The Boston Marathon Bombing service, how would you feel if you'd been excluded because of your belief system?

I wouldn’t worry too much.

What real good does a prayer vigil do?

Alternately, how much good will come from the (as of 4.43 PM 4/18/13) $28,321 currently set to be distributed to families directly influenced by the bombing by those who have donated to Atheists Giving Aid?

Donate HERE

All discrimination is wrong, and that’s horrible. I would likely throw a hissy fit.

The thing is, non believers like me (and you?) really have no belief “system”

They have a drawn a conclusion and that is that.

There is no ritual, no indoctrination, no ceremony, no hierarchy, no institution-nothing.

So I figure the invitation was for people who want to ritualize and reinforce their belief “system” with gatherings and ceremonies.

People like me would not have much to say except bombing innocents is morally questionable, my sympathies to the victims and their families, and I hope they catch the perp.

I don’t think something that perfunctory is what the organizers had in mind.

See? Just another example of Christians being oppressed!

@josie Secular humanism is a belief system. It’s a secular philosophy. You’re right about the ritualization aspect though.

Being agnostic, i’d have probably been undecided whether to attend or not anyway.

* thwacks @ucme *

@Seek_Kolinahr
You should not do that. It only arouses him.

@Seek_Kolinahr Whaddidido¿

It was a ”...a community gathering…” not a church gathering. They were wrong to exclude anyone.
And what real good it does, @Seek_Kolinahr, is emotional. People often feel better afterward.

@gorillapaws
Sorry. But you can’t use the same words “Belief System” to compare secular humanism which is totally non-mystical (is that a word?) to something that it is indeed in stark contrast to, which is the worship of, appeal to, fear of etc the God of Abraham, which is totally mystical. There is little or no comparison, only contrast.

Anyway. I don’t want to get into it.

I guess I just should have said that I am not put out for not having been invited.

@Dutchess_III That’s fine. The public gets to feel consoled. Awesome. They speak to their collective invisible friends and move on with their lives. Problem solved.

Y’know, except for the 200 people who have medical bills to worry about, and funerals to plan.

Obama did good though, raised their spirits somewhat.

It’s about the intermingling with others, @Seek_Kolinahr. For many it doesn’t have anything to do with God. It has to do with emotional release and emotional support from other humans. If they don’t feel that it means anything to them, they don’t go. They do the same thing at funerals.

Gatherings and physical / financial help are not mutually exclusive. Refusing to go to a gathering isn’t going to help anyone plan a funeral or pay the bills.

I think it’s wrong to make a big deal about it.

@Dutchess_III The question was whether I, as an atheist, felt discriminated against.

The simple fact is, yes, we were discriminated against. However, I choose to look at it practically. The vigil ultimately accomplished very little, other than making some religious and political bigwigs feel good about themselves, and get some nice publicity photos. It cost more to put on than any of those people will donate to the cause.

However, the atheist community is banding together online and contributing in their own way to actually bring aid to the victims. I am much more proud to be a member of a community that is promoting giving than I am upset that we were not invited to the backpatting party.

Are you suggesting that that religious people aren’t doing the same @Seek_Kolinahr?

Also, regarding the people who DO feel better emotionally after a gathering—you are being extremely insensitive.

The organisers of the London marathon have promised to donate £2 for every runner that crosses the finish line on Sunday to the Boston fund, should be around £100,000…poignant & entirely correct.

@Dutchess_III I am suggesting nothing. Once again, you’re doing that “judging with insufficient evidence” thing you’re so fond of. If I intended to say that theists are not donating, I would have said something like, “Theists aren’t donating.”

It’s kind of hilarious that you are insinuating that I am being insensitive, when the entire purpose of this question was to see whether I was insulted because my entire subgroup of humanity was excluded by your subgroup of humanity, for no apparent reason. Because I choose to focus on the positive work being done by my subgroup regardless of the fact that your subgroup excluded us from your subgroup’s party, I’m insensitive. Ha. Fucking. Ha.

LOL! And which subgroup am I a part of, @Seek_Kolinahr?

Plenty of evidence for that. Theist. as opposed to my subgroup: atheist.

You’re making assumptions about my beliefs. You’re wrong in your assumptions, but it’s OK.

If you are an atheist, that is news to me. Good news, but news. And if I assumed incorrectly based on our past interactions, I apologise.

This was an interfaith service held at a the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. If you don’t have faith why would you want to offer a prayer at a service in a Catholic Church?

I’m misunderstanding how atheists would feel discrimination inside of a church.

Wouldn’t atheists be better off having their own community gathering type event not inside of a church during a prayer service?

@SpatzieLover
That is pretty much what I was trying to say. Better.

I’m not very bothered by it, but it would have been nice to let the humanists have a chance to speak I guess. Do they have a specific belief about death? As an atheist I don’t really associate myself with a group like humanists, or any other atheist group. It is a little odd to me for athiests to be part of a “group.” But, being a Jewish person I have a different situation than other athesist since I do have an association with a religion.

