I know not all of you like to listen to podcasts. So I went through it and transcribed a good chunk of what Luke said in his lecture, the parts that I thought were most important. I have a few thoughts afterward. By the way, I missed the beginning for reasons I can’t remember (this took me a couple of days to make it all make sense) but this is a lecture about Dr. Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory.

Partial transcript:

…This is where we get neurotic about death. It’s the ultimate inferiority complex. Our lifespan is limited. We realize we must die but in striving to overcome that, it creates more problems. We put a lot of energy into denying death.

One way to summarize Becker’s theory: It’s good to have a brain that can plan for the future and be self-aware, but the problem is that when we become scared of our own mortality it sets up a defense against that. Part of the defense involves symbols. We think symbolically and so our symbols set up a barrier. These symbols can be religious, political, symbols of our mastery over the world, symbols of making money, etc.

What Becker thought was that culture itself is a buffer against these threats to our self esteem. We set up our belief in culture and human culture really is an attempt to deal with threats to our own mortality and our self esteem. So first, what is self esteem?

Self esteem is not just a product of you, individually. What Becker thought was that self esteem was something you get a sense of only through other people. So you think of yourself as a valued person who has powers, who can act upon the world, but that is socially validated by parents, siblings, peers, a gradually expanding group of people. This gets more abstract and symbolic as the child grows up. So as a young adult you might latch onto ideologies. For many people this is religion. You join a church and get a sense of what you need to do to be good or bad from those groups too. The good thing is that these groups give you clear guidelines to derive your self esteem.

This can be positive or negative. So if you don’t get positive reinforcement, you’ll look for self esteem and validation in other ways. So this is why people join cults and gangs, etc.

Hero Striving System: whatever you use to seek pride and superiority. Everyone does this in different ways. The system is different for different people but it all boils down to wanting to feel worthwhile.

So cultural symbols can provide a buffer against our mortality fear. How can I transcend death? This is Immortality Striving. It all boils down to “the end is not the end.” This could also be more abstract. Your cultural striving could be symbolic striving against death. You believe your genes and your legacy will pass down even after you die through your children. You create something that will last after your death, like a pyramid, or a lot of money, etc. You’re saying, “I was here, I mattered.” This maintains your self esteem.

Here’s where the problem comes in. If you are so invested in these strivings, in these worldviews to drive your self esteem, that means any threat to those worldviews, to that symbolic system, if they are poked at, is not trivial. This will poke at your self esteem. This person is challenging my worldview. And someone doesn’t even have to be mean to threaten you, because there are different worldviews. Every time you encounter a different person, a different culture, you see the standards of normal differ.

What Becker thought was that being presented with a different worldview is inherently threatening. Because if that guy’s right, he has a different worldview, he seems perfectly happy with his system, and it’s contradictory to my system, there’s a problem for my system.

So a lot of war, strife and prejudice was really about more than just “you’re different, I don’t like you, you have funny gods”, but it’s a threat to our self esteem. So if he’s right, I’m not going to heaven, or there isn’t a heaven.

So an atheist’s world view is very different and therefore very threatening.

People, when confronted with different worldviews have to find a way to deal with it. You can denigrate people (call them stupid); try to convert them to your worldview (proselytize or missionary work) – which validates your worldview and your self esteem; assimilate people – neutralizes the threat by getting them to give up part of it (Native Americans, etc);  accommodation – declaw the other worldview by incorporating some of their elements into ours (like blue jeans, hippy symbols, etc) in a very sterilized sort of way; or annihilate the other worldview – genocide, stamping out everything about the American Indians, even their buffalo, don’t let them speak their own language, etc.

Here’s where Terror Management Theory comes in, with empirical testing. There are 2 main predictions to test:

1. If we threaten someone with mortality thoughts, if we remind them of death, that should result in compensatory response to bolster their worldview.

Mortality Salience Hypothesis (around the 30 minute mark)

2. If we poke at someone’s worldview and suggest that they may not be correct, we should see an increase in their death anxiety. They might become more fearful of their own mortality if their worldviews are challenged in some way.

