COME OUT AND FIGHT LIKE A MAN

God? Loud Denials and a Few Shrugs (ERIN CHAN, August 10, 2003, NY Times)

SITTING in on a social meeting of the New York City Atheists can be like walking through Times Square for the very first time.

A flurry of philosophical ideas assaults your senses. Arguments and theories dart into your cerebrum, voices swirl through the inner ear. When it's over, you need to blink hard, breathe deep and tell yourself to go to bed. You'll relive it later.

Two things, though, become clear about this fusion of unbelievers: they may not need God, but they need each other. And they need each other to disagree. [...]

On a recent Tuesday at a corner table at the back of Mustang Harry's, 352 Seventh Avenue in the garment district, 4 women and 14 men gathered.

Under a framed excerpt from Joyce's "Ulysses" (which bore three references to God), Kevin Jones, a computer systems analyst from Long Island who looked more like an ex-football player, had drifted into a debate with Kirsten Sorteberg and Jack Schweitzer, a feisty retired couple from the Upper West Side who looked more like they had tumbled in from a New Hampshire farm. Ms. Sorteberg wore a red, white and blue patchwork skirt and a T-shirt reading "Democracy Not Theocracy."

"I'm sure I don't believe in God," Mr. Jones said. "I'm not sure I like the term 'atheists.' "

"We could battle over this," Ms. Sorteberg replied.

"It gives into the fact that it's natural to believe in God."

"That's deep. That doesn't make sense to me."

"I like my term."

"What's that?"

"Healthy."

Ms. Sorteberg shrugged.

The disagreement is the point of the exercise, isn't it? Sort of the way the smallest guy in the bar always seems to want to fight the biggest. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 13, 2003 9:12 PM