I ARRIVED AT THE RESTAURANT and there was no one in site except for the wait staff. After a few moments wondering whether I had came to the right place, I asked the waitress if there was a group meeting there and she escorted me to the backroom where I saw about 5 people sitting at a table. There were two women and three men. The woman who seemed to be running the show was a bit older, maybe late thirties, and white. The other woman was probably a bit younger than that, and also white, with strawberry blonde hair and a fair complexion.
“Is this the atheist meetup?” I asked everyone.
“Yes,” the older woman said. “Hi I’m Janis.”
The other younger woman greeted me and introduced herself. “I’m Cynthia. What’s your name?”
“I’m Mike,” I replied. I sat at the end of the table next to Cynthia and across from one of the men who introduced himself.
“I’m Felix,” said the man across from me. He looked to be in his late sixties with a head full of gray hair, slightly receding, but not too much. One of the other men to the right of Cynthia introduced himself to me.
“I’m Frank,” he said. He was younger, probably in his late thirties with a head full short dark hair and thick rim glasses. Quintessentially geeky looking. The other guy at the far end of the table from me just nodded at me. He had a shaved head and a piercing stare. I later learned that his name was Vladimir. There seemed to have been some small talk that I had interrupted, but it resumed once I the greetings were out of the way. Janis and Cynthia were chatting about their jobs. Janis was apparently a school teacher who taught disabled kids. I always thought that kind of job was noble. After looking at my menu for a few moments I decided I didn’t want to be quiet. I was a little nervous being around all the new people I didn’t know, but I had a funny story to tell. When the Cynthia and Janis’ conversation came to a pause I began my story.
“You’re never gonna guess what happened to me on the way over here,” I said getting everyone’s interest raised. “As I was walking here I was approached by two women, and they stopped me and asked me what I knew about Mormonism. They were apparently trying to convert me to Mormonism. So I told them that I knew that their religion was officially a racist religion until 1978 - and they were completely shocked. Their fucking jaws dropped.”
“Wow that’s incredible,” Cynthia said. “Did they know you were coming to an atheist meeting?”
“No,” I said. “But how ironic is that right?”
“So after I said that they quickly tried to change the subject but I put them under a little pressure. They were like ‘we’re not racist’ and I was like ‘great, but your religion was.’ And then we talked about monogamy for a bit before I told them I wasn’t interested. But I took their card, take a look.” I passed the card around and everyone had a good laugh.
“I’m interested in your thoughts on this. How should we react when religious people try to convince us of their faith? Do you think we should openly mock religion?”
“I think it’s OK to mock the religion but not the believer,” Janis said. “Because I was once religious and I know what it’s like to be on the inside.”
“I agree,” said Frank. “As Dawkins said, religion should be mocked into extinction.”
“But Dawkins said that we should mock religious people too,” Felix interjected.
“Well I’m a little iffy on that one,” said Frank.
“What are your thoughts on that?” I asked Felix. “Should we mock religion and the believers or just religion?”
Gazing upwards Felix replied, “We should be able to criticize anything be it an idea or a person. So I’d agree with Dawkins.”
“Would you call yourself a militant atheist?” I asked him.
“What’s a militant atheist? I don’t even know what that means.” I had to think about this for a moment, but then I replied.
“Well, Dawkins is a militant atheist. He’s an in-your-face kind of atheist. He’s willing to openly criticize religion and religious people harshly and he makes no apologies about it. He thinks religion should be destroyed, whereas there are some atheists who don’t really care about religion enough to criticize it.”
“There’s a word for that,” Vlad said. “They’re what we call an apatheist. It comes from the word apathy and atheist. They’re atheists who don’t give a shit about religion enough to even talk about it.”
“What’s your view?” Janis asked me. I hesitated for a moment to collect my thoughts.
“My view….is that religion should definitely be mocked. I think mocking religion is one of life’s greatest pleasures. And the internet sure makes that easy. But when it comes to people, it depends. It depends on the context. Just walking up to someone one the street and insulting their religion is wrong. But if you’re in a conversation with someone and they assert their god over you, then yeah, you can directly mock their beliefs.”
In recent years I had started mocking religion more and more with the help of the new atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and my favorite, the late Christopher Hitchens. And no one in my immediate social environment challenged me on it.
