What, Me Worry?
- April 22, 2010
- By Dale McGowan
- In critical thinking, death, fear, My kids, Science
- 16
Samuel Pepys had surgery to remove a bladder stone when he was twenty. He had seventeenth century surgery, the only type available in his day. Joseph Lister was busily pioneering antiseptic surgery less than a mile from where Pepys lay tied to the bedposts, but Lister refused to offer his new techniques to Pepys’ physician, using all the old excuses – “my techniques are too new, my methods are untested, I’m living two hundred years in the future,” blah, blah, blah.
The pioneers of anesthetic surgery were likewise unhelpfully unborn, but had the additional excuse of working in a whole different country. So Pepys’ doctor used what science he had: he got his patient drunk, tied his legs to the bedposts and stabbed and sawed away until, in a gush of blood and urine, out rolled a stone the size of a tennis ball.
Pepys survived the surgery, for some reason, and celebrated the removal of the stone each year with a party on the same March day. And each year at that party, in the center of the table of hors d’oeuvres, mounted in a stunning teak box, sat the guest of honor, the founder of the feast – the stone itself.
I had my gall bladder removed yesterday. Thanks to a hundred medical advances since the 17th century, I don’t even remember being tied to the bedposts. Four standard Band-aids now cover the relative pinholes through which a tiny camera and three tools were deployed to remove the mutinous thing. I was advised to avoid fried chicken for a while and sent home.
In the weeks leading up to the surgery, I had to decide whether to worry about dying on the table. There’s no such thing as minor surgery, of course. Google the phrase “routine gall bladder surgery” and you’ll find the phrase “what was supposed to be” pinned to the front of it, over and over, in articles on the deaths of Andy Warhol, Dan “Hoss Cartwright” Blocker, and Congressman John Murtha. Another gentleman was rendered paraplegic by the same surgery, and a woman sustained severe brain damage. It happens when one of the tools nicks the large intestine. Infection sets in, then sepsis, then, sometimes, death.
Connor (14) caught wind of these stories somehow — possibly by overhearing me — and began to worry about his dad. It was a great opportunity to chat about one of my all-time favorite insights: the news paradox.
I don’t even remember who first brought the news paradox to my attention, but when it comes to ramping down our collective paranoia, it’s hard to beat. There are countless real dangers in the world, things that have a high statistical likelihood of taking us out of the game. But those common killers (like car accidents and smoking) don’t make the news, because they are common. Something that actually hits the collective radar is uncommon by definition — otherwise it wouldn’t be newsworthy.
So a good rule of thumb: If you read about a threat in the newspaper or hear about it on TV (like terrorism or mad cow disease), you can generally relax. It’s almost certainly not going to find you. It’s those things you don’t hear about, those pedestrian everyday killers, that you should worry about.
Once I heard the names of the same three celebrity gall bladder victims for the fifth or sixth time — Andy Warhol, Dan Blocker, John Murtha — I knew the news paradox was in play and began to relax. When someone dies during open heart surgery, it’s sad, but it doesn’t shock. But when a handful of people go down after a “supposedly routine” operation, it leaps to the top of our consciousness.
Over 500,000 gall bladders are removed each year, 99.9 percent of them without incident. So yes, there was a risk, but the very newsworthiness of the times it went wrong comforted me. And my boy.
BANG! The Universe Verse
Oh I love this.
BANG! The Universe Verse Book 1 is unique comic book that illustrates scientific theories about the origin of the universe as Dr. Seuss might have done. Best of all, though it’s set in verse delivered by a cartoon Einstein, there’s no dumbing down of content. Instead, Jamie Dunbar has given the reader permission to not fully grasp it all. “This book is intended for all ages,” says the preface. “If you don’t understand everything, don’t worry, no one does!”
Amazing what a powerful sentence that is.
In other good news, it’s available FREE as a PDF direct from the author (email him here) or in a low-res version on his website. You can also download the e-book for $5 from his site or get the physical book for just ten bucks. (It’s also on Amazon for $15. Don’t buy it there, but if you like it, drop in and write a nice review.)
Secular parent survey results!
To help set the course for our parent community program, Foundation Beyond Belief conducted a survey of nontheistic parents in February of this year—the first of its kind, as far as we can tell. The survey was unscientific (e.g. subjects were self-selected and the survey was advertised on websites that skew in the direction of organized secularism), as is the following analysis. But the project has given us a fascinating and sometimes surprising window into the world of secular parenting.
A total of 1740 people completed the survey, including secular parents in 49 U.S. states (87% of total respondents), 10 Canadian provinces (6%), and 19 other countries (7%).
