Monthly Archives: September 2012

Don’t need God to tell us what is good

Posted on by

“How do you know what is good without God?”

This is a question that one of the visitors to the Louisville Atheists booth at the Ky State Fair asked me after he read our banner slogan “Millions are good without God!” It was not hard for me to come up with a quick answer. “We define ‘good’ in human terms. We don’t need a God to tell us what is good.”

I’d like to expand on that answer a bit. After spending 10+ years as an atheist, it still shocks me a bit that some religious people seem to think we require supernatural revelation to tell us what is good.  When you eat a delicious and satisfying meal, do you need someone to tell you that it is good? When you feel wonderful about yourself after helping someone in need, do you need someone to tell you that your action was good? If you are angry and lash out at another person in your anger, do you need supernatural revelation to tell you that your action was not good?

I think not, and it doesn’t matter if you believe in any gods or not. We know that there are certain things and actions that bring love, and happiness, and fulfillment, and we call these things “good.” Others bring fear, and hate, and disgust, and we call these things “bad.” A large number of things and actions bring a bit of both good and bad into the world, and there we need to made a judgement call on whether the good is worth the bad.

During my conversation with this state fair visitor, I asked him if he saw any problem in the bad things in the Bible that God reportedly commanded. In particular, about the genocides described against the Amalekites and other “pagans” that God commanded the Israelites to destroy. His answer was the usual “God’s ways are higher than our ways,” and I think this simple yet mind-boggling phrase highlights what Christians means when they say we cannot know what is good without God’s help. Everyone knows that delicious food, funny jokes, and helpful actions are good, but what about all those things we would never guess could be good expect by divine revelation?

Things like:

  • Genocide (1 Samuel 15)
  • Sexism (1 Corinthians 11:7-12)
  • Homophobia (Romans 1:18-32)
  • Blood Sacrifice (recurring theme, specific examples probably not needed)
  • Substitutionary atonement, or the punishment of an innocent victim to pay for the wrongdoings of the guilty. (See also: scapegoating). This is the theological principle underlying the Christian notion that Jesus “died for our sins.”
  • Hell (need I say more?)

Even today, on the fringes of Christianity, there are parents who sincerely believe it is bad to take their sick child to the doctor, and good to beat their child for disobeying them.

There are things that under normal circumstances, any reasonably intelligent and honest person would see as harmful and bad. However, when it is presented to a person as part of their inherited or chosen religious tradition, that person will absolutely bend over backwards to justify these things and make them “good.” After all, God’s ways are higher, right?

So, we don’t need a God or any authority outside our own minds (individually or collectively) to tell us what is good, unless there is some motivation to present things that are really bad as good.

The Kentucky Freethought Convention

Posted on by

Recently, the Bluegrass CoR in Lexington Kentucky finally got their billboard! But that is not the only Freethought News going on in Lexington lately.

The first ever Kentucky Freethought Convention is now only two weeks away! On Saturday October, 6, the KFC  will be held in Lexington Kentucky on the University of Kentucky Campus, and will feature nationally known speakers Seth Andrews (aka, The Thinking Atheist) and Jen McCreight, as well as a number of more locally known speakers from around Kentucky.

Friday the 5th, a group of freethinkers will be visiting the Creation Museum with Seth Andrews. And for local group leaders (or those who would like to be group leaders) there will be a leadership training on Sunday morning lead by Michael Werner.

To find more information about the Kentucky Freethought Convention and to register online, visit http://www.kyfreethoughtconvention.com.

Reasonable Living and Intentional Community

Posted on by

Why do people go to church?

Of course, since my background is Christian I will write in “church” terms, but the same applies to the people who meet together in any type of religion, whether Nazarene, Catholic, Mormon or Hindu or Muslim or anything else. The same principles apply regardless of the specific beliefs.