From the clip of the video, Life and Death: Flight From Death: The Quest for Immortality (video on demand), Flight From Death – The Quest for Immortality (dvd)

The first component of TMT states that individuals need to sustain faith in a meaningful worldview.  The second component states that individuals need to feel as though they are value protected members, objects of significance within this worldview. This is self esteem.

Talk of politics and what kinds of leaders people will choose when their mortality feels threatened: (39 minute mark). (there is a polarizing effect)

There is a reciprocal relationship between threats and my own mortality and worldview.

49:00 – more religious studies: Here’s an interesting one. A group of high fundamentalists (believing in biblical literalism) were confronted with contradictions in the bible, they unconsciously thought about their own mortality more.

What does that mean? What’s at stake? It goes a bit deeper than they just want the bible to be perfect and literal, or that they want to preserve a belief in doctrine. When people are defending religious concepts, their worldview is at stake. When someone pokes at their belief and says your belief isn’t true, or here is evidence against your views, it’s more than just a contradiction of these facts, it’s an emotional reaction the person is going to have because that is their ticket to immortality. It raises fears of their own death when those are challenged.

52:30 – creation and evolution worldview studied with similar results. Creationists who had their worldview threatened had higher unconscious death fears.

Implications: why won’t people accept data on evolution? This study would imply that it’s not simple bullheadedness or dogmatism, it cuts deeper than that. From a TMT perspective, these people are defending their worldview. This is what keeps mortality fears in check. If someone comes along and pokes at that worldview it’s not just a matter of intellectual debate anymore, this is an actual threat to their sense of symbolic immortality.

55:00 Dual nature to mortality salience. Studies show that if you show the positive aspects of a religion, for example, then expose them to mortality salience, the people end up defending a worldview that is more accepting. So religion and politics might contain mixed positive and negative messages. If the positive ones are primed and made more active, the person when under threat defends those more too.

So mortality salience isn’t all about doom and gloom and threats. What this would imply is that, it depends on what message is accentuated.

57:20 What about atheists, who don’t have a worldview of literal immortality? Does that mean that we’re immune from the effects of death threats because we’re not expecting to live for the resurrection, or be reincarnated? That is, we are probably not using that as a security blanket. Essentially Becker says it  doesn’t matter – “It doesn’t matter whether their cultural hero system is frankly magical, religious and primitive, or secular, scientific and civilized. It’s still a mythical hero system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of unshakable meaning. Civilized society is a hopeful belief and a protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense, everything that man does is religious.” So there are just as many non-theistic, nonreligious worldviews that can be defended as religious worldviews. For example, the cult of Stalinism and Mao. Or other things people value like human rights, humanism, science: these things are also worldviews that are defended because they give our life meaning.

Somebody might not say, “I’m going to go to heaven, that’s the only thing that would matter to me”, but they might say that they support these values. That’s their ticket to immortality. So this has the same effect. If anyone pokes at the Bill of Rights, messes with Jefferson, or says that science doesn’t matter, to many people who have a naturalistic worldview that would be just as threatening as people who have religious worldviews. So these theories don’t just apply to people who have supernatural or religious worldviews.

1:00:00 What should people do with this information? The denial of death in our culture is particularly strong. So one way to deal with that is to learn to have a worldview that acknowledges mortality on a regular basis. Live more consciously with those reminders everyday, not in a negative or morbid sense, but in a sense that this is part of life. “This is going to happen to me, and I’m going to make life count now, instead of saying I can transcend and cheat death.”

Also, choose ideologies that don’t rely upon the strident defense of “that guy is threatening my worldview, I’m going to wipe him out”. Ideologies don’t have to be threatening to other people. Make the unconscious conscious. Recognize that this is a bulwark to my worldviews, to recognize when you see a commercial, a political package, or a doctrine that this is really more than what it says. It’s actually a worldview defense. If we make that conscious, we can recognize what it is that we’re doing when we do it. So then we can take a step back and say, “I’m going too far. I’m defending myself against my own sense of insignificance by doing this action.”

1:02:13 There are ways you can strive for immortality in a nondestructive way. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to strive against other peoples’ worldviews. Find positive ways to find meaning for your lives through positive ways to defend your worldview; charity, supporting other people, etc.

~

If you’ve made it through the transcript and are still with me, congratulations. This isn’t the most fun topic, and this post is really long. But it does have huge implications and can really help us in understanding our own motivations as well as how other people are dealing with their own fears and thoughts.

I have a followup, also by Dr. Luke Galen and the rest of the Reasonable Doubts crew, that will give us some very practical advice in dealing with people and their dogmatic beliefs. But this post was plenty long enough, so I thought I’d save it for later.

I welcome your thoughts.

Crossposted from Heaving Dead Cats by Neece

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Before I read this paper, I thought Dale McGowan‘s take on Santa to be the best way to handle it. In a nutshell, he says Santa is a dry run for letting kids reason their way through the fact that Santa is a myth, to then figuring out that religion is mythical, as he puts it, Santa is “the ultimate dry run for a developing inquiring mind”. It makes sense in a way. But then Joe told me about his experience as a kid.

Joe really believed in Santa, the Easter Bunny, etc. Then one day a kid in the playground told him it was all a pack of lies. Joe believed him and went home crying. He was devastated. When Joe and I talked about the McGowan philosophy of Santa, I figured out that in theory it seems like a great idea, but maybe in practice it could backfire and cause a lot of unhappiness and pain for kids who don’t get to reason it out for themselves but are told by other children.

And is it necessary to lie to children about a mythical jolly old fat man? Does it increase their happiness, improve their moral fiber? Does it make them better little people, or better adults down the line? And is there an alternative to lying about Santa?

First, there are 3 alternatives, according to Ernâni:

• Disbelief: The parent tells the child Santa Claus is not real
• Neutrality: The parent does not inform the child one way or the other
• Pretense: The parent invites the child to pretend there is a Santa Claus.(page 13)

…inviting to pretend there is a Santa Claus is morally superior to encouraging to believe. (14)

I never thought of this as an option, but it makes sense. You get all the good fun of Santa but you don’t get the lies and beliefs in those lies.

What about short term pleasure and pain? Here is what Ernâni has to say:

The extent to which the pleasure of children and adults justifies the Santa Claus lie depends on the amount of pleasure available from non-deceitful alternatives. The alternative that most closely replicates telling children there is a Santa Claus involves inviting children to pretend there is one. Although pretending something is real is fundamentally different from believing it is, as I have argued, many of the emotions evoked by an object believed to be real are also evoked by objects supposed to be fictional. Children and adults derive great pleasure from creatures of their imaginations, as witnessed by the large crowds at movie theaters. Children who are old enough to know she is fictional still derive great enjoyment from the pretense that Cinderella is a real person with real hopes. And, it is easy to replicate the gift-giving aspect of the Santa experience, which is surely a significant factor in the child’s enjoyment. (15-16)

Interesting and thought-provoking, don’t you think? This is even more important:

One reason the justification of the lie cannot be a matter of the short term pleasure is that the purpose of parenting is not only or even primarily to maximize children’s happiness and minimize their suffering. A major purpose of proper parenting is to foster the child’s moral and cognitive development. Much more important than whether Santa belief is conducive to happiness in the short term is the question whether it is conducive to a child’s moral and cognitive development. (17)

How true! It’s all about raising a child to be moral and to think for themselves throughout their lives. So it isn’t just the short term gain you need to think about, but the long term consequences.

Here is where I really agree with Ernâni:

When parents tell their children about Santa Claus they encourage belief, not imagination. (17) Evidently, insofar as increased imagination is supposed to be what is gained through the Santa Claus experience, this can be much more effectively pursued by having the child pretend that Santa is real, rather than believe he is. (18)

Perhaps belief in Santa Claus is beneficial in that it fosters a “sense of magic” and “magical . . . thought” (Breen 2004). A magical occurrence, in the sense in question, would seem to be one which violates the laws of ordinary reality. Why should it be beneficial for a child to believe that there are things that work in unheard of ways? (18)

The similarity between the child’s belief in Santa and adult religious belief has been widely acknowledged. Children often think of Santa as having many of the same characteristics as God, to the extent that upon discovering the truth about Santa, some children question the existence of God as well.

The resemblance between the child’s attitude toward Santa and religious belief is only an advantage of belief if encouraging this sort of religious belief is beneficial. (20)

An excellent point! Why would any secular parent need to teach a child to believe in physics-breaking, supernatural magical beings at all? One thing I was thinking as I read this; wouldn’t it also sow a seed of doubt into that child that their parents lied to them about Santa? What else have they lied about?

If religious conviction is essentially belief in the absence of evidence, then the child’s attitude toward Santa is not religious conviction. Again, the child has ample testimonial and other evidence for the existence of Santa. (21)

A plausible inference for the child to draw from the entire experience is a certain skepticism about claims of the existence of unseen things: once bitten, twice shy. And insofar as encouraging belief in Santa encourages belief in the absence of and contrary to perceptual evidence, the supposed advantage must be weighed against the tendency of the child who discovers the truth to infer that believing in things in the absence of evidence is a hazardous affair. (21-22)

I would also like to add, many millions and millions of kids who once believed in Santa never extend the thought process to then doubt God or Jesus. They figure out that Santa is a myth but never take that lesson any further to realize God is too. So it’s not a safe bet.

Ernâni makes a great point about morality and Santa:

Although Santa is still supposed to observe whether children are naughty or nice, this activity is rarely emphasized. And, importantly, it is extremely rare for parents to follow through on the traditional threat that Santa will not give presents to naughty children. Hardly any American child in the last twenty years has found a lump of coal in his stocking from Santa Claus. This is, interestingly, one of the few aspects of the tradition that has earned the condemnation of childhood psychologists. (22)

Does the concept that Santa, who the child admires, single-mindedly fulfills that child’s wishes translate to a child being more generous themselves? I don’t think so. Neither does Ernâni:

Nothing in the experience encourages the child to give. The child’s primary role in the ritual is as recipient. Indeed, a child who might otherwise feel inclined to do a generous deed for other children is apt to think that Santa will take care of their needs. The tradition does include the cookies and milk for Santa. But this is a rather limited generosity, applying as it does only to someone who has done very nice things for the child. Nothing in the behavior points to the importance of being generous to people in general. (23)

What are the alternatives to lying to a child about Santa then, if the goal is to teach generosity?

One non-deceitful thing that might be done to encourage the child to be generous is to tell the child about the importance of generosity. One might encourage the child to give things to others. One might reward the child for doing generous things. In the right circumstances, such encouragement is known to lead to greater degrees of the tendency encouraged. Indeed, such a direct method promises a much higher likelihood of success than the roundabout method of encouraging the child to adopt Santa as a role model. (23)

What an amazing concept! Just teach a child directly without subterfuge!

Now, if the child is taught to just pretend in Santa, what do you teach that child about the beliefs of other children?

Any parent who decides not to encourage belief in Santa faces the question of how the child ought to discuss the issue with children who believe. If it is possible to teach formerly believing children the importance of discretion concerning Santa belief, then it is similarly possible to teach children who never believe the importance of discretion concerning believers. Children who are not told there is a Santa can easily be told that other children are told and that it is important not to ruin their fun by denying his existence. (24)

Ernâni then explains his main reason why it’s not good to lie to children about Santa:

The main problem with lying to children about Santa Claus is that it encourages children to lie. The encouragement happens because children inevitably discover that there is no Santa Claus. And although apparently some children at first believe that parents are similarly under the misimpression that there is a Santa Claus, eventually children discover that they have been deceived. As lately noted, when they discover the truth children are encouraged not to divulge the truth to other children and also to lie to them. Also when children discover that they have been lied to, they reasonably infer that such lying is held to be permissible by their parents and other adults whose opinion they hold in high regard. (25)

The first step involves the child’s discovery that the parent has lied. It cannot be seriously maintained that children do not discover that deceit has taken place. Children of seven or eight understand what is involved in lying. And eventually children understand that although their parents told them otherwise, the parents do not believe there is a Santa Claus. Children therefore
become aware of two facts, both of which tend to encourage the child to lie. First, their parents (and many other adults) lie. Whether children imitate Santa Claus is questionable, but they undoubtedly imitate their parents. Since they observe and are aware of their parents lying, they are more likely to lie themselves. Second, their parents (and many other adults) believe that it is morally appropriate to lie. Children notice that their parents feel no moral qualm about having deceived the children about Santa Claus. It is evident to the child that the parent believes so deceiving the child was morally appropriate. (26)

