There aren’t many issues for which I sit on the fence, but this is one great big fat one. Do we call ourselves a religion in an effort to gain equality and membership in the movement? If you take the absolute broadest definition of the term “religion” and squint really hard, you can force Atheism to fit (the same goes for baseball fans). Theists love to do that, and from a debating perspective I’d love to take that card away from them. This is certainly not the correct usage of the term, but we’re arguing semantics, and isn’t that irrelevant anyway (semantics change over time)?Is that copping out? Is copping out a bad thing? One side of me says “don’t you DARE group me in with the sheep following invisible men in the sky”, and the other side says “call me anything you like if it gets me equality and fair treatment (easy tax deductions, faith-based money, etc)”.There is no easy answer, in my opinion. At American Atheists we are a “big umbrella” organization, so we gladly welcome Atheists who support the idea of a freethought church, as well as those who are utterly repulsed by the idea. I’m not repulsed, but I find it difficult to decide on which side of the fence to fall.
(thanks Zac)http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1877The Atheon Temple of Science is an art project conceived by Jonathan Keats. Using a grant from UC Berkeley’s Chancellor’s Community Partnership fund, he created the Atheon in downtown Berkeley office building. Four millennia after Abraham fathered Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and 150,000 years after hominids introduced burial rituals to the Mediterranean, religion has finally been rendered wholly compatible with science. Beginning on September 27, 2008, a two-story downtown Berkeley building dubbed “the Atheon” will provide a spiritual home for rational people in California, and guidance to acolytes worldwide. Establishment of an Atheon has been a high priority in the scientific community for the past several years, rivaling even enthusiasm for the new Large Hadron Collider. “When you listen to people like Nobel-laureate cosmologist Steven Weinberg, or Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, you hear a lot of talk about how god-based religion is out-of-date,” says conceptual artist Jonathon Keats. “The leading minds believe that science can and should provide a spiritually satisfying replacement. But until recently no one bothered to consider what form that alternative might take.” The temporary facility features stained glass windows showing the cosmic microwave background radiation using NASA’s new WMAP satellite data.
Here’s another version — The Church of Reality, headed up by my friend Marc.http://www.churchofreality.org/wisdom/welcome_home/
The Church of Reality is not just a religion of science, it is a religion of people. We explore reality from the human perspective. In order to explore reality, we need a strong, healthy society where people can live freely and peacefully, and the human race can evolve toward a better future. The pursuit of reality is something that is a shared process. It’s something we do together as a church, as a community, and as the human race.We are about Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Reality!The Church of Reality provides a religious identity for people who have made a personal commitment to pursue reality the way it really is. When we are asked, “What religion are you?,” we answer that we are Realists; we practice Reality because we believe in Reality. We also provide a sense of community, a social structure, and a moral compass to define right and wrong. We provide a sense of purpose about who we are, why we exist, and how we live our lives, in the context of science and logic.
I love the idea of an explicitly atheist community center.
I don’t want to support sneaky tactics, but there’s a small cafe in my Brooklyn, ultraliberal, gay-friendly neighborhood that’s actually a church in disguise! It’s a “church planting” evangelizing project.
Here’s an article about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/garden/20turf.html
I’ve tried it out a couple of times. Delicious coffee and no proselytizing. But I have no reason to give them repeat business.
phreedm:
Sorry to butt-in, but if you?ll recall, I attempted to ascertain an answer your question to alatham:
a while ago. Without trying to put words in his mouth, he regards himself as a ?weak? atheist?that is, one who is either unwilling or unable to make the intellectual commitment to the proposition that God does not exist?despite the fact that he functions virtually as a ?strong? atheist (and go figure how such people are able to intellectually reconcile the resulting cognitive dissonance).
And your query:
is the proverbial ?$64.000? question that requires atheists of all stripes to wiggle through all kinds of intellectual histrionics to avoid making even the slightest hint at acknowledging a pre-existing moral absolute.
Joe
Do you know what the laws are concerning NPOs applying for tax exemption? Do they need to follow nondiscrimination guidelines?
