That was not the only value I learned from my parents growing up.

Mom also had a thing with words. One I learned from her was “stick-to-it-ativeness.” Basically that is the idea that you should finish what you start–a tough lesson for a kid who would want to quit and do something else as soon as the fun had gone out of a task. It’s a lesson that has served me well up to this point.

Today is my parent’s 44th wedding anniversary. And that’s quite a lesson in “stick-to-it-ativeness” in itself.

Happy Anniversary! I love you both.

In the interest of full disclosure, I decided to post this on Think Atheist in reach of a bigger audience

Why Do Atheists Meet Together?

Overall I think I did a good job, though I was very nervous and didn’t really have the time to go as far in depth as I would have liked. This speech is supposed to last from 5-7 minutes, and mine went 6 minutes and 52 seconds. Right on time!

Many people told me that they liked my speech, though no one mentioned what their own view on the subject were or whether I’d convinced them of anything. The most interesting comment I got was from a lady in the group who is also a preacher (who also gave a very good speech today). She said that I had done well at discussing the issue without dragging too much of the religious controversy into it. I had focused primarily on the scientific issues. I think this is a good thing, as one of my goals in Toastmasters is to be able to present a controversial, sometimes polarizing issue, without, well, polarizing the audience.

On Thursday I went to a candlelight vigil that was held by the Kentucky Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. I was invited by a friend who works with them, though she is an atheist like myself. It was the first time I’ve been inspired in a church in a long time. Most of these people may believe in supernatural stuff I don’t, but we all seem to share the same humanist values of compassion, understanding, and social justice.

I think this was a very important thing for me to see. While out defending the clinic’s clients on Saturday mornings, I get to see the crazy side of religion. Most of the protesters appear to be either conservative Catholics loudly saying the rosary (prayer as a weapon?), students from the Southern Baptist Seminary, or occasionally a busload from the Kentucky Mountain Bible College (who always seem to keep a good distance from the rosary-praying Catholics). There are two women in particular who like to yell at the clients, and one of these will continuously jump around yelling and preaching like she’s full of holy spirits.

Never in my life have I been exposed to such incredibly different types of religion. It gives me hope to see that there are some truly sane and compassionate religious people out there, and that I get to work right along-side them in hopes of a better world.

In keeping with the tradition of making resolutions for New Year’s Day, I would like to state my intentions to accomplish a few clear goals in 2010.

I want to:

• Get my passport. Not planning any international travel just yet, but I want to be ready if the opportunity arises.
• Make some progress towards getting my Masters degree. Even if I don’t start a program this coming year, I want to take the GRE and get my letters of recommendation before the end of the year.
• Finish rest of the 10 speeches in the Toastmaster’s Competent Communicator manual. I have done 2 of them, 8 to go!

Happy New Years!

I liked the objective, evidence-based view of the scientists, especially that of the main scientist Dr. Grace Augustine. I also noticed the way that she came to believe in the mystical environmentalist religion of the Na’vi. And I’d have to say that if I observed the things that she observed that I would have believed too.

Think about it. She and the other scientists were first amazed to find out that all the plants on Pandora had some kind of chemical/electrical communication system going on between them. She also would have observed in her Na’vi avatar body, as Jake Sully did, that she had an odd sensor thing at the end of her braid that allowed her to tap into that network. Then she finally got to see the magical tree that was at the hub of all the communication. If I were to see an experience all that, I would definitely be leaning toward some sort of pantheism even if I considered it all to be totally natural (as opposed to supernatural). If I had all these signs, all this evidence, that it was true then I’d be right in there with the believers.

Now for the Issac Asimov explanation I promised. In the book Nemesis, a group of humans who have inhabited an asteroid in the increasingly crowded solar system have found a way to leave for another sun. They try to terraform an earth-like moon of a gas-giant planet in orbit around a large red sun, but workers on this new world are continually struck by some sort of ‘madness.’ It turns out that there is a microbial life form covering the planet, but it’s not just bacteria. It’s a huge planet spanning superorganism, and it does not want to be destroyed to let the humans terraform the planet. To top it all, this interconnected mass of microbes is telepathic, and communicates with the main character in the story, a girl named Marlene. In the end it is able to convince them, by communicating though Marlene, to stop the attempts at terraforming.

A common thread in Avatar and Nemesis is that the main characters are generally skeptically minded rational people who encounter the reality things that they had previously thought impossible. And in the face of this mind-boggling evidence they accept what the evidence implies. It’s any open-minded skeptic’s dream.

Of course, this is all fantasy and not reality. These fantastical happenings are commonplace in fiction, but not so much in the real world. Skeptics are not convinced by fanciful speculations and second-hand stories.

So if you are curious about what would cause this skeptical atheist to believe in (fill in the blank) check out the sort of things that convince the skeptics in these stories. Seeing (and verifying) is believing.

Those who argue against secular morality almost inevitable talk about the necessity of ‘absolute morality.’ But what does that mean? As far as I can tell, absolute morality means holding up some outside moral authority over even your own conscience. This is demonstrated in the way that most of the major religions hold up obedience as one of the highest virtues. Probably most the the time your conscience will agree with the authority. But what if the authority in question demands something that disagrees with your conscience? Does obeying your conscience ever mean disobeying the absolute authority?

• As an example from the Bible, consider the Abraham and Isaac story. Was it moral for Abraham to kill his son? By what moral standard? I agree with Julia Sweeney on this one–if you perceive that a God is telling you to kill your child is not the proper answer ‘No I will NOT even if it means I’m going to hell!’?
• What about conscientious objectors to war? In the context of morality do you think it makes sense to hold the authority of your own conscience over that of your countries leaders? If you want to answer this from a Christian point of view, please reread Romans 13 first.
• The ‘conscience’ objection for pharmacists re:birth control? What other medications might a pharmacist object to for conscience reasons? And what kind of moral standard is being upheld by withholding women’s access to birth control?

My conclusion is that if you hold up the dictates of your own conscience over that of an outside moral authority, then you can’t believe that morality is absolute. Why is it not considered morally acceptable for a soldier to torture prisoners or commit other war crimes and then claim ‘I was only following orders?’ Absolute morality and personal responsibility do not fit together.

My personal view is that morality does not come from ‘on high,’ from some absolute source whether it’s God or something else like the rulers of your country. It is an inevitable product of a society where people must live together and interact with each other. Good moral acts are those that take into consideration the well-being and happiness of yourself and of those around you. I’m not a professional philosopher, but I’ve found that in my daily life this has been a good rule of thumb. Since there is no static list of rules that takes into account each and every situation and moral choice in life, morality is situational. Each and every moral decision is unique.

I want to list 10 things that I am thankful for in honor of Thanksgiving.

• Family
• Freedom
• Freethought, and the freedom to express it.
• My Health
• Good water and food, not something that everyone in the world has.
• A good job, especially in a time of high unemployment.
• Science, for technology and for insights into who we are and where we come from.
• Good friends
• Good books
• All the people who have gone before who have fought and sacrificed much for freedom for Americans, for women, and for atheists.

And that is a lot to be Thankful for.

The part that was truly touching and meaningful was when my aunt got up and read pieces that she and my uncle and other aunt wrote in memory of Grampa. My favorite part was her story about how Grampa let them all be children and would laugh and play with them. They also went on long trips in the car, which was a foreshadowing of the long car trips cross-country that I would go on with my parents. Those are some of my fondest childhood memories. I can definately see where Dad got a lot of his personality traits and his love for travel.

So I had mixed feelings about the memorial: a sense of isolation due to the abundance of religious preaching, but also a sense of connection from the stories told by my aunts and uncles.