Finding spirituality as an atheist

After leaving religion, I felt like I was missing spirituality in my life. Because my religion had always been my source of inspiration, comfort, and spiritual renewal, I needed to find new sources for those things. I'm going to share some of the things I've come up with.

For a while, I made up an imaginary deity to pray to, because I missed prayer. I eventually came up with "Life Reviews" to replace prayer altogether. Once every week or two, I set aside some time to do a "life review." It's quiet personal time for me to review my past goals, set new ones, think about how I've been using my time, and how I want to use my time. I record my feelings about how my life has been going over the last couple of weeks, and my goals for the next couple weeks. I keep my writings password protected, because they're pretty personal. That way I can be totally honest about everything with myself. Life reviews help me remember the big picture and my life goals. I also have some specific goals that I check off daily in a spreadsheet to keep me focused and productive.

I also find spiritual renewal through reading great literature. I mostly read non-fiction books, but sometimes fiction. I enjoyed ExMormon, probably because I related so strongly to so many of the characters in it. I even read it twice. I really like coming-of-age novels (I recently read this one), probably because I feel like I'm still growing up and figuring things out too. Good movies, musicals, and documentaries can also provide inspiration. I loved Les Miserables, Wicked, and Easy A. I think they each teach important principles that I believe in.

I've also liked service projects, donating to charities, and talking with friends and family to maintain strong relationships with them. I started doing Yoga recently, which is pretty fun. Working out and eating right helps me feel good about myself.

So those are just a few ideas. I'd love to hear your ideas for non-religious sources of inspiration and spiritual renewal, whether you're religious or not. Feel free to comment!

Quick update

I've been busy commenting on some atheist/theist arguments on Gavin's blog, in case anybody's interested. New posts here are coming, probably this weekend.

Government neutrality on religion protects us all

In a comment on my last blog post, my good friend Gavin stated that he is "concerned about the rise of secularism in general" because atheist groups are "far more intolerant of religious people than religious people are intolerant of atheists." I think this is far from the case, and I want to share a few stories of people who have bravely fought to be treated neutrally by their government.

I'm giving a summary of Vashti's story from a paper I found online here, although I originally heard many of these stories on FFRF podcasts.

My first example is Vashti McCollum. She isn't atheist, but wanted freedom to teach her children her own interpretation of the Bible. Her son Jim came home with a permission slip to allow him to participate in religious instruction at the school. She refused to sign it, but after heavy pressure from his peers, Jim desperately wanted her to sign it, so she did. She soon found that the class was not teaching ethics and morals, but rather religious indoctrination including faith and miracles. She transferred her son Jim to another school, and the next school again sent home a similar permission slip, she again refused to sign it, and Jim began to be bullied by his peers who saw that he was not attending the religious instruction class. He was forced to sit alone in the music room while everyone else went to the class. She decided to sue, on the grounds that the school was violating the 1st and 14th amendments.

Her family was ostracizied from the community. She often received very angry and threatening letters and phone calls, which were most especially vehement on Sunday evenings (after church). At one point, a crowd marched on her house singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers," rang her doorbell, and when she opened the door, she was pelted by rotten fruits and vegetables. People would dump their garbage in front of their front door. Jim often came home crying, and teachers seemed angry at him for not attending the class.

It was under these circumstances that the Supreme Court found that the only way for the schools to treat all students equally would be to ban religious classes in public schools. This decision protects all religious minorities. A Mormon family in Texas found refuge in it, and sued to prevent the Southern Baptist majority in the area from pushing their religion on their children. It protects students in Utah from having Mormonism pushed on them. Ultimately, these decisions protect all religions, and defends our right to not have someone else's religion pushed on us or our children at school.

You can be good without religion

Many people have suggested that society needs religion to be good. In contrast, I think there's some decent evidence that more secular societies are better in many ways. According to The Moral Landscape, location 2557-62 on the kindle version:

And on almost every measure of societal health, the least religious countries are better off than the most religious. Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands—which are the most atheistic societies on earth—consistently rate better than religious nations on measures like life expectancy, infant mortality, crime, literacy, GDP, child welfare, economic equality, economic competitiveness, gender equality, health care, investments in education, rates of university enrollment, internet access, environmental protection, lack of corruption, political stability, and charity to poorer nations, etc.

He cites  "Society without God" by Phil Zuckerman.

Now I'm not saying that atheism is for everyone; I think many people are actually better off religious, whether you're better off religious depends a lot on your personal circumstances and background. But I do see this as good evidence that as America becomes more secular, it's not going to fall apart. It's entirely possible to have a good, non-religious society, and to be a good non-religious member of society. Many deists, atheists, and non-religious individuals have made very substantial contributions to society. I'll list a few of my favorites:

• Thomas Jefferson
• James Madison
• Benjamin Franklin
• Albert Einstein (seriously, I promise he didn't believe in a religious God)
• Charles Darwin
• Stephen Hawking
• Bill Nye
• A couple of my heroes, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett
• George Soros

So there's no lack of awesome non-religious role models out there, including many of the founders of this country, our most prominent scientists, and the most generous philanthropists in the world. I hope that as America becomes more tolerant and diverse, that non-religious individuals and atheists like myself will be as accepted and trusted as religious individuals.

