David Silverman set the tone for the entire weekend on Saturday morning with his speech “Skepticism, Atheism, and our Common Movement.” He pointed out, and I agree, that while “atheist” is not synonymous with “skeptic,” the two categories of people have an incredible overlap of people and that skeptics play a large and vital role in the secular movement. He also encouraged the crowd at Skepticon not to be afraid to use the word “atheist” in public whenever the question of religious affiliation comes up. When friends and family know that someone they love and know personally is an atheist, it’s less likely that they will hold negative stereotypes in their minds about atheists. This has worked for other movements, and it can work for us.

Most of the talks were not directly related to atheism, but had to do with science, rationality, and clear thinking in general. There were two talks addressing cognitive biases (Eliezer Yudkowsky) and how our own thinking can go wrong (Spencer Greenberg), a couple of basic and interesting talks on molecular genetics and addressed popular misunderstandings of genes (P.Z.Myers and Jen McCreight), a speech on undercover paranormal investigations (Joe Nickell), the need for critical thinking in math education (Hemant Mehta), and the crazy history and beliefs of Mormonism (David Fitzgerald). There was also a talk on the “Straw Vulcan”–ways in which logic and rationality and misrepresented in popular media  (Julia Galef), and I may write more on that later as I have thought about this a lot before and find the topic fascinating.

One of the more unusual speeches was from Darrel Ray on “Sex and Secularism” presenting the results of a study that queried how leaving religion had affected their sex lives. I think I had even participated in that survey some time ago, but I had forgotten about it. A major theme that Darrel Ray has proposed is that religion roots itself in people’s lives by generating a great deal of guilt about normal and healthy sexual (and other) behaviors, and then also promotes itself as the cure to ease that guilty feeling. That is a bit of a simplification of his thesis, and one day I need to read his book “The God Virus” and examine his idea more throughly.

Without a doubt, the most fun presentation was put on by the “Atheist Evangelist” Sam Singleton, which was in part a parody of a charismatic style  church service, and in part a (semi) serious sermon to secular people about giving thanks to the people who deserve our gratitude. At least, I took it somewhat seriously, because I think it was a great message. Thank you Brother Sam!

The final presentation was the most powerful and incredibly personal of them all. The title of JT Eberhard’s presentation was “Why the Skeptic Community Must Concern Itself with Mental Illness.” In which he came out as someone who has struggled silently for years with anorexia. The whole experience was so heart rending and emotional I find a difficult time describing it. There is such a stigma attached both with admitting that there is something wrong with your mind, and also with seeking help and taking medication to treat it because of a fear that that means  you are weak. He delivered a heartfelt plea to the skeptical community to address the incorrect and non-scientific views on mental illness just the same way as the community exposes the frauds of homeopathy. And for those who have mental illness to come out and help remove the stigma in the same way that we are calling atheists to come out and remove the stigma of nonbelief. Mental illness is not an issue I have had to deal with personally, and he presented a view of this problem that I have never been able to see before. The reception from the crowd was also amazing. We all love you JT!

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.

Anyway today I hit a personal milestone. This was the first morning that I made first vocal contact with a client (actually I was speaking to the support person, but same idea.) It’s simple, but takes a bit of balance to be both assertive enough to get them to hear you, but docile enough not to intimidate a person who is probably already pretty scared. After all, when you first approach, they don’t know if you are there to help or to berate them. “Those of us in the orange vests are with the clinic. Would you like an escort to the clinic door?” The looks of tremendous relief and gratitude on the faces of the clients is enough to keep me coming back again and again.

When I first come to the clinic, about 6:50am, I’m a bit nervous about getting out of my car unless I see orange vests around. And I know the faces of a lot of the protestors, and know that they are generally peaceful and not going to attack me or anything like that. However, today I saw one of my fellow clinic escorts threatened by a protestor in his car. She was crossing the street to the parking lot, and he came around the corner in his big black truck and drove into the lane where she was, honked at her, and even sped up when she picked up her pace to get across the street. Then he pulled into the clinic parking lot and then we knew for sure he was one of the protestors. The intent to intimidate was clear.

So, considering my nervousness when there are not other escorts in the parking lot, I can only imagine the fear that the clients go though when trying to access the clinic. Unlike myself, they are probably not entirely sure what is going on, how the protestors will behave. They have already had to go though the KY state required counselling and 24 hour waiting period. If they are a minor, they have had to get the consent of a parent. At this point they just want their privacy and to be left alone, whether they are getting an abortion, a pregnancy test, or any other service that the clinic offers. No one has the right to take that from them.

