One of the traits that led me to reject religion, was my desire to know the truth. It wasn’t a trait that was very strong in me growing up, but in late adolescence it forced itself into my consciousness. While taking Bible classes at a non-denominational Christian school, doubts started to emerge that I had never entertained before. It was the first time that I had seriously come into contact with doctrines and dogmas that conflicted with my Seventh-day Adventism. These doubts created a conflict within myself that eventually led me to the conviction that the only way to put my mind at ease was to dive into the Bible and figure out what the truth was about God.

What I found created even more problems as I found that the more I read the Bible the more doubts I had. This led me a few years later to admit to myself that I no longer believed in the truth of the Bible, and the possibility of some other God seemed very remote. It was that strategy of looking for myself that led to atheism. If I had taken the route that many others do, and read other books that told me what the Bible meant, or asked my paster to tell me what I was supposed to believe, then I would likely still be in the same place I was then.

I find that most people I know, most of whom happen to be religious, lack that desire to find out the truth by looking for themselves. Most people seem content to believe what seems interesting or comforting to them, and do not bother to check to see if it is true. I have made some in-roads with the people in my life. When they hear or read something that seems incredible they do seem to question it more now, but they still rely on me to do the research. I get emails all the time from people asking me to find out if this or that is true. I’ve told them many times that I simply google the topic, or if it is something they receive in an e-mail forward I check Snopes. They still have no desire to look for themselves.

In one recent incident, someone I know received an email warning about something that could be deadly. He completely believed that it was true, since anything that gets forwarded by numerous people must be true, right? I expressed skepticism, and said we should look it up. It turned out that the warning was legitimate, and my friends reaction was “See, I told yo so!” The fact that it turned out to be true was not the point. The point was that he believed it on faith, and therefore whether he was correct or not did not matter, because he had no reason for believing it in the first place.

This is incredibly similar to the traditional Christian belief in the second coming of Jesus. We have no reason for believing it, but we are told that if we do we will be rewarded with an eternity in paradise. Quite a bit bigger prize than just getting to say “I told you so.” But this scheme has nothing to do with a legitimate search for the truth. It is gambling our lives on winning a prize that we have no reason to think exists. Even if it turned out to be true, it would be foolish to take the gamble without some evidence.

If a random homeless person walked up to you in tattered clothes and said they were selling tickets for a multi-million dollar lottery, and you were guaranteed to double your money if you bought a $1,000 ticket, how many would you buy?

I was anxious to comment on the Friendly Christian’s blog entry asking What is Christianity Good for? since I had commented previously on what about Christianity turns me off. Unfortunately by the time I got there the other day he had closed the comments. So here is my answer:

Since I no longer believe in the existential truth of Christianity’s various claims, I can only offer something personal. When I was a Christian, I was younger, less jaded, and less mature than I am now. Often when I think about the difference between how I think now, versus when I was a Christian I wonder how much of the change is due to my change in beliefs, and how much is due to just normal growing up.

The same is true for certain heights of emotion that I experienced when I was a Christian. I have no reason to think these states were induced by virtue of my Christianity at the time, though I would have then. The thought of God was a million miles away at these times. There was nothing specific that I could point to, just kind of a soaring, empowered feeling. Knowing that everything was going to turn out ok in the end. That I was capable of making a positive difference in the world.

These flights of emotion may have simply been due to my age, or mental state at these particular times. The whole “teenage invincibility” thing that people talk about. Where young people feel like the flow of universe is at their personal disposal, and that no harm could possibly come to them. Whatever might have caused these feelings, the fact is that I don’t have them as much, or as intensely any more. When I hear people talk about being “spiritually” moved by science or nature, I’m more than a tad bit jealous. I have an intellectual appreciation for science, but the emotional aspect is lacking for me.