@SpatzieLover But, if the community ceremony happens to be in a church, it doesn’t mean athiests should be excluded. If the location was a secular place, still clergy from many faiths would be allowed to speak I am sure.

@SpatzieLover Well… if it’s called an “Interfaith Service”, what is that but a name? What kept the organizers from creating a gathering for everyone, regardless of faith or lack thereof? That would have been a generous and caring thing to do. Non-theists can certainly speak and listen to words of comfort without personally offering them to a god. And it doesn’t mean that they can’t sit civilly through the prayers of others.

The way that the thing was organized was discriminatory. Personally, I don’t or would not have felt strongly about it. But I don’t like to see people assume that, as an atheist, my presence at such a gathering would be offensive, or somehow dilute the integrity of the event. Do theists really think that there are never atheists in their churches? Hmm.

It actually is the reverse of all Jesus teachings to exclude atheists.

We have non-denomination churches here at the colleges and all kinds attend, and it’s not a big deal, and I’m in the Bible Belt so you’d think we’d be more narrow-minded about it than Boston. Seems very odd to me.

It’s OK, Seek. That’s what we humans do.

I still think it was a very “unChristian” thing for them to do. It was just hypocritical.

I am an atheist.

I wouldn’t feel snubbed and/or excluded for a couple of reasons. One, I hate going to shit like and two, the outcome of the gathering had no effect on my life whatsoever. In fact a very wise man once said . . .

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

With that said, it was their party and they can invite whomever they wish.

As a Baha’i, I wish the Boston Baha’i Community was invited to participate.

Since invitations can’t possibly be made to every local denomination, I think they should have made a reasonable effort to include all the groups who made a request to participate.

I’m probably closest to @Cupcake and @glacial‘s views.

It seems like the event was used (whether intentionally or not) to omit some people who were interested in what was promoted as a “community” event.

Oddly this is my first online comment about the Boston incident.

@josie I think you’re conflating belief and faith. For example a scientist can have an evidence-based belief that the dinosaurs were wiped out by the Chicxulub asteroid. Faith, on the other hand, is a belief without any evidence.

@Seek_Kolinahr I agree, that giving those in need financial aid does more good for the victims that staging what is largely a political photo-op. The BostonAtheists group has been promoting such giving through their newsletter and email. Greg Epstein’s CNN Blog covers some of these efforts.

But coming together as a community does help us humans pull together and survive. It’s not a time for deliberate divisiveness.

@KNOWITALL Thank you.

@josie I’m an atheist, but I definitely have a belief system. I believe in going where the evidence takes me. I wouldn’t pay any attention to the findings of science if I did not believe that the scientific method is the most accurate tool we currently have for understanding the Universe. The fact I don’t accept some system of belief handed down from prehistoric desert nomads is no indication I am without beliefs. I see no reason why beliefs based on something are inferior to beliefs based on nothing.

@Dutchess_III Exactly. Thanks.

@SpatzieLover It was the one and only big community gathering. The President of the United States was there, the Governor was there, the Mayor was there… So we, as 20% of the population of this city, should have rented a Union hall somewhere and held our own separate get together as a way to feel we’re part of the community trying to heal? Sorry, but that just doesn’t work. In a nation with separation of church and state, the error was in labeling it an Interfaith activity at all.

@glacial Thanks.

@KNOWITALL How right you are.

@Blondesjon No, sorry but it was the taxpayer’s party and we atheists don’t get even a dime of tax relief for having no religious affiliation.

@Cupcake Agreed on both points.

@ninjacolin Thanks. And I can sympathize with the reluctance to get into it. The carnage in West, Texas was far worse, but it’s not garnering the headlines like the Boston Marathon Bombing. There are lots of reasons, but none of them very fair. My heart is broken for those in West whose lives were shattered by the explosion there.

Is Bill Ayers an Atheist? I don’t think he was invited.

I wouldn’t have been put off by being shut out.

@woodcutter What the hell does Bill Ayers have to do with Boston? Did he submit a request to speak and get rejected? If he did, what Boston constituency totaling 20% of the city’s population does he represent?

I could understand the unintentional omission of groups, but if a group specifically requested to be included, I think that’s pretty crass and I can understand why you feel as you do about it.

@ETpro Sorry, but the way I read your question ,was to put myself in a position of being excluded from the service. And I don’t live near Boston either. Going on an assumption both Mr Ayers and myself are in that 19.6% I put us in the same camp.

except I never have been party to bombing people

get what i mean?

@Buttonstc Thank you.

@woodcutter The OP said, “Greg M. Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University and numerous other members of the secular humanists societies of Boston were refused a place at the podium.” It mentioned that about 20% of this community claims no religious affiliation; and that all such community members were snubbed.

Well sometimes being snubbed isn’t such a bad thing. I look at it as their loss.

@woodcutter Good way to look at it. :-)

@ETpro . . . Why should we get tax relief? We’re not a religion.

