Godless, not Soulless

So, I’ve had a lot of conversations over the past few weeks about my religious identity, and I get the feeling that a lot of folks in my life have been surprised by my answers.  For the past four or five years, I’ve identified as an atheist, and that’s still the case – but I think the surprise comes into play because people believe that “atheist” can only mean one thing.  So in an effort to a) be clear, b) get my own head around where I stand on matters of faith and spirituality, and c) just to see what comments, if any, this might generate, here’s where I am.

1.  I don’t believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, unified force in the universe that guards over us and intervenes in our lives.  To most people, that means “I don’t believe in God,” so I guess that’s true.

2. I do believe in the human soul – however, what I call a “soul” someone else might just call a “personality.”  What I call “spirituality,” someone else might just call “psychology.”  I believe that there’s something within us that exists separately from our biological, physical selves that defines who we are as people.  I believe that there’s such a thing as being spiritually evolved, and that people who attain this state tend to be happier, kinder to each other, more aware of the needs and feelings of others, more able to handle life’s tragedies, and more able to put things into perspective than those who are not.  Spiritual health to me is different from psychological health, which (to me) basically just means that you’re free of psychological disease.  Spirituality is about your psychological state, but also gets into ethics, worldview, and a lot of other things.  Speaking of ethics …

3. I ascribe to a moral code.  Some of the things that are a part of my morality are found in the Bible, but that’s more of a coincidence than cause-and-effect. There are lots of things I think are perfectly moral that the Bible condemns, and plenty of things that the Bible encourages that I think are downright evil. Basically, my morality consists of two tenets: I believe that we’re all connected, and I believe that we have an inherent responsibility to care for one another to the best of our collective abilities. That’s it. When I hear about people conducting honor killings in the name of religion, bullying gay kids until they want to die in the name of sacred texts that were written during the Bronze Age, or denying health care to those in need in the name of a political ideology steeped in religious fervor, I am disappointed in our ability to collectively evolve spiritually.  And I will admit – at these moments, I believe that my moral code is superior.

4. I’m completely open to the idea of divinity. But, if there is such a thing as “the divine,” I believe that it exists within us and not up in the sky somewhere.

5. Guilt is good.  In moderation, that is. I’m all for people being kind to themselves, but only insofar as they have done their level best to be kind to others.  Forgiving yourself for your past mistakes is crucial, but so is accountability. Doing whatever the hell you want, no matter what damage you leave in your wake, then saying to the world, “I refuse to dwell in the past, so I forgive myself, la dee da” does nothing for your personal growth and pretty much guarantees that you’re going to continue to make the same mistakes, over and over again.  Being truly kind to yourself might involve doing a little digging in the darker corners of your soul (personality, whatever), bringing the muck you uncover into the light, and dealing with it.  And it’ll also result in fewer people being hurt.

6. I have nothing against religious people.  If you go to church every week, pray to an omniscient, omnipotent being so that s/he might intervene in your life, and that works for you: dandy.  If it helps you to be a better, kinder person: extra dandy; you should keep doing that. Just don't use your religion to justify unkindness.  Don't attempt to codify religious tenets that have nothing to do with ethics into law.  Don't prevent me from buying a bottle of wine on a Sunday if I feel like buying it and some merchant somewhere feels like selling it to me. Don't prevent a gay couple from getting married just because your religious leaders have an "ick factor" around sexuality and are telling you that it comes from God and not their own squeamishness. Don't restrict a woman from making her own health care choices because you think you know what's best for her. You don't. Don't be mean, and then say God made you do it.  Because that's a lie.

And that’s about it.  Yes, you can call me an atheist and I will not be offended.  But please don’t say that I have a closed mind, no soul, no sense of morality, and no purpose in life. Because I’ve done a lot of work on those things in the past five years – way more work than I did when I identified with a religious faith, I might add.

Aaaaaaand, scene.

Jim Daly: We Lost Marriage.

Much has been made of recent remarks by Focus on the Family President/CEO Jim Daly regarding his organization's quest to keep same-sex couples from marrying.

Here's some of what he said to World Magazine:

We're losing on [gay marriage], especially among the 20- and 30-somethings: 65 to 70 percent of them favor same-sex marriage. I don't know if that's going to change with a little more age, demographers would say probably not. We've probably lost that. I don't want to be extremist here, but I think we need to start calculating where we are in the culture.

And he goes on to outline what future FoF messaging around marriage might look like:

"The piece of paper that you get at the state to recognize your marriage is worthless. It's like registering your car. But if you're going to be a part of this church and you're married, you're going to be committed to your marriage. There's no easy way out."

Is it possible that I like this guy?

Probably not, because he makes his living moralizing, while looking to written artifacts of Bronze Age nomads who had no understanding of human psychology, biological evolution, or a round planet as the best guide we have to a moral life.  And you know what else: it's easy for him to say that the "piece of paper" that is one's marriage license is "worthless" when it's something that heterosexual couples can so easily take for granted.  But for same-sex couples who desperately need marriage rights in order to share property, protect their children, sit at the deathbeds of their spouses, and inherit from them without being gouged by crippling tax burdens (among 1,000+ other rights and responsibilities), that "piece of paper" can be incredibly valuable.

Still, I like the direction this guy is going.  If nothing else, he seems to finally understand what the LGBT community has been saying for years: we don't want to take over your religions; we only want that piece of paper, and why the hell do you care so much?

Why American Christians have for decades been hell-bent (yes, I chose these words carefully) on preventing loving and committed couples from protecting their families under the law - while the scourges of war, genocide, hunger, poverty, and disease remain unabated around the planet and here at home - is frankly beyond my understanding.  And if there's a sign that they're no longer going to do that, well ... fine with me.

Happy Eggs and Bunnies Day

It's Easter.  For many, it's the most important day of their faith calendar.  For others, it's the first time they'll go to church all year.  For folks like me, it's just another Sunday.

I glided from twice-a-year Catholic into agnosticism back in 2006 or 2007, and became a full-on atheist a year or so later.  (Funny, as agnostics and atheists by definition don't organize, there aren't rituals to welcome you into the non-faith community, so my dates are a little fuzzy).

It's been an interesting journey, and more or less a happy one.  Which is why it's always such a surprise when people put on the long face after hearing of my new secular outlook.  Once, a very well-meaning acquaintance said to me with quivering voice, "I just think it's so sad that you lost your faith."

It took everything I had to not respond with, "I didn't lose it.  I know just where I put it.  But thanks for your concern."

I used to say that I wasn't one of those angry atheists; that I don't care what anyone else believes so long as they keep their religion out of my laws and don't try to coerce me to follow their far-fetched religious notions as my only legal option.  Y'know, dumb things like you can't buy alcohol on Sunday, or two gay people can't get married.  That kind of stuff, that has no real justification other than the Biblical - in a society that is increasingly diverse, religiously, wherein not everyone follows the Bible as the best guide to a moral life.

Then I met Shorebird (not his real name), my, um -- boyfriend?  I guess that's the right word.  We share a house and a bed, but we haven't applied for a marriage license, even though we live in one of the relatively few places in America where the document would be legally binding.  "Domestic partner" seems a little sterile - but that's another topic for another day.

Anyway, when I first went out with Shorebird, his Facebook profile said, "Christian."  And I thought, "well ... this could be a problem.  Not with me, I mean ... I'm one of those open-minded atheists, but he might not appreciate where I'm coming from, and -- oh hell, just go out with him and see what happens.  He is awfully cute."

And on the third date or so, I broached the topic of religion.  And to my relief, he wasn't as stolid a Christian as I might have first imagined.  In fact, he was struggling with the idea of faith quite a bit.  And by "struggling," he was beginning to wonder if it all wasn't just a load of Bronze Age hogwash.  I innocently suggested he listen to a brilliant work by Saturday Night Live alum Julia Sweeney called "Letting Go of God."  It had helped me come to terms with being a big, bad, atheist - and if it didn't have the same effect on him, it might give him some things to think about - or a quick chuckle.

Fast forward six months or so, and Shorebird has embraced atheism full on.  (Where's my toaster oven?  Just sayin'.)

But he didn't stop at Julia Sweeney.  He now reads Sam Harris, Dan Barker, and his personal favorite, Christopher Hitchens, with relish.  And his brand of atheism is just a shade angrier than mine.  Once, I thought it would be fun to watch a documentary called "Jesus Camp."  I had seen the film in theatres before, and it had given me a good laugh.  So I got my hands on the DVD, and to my mild disappointment, Shorebird didn't think it was funny.  He later described it as "watching child abuse for two hours."  Turns out that his upbringing (as a Pentecostal, where folks spake in tongues with alarming frequency) was a little more intense than my Catholic upbringing (all of that eating the Lord's flesh notwithstanding), and he had been left with considerably more scars.  And he's given me a lot to think about.

I still don't feel a lot of anger toward religious people; rather than shake my fist, I'm much more inclined to just shake my head.  But I'm inching toward that anger, especially when I see innocents (and that includes most kids, and certainly the gay ones) being put through the religious ringer.  You might think that gay kids committing suicide was something terrible that happened last summer, when a new story about a gay suicide hit the news wire every other day.  The truth is that gay kids have been killing themselves at a fairly steady rate for years, a rate that continues today, even though that story in 2011 no longer seems new.

So all this is to say, I'm ambivalent.  Which isn't saying much, I realize.  But it's an ambivalence that is especially present for me today, the most important day of my former faith calendar.  But I'm not anti-Easter, not at all.  For instance, I don't really have anything against bunnies and eggs, mostly because some of them are made out of chocolate and to the best of my knowledge, ancient pagan fertility rites never made people feel bad about their sexuality - just the opposite, I would imagine.

Happy Eggs and Bunnies Day, everyone.