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It started with a flat tire in a church parking lot.

I had been driving last Saturday to help some atheist friends move from Fort Worth, Texas, to New York when the tire blew out. I was already running a bit later than I promised, and I felt bad. It was a bit hot outside (hotter in the car), my phone only had 2% battery, and (of course) I had forgotten my jack.

It was about 12:30. Two men with pickup trucks drove into the church parking lot. I approached one parked car — a wiry man in his thirties with sun-burnt skin and some crooked teeth, but a pretty nice truck.  I asked him if he had a jack in his car. No luck. Asked the heavyset man with the other truck. No luck there, either, but he said there was going to be a wedding in the next 90 minutes there, so a bunch of guests would be showing up.

I had finally found a way to call up my insurance company, but they wouldn’t be there for another hour. I really wanted to get out of that parking lot sooner, if possible.

I was really trying to help my atheist friends move — it was the last time I’d see them here in Fort Worth — other than, possibly, the occasional visit. We had had a lot of good times. Complained about religion, discussed atheism, talked about life, hung out in Fort Worth quite a bit. They were family.

That’s something that gave me doubt when I was a Christian. Supposedly belligerent atheists were going to hell…and yet many of them seemed to have a lot of the same dynamics we Christians had in their groups. Some of them actually seemed to behave better, in my mind at the time, than many of the Christians I knew. They weren’t bad people; they just thought differently than I did. Didn’t God make them, too, atheism and all? Why would God send people I knew were decent to hell?

When I became an atheist, I found a lot of support from people. They mean a lot to me, and so I wanted to be sure I got there, as soon as possible, to help them move — showing solidarity and so on.

The irony is that I was trying to enlist the help of some Christians to do it.

Or maybe “ironic” isn’t the right word. Maybe we’re all just people — atheist, Christian, Muslim, etc. — and people who care about each other help each other.

I guess that’s what I saw at the church that day. When I asked another person, he genuinely looked like he wanted to help. He opened up his car and looked for a jack. Didn’t find one. I said “thank you.”

I was already a bit apprehensive about approaching him. I drive a beat-up car and I wasn’t wearing the nicest clothes, and I’m black; the church was very nice, he was white, and I could tell from the car the guy drove that he did OK for himself.

But he wasn’t patronizing. He seemed full of respect, as if he wanted to ensure he did right by me not out of a sense of obligation, but because he was putting me in his shoes. I told him it was OK; my insurance company was coming in the next hour, and prepared to wait in the sun. He said, “Um, I can let you into the church. You can wait in here.”

He unlocked the door and let me in. Treated me like a king. Took me into the kitchen and offered me two bottled waters. I took one. “You sure you don’t want another?” he asked, eyebrows raised. I was sure.

Then he made small talk — with the obvious attempt at being hospitable. I asked him how old the church was, how long he’d been going there, what he did for a living, etc. He helped his brother with sound control at the church and its two satellite campuses. I have a friend who does sound for churches (an atheist, by the way) and I asked if he knew him. He hadn’t, but we continued to talk. I didn’t tell him I was an atheist, and he didn’t invite me to church or ask what church I went to. We were just a couple human beings chatting about life. Then he had to go and get ready for the evening service, so he left me near the front entrance.

I noticed scriptures on the walls as I sat down. Two were about helping the needy, and one was about raising godly families with male-female roles.

And that’s what bothers me about church. Like, this person was genuinely a nice, good-hearted person, and the church wanted to do some beautiful things for people. There are a lot of scriptures to choose from; the fact that they chose scriptures about helping others as a church said something about the church. And yet, there were some ugly insinuations about what a “proper” family consisted of.

I experienced this as I continued to wait. There were these young pre-teen girls who were singing for the wedding — four people. They practiced in front of a small crowd of spectators, singing a melody so beautifully that I felt tears down my cheeks. I saw real beauty there, in this corner of the vast universe. And I saw it knowing how disturbing some of the words behind what they sung in a hymn or two were. There was a sincere and deeply felt closeness there.

I saw hugs, I saw friendship, I saw beauty, I saw people of many different races and backgrounds coming together, and as much as I’m an anti-theist, I had to admit…it was beautiful in its way.

I slowly realized, as the minutes ticked on, that underneath it all we’re just human beings. We’re not perfect, and sometimes we’re wrong. But we’re part of the same life, so to speak.

To be honest, I had also been feeling a bit down about atheism in general, as well. There are a lot of disputes and names and accusations of scandal being thrown around these days among atheists that have really impacted me, and to be honest its hard for me to make heads or tails of it now. The whole thing has been really demoralizing for me, personally.

But when my car finally drove away from that church and I made it to help my friends move…those were beautiful moments I won’t forget. Oh, it was rushed and stressful as hell — we were working against a hard deadline and had a LOT to do. But all that hustle-bustle was an expression of caring and friendhip. It just underlined and accentuated it more. It made me feel warm inside, and grateful that I had friends like this and could be a part of ushering them on to the next stage of their lives. I think we all felt that way after a hard day of work when, at about 2 am in the morning, finally all packed up and in a completely clear house, we unwound and said our goodbyes. We saw the family drive to the airport shortly after (they had a 5am flight) and sadness mixed with a sense of accomplishment and friendship.

Atheism seemed like a beautiful thing, then, because of the people. Forget the bullshit; we were just human beings caring about each other.

So, that’s what I learned that day. We’re human beings, underneath it all. That’s all we are, on some level. And I’ve been thinking that if we understood that — if we could just see that in each other — then we would get along more, across the lines. There would still be problems, many of them very serious. But existing at the same time as those problems are opportunities to love — little pockets of connections you can have with people who disagree with you to show that although we have important differences in thinking, and although there might be drama in different corners of an organization, on an individual level we still care about each other.

Not sure I would have seen it quite that way, if it hadn’t been for a flat tire. Which is something kind of beautiful in itself. Don’t get me wrong; I hate flat tires, and waxing eloquent about love doesn’t fix them — repairing a tire, just like repairing a lot of problems in general, takes actual tools, logic and know-how. But in the problem, I unexpectedly found love in an unexpected place.

I guess life is like that sometimes.

Thanks for reading.

 

You know what I hate? People thinking I’m a certain way just because I’m black. My existence defies a zillion stereotypes out there that people have of black people. I have to fight against the stereotypes people want to believe about me, all the time.

Maybe you get that, too. Like, for example, I have a roommate who grew up on a farm and works for an oil company now. His family his full of Republicans, and he makes a six-figure salary. He rides horses, hardly ever uses his car, and is saving up to buy a farm. You’d think he’d be a practical country person who may not know a lot about history and the world, maybe, looking at that resume, but in reality he’s a lot more well-read than I am. If you’re used to stereotypes, you may not see that.

I’ve heard from white males, who are getting attacked almost constantly by us left-wingers, that they are not the monsters people often make them out to be. And although I’m black and often get labelled a social justice warrior, I know some awesome white males, and I cringe sometimes at the ways they are portrayed. They’re not bad people just because they are white men. We need to get rid of that black-white thinking and see them as actual people, not types. Not bigoted, racist monsters with horns, but real people with real experiences.

I think a lot of people see themselves being portrayed by social justice warriors these days in ways that they clearly don’t see themselves as being. They see Donald Trump as the Savior who will finally force people to see the beautiful people they are.

That’s not what’s happening, though. When Trump brings up stereotypes, he firms up stereotypes assigned to both liberals AND conservatives.

He traps me in stereotypes of blackness, he traps white males in the stereotypes of white masculinity, he traps hispanics into the stereotypes assigned to hispanics….he makes us all types. He steals away our individuality so that we can’t see each other. And when that happens, we become monsters to each other. Maybe we’d be nicer to each other if we actually saw each other for who we are — just people. But Trump hides that under a stereotype so no one can see me or you. We’re just types, and that makes us monsters.

That’s why there’s violence at his rallies. It’s not just conservatives, and it’s not just liberals. There was no violence at the rallies of the other 15 or so Republican candidates. No fists at Sanders or Clinton rallies, either. Why?

Because they weren’t trapping people in stereotypes that made people monsters to each other. I disagree with several of them, and I’m sure you do, too. But they were better than Trump at seeing that you and I are better than we may, at first, appear to be.

When Trump says, “Make America Great Again!” what he’s saying, to you, is that he’ll make you great again. He’ll restore to you the respect and dignity the left has tried to take from you.

But that’s not what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is that he’ll keep talking in stereotypes. He’ll prompt people to see you as a stereotype. And you will be more hated, and you’ll hate us more.

It’s happening right now, and it will get worse.

Now, let’s talk about Hillary Clinton.

I don’t like Clinton all that much. I think she’s too centrist. I prefer Sanders, which is why I’ve participated in his campaign several times and praisehim almost every chance I get.

But I have to say this about Clinton: She sees people as individuals. It’s not simple black-and-white with her. If you talk to Trump, you might feel like you fit into a stereotype of a larger group of angry people. But if you talk to Clinton — hate her all you like, but I get the sense that she would see beyond the surface of you and recognize you as an individual. She’ll see YOU — not just whether you’re white or black or a man or a woman. She’ll see who you actually are.

Yeah, I know she’s a Democrat, and I can understand how that might make conservatives uncomfortable. But she’ll listen to me and you as individuals, not to our stereotypes. And that will make us all better. It will help all of us be seen instead of encasing us in the battle helmets Trump is forcing us to hide behind.

There’s a bit more freedom in that, and I think, personally, that America is best when it promotes freedom.

The freedom to be seen as who you are, instead of as a type. To be seen by the other side as a person and not a monster.

It’s how we can make you, and I, and every individual in this country, great — perhaps for the first time.

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.” — Albert Einstein

There are two types of Christianity that I can stand.

One is the Christianity that clearly, unequivocally, does not believe in a personal God. Those who follow this Christianity think that God is wholly and completely a human construction that symbolizes things like “order” or “love” or something similar. But it’s not those things itself, it’s not bound to any book, it’s not someone it would ever really make sense to talk to except as a ritual that brings you personal comfort but that you know does absolute jack-squat in the “real world.”

The “God” of these Christians is nothing more than the sense of community they get when they hang out, and the moral code that they craft from a ground that is STRICTLY man-made, as there is no personal God to dictate this moral code to them. Nothing is “just so” — their morality is completely and wholly and thoroughly a product of the thought of human beings.

This kind of Christian may sound outlandish, but when I talk to Christians sometimes it seems like one is always trying to dismiss God by saying that He doesn’t matter. Therefore I should tolerate Him.

But the frustrating thing is that these same Christians will turn right back around behind my back and tell other people that — hey, wait a second, God is real, God is wonderful, and we NEED to follow Him.

No, no, no, no, no no, no, no. You don’t get to have it both ways.

Either God is completely a fiction, completely a figment of everyone’s imagination — just a big, grand metaphor — OR God is a real external entity people dictating to people that they need to follow.

It’s not complicated. People have found ways to make it seem complicated, but it’s not, and what we need right now is clarity.

If you do not believe in a personal God — if you think God is completely a human construction — then say it. Unequivocally. I mean, it doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out that lack of clarity on this point can be bloody confusing (and even Einstein, when he was unequivocally clear on this point, still has people who are trying to misconstrue what he meant by “God”).

I call myself an “atheist” partly because, frankly, that kind of so-called “God” just looks like ornamentation to me and causes too much damn confusion.

Be straightforward. Be up front.

There’s another Christianity that I can actually stand, though it is still a bit nauseating. In this Christianity, adherents think there is a God but don’t know how this God operates, why, or even, for sure, what religion he favors more, if any. It’s a God so securely behind the curtain that it might as well not even exist. You’ve got that God behind the curtain, so that’s irritating and problematic sometimes — but I don’t mind so much because you don’t know jack squat about this supposed God, so it’s presence or absence has no bearing on our day-to-day affairs.

And you’re clear about it. Clear as in, “Yeah, I think there’s probably a God, but I don’t know jack squat about said God, so it has no impact on my life.”  Problematic, still, but I can stand it.

But…most Christians are SO unclear and maddeningly inconsistent about this. Ugh. Like, when I ask a Christian about hell, they’ll almost invariably say, “Well, that’s up to God.” And yet they’ll walk out the door and tell anyone who will believe it that they need to come to God to be “saved.”

No.

Again, you don’t get to have it both ways. If you can’t know God’s judgment, then you can’t not know God’s judgment one moment and try to preach it the next. You gotta be consistent. Stop telling people they should be saved if you’re not sure about heaven or hell or who is saved. Just shut up about things that you’re so insistent to me that you don’t know about.

That’s what makes conversations with so many Christians so frustrating. They’ll hide behind “I don’t knows” about God and I’ll look like a dufus when I keep arguing because they’re in steady-on denial. I know they’re in denial because the MOMENT my back is turned I can hear them talking about God’s qualities in intricate detail, and telling people they need to be saved, and so on.

Just be clear. Just tell the world that you don’t know jack-squat about God, that for all you know no one else does, and be clear on the logically following fact that the best we can do is disregard concepts of God (since we don’t know them) in our day-to-day decisions.

This ESPECIALLY goes for apologists try to do a vanishing act with God (which, to be fair, is easy enough, as God is conveniently nonexistent in the first place) and challenge whether we can know anything about God at all (including God’s supposed nonexistence), and do all that to defend, behind the atheists’ backs, a God who supposedly likes rainbows and killing people in floods and all kinds of outlandish stuff.

Don’t do that.

If you don’t think there is a personal, conscious God, or if you think it exists but think (as people seem to tell me) that you know absolutely jack-squat about it, then be clear about that; stop obfuscating and trying to do sleight of hand to defend the notion that you or other Christians or your Bible have the inside info on God. You can’t have it both ways. Be up front.

Like Einstein said here:

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

Or here:

“I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. … It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far as we can grasp it, and that is all.”

Einstein didn’t identify as an atheist, so he differs from me in that respect. But he was absolutely clear that he was not defending some half-baked religious conception of God, nor was he endorsing a personal God — God, to him, was a metaphor for his admiration of “the structure of the world.”

Christians today need to learn from his clarity and stop with the double-timing doublespeak.

Seriously.

Thanks for reading.

“Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

I’ve been busy with school and summer job-hunting stuff lately, so I haven’t been posting here as regularly, but I just want to say something real quick that occurred to me.

When I was a Christian, I believed in hell. I didn’t know exactly who was going there, what it looked like, etc. I just thought that it existed and that it was a bad place, something most Christians (which is constituted by the “you send yourself to hell” nonsense — Christians, you’re not original there, we’ve heard that nonsense a zillion times before) pretty much agree on.

It was hard believing in hell and in the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I deserved to spend eternity there, even if Christ saved me. It made me feel deeply grateful but also fairly inferior and insecure. It wasn’t good for my psychological health overall, especially when I began having serious doubts — not the “doubts bring you closer to God” kind (again, been there, done that — that’s not original either). The “my empathy and Christianity is incompatible” kind.

It is truly disturbing to me now to realize how cold-hearted you have to be to be a Christian. Somehow, you have to be OK with thinking that some people might be going to hell and just trust God’s morality, which is supposedly going to send them there, and yet worship this God and say He has beautiful judgment.

It’s not beautiful. It’s ugly to think that anyone deserves eternal torment.

It overwhelms my mind when I think about how cruel or unfeeling towards other people one would have to be to think anyone deserves that.

Anyways — for all the controversy that happens among atheists, I’ve never met one who believed I had even an inkling of a chance of spending eternity in torment. Mosts atheists I know are very now-focused; the present is what matters. Being a decent person to the people around you matters in the here and now, and we take care of it in the present. There is no eternal torment chamber I deserve that opens up when I die.

It might sound strange to say, “Thanks for not believing that I or anyone else will spend eternity in torment — and worshipping the guy who would supposedly send me there,” because that’s such a cruel thing to believe and kinda sets a low bar, to be honest. But, sitting here in my rented room on a street near the outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas surrounded by Christianity, it means a lot.

It helps me focus on the present moment, it eases a lot of my religious-era anxiety, and it makes me more comfortable than interacting with people who think that I maybe deserve to perish in hell forever.

Really. It might seem like a small thing, but you have no idea how much this has helped me.

Thank you.

As you may or may not know, I’m currently pursuing a doctorate in Modern American Literature. Every once in a while, people ask me if the field has any use or utility to it. Why does literature seem to use postmodern theories so much? And why would I sit around reading and writing about novels all the time?

Here’s my answer. Oversimplified, but it’s a rough outline.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_m6rCYn4PU

I get the sense that when someone accuses someone else of being “politically correct” they are trying to give the impression that there’s a conspiracy to keep people from saying things that are true — as if the person accused of being “politically correct” is the one most interested in silencing honest discourse.

Far better, they say, to be honest, straightforward, and to the point.

But here’s the thing: It is not brave to be honestly insulting when you’re the most powerful person in a given situation. And people only seem to use the term “politically correct” in those situations.

Say a bully on a playground goes up to an overweight kid who struggles with learning. The bully is good-looking, fit, and a straight-A student. He tells the overweight kid that he’s overweight and has learning disabilities, and the overweight kid cowers, quietly bearing it. What can he say? Others are on the bully’s side, laughing. The kid is silenced.

If another kid tells the bully to stop, the bully might say the kid was being “politically correct.” But let’s take a closer look.

The bully is the one able to speak.

The overweight kid is the one silenced, afraid, forced not to insult the bully. If anyone is being silenced and barred from being honest, it’s the one being bullied, not the bullier.

Maybe the overweight kid laughs it off to keep from being alienated. Maybe the overweight kid goes home and cries while the bully continues to be smug. But my point is that it is far, far braver for the kid being abused to honestly speak up and protect himself than it is for the bully to honestly insult him.

If you were REALLY interested in protecting honesty, then you’d fight for a playground in which the abused kid doesn’t have to be any more scared to speak up than the bully.

That’s why I think the term “politically correct” is just a term for the bully to use to protect his bullying behavior and discourage anyone from stepping in. Think about it. Would the kid on the ground, who is really the one ACTUALLY silenced by the politics of the school, get labeled “politically incorrect” if they talked back to the bully? No. Because the bully is the one in power. The terms “politically correct” and “politically incorrect” are there to protect his right to bully.

Don’t believe me?

Try this thought experiment.