And for me, nature invokes more of an existential stoicism than anything else, if that make any sense. When I think of stoicism, my first thought is always Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations. There is a passage early on in Meditations that I could not find in my quick Google search, that says something to the effect that it is good to take refuge in yourself, to find that place of peace within. I don’t recall his exact words, but when I first read it my mind went to the Fortress of Solitude, that icy den where Superman went to chill out from time to time. And my simple understanding of existentialism is that we are utterly alone in the universe, and utterly responsible for deciding what to do with ourselves. Those are the two paths that come together for me in the term existential stoicism, that cool, bracing realization of being alone, and responsible for our choices.

Now there’s nothing wrong with all that, as it is very grounding, but I would like to soar every now and then. I think part of the change is because I feel less powerful than I did then, and I am exposed to more of the problems the world has. There does not seem the time to tend to all of them, and that fact can be disheartening. Being a Christian, I also think I felt less actual responsibility than I do now. Part of that is growing up and starting my own family, but I also think that does have to do with the shift in my beliefs. Of course I am an oldest child, so it’s not like that feeling of responsibility is new.

So if I had to pick something that was good for me in Christianity, it would have been that it possibly made me more inclined to those emotions, and gave me a framework for understanding them afterwards. I still think these emotions are a possibility for me now in my new mental framework of humanism. I just have yet to access them as such.

I’ve read several posts over the last few days dealing with atheism, and exactly what percentage of certainty someone has to have about the non-existence of God before they can call themselves an atheist. Here, and here. The thinking seems to be that you can only call yourself an atheist if you are 100% sure that there are no Gods, which is irrational because no human being could have that kind of certainty on the issue. Whereas the authors give the high ground to the “agnostics” who are only 99.99999% certain that there are no Gods. That tiny, minuscule sliver of doubt makes them morally superior.

The problem is, I rarely hear atheists talk about having 100% certainty. Most atheists simply don’t believe in any Gods. But I have heard atheists talk about being 99.9999% certain, just like these “agnostics.” So is the real problem that the term atheist seems to imply dogmatic certitude for the majority of people? That’s the impression I got from the discussion here. where the person in question prefers to call herself a doubter, because of the calcified and corrosive attitudes of some who call themselves atheists.

I’m all for coming up with more specific labels, telling people what I personally stand for, rather than what I do not believe in. I wish the God question wasn’t so important in our culture that I feel obliged to have an informed opinion on something that I do not believe in. That’s all well and good. My question is: Where the heck are these numbers coming from? I have certainly heard atheists and agnostics talk about their percentage of certainty before, I think I may have done it myself, but I think it is obvious that these numbers are being pulled out of the air. There is nothing grounding them to anything observable, they are tied to the intensity of our feelings. You can’t get much more pseudoscientific than slapping numbers on feelings.

So let me state for the record that I am not 100, 99.9, 99.999999, or any other percentage sure that there are no Gods. I’m simply not convinced that any exist. I think it is disingenuous, and misleading to stick numbers on my lack of belief. So from now on I won’t be applying percentages to my religious beliefs, or pushing the equally misleading idea that agnostics must be 50-50 on the existence of Gods, or else they would be atheists. There are plenty of things we can have meaningful discussions about, but made up percentages is not one of them.

I happened to be thinking about death the other day. I think I got on that topic because I had been thinking about how well my life has been going lately. Growing up, it seemed like my family careened from one crisis to another. This may simply be a distortion of time, and my own lack of maturity at the time, but I think it is somewhat accurate.

My family was middle to lower-middle class growing up. Although I did not know it, or perhaps did not understand it at the time, we were on food stamps for awhile when my father was struggling to support our family. I do remember people from our church bringing us food, and I distinctly remember my mother in tears because we could not pay our bills. That consciousness of being lower-middle . . . OK poor, will always be with me.

So it has been quite an adjustment for me since leaving college, for me a place of loneliness and existential loathing. I have a decent, but not great job at an organization that does a lot of good things in the community helping the poor and underprivileged. My wife and I have two newish cars that actually run, and have not given us any trouble. We were able to buy a house after being married less than six months, something my parents could not do in their years together before their divorce. Although we are very frugal in our spending, we both have simple tastes and do not feel lacking or deprived. This awareness of being better off than my parents is likely what set off a guilt reaction, and got me thinking about death. Everything in my life is going so well now, that subconsciously I expect something bad to happen. I seem to be due.

