Freethought Association of West Michigan; History & Stories of Leaving the Fold.
Presented by Jeff Seaver, Executive Director of Center for Inquiry Michigan
About the Speaker
Jefferson Seaver is a co-founder of Center for Inquiry's (CFI) Michigan branch and has served for 13 years as the Executive Director. He is a partner in a local marketing and design firm where he has worked for the past 18 years, and he has served on the ACLU of Western Michigan board for 10 years.
Jeff was a committed, born again Christian of the fundamentalist Baptist variety for 20 years — even releasing an album as part of a Christian rock band. His deeply held religious beliefs led him to study the Bible, philosophy, apologetics, and comparative religion — which were ultimately their undoing. He reads voraciously especially about neuroscience and psychology and has never let schooling interfere with his education. Jeff resides in Allendale with Cathy (his wife of 19 years) and 2 teenage children.
About the Event
Announcements
Meeting Minutes for November 8, 2000, #80
We welcome the 1st time attendees to our meeting and hope to see you again. As a reminder: we stamp tickets to validate free parking in the Ellis lot across the street from where we meet. Also note that we decided to shoot for ending our meetings at 8:30PM, rather than 9PM as was our previous time to break. This provides more time for unstructured socialization and is a courtesy to those who travel some distance to attend. We continue to meet socially after the meeting at either the Cottage Bar or One Trick Pony, both are close by our meeting site and each other.
We welcome topic suggestions, questions, concerns and requests for a membership directory. Reach us at: http://www.freethoughtassociation.org, , or at our postal address: P.O. Box 9873, Wyoming, MI 49509-0873.
***REMINDER that there is NO SCHEDULED MEETING for November 22, due to the holiday.
Our Winter Solstice Party is tentatively scheduled for the Yen Ching Restaurant in downtown Grand Rapids on December 27. More specifics to follow.
The Halloween party at the Seavers was a success with fun had by all.
Our next meeting topic is: “Are There Objective Values? Human Hope vs. Randian Logic as an Answer to Relativism” to be moderated by Dr. Joseph Ellin, Philosophy Professor, WMU.
All meetings are held @ the Calkins Science Building of the downtown Grand Rapids Community College campus, beginning at 7PM.
Presentation
Our topic was “Freethought Association of West Michigan; History & Stories of Leaving the Fold.” Two of the original three members moderated this discussion; Jeff Seaver and Don Hansen. Charles Honey, the religion editor of the Grand Rapids Press was in attendance, along with a photographer, to do a story on our group. This will probably appear in the Press on the edition of , Saturday, November 18th.
Jeff and Don had met previously through a Humanist group and began getting together to discuss issues from a non-theistic perspective in Jeff’s back yard. This was in June of 1997. At that time there was no group in the area that was completely free of a liberally religious or spiritual component. There was one other person who attended the initial get together but only for that one time.
Slowly, by word of mouth, the as yet unnamed group, began to grow, though hovered around 6-7 people for about a year, and began meeting in Don’s condominium in Jenison. We began getting more organized and came to have a group identity, advertisements in local papers, a website and ideas for participation in activities that would get our name out better. We also joined with the Great Lakes Humanists on an e-mail discussion board and got a mailing list together.
We soon outgrew Don’s place, and began meeting at Schuler Books, continuing to meet every other Wednesday in an open area set aside for us there. After a while, this too became cramped and we relocated to the new Urban Institute for Contemporary Art building in downtown Grand Rapids. We rented our space there, and when the rent increase became prohibitive, we again moved, this time to the Wyoming Public Library. This was a pleasant place for us to meet but we were forced to look elsewhere once again, when the library was about to be renovated. Dr. Gregory Forbes, professor at Grand Valley State University and FAOWM member, was able to secure for us our current location at the science building on the downtown G.R. GVSU campus. This is rent free and a beautiful facility, providing many accouterments conducive for good gatherings. Our members in attendance varies but seems to hover at between 20-some to nearly 40, with an extensive mailing list of those who keep in contact, receive meeting minutes and heads-up on coming events of interest, etc.
Jeff got us started on personal stories of how we came to our worldview. The talks varied from those who “passed,” to exceedingly succinct offerings, to richly detailed and informative narratives. Humor was interjected at various times when, for instance, one member talked of how he had been instructed to pray with his thumbs oriented in one position, then later was told that another position was the correct way… were all those prayers said via incorrect hand clasping invalid? Another member talked of looking to New Age spirituality, when traditional religions had little to offer her. Frustration arose when she simply was unable ”...to see the auras” that the others seemed to have no problems discerning. Some of the talk of rituals, especially from the Catholic tradition, that some members were immersed in, were droll to reflect upon in hindsight.
The group seemed to fall into two main categories as we went around the room. One, having come out of a very strict religious upbringing, and the other having had very little dogmatic instruction. The former tended to be unsatisfied with the explanations given for contradictions and problems seen in the religious doctrines they were expected to accept on faith, and came to actively seek answers from other philosophies and secular sources. The latter, generally, had less knowledge initially of the minutia of religious thought and dogma, fewer questions about specific problems seen in their faith, and were just generally less affected by religion. Some went from passively non-theistic to more involved in freethought concepts, from an interest in science and/or seeing, as adults, the negative influence of religion, both historically and currently, with the efforts of the Religious Right, for instance.
A couple people mentioned how travel to other countries had influenced their loss of faith in one true religion or God. Some found great liberation in learning to think for themselves for the first time, or looking into formerly taboo texts and questioning religious authority—in essence acquiring a free mind.
In “leaving the fold,” one of the most difficult matters was feeling more isolated from the majority and sometimes friends and family. Another difficulty mentioned was no longer having the comfort of belief in an Afterlife. Mr. Honey asked us if we were all comfortable with one appellation. In response we talked about our diversity of backgrounds, education, interests and how we see ourselves in the spectrum of freethought. There is no one designation that all of us fall into neatly—and that is typically what is seen in freethinkers. This is also a difficulty, as mentioned, in forming viable groups as members tend to not be in lock-step agreement with each other, have one guiding, authoritative set of beliefs or follow others unquestioningly. For many of us this group is a place to feel free to express ourselves in ways we cannot in larger religion-saturated society.
Some of the lingering statements were ones of being honest with oneself, having an integrity and system of ethics that have nothing to do with the carrot & stick of many religious teachings, no longer being a wretch in need of salvation, out of Original Sin, but a responsible and responsive human being, independent of an omniscient tally-sheet keeper, and having the courage to live as members of a minority group that is often reviled simply for not having blind faith.
Recorder: Charles LaRue