“Well I don’t think we should make fun of people’s religious beliefs,” Cynthia said in a tone that seemed to be acknowledging that she was bucking the trend. “Religious people are not stupid. It’s not their fault that they’re religious. They’re products of their environment. If you were raised like them, you’d be just as religious. And making fun of people’s beliefs is not going to change their mind. In fact it could make their beliefs even stronger.”
“That’s actually true,” Felix said. “There’s a psychological effect called the backfire effect that shows that when people’s ideas are challenged in a hostile manner it just makes them double down on their beliefs even further. So making fun of someone’s religion could make them even more religious and more fundamentalist.”
“But it’s definitely true that making fun of religion has turned some people away from religion,” Frank said. “That’s what happened with me. I eventually realized what I believed was a load of crap and it was because of people pointing out to me how stupid it was.”
“But you said you were iffy on whether we should mock people,” I said.
“That’s because it doesn’t work with everybody,” Frank replied. “Some people respond to criticism by believing stronger, and other people allow it to change their beliefs, and that was what happened to me. So I can’t say that it’s bad to do that to everyone, because you never know.”
That was food for thought. I wasn’t completely naive to the fact that some people double down on their beliefs when criticized but I hadn’t exactly fully considered whether mocking someone’s religion could be a bad thing. I mean, I didn't want to live in a world full of religious superstition, but perhaps a little kindness and compassion could become useful towards those who still believed in bronze-age myths. I thought of something witty and clever to say on the matter.
“So I guess you can say that the atheist equivalent of ‘hate the sin not the sinner’ is ‘hate the religion not the believer,’ right?”
“I think you have a good point there,” Felix said as the others mildly laughed.
We ordered our food and I got a beer. So far the meeting was going pretty well I remember thinking. I enjoyed talking about these kinds of issues with like minded people, even if we didn’t fully agree on everything. I remember I ordered some kind of rice dish that had shrimp in it. When it came it was nicely shaped like an upside down bowl, in typical Thai fashion. I had something else on my mind I wanted to talk about. I chugged some beer first.
“So I get that everybody here is an atheist,” I said. “But who here is an anti-theist?”
“I’m an anti-theist,” Felix said.
“Me too,” said Vlad, whose name I still had not gotten up until that point. The women were gazing up thinking.
“Anti-theist?” Frank asked. “How do you define that?”
“Well,” I said, “as I understand it, an atheist is just someone who doesn’t believe in god—”
“It’s someone who lacks a belief in god,” Felix interrupted, causing me to glance at him with a curious gaze.
“OK, it’s someone who lacks a belief in god,” I continued. “An anti-theist on the other hand someone who is not only an atheist, but who actively opposes belief in god.”
“If that’s what it is then I’m an anti-theist,” Frank said. “I think we have to stop believing fairy tales.”
“I agree,” Janis said. “I certainly want the world to be less religious but there are numerous ways to get that done that don’t involve making fun of people.”
“Like what?” I asked. She put her beer down and sat up in her chair to answer this.
“For example we can help promote science-based education, like science-based sex education. I’ve been a teacher for twelve years and I’ve seen first hand the effects of bad sex education. We could also teach critical thinking and logic in school. We don’t really teach these things. We just dump a bunch of dates and facts on kids and expect them to memorize them for a test. And once they take the test they forget it immediately. That’s a really bad system of educating the country. I think that if we teach people how to think properly they will naturally leave religion.”
I was impressed. “Those are really good ideas,” I replied.
“I totally agree,” Felix said. “In Texas recently the school board tried to prevent critical thinking from being taught in public schools because they said it might end up strongly challenging deeply held beliefs—which of course means that they fear that kids who think critically will examine the religions they were indoctrinated into.”
“That’s insane,” I quipped. “I definitely think critical thinking is important. You have to base your views on good scientific evidence.”
“Yeah but is science the only way to true knowledge?” Felix challenged me with a mischievous smile. The question had me thinking.
“I would say so,” I replied.
“If you think science is the only way to true knowledge then you’re committing yourself to a view known as scientism. Scientism is basically the view that science alone can render the truth about the world and reality. It seems like it makes sense, especially to a lot of atheists, who tend to love science, but the view has a problem.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It should be obvious but it often isn’t. The problem is that view is self refuting. If science alone can render the truth about the world and reality there’s no way to prove that scientifically. So the claim itself cannot be justified by science. So if you want to be a critical thinker—and I see that you do—you shouldn’t think science is the only way to truth.”
