What's happening on the little stage?

What's happening on the little stage?

We get oodles of news on the national level, the big stage of the secular/atheist movement, but what's happening on our smaller stages?  What are our local groups doing?

I really enjoy attending the monthly meetings of my local group, Fayetteville Freethinkers,  Arkansas, and I also take time out to attend the meetings of a few other nearby groups - often, just to see what's going on.  There's a good deal of variety out there and I encourage everyone to get their fill of it by visiting outside their own neighborhood once in a while.  Here's why...

This month, my own group featured a Doug Kruger "original"... What a hoot.  Doug has been giving presentations to our group for years.  He's the author of  "What is Atheism: A Short Introduction,"  he teaches at the collage level and he's a highly polished speaker - a real piece of human inventiveness especially when it comes to selecting topics.  This month he offered an overview on dowsing, of all things. It's the art of ( ...the  art of?) finding underground water, lost and hidden items, and a lot of other sorts of foolishness.

The conclusion: If dowsers would turn their dowsing attention and skills (...skills?) to seeking out nonsensical thinkers with foolish beliefs (and if dowsing worked) the seeking dowsers would end up chasing their own tails around endlessly, just like little puppies often do and they'd look just as brainless as they do when seeking out other such silliness as they claim to be able to do.

You can't guess what fun it is to look critically at the wacko ideas humans come up with... at all of it.  Science and history, philosophy and ethics, politics and government are certainly not to be slighted in the least. Knowing these things is important; yet, doing without an occasional debunking of this and that or failing to poke some fun at the silliness some segments of our societies believe, kind of runs a close second in many, many categories.

Attend your local meeting... Don't miss it.

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Preacher man, abandon your post!

Preacher man, abandon your post!

If religion's thinking members (and there are plenty of them) would suddenly adopt courage enough to honestly recognize that the moral grounds applied by the holy scriptures are not entirely defensible, that the gods touted in the Bible, the Qu'ran and Torah and by all the other ancient holy texts are clearly not infallible in every way; then, the doors of a new dilemma, a modern intellectual dilemma, would open wide on the public stage.  And that new dilemma, "What ought we to believe and live by?" is the single most neglected question of today's society.

But who should be called upon to take the first brave steps?  Who should become the leaders of meaningful religious reform. Preachers; that's who!

One who assumes a leadership responsibility for others is obligated morally to examine the direction he advocates.  Is it right to teach that those who fail to believe as others do deserve death?  Is touting slavery as an institution a worthy endeavor?  Is advocating "eye for an eye" justice a just avocation?  And women... is it okay to to cast them as second class people, obedient to the whims of men as has been done since long before the year one? Are aggressive war and genocide supportable? Aren't there moral grounds today for casting off the amoral standards of the past, those less than holy standards reflected by old-world scriptures, whether they are said to be "divinely given" or not? ... I believe there are.

One at a time or as a mass exodus, a new clergy must take-up the lead for a new cause. That being: to officially and completely abandon any book of scripture and any religious doctrine that is so tarnished by such uncivilized teaching as the kind seen above such that whatever remaining good which might be derived from  religion and its texts must be rescued away to begin again elsewhere, untarnished and based in reality.

Honest clergymen, wherever they can be found, must take the first steps out of their wrongfully taken yesterday-attitudes for idealization of that which is clearly not ideal.  Preachers need to answer a new calling outside the old ideals of church and far away from the ill-thought moral teaching found in the old holy books.
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What non-believers DO believe

What non-believers DO believe

Atheism, agnosticism and the trailing pack of additional isms that are so often attached to the first two as if they were mere after thoughts are not entirely devoid of belief, not even from the most extreme beginning, atheism - the ultimate abyss of nothingness and hopelessness as god-believers might call it.  Certainly, a Taoist has beliefs and yet he claims no beliefs in gods.

"Hey... What's that?  Beliefs?" you say.

It's true.  Even atheists have beliefs.

I'm personally not an avid reader of philosophy, yet I do have a personal philosophy that I live by.  We all do. I'll refer you to Richard Carrier to argue against this, if you'd like to refute the truth of the matter.  Yet here, my purpose is simply. I wish to raise the level of awareness of for readers to recognizing the fact that we non-beleivers do, in fact, believe something.

Collectively speaking, it would be a fine mess to attempt lumping all non-believers into a single pile. Our beliefs vary enough from person to person that even listing the least common denominators of our every individual philosophy ofour midst would present a task of the highest order - it might be possible, of course, but impossibility is likely its nearest up-the-street neighbor.  Yet let's try.  Respect for basic honesty, respect for self and others, valuing and improving upon our own critical thinking skills, and accepting irrefutable reality might head such a list, (or not).  But the point, I hope, is clear. We are not, any of us, entirely without beliefs.

I urge each of you to explore your own beliefs, and then to seek that which is common and uncommon between you and the guy or gal next to you.  We all need to talk about our beliefs a lot more.

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