Atheists Handbook

Atheists Handbook

A few days ago I start to think about a Secular Overeating Recovery group handbook, what it would need to say, and how it should be organized. This is a keep busy project. I realized that it has three separate topics, and before we can address overeating recovery, it would need to address what it means to be a atheist in a comprehensive way. 

I have come to realize that we are all independent beings, but dependent on others in many ways within our society. We are social animals some say, but I support the other view, we are a group of independent animals that have learned that we can do better in cooperation that apart. Evolution is not uniform, so there may be both mixed into our population, just to add more twist to the mix. Once we take hold of atheism, we may find ourselves at odds with many of the extended family, and we may find that uncomfortable and need to address the resistance to what appears to be the true reality. This supports that we are cooperating individuals, and those closed minded religious individuals do not want to be corrupted by what they see as "sinners". It is all about like minded sticking together.

To replace this "god culture" we may need to develop a "local community chapters" of atheists, whose primary function is to provide support for we atheists. As many of us entered the wormhole as some kind of agnostic or believer, and emerge into a foreign world of complete unbelief, we need to stumble about and explore. What we need to explore is also different for many of us. Most of the North American population have grown and lived in a inbred christian culture, where religion permeates everything. Many expressions contain references to religion, "by god". Musonius Rufus used, by Zeus as his expression of certainty. We atheist need to clean up all our language to remove these trained in phrases.

We atheist need to start with what we know, that the concept of a god that has any interest in humanity, is supernatural in any way, is not real. God, as a word for that which is unknown is being ground down by science. We cannot see any application of god in the last 13.8 billion years, unless god is dark mater and dark energy to make the observed gravity work correctly with our science. God as a calibration ballast just does not seem likely. Oh well.

There is much for the atheist to make peace with. What should we have done with our bodies after death? Considering that the world is at a population, above which it can support long term, we need to consider this carefully. For carbon capture, cremation is not a good practice. The Native Indians, the Celts and others used "sky burial", where the bodies are exposed for the carnivorous to clean up. That way the carbon is recycled quickly. Burial below ground does maintain carbon capture, but it occupies too much land. Perhaps we need to create a new system like garbage disposal cells where we are stacked and a thin layer of dirt is used to cover each day. when the "terminal mound" is full, a thick layer of soil is placed and capped with grass cover. Or perhaps precast concrete coffins, and we could be stacked above grade, or be made into buildings or other civil structures like road overpasses.

Much to think about eh? But what do I know?