UNCG Atheist, Agnostics and Skeptics meet

The student body of UNCG has a lot to offer. To a transfer student, the diversity can sometimes be a little overwhelming. For example, a “bible for comic books trade” was put on by the Atheist, Agnostic and Skeptic group at UNCG this past Monday at the EUC. There is nothing like this back home at community college. Membership of the Facebook group is a meager 50 members, but they are active on campus, and even adopted a section of Wendover Avenue between Spring Garden and Norwalk.

“We had free cookies, and you could trade in a bible or any religious materials for a Thor comic,” said Phillip Drum, the group’s president and founder.  “The turnout was pretty awful, but we didn’t advertise it well. It was really just an idea that came up at last week’s meeting.”

The UNCG Atheist, Agnostics, and Skeptics meet on Friday evenings every week since last semester. When asked if he had received any encouragement or criticism from students, Phillip said, “Most people just took the free cookies.” He furthermore said that he had a fairly eclectic group, with a decent ratio of men and women from a range of majors.
To get a better feel for how the group operated, I attended a lecture on the 8th. The turnout was hoped to be near 100 people, but closer to about 50. It was a somewhat diverse group, and I was surprised to see a range of ages and an even of male to female. “You know, I think people expect to see fringe, anti-authority types here, but the people I’ve met are extremely friendly,” Logan DeHart, a member, said.

The speaker was Dr. Jacob Fortin, a blogger and podcaster from “The Good Atheist.” Fortin,from Montreal, is a self-admitted cussing machine and atheist. His discussion, entitled “Holy S$%&, I’m An Ape” turned out to have a somewhat personal focus. He recounted dealing with the thought of his own mortality after a recent 30th birthday. “Belief can be comforting,” he said, but he touted his belief in “intellectual integrity”, the belief that people can make intelligent decisions about morality regardless of belief in God.

He explained that science witnesses evolution daily, providing an example of multiple experiments involving short-lived fruit flies. He recounted statistics, like the almost infinite combinations of the human genome. He explained various psychological experiments which have shown that humans and animals, specifically pigeons, recognize patterns between their actions and rewards in the real world that actually have no correlation. In both examples, the experimenters left the reward to random chance, with the human study being decided by whether or not a fish crossed his bowl.

On the more tolerant side, he outlined three reasons why evolution can be hard to accept: it has no direct meaning to current life, gives humans no direction, and fosters “scientific materialism,” the belief that everything in the universe is explainable. He said that some of his best friends were Christians, and that he doesn’t completely shut the idea of a deity out, it would just take some concrete evidence. He also talked about how the ability for theists to attempt to concurrently believe in evolution. He noted Ken Miller, a Catholic who has argued against intelligent design.

He explained the concept of “God in the gaps,” the belief many religious people fall back on. Essentially, “God in the gaps,” says that while science has proven what it has, a deity is responsible for what has not been explained.

Fortin’s story was that he was not raised religious, but has a certain amount of understanding into the appeal. “Religion creates a sense of unity,” he said “but also a sense of otherness when applied to other religions.”  He added that traditions are a core element of religious doctrine.

The audience was engaged and followed along with him asking questions. Some of the members recounted stories of their progression from religious to atheist. One man even recalled that it was a number of years before he finally could let go of his beliefs. Ultimately, the lecture proved that  it’s clear that there’s a wealth of opinions everywhere – and UNCG is no exception to that.