I began thinking about what it would be like if I were to die in the coming year. Inevitably, my thoughts centered on what life would be like for my spouse. I know that the impact would also be great on my parents, but not having experienced what it feels like to have a child, their grief is less accessible to me. But I can imagine what it would be like to lose my wife, and it’s these feelings that my mind reflected back onto her, in my imagined scenario of dying young.

One of the first big changes would be that she would have to sell our home. She might move in with her parents for a short while until she could get some money saved for something smaller, or she might just start renting right away. It would be difficult for her to find a nice rental that would allow our four small dogs, and she would likely end up living some place less desireable rather than giving any of them up, such is the way of her heart.

What I thought about the most though, was the breaking of our bond. We have been a couple for close to ten years, starting in junior high. There were of course highs and lows, and many bumps in the road, and that is why my heart mourns to think what it would be like for her to start over with someone new. The bond that we share has grown over the years, and changed in many ways, and has gotten stronger for all the weathering that it has gone through. That’s not the kind of thing that can be replaced quickly or easily, and I can imagine a period of awkwardness for her as she tried to forge a relationship with someone new.

Then there is the matter of children. I know that my wife wants to have children. I hope that I am correct in this, even though it might mean more sadness if I were to die early, but I believe that my wife doesn’t just want to have children, but that she specifically wants to have my children. That’s not to say that she would love her children with another man any less, she would love them just as much as if she had never met me. But I cannot help thinking there would be a certain sadness that might visit her from time to time thinking about the missed opportunity, of not being able to produce any children with me. A child that could remind her of the love that she once had, even while she moved on with her new love.

I don’t know what it is like to lose a close lover, and have to start again with someone new. But I imagine that some part of that person stays with you for the rest of your life. The thought of this happening to me wife is the most unbearable thing I can think of in regards to my own death. Although I do not want to die, once dead it would not bother me at all, and the people I left behind would be left to pick up the pieces of their lives and carry on. It’s just so unbearably sad to think about their grief, and the hole that would be left in their lives.

We do not have the consolations of an afterlife, but honestly I do not think that matters. The pain felt by an atheist at a funeral is exactly the same pain felt by believers. Our tears and theirs are just as salty. Though they may sing through their pain of a coming day when all will be set right, and they will meet the deceased again, the truth remains that they will never again see their loved one in this life, and the pain they carry with them is the same that we carry. No matter what the beliefs, the separation is still real and painful.

I don’t plan to die for a long while yet. No matter how often I remind myself that I will in fact die someday, I will likely never accept the idea that I will die before I’m ready, before old age softens my resolve and prepares me for that final curtain. Whether it happens that way or not, my imaginings of death make me that much more eager to be a better person, a better husband, before that curtain falls. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go spend some time with my wife while we still have the extravagant opportunity to live and laugh and love one another.

I had been planning this post for awhile, but what has motivated me tonight is a book I’m reading. Prepare to be disappointed, or underwhelmed if you prefer. I’m reading False Memory by Dean Koontz. Without giving away the plot, lets say the bad guy is a sadistic, homicidal, sociopathic atheist, and the character that I think will end up being the hero is a generic theist who frequently equates atheism with a hopeless, meaningless, relativistic postmodernism that he thinks infects “academics” and other people who finished college. Clearly this isn’t serious fiction, from the implausible tactics that the villain uses, to the sometimes painfully jarring metaphors and similes that Koontz uses.

But the caricature of atheists as grumpy relativists with no hope, and no meaning in their lives is just so insulting. I can see how some theists could make that mistake. When I first came to identify my disbelief, I devoured everything I could find written by atheists, agnostics, skeptics, as well as things written by people of other religions than Christianity, and what I would still consider fringe Christians. You can certainly find postmodernists who deny God and write about the meaninglessness of existence and truth, or teenagers who embrace “Goth” Satanism and Nietzsche and proclaim that God is dead. Reading the bleak outlooks from some individuals in these groups could lead the uninformed to conclude that atheism is a bleak, meaning denying outlook.

