In the world but not of it…at what cost?

I find it funny…I do not believe in the divinity of the church. I do not believe in God. I have written an article at Mormon Matters suggesting alternative ways to believe where the comments quickly evolved into a discussion about what atheism does and does not entail (protip: atheism is mere. It is merely lack of belief in gods…as such, it alone is not a worldview or belief system. More on that later.) And people like my father or people from church or people elsewhere have feared for me, suggesting that if I continue these paths, then surely I am asking for trouble. If not in the near future, then for eternity. But some suggest that I will bring ruination to my temporal life.

I am increasingly interested in ideas like moral error theory and amoralism, nihilism and existentialism, ideas and philosophies that might scare and shock normal people because they thrash cultural normativity even more than atheism does. And yet…contrary to all expectations, I’m doing surprisingly well.

So, Mr. Barna…about your so-called faith tribes?

So, I was reading an article this morning, where George Barna, who seems to be a rather prolific pollster, starts banging on gongs. The United States is in peril, standing at “the precipice of self-annihilation.”

Oh noez! How could it be? Why must it be? Apparently, we are losing values, he says, and the only way to fix this crisis is to “recover the values that made this nation great and that must be firmly in place for order, reason, and unity to prevail.”

…ok, how do we do that?

That’s where his new book comes in…Barna’s written The Seven Faith Tribes: Who They Are, What They Believe, and Why They Matter. So great, he’s gone religiously eschatalogical on us.

Even believers realize it’s easier to bring someone down

I see this phenomenon so often. People will say, “X is wrong, wrong wrong, omg.” For example, a good X to put in is Mormonism. Well, that’s great to say…but most times when they do this, they don’t mean to say it just to put it out there. Rather, they have a motive in trying to say that their way is better/correct/true. So, “X is wrong and Y is right.” Where Y is some other Christian denomination, atheism, or whatever. (Don’t point my argument in a mirror at me: I don’t pretend to have a job of showing my way is best for everyone…rather, I want to justify that it should be acceptable for me to have this position. You can believe whatever you want.)

So, I’ve always wondered why people do this. If you want to convince me you’re right, then you should show me why you’re right, or why your way is better. How does your way improve your life? When you can only badger me and tear my beliefs and ways down, then it seems to show that your way has an incredible dearth of praiseworthy words for itself. The very obsession of fault-finding seems to be indicative, in fact, of a poverty of ideology. (I caveat again: if I seem to be obsessed with fault-finding as we speak, note that I do not try to wed this to any ideology…if I’m writing critical posts, I’m not doing it as a Career Atheist Evangelist [whatever those are]. I’m doing it as some guy who has been badgered before, who is not and was not happy with it, and who just happens to be a nonbeliever. But to atheists who want to wed anti-theism with atheism or to ex-Mormons or anti-Mormons who want to wed countercult ministry with their new religious zeal, I think that does a disservice to whatever your belief system is.)

The atheist hiding within the Mormon

I’ve been reading some really good articles today, and it just makes me feel so warm and fuzzy. First is Kullervo’s article at Songs from the Wood entitled “I Have Always Been A Pagan.” And the second is a comment from Jonathan Blake at Green Oasis entitled “Mormon Me vs. The Infidel.”

I wonder how I can do these topics justice, but realize I probably can’t. I’m not good at writing warm and fuzzy stuff.

I guess this kind of mood came about earlier. I was having an email conversation with JTJ, who has commented here a bit and also has been around Mormon Matters and other places, and he had asked me when I doubted and what caused it.

And I must admit…my story of apostasy and doubt isn’t very exciting.

Religion vs. relationship

OK, there’s just one thing that’s been kinda getting at me. It’s this seemingly ridiculous dichotomy that people have begun drumming up…A tremendous conflict between our two pugilists…in the red corner: Religion. Namely, Christianity, but in some instances, people will target certain denominations (like, for this article, Mormonism.) And…in the blue corner: Relationship. Namely, with Jesus Christ and/or God.

Now, there are a few reasons I don’t understand why this boxing match is even happening, but I guess I’ll link to an article that got me thinking about this most recently.

