Jesus vs Shirley MacLaine

Christians have no trouble dismissing Shirley MacLaine's hokum, but they seem completely blind to the thinness of the claims for Christianity.



Let's see how well they compare:

• Jesus (supposedly) claimed to fulfill the historic prophesy of the Hebrews.
• MacLaine's website points to the writings of known historical figures, and these people supposedly back up her claims. Unlike Jesus' prophets, MacLaine's list of luminaries includes people from various epochs, cultures, and walks of life. (Though, strangely, none of them was one of her prior selves)
• Jesus' exploits are written down in four books called "The Gospels," which were most likely written 60-100 years after his death/resurrection.
• Shirley MacLaine wrote eight books about herself (herselves?), and a few other people have written about her. She's also been interviewed dozens of times, and she wrote her own biography for her site. In fact, it's hard to shut her up. So she's much better documented than Jesus.
• The Bible gives us rules to live by, and guidance for everyday decisions. Shirley MacLaine's website includes a daily horoscope, which is much more specific and useful.
• Christianity gives its adherents a community for mutual support.
• Shirley MacLaine's community includes a forum, a chat room, and an e-mail newsletter. You don't have to dress up on Sunday morning, just log on and chat in your jammies.
• Jesus Christ rose on the third day and he lives in the souls of Christians.
• Shirley MacLaine is alive today, and judging by the number of times she's been reincarnated, is likely to be reincarnated again, though three days might be a little fast.
• Christ spent 40 days in "the wilderness."
• Shirley MacLaine went on the pilgrimmage to Santiago. It took her 30 days. A pretty long time considering she was twice the age Jesus was when he went camping.
• Christians, on the whole, are pretty nice people, because they fear going to Hell and hope to go to Heaven.
• People who believe in reincarnation tend to be pretty nice people, because they fear returning as cockroaches or meth heads, and hope to return as Shirley MacLaine.
• Jesus said (supposedly) "I am the way, the truth, and the light."
• Shirley said "I'm a Taurus."
• Jesus has inspired miraculous conversions, including Paul's conversion.
• Christians can persuade God to heal them through prayer, and really popular Christians can get prayed for in prayer circles.
• Shirley's forum has a "Healing Circle" section where people can put in requests for "healing energy."
• Christianity must be valid, because so many people believe in it.
• Shirley MacLaine's books have sold millions of copies, and her website is popular.

Well? I think Shirleyism has just as much claim as Christianity for the souls of humanity. How about you?

How much science does an atheist need to know?

Over and over I see people claiming that the antidote (or antipode?) to religion is science, or perhaps the scientific method. For some of the Big Questions that religion is supposed to answer, that is indeed true. It's sad that so many religionists refuse to accept evolution as the answer to how humans became what we are, but if history is any guide they'll come around. Eventually they decided that the Earth does indeed revolve around the Sun.

The problem for theists, and especially Christians, is that even if they can accept advances in the "hard" sciences and biology, they cling to theology for the other Big Questions. And here they assume that because science threw out parts of Genesis that it will eventually displace everything else the Bible provides.

I think this science issue is why there seem to be so few female athiests. My generation was discouraged from studying science. In my case it was so extreme that my mother refused to give me permission to take AP physics & calculus because "what do you need to learn that stuff for? you're just going to get married and have kids." I also remember receiving such lovely gifts for holidays and birthdays as a Ouija Board, ESP cards, and other nonsense.

When I read blogs and books written by atheists the subject of Science vs Belief comes up quite often. I think you could easily throw out all the sciences and reject belief on your own, though the scientific method and a little logic would help get you there.

For instance, there are many religions in the world. Can they all be true? If you believe they're all true, then you are polytheistic, but most people reject at least some of the other religions as untrue.

If you want to take the position that some religions are true but not others, you need a basis for judgment. From the comments I've seen from theists posting to blogs, the most popular basis is the ad populum. Religions are valid if enough people believe in them. A billion Muslims can't be wrong, can they? So you could draw the line at 1% of the population or more being "right." Christians would of course make an exception for Jews because they are kissing cousins of Christians. They could dismiss Scientologists, Satanists, and Neo-Pagans without regret or further justification this way.

