Positive Atheist in Philadelphia

Sally Cramer is the new president of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadephia. She had a nice article about her published in Sunday’s edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Cramer is a 24-year-old graduate of West Chester University, lives in West Chester and is an office worker at the Deveraux Foundation, which deals with troubled youths.

Her atheism was inherited, she said, from her mother’s experience “growing up with her eight siblings in East Stroudsburg, in a Catholic family.”

Her mother, who she said now practices no religion, “went to Catholic school and told me horror stories. She didn’t like it and she didn’t want to force anything like that on her children.”

Her identity as a humanist atheist, she said, “means not only do I not believe in God, but that I believe in good.

“I believe that humans are ultimately good and trying to understand each other better and working toward world peace.”

And like many social activists, Sally works with other groups which also have a progressive agenda:

In August 2006 she joined the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Chester County and, afer a year, was elected to its executive committee.

And in her senior year at WCU, she became president of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning and Ally Association.

As a college sophomore she said, she realized that she was bisexual.

“I had been engaged to my high school sweetheart,” she said, “and I just realized that love knows no gender.”

Cramer said she “dumped him. I was really cruel. I was going through some tough emotional, psychological [thinking].”

“I identify as queer,” she said. Though the term is a perjorative in the straight world, she said for her, “queer means that you’re attracted to the person, not the gender.”

It’s never easy to follow Margaret Downey (the immediate past president of FSGP) in any of her endeavors, but Sally looks like she’ll be a great representative for atheists in Philly.

[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]

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The Unbrainwashed

“I believe that humans are ultimately good and trying to understand each other better and working toward world peace.”

This comment strikes me as overly idealistic and tinged with the concept of faith. Who says that humans are good? It’s a belief that I would consider not grounded in reason or evidence, but an overly optimistic perspective of human potential.

On a related note, it may just be me, but considering her background and her bisexuality, I surmise that her atheism is motivated by her mother’s encouragement and her own dismay at the church’s attitudes towards homosexuals. I’ve often noted that homosexuals tend to be less religious and I hypothesize its not a result of philosophy or scientific inquiry, but rather a condemnation of the anti-gay conservative Christianity.
Morse

It’s a belief that I would consider not grounded in reason or evidence, but an overly optimistic perspective of human potential.

Don’t fall into the sharpshooter fallacy. Yes, humans have and do do horrible things to each other. But do you really think we’re not ultimately good?

Penn Jillette said it wonderfully. (paraphrasing) Newspapers are filled with all the bad news that could be found in 24 hours. If they tried to report on all the good news, there wouldn’t be enough space.
Bjorn Watland

I’ve known only a handful of atheist homosexuals, and many devout Christian homosexuals. I think it’s difficult to generalize homosexuals as being religious, or non-religious. Although, it is a puzzle to uncover why someone who is a homosexual would try to hard to change the organization he or she is a part of to, rather then altering beliefs.