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What Level Of Woo Would Make Someone Undateable?

Here is a question for you. What level of woo would make someone undateable? What about unfriendable? Do you have a limit that you’ve drawn in your life or do you have a lot of woo woo people around you that you interact with? How do you get on with them? Do you find it difficult? Do you argue with them or are you silent about your woo disbelief?

Woo can be defined as anything supernatural, irrational or lacking in evidence. So it would include religion and any kind of pseudoscience.

On a side note, is there anything that could be defined as woo that you still believe in? If so, why?

For me, I’ve somehow whittled down my friend list from all woo-lovers to all skeptical atheists. I didn’t do this deliberately, but I guess with my skeptical talk and constant questioning (not aggressively, but I really did question all the woo I previously embraced), my woo-loving friends all went their separate ways and avoided me within months of when my quest for knowledge began.

I didn’t have many friends for awhile but then found the Morgantown Atheists where I found several people that have become good friends. Also, having HDC has let me meet new people who were rather like-minded as well.

With extended family, I still have to deal with woo, both religious and supernatural. They know Butch (my awesome husband) and I are die-hard atheists so we have come to an unspoken agreement that we don’t talk about religion. Or politics just to be safe and have nice dinners together.

I think I’m lucky in most respects. My skeptical atheist friends keep things lively by being smart and reason-based (most of the time, we’re not perfect, of course). And my extended family gives me an occasional glimpse into woo-land so I get to see what the majority of people are dealing with and believing. It’s enough.

Read the rest of this entry »

Replacing Everlasting Life

Yesterday my local atheists group met and talked about many different topics. One question a woman asked was something I think most people who give up god and the supernatural have to face. I will paraphrase:

If there is no god, no heaven, no life after death, or no reincarnation what do you replace that with?

In other words there is a comfort that many people find in religion, that they will live after death in some fashion. But when you come to understand that there is no god, then soon after you have to give up this comfortable idea in life after death, that our consciousness survives death and lives on in some other way.

For me, I became an atheist but still believed in reincarnation and the idea that there was some part of us, our soul, that somehow lived on. I was a spiritual atheist. Over time I realized that there is no evidence for a soul or any kind of supernatural and eventually gave it all up. For me, giving up the comfort of the supernatural was much harder than giving up the fear of god. But I had to be honest with myself and rely on science instead of my own fanciful wishes. For me, I didn’t really replace the idea of the supernatural and the soul with anything. I just gave it up. If there was an exchange it was reason and science that replaced wishful thinking.

Butch, my husband, was raised catholic. He read Revelations in the bible, about how 144,000 Jews’ names are written in the book of life, so that was the limit for heaven. He assumed he’d go to hell. So when he gave up religion and god it was a relief more than anything else.

I know a few atheists that still believe in ghosts and the supernatural. I see the appeal, as I went through that stage myself, but I wonder why we feel the need to cling to such beliefs.

The woman at the meeting asked what do you replace the comfort of life after death with. So I am asking you, my nonbelieving friends. What process did you go through? How did you transition? What did you replace the soul with, if anything? Was it easy for you, or did you struggle?

If you want to reply and it’s lengthy, you can email me or leave a comment, whichever you prefer. I’d love to hear your story.

Conversation with Anne About The Meaning Of Life

The other day I wrote to Anne in response to some questions she emailed me. She replied not long after in another email. Here is an excerpt (I’ve removed the more private information): (Note: I’ve added some happy puppies playing in the snow since this topic can be rather serious, and we are having the biggest snow in WV that I’ve seen since we moved here 5 years ago)

Thank you for answering my email. I am only 21 and it seams that I am searching for myself and what it is that I can believe. I see how people lie on a daily basis to make the even more entertaining than the event really was so I find it hard to believe anything that is told to me. Giving this way of living I find it tremendously hard to base my life and way of living around things that have been written in a book (the bible) that has been translated umpteen different times before coming to english. The thought that people let their lives revolve around something that was written 2000 years ago just amazes me. As humans are we so daft to do such a thing? The more I look into religion the more I am amazed at the living situations of some people in this world.

