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You know, this is all going to go much better when Aunty Flow’s been and gone. Look up the symptoms of perimenopause if you really want a gruesome description of how I’m feeling just now. But we’re making progress despite the unrelenting uterus.

I’ve collapsed a couple of chapters together, and have inklings of a few to add. Not that I’ve really had time to think about it – mostly, it’s just whacking out as many words as quickly as possible without too much thought as to what the next bit might look like. I’m afraid it shows in the manuscript, but that’s why we have revision.

Here’s the end to Chapter Four, What to Expect if You Bring Up God:

HOW TO SURVIVE THE SCRUM

So how can you do it? How can you get into a contentious argument about religion with atheists, and survive?

Believe it or not, it is possible. You’re probably not going to win, but you can walk away with our respect.

Let me give you a quick list of survival tips:

1. Be honest about your faith. We have a lot more respect for those who can freely admit that they believe in God for their own reasons. Maybe it’s because you can’t imagine a life without God, or because of a personal experience that seemed like revelation to you. Maybe the Bible has special meaning for you. Maybe you need the promise of Heaven to get you through the day. Maybe you think the idea of God makes so much rational sense that He must exist. It’s quite all right to say so, even if you think we’d be more impressed with a theological argument worth of Aquinas. The truth is, we won’t be, and we’ll see through the attempt. Just tell us honestly why you believe.

2. Answer the question asked. We atheists are just a little tired of having to ask the same question a thousand times because the believer we’re speaking to keeps giving answers that don’t answer anything at all. If we ask you, for instance, if you agree with every single one of the Ten Commandments, and you answer by talking about how wonderful the Sermon on the Mount is, you’ll completely lose our respect. Our respect rises in direct proportion to the relevance and honesty of the answer.

3. If you don’t know the answer, just admit it. It really is okay if you can’t answer a question because you don’t know enough. Rather than trying to bluster, just explain that you don’t have the answer. Atheists are used to not having all the answers, so we appreciate a sincere, “I don’t know” much more than a smokescreen.

4. Give as good as you get. Whining gets you nowhere with atheists. Robust debate and a sense of humor, on the other hand, gain respect even if we don’t agree with you.

5. When all else fails, shake the dust. You’re going to be talking about God to a lot of people who don’t believe in God and never will. Jesus once said, “Shake the dust from your sandals and move on.” It’s great advice. There’s plenty of other stuff to talk about, and you’ve done all you could to get us pigheaded atheists to come around to your views, so it’s okay to move on.

Talking about God with a bunch of atheists can be a bruising experience, but I’ve also seen plenty of conversations between atheists and Christians where the discussion has been a benefit to all. Religious fanaticism threatens us all. It’s good for us to find strength in each other so that everyone’s freedom of religion (or lack thereof) is preserved.

Believe it or not, there’s a lot of believers in atheist forums who are well-loved and well-respected. They take their hits just like everybody else, but they dish out as good as they get, and they’re great friends to have. We don’t agree on everything. We don’t have to. We just have to hold the best conversation we can.

And that’s about where we stand. I’ll have the actual Bible verse quoted when I go through the revision. There’s a lot of niggling detail that’ll get bunged in later, when I have the luxury of chasing it down.

I didn’t put in goal-post moving and all of the other things that piss us off beyond belief because those admonitions are going to be in the Rules at the end. In this section, I just want a few simple, positively-stated bits o’ advice to keep innocent religious sorts from making absolute asses of themselves.

As always, suggestions, commentary, and disagreements welcome in comments. I’ve been getting excellent use out of what you’ve all said so far. Don’t stop.

9309

This book is a skeleton. It’s just a framework upon which flesh shall later be draped, because as I’m writing it, I’m realizing all sorts of things that I need to look up and quote and get exactly right. So to any of you who are going to be suffering through reading this first draft: keep in mind that what you’re looking at is a rickety scaffolding upon which something lasting will be built.

I’m one of those weird writers who tends to write too little rather than too much in most first drafts, it seems.

I came across a fantastic little tidbit tonight, so I’ll share this section from “What to Expect if You Bring Up God,” bare bones as it is:

WE KNOW ALL THE EMBARRASSING BITS OF THE BIBLE

It’s not uncommon for atheists to know more about the Bible than Christians do. In fact, a Kelton Research survey of 1,000 Americans commissioned by the Ten Commandments Commission in 2007 discovered that the ingredients of a Big Mac are better known than the Ten Commandments: 80% of respondents knew that a Big Mac includes two all-beef patties, but less than 60% of them knew the Ten Commandments include the command, “Thou shalt not kill.”

Most atheists could not only get that one right, but if you bring up the Ten Commandments, be prepared for the question, “Which ones?” Most Christians don’t realize there are actually two sets of Ten Commandments in the Old Testament, and those sets don’t mesh.

We know all sorts of pesky details. And if someone starts claiming the moral supremacy of religion and the infallibility of the Bible, we’re more than happy to trot them out, chapter and verse.

Some of us can even give Biblical scholars a run for their money when it comes to describing the minutae of erroneous translations, ambiguous passages, obvious copying errors, and all of those books that didn’t make it in to the Book.

Why do we know the Bible in such detail if we’re atheists? Simple. We have to know our adversary. When so many fundamentalists and even moderate Christians are attempting to use their faith to dictate morality, conduct, and the course of our destiny, we have no choice but to study the scripture used to justify those things.

If you want to get into a conversation about the Bible with an atheist, just be prepared to learn things about it you may never have wanted to know. After all, it was during a Bible study course that Julia Sweeney lost her faith.

The link is here. I love that fact: more people know the Big Mac better than the Ten Commandments. Quick! Let’s base all of our jurisprudence on the ingredients of a fast food sandwich!

For the record, I’m one of those who doesn’t know all ten. But I know more off the top of my head than Lynn Westmoreland:

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, his ass, etc.

Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.

Thou shalt not bear false witness.

And that’s where I get fuzzy. I suppose I’ll have both sets memorized by the time this book is finished and available to the general public. Wouldn’t do for some snarky religious bugger to be able to recite seven or eight to my six, eh?

In case you wanted to brush up, here’s both sets.

8060.

One of those nights when the words wouldn’t flow, alas. But progress none the less.

I came up with an interesting exercise:

If you and I sat down and made lists of things that are important to us, there would be a lot of duplicate items. Why don’t we try an exercise? Take a pen and paper right now, and list out ten things that are important to you. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

Ready? Here’s mine, in no particular order of importance:

1. Family
2. Friends
3. My community
4. My country and the world
5. The environment
6. Financial security
7. Literacy and education
8. Science
9. Constitutional issues
10. Writing

How many things do we have in common? Probably quite a few. If we got into specifics, we’d probably notice quite a few differences in the details, some of them superficial, some of them more serious. But there’s enough there to work with, isn’t there?

This is just a little warm-up, to show you that we really do have enough interests in common to talk about. Most of us share common concerns. We want clean water to drink and clean air to breathe. We want kids to be healthy, and we want our communities to be vibrant. We want to make sure our economy’s strong so that we all have a chance to work and support ourselves and our families. We want a better world.

Together, we can find ways to make that happen. Even when we disagree.

It’s kind of sad to think we might be reduced to making lists and checking them twice in order to find things to talk about, but hey. Considering that some religious folk seem to think we have nothing at all we agree on, at least it would be one way of demonstrating otherwise.

As I’m writing this, I’m conscious of the fact that there are some religious folk buried so deep in the dogma that there’s no possible way we could hold a useful discussion, so I’m trying to aim this book away from them and at those who either want to talk to us, but aren’t quite sure how, or those who never really considered we’d have anything to talk about but are willing to be surprised.

For those of you who might be afraid I’m getting too toothless here, I do get more confrontational later in the chapter. That’s where I explain in no uncertain terms what the world would be like if atheists had never existed. Some folks might be a mite surprised.

It seems to me important to get across one metatheme in this book: Atheists are here to stay, and the world needs us like it or not, so you might as well learn how to get along with us.

Striking the right balance between friendly and firm has proven a bit difficult. We’ll see how it turns out.

Your comments on this project thus far have been invaluable. I haven’t incorporated your ideas and suggestions just yet, simply because NaNo demands looking forward rather than back, but most of what you guys said yesterday is going to end up tweaking the book considerably in revision. We’ll hold a few discussions on specific points later. Right now, I just want to say thank you a thousand times THANK YOU, everybody drinks on the house (how I wish I could actually give you guys real live free drinks!), and keep the commentary coming. I don’t care if you don’t think you have something useful to add: I want to hear your thoughts. No, I NEED to hear your thoughts.

This book is for all of us. Without you, it’s not going to be a very useful book at all. So: thoughts, links, quibbles, anything you want to toss at me, bring it on.

Muchos gracias, mis amigos. Salud!

Whelp. We have ourselves an Introduction and part of Chapter One. Not too bad so far, I don’t think. I’m writing this in something of a conversational tone, directly to the Christian reader, which is tougher than it sounds because my Inner Editor keeps sniggering, “You know it’s actually atheists reading this.”

What-the-fuck-ever.

A huge part of NaNo always involves bludgeoning the Inner Editor into unconsciousness so you can get on with the business of writing the bloody book.

As promised, an excerpt: