Basketball is my religion

Want to make a Kentucky Atheist angry? Show up at my door to proselytize during March Madness. WWJD? Not do that.

Remembering Butterfly McQueen

Not many people know that Atheists / Secular Humanists played essential roles in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. This article in USA Today reviews efforts to recognize the contributions of these Atheist civil rights workers, as well as efforts to focus attention on black Atheists in the USA over the years. Many recent efforts have been in conjunction with Black History Month (February), but efforts are ongoing. For instance, Norm R. Allen Jr. of the Institute for Science and Human Values, a humanist organization based in Tampa, Fla. has promoted recognition for African-American nonbelievers since he founded the group African Americans for Humanism in 1989.

But there's a name I'm not seeing in all these efforts, and it needs to be there. And that name is Butterfly McQueen.

Butterfly McQueen was "Prissy" in Gone With the Wind. That's all most people know about her, and goodness knows we've all imitated her famous line, "I don't know nuthin' 'bout birthin' no
babies."

But there's soooo much more you should know about her.

I got an inkling that there was a lot more to this person than I had imagined when a friend of mine back in my home town, obsessed with Gone with the Wind, found addresses for various people who were in the movie and still alive, including for Butterfly McQueen. She wrote all
of them. Butterfly McQueen wrote back a terrific, full-page, hand-written letter that was so full of enthusiasm and charm and a geniune warmth and kindness. My friend had it framed. We gawked over it on more than one occasion.

I cobbled together information about her from various Internet searches a few years back, and I was shocked at what I discovered the more I read about her:

After playing maids in the movies, on TV and the stage over many years, McQueen took a break from acting and worked a succession of jobs, including as a taxi dispatcher, a saleslady at Macy's, and a seamstress at Sak's. She told The Guardian during a visit to Great Britain in 1989: "Any honest job I have taken." She returned to acting occasionally; I remember her from an "ABC Weekend Special", a really charming story called The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody that I adored. She also had a tiny role in Mosquito Coast with Harrison Ford.

But she was also a continual student, taking classes at five universities and even reading Gone with the Wind in Spanish. In 1975, at the age of 64, she received a bachelor's degree in political science from New York City College.

And in 1989, she received the first ever "Freethought Heroine" award from the Freedom from Religion Foundation at its national convention in Atlanta, coincidentally held during the 50th anniversary of Gone With the Wind. McQueen had been a member of the Foundation since 1981. After brief remarks and a poetry recitation before that audience at the convention, she sang Paper Moon, accompanied by piano. I now can't hear that song without thinking of her and imaging her child-like voice singing that song. If I had a time machine, it would be one of the moments I would like to go back and witness for myself.

She told Gayle White, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution (Oct. 8, 1989): "As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion."

McQueen was raised a Christian, but questioned the value of organized religion even as a child - something I can most definitely identify with. She related one eye-opening experience with clergy as a youngster, when she was riding a train to New York and offered to share her lunch with two young preachers. Instead of taking "one sandwich and one piece of cake, they took the whole thing."

She also said Christianity and studying the bible has "sapped our minds so we don't know anything else."

She said she tithed not to religion but to friends and neighbors. This included "adopting" a public elementary school in her beloved neighborhood of Harlem, where she patrolled the playground, picked up litter and looked after the children. "They say the streets are going to be beautiful in heaven. I'm trying to make the streets beautiful here. At least, in Georgia and in New York, I live on beautiful streets."

"If we had put the energy on earth and on people that we put on mythology and on Jesus Christ, we wouldn't have any hunger or homelessness."

Sadly, she died of injuries suffered in a kerosene-heater accident at her Augusta, Georgia home on Dec. 22, 1995. And it surprised many people when it was revealed that she remembered the Freedom From Religion Foundation in her will.

Her life is fascinating, full of dignity, grace, compassion, a love of learning and a passion for critical thinking. If Black Atheists are going to be recognized, then let's make sure Butterfly McQueen is there as well.

Picking & choosing morals?

A Tweet I read today:

GodlessAtheist

Pope says atheists pick & choose their morals. Today I will be frowning on child abuse & not having a problem with homosexuality #atheism

And I laughed and laughed...

Even the Dali Lama says we can be good without God.

Where do my morals come from? From my own thoughts, which are much better expressed by Carl Sagan than me, such as in the text that goes along with this magnificent video.

In case you don't want to, or cannot, listen to the video, here is an except of the text read with the video:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

The Atheist at the Funeral

Most humans need rituals. I do. Weddings, funerals, baby showers, graduations - these are highly symbolic events that give us a very public outlet for emotions, something most humans very much need. I appreciate that outlet, as do most Atheists.

I recently attended my beloved grandfather's funeral, and while I didn't at all mind that it was officiated by three Christian ministers - he was a religious man, from a religious family, it was entirely appropriate - I did mind his minister opening his remarks with, "We are gathered here today, as people of faith, to..." I sighed and stared at the flowers.

If someone says something to me one-on-one, or in a small group, that implies I'm a Christian, I will correct them. It makes people uncomfortable, no matter how hard I try to be nice about it, but I have to do it - I have to be honest. To not say anything is dishonest.

But in that moment at my grandfather's funeral, there was nothing to do but sit quietly and have my own private, internal tribute to my grandfather for a while, until words were said that made me feel welcomed to be there.

It's not the first time this has happened: I attended a Catholic wedding where the Priest said repeatedly, "We are gathered here as Christians to..." and "Now, let us bow our heads, as Christians, and pray for..." He not only made the Atheists know, in no uncertain terms, that they weren't supposed to be there, he also made sure the two Jewish couples in our row would also feel profoundly unwelcomed.

I have no problem with religiously-lead ceremonies, but I do have a problem when religious leaders assume everyone at a ceremony is a person of faith - and even the same religion. The idea that Atheists have compassion or want to show public support for people they love is beyond their understanding. I don't know how to change that - but it most certainly needs to change.

Greetings

The word holiday came from a mispronunciation of the word holy day (or, as it was spelled in Old English, hāligdæg).

So it confuses me when Christians get upset at being wished Happy Holidays (or Happy Holy Days) instead of Merry Christmas. How in the world is saying Happy Holidays secularizing Christmas?!? What part of holy don't they get?

I'm an Atheist, yet I'm not offended when someone wishes me Happy Holidays, even though the days aren't at all holy to me. I'm not offended when someone wishes me Merry Christmas either. Or salam walaikum, for that matter (it means peace be with you or peace be upon you, in case you didn't know). Heck, I don't even get upset when someone says, Bless you. I take any of these greetings as good will gestures - people wishing me happiness. And the world needs more good will, no question.

What do I say? I'll say just about anything to wish someone a happy day:

• Happy Eid
• Happy Hanukkah
• Happy New Year (Lunar, Persian or Gregorian calendar)
• Merry Christmas
  
• Joyous Yule
• Happy Festivus

I just want you to have a happy day, with or without a belief in an invisible friend. I hope you will wish the same for me.

And in case you are wondering: yes, we'll be having turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, and cream of tomato soup on Thursday. Turns out it all tastes just as good without God. We'll be thankful to the farmers, supermarket workers, truckers and other food producers and shippers that made our meal possible. We'll be counting up the good things that have happened, through our own hard work, through the help of others, and through chance. And drinking heavily. We might even take some time to think about scientists, inventors, engineers, researchers, activists and others who have helped our world and our lives. And, yes, we'll still call it Thanksgiving - we'll just be thankful to humans rather than an invisible friend.