Respondents were primarily women (60/40)—interesting because organized freethought skews heavily male. Most respondents are raising 1-2 children (38 and 39%, respectively), most are in a two-parent home (89%), and the largest percentage (39.4%) are in a big city suburb.
The largest percentage of respondents (27.4%) report that they themselves were raised in a mainline Protestant denomination, followed closely by Catholic (24.3%) and a poetic tie between atheist and evangelical (11.6% each). These numbers are somewhat muddied by the fact that of the 23% of respondents who checked “Other,” about half listed a denomination that fit one of the listed categories. That’s what an unscientific survey design will get you.
Of those in mixed worldview marriages, 47.8% report very little tension between the parents over issues of parenting and religion, and 41.1% report some tension and occasional issues. Just 6.7% reported frequent issues and 4.4% experience significant, severe conflict over parenting and religion.
I was surprised and pleased to see that only 11 percent of mixed secular/religious marriages in the survey seem to be grappling with these issues on a frequent or severe basis. It’s no less troubling for those people, of course, but as the Foundation develops its parent support program, we can be more effective and efficient in offering solutions if we know the extent of the problem.
The next question also produced something of a surprise to me:
Just over a quarter of respondents (25.5%) report an extended family that is moderate to intense in its religiosity. My surprise is partly an artifact of reportage—the vast majority of my own correspondence and contact with secular parents comes from those in a deeply religious extended family.
Over a third of respondents (35.2%) are in an extended family that ranges from secular to mildly religious, while the largest proportion (39.2%) are in a situation of significant variety, either split along two or more sides of the extended family or scrambled up within the whole.
I think this can be an ideal situation for raising kids who genuinely think for themselves. If your extended family is too uniform (either strictly religious or strictly secular), a parent has to expend more effort to be sure other points of view are represented. When my wife Becca, a fairly conventional Christian believer for most of our marriage, came to self-identify as a secular humanist, it eliminated what small tensions we had over those questions but also deprived us of what had been a handy safety valve against unintended indoctrination. Fortunately we still have a variety of views in the extended family to provide that diversity.
Fewer than half of respondents report significant religious pressure or indoctrination directed at their kids. Family members, unsurprisingly, are the source of most pressure from those who do report it:
(Totals exceed 100% because respondents were free to choose more than one source of pressure.)
And what’s the pressure about? You can probably guess:
How do secular parents expose their kids to religion?
Another question asked about the parent’s feelings about his or her child’s eventual worldview. I’ve often said that it seemed to me that most secular parents are genuinely committed to raising their kids to make their own choices, and the survey seemed to bear this out. Even most of those who hope their kids choose atheism affirm a desire that the choice be their children’s own:
(Complete purple question, which was very carefully worded: “The choice is theirs, and though some religious identities would make me heartsick, others would be fine”)
Finally, two related questions that are of central importance as we build the Foundation’s secular parent support program:
The greatest need of nontheistic parents by far seems to be simply finding and connecting with other nontheistic parents. This result was profoundly influential for the Foundation. It became clear that our original plan to train seminar leaders would not meet the most common need. What is needed is ongoing support for local groups that can help remove the crushing sense of isolation that so many secular parents feel. What’s needed is not a lecture but an opportunity to socialize, to mingle, to informally share experiences and ideas—to simply be with other parents who are raising their kids with the same challenges and opportunities.
Best of all, nearly 1,000 respondents expressed an interest in being contacted if a secular parenting group formed in their area, and nearly a third of these were willing to help start such groups. Ute Mitchell, our parent community coordinator, is currently using the contact data from the survey to help form groups in the ten U.S. states with the most survey respondents (some obviously the result of higher population):
…after which we’ll continue with other states and provinces SOON. We’re also continuing to build the parent resource section of the Foundation website, which will launch in the coming weeks.
Thanks again to all participants! More surveys to come.
Foundation Beyond Belief in NYT
Atheists’ Collection Plate, With Religious Inspiration
BY SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
ALPHARETTA, Ga. –– Four or five Sundays in 2005, his own atheism notwithstanding, Dale McGowan took his family into the neo-Gothic grandeur of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis on a kind of skeptic’s field trip.
Mr. McGowan went because he wanted his three young children to have “religious literacy.” He went because his mother-in-law, Barbara Maples, belonged to the congregation. He went because, as a college professor with a fondness for weekend sweatpants, church gave him the rare chance to wear the ties she invariably gave him for his birthday.
Something else began to strike Mr. McGowan on those visits. He listened to the vicar preach about ministering to the poor, and he learned that the cathedral helped to sponsor a weekly dinner for the homeless. Most importantly, he watched as the collection plate moved through the pews and as his mother-in-law, who volunteered at those dinners, dropped in her offering.
All those details added up to a nonbeliever’s revelation. The theology and the voluntarism and the philanthropy, Mr. McGowan came to realize, were part of a greater whole, a commitment to charity as part of religious practice. And on that practice, this atheist felt lacking. To put it in church slang, he was convicted.
Rather than adopt faith, however, Mr. McGowan set out to emulate it, or at least its culture of giving. He set out to, in effect, create the atheist’s collection plate. By now, five years later, that impulse has taken the form of a nonprofit foundation that solicits donations from atheists and bundles them into contributions to organizations in fields like public health, environmentalism, gay rights and refugee aid.
Within the next week or so, Mr. McGowan expects to cut checks for a total of $12,025, the first benefits collected and disbursed by the Foundation Beyond Belief.
Interesting times
May you come to the attention of those in authority
May you find what you are looking for
May you live in interesting times
Three (alleged) Chinese curses
Life is a bit too interesting at the moment. Since some of it relates to my books and other things of potential interest here, I’d like to file a brief report.
Foundation Beyond Belief ended its first quarter after raising $12,500 for charities and started its second with a brilliant new slate of beneficiaries. An extensive article about the Foundation is scheduled to appear in the New York Times this Saturday and another in the Chronicle of Philanthropy next week.
I submitted the final draft of my self-published second novel this week and learned that a (frankly) wonderful book I was planning about Radiolab will not go forward after all. I am trying desperately to finish my long-promised sixth video for the PBB Channel on YouTube, preparing for a seminar in Albuquerque, and co-teaching an online course on humanism for the Center for Inquiry this month.
Meanwhile, I’ve learned that my gall bladder has resigned in disgust and that steps must be taken to evict it from the premises, and soon. And we are planning to shortly make an offer on a house.
It’s all a bit much. But aside from the gall bladder and the dead Radiolab book, it’s good. Just know that posts will continue to be sporadic until I can clear this deck a bit.
Invisible knapsacks / Can you hear me now? 12
My mind has been on invisible knapsacks this week.
After health care reform passed, the gnashing of teeth intensified among its opponents — a deep concern about (non-war-related) expense, dire warnings of our descent into one or more other-than-capital isms, and a tearful eulogy for the America We Loved. These flies are always buzzing, and I’ve learned to just keep my tail moving and go about my day.
But there’s one trope in the mix that brings up an especially deep outrage in me, one that makes it hard to hold my tongue. It’s the suggestion that this Act confers benefits on people who — unlike the speaker — have not earned them.
Which led me back to the invisible knapsack.
Twenty years ago, in a piece titled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh of the Wellesley Centers for Women crystallized the argument that racial discrimination, especially today, is less a matter of “individual acts of meanness” than “invisible systems conferring dominance” on one group over another.
In our culture, I’m a member of several privileged groups (white, male, educated, heterosexual) and outside of others (religious, attractive). Like most people, I’m able to see and decry the advantages I am denied, but those I do have are largely invisible to me — until someone points them out, as McIntosh does so lucidly in her essay, with a list of 50 privileges she holds, but usually fails to recognize, as a white person. It’s a quick and thoughtful read, and I recommend it.
The nonreligious rightly protest unfair advantages conferred on the religious. But when it comes to our own advantages as nonreligious people, we too often act as if we earned them all.
Our advantages?? Sure. My secular humanism doesn’t confer much social advantage, but I do think it has allowed me to see a much grander, more astonishing, and ultimately more inspirational world and universe than the one my most conservatively religious friends inhabit. I don’t think this makes me a better person than they are. But I am deeply grateful for what it has done to the color and depth of my life and to my ability to open that lovely perspective to my kids.
Darwin hints at this color and depth in the last sentence of the Origin:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. (First edition, 1859)*
I’m glad for that grand naturalistic view, at once humbling and ennobling. But I recognize that in addition to the serious effort I put into reaching my conclusions, I also had some advantages along the way — advantages that not everyone shares.
My parents valued education and the life of the mind and encouraged the same in me and my brothers. They took us to a UCC church, a liberal denomination free of thought-paralyzing dogmas and fear. They encouraged us to think for ourselves and to be infinitely curious. My early interests in mythology and science were nurtured. I had a first-rate education, K-Ph.D. I was raised in relative physical and economic security. I knew people of several different religious traditions and eventually attended churches in nine denominations. We attended a Unitarian fellowship in my teens.
Not one of these is essential in achieving a naturalistic worldview free of traditional religion. Many of my nonreligious friends found their way out despite far fewer advantages than I had. But I recognize that many of the folks we rail against for holding on to beliefs we find unbelievable have often inherited, in one way or another, a more formidable set of obstacles.
