BY TERRI FLAGG
Courtesy of the
Carrboro Commons
Dustin Hill doesn’t lie, cheat, steal or worship the devil. But because Hill is an atheist, people sometimes assume he does.
Hill has struggled for years with the social isolation resulting from his non-belief.
“It damaged a lot of my relationships,†said Hill, 28, of Carrboro. “It ended most of them. Once I mentioned I was an atheist, things would just dissolve.â€
But he recently joined a group with at least 546 like-minded people: The Triangle Atheist Agnostic and Freethinker Meetup. Managed through the website meetup.com, where people can form groups based on any kind of common interest, the Triangle Atheist Agnostic and Freethinker Meetup gives local nonbelievers a means of coming together socially.
“There is such a stigma when it comes to nonbelievers,†said Hill, who moved to Carrboro from Asheville in July 2007. “It would make me happy to think that this group could help develop a different perspective.â€
The path to atheism was not an easy one for Hill, who grew up in a very religious household and started wrestling with existential questions as he got older.
“All the people I looked up to went to the Bible for answers,†he said. “So I read the Bible from beginning to end. When I got done with it, I was no longer a Christian. You’re never encouraged to read the whole Bible, just to take bits and pieces and believe it makes this nice coherent story, and it doesn’t.â€
Hill said he then went religion shopping. “I still believed in God, but just figured I had the wrong religion.†But eventually, he realized he didn’t believe in God, and made peace with that fact.
But society did not, he said.
“‘Do you worship the devil?’ That was such a common thing to hear and it still is,†he said. “The second thing is, ‘If you don’t believe in God, where do you get your morals from?’â€
Hill said he turns to science and his own autonomy to answer difficult questions and guide morality.
“Our species could not have survived if we did not want to help each other and didn’t know that killing each other is wrong,†he said. “I believe that when I’m in a serious relationship, that monogamy is the right thing. That is actually contrary to our biology, but I feel compelled to do that. I find it offensive to lie. Although I think it would be more advantageous to lie, to much detriment I try to be as honest as possible.â€
Hill is in a committed relationship with Grace Salzer, with whom he moved to the area so Salzer could attend the UNC School of Law. The couple wears wedding rings and refers to each other as husband and wife, but they are not legally married.
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Marriage is more of a religious thing,†Hill said. “But by all our culture’s standards, for every practical purpose, we are married.â€
While Salzer is busy with law school, Hill, who works at Best Buy as a Geek Squad member, looks forward to getting more involved with the Meetup group. The group offers meetups once or twice a week, with a range of events such as trivia nights, game nights, food and wine tastings, cookouts, pool parties, lectures and museum trips.
“We’re all over the place,†said Alex Jones, the group’s organizer. “We’re a very active group.†Earlier this year, the Meetup sponsored a fundraising concert for Haiti earthquake relief at Cat’s Cradle. “And people say we don’t have morals,†Jones said.
Jones, 37, of Chapel Hill, has been a member of the Atheist Agnostic and Freethinker Meetup for two years and organizer for over a year. He said membership in the Meetup has doubled in the last year.
“It fulfills a very important function of providing a safe environment where people can be themselves,†he said. “It lets people come together and they don’t have to censor what they say.â€
Jones said he grew up in a secular household in West Virginia, but that many of the members of the Meetup had experiences similar to Hill’s.
“A lot of our members did grow up in the church environment, so a lot of their social life revolved around church,†he said. “They miss that now that they no longer go to church.â€
Jones said he hopes involvement in the Meetup will help Hill.
“You can share those common experiences,†he said; “you can talk with someone who understands it. I do think it helps.â€
Terri Flagg is a UNC student writing for the Carrboro Commons, a bi-weekly online lab newspaper for Jock Lauterer’s Community Journalism class at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.