Most of the time though, I think there is simply a misunderstanding between believers and nonbelievers. Putting on my “Ex-Christian” hat for a moment, I can say that when believers hear something like natural selection described as an “undirected, purposeless force” or that the universe is inherently without purpose, or that life is essentially meaningless, they don’t hear it the same way an atheist hears it.

If you’ll allow me a bit of leeway, I’ll attempt a rough sketch of the difference between what the two groups hear in those phrases.

Natural selection is an undirected, purposeless force.*

Atheist: natural selection is a force that has no foresight for what it might produce, and simply operates undirected with no particular goal in mind.

Theist: Scientists are trying to deny meaning and purpose in life. If the process that produced us is “purposeless” then that must mean they think human life is a meaningless, random occurrence.

The universe is inherently without purpose.

Atheist: The universe itself does not have a purpose because it is simply the totality of all that exists. To say that it had a purpose would be to say that some external entity had the same purpose for every existing thing, and we have no evidence of that.

Theist: Atheists have no purpose in their lives without God, so they extend the emptiness of their lives to fill Creation.

Life is essentially meaningless a.k.a. 42

Atheist: There is no sensible answer to the question of the meaning of life. The question does not make sense, it’s like asking what the “meaning” of a cup of coffee is. 42 is as good an answer as any since the question makes no sense.

Theist: Atheists think life is meaningless.

Being a former Christian, I can empathize with the misunderstandings here. In many Christian worldviews, a lot of concepts get cemented together. For instance, try talking to a Creationist about evolution without them trying to talk about abiogenesis, and the Big Bang. For them, the creation of the universe, earth, life, and the different species took place within 6 days. Even for the old earth creationists who allow for more time, the topics are intimately intertwined. It’s the same thing with the Universe and individual human meaning. What they take to be the meaning in their lives is derived from a belief that they are participants in a Universal struggle of good over evil. To this mindset, denying that the Universe itself has meaning, is equivalent to telling them that their life is meaningless. Or to put it another way, so as to avoid misunderstanding, I think they interpret meaningless to mean without value. I used to when I was a Christian.

I think that is what I’ve been driving towards this whole post. When an atheist says that life is meaningless they are generally saying that there is no external meaning to life, and that meaning can only come from us. What life means to us should naturally “mean” more to us than some meaning imposed from outside. It is really an uplifting view. But what I think a lot of theists interpret meaningless to be is “without value, or worthless.” They think that atheists are degrading life and calling it worthless.

So let me be explicitly clear. As an atheist, the existence of life is the most valuable, the most special, and wondrous aspect of existence. The universe could just as easily be devoid of life. It was incredibly unlikely that any life, let alone humanity, would come to exist here. That thought is humbling and exhilarating at the same time. How lucky could we possibly be? To be alive, to be conscious, to be a member of a species that has split the atom, and broken the bonds of gravity to travel to the moon. When we could have never existed. Our lives have significance, they have meaning, and they have value. Life is the most precious, the rarest, and the most valuable thing in the Universe. That’s where I stand as an atheist.

Everyday Atheism

* Hurricanes and other natural occurrences are also undirected and purposeless, but I never hear them described as such. Why is this? It seems like evolution tends to be a line in the sand for many believers and skeptics alike.

When I woke up this morning, my wife asked if we could check out a large church that is near our house. This has been an off and on thing. It can sometimes be hard to make friends in a new area, and after two year here, pretty much all of our friends are work friends. So every now and then she has suggested going to a church to try to make some new friends.

I’ve expressed in the past my skepticism towards being able to make real friends in a church, what with not believing in Jesus or a God. That doesn’t come up at work, but I figured at a church the conversation would eventually have to get back to that. But I have been curious about this particular church. It is fairly large, and they do a lot of events to try to get outsiders to come. According to their bulletin they had an attendance of over 500 last week. Even if that’s inflated those are still excellent numbers for a church at the beginning of a nice summer, and the pews were nearly few today as well. Having been with her for quite awhile before we got married, I knew my day would go better if I went along. So I told her we had to go out to breakfast afterwards . . . you know, to get the full effect.

