Aug 04 2008
A Bagel Among Religious Donuts
I regularly give talks at a number of groups: freethought/atheistic/humanistic and Unitarian Universalist. The later is a religious group. Or maybe not.
Yesterday morning, before heading out the door to drive to a UU new to me and speak there (topic: “What is the Bible Really About? A Word-Frequency Analysis”), I checked my email and the posts at a number of sites on my favorites list. On a discussion thread for the Orlando Freethinkers and Atheists group – of which I am a member and have giving numerous talks to – I found a lively back-and-forth about whether or not Unitarian Universalism is a real religion, and, if so, must be considered “bad,” or, if not, at least be stripped of its tax-exempt status.
On the drive to the UU hall (church?) to give a talk during the meeting (worship/service?), the following analogy came to me.
Skeptics and atheists can be like nutritionists of the mind. They are concerned about what people “put in their heads.” Religion, in this analogy, is a donut. Not something that should play a role in a healthy diet. And while some religions are akin to an old-fashioned cake donut, others are honey glazed. And then there are the chocolate-coated chocolate donuts. Holy smoke! There’s no telling what the person who consumes too much of these is likely to do.
In my experience, the Unitarian Universalist religion is more of a bagel. It has the form of a religion, but little of the substance.
And that is why I felt comfortable giving an opening to my talk, without first strapping on a Kevlar vest, that went something like this:
“My wife and I have an elderly dog. Her name is Vita. We aren’t sure how old she is because we adopted Vita from a Humane Society Shelter when we lived in New Mexico. She had been a stray and they couldn’t pin down her actual age. We guess that Vita is now about 15 years old. Despite the fact that she has gone deaf and has serious cataracts in both of her eyes, she is a sweet dog.
“Yesterday I got the idea that it might be a good thing for me to rename the dog. I’d change her name from Vita, to God. I smiled at the idea, for this reason. I imagined someone confronting me with the question of ‘God’s existence.’ For the first time in my adult life I would be able to answer in the enthusiastic affirmative. ‘Yes, God exists. I know it. God may be deaf and blind, and she can’t jump onto the couch anymore, but she certainly exists.’
“As an atheist I have no natural disposition to reject any and all gods, it is simply a conclusion I have come to based upon the evidence, and lack thereof, I have encountered. If the evidence changes, my conclusion would change.
“Speaking of evidence, with a re-named dog, were someone to confront me with the question of evidence for my God, I could reply, ‘Evidence? Heck, every day there is fresh evidence of God’s existence in my backyard. Sometimes I even step in it. It’s not the best evidence, but it’s something . . . .”
And there was laughter. In the very least, UU congregations tend to be more liberal, educated and much more tolerant than all the other groups that meet on Sunday mornings across the land. Can that be a bad thing?
