| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Jason Spaceman" |
| Date: |
15 Jan 2006 01:39:06 AM |
| Object: |
In the News: In no god they trust |
From the article:
------------------------------------------------------
Atheists, agnostics and secular humanists build a community of
like-minded people
By Robert King
In a state where lawmakers pray to Jesus before doing business, Reba
Boyd Wooden finds herself leading a group that she says frequently
feels marginalized -- the nonbelievers.
Wooden's Center for Inquiry Community of Indiana includes atheists,
agnostics and secular humanists, the term for nonbelievers with which
Wooden most closely identifies.
Their profound skepticism about God may be how most people define
them. But Wooden said the secular humanists and others who are members
of the center shouldn't be viewed so narrowly. They treasure science
and reason, value common decency toward others and believe people must
solve their own problems.
Still, Wooden said the atmosphere in Indiana is so colored by religion
that many nonbelieving Hoosiers not only feel like outsiders, they
also sometimes fear discrimination.
"They are asked from the time they get here what church they go to,"
Wooden said. "People try to recruit them to their church, and they are
looking for something else."
Wooden, 65, hopes to develop her Center for Inquiry chapter into a
thriving secular alternative. She is reaching into what appears to be
a big growth market.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Read it at
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060114/LIVING/601140305
J. Spaceman
.
|
|
| User: "J Forbes" |
|
| Title: Re: In the News: In no god they trust |
15 Jan 2006 11:10:50 AM |
|
|
Jason Spaceman wrote:
From the article:
------------------------------------------------------
Atheists, agnostics and secular humanists build a community of
like-minded people
Read it at
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060114/LIVING/601140305
That's a good article....nice to see such a thing for a change.
Jim
.
|
|
|
| User: "L. Raymond" |
|
| Title: Re: In the News: In no god they trust |
15 Jan 2006 04:35:34 PM |
|
|
J Forbes wrote:
Jason Spaceman wrote:
From the article:
------------------------------------------------------
Atheists, agnostics and secular humanists build a community of
like-minded people
Read it at
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060114/LIVING/601140305
That's a good article....nice to see such a thing for a change.
I'm excited that Texas will soon have the Center for Inquiry, too.
CFI-Austin is being set up right now, and while I know it's a long shot,
I hope they have an effect on the state house.
--
L. Raymond
.
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: In the News: In no god they trust |
16 Jan 2006 05:28:59 PM |
|
|
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 02:39:06 -0500, Jason Spaceman
<notreally@jspaceman.homelinux.org> wrote in alt.atheism
From the article:
------------------------------------------------------
Atheists, agnostics and secular humanists build a community of
like-minded people
By Robert King
In a state where lawmakers pray to Jesus before doing business, Reba
Boyd Wooden finds herself leading a group that she says frequently
feels marginalized -- the nonbelievers.
Wooden's Center for Inquiry Community of Indiana includes atheists,
agnostics and secular humanists, the term for nonbelievers with which
Wooden most closely identifies.
Their profound skepticism about God may be how most people define
them. But Wooden said the secular humanists and others who are members
of the center shouldn't be viewed so narrowly. They treasure science
and reason, value common decency toward others and believe people must
solve their own problems.
Still, Wooden said the atmosphere in Indiana is so colored by religion
that many nonbelieving Hoosiers not only feel like outsiders, they
also sometimes fear discrimination.
"They are asked from the time they get here what church they go to,"
Wooden said. "People try to recruit them to their church, and they are
looking for something else."
Wooden, 65, hopes to develop her Center for Inquiry chapter into a
thriving secular alternative. She is reaching into what appears to be
a big growth market.
Humanists are still a small group. But the number of Americans who say
they don't belong to any religious group doubled between 1990 and 2001
to 29.4 million, according to a survey by the Graduate Center at the
City University of New York. That was about 14 percent of the
population. Other faith-based pollsters have found a similar
secularization.
Wooden's CFI group has about 50 dues-paying members and a contact list
of some 350 people. She plans to start a family group that would be like
a secular Sunday school.
In some ways, the community functions like a church.
Wooden is certified to perform weddings. The community holds small group
book studies -- not on the Bible but with volumes like "Freethought
Across the Centuries: Toward a New Age of Enlightenment" by Gerald A.
Larue (Humanist Press, $19.95). Occasionally, the center hosts picnics
and other social outings.
But building a community of humanists, atheists and agnostics isn't
easy, she said.
"They are all independent. They want to go in different directions. A
lot of them are really kind of loners and are happy being loners,"
Wooden said. "A lot of people don't want to get involved in an
organization."
Even so, the group added more than 30 people to its contact list since
June, when it officially became affiliated with the Center for Inquiry
Transnational, a 30-year-old organization that bills itself as the
largest humanist organization in the world.
The Indiana chapter is just one of 15 started in the last year by the
Center for Inquiry, which traces its roots to a group of skeptics who
began investigating claims of the paranormal in the 1970s.
Jeff Jones, a 47-year-old atheist from Knightsville, joined the Center
for Inquiry chapter here about three months ago after he met Wooden at
another humanist gathering. He fears that the influence of Christian
fundamentalism is threatening the foundations of American society.
"We will have a theocracy in the United States, except it will be a
Christian theocracy instead of a Muslim theocracy like in Iran," Jones
said. "We will have our version of the ayatollah, be it Jerry Falwell or
Pat Robertson or those of their ilk."
Wooden, a retired high school guidance counselor living in Greenwood,
said Jones' concerns -- how best to preserve the separation of church
and state -- is an objective on which most humanists agree.
She has appeared in local media recently, representing nonbelievers on
controversies ranging from intelligent design to prayers in the
Statehouse. In March, her group plans to host a "Darwin Day Conference"
to showcase the scientific evidence for evolution.
"A good alternative"
People choose the secular fold for various reasons.
Wooden, for one, didn't grow up as a humanist. As a child, her family
faithfully attended a forerunner of what is today the United Methodist
Church.
While she started out believing in God, she became skeptical as she grew
older. The final tipping point came in college, when a Methodist
professor at what is now the University of Indianapolis discussed how
the books of the Bible were put together. From the discussion, she took
away the idea that humans had more to do with its formation than did a
god.
"I think that day is the day the light bulb went on," she said.
Still, Wooden stayed active in her church for years, even teaching
Sunday school. "I didn't know there was a good alternative," she said.
Wooden dislikes terms like atheists, agnostic and deist because they
focus on what their subscribers don't believe in. Instead, she embraces
the term humanist.
To her, humanism means basing one's life on science and reason.
Science hasn't yet discovered what caused life and the universe to come
together, so she is content to live with the question marks. Some
believe in miracles, but Wooden believes there is a natural explanation
for everything if you look long enough.
Rather than prayer, she values action.
Many cling to the hope of heaven. Wooden believes life ends at death.
The only afterlife she sees are the memories one leaves behind and the
way society has changed by your passing through.
Rather than quoting sacred scriptures, Wooden quotes philosophers Paul
Kurtz and Robert Ingersoll and scientists Abraham Maslow and Carl Sagan.
Holding such views has consequences. Wooden said she knows humanists who
keep their views to themselves for fear of turmoil at home,
discrimination at work and lost customers in their businesses. In her
own career, some parents asked that their children be assigned to
another guidance counselor when they learned she didn't believe in God.
Wooden said most people fail to realize that humanists share many of the
same values -- honesty, personal integrity and tolerance -- that people
of faith hold dear.
In the end, she said, Hoosiers should understand that America is not
merely a Christian nation. "Non-religious people are speaking out more.
We have more people of more different religions here than we had," she
said. "It is because our country is more diverse."
at (317) 444-6089.
Call Star reporter Robert King
Copyright 2006 IndyStar.com
Read it at
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060114/LIVING/601140305
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