Things were different this time around. In the past when I have gone to a few churches, I have felt not just like a newcomer, but like a spy, not wanting to get found out. This church was larger than any I had ever been too, and I quickly got over the feeling. There were so many people, there was no way anyone was paying enough attention to us to care that we were atheists. The bulletin was teeming with announcements about all the groups and activities that the church offered. It is likely that most of the people there know less than half of the other members. One thing that made me laugh was that they give out a fresh baked loaf of bread to all their visitors. We did not bother to claim ours.

I actually felt pretty good during the service. I relaxed into my role as observer and I was pleased with my reaction to the whole thing. Once I settled in I was not anxious or nervous. It is really hard to listen to the kind of service we listened to without feeling a bit paternal towards all the people there. The main thrust of the songs and call to worship was that God was our loving father and wanted us to have life more abundantly. It was a bit like a Joel Osteen service only less cheesy. This is probably true of many churches, but the pastor, and the other church leader seemed the most energetic for Jesus, and the most “plastic,” and I think the further you got away from the stage the more real and normal people seemed. We even saw some people we knew from dance lessons.

The most interesting part was the message from some returning missionaries who had been living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the world’s tenth largest city. He mostly talked about life in Argentina, and he actually told a lot of jokes about their experiences, and he was actually entertaining. He came across like a youth pastor. I do question whether they count as missionaries. They live in one of the world’s largest cities that is 90% lapsed Catholic, and they live in a normal house. They are basically just members of a church in Argentina, and it didn’t seem like they were doing anything differently than they would have been if they had stayed here.

Now I was doing ok watching all this, thinking about the feel good, God is your buddy theology, and also about how good breakfast was going to taste, so it was an unexpected surprise to hear my wife’s reaction. In the past she hasn’t really shown any concern one way or the other towards the doctrines of the churches we have been too. So long as they stay positive I think she figured she could find some people to hang out with. Although she did object to the formalism of a mainline Lutheran church when we went to one. She had never been to such a heavily ritualized service before, and she really disliked it.

So today when I leaned over and whispered in her ear halfway thru, “So were still going out after this, right?” I was surprised to hear her reply, “I think we could probably sneak out now.” We did not leave then, but stayed through most of the rest of the service. She turned to me and told me to head for the door when they were about to start sending the collection plates around a second time, this time being for the “missionaries” rather than for the church. She told me it wasn’t working for her because she just couldn’t buy into it. Which didn’t surprise me in the least, since she gets annoyed when I watch TV preachers for fun. But it was the first time she seems to have been turned off by a sermon in person. And what is probably the most important part, she said she doesn’t think church is really a good place to meet people. Which means . . . I’m no longer the bad guy keeping her away from friendship opportunities! For those of you single people, this is a really big deal.

I think this marks a new milestone in my personal relationship to churches. When I first deconverted I think I feared going churches because I worried about being emotionally vulnerable and getting sucked back in. After that passed, I still worried about my wife wanting to get involved in a church, and having the church members turn her against me for now wanting to participate. Or I would worry about just not fitting in, even at a Unitarian Universalist church where it is almost impossible not to fit in. For the first time since became an atheist, I was able to go to a church today, and not worry about not fitting in, or being discovered as an atheist. It was just a building full of people who believe the way I once did. And I was no longer defensive, no longer afraid. Just really tired and hungry. And breakfast was very, very satisfying.

“Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.”

Thomas Szasz from Quotes of the Day

I’m a little late on this because I do not listen to podcasts as often as I used to, but I wanted to recommend the recent Point of Inquiry podcast with Jennifer Michael Hecht on her book The Happiness Myth. I thought it was a very interesting discussion of how people have searched for happiness through various means throughout history. She also expresses opinions similar to my own when it comes to some of the value in the general idea of religion, if not the actual beliefs or practices that often go along with it. Just think if those cathedrals were used for something more uplifting like meeting places for Humanists, rather than the divisive creeds of religion. I think she is a fascinating woman and you should really download the podcast if you haven’t already.