My dad did not express any beliefs of god when I was young because he is like me a firm non-believer until there is hard core facts to show him. He wanted me to believe what I wanted and didn’t want his opinions to influence me so he felt it best not to tell me anything. My mother… well she didn’t teach me anything about god or religion until I was 12 we went to church for the first time. She stuck me in Sunday school before a service. Now my father’s mother was catholic. She went twice on Sunday and Wednesday night. I stayed the night with her several times and went to church with her I believe when I was 7. That was enough religion for me. I still remember sitting in the pew looking around saying to myself “are these people really this crazy?!?”

I went to public schools in Indiana. I went to ten different schools before 9th grade so needless to say I was not well adjusted. I never really had any foundation so to say.

I have two children and I want to be able to educate them on religion and allow them to choose their own way. I don’t see the point in trying to force them to do things my way because they need to find out who they are maybe then they won’t have the same struggles that I do.

To answer your question no I was never taught the prevailing theories of how the earth was formed through natural cosmic events. As I said we moved a lot and the curriculum was different at each school there were several things I missed out on. That is why I am so ignorant on religion because I was never taught the scientific end of the world.

I don’t feel that I “NEED” a religion. I would just like to know a little more about why I am here on this earth. I feel there is a purpose for everything because it just doesn’t seam like we exist just to exist. There is some sort of purpose behind our being. So now my job is to find the why.

Thank you so much for this information!! You are right I will have many more questions for you. I want to look over the information you have given me and I want to do some additional research. (Internet based because I now live in the middle of BFE so no museums in my area and the library has a limited amount of books. Besides the fact, I am in the middle of the Bible belt so there will be virtually no literature supporting the thought that there could be an existence not provided by god.)

And here is my new reply: Read the rest of this entry »

Advice For Freethinking Kids?

The other day I got an email from an atheist couple who have two kids, one 9 and one 10. They asked me for information regarding websites or literature that might deal with “god pressure” for kids at school. This would be the 4th and 5th grade. Apparently kids at their school are proselytizing and mocking these 2 kids for not believing.

The parents don’t want their kids to feel like freaks and also want to help them counter the exasperated ‘you don’t believe in god!’ remarks. Sam, the father, admits that it can be lonely to not believe in god sometimes. I understand. I feel that way too, although not as much as before I belonged to Morgantown Atheists.

Diane, the mother, says they are open to ideas and suggestions. She says they have friends who aren’t religious but still believe in god. It’s not the same thing.

Seeing as how only about 10% of the population would go so far as to actually use the dreaded A-word, it can be isolating to be godless in a sea of believers. As I’ve mentioned, I still keep my atheism to myself when around Butch’s family. Some of them know we’re atheists but it’s never been brought up or mentioned. This means that a huge part of what I spend my time thinking about and being an activist over can’t be talked about when I spend time with others. It’s kind of lonely, in a way. Read the rest of this entry »

Random Thoughts On The Nature Of Things

Hello everyone,

First, I am now a Google Waver! Find me at zeneece@googlewave.com. I started my first public wave for atheists: Atheists Unite!

Secondly, I must confess my ignorance on a certain matter that has been bouncing around my brain for some time. I have asked my genius husband Butch and he didn’t have an answer, which made me feel better.

I’ll start with an example:

I always thought aspirin was found in the bark of white willows, and then was made in the lab. But the history seems to be entirely in the laboratory, according to Wikipedia. Also there does seem to be a connection between white willow bark and eventually aspirin.

Needless to say these days, aspirin is made strictly in the lab/factory. My question is, if things are made strictly from chemicals, where do the chemicals themselves come from? And a followup question would be, wouldn’t that make everything natural, at some point? Doesn’t everything eventually lead back to nature?

Another example:

Black Gold, petroleum, crude oil. It’s considered this unnatural thing. But didn’t it come from rotting vegetation and other natural organic matter?

When does something natural become something synthetic?

Why are natural things considered superior to synthetic things nowadays? Is there some proof that it’s true? Or is it marketing/propaganda?

I’m not trying to start anything, or as the Brits would say, I’m not trying to have a go at synthetics. I really just want to understand. If the red food dye and flavoring in my drink stick mix is synthetic, where did the chemicals that make it up come from?

I would love your feedback and thoughts on this. But please, I took chemistry in high school which was over 20 years ago (egads, that made me feel old), so keep it simple.

Thanks friends!