Human sexual evolution

If I've never written something that made you feel awkward, this probably will. Read at your own risk.

Our biology reveals fascinating evidence of our
evolutionary history, and answers some interesting questions. Why are our penises so big? Why is the vagina so acidic? Why do we have sex so often per childbirth? Why so much pumping action, and why do females have a tendency to vocalize during sex? Why do we have large external testees hanging off our bodies? Any man can vouch to the inconvenience of his balls: they're terribly sensitive and present an easy target in a fight. It doesn't have to be that way. Gorillas have tiny 1-inch penises and balls safely inside their bodies. The answer to these questions is that sperm competition has played a prominent role in our sexual evolution.

The reason we have large penises is that a vacuum is created by the tight seal between the vagina and the penis. By pumping, the male can suck out any semen that may have been left by a previous male. His large external testees create enough sperm to allow him to attempt to fertilize many women each day. The female's vagina has barriers to entry, such as its acidity, so that only the healthiest sperm could fertilize her egg. Her tendency to vocalize during sex may be an invitation for other males to have sex with her as well.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be monogamous, but I am saying that for the last several hundred thousand years, our species has not usually been monogamous. Some of these explanations may turn out to be wrong, but I think it's clear that evolution offers very plausible explanations of our biological characteristics, whereas the hypothesis that we are a special creation of a loving deity who wishes us to be monogamous does not offer plausible explanations of those characteristics. I think this evidence indicates that we are a product of evolution.

The balance between selfishness and unselfishness

Once I had accepted that promoting human well-being should be the basis or morality, I faced a difficult moral dilemma. Any money that I spent on myself that could have benefitted Africans without clean drinking water meant that I did not care about those people or their needs. The requirement for truly loving your neighbor as yourself seemed impossible for Americans. I had a hard time seeing American society as any better than The Capitol in the Hunger Games. We have so much, and use so little of our means to help the people in this world that need help so badly.

While I still feel like American society does not do nearly enough for the needy in the world, I eventually came to a partial resolution to that dilemma. I realized that trying to be so frugal and generous was making me unhappy, and I couldn't promote a moral system that caused its own adherents to be unhappy. For this reason, I now think it's reasonable to buy the things that we really need for ourselves to be happy, and fit into the culture we are apart of, and save for our financial security, before donating to charities to help the less fortunate. I still think that spending money frivolously, on things that don't really add to our happiness or are unnecessarily expensive, is wrong. That money could have been used to help to destitute. I think being ostentatiously rich is wrong too, for the same reason. If you appear rich to those around you, you're spending more than you need to fit into your own culture. I still think we should each make a strong effort to become unselfish: to train ourselves to feel happy when we are helping others, not ourselves. But I do think it's reasonable to put our own happiness and security first, before helping others.

Atheist Morality

After losing my faith in God, I was unsure about what should be my basis of morality. I discovered part of the answer in Sam Harris's TED video on how science can answer moral questions, and his book The Moral Landscape. The basic idea is that morality should be based on promoting human well-being, or in other words, based on empathy, compassion, and loving your neighbor like yourself. So I'm a big fan of Jesus's 2nd greatest commandment (although obviously not so much his greatest).

The traditional basis of morality is tradition, usually religious tradition. Using compassion as the basis of our morality means that it can progress, and there are several reasons that it might:

Tradition may be mistaken

There are a lot of commandments in the Old Testament that seem objectionable to us today. For example, most of us would consider it wrong to kill someone for collecting sticks on the Sabbath, for worshiping a different God than us, or for being the child of someone who worships a different God. I realize Christians don't follow those rules now, but were any of those things ever right? If not, then maybe we should question whether scriptures are a good source of morality.

Our environment may change

For example, as we become more and more exposed to advertising, and that advertising becomes better at causing us to want to buy things, we can re-evaluate its effect on our well-being. We may realize that advertising does not promote our well-being, and we should take steps to reduce our exposure to it. What's right can depend on our personal circumstances.

We may learn more about human nature

After we learn that sexual orientation is largely immutable, and that most gays and lesbians are happier accepting their sexuality than repressing it, we can become more accepting of our gay and lesbian peers, or even encourage them to accept their sexuality rather than repress it.

People are different

What's right for one person may be wrong for another. Maybe pre-marital sex is a terrible idea for some people, but fine for others, depending on their personalities, desires, and situation. Maybe getting married and having a family is a really great idea for some people, but not others. We shouldn't think that what's good for many people necessarily applies to everyone.

For these reasons and others, I think loving your neighbor as yourself is a superior basis for morality than religion or tradition.