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| Members of the Dalhousie Atheist Community. (Bruce Bottomley Photo) |
Derek Rodgersā sense of wonder about things is palpable. The second-year biology student scrolls through his cell phone images to display photographs taken by the Hubble telescope. He enthusiastically talks about the enormity of space while pointing to the pictures of tiny lights containing galaxies upon galaxies.
āScience gives us a kind of perspective that is completely awe-inspiring,ā he says.Ā
Heās one of the founding members of the Dalhousie Atheist Community, now in its second year on campus. He helped establish the group because āthere wasnāt a group for atheists, humanists, secularistsāthose people coming under the umbrella of free thinkers.ā He wanted to provide a meeting place and a social environment for non-religious people to talk about the issues they are interested in. The community, which includes students from kinesiology, biology, Canadian studies and law, meets monthly and is hoping to have short talks by members and movie showings as part of the occasion. The group is also interested in community activism āwhere we feel the need to advocate around issues.ā
The group opted for the word āatheistā instead of āfree thinkerā because it is unambiguous. āItās difficult to organize non-believers,ā says Mr. Rodgers, āitās like herding cats. We are very different people. Our only commonality is non-belief. The closest thing to a common position is anti-dogmatism,ā although all members place a high value on āempirically verifiable scientific data.ā
He became involved in the Free Thought movement in high school.Ā A formative moment came for him when a visiting Christian speaker addressing the school community made statements about evolution that he describes as āa stack of logical fallacies.ā
āBeing a science nerd... I thought, āthere has to be a response to thisā.ā He prepared a rebuttal in which he invited like-minded students to join him in developing a Free Thought Society, apparently the first of its kind for a high school in North America.
āI call myself an atheist. I consider myself a skeptic,ā says Mr. Rodgers. āA skeptic places a high value on evidence to be convinced of something. I havenāt heard convincing reasons why I should be a theist.ā
He maintains that humanist values āemphasize the inherent moral worth of peopleā And argues that traditional monotheistic religions tend to denigrate human beings with concepts like original sin or over-emphasize the importance of humanity in the grand scheme of things.
āScience helps us to understand our place in the universe; it shatters the idea that humans are imbued with importance.ā
āReligion is not a prerequisite to being a moral personā he adds, pointing out that the search for meaning is a question taken up by non-believers and believers alike. āThe most profound questions we can ask are, āis there meaning in life?ā āWhat is our place?ā For free thinkers, the tools and methods of science are the best ways of knowingā the answers to these questions.Ā