That is why I keep getting up at 6am on Saturday morning and putting on the orange vest.

1. I seriously doubt that any religion has the truth or the answers for life. It would be inauthentic for me to say stuff like “I think all paths are equal” or something like that. I can see that religious traditions each contain some bits of truth, but not in sort of way the way that they claim.
2. I think it does injustice to the natural world and to humanity to attribute all that is good and delightful in the world to supernatural causes.
3. Because my reasons for not believing in God goes far beyond the injustices in the Bible or the travesties that have been carried out in the name of religion. I know plenty of people who view God as a loving father and I’ve also heard many variations on the “Footprints in the Sand” motif. I also know that there are lots of Protestants, Catholics, and Unitarians who put a strong focus on social justice and other good works. I will work right beside them. But I don’t need to believe in God to pursue social justice, so I see no reason to throw religious belief into the mix.
4. Because morality is a concern of humans, not of God. Morality that is backed only by religious reasons, and not human reason and empathy, is not real morality. Religious morality is the type that keeps Muslim women hidden from head to toe and attempts to justify the killing of abortion doctors and persecutes people for being gay. Purely secular reasons are sufficient for a morality based on empathy and love.
5. Because talk of God or spirits providing your purpose and meaning is a way to avoid the responsibility to create your own purpose and meaning in life.

It has been suggested to me many times that God is not like a judge, but rather like a really good loving father. Since I don’t believe that supernatural beings exist, either ghosts or gods, there is probably not a lot of reason to labor the point. My disbelief in God is not because I think he is not good, it is because I think he is not real. I have only a very minor disagreement with anyone who wants to use the word “god” to describe things that are indisputably real, like the universe. But as far as believing in a God that exists in an objective and independent way, well, I’ve never seen or heard any evidence to convince me that is true.

Anyway, here are the issues I have with the “God as loving father with a broken heart when he sees your suffer” metaphor.

1. Very unlike a human father, God is all-powerful. That instead of merely wishing he could take suffering away from his children, he could actually do it, with amazing ease. A human father, on the other hand, faces the heartbreak of helplessness when his child is sick or hurt and he can do nothing about it. Even if God would have good reasons to allow suffering to continue, he definitely does not face the same issues that a human father would face in that situation.
2. While it is very hard for a human father to explain something to his small child, communication should be a cinch for an all-powerful God. A human father can pick up his child and cuddle and comfort, while God apparently only leaves us to imagine that he is carrying and cuddling us. It’s as if he is not only not able to communicate what is going on, he is not even there at all.
3. The whole metaphor has us as helpless, uncomprehending, and totally dependant infants. Such a philosophy is not conducive to self-respect and confidence and self-responsibility. It is most definitely not conducive to freethought–since it promotes the idea that we are uncomprehending and unable to think for ourselves in the face of the big scary questions of life.

My life is good without God. I am not suffering, nor do a feel a hole in my life that I need God to fill. In times when I am suffering I will do what I can about it, and hopefully I will have the support and care of friends and family. There will not necessarily be any ultimate purpose behind it, and I will not be looking for any.

A woman has the right to live
A woman has the right to choose
A woman has the right to have a child
and she has the right to refuse.

I also learned this one:

Not the church and not the state,
Women must decide their fate!

We had some escorts come from Nebraska, as a reciprocation for when some Louisville escorts went to Omaha to defend Dr. Carhart’s clinic. So I made a few new friends and experienced some great camaraderie. The mix of people was great too: we had men, women, atheists, Christians, pagans, young, and old. Greatly increases my hope for humanity.

EDIT: I corrected some of the lyrics on the first song. And I’ve come up with a verse, to the same tune.

You don’t call an egg a bird,
You don’t call an acorn a tree.
A medical student is not a doctor
and a fetus is not a baby!

Now that’ll raise some anti hackles!

In exactly the same sense that there have been religious existentialists, individuals who embraced existential ideas about personal responsibility but then leapt in the next breath to gods, there can be — and there are spiritual atheists or new age atheists, individuals who take a pass on gods but who imbue the word spiritual with special meaning.

Why would this happen?

He then goes on to describe the situation where an atheist is going about her normal daily business but is suddenly struck at the thought of the strangeness and somewhat incomprehensibleness of the brute facts of reality. Struck by questions like “Why is there something instead of nothing?” Or being overwhelmed at an amazing sense of connectedness with the rest of the universe, a feeling I have experienced many times while walking though the woods or laying out on a clear night gazing at the stars. I’ve had the same type of feeling in yoga class too, usually while chanting or in the Savasanna pose at the end of the class.

He goes on.