The end result of such a process is greater empathy for the believer. Not for the beliefs themselves, especially those that are malignant or dehumanizing. It’s unethical to leave genuinely harmful beliefs unchallenged. But the most effective challenge to beliefs begins with heartfelt empathy for those who believe.
*Go here for a fascinating look at the (what else?) evolution of this poetic passage through later editions, and Darwin’s regret at “truckl[ing] to public opinion” in changing it.
Invitation from a screwball
Glenn Beck’s latest and greatest departure from sanity is an opportunity not to be missed.
No, I’m not talking about jeering at this exceedingly small man with the big microphone. He’s no smaller in his views than a dozen people I know and love. And he has the microphone only because we the people gave it to him.
The opportunity is to notice that the sane religious have a helluva lot more in common with the sane nonreligious than with their screwier co-believers — and that in this case, they’re drawing the line themselves.
For those who haven’t been following the story, Glenn Beck pleaded with Christians on his March 2 show:
I beg you, look for the words “social justice” or “economic justice” on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If I’m going to Jeremiah’s Wright’s church? Yes! Leave your church. Social justice and economic justice. They are code words. If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop and tell them, “Excuse me are you down with this whole social justice thing?” I don’t care what the church is. If it’s my church, I’m alerting the church authorities: “Excuse me, what’s this social justice thing?” And if they say, “Yeah, we’re all in that social justice thing,” I’m in the wrong place.
He repeated this revealing nonsense on radio and TV, and clarified what it is that “social justice” is code for: communism and Nazism.
People from a wide variety of denominational perspectives have condemned the remarks as an attack on the central message of Christianity.
Now I could take this opportunity as some have to argue that there are several central messages in Christianity, many of them contradictory and some immoral. But that knee-jerk tangent would miss the real beauty of this moment, which has nothing at all to do with this tiny, tiny man and the frightened little echo chamber between his ears.
The beauty of the moment has to do with the forceful statement by churches across a wide spectrum that social justice is at the heart of their identity and mission, not to mention Jesus’s message. Not judgment. Not fear. Not the enforcement of social categories or rules about who we can love or what seafood we can eat. Not the demonization of doubt or the prohibition of thought. They say that the desire for social justice is, and should be, at the heart of who they are.
And there’s the beauty. Given an invitation to clarify what they are about, this is what they chose to claim and defend. An attack on social justice from a fellow believer drew a more potent and broad-based response from the churches than any other critique I’ve ever seen.
It’s true that social justice is not at the heart of things for some churches. Author Bruce Bawer (Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity) wrote a piece in the New York Times long ago while the Presbyterians were tearing themselves apart over the ordination of gays — just like the Episcopalians have done more recently. It was a sharp and illuminating piece that instantly snapped the American religious landscape into perspective for me. As I blogged in August ’07 (quoting Bawer):
“American Protestantism…is being split into two nearly antithetical religions, both calling themselves Christianity. These two religions — the Church of Law, based in the South, and the Church of Love, based in the North — differ on almost every big theological point.
“The battle within Presbyterianism over gay ordinations is simply one more conflict over the most fundamental question of all: What is Christianity?
“The differences between the Church of Law and the Church of Love are so monumental that any rapprochement seems, at present, unimaginable. Indeed, it seems likely that if one side does not decisively triumph, the next generation will see a realignment in which historical denominations give way to new institutions that more truly reflect the split in American Protestantism.”
Though Bawer is talking about Protestants, the same fault line runs down the middle of American Catholicism, between venomous literalists and social justice-loving practitioners of genuine agape — unconditional love.
Many Christians I know are too quick to dismiss the “Church of Law” as an aberration, something unfortunate but…you know… over there somewhere. And atheists are often just as quick to overlook the presence of the “Church of Love.” My major complaint with that side of American Christendom isn’t that they have supernatural beliefs. As long as they do good with them, who cares? My complaint is that the church of love does far too little to confront its ugly fundamentalist stepsister. Worse yet, it arms her by indiscriminately promoting faith as a value in and of itself.
But take heart, Me of the Past! Here in 2010, in its strong condemnation of an unhinged conservative commentator, we have the Church of Love standing up and decisively separating from those who would underline the petty, hateful messages of religion at the expense of the uplifting and ennobling.
Beck is a Church of Law guy. He is afraid, and makes his living keeping others afraid as well. No surprise that a quick scan of his homepage brings up the words PROTECT, CRISIS, FEAR, WAR, ALERT, and WATCHDOG. Always “under attack,” he simply isn’t at liberty to extend any generosity (a.k.a. social justice) to others. Predictably, he has already begun sputtering that he is under attack on this issue as well, that his words were taken out of context, oh and etc.