Imagine someone making a “politically incorrect” insult. Say, someone white says that someone is the n-word in front of a group of white people. Someone protests. And then the response is, “Man, stop being so politically correct.”

Seems like a standard use of the phrase? OK.

Let’s change the scene. Say that same person  says the n-word while surrounded by the Black Panthers. ALL of them start to glare. Others begin to ball up their fists.

Somehow, “Man, stop being so politically correct” doesn’t seem like a proper usage of the term.

I mean, honestly…now that the power dynamics have shifted, I don’t think most people would think the problem was that the Black Panthers were too concerned about being politically correct.

The problem is that the guy didn’t know where he was at. You don’t say the n-word to a black person in a roomful of the Black Panthers if you’re the only white guy there. Bad idea.

What was the difference? The word used? No. The word’s offensiveness? It’s offensive in both places. What changed was the power dynamics of the environment.

So, the phrase “politically correct” is not about honesty. It’s not about a right to say or not say a certain string of words.

It’s about an effort to protect your “right” to insult the most vulnerable person or people in the room.

I know it might not feel like that, especially when you’re restricted from saying certain things that you’re used to saying. But the clear fact of the matter is that, when you look at most of the groups you’ll get accused of being “politically correct” for speaking up for — at the actual STATS, not at the unscientific hearsay of random people — you’ll find invariably that those groups are the main ones being silenced. Not the insulter.

If you were in a roomful of any one of those marginalized groups when you made these insults, we both know that the “politically correct” moniker wouldn’t work. It only works when that person is in the more vulnerable minority, surrounded by people who, in that situation, are more powerful in some respect.

Since “politically correct” is a term that only works when it comes from the people at the top of a power imbalance, the more of us fight against the term, and the more that power shifts, the less power that term will have.

It’s not about honesty, because if it were you’d be empowering the voices that are silenced by the lies you tell about them.

It’s about power dynamics, plain and simple. It’s about you wanting to be a bully, and having a hissy fit when someone threatens that.

You’re just scared. Which is understandable, on some level. It takes time to adjust when people start talking and shattering your illusions.

Just admit you’re scared of change. Stop lying about the problem being “political correctness” and start admitting that you’re having to adjust to changing understandings of the way the world works and it’s hard; that’s the real problem.

Be honest; tell the truth.

Thanks for reading.

[Image via Sander van der Wel under CCL 2.0]

 

 

 

I think my anti-theistic position is often maligned, so I decided to clarify it. Basically, most religions have a leap of faith — belief without evidence. You need that to affirm belief in God or gods, because there isn’t good evidence for that belief. The very real, urgent problems we face in the world today need to be solved with a strong focus on reason, evidence, and sober-minded thinking. Faith — belief without evidence — fundamentally forecloses the possibility for such solutions.

So yes, of course I’m an advocate for pushing past it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofT94bCwQnw

A few months ago, I ran into an enthusiastic, fairly charismatic atheist with, supposedly, a string of degrees behind his name. He was starting a new Atheist group. Intrigued, a few of my friends went.

Then one of my more skeptical friends checked him out. He found out the man was not only a fraud — his real name was Leslie Snell, and he was infamous for, in the late 1990s, operating some of the biggest diploma mills in U.S. History. Basically, the scam worked like this: You would pay money for schooling that you probably thought was legit, do all the work, and get your degree — except the degree was worthless, the school was made up, and Leslie Snell was lying out of his teeth. He had started Monticello University, Thomas Jefferson Education Foundation and several other related diploma mills. Upon investigation, we found several signs that his new atheist organization was probably something he was gearing up to be his next fraudulent undertaking.

We were taken aback. There was no money in being an atheist, especially here in the DFW Metroplex — or so we thought.

And why atheists? Atheists were smart, saavy, and skeptical, unlike the religious people we were surrounded by. Why not go to one of those churches and take their cash, posing as a preacher? That’s where the money is.

But now it’s occurring to me. Maybe that attitude is exactly why he chose us. Our confidence can make us proudly believe that the things that happen in other organizations don’t happen to us.

Now, I know some atheists are against movement atheism, but in a sense being against movement atheism is like the Monty Python skit “What have the Romans ever done for us?”

Recovering from Religion is instrumental in being a kind of transition place where people hurt by religion can transition and share their pain with sympathetic ears. I doubt many atheists would say that’s not important.

Apostacon is a way for atheists who are trying to help people out of religion on a wide variety of fronts meet, share experiences, and discuss their concerns. There are unique struggles for Hispanics, black Americans, former Muslims, former Fundamentalists, etc., and other people help those with these struggles, and when a bunch of them do it, it becomes a small volunteer organization.

Reason Rally — when atheists like Johnny Depp and Richard Dawkins go to Washington, D.C. in a huge rally, it shows Washington D.C. and the nation that we atheists are here and unashamed. It legitimizes atheism, in a way; it helps make it easier for you to admit your atheism at your workplace.

These organizations do a lot for atheists, and they have helped me come out of a history of being deep in the church.

Because of what they have done in my life, I’ve been trying to emphasize how they can help other people. I’ve been largely anti-theistic, saying that atheism offers superior benefits — in large part, I’m seeing now, thanks to belief that atheists in these organizations were people who I could trust.

And I have thought these things, without much criticism, up to a few weeks ago.

Now, I’m really a nobody in the atheist “movement.” Just a small-time blogger on Patheos.  At Apostacon I talked with a few major figures in the movement, briefly, but although I felt a strong affinity with several of them at the time, we’re not close. I don’t have the “inside scoop” and I don’t really know Sarah Morehead. I’m really just a guy who has been profoundly influenced by the atheist movement — like many of you are.  Someone who wants to help the people who have helped me.

So, anyway…Recovering from Religion, Apastacon, and the Reason Rally all had someone heading them who most of us assumed we could trust.  Most of you don’t know who she is, probably, so this means nothing to you. But she has helped out the atheist movement a lot — one of the hardest working, most influential people in American atheism. Her name is Sarah Morehead. Recently, her husband (for all intents and purposes, though not under law) Ray Morehead went on trial for child sexual abuse of her child and another child. We atheists felt for her, and when one of us said that we should give her money to make the ends meet (as he supported her), we didn’t hesitate. She had helped us so much. Why not help her? I gave her a bit of money and asked others to do the same. The request was for $8,000; over $23,ooo was raised.

Shortly after, she removed from leadership of Apastacon, Reason Rally, and Recovering from Religion. There were a lot of non-disclosure agreements involved, so we don’t know all the reasons why. But there were rumors about her character not being as it seems, which were largely rebuffed by people who thought it was the work of Ray Morehead to try to destroy Sarah Morehead’s reputation while he’s on trial.

The rumors became so confusing and pervasive that J.T. Eberhard, one of the top atheist bloggers and a friend (like many influential atheists) of Sarah Morehead’s, investigated them thoroughly. Not only did Eberhard, in his long, very well-documented write-up, find that the evidence indicated this was true — what Morehead said about several rumors in the interview he had with her for his article directly contradicted the evidence he found, evidence that Morehead seems to have tried to delete before he uncovered it. Eberhard, then, uncovered extensive evidence that Morehead systematically made sure only she had access to funds that she seems to have used personally, and lied about several other matters as well; the picture that is painted isn’t pretty.

The way J.T. discussed it, that lying was strategic and repeated. There has been suspicion that she has acted similarly in the other organizations she’s been part of — Stephanie Zvan has also said some troubling things about her overall character, making the picture even darker in my mind.

Although this revelation has sent ripples through much of the Atheist community, most prominent Atheists won’t talk about it. Many former co-volunteers with Morehead have signed non-disclosure agreements, so they can’t talk, but I’ve seen (being an avid blog-reader myself) a bit of vagueblogging about the importance (or lack thereof) of movement atheism that seems connected to the incident here and there.

These posts range from people talking about their disgust for movement atheism, to people talking about how much we need it in spite of negative things that happen.

As for my own part, the whole incident has made me slow down drastically in promoting atheism.

A Christian would probably say, “See, atheists aren’t special.” And in a way, they’d be right. We’re not special, set apart from the world. The laws of gravity apply to us.

Although the evidence that Sarah Morehead lied and misappropriated funds seem undeniable, I don’t know how true the rumors about the kind of person Sarah Morehead is are. It’s possible that it started out gradually — that she had been volunteering so much and working so hard, and yet struggling financially. There was little oversight, and maybe her bills — for her and her children — were getting overwhelming. Maybe she thought (as many of us would in that situation, honestly) that if she borrowed just a little of it, she’d eventually be able to pay it back. But once it was borrowed, she had to cover it up. And then the cover up needed a cover up. And maybe she covered up so much that the “borrowing” became more justified in her mind. Maybe she still cared about the organizations deeply and the money factor was something separate, or something she did to enable her to spend so much time volunteering. Or maybe she thought she was doing such good work that she and her kids had earned that kickback. And maybe the money was somewhat justified, even if she got it through nefarious means, with how hard I hear she was working.

Or maybe it’s worse. Maybe it’s not. I don’t know her, so I’m not sure.

But what was truly disturbing, for me, was finding out through Internet conversation that this was just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of good the atheist organizations have done, but there are also more rumors of disturbing things that happened, and additional blown-open scandals in the past that I didn’t know about or time had caused me to forget. It all kinda came to a head on me at the same time.

And it was crushing, in that moment, that I was struck by the realization that the laws of gravity and logic work in important atheist organizations, too. We aren’t special superheroes. We just don’t believe in God. Thinking that means more than it does sets us up for disappointment.

Yes, I’m an anti-theist, in the sense that I think that believing things based on faith has harmful effects.

But it’s gotten more complicated for me, now. I’m not as eager to advocate atheism, after the last couple weeks, as the most important part of the solution to the problems we face.

Of course I’ll speak from an atheist perspective in my criticisms of culture. But I’m thinking, now, that I may not be promoting atheism specifically, so much as the values that I hold and the logic I think is important that come as a result of my atheistic thinking. Like…not as fixated on atheism, but fixated on things like love, logic, justice, knowledge, etc.

And also on things like bowling, running, reading novels, working, laughing, and helping people.

In a lot of ways, this isn’t a big change. I still think religion is harmful. I’m also against trying to reach out to religion just to boast that a bridge is made; I think religion contains faith, which offers fundamental harm in our efforts to solve the very real problems we face in culture today.

I still think that the atheist organizations carry some importance — atheists need to be less marginalized, people need to recover from religion, and so on, and groups helps this happen.

But in a major way, this is a big change, because I also am much more hesitant, now, to say that atheism is the beginning of making everything better.  Like religion, there are some things in many atheist movements that are good, and there are some things that aren’t. Very little of anything is exactly the way we’d want it to be, or exactly as good or bad as it may initially appear. And that doesn’t mean that the good things aren’t good or that the bad things aren’t bad. Life is just complicated.

So I’m an atheist who thinks religion is a terrible idea, but that’s not the entire definition of who I am, and even though it’s important, a lot of other stuff in my life is important, too — and focusing too much on atheism means that those other things (like, for example, honesty) get left at the wayside.

I need to have a broader focus. That’s what this taught me. Atheism isn’t the answer; no one thing is the silver bullet for making the world a better place. The world is more complex than that, and the people — people working to make the world a better place and the people we are trying to make the world a better place for — are more complex than that.

As you can probably see, this isn’t about Sarah Morehead; it’s about an error in atheism I made, personally, that I need to correct. It’s time for me to stop having and preaching illusions about it, and start showing that atheism, while it’s part of many solutions, doesn’t automatically fix a lot of the very real issues we have.

I don’t exactly know how realizing all this is going to change the way I move forward, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and the disillusionment has been broadening and challenging my vision.

I guess that’s a good thing.

My housemate, Mike, died. I have a few housemates, as my landlord owns the house I’m in and the one next to mine. I guess, technically, Mike wasn’t my housemate, as he lived next door. But we’re all part of the same acquaintanceship, more or less.

I didn’t know him well. He was thin, around sixty, had a brown dog. Negative person. Always complaining about health problems until the ambulance came and took him away for liver problems and he died in a hospital room. Or at least, that’s what we think. To my knowledge, no one came to visit.

He lived in that house with another person, an older woman. They did not get along. She always complained about him. We were suspicious when, after he died, she took all his stuff out his room and sold it, claiming he willed it to her via word of mouth.

We asked around about his family. We found out he had an ex-wife, kids. They had disowned him several years ago and apparently his death meant nothing to them. We don’t know why. He’s not around to tell his side of the story.

I asked a couple of my other housemates where he worked. He was a barber, I found out, at the local base. He didn’t have a car; he biked to work when he was healthy. We talked to his boss, and his boss said Mike had no friends; didn’t know anybody.

A stranger came to the house a couple days after he died, claiming to be the closest to family Mike had. She said he had once lived with her and her boyfriend. I had to go to work, but I took her to talk to the woman who had been Mike’s housemate.  She was eying the stranger suspiciously as I stepped away.

One of my housemates, a guy in his late fifties, said that we should set up a memorial service for him. He had converted from 17 years of being a Buddhist to the Greek Orthodox Church about a year ago, so the idea of a Christian memorial service seemed fitting to him. He asked if I’d attend, even though I was an atheist, as it would be a religious ceremony in order to respect Mike. I said that of course I would, but they didn’t say when it was so I missed the date when it came around.

I found out about the memorial second hand. The landlord was there and joked about how he’d have to clean out Mike’s room. The guy who set up the service, the fifty-year-old, said a prayer. Another guy played the guitar in the quiet evening and they sang a few random songs and drank beer.

The state buried him in an unmarked grave two feet deep in a cheap box on a government plot; no one can visit him without trespassing.

And that was it. No funeral.

Me and my younger housemate, the petroleum engineer in his early twenties, listened to the story. The young housemate fumbled for a phrase that would sum it all up, some deeper meaning.

I tried, too; we failed.

We agreed it didn’t make sense to say it was shitty, because Mike was dead and didn’t care.

We eventually agreed that there isn’t any moral; it is just what it was and that is all.

“Well, I know this, and anyone who’s ever really tried to live knows this: That what you say about somebody else — anybody else — reveals you. What I think of you as being is dictated by my own necessities, my own psychology, my own fears and desires. I’m not describing you when I talk about you; I’m describing me.” — James Baldwin

Something I hear as an atheist a lot is, “How do you live a moral life without believing in God? What keeps you from raping and killing people? If I didn’t have belief in God, I’d do [insert long series of disgusting acts].”

When we atheists hear that, it sounds a lot like projecting — like the only thing keeping you from doing bad things is a belief in God. We wonder — are you really so twisted that you would rape, murder, and generally be a terrible person if you didn’t believe in God? I mean, when you show you can’t conceive of living a moral life if you didn’t believe in God, you almost sound as if you’re saying that you’re truly hateful person underneath, and the only thing keeping you in check is the threat of hell.

Worse than that — when you project that twisted person you’d supposedly really be if you didn’t believe in God onto atheists, you can often become the very twisted person you’re projecting (in the real world, as opposed to an imaginary or theoretical one).  Let me break that down.

Your thought that people who don’t believe in God are bad people somehow because you’d be a bad person if you didn’t believe in God seems, in the real world, to justify the belief that atheists are somehow worse people who deserve to go to hell (because, after all, if you didn’t believe in God, you’d deserve it). A lot of Christians won’t say that to an atheist’s face, but what I heard from pulpits when I was a Christian and what I hear from Christians in debates as an atheist — it all seems to support the theory that Christians who think they’d be bad people without God tend to think that atheists are also bad people without God —  and that, therefore, these atheists deserve hell (and often, by extension, treatment as second-class citizens here on earth).

Thinking an atheist deserves hell is far more terrible than thinking they deserve — well anything else. By definition, hell is the worst punishment that exists.

I mean, it’s like condemning someone to death, even though he didn’t kill anyone, because if you were in that situation, you think you would have killed someone. The irony here is that the person you’re condemning is innocent, and you’re the only one who wound up killing someone.  Your projection of the monster you’d be actually made you that monster in reality — and the person you projected that monster onto remains innocent.

You’re the monster, not the innocent person you projected your own twisted psychology onto.

I hear the similar rhetoric when people talk about transgender people going to the bathroom that happens to be labeled differently than the gender they were arbitrarily assigned. They say, “How are we going to keep transgender people from sexually harassing people?”

And that’s really projecting — they’re basically saying: “How do you keep from sexually harassing people if you don’t identify with the gender you were assigned at birth? I mean, if I didn’t identify with and try to fulfill the expectations attached to the gender I was assigned to at birth, all I’d want to do is sexually harass people.”

As if the only thing that’s keeping them from sexually harassing people is being cisgender.

But in the real world, transgender people are not the ones sexually assaulting cisgender people. Cisgender people are the ones sexually assaulting transgender people.

Here are some terrible statistics:

In 2005, we found out that 50% of transgender people will experience sexual assault at some point in their lives. As recently as 2015, 25% of transgender college students in a major survey stated that they had experienced sexual violence since enrolling in college — a space of life typically only about four-five years long.

Transgender people are not doing the sexual harassment.

The projectors are.

And that says very dark things about the people who can’t really imagine being transgender and not sexually assaulting people. Not only are they showing they secretly want to sexually assault people — their placement of that secret desire onto the transgender person becomes, in their mind, a license to engage in sexual assault themselves — against the transgender person. And a failure to see transgender people as a three-dimensional people. And an unhealthy interest in a transgender person’s extremities.[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISsdSvJhniQ[/youtube]

And this focus — and the resulting well-documented rampant violence from cisgender people — results in cisgender people committing further everyday injustices by denying transgender people any rights that do not fit into that projected fixation of sexuality, as is evidenced by the fact that there is widespread, well–documented discrimination against transgender people in every segment of society — including restrictions, most famously, on where transgender people are supposed to pee. As if going to the bathroom wasn’t hard enough with the perpetual threat of sexual assault from the cisgender people in the stalls.

Let’s be clear here. Transgender people are not the problem. The projectors have become their own boogeymen, and unleashed the darkest aspects of their nature onto people who are just trying to live their lives.

It’s the same flawed mentality in both instances.

What needs to happen is for people to stop projecting, start listening, and maybe trust that people are the way they represent themselves to be rather than as we imagine them to be. Especially if, like atheists and transgender people, stereotypes regularly replace these self-representations.

Thanks for reading.