Jeez Jon: Agnostically Yours

This past weekend, my uncle Al treated Tom and I went to the AAIC 09 in Burbank, CA. For the uninitiated, AAIC is the yearly conference for the Atheist Alliance International organization. My uncle has been a die-hard atheist since he was a kid, and since he retired from being a mechanical engineer many moons ago, he spends his time now going to different Atheist conventions and meetings around the world. Since Tom and I had a good time at the conference last year on the Queen Mary, we decided to give it a go this year.

Let me tell you what actually happens at an atheist conference. It's not a bunch of sour old men sitting around complaining. It's a three day event with talks and lectures on science to comedy to the ongoing fight by the Religious Right to take evolution out of schools. Tom and I went on Saturday, which had some great lectures by astronomer Carolyn Porco, biology professor and author Jerry Coyne, and philosopher Daniel Dennett. While Porco's and Coyne's lectures stayed on the science end of things, Dennett's talk was more on deconstructing religion. The headliner was Richard Dawkins, the closest thing modern atheism has to a rock star.

His last book, The God Delusion, has sold over 1.5 million copies. At the conference, he did a reading from his new book The Greatest Show On Earth, using the beauty and multitude of life on Earth as a defense of Evolution. To show you how popular he is, Dawkins did a book signing after his talk. This was the line:

It went around the corner as well:

Richard Dawkins is so famous and influential that the guys at South Park even put him into two episodes. (Voice not actually Richard Dawkins, natch.)

The majority of the people we met at the convention were nice, pleasant, and great to talk to. One of the guys who ate at our table for dinner -- let's call him Steve -- told us how he was a conservative Christian touring musician for the first 30 years of his life, hell-bent on converting his friends. On a bus-and-truck musical theater tour, Steve roomed with an atheist. Seeing this as a challenge, he decided to bring his friend "over to the light", and prove that atheism is wrong by reading one of his roommate's atheism books. Steve read the book from cover to cover, and he couldn't prove it wrong. In the span of a few weeks, he went from Bible-thumper to atheist. Others told stories of how they just started questioning their own religious beliefs and after a while, they abandoned them all together.

You might be asking yourself now "Jon, are you an atheist?" Well, I've been agnostic since high school. Coming to terms and accepting my sexuality as well put me squarely at odds with the Catholic Church (in which I was raised) and a lot of other organized religions. Even as a kid, I could never square the circle on God being wrathful or angry. It didn't make any sense to me that He needed to be praised every five minutes. If He's a higher being, is he so neurotic that he has to have constant compliments? Does he need to be told he doesn't look fat in his robe? I don't think so. I also don't believe that going to a church is the only way to be a good person. Lots of people hide behind religion to put forth ugly and hateful rhetoric and actions. Being ethical and being religious aren't one and the same.

Yes, I know that there are plenty of people who are religious and are indeed good, loving people. Quite a few of them are in my life, and I do feel that my life is enriched by their presence. But conversely, I don't feel that I have to do what they do in order to be ethical and kind. You don't need religion to guide you generally in life. At least I don't.

While there is a lot of atheism that I do find attractive, I don't want to necessarily rule out that there's something more to this life as well. I guess I want to keep my options open. I do know that I want to keep reading and keep exploring.

And I finally want to give a thank you to my uncle Al. Tom and I had a great time with him during his visit (which included such non-atheist activities like going to a taping of Craig Ferguson's show and seeing Capitalism: A Love Story). Thanks, Al!