…notice that the deceit about Santa Claus is part of a larger pattern: the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, being the two main other culprits. Together with these other incidents, the child is likely to draw the inference that lying is thought to be permissible in many cases beyond the Santa Claus situation. (27)

While I think that lying is a major flaw in teaching kids about Santa, I personally feel the worst part is teaching kids that a magical being gives them presents. I think all the points Ernâni makes are extremely important, and that together they make a strong case for simply encouraging children to pretend instead of lying to them.

What do you think?

Cross-posted from Heaving Dead Cats by Neece

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~Update: We had a big crowd for Loring’s talk about christianity. He talked about his story, the history of christianity, and answered a bunch of questions. It was great! The food was also awesome, and of course the socializing was wonderful too.

Here are my notes that I took from Loring’s talk:

• The view of fundamentalism is “verbal plenary inerrancy”
• fundamentalists are separatists, they can’t associate with people who don’t think like they do. Evangelicals are theologically the same and often share a lot in common, but they are willing to deal with the wider church, to work with people who might think differently (if I recall, in hopes of converting them at some point)
• Why should atheists know the bible? Because if we are going to argue with christians, we can’t afford to make a mistake about christianity.
• The old testament was written by around 160-150 BCE. It started to come into shape in the first century CE.
• A great author is Bart Ehrman
  • Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
  • Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)
  • God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer
  • A 24 part course on DVD on the Historical Jesus.
• Crucifixion was a penalty reserved for people undermining the Roman state. It was a political statement: do not oppose the Roman empire. It wasn’t for thieves like Barabbas. (To note an error in the Gospels)
• Christians modified the order of the old testament. The Jews have it in a different order.
• The Apocrypha: predates christianity. The Palestinians said it wasn’t scripture. The Egyptians said it was. Protestants reject it, Catholics accept it.
• The new testament took shape around the 300′s CE. Constantine had his conversion in 312.
• The Council of Nicaea was 325 CE. It asked the question, who was Jesus?
• Orthodoxy: a description of who won politically to decide what is orthodoxy and what is the “truth” and who ended up being heretics.
• Think of fundamentalism as a cone, with Jesus and his disciples at the point at the bottom. Over time things change and it gets farther from Jesus, things change. Fundamentalists are trying to get back to the base where it was pure, how it was with Jesus.
• Whereas regular christianity is more like an hourglass. At the base it starts with Jesus and grows. Then in the 300′s CE, there is a narrowing of doctrine and the orthodoxy is set. Then it branches back out again like the top of the hourglass. Now we have all kinds of christianity.
• Anabaptists are sects that baptize adults instead of babies. They baptize believers.
• Victor Stenger is another great author to consider
• Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity by John Loftus is another great book, according to Loring. It has great documentation and is rational, theological and philosophical.
• Loring talked about the different versions of the bible. He uses the New American Standard Bible.
• Epistemology: how you know what you know
• The gospels: A book called Synopsis of the Four Gospels compares the gospels in chart form with original text as well.
  • Mark is the oldest – about 70 CE
  • Matthew appears to be from Mark, Q and M and was written in the 80′s CE
  • Luke was also written in the 80′s CE and appears to be written from Mark, Q and L
  • John is the newest, from about 95 CE and is very different than the other three.
• Paul Kurtz is another great author. He wrote, among many other books, Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise Moral Judgments?.

~

We are having a guest speaker: Loring Prest, a christian theologian turned atheist. So bring your questions!

Here is his relevant educational background:

• Methodist Theological School in Ohio, Delaware, Ohio
  • Occasional studies leading to transfer of ordination, 1991-94
• North Park Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois
  • Orientation studies leading to ordination, 1985-86
• Grace Theological Seminary, Winona Lake, Indiana
  • Master of Theology, Christian Theology and Apologetics, Magna cum Laude, 1984
• Baptist Bible College of Pennsylvania, Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania
  • Bachelor of Religious Education, Biblical Studies, High Honors, 1978
  • Included a course in Historical Geography at the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem, Israel.