But the Judeo-Christian commandment to "have no other god before me" has been interpreted as "have no other god." So here we say to the Jew, Christian, or Muslim, of all the religions in the world, only one can be right. How do you know that yours is right? If you can't tell for sure which is right, shouldn't the default position be to believe they're all equally wrong?

Reading Randal Rauser's blog I found out that when pushed into this corner the academic wing of Christianity has resorted to calling belief (in their own version of religion of course) "properly basic." This means it requires no justification, just explanation. The everyday Christian resorts to the feeling they get when they worship or think about God as their justification.

While I respect their feelings, their position basically validates all other religions as well, since the adherents of those religions also "feel the spirit." It's not a big leap from "I feel the spirit" to "I feel something which I interpret as a spirit." So unless you're going to validate all other spirits and all other religions, there needs to be some justification for why only one spiritual experience is valid.

Some adherents get around this by acknowledging that other spiritis exist, but calling them "devils" or some such scary opposite of the spirit they like. This isn't quite like acknowledging other gods, since these devils' greatest power would be to drag the soul away from the preferred spirit. But it still doesn't say why one spirit that appears to be warm and fuzzy is superior to other warm & fuzzy spirits.

Coincidentally, the religious right a.k.a. evangelicals, rebel against religious "diversity," don't like having someone with the middle name "Hussein" running the government, and don't want their kids going to public schools. When faced with other religions, and seeing that the adherents of those other religions aren't trying to kill them, they have to admit that their belief is just one of many and not all that special.

Hassidic Jews and some Muslims also put their heads in the sand. In Brooklyn there are religious schools for all three traditions. The children never meet each other except in passing, and are instructed to not to talk to outsiders.

Religion can't exist without either a strong indoctrination program or cultural hegemony. It's a product of the human imagination, and the original stories are equal in validity to fairy tales or fables.

See? No science. One can conclude that religion is based on comforting fairy tales and promoted through cultural means, and that therefore one's own religion and those of others are all false, without any scientific background.

If you do decide that you have burning questions about the nature of the universe, you can read up on the best current thinking, bearing in mind that new information does sometimes change the "facts" as you learn them. There are books and wiki articles that aren't hard to absorb. You might need a dictionary for some of it, but that's part of learning and growing. But it's not necessary for non-belief.

"I don't believe" is all that atheism says about a person. There is no catechism, no reading list, no authority figure, no pithy quotations, and no sacred text. Being a "free thinker" is challenging, but it's also liberating. You can remain ignorant of some things if you want to. Christianity has its default position of "The Lord works in mysterious ways" to respond to the Unknown. My default position is "there's probably a good scientific explanation for this, but I don't have time to figure it out." Knowing that I could figure it out if I applied myself and had the inclination is much more comforting than imagining some fickle supreme being has decided not to reveal it for his own reasons.

In the year of Our Lord, 2010...

Of course to be au courant in academic circles we now say "common era," to distinguish European dating from Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic and all sorts of other calendars. And anyway, "our lord" probably wasn't born in the year zero or one, if he existed at all.

Deconversion is such a gradual thing. This year's 'revelation' was that Christianity is perhaps the most selfish, amoral religion ever. It has taken me over 20 years to come to this realization.

"Salvation" from either one's own sins or Eve's (it's debatable, apparently) is "bought" with the "blood" of an innocent god-spirit-man, who knowingly or unknowingly becomes the "sacrificial" lamb to replace the sacrifices at the temple for all the Jews, and later Greeks, Ethiopians, Lebanese, and Europeans etc. who believe in him and don't fuck people of the same sex.

This is supposed to be a wonderful thing. In my reading this year (thank you, John Loftus) I found out that the term is "penal substitution." Instead of punishing the guilty person, someone else is put in that person's place. And it seems this year I've seen more evidence of evangelicals' embrace of this concept.

One of my facebook pals posted recently about how grateful she was that Jesus was all-forgiving. Being a nice person, I bit my fingers-tongue and didn't type out "unless you're a fig tree." Of course Jesus doesn't have the power to forgive, but you don't have to actually think through theology if you're enveloped in a feel-good movement that's all about YOU feeling relieved of your guilt.

This week Governor Bill Richardson decided not to pardon Billy the Kid. Apparently during Billy's lifetime a pardon was promised, then renegged on, and then Billy continued killing people. Richardson decided on the pardon on the terms he would if the Kid were still alive: based on his behavior subsequent to the original crime. My question is, why didn't he reject it on the pure ridiculousness of the request? It's not like the Kid was on Death Row! I think the answer is that we care about our reputations after our death. We want to be remembered well, and we can't guarantee that we will. We can leave all kinds of instructions for our funerals, pre-engrave our epitaphs, and publish our story in a self-serving autobiography, but when we're gone we won't be able to defend ourselves.

This is where "God" comes in. The trial takes place immediately upon death, and it's quick because there's only one matter to take up: whether we accept Jesus as Lawd, or God, or whatever. (The evangelicals have confused me on this point, I admit) Anywho, if we "ak-Tsept JEEE-zussss" into our hearts at the last possible moment, all the rest is pardoned. And that should be enough.

The Billy the Kid case reminded me of another, Karla Faye Tucker. She was still alive when her earthly fate was being decided on by none other than then-governor George W. Bush. I had just moved to Texas that year and the case really represented Texas for me. Karla Faye had converted to Christianity in prison. While reading the Bible, she was "asking God to forgive" her." She became a cause celebre when she tried to escape the Death Penalty on the basis of her conversion.

She had already something of an evangelical celebrity as her conversion and subsequent good behavior, so she had the Army of Gawd on her side. (This, of course, is quite opposite to what Christians should have wanted for her -- the best she could have hoped for was life without parole, but if she'd been executed she'd be in Heaven with Gawd). But perhaps her jailbird testimony was just too delicious for them, and they wanted her to stick around for their purposes.

The conflict for Dubya: the death penalty, which is almost sacred in Texas, vs. born-again Christianity, which he himself professed. He chose not to forgive her, and Karla Faye was executed. Her last words included the following: "I am going to be face to face with Jesus now." Yes, Jesus forgives murder.

I don't remember any debate about whether she would in fact be forgiven by God for her part in the murder of two people. It's convenient that Christians are all about the Ten Commandments when they want them posted in courthouses or recited by school children, but when one of their own has violated one, they suddenly don't care so much.

The true common element for Billy the Kid and Karla Faye Tucker is time. Christians will forgive if enough time has passed without further ill will. Billy the Kid stopped murdering people ... upon his death... and hasn't broken any laws since then. Karla Faye was a youngster and had spent many years in prison waiting for her lethal injection. After so much time has passed, m'eh they're okay.

Supposedly hell and heaven are forever decisions. God doesn't forgive, and he doesn't forget, either. His judgment isn't mitigated by time or good behavior. Either you're with him or agin'im, and that's forever.

Yet somehow the Ten Commandments only matter when we want them to. Forgiveness is not God's to give or retract, but ours. The whole judgment-in-heaven concept is a projection of our desires. It's 100% cultural, and has nothing to do with eternal spirits, burning bushes, or any of the rest of it.

What it comes down to is this: We want to be forgiven, and we also want to forgive. The Christian theology of forgiveness is a reflection of our human nature, not the cause of it. Society holds together based on whether members of the community can trust each other to behave in a way that supports the community. We have that trust at birth, and we can lose it. It can be lost forever, or it can be regained after a time-out, or some act of redemption. Folk stories from around the world reflect the very human need to keep the very human community intact.

Sometimes we can't control whether we get that trust back. If we've killed someone, they can't turn around and say "aw it's okay I know you're really a nice person." Or if someone holds a grudge we can only do so much to get back into their "good graces." So we ask the Sky Daddy to forgive us. How that happens depends on your interpretation of the Sky Daddy. Evangelicals don't have to do much at all, though they will tell you they base their morals on a fear of Hell. Episcopalians mumble contritious words at weekly services. Catholics go to confession and do some act of penance to make up for whatever they've confessed to.

My absolute #1 favorite religious tradition is the Jewish New Year tradition of self-reflection for acts done during the previous year, then doing an act of charity to erase those deeds. It's all done in one's lifetime, and within a brief time span so guilt doesn't accumulate. Lazy Jews donate money to "the building fund," but a lot donate to actual charities or give their time to the needy. Animal Sacrifice went the way of the dinosaur after the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. (oops, C.E.), and God has stopped punishing entire cities and countries for group misdeeds. This is their substitution. I think it's a great idea. When it was explained to me it was called "mitzvah" and I even like the sound of the word.

Last year I had the means and opportunity to do an act of charity that directly made up for something I regretted. It cost me a lot of time and money but when it was done it was a very "clean" feeling. My mitzvah had been accomplished and though I could never set right the original situation, I had done the next-best thing. My guilt for what couldn't be righted (don't worry, I didn't break any laws, just felt guilty) was matched by my satisfaction of making a real contribution in a parallel situation. I can start the New Year with a clear conscious, knowing that what's past is past and I've done my best.

When Christians ask me why I'm not worried about Hell, I don't go into all this detail. I simply say I'm not afraid of something that doesn't exist. They're not really interested in a "sermon" about guilt, retribution, redemption, making the most of one lifetime, paying for your own "sins," etc. but I wish they were. Atheism is liberating, but in a grow-the-fuck-up and take responsibility for yourself kind of way. That's much more frightening than Hell to them.

So Happy New Year, atheists. Let's make the best of the time we have and not worry about our 'afterlife' here or in the sky.

It's *not* a Wonderful Life!

Well, it might be or it might not be. I love the sentiment of generosity in that movie but the rest of the message, well...

Let's summarize the plot: George Bailey gets whacked upside the head, loses his hearing, and can't join the army. Fortunately, the whack didn't destroy his ambition; love did that. So instead of going to the big city to be a little fish, he stays "home" and works at the family's savings & loan, then has a few kids and fixes up This Old House.

Being a little soft-hearted (or -headed) he lets his "special" employee take cash to the big bank and the retard loses it to the mean old crippled guy. Yes, Tiny Tim has grown up to be a selfish, mean-spirited MoneyBags who wants nothing less than to destroy all competition and be King of Bedford Falls. Bwahahahahaaaa!!!!!! And we all know that when you put two people with disabilities in the same room together hilarity ensues!

This is Mr. Potter's moment! He calls in feckless George's loan, and now George, Mr. Ambition, contemplates suicide. Because of course we all know that when you have a wife & kids the best thing you can do for them is jump off a bridge. Naturally they'd rather have money than a husband and father.

Oh wait! Here comes an Angel straight from HEAVEN to convince George he shouldn't jump. Why? Because George is popular and lots of people are praying for him. Now we know that all those people who jumped from the Twin Towers on 9/11 were unpopular anyway, since nobody could have been praying for them or else they'd have been rescued.

So this angel, instead of saying "it's only money and there are worse things than being in debt," grants George the wish to know what Bedford Falls would have been like without him. Oh my it's terrible. Mr. Potter is rolling all over everyone, his wife is *gasp* an old maid and *BIG GASP* a LIBRARIAN! *faint* He regrets his wish, his life is restored, and he finds out that he's POPULAR! How does he know he's popular? People shower him with cash to bail him out of a tough spot.

The moral of the story: what goes around comes around? If you're popular God will intervene? Money is the most important sign of love?

Here's what this atheist would like to see:
George Bailey doesn't even know the money's missing yet. God is pissed by what Mr. Potter did, and of course he saw the whole thing. He doesn't have to wait to hear about it on the prayer party line. He smites Mr. Potter, perhaps with a good smack upside the head, and the wad of cash falls to the ground in full view of everybody. The retard who misplaced it is suddenly cured of his affliction, grabs the money and tells everyone exactly how much money it was to prove it belonged to the Baileys. Mr. Potter goes to jail, the retard is now qualified to take over the business, and George moves to TheBigCity with his family after scoring a hostile takeover of Mr. Potter's bank.

That's how a powerful, omniscient, loving, just god would handle the situation. Clarence would get his wings upon arrival in Heaven just for being a nice guy, because that's what God really wants to see -- nice people getting their reward.

Instead, we have a God who needs to be implored for mercy, and is so powerless he has to employ trickery to save a life. He runs heaven like the army, with ranks and seemingly impossible tasks to complete to get promoted.

Theologians probably don't like this movie much, either, but it resonates with people even decades after its release because it fulfills the fantasy role that religion has in so many lives: prayer works, God works in mysterious ways, the "reality" one person experiences is really true no matter how bizarre, and even though money doesn't matter, in the end it really does.

Of course this could never happen today. Banks have security cameras now so they don't need God looking in on them.

Feelings Aren't Facts

"Debbie," in the discussion here, insists that her feelings are justification for the "knowledge" that God is "real." One of her posts seemed so insane to me I was sure it was sarcasm, until I read more posts by her. It's worth copying here:

I care and seek to know the truth. Jesus claimed to be the Truth. To know Jesus is to know the Truth. He is the answer to the Big Questions of life. So it seems to me.

This is posited like some kind of logical argument but in the end she waffles with "So it seems to me." That's the key. The rest is baloney. She trusts her intuition, so the rest is irrelevant.

Later she posts: "Truth by it's very nature is narrow. A fact is a fact period. Broad is the road that leads to destruction. Narrow is the gate that leads to life. Isn't it interesting that Jesus claimed to be the Truth?"

Yes, very interesting. We all care to seek and to know the truth. It's human nature. SO ... of course if you want people to follow your religion you need to convince them that it's TRUE. And apparently SAYING it's true is enough for some people.

So "Jesus is God" is true because I feel good about Jesus, and Jesus supposedly said it's true, and there can only be one truth. Therefore, any other truth claims must be false.

This kind of thinking drives me crazy. But the "thinking" is irrelevant because she really wants to 1) respect a predictable authority figure, 2) belong to a social group that validates her feelings, and 3) believe that her feelings are facts. "A fact is a fact period." Debbie believes that her feelings are facts. She has positive feelings about authority figures, her church spokespeople & writers, the Jesus of her imagination, and of positive feelings themselves.

If Debbie were the only one, I'd just reply to her rather than blogging about this. Sadly, she's just one of thousands, possibly millions, of people who think that her feelings justify her faith. It's more likely the other way around. Theologists with Ph.D.s call their beliefs "properly basic," which amounts to the same thing.

Believers who pepper me with questions after finding out that I'm an atheist often start by questioning my answer to uncomfortable feelings, such as fear of death, fear of a chaotic society, fear of nothingness... All bogeymen invented by the church to keep the fearful in the flock. It's simple: create good feelings for insiders, create bad feelings about outsiders.

But it really just comes down to feelings. They "feel the spirit," or so they believe. If I felt the "spirit" of Heidi Klum enter me and started doing runway walks in my underpants, I'd be considered "insane." If I said I felt the spirit of Jesus enter me and started speaking in tongues, I'd be welcomed into a few cults.

Feelings aren't facts, and they are no proof of the supernatural in any way. This is why atheists can't reach most believers: we don't manipulate people via an opposition of positive and negative emotion. And being the moral people we are, we find it difficult to ramp up the rhetoric the way that religions have done. Many of us self-identify as "free-thinkers" and resent others' attempts to impose their beliefs, so of course we wouldn't commit that offense either.

The irony for me is that after decades of non-belief I find that there are some emotional benefits. Life means more because it's limited to time on Earth, and death is less scary because I've accepted the inevitability of it.

Many of the "comforting" parts of Christian theology have actually become anathema to me:

• ritualistic cannibalism (yech!)
• penal substitution (how unfair!)
• "original" sin carrying through to every human (yet we're "innocent" at birth?)
• eternal existence without a body (how boring!)
• "bad" people going to hell (somebody loved them!)
• God listening to our thoughts (if he didn't like them why give them to us?)

The rest of them were distasteful to me even while I was trying to be a believer! Fortunately for the ticket-takers at the Pearly Gate, most Christians don't think too hard about these things. They've been offered a self-centered fairy tale future, and it feels pretty good to them.

Is Charlie Brown a Christian?

Every time Lucy holds out the football, Charlie Brown takes the bait and tries to kick it. Then Lucy pulls it away and poor Charlie lands on his back with a *thud.* Predictably, Charlie Brown blames himself for his gullibility. As a woman, I say, "Go ahead and kick her in the crotch!" Yes, getting kicked in the crotch is painful for women too. We won't barf but we will double over, and this Lucy bitch deserves a taste of her own medicine.

Would an atheist version of Charlie Brown be such a sucker? He'd say "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..." and he'd turn to the side and kick Lucy in whatever body part happened to be within range. Because despite not having any god-given morals, even an atheist knows that HURTING OTHER PEOPLE ISN'T FUNNY!

We have the other example of pro football players intentionally giving concussions to the other team's players. How charming.

I have read comparisons between football and religion, and there are some remarkable similarities, it's true. It's us vs. them, break the rules for a good cause, drop everything on the appointed day, and make pilgrimmages to partake of ritual foods. There are heroes and villains. And after hours of "play" nothing has really changed except a few numbers that will be erased in a few months.