The problem with getting Atheist community centers built is that they cost money. Although Atheists would probably support building these sends by contributing they face a financial deterrence that theists do not – taxes. Is there a way to ameliorate the tax deterrence without committing the objectionable and inaccurate act of declaring Atheism a religion?
these sends -> these centers
Ha! That’s rich. What about the anti-intellectual histrionics that Christians often stoop to when trying to explain why we don’t have to stone people to death anymore or why it’s okay to eat shellfish? Yeah, “new covenant”… that explains a lot. Whatever.
I’ll take the intellectual challenges of social economics over the circular nonsense of theology any day.
Asemodeus:
That’s all good and well, except that he is far enough out of touch to think that he’s besting you.
He’s been having these same arguments here for the two years I’ve been reading. Nobody’s ever made any progress, and making fun of him hasn’t gotten anywhere, either. The only approach is to ignore him.
TXatheist:
I’d be willing to bet on that.
I’d like to know about nondiscrimination guidelines, too.
Back in 2001, NYC’s L-sbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center refused to even consider NYC Atheists’ application for renting meeting space in their great building, even though they’d hosted the meetings of the NYC chapter of American Atheists a decade before. As D.J. Grothe of CFI has said, gay groups can be too vested in getting approval from the religious to be comfortable with freethought activism.
If the LGBT Center can pick and choose its clients according to its own ideology, an atheist community center should be able to as well. No use having religious groups buy their way into monopolizing our scarce resources.
Not that we have this resource quite yet. Anyone have a quarter of a million looking for a new investment/charitable opportunity?
(Dave, this blog software forbade me to use the L word, and I don’t mean “liberal.”)
Asemodeus already responded to Phreedm, I have nothing to add to his/her post.
jcc,
How so? If I have some sort of cognitive dissonance I’d like you to point it out because it’s obviously not affecting me greatly enough to be noticeable. Then again, I’m not the preeminent armchair psychologist here.
I’ll ask you for the tenth time (at least): Who’s interpretation of the Bible are you following?
Why won’t you answer that question?
I usually spell 1esbian with the number “1″ standing in for the “l”. You can also try l_esbian.
Glad to see another godless sodomite in here.
The 1990 NYC atheist chapter’s membership was approximately half gay. I don’t know what the orientation proportions were in 2001 of the current group. But I felt it was enough to warrant applying to the LGBT Center. They took our application but wouldn’t even return our calls. They pretended we didn’t exist. Yet they had meetings for gay knitters and gay Star Trek fans!
The Center has some of the most beautiful and most affordable rentable meeting space in Manhattan. Yes, NYC Atheists would’ve lost some straight homophobes who wouldn’t want to go to such a center. But I think we would’ve gained many more GLBT freethinkers with great activism skills and resources, many of whom had already been fighting the religious right. A lost opportunity.
We settled for a seedy but clean and relatively cheap conference center in west midtown, near commuter trains so people outside the city could come to us too. Other freethought groups now use it too; we were the first.
Phreeky is just pissed because he has final realized that the religious right is being played by John “Keating Five” McCain. Palin was selected by McCain because TrooperGate would allow him to force her from office if elected. He then gets the VP he really wants – Joe “Israel” Lieberman.
LE$$$$Bians!
Hey What,
We did these at my work – you might dig it:
http://barackyou.net/
r4d
Nice design and great looking Ts but I just wouldn’t want to associate Obama with a hurricane or The Scorpion song “Rock You Like a Hurricane”.
lol
I hear church bells again….Maybe some atheist bells next door would be cool….but how would they sound….
If Atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color… we all know the sayings that make it blatantly clear that not believing in supernatural creatures called deities (which don’t exist)is NOT a religion.
Doesn’t American Atheists have a policy on this?!?!?!? Of all the years that American Atheists has existed and all the material it has produced, it hasn’t made it clear statement on this subject? Why would the spokesperson make this a topic of opinion instead of a topic of policy? AA can’t be that disorganized and irresponsible, can it?