Atheism at a glance- BBC Style

I thought I’d share this with you. The BBC has a page for each religion where they give a bit of information at a glance, and one for atheism too.

Atheism is the absence of belief in any gods or spiritual beings. The word Atheism comes from a, meaning without, and theism meaning belief in god or gods.

Atheists don’t use god to explain the existence of the universe.

Atheists say that human beings can devise suitable moral codes to live by without the aid of Gods or scriptures.

Reasons for non-belief
People are atheist for many reasons, among them:

They find insufficient evidence to support any religion.

They think that religion is nonsensical.

They once had a religion and have lost faith in it.

They live in a non-religious culture.

Religion doesn’t interest them.

Religion doesn’t seem relevant to their lives.

Religions seem to have done a lot of harm in the world.

The world is such a bad place that there can’t be a god.

It is possible to be both atheist and religious. Virtually all Buddhists manage it, as do adherents of other religions, such as Judaism and Christianity.
But many atheists are also secularist, and are hostile to any special treatment given to organised religion.

Atheists and morality
Atheists are as moral (or immoral) as religious people.
In practical terms atheists often follow the same moral code as religious people, but they arrive at the decision of what is good or bad without any help from the idea of god.

What does it mean to be human?
Atheists find their own answers to the question of what it means to be human.

What are your main reasons for being an atheist? Mine are:

There is zero evidence of the supernatural in any shape or form. (except the Invisible Pink Unicorn, may you die an honorable death, trampled under her holy pink hooves!)
Religion is harmful if swallowed. It survives and thrives on indoctrination/brainwashing, especially in early childhood when a person has no defense for its insanity.
Religion has caused more death, murder, destruction, harm, repression, ignorance, destruction of knowledge, etc, than anything else.
I live in a religious culture and I see the hypocrisy and harm it causes.
The morality of the religious is twisted and usually extremely hypocritical. As an atheist I have my own moral code that doesn’t rely on 2,000 year old rules from desert goat herders who liked to stone people for wearing 2 different fibers at the same time.
Life does not appear to be sacred to the religious, despite their constant braying about the issue. The religious seem desperate to control everyone’s life but their own. (More hypocrisy). The religious subjugate themselves in this life (at least they pretend on the surface, while breaking their rules in secret often) because they want eternal life that doesn’t involve roasting forever in hell (so it’s based on fear of suffering, not on being good for goodness sake).As an atheist, this the the only life I have. It is natural, amazing, awe-inspiring, and precious beyond measure. Every moment is to be treasured and lived fully.
Religion is based on faith, which by definition, has no proof. Religion abhors such free thought. I embrace reason, critical thinking, logic, observation, experimentation, facts, science, intelligence, freethought and skepticism. Basically I believe in using your brain, and thinking for yourself.

That’s my short list. I’m sure I have other reasons for being an atheist but I can’t think of them offhand. So what are yours?

Why Do Atheists Have To Rock The Boat?

“Why can’t atheists just keep their lack of faith to themselves? Why do they have to write books and have blogs and speak out all the time? They’re in the minority. No one cares about their crazy godlessness. Why can’t they just shut up and stop criticizing us? Why do they even call themselves atheists? Can’t they just say they don’t know if they have doubts? Why do they have to be so militant about our dear lord and savior?”

This kind of questioning sets my teeth on edge. It’s extremely ignorant, but worse than that, it screams of hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy: falseness; the practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess.

Yesterday a friend of mine told me that his friend asked him, “What’s wrong with just saying “I don’t know, and no one really knows” in regards to spiritual questions?” My friend had written a book review for God Is Not Great and his friend said that atheists can be just as zealous and hardcore as religious people.

First, yes, it’s true, there are extremists in every walk of life. People seem to have a tendency to get extreme about things. Not everyone, but there are definitely personality types that are not satisfied with moderation, whether it be eating, dieting, exercising, working, lifting weights, collecting weird things, religion, politics; you name it, someone is doing it to excess. Read the rest of this entry »

What Level Of Woo Would Make Someone Undateable?

Replacing Everlasting Life

Conversation with Anne About The Meaning Of Life

Advice For Freethinking Kids?

Random Thoughts On The Nature Of Things

Atheism at a glance- BBC Style

Why Do Atheists Have To Rock The Boat?

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