These are the kinds of experiences that cause many atheists to want to keep the word spiritual in their vocabulary. I think that this is a grave mistake, second only to allowing god-talk to stand unchallenged. It is better to stand consternated and not understand an experience than to commit our version of the supernatural error. It is far wiser not to sprint from a momentary feeling to a complete revision of our basic understanding of the universe. If we do not stand firm here — with ourselves — we are in serious danger of backsliding into inauthenticity. [bold mine]

I put that in bold because I think it is the crux of the issue. Since I’ve been an atheist I’ve always been a bit ambivalent about the word ‘spiritual’ but I stuck with it because I thought it was the only and best word there was to explain experiences like the ones I described above. Every now and then I would explain that I didn’t think there was anything supernatural about the events, just that they invoked an emotional and thoughtful response in me. These experiences were deeply meaningful to me, and pulled me out of the normal mundanity of life for just a few moments at a time.

They were meaningful. This, in fact, is the word that Eric Maisel recommends that we use for these types of experiences. Which is great for me, since I don’t have any reservations about the word ‘meaningful.’ It’s one that I can use and not feel I need to backtrack and explain that what I mean by it is not exactly what is traditionally meant by it. It’s one less mental tension in my life.

If you have any more questions about the concept, pick up the book and read it. It’s a good and inspiring piece, and it’s also fairly short as books go. I think that it is great that someone writes books like these for atheists in a situation where we have not had many examples and roll-models in our daily lives of how to ‘live well’ in the context of atheism.

EDIT: Another thing I thought of during the day today: Calling something ‘spiritual’ seems to endow it with a sense of virtue and ‘holier-than-thou’ feeling that ‘meaningful’ does not imply. That sense is not necessarily deserved–that something fills you with a special and inspired feeling doesn’t necessarily mean that it is virtuous. The ‘holy man’ does not deserve a halo for just sitting around uttering more or less inspiring words. The activities that we label as ‘spiritual’ are not necessarily better or more important than anything else we do. Just an observation–anyone else get what I’m talking about?

First of all I was totally saddened and PISSED at the murder of Dr. Tiller. Anyone who has seen my Facebook page knows this well. What upsets me the most is the cavalier and even sometimes gleeful attitude of some pro-lifers. As if they are saying “well, we don’t condone murder, but he had it coming.” In response, I have pledged $10 a month to Planned Parenthood for the next year–probably longer. I am utterly convinced that it was the hateful rhetoric of groups like Operation Rescue that killed him–not just some loner with a gun. It take everything in me to remind myself that most pro-life people are good people concerned with protecting babies, even if they have been badly misinformed about the facts around abortion and filled with the fore-mentioned hateful rhetoric.

And that brings me to my next thought. One of the teachers at Yoga East has been talking about a yama each week, and recently she brought up Satya. This is usually translated as truthfulness. Here is what a quick Google search brought up on the topic.

Satya (Truthfulness)
Satya means “to speak the truth,” yet it is not always desirable to speak the truth on all occasions, for it could harm someone unnecessarily. We have to consider what we say, how we say it, and in what way it could affect others. If speaking the truth has negative consequences for another, then it is better to say nothing. Satya should never come into conflict with our efforts to behave with ahimsa. The Mahabharata, the great Indian epic, says: “Speak the truth which is pleasant. Do not speak unpleasant truths. Do not lie, even if the lies are pleasing to the ear. That is the eternal law, the dharma.” Please note that this does not mean speak lie. Keeping quiet and saying lies are two different things.

(from http://yoga.iloveindia.com/limbs-of-yoga/yama.html)
 

[I should note here that I don't believe in holy scripture, and do not give special pleading to yoga philosophy. But just sometimes these old writings have some great concepts and this is one of those cases where I think they really got it right.]

I couldn’t help but think of Satya in the context of the debate over abortion and the murder of Dr. Tiller. I’ll give the Operation Rescue folks the benefit of the doubt, in that they really think they are speaking the truth when they call abortion murder and Dr. Tiller a murderer. I used to be on their side in the issue, too.  Abortion is a hard issue to deal with and is not something than anyone considers a good thing. Necessary sometimes, but not good. I cannot believe that they are really speaking the truth. Words that inspire people to murder and violence are not truth. Words that smear and vilify women who have found themselves confronting this horrible and painful decision do not express truth. Words that call a doctor who saves women’s lives a murderer are not truth.

Truth, whether it is pleasant or unpleasast, bring light and understanding to the subject at hand, not rage and violence. When the “truth” we speak creates more heat than light, we should reconsider our words and our attitudes.

Anyway, this is an incredibly fascinating video.