We’ve all heard many times over that humans are social beings. We need each other and we need some sort of rule set and cultural framework to structure our lives. We like to “hang out” with people who think the way we do, for better or worse. It has been my observation that churches and other such organizations exist not out of the commands or needs of any God or gods but rather to fit the needs for human beings for belonging and social structure. After all, what do a large part of church activities have to do with theology? What do basketball courts, walking tracks and youth trips to amusement parks have to do with religion? They are attractions, side benefits to membership (or potential membership) that are used to draw people in with the hopes that they will join and stay and buy into the theology.

Unfortunately, the community benefits of churches and religious organizations come at a serious cost to those who do not buy into the theological baggage that comes with it. Constant messages saying that you are a sinner, that you should believe. The idea that you are incomplete and sick and doomed to failure unless you can believe something no matter how absurd and impossible. Being around people who tell you these things, implicitly or explicitly, can wear one down incredibly even if you are certain you are right. And the believers in a church environment usually don’t get it. Even if they sincerely love and accept you as an atheist, their insistence that “God loves you anyway” and “you are still welcome here” amounts to nothing more than a massive (and massively absurd) guilt trip. It’s not that we think we are too dirty and “sinful” to be accepted by your God. It’s that we really don’t think your God is real at all.

So what is a community-craving atheist to do? Some people are thick-skinned and nonconformist enough to put up with the negative messages about non-belief from the religious with no problem. But the rest us need the sort of community that churches and religious organizations have monopolized for so long.

In order to meet this need, one of the more recent offerings of the Louisville Atheists and Freethinkers group is a weekly Sunday morning small group meeting called Reasonable Living. It was founded and is lead by a former Baptist minister, and we (half-jokingly) refer to the meetings as our “secular Sunday School.” We have been meeting for the past few months, and on some weeks we have almost outgrown our meeting area. In the meetings, the topics of discussion are ideas like how do we balance societal responsibility with personal responsibility, what is the role of an individual in society, how we deal with life and death issues. Studies have usually been modeled around a book, and for the past several weeks we have been studying “Living without God: New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists, and the Undecided.” It’s a great opportunity to discuss some interesting topics and sharpen your own thinking. If you are in the Louisville area and are interested in discussing the secular life, come and join us!

(Cross-posted at LouisvilleAtheists.com)

Recent events: Atheism+ and Insanity at the DNC

Posted on by

Too much is going on the past several days for my to focus on a single thing. Today I will be writing about Atheism+ and the insanity at the DNC.

I really like the idea of Atheism Plus. To me, this is not a new thing, but what I have been for years. Technically speaking, an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in a god or in gods, and I have no problem with that specific definition. But atheists as people are so much more going on than merely not believing in gods. Just talking about that gets very boring after a while. Let’s get together as atheists and talk about feminism and social justice and how to live ethical lives. I like having a term for this that does not gloss over the “atheist,” the way several people have used the term “humanist,” and still incorporates the general principles of humanism and skepticism. I have added the A+ logo to my sidebar, and if you click on it, it will take you to the Atheism Plus website. Not much there yet, except for a pretty active forum that I will be checking from time to time.

Also, for more reading about A+ check out
How I Unwittingly Infiltrated the Boy’s Club & Why It’s Time for a New Wave of Atheism
and
Atheism Plus, and Some Thoughts on Divisiveness

On an entirely different topic…

….what is this ridiculousness at the DNC around adding God back into their platform and also some sort of statement about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel? Why the hell is an American political party making a resolution about the proper capital of another sovereign nation? Anyway, there was a vote during the convention to revise the party platform. Any revisions require a two-thirds vote, and they did this by having the audience of delegates call out “yea” or “no.” Here is where it gets really ridiculous. They held the vote to add the “God language” and the resolution on Israel’s capital city three times, and while the “no’s” were at least as loud as the “yea’s” each time, the DNC chair went ahead and adopted the resolution anyway. What kind of vote is this? I might expect this sort of thing from the RNC, but what is this but a statement by the DNC that us godless citizens are just not welcome among them? This sort of behavior at the DNC has cause me to really consider switching my party affiliation from Democrat to Independent. I won’t tell anyone else what to do, but I have to wonder what kind of impact it would have if all the Democrat atheists in this country did the same.

Video here: