asking for advice from fellow atheists

[Pezzoni]

I'd think that if you are going to go down the evidence angle, then it would be wise to cover the scientific method as well, which will help in explaining the inevitable 'what about <insert shaky annecdotal evidence here>' questions.

[Darth Wong]

Just remember: your goal is to make them understand that atheists are normal, psychologically well-adjusted people too, and that many of the lies told about atheists are just that: lies. It is not your job to convert all the schoolkids to atheism.

[munky99999]

Well Dan Barker has a great starter arguement.

Define atheism: Atheism is the lack of belief in a God or Gods. This means I do not believe in Zeus, Jesus, Mohammed, apollo, hades, hercules, horus, hathor, oriris, nor seth.

The difference between me(an atheist) and a believer of christianity or islam is 1 God. I disbelieve the MANY MANY Gods as does any of the other theists.

So the big question: What is it that makes you disbelieve in all these other Gods but believe in this 1 other?
</danbarker>

Now I'd make a comparison of religion to other mythical things.

What evidence do you have to believe in a God? The answer if obviously none or simply faith which is the same thing as none. I'd draw the comparison. This T-shirt I am wearing I can prove it exists by touching it, looking at it, smelling it, etc. Or you have electrons and protons and such which are so small you require mechanical assistance to detect and prove to exist. However God or the Lochness monster neither have any evidence to support their existence.
</ME-Munky>

Then answer alot of the FAQ questions.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... intro.html
This is the best one I've ever found.

But the best way to spend it is to answer their questions.

[Medic]

Q: Have you ever heard the saying "there are no atheists in foxholes"?
A: I've known atheist soldiers. That saying is false.

There is another reply which I think works better, and it can work even if you don't know any soldiers.

A: It's not a saying, it's a joke. One of Murphy's Laws of Combat, like "Five-second fuses always burn in three seconds," and "Incoming fire has right of way." They are not meant to be taken seriously.


Note: Some of the lists in the link say that "Murphy was a grunt." That is incorrect, Major Edward A. Murphy Jr. was an engineer for the US Airforce, and certainly no grunt. Well, according to wikipedia. I guess if anyone wants to make sure, they shoud cross-reference with something more trustworthy.

There's an addendum to that quote (though the source I can't conjure up at the moment): "'there are no atheists in foxholes' is an argument against foxholes, not atheists!"

[Nova Andromeda]

--Looking at the list of people they are inviting a question immediately comes to mind. Why are they treating atheists as a group with a common set of beliefs? Its like inviting all the shades of red to meeting an only asking one guy to represent all the other colors. They should really be inviting a humanist and other organizations that are at least somewhat comparable to a religious group.
-I would point this out immediately after you introduce yourself. Why aren't they limiting the theists to only one time slot? It shows just how badly they misunderstand atheism.

[drachefly]

I do not think Atheists are more varied than Christians or Buddhists. In the christians, you've got everything from Eastern Orthodox to neo-gnostics to YECs, with many things in between...

Of all the directions you could go, whining is a bad one.

[momochan]

Hello -- I don't have a lot of time at lunch here, but I thought I'd just let you know that we did the first of our class presentations this morning. It went quite well, I think! There were a lot of questions and in fact everyone stayed well past the bell ring. Some other teachers and staff joined in the back, so we had a little crowd going.

It was my fellow club member, Mike, and I speaking. We started off by asking them what they had heard about atheists from family & the press ("you guys don't believe there's a god"), and then Mike took a few minutes defining atheism, agnosticism, freethought, etc., on the board.

Then I gave my personal testimony. I'll describe this more when I get some time.
Then Mike talked about his own deconversion, and we opened it up to questions which went on for about 40 minutes or more.

The most interesting aspect to me was the ethnicity issue. I was the only Caucasian other than a few of the teachers and staff. The teacher of this particular class is black, as is Mike. The students were about 2/3 black, 1/3 Hispanic apparently. One of the kids did mention that he thought atheism was for white people & that blacks and Mexicans are usually believers. But Mike talked about how atheism made him feel better about being black, because the idea of a white Jesus and God is psychologically crippling to people of color.
I thought the kids might ignore me as a white person, but in fact I did get a lot of questions, particularly from the female students (and staff!) So I think Mike & I were a good balance.
Most of the students' questions were along the lines of "So, you like really really don't believe in an afterlife?" "You mean you don't believe in blessings?" "Did you actually read the New Testament and CS Lewis?". It was like they couldn't believe that someone could have seriously considered God and then rejected the notion -- they couldn't belief in unbelief!
The teacher asked us more analytical questions, such as what is our position on teaching evolution in classrooms? Where do we get our meaning in life?
It sort of ended with the students and teachers commenting on our willingness to accept uncertainty. We didn't pretend to have all the answers -- we just came to this position because that's how things look to us!

Like I said, I'll be back later with more details. Thanks for all your advice and support! We're doing it again next week with a different group of students, so stay tuned.

[Zero]

Sounds like it went well. Best of luck with the rest of the day.

[Justforfun000]

In the end, morality is based upon the simple human emotion of sympathy for others, and the rest is window-dressing. That's why the parts of the Bible which ring most true for moralists are the parts where Jesus or God shows his mercy rather than his anger.

You know I have to say Mike that I think my strongest admiration for you is probably based on concise little quotes like this that so succintly sum up very complex subjects. I can be very verbal when I want to be and string a pretty good argument together, but it tends to get wordy and almost apologetic in defending my views. You just have a gift of summing up self-evident truths that cut to the heart of the issue and turns the light bulb on full wattage.

That is a PERFECT description of the real basis of morality that doesn't need any linking to religious thought whatsoever. "morality is based upon the simple human emotion of sympathy for others." Truly 'nuff said. Now I have another great buzz phrase to toss back to others debating me on morality. Thank ya sir.

[momochan]

Well, I have to go home soon. But I just wanted to say that after our talk this morning, one young man did come up to Mike and confess to being an atheist! He must feel a little lonely, seeing as how the other students in the class had a worldview in which religion is taken for granted.

[momochan]

Ok, I'm back, and here's a summary of my own personal story that I shared with the high school students yesterday.

Let me take you back to when a 15-year-old momochan was kneeling beside her bed, praying for God to come into her life. I had been reading Xian pamphlets which painted such a nice picture of how my life would be better if I knew God. They said if you were sincere and opened your heart to God, he'd definitely change your life. It sounded so good to someone in her troubled teens -- oh yeah, I was a troubled teen back then.
So I prayed -- I tried to be sincere and open -- and then....nothing. No angels, no light, no harp music, not even a twinge inside myself. I didn't even feel any different. I had to be honest with myself; there was no response. My interpretation of this was that my faith wasn't strong enough. It was my fault somehow.
I went off to college, where I did things like read the Tao te Ching, the Analects of Confucius, many Buddhist and Hindu writings. And they didn't really speak to me. I visited a Hindu temple, I went to a Quaker meeting and for years afterwards I visited Quaker meetings. I tried to pray in the Quaker fashion, but again, nothing happened.
After college I went to live in japan, and that was an amazing experience, but two points are relevant here. One is that Japanese society works -- Japanese people are good people, they lead decent lives and they love their kids etc. Even though their religion and philosophy are quite different from ours, they are decent people.
The other thing is that I can remember one of my English conversation students asking me in English, "do you believe Jesus' mother is a baa-geen?" A what? A bargain? Oh, he means "virgin". Well, I had to reply honestly that I had never even asked myself whether I believed that or not. And that's a form of belief, in a way, that unquestioning acceptance.
When I came back from Japan, I started reading books on religion and atheism, etc. I can remember coming back home from the downtown library, I was on the bus, and I read that there is no scientific evidence for an afterlife. And that hit me like a ton of bricks, because I want there to be an afterlife. I love being alive and I love my family. And then when I got home, it hit me, again, really hard: life is very precious and it is absolutely wrong to kill someone. See, when you believe in an afterlife, you can justify killing because you can say you're sending them to a better place. Andrea Yates said that when she killed her kids. So now I realize, you're not changing them, you're not sending them to meet their Maker -- you are ending them.
And now I'm an atheist, and that to me means I see no reason to believe in the supernatural. And I realize that back when I tried to pray as a teen, there was nothing to answer me back. So nothing was deficient about me; there was nothing wrong with me.
And I really appreciate my life and I try to stay in touch with my friends & family, because I won't have a chance to in the hereafter. This life is not a waiting room, this is not standing in line for the roller coaster, this IS the roller coaster. This is real and you gotta grab it.



Several different students, mostly girls, did ask me questions about my teen prayer incident, so I guess it got through.

[sketerpot]

Nicely done! You managed to give a good description of reasonable atheism, in a way that refutes most of the standard responses before they're even formed, without trying to convert anyone. That's quite a feat, for such a short talk.

[Surlethe]

I very much enjoyed the anecdotes; they're a simple, but powerful, testimonial. I think you've given these students something to think about.

[Metatwaddle]

I liked the anecdote. It's pretty much exactly what I went through as a teenager, except I managed to fool myself into thinking it was real for a couple of weeks. Looking back, I think it was more of a Pascal's Wager thing going on in my mind, as well as the "maybe this'll make my life better" idea that you described.

The questions are a great sign. It sounds like you were very effective, so congratulations!