After all, from what I have read on this blog, Dave seems to be very much in support of “atheist” religion, with his constant support and defense of jewish and hebrew mythology, zionism, etc and attacking those who don’t agree with his religious beliefs.
KenB
Good questions all. What say ye Ed?
OK…so it’s a clear by the hard liners who post here that “atheism” is not a religion…
Huston…we have a problem…
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”…
So then on what grounds are atheists afforded the same protections according to the 1st amendment as religions…?
phreedm,
Thank you for asking a thought-provoking question. I have to admit this is not something I’ve ever given much thought to.
Exactly what protections are atheists currently afforded via the 1st amendment?
You could make the case that the 1st amendment doesn’t protect the free exercise of atheism, but I would then point out that “the free exercise of atheism” doesn’t make any sense since there’s nothing there to exercise. Free speech and a free press is all the protection my atheism needs and thankfully that’s not dependent on belief in a deity.
phreedm
the constituiton doesn’t protect atheists who don’t have a religion it does protects atheists who have humanism or communism as a religion.
now why do you think christianty is superior to communism or humanism.
didn’t jesus command all who would follow him to give up their worldly goods.on that basis most christians are heretics.
alatham:
Claiming to adhere to ?weak? atheism while, more often than not, espousing the popular attitudes, vernacular and social policies of ?strong? atheism here pretty much makes an air-tight case for your cognitive dissonance? that is, in my opinion of course.
My apologies. I wasn?t purposefully dodging the question because until now I took it to be a rhetorical one. I?m not sure what all the fuss is about, but since you seem adamant in wanting to know, I largely regard the orthodoxy and tenets of Reformed Theology (based in part on the Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms) along with my research and understanding of the historical context of the Scriptures as the basis of my interpretation of the Bible.
Jcc
Reform Theology what is that but heresy and blasphemy according to the teachings and laws of the church.
rainbows4dinosaurs:
If you don?t mind me asking, is that you?
Chuckle, snort.
Yeah, like what? “Don’t kill each other? Don’t slaughter those around you, ’cause that means no more company (or kids).”
Really? The fact the damn thing is anything but historical is what I’d term cognitive dissonance in a nutshell.
jcc,
I certainly don’t mind you asking, sir. Not me. At 35, I might be a few years past my modeling prime
. Plus I don’t have cool tats like Tyler.
http://www.pampelmoose.com/mspeaks/2008/09/obama-t-shirts-from-nemo
What said: Do you know what the laws are concerning NPOs applying for tax exemption? Do they need to follow nondiscrimination guidelines?
The problem with getting Atheist community centers built is that they cost money. Although Atheists would probably support building these sends by contributing they face a financial deterrence that theists do not – taxes. Is there a way to ameliorate the tax deterrence without committing the objectionable and inaccurate act of declaring Atheism a religion?
____________________
I say:
I don’t know the ins and outs of nondiscrimination requirements for NPOs looking to get a tax exemption. Freedom of association has been protected in that case, for religious groups like the Boy Scouts of America. Beyond that, I don’t know.
Most community centers are either government run or are non-profit organizations, I believe. If we were to open one that qualified as an actual community center, I’m sure we could get a tax exemption. It wouldn’t be profitable though. Some investors won’t touch an idea without immediate gains in profits. Some will. It takes a lot of vision to lay that all out in the first place though. It’s risky. But I would definitely get involved with it.
The United States Atheists has a community center, I mean I hope they still do. I’ve tried to contact them for a while, with no success.
Joe Zamecki
Austin
Comment from: alatham
Thanks alatham…
And now I’ll take it one step further, and I know many will object, but logic insists we do…
If atheism is not a religion, and it’s clear the 1st amendment makes no allowances for those “without a religion”, but only applies to those “with a religion”, then exactly how can one claim we have a secular government?
If the framers really wanted a “secular” government, then why didn’t they make provisions for those “without a religion”?
Joe
Thanks for the response. It would be nice to get some definitive info on NPOs. Doesn’t AA retain lawyers with this sort of expertise?