@Blondesjon I did not say we should. I said that we shouldn’t have to pay our taxes to fund religious services we are excluded from.

@ETpro . . . I agree that we shouldn’t have to pay taxes to fund religious anything.

Where I disagree is when we get to the whole exclusion thing. I don’t feel excluded because me beliefs are simply things I believe. They don’t make me special or part of any group.

I think the event organizers made a huge mistake. Of course nonbelievers should be invited to speak as well. Mourning is something shared by all human beings.

I’m an atheist and by default excluded from what happens in this catholic town. That exclusion make me want to become more involved and in no way makes me want to blow up crowds of innocent people.

It take religion to make a person do the unthinkable.

@Ron_C Are you saying only religious people do criminal acts of mass murder? Do you have some sort of statistics to back that up?

Wasn’t Hitler an atheist?

@JLeslie a survey of mass murder and the religious affiliation of the perpetrators…. that would be interesting and I’ll have to look it up. I think samples of atheist blowing up stuff would be difficult to find in recent history.

Look at the pride Israelites take in genocide acts in the bible, the murder of both sides in the Palestinian/Israelis boarder wars, the Branch Dravidian massacre, Muslin suicide bombers throughout the world, and the forced recruitment of child soldiers fighting for a guy that claims to be another messiah.

Even the “leader in Northern Korea” claims to have divine origins. The closest atheist massacre I can find is the 3 million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Mass atrocities have always been the purview of the of the extremely religious.

@Dutchess_III There is controversy over this, but most maintain he was a Christian, I think his mother was Catholic, and ai think he was a member of the Catholic church. Although, he had some problems with the church, disagreements. In some of his famous public speeches he affirms his Christianity. No matter what he was killing Jews, so what he did was religious, hatred of a religious group, so it doesn’t even matter if he was an atheist, he still killed in the name of religion of sorts. He killed many Catholics for that matter, those who helped the Jews. Back then I guess Jews were scene more as a race, but I don’t think we can get away from it being a religion as well.

@Ron_C In North Korea I assume he is replacing God, like most communist leaders. They call for atheism among their citizens so they will be worshipped themselves. It’s interesting how so many people need to follow.

@Dutchess_III See under Public Statements, Hitler definitely could sound like a warrior of God and Jesus at times.

Hitler was a Catholic Choirboy. He went all over Germany whipping up Catholic hatred of Jews because they killed Christ. We he a try believer or an opportunist? Who can know without getting inside his now dead head. But he certainly never expressed atheism.

@ETpro it’s a valid question. Would it matter? Let’s say Osama bin Laden is a nonreligious atheist, he still used religion to further his cause.

@Ron_C – The Khmer Rouge did not kill in the name of atheism. Stalin didn’t kill in the name of atheism. Hitler didn’t kill in the name of atheism or in the name of a religion. The IRA didn’t kill in the name of Catholicism. The Kurds don’t kill in the name of Islam. There are other ideologies or causes that can be the reason for the killings.

I thought Hitler killed the Jews because “they” killed Christ. That would be a religious motive.

No, the Jews were killed in the name of his Nazi ideology. But Hitler needed collaborators, so he appealed to anti-Semitic Christians and told them they had a good reason.

@mattbrowne religions and despots all need an outsider “devil”. Khmer Rouge used intellectuals as the outsider devil; it got so bad that they started to murder people that wore glasses. The Nazi Party was run like a religion with grand displays, symbols, and an outside force that had to be conquered (International Jewry). Stalin made “Communism” a state religion, again with pageantry and parades, and outside devils, this time represented by Nazis and capitalists.

The IRA was certainly a religious organization even if the mainstream Catholic church rejected them. I know that it was “religious shorthand” because their actual enemies were the English and the Northern Ireland landowners. They were conveniently protestant.

There are many forms of religion. Regardless of form, religion’s main purpose is to organize people so that they can be controlled, either by the church heirarchy, or by their ordained leaders who are “blessed” by the whichever church or zealot group is aligned with the government.

@mattbrowne Hitler used the long-standing hatred of Jews that both Catholic and protestant Germans felt to further his cause. But he grew up steeped in that longstanding hatred. In desperate times, he let that hatred guide his ideology. So I would argue he most certainly did kill in the name of Christ. It’s repeated again and again in his speeches. Nazi symbolism and worshipful rallies also set the high mark for state religion replacing God-centric religions. The communists turned to state religions. The IRA wasn’t inspired to kill by religion, but the subsequent murders, bombings, lynchings and such between Irish Catholics and Protestants are most definitely religiously motivated.

What you are saying is true. Keep in mind that anti-Semitism at the time was a widespread phenomenon. It existed in the UK and the US and in numerous other countries. Today there is still widespread anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe and of course in many Muslim countries.

@mattbrowne Your note about antisemitism in those times it absolutely correct. I’m afraid the sentiment is experiencing a renaissance along with far-right ideology in general.