Fear Mongering about gay marriage in Massachusetts

So, I was reading an article by some writer at RealClearPolitics (and I dunno…maybe I should’ve seen it coming, but I don’t read RCP a lot) about Massachusetts Gay Marriage: FIVE YEARS LATER (dunh dunh dunnhhhh…).

OK, so maybe I added the ominous capitalization…but still…the writer, Maggie Gallagher, says something curious relatively early on:

I have argued that over time gay marriage will weaken support for the idea that marriage really matters because children need a mom and dad.

Now…warning sirens are going off in my mind…because she has several ideas going around here that she’s trying to collapse into one…she is arguing that 1) the idea that marriage really matters will weaken from gay marriage and 2) the idea of marriage that will be weakened is the one that has a mom and a dad. Which I presume is the one she thinks is correct.

But she so slyly wraps the two together. Marriage matters because children needs a mom and a dad. So marriages with two dads or two moms? You guys are the enemies.

So, Ms. Gallagher is able to triumphantly (or regrettably report):

Moderated parenting

So, I was reading an article at Feminist Mormon Housewives about what Idahospud calls Teaching Fail. Personally, I wouldn’t be so harsh…but something she said struck me…

I never planned on being ”one of those parents” (putting the scare into scare quotes) who invests time into the oldest kid and ends up slacking on the younger ones, evidenced by eight photo albums of The First Child doing dance lessons and tumbling class while the youngest has eight photos total, and no cute teeball trophies. I exaggerate, of course, but it is a common lament of youngest children that the elder ones reap the benefits of a parent’s energy and time while the subsequent children receive less time and attention due to waning parental energy combined with increased responsibility.  It is a truism that no two children are born into the same family.

I don’t say this as a parent, and I don’t pretend to understand this as a parent, but I say this as the oldest son of a family whose parents have seemed to noticeably change their parenting styles for my youngest brother and sister.

Even I can’t outsnark this comment about atheists

So, yeah, this is my third and (hopefully) final article about Jeff Lindsay’s yogurt blog story…I just couldn’t resist because there was a final commenter who said something that seemed to wrap together every cliche…every stereotype…every judgment about atheism that has ever existed…into one comment.

Here’s the teaser:

For someone who doesn’t believe in god, I wonder how much more cheap one can be about Him. Atheism is the definition of cheapening God.

Atheism is the source of all of the major wars in history. Only 10% of all wars can be attributed to religious wars. Three of the top wars attributing to the largest massive death of humanity, communism, the pol pot revolution and the Chinese revolution, each claimed over 50 million deaths, all at the hands of atheists.

Continue for the rest:

Dear theists…please do your god/s a good deed.

So, recently I talked about a post at Jeff Lindsay’s blog Mormanity…and just to spoil things, no I’m not going to talk about yogurt again.

Rather, I got into a curious conversation with this guy who posted anonymously…it was interesting because many times, he would answer my posts in a rather unexpected way or unorthordox way. Yet, at the end of the day, I dunno…I guess we were still just too different. Somehow, late in the conversation, he realized I wasn’t even a theist, and so he asked:

Andrew S

You don’t believe in God?

Oh, wow, dude, we only just had like…a super-wall of text conversation before getting to this question. But I’m a charitable guy (I wonder what Jeff must be thinking since we so derailed his topic?), so I answered, “No sir, I do not.”

Anonymous responded:

Andrew S.

How do you explain creation?

I should’ve seen this one coming…

Subjective morality — wow, why am I even trying..?

For a while, I had been having a go around with Randal Rauser at Christian post (I would link to our comment discussions, but he seems to have deleted them and then posted his articles anew with no comments, but I guess that was to be predicted, after Hemant Mehta sic’d his minions on the site).

HANLON’S RAZOR EDIT: so, it seems like it wasn’t a conspiracy or anything. The site just crashed deleting all the comments (and I guess posting accounts?)

Anyway, while I think there was a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of words put in others’ mouths, etc., I didn’t see a point to getting angry and quarrelsome (and I’ll have to write about that some day…dear ex-Mormons or atheists in general, do we realize that getting mad and making fools of ourselves online hurt our cause, no matter if we’ve been slighted and think we deserve better?)…so I wanted to try to engage on a friendly level.