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Monthly
Meetings
SASH
currently meets at 2PM on the 3rd Saturday of each month at the Samuels Public Library,
330 East Criser Road, Front Royal, Virginia 22630 except as noted.
SASH will hold its September meeting on Saturday the 25th at 2pm.
Subject: DVD- The God Who Wasn't There. Former fundamentalist Brian Fleming examines believers and the origins of their beliefs with help from Robert Price, Richard Carrier and Sam Harris.
"I know that I derive the same kind of spiritual fulfillment from what I do, being a planetary scientist, seeing our the exploration of the solar system come to fruition. I get such a spiritual high from it that I don't even see the need for religion. People gravitate to religion to feel a connection to the underlying meaning of everything. Well as a scientist your always looking for the underlying meaning, and that to me is such a spiritual life. I wish people would open themselves up to that wonder."
A message from our coordinator.
Statement of Principles from Free Inquiry.
Notable Quotes for Humanists...
Kenneth Phifer — UU minister:
Humanism teaches us that it is immoral to wait for God to act for us. We must act to halt the wars and the crimes and the brutality of this and future ages. We have powers of a remarkable kind. We have a high degree of freedom in choosing what we will do. Humanism tells us that whatever our philosophy of the universe may be, ultimately the responsibility for the kind of world we live in is up to us.
From the preface to Satin Verses, by R. Leland Waldrip:
Religonists can believe whatever they wish. For me, rational answers are preferable to mystic ones on many levels. I believe history shows that progress in developing models of the universe that accurately explain and predict events only comes from rational minds, while impediments to that progress invariably come in support of mystic activities of what might otherwise be rational minds.
No credible evidence exists that a god actively interferes in the day-to-day executions of universal order, as approximately expressed by the known laws of physics, despite the gargantuan amount of wishful thinking to the contrary. The evidence is overwhelming that a proactive God exists, but only in the mind of man. (“If God did not exist, man would have to invent Him.” I believe man did that, to explain the existence of the world, just as he invented morality as a cultural device to allow societies to survive the anomalies of individual behavior.) Each of us was born atheist and remained with that position until local member(s) of society influenced us to become theist. They did that through cultural immersion and some extraordinary claims that, due to youth and inexperience, most of us were not equipped to evaluate. But to be valid, extraordinary claims must be backed by extraordinary proof, and extraordinary proof has never been given. Secular law protects non-adults from making contracts. Intellectual integrity would be better served if this age restriction applied to religion as well. Secular culture is well equipped to instill necessary morals—no belief in a supernatural is required. When I began to think for myself I eventually recognized the difference between faith in ignorance and faith in reasoned knowledge—and the power differential under which I had been proselytized. Consequently, I reverted to my former state of atheism. Should God’s existence ever become a more rationally plausible explanation of the universe than scientifically established explanations, undoubtedly I would revert to theism. My mind is open and intellectual integrity would compel me to do so.
More Quotes
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