Freethinkers Find Bond in Their Different Beliefs

So you don’t subscribe to a particular religious slant, you are liberal in matters of social and cultural significance and you live by an ethos of empirical rationality.

Where do you go to find kindred spirits?

You might choose the faculty lounge at Camarillo High School, where a few dozen members of Freethinkers of Ventura County debate, discuss and listen to issues ranging from separation of church and state to the hypothetical beginnings of a cosmos devoid of divinity.

“There are really all sorts of different people here, so it’s kind of hard to tack a label on them,” said organizer Charlotte Poe. “But the easiest way to describe everybody is as a truth seeker.”

Organized in January, the informal group has been meeting once a month to bat around ideas that had for years been locked inside.

Although the group has its share of staunch atheists, it also includes agnostics and others, such as Berta Vittier, for whom religion does not provide enough comforting solace.

“I’m not an atheist and I’m not really an agnostic, so I’m kind of an other,” the 67-year-old Camarillo resident said. “I’d like to believe in some kind of afterlife, but the real reason that I’m here is because of what I see in the world today.”

Like most members of the Freethinkers, Vittier said she is uncomfortable with what she sees as a conservatively religious agenda creeping into the political and public life of the country.

For her, the clear and definitive line separating religion from the governance of the people has begun to erode. She believes that the shift, if left unchecked, will eat away at the country’s constitutionally mandated tolerance and respect for people of different religious, cultural and social beliefs.

“That’s one of the reasons I started a Freethinkers group,” said Poe, a 45-year-old Somis resident and mother of two. “We all believe that it’s important for religion to be kept separate and private.”

Like Poe and Vittier, most of the members came from religious backgrounds. They questioned those faiths for various reasons, opting instead for a belief system rooted in quantifiable fact.

“I don’t believe in any claims that can’t be proven,” said Rob Stroh. “I don’t believe in astrology, I don’t believe that Shirley MacLaine communicates with the dead and I don’t believe in God. . . . I can’t prove that all of this is wrong, but I can’t prove that it’s right either, and until it is I will keep living without theism.”

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The 56-year-old Fillmore resident said he was raised in a strict evangelical home; his father was a Baptist preacher and his mother a devoted Bible reader.

Stroh said he attended church three times a week and although his friends felt a calling to dedicate their lives to the teachings of Christ, he didn’t.

“I guess I’ve always been one to question things we’re supposed to take on faith,” he said. “As a child, I can remember asking my mother questions like how God came to be and whether there was an end to the sky and I just didn’t like her answers, so that’s kind of been my life from then on.”

Although Poe said one of the reasons she founded the group was to establish a community, Stroh said he has never felt alone.

But since joining the group, he said, his sense of intellectual discovery has entered a renaissance.

“It’s like a breath of fresh air being around all these people,” he said. “We stimulate each other to think and explore ourselves and that’s what keeps me coming back. . . . I can’t imagine why I’d ever miss a meeting.”

Although still in its infancy, the Freethinkers are trying to ally themselves with larger, nationally run organizations such as the Secular Humanists.

They are also planning to begin organizing community outreach programs such as tutoring sessions for schoolchildren and highway cleanups.

But for now, the group has focused on dispelling perceptions that by being an atheist or agnostic, one is living an immoral and spiritually bankrupt life.

“You just have to smile when you hear that,” Poe said. “We’re no different than anyone else; we just have to work harder to show people that even though we don’t believe, we’re still good people who live good lives.”