Whatever. This isn’t about him anymore. It’s about a church that, in defending its values, has accepted a priceless opportunity to clarify and embrace them.
I for one send a loud shout-out to the Church of Love. Jesus would be so proud of all y’all.
Unconditional love revisited
- March 16, 2010
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, Parenting, values, wonder
- 13
[As a child] I had developed an attitude toward the world that is the essence of inquiry: I had fallen in love with it. Thanks to Carl Sagan and other popularizers of science, I’d come to the conclusion that the universe was wonderful, period, and that I was incredibly fortunate to get a chance to be a conscious thing in the midst of it. The wonder of it came with no strings attached, no “ifs.” I was unconditionally smitten with reality.
From “The Unconditional Love of Reality,” in 50 Voices of Disbelief
That essay of mine taps one of my favorite themes––the idea that we should encourage in our kids, and ourselves, an unconditional love of reality. It’s the positive form of discouraging self-deception, and it’s the shortest route to the kind of curious hunger that can keep a mind awake, engaged, and grateful for a lifetime.
Every once in a while I come across a comment that misunderstands the concept. “That’s just crazy,” said a recent one. “I ACCEPT reality, but I certainly don’t always love it.” And then, as always, the example of the Holocaust.
What’s being confused here is the love of reality and the love of what happens in it. When it comes to the Holocaust, we rightly consider denial of its reality to be a terrible thing. More than a dozen European countries have gone so far as to make it illegal to deny it — a mistake, I think, but never mind. By insisting that we look the Holocaust in the eye, we are expressing a love and respect for reality and a profound distaste for self-deception. Our hatred of the Holocaust itself makes us love and protect our honesty about it. That’s the unconditional love of reality at work.
In the same way, my unconditional love for my kids does not (believe me) imply a love for everything they do. But it does inspire me to want nothing but the best for them –– including a wide-eyed infatuation with their own existence that will endure the inevitable bumps and bruises their existence will contain.
Embrace Life
- March 09, 2010
- By Dale McGowan
- In death, Parenting, values
- 28
A PSA from the UK with the most powerfully condensed message I’ve seen in years. Ninety brilliant seconds.
(Hat tip to Life is but a dream.)
Penny wise
My kids are weirdly consistent in their vocational dreams. They flirt with various ideas, but they always end up whipping back to their respective Norths like compass needles. By the time I was ten, I’d already torn through a half-dozen intended vocations: paleontologist, stand-up comedian, astronaut, clarinetist…stuff like that.
For years, Connor (now 14) has had his eye on engineering, and has recently narrowed it to alternative energy engineering. Erin (now 12) has wanted a career in medicine since she was 8 and has recently narrowed that (through questions like “What do you call a person who studies the way the body works?”) to research physiology.
Delaney (8) has pretty much always wanted to be a scientist of some kind.
A few weeks ago, Erin hunched intently over the kitchen table with a dropper to see how many drops of water would fit on a penny. Cool science project from school involving estimates, observation, averages, graphing. Good stuff.
Delaney suggested expanding the parameters of the study to see if water temperature would affect the results. I was reading in the next room when a small brouhaha broke out between the researchers. As usual, Erin came tromping in to me with a look of righteous determination.
“Dad, Laney and I are doing an experiment to see if a penny holds the same amount of hot water as cold water.”
“And?”
“And I’m trying to tell Laney that we have to use the same penny for both, because one might be a little different, but she…”
“They’re both the same! Shiny 2009 pennies!” whined Laney from the doorway.
I walked into the laboratory and saw two shiny 2009 pennies sitting side by side on the table, waiting for further instructions.
I asked Erin why you need to use the same one.
“Because there might be tiny differences — little scratches or nicks that you can’t even see, but they might affect the water differently.”
“Variables.”
“Yeah, variables.” Erin looked mighty pleased with her middle-school sciency self. I was too. But I wanted Laney to learn a cool thing about her life’s work, not to feel defeated. I told her to imagine that I was a scientist designing a study to see if people with blue shirts could get things off high shelves more easily. I opened the kitchen cupboard and asked white-shirted Laney to grab a cup off the top shelf.
She gave me a fumey look.
Blue-shirted me reached up and brought down the cup. “Well there it is. I’ve learned that people with blue shirts”
“Dad”
“are better at”
“Dad”
“getting things down from”
“DAD!”
“What?”
“You’re taller.”
“I think it’s the shirt.”
“Then you’re a dork.”
“How can you figure out whether it was the shirt?”
“I just wouldn’t