In the name of no father

Atheists say morals unconnected to faith

By Rob Cullivan

The Gresham Outlook, Nov 7, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

Annie Tuppan, Bill Smythe and Carol Knox are open to discussions of atheism, agnosticism and religion in general.

Jim Clark / Gresham Outlook

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Gresham resident Bill Smythe knows what your faithful mind is thinking. Which is why he’s wearing his new favorite T-shirt, stating he’s your “Friendly Neighborhood Atheist.”

Smythe says people tend to believe atheists are “evil” because they don’t acknowledge a deity. However, he and fellow atheist, Happy Valley resident Annie Tuppman, believe just the opposite — with no deity to whom they must answer, their morality is based on something more fundamental — themselves.

“We take the whole responsibility for who we are and what we do,” Tuppman says, adding she is a humanist who rejects supernatural explanations for anything. “We don’t have a god telling us what to do.”

Smythe adds he believes religion, particularly of the fundamentalist variety, can blind people to such scientific insights as evolution. Indeed, he’s formulated his own “creation” story of sorts.

“Everything started at the cellular level,” he says. “It’s bottom up creation, not top down creation.”

Divining truth

Smythe attends Eastrose Fellowship Unitarian Universalist Church, 1133 N.E. 181st Ave., where he and other similarly minded folks held a panel discussion in late October on atheism and related issues.

Eastrose is well known for its Sunday discussions on a variety of faiths and beliefs, as well as social issues. The congregation is home to a number of people who value insights from all religions and philosophies developed over the centuries. The panel leader was Gresham resident and Eastrose member Carol Knox, who says she’s actually more of an agnostic.

“I believe that anything that is in the imagination is possible,” she says. “Maybe there is no god. Maybe there are many gods. Maybe the Christian god is the truth of the matter.”

Indeed, she says, if you subscribe to the theory there are parallel universes enabling an infinite number of beliefs and outcomes to exist, anything is possible.

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