...and quite a few people will have new scars and debilitating injuries.

Yep, football is just like religion.

So, Christians, don't blame yourself if you crack open the Bible and it makes no sense to you. It's a nonsensical piece of dreck written by bronze age superstitious tribal leaders and propagated by generations of Lucy's who make it your fault for taking the bait. The next time someone tells you to read the bible, kick them in the crotch!

Can an atheist pray?

In one of my former cities I had a friend who was in A.A. He was a believer of sorts but he said "We have atheists in A.A., but they pray." At the time I was trying to be a believer, and I was praying as part of that attempt. His promise that atheists can indeed pray gave me hope that I would get something out of prayer, if not a connection with a supernatural entity. I decided that even if it was mental masturbation it was mostly harmless as long as this "God" guy wasn't answering. I think if he answered I'd have worried that my family gene for psychosis.

A little while later I realized trying to be a believer was a hopeless task. I just couldn't accept the supernatural in any form and the religion thing was just one of many pieces of supernatural goofiness that humans had made up. But the prayer thing really did feel good and I do sometimes miss it when I have a hard decision to make. I can't for a minute think that "God" speaks to me and gives me an answer from "above" but being quiet and reflective seems to be helpful.

Part of my quest involved looking into "Eastern" religion, and I tried meditation. Curiously the effect is pretty much the same. Nobody answers but I feel more relaxed and sometimes make progress on a life issue. Have one currently, a life or death decision about my beloved diabetic dog. I have been feeling the urge to "pray" about this, and I'm embarrassed to admit it. Well, really meditation... still, it's embarrassing because I know it's 100% natural and in my head. We atheists don't talk about our mental needs. I think this is why we meet with such resistance.

My family wasn't big on prayer except when we were all together. Even at the time it felt phony and forced. Any public declarations make me snicker even now. We all knew it was really about convincing everyone else that you're a Christian, not so much about communicating with the Deity. If God can read your mind when you're coveting, He should be able to do it while you're praying. Still, it had to be done before digging into the Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey. Some branches of the family still keep up the pretense. Nothing wrong with expressing thanks, and thankfully, my family keeps it brief: God is Great, God is Good, and we thank him for this food. Amen.

Being puzzled, being grateful, being quiet... nothing wrong with any of these things. They're part of the human condition. Sometimes writing (like here) helps me sort things out. Sometimes talking it over with someone helps me come to an insight (note: in-sight not outside my head at all!) Sometimes I just need time away from my routine, such as when I'm driving.

Recently I figured out how to drop my unhelpful therapist while driving. Curiously she felt the need to tell me that she was Christian & that her whole workgroup also was. This was at my first meeting with her, and she promised she wouldn't hold my atheism against me. Of course I can't hold out for an atheist therapist in FundyTown so I didn't expect any trouble either. She turned out to be judgmental, talky, scolding, and bossy. Just a coincidence that a self-professed Christian was like that, of course. ;-) She seemed flummoxed by some of my answers to her questions. I sometimes went away wondering if we'd come to the point where she'd usually jump into religion. On her workgroup's website all of the therapist bios say they work on "spiritual issues." I snickered when I read that -- did that mean they would help people who had been abused by crazy fundies, or by crazy fundy issues? I'm not curious enough to ask, but it made me go "hmmm."

So anyway, I dropped the therapist just as I'd dropped the Sky-Daddy, but I haven't dropped self-reflection and talking to other people as means for finding "answers." I consult "facts" as well as my feelings. I won't always do the "logical" thing, and sometimes there are two competing logical choices anyway. In the end I'll consult my feelings and objective reality equally. It's probably not a girly thing to do this, but it's a girly thing to admit to it, and even be proud of it. I have made a few decisions lately that I can proudly say are both logical and emotional.

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I will admit to doing what "prayer" really is - looking inside my head to figure out what I want. The only difference is that I take credit for what I "hear" instead of attributing it to Sky-Daddy or his rape victim or their psychotic bastard child.

I find in the craziest of places that I"m not completely alone in being an atheist who admires the better psychological qualities of Thanksgiving and ritual in general:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifestyle/50690119-80/thanksgiving-says-holiday-god.html.csp