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Obama still proclaimed the National Day of Prayer this year, even though the ruling said it was unconstitutional. The government is wasting good tax dollars appealing. Of course.

I guess we’ll still keep holding the National Day of Reason until reason and the constitution prevail.

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~We had a great meeting where we got through the rest of the old testament. Swami, a Freethinker from Orlando,  came up when we were almost done and we enjoyed talking to him. He came to dinner with us as well. A lot of interesting discussion took place over dinner. I think we solved all of America’s problems, and probably most of the world’s as well.

~

We are reading God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman.

~EDIT: Since we’re not getting anyone to volunteer for chapters, let’s do it a different way. We are covering Chapters 18-39 (pages 133-181).

Bring in whatever notes you feel you’d like to share and we’ll just go through the chapters and talk about whatever we find interesting.

~

This is an irreverant review of the bible. Since christianity is the religion we deal with the most as atheists, we will spend some time using this book as a reference. Bring your bible as well, if you want, for more detailed discussions.

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Update: We met for a lively and interesting discussion about the first 17 books of the bible. We also talked about some of the exciting things we have coming up in the next few months. Then we went to dinner for more casual conversation.

~

The book we’ll be talking about is God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman.

This is an irreverant review of the bible. Since christianity is the religion we deal with the most as atheists, we will spend some time using this book as a reference. Bring your bible as well, if you want, for more detailed discussions.

For our first meeting, let’s focus on The Books of the Pentateuch (1-5) and the History Books (6-17). Pick your chapters that you’ll cover. I’d say pick 2 or 3 chapters if you like, especially if some are short.

The Books of the Pentateuch:
1. Genesis: Gerald
2. Exodus: Gerald
3. Leviticus:   Neece
4. Numbers: Daniel
5. Deuteronomy: Daniel
The History Books:
6. Joshua: Brent
7. Judges: Brent
8. Ruth:   Neece
9. Samuel 1: Gerald but if anyone wants this just leave a comment.
10. Samuel 2: Gerald but if anyone wants this just leave a comment.
11. Kings 1: Gerald but if anyone wants this just leave a comment.
12. Kings 2: Gerald but if anyone wants this just leave a comment.
13 and 14. Chronicles 1 and 2:
15 and 16. Ezra and Nehemiah:
17. Esther:   Neece

From Amazon:

‘God Hates You, Hate Him Back’ makes the ultimate case for the claim that the God of the Bible is the most wicked character in the pages of history. With a wit as dry as a martini, and the cross examination techniques of a seasoned lawyer, CJ Werleman lays out all sixty-six chapters of the Bible to present an irrefutable argument that indeed God hates us all. If you have never read or never fully understood The Bible then you will do no better than this unique, comedic, 21st century summary of the greatest story ever sold, or in Werleman’s own words ‘never read’.

‘God Hates You, Hate Him Back’ provides you with an arsenal of Biblical facts, stories, mythology and assertions to ensure you victory in your next religious debate.

Arguably the most unique, certainly most entertaining, rendition of the Bible ever told!

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The first video is on CNN Opinion and therefore it’s just a link to its page. Sam talks to CNN (at the TED conference) about how religion discussions distract us from truly important issues. It’s almost 4 minutes long. If you go there to the page, it has a lot of what he said under the video.

Project Reason, which Sam Harris helped start, had a video contest recently. So here are the winners.

Winning Video: The Values We All Stand For

An argument for a change in our national symbols to include atheists by not presuming a belief in God among Americans at the level of our federal government. The goal is not necessarily immediate action, but rather to raise consciousness about where these references to God came from and why they shouldn’t be a part of a government that is supposed to represent all of us.

Second Place Winner: Imagine

In a post-religion world, it would be difficult to convince people to build bombs, worship a person, teach creationism, tell people who to marry, or feel justified in ‘owning’ other people. And when we look up for inspiration we’d have to find it in ourselves.

Third Place Winner: Just a Book

A Bible thumper learns his lesson.

Cross-posted from Heaving Dead Cats

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~

Update: We had a very interesting meeting, talking mainly about the Cao Dai. What an interesting religion in Vietnam. Thanks to Jim for sharing that with us. Dinner afterwards was full of lively conversation.

We also brainstormed on our T-shirt for Morgantown CoR and came up with something we all seemed happy with. I finished the design and ordered the shirts. See here for the final design.

~

We are spending the first 15 minutes or so on a Vietnamese religion called the Cao Dai. Jim will be sharing that with us as he spent a bit of time there recently.

After that, we’ll talk about Irish Folklore. So bring along some information on that.

Make sure you got your quotes in. If you have any last minute ones for our Morgantown CoR t-shirt design, bring them in so we can vote tonight! Also let us know if you want a shirt. See the details of the Quote Contest here.

If anyone wants to let us know what Irish Folklore you will talk about I’ll post it here:

• Neece: Four leaf clovers

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EDIT!

Update: We had a fantastic time! We socialized, celebrated, decided, talked, shared, ate, drank, ate more, and talked some more. Thanks so much to Joe and David for being such gracious hosts to their beautiful home and farm! Want to see some pictures I took of our Nature Walk?

NOTE: This is INSTEAD OF meeting March 21. We are now meeting the day before. Any questions, email Neece.

I forgot to bring up the subject of our Secular Service in our regular meeting! So we’ll spend a few minutes when we get together for this meeting, gathering ideas and then getting a tally on which service we’re all most interested in. So bring your ideas or comment here with suggestions if you can’t make the meeting.

~

We had so much discussion for The God Virus that we only go through chapter 5. So we’re going to finish the book next month, chapter 6 to the end.

The book we are reading  is The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture by Darrel W. Ray

We still need someone to take chapter 11, and chapter 10 is also available, if someone wants it.

• 6. The Myth of Unchanging Morality: Daniel
• 7. Jesus My Personal Savior: The Roots of American Evangelism: Gerald
• 8. Intelligence, Personality and the God Virus: Neece
• 9. Understanding and Living With The God Virus: Neece
• 10. The Journey: Living a Virus-Free Life: Brent
  
• 11. The God Virus and Science:  Gerald
• 12. The Future of an Illusion: Daniel
  

Directions to Wilks/Smith home from Morgantown via I-79:

North on I-79 from Morgantown, cross the border into PA and take the Mount Morris Exit, #1. Turn right at the bottom of the ramp. You will stay on this road for 3.6 miles (bearing right at church/cemetery) and it will dead end at a stop sign. Turn left on Taylortown Road and go 2.2 miles. There will be a sharp bend in the road but you will go straight ahead onto Big Foot Road (not marked). Go about a city block and take the first driveway on right (you will see a red barn as you turn in).

House phone number: 724-324-2712
cell phone: 724-998-2520

Address:
126 Bigfoot Rd.
Dilliner, PA 15327

Do not trust a GPS – sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t in this area.

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By design, voucher programs aid struggling Christian schools. A July 2009 report by Rutgers University on the D.C. voucher program concluded that the way the voucher program is structured “essentially push[es] students into Christian Association and Catholic schools, pricing out independent (non-religious) schools and Hebrew schools.”

By continuing this program, those of us who do not wish to subsidize someone else’s church will continue to be forced to do so through our federal tax dollars.

The vote will occur sometime today. Please take five minutes and email your Senators below and tell them to vote against this amendment that would re-authorize this program.

The Secular Coalition for America opposes the use of government funds for religious purposes, including vouchers for religious schools. We agree with the founders of the United States that no individual taxpayer should be required to pay for someone else’s religion. We agree with James Madison. Senator Lieberman wants us to go in a different direction.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, with your tax money, funds and enables proselytizing and religious discrimination. Recipients of the vouchers who attend religious schools are not even allowed to opt out of religious activities at their school—a direct affront to religious freedom.

It is critical that you write your Senators today and ask them to oppose Sen. Lieberman’s amendment that would re-authorize this program and spend your taxes to fund the religious education of children in D.C.

Go to Secular Coalition for America to send a letter today.

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