I just got done reading an intriguing post by Mike over at Emerging Pensees. In it he talks about an issue that I have mulled over a lot from time to time. I would describe it as the competition between a modern scientific worldview that focuses on the how questions, and pre-modern, or postmodern worldviews that focus more on the why questions. As Mike sums it up:

What is more important, scientific knowledge or self-knowledge? Truth or Beauty? Math or Art? Scientific progress or moral progress?

Of course this is an artificial dichotomy, which he acknowledges later in his post when he says that in the modern worldview, science becomes a kind of poetry, and source of beauty. Although I do not completely agree with his analysis, I definitely see where he is coming from. There does seem to be a difference in emphasis between atheists who tend to spend a lot of time talking about science, relatively speaking, and theists who spend more time, again relatively speaking, talking about meaning and purpose.

There are good reasons for this. Atheists tend to see in the findings of modern science a means of explaining the world sans deity, and this of course supports atheism. Whereas for Christians of all strips, and myself as an odd duck atheist, science is seen as instrumental knowledge. The real action, and emotional resonance comes from the human drama on this planet. Scientific progress is certainly interesting, but more as a means of propelling ourselves farther into history than we would have gotten without it.

I find science interesting, and certainly I am very glad for it, as it provides us with a standard of living unparalleled in history, but I don’t find the details that compelling or captivating. I think of it as an amazing tool for truth, but not as a source of beauty. The natural world that science studies is certainly a source of beauty, but I think of science as simply the method for extracting that beauty and truth, not as the beauty itself.

And on the other side of things, those of religious worldviews, tend to spend more time talking about purpose and meaning. I think this is the main draw, and one of the most useful aspects that religion actually gives to people. The afterlife can certainly be a motivator to continued religious belief, or religious conversion, but once someone starts to have doubts about the details of an afterlife, the lure of a shared meaning in a church community can keep people in a religion that they otherwise would have left. I have no doubt that many people who line the pews each weekend, do so out of the desire for that feeling of being in sync with others, even after they have stopped believing in the actual doctrines of the church.

Things are a bit different on the atheist side of the aisle. For the most part, I think atheists would say that there is no intrinsic meaning to the universe, and that any meaning has to come from ourselves. I think this is true, and that it is the same process for believers as for atheists. The difference being that believers have the option of accepting a meaning presented to them by their religious community, whereas atheists have nowhere to turn but themselves.

It is difficult because so many people are looking for meaning, which is why religions tend to be so much more popular than atheism. When someone loses their faith, and they come to the feet of an atheist begging them to tell them what the meaning to life is, an answer like “Life is meaningless, but you can make something up” is likely to send them back to the warm familiarity and comfort of religion. It is hard to make something like that not sound so trite and empty. The only two things you can do is explain to someone the process of finding their own meaning in life, or explaining what you have found to be meaningful. The search for meaning is so varied that I do wish more atheists would really dig in and take the time to show people on the fence how rich and varied the internal life of atheists can be. Forget about debates over the resurrection of Jesus, and the logical insufficiencies of the proofs of God’s existence. If you want people to pay attention to atheism and Humanism, you have to show them the richness of life as a freethinker.

As I mentioned somewhere, it may have been a post or comment on someone else’s blog, I tend to think of myself as an ex-Christian first, and atheist second. If I had lived in any other era without ready access to the internet, I would still be some kind of believer, perhaps even some kind of liberal, or emergent Christian. I have a lot of sympathy for Christians, well . . . reasonable tolerant Christians, and I tend to take in atheist-to-Christian dialogue in the mindset of “How will this actually come across to Christians?” I think believers and non-believers often misinterpret each other because of differing communication styles, and I think that is sad because there could be much more productive dialogue if everyone actually understood each other.