I nodded my head in affirmation. It sure seemed logical to me. Had I been mislead all this time? If so, what else was I being mislead about? What other beliefs did I hold that were irrational? I had committed myself to the life mission to find this out. But there was still a question that needed to be resolved.
“OK,” I said. “If scientism is self refuting, then what’s the alternative?”
“I see you’re on the right path,” Felix said with a smile. “You’re asking the right questions.” He leaned forward. “The alternative, as I see it, is not to say that science is the only way to truth, but is instead the most reliable way to truth about the world. Science is one among many methods that can render truth. For example, pure logic without any scientific data can render truth. That's what we call a priori reasoning. But logic alone cannot always discover truth. Just look at quantum mechanics. No one in their right mind could have used logic to figure that out. It defies common sense. That’s why science is more reliable. It’s the most reliable.”
Another insight. It also made sense to me. Science was just the most reliable way for finding truth about the world, not the only way. I still needed to parse this new information in my brain, but it was good food for thought.
“How do you know all this?” I asked Felix.
“I’m a philosopher!” he said with a big smile.
“Awesome. I’m really into philosophy,” I said.
“I can see that.”
“There’s all kinds of philosophical issues that’ve been racking my brain recently and you’re exactly the kind of person I need to talk about them.”
“What kind of issues?” he asked.
“Issues with existence, ethics, meaning and purpose.”
“Oh OK,” he said with a look of surprised laughter on his face that read OH JEEZ. “That’s plenty of stuff right there. Too much actually. You really want to know what the meaning of life is?” Everyone looked at me as if I were crazy for a moment.
“We’re atheists,” Cynthia interjected. “There is no meaning of life.”
“Well I understand that,” I said. “I’m not talking about objective meaning, like from outside—like from a god. I'm talking about something else. I don't know exactly how to explain it. Meaning….meaning in the sense of something better than what we’re fed in modern culture, which is to go to school, get a job, and make a bunch of money and be a good consumer, and maybe get married and have kids.”
“Well if that’s what you want to do, that's what you want to do,” Felix said.
“But that’s what I don't want to do,” I said. “If fact I hate that idea.”
“OK so don’t do it,” he shot back.
“I understand that but…..do you think life offers us better alternatives?”
“Of course,” Felix said. “But you have to know what you want. If you don’t want to just make money, then don’t focus on making money. Pursue something else.”
I wasn’t quite satisfied with his answers. For some reason I expected him to have the magic bullet. I can get on board with the “do what you like” idea, but was there a way to know if various ideas were better than the others?
“Do you think that some ways of living a life are better than others?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he responded back without hesitation. “But if you want to know if one is objectively better, I would say no. I’m skeptical of objective moral values.”
“So it really comes down to a matter of preferences you think?”
“I would say so,” he replied.
I still wasn’t satisfied but I decided to let it go and so I let the conversation drift onto other topics.
After a few beers Cynthia started looking better. I was single. Was she? I didn’t see a wedding ring on her finger. Just as I finished hypothesizing all kinds of devious plans to try and approach her she killed those plans while talking with Janis about vacations. She dropped a b-bomb: she had a boyfriend, with whom she recently went to England with. Oh well. It was better I find out that way than find out after having approached her. Despite this, I was having a good time. It was a mixed crowd. I didn’t know anyone over forty who I could talk philosophy with, but I got exactly what I wanted. I was making friends with people smarter than me, who were giving me wisdom. And wisdom was what I wanted. So after it was all over and we paid the checks I asked Janis how long this group had existed for, and she said several years, but she took over running it recently. To think that groups like this were meeting up within walking distance from my apartment for years without my knowledge was pretty fucking far out. Felix told me he had been coming for about a year, and the others for various intervals. I told Felix that I wanted to keep in touch and I got his email. I was hoping to start more dialogue with him on some deep philosophical issues.
We all said our goodbyes and I began my trek home. It was night and still hot and humid. East coast summers stay hot at night with little relief from the heat. I had a lot to think about. The very foundation of what I thought was true as far as how we know what’s true was shaken. I needed to read up on scientism to get the upper hand on it and that was exactly what I did once I got home. I didn’t feel like I had gotten any closer on new perspectives on life’s meaning if there was any at all, but it was interesting hearing Felix’s rather causal views that you should do whatever makes you happy. I had much to learn and this was only the beginning.