But another problem is not that the gulf between different groups is getting larger, but that the range of opinion expressed is shrinking. This is being remedied by the blogosphere, but for quite some time it seems like opinions and discussions have been getting reduced more and more to simplistic soundbites, due to the nature of television, and the mainstream media outlets. Dawkins and Harris are great, but because of the media machine they end up having to give the same interviews over and over again. Maybe it has more to do with our culture than anything, but I’ve found so much more hope and beauty in the writings of freethinkers of the past like Paine and Ingersoll, than I have in anyone promoting freethought today. I think it may be because we are more aware of the mechanisms of social and political movements now and how we might be affecting them, that it changes our tenor to be more self-consciously aware of our impact. Or it could just be my personal preference.

In summation, when it comes to science I do lean towards seeing it as instrumental, and I would love to see atheists, and other freethinkers, or just open-minded individuals out there spending more time talking about meaning, and what really drives them, and motivates them. Not for the purpose of converting or deconverting anyone to any particular worldview, but just in the spirit of openness, and creating a space and a tolerance, in our somewhat cynical age, for the expression of those things that matter to us the most without fearing the derision of the unenlightened. I think our world would be that much richer if we all felt more comfortable sharing those aspects of our inner life in a genuine way.

I have heard a lot of talk over the past couple of years from people saying that if you are against setting fires to keep firefighters busy and working, that you do not support our nation’s brave firefighters. This seems like a specious argument to me. Firefighters get paid whether or not there are fires to fight, and it seems that they would be safer if they only had to fight fires that were not set intentionally. I mean should people who make flame-retardant materials be considered anti-firefighter, because they actively try to prevent fires? It seems like it just wastes the firefighter’s time when they have to fight fires that could have been avoided. Ideally firefighters should be a reserved for emergencies, rather than fires of choice.

Or what about when people say you cannot support firefighters if you oppose sending more of them into a building that may collapse on them? Is it really anti-firefighter to be against wasting their time and lives trying to save a building that can only survive the flames if it has the internal strength to support itself?

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like you can be supportive of firefighters by wanting to keep them out of unnecessary fires, rather than starting more of them, and wanting to get them out of buildings that may collapse on them, rather than sending in more firefighters to get killed.

My wife and I will be going to see my father this Memorial Day weekend, and she has already asked me the big question.  Will we attend church with my father?  It is a valid question, since my father does not know that I am an atheist.  He may suspect it though, since I stopped going to church a few years before I moved out of the house.  He would ask me each morning if I wanted to go, and eventually, after saying no enough times, he simply stopped asking.

I have no objection to going to church with him if my wife wanted to go to be social.  My biggest objection is that I would be bored out of my mind.  I grew up in the SDA church, but since I left I’ve come to appreciate the structure of mainline church services, though I used to think it was strange before.  Now I think it is interesting because it harkens back to bygone eras.  I can imagine people  finding comfort in the familiar creeds and readings, and the shared experience, and the rituals.  At least reciting a script requires some interaction.   Also the sermons in those mainline churches seem much shorter than SDA, or I suspect evangelical churches are.

SDA church services generally have the singing, children’s story, offering, prayer . . . It’s been awhile so I may be forgetting some things . . . and then about a 30-40 minute lecture.  Having the sermon take up half of the service really makes the quality of the experience vary a lot.  At a mainline church you might have 10-15 minutes (at least in my limited experience), which is easy enough to get through.  But when someone thinks they have to fill half an hour, they tend to stretch things out a lot more, or jump around to different topics to avoid repeating themselves.  It can be very hard not to fall asleep, and if you do stay awake, it can be hard to keep a straight face, especially if they try talking about something like Noah’s ark, or creationism, or . . . well if they draw attention to any of the big stories in the Bible.

I don’t think I ever gave my wife an answer, and I don’t think it will matter because my father is not likely to ask.  So far avoiding the subject has worked between myself and my parents, and I don’t have any need to jeopardize that peace.  For right now I am fine not talking about it with any of them.  The way I see it, if they are not pushing anything on me, I don’t need to push anything on them.  My family never really talked about our beliefs growing up anyway.  There is no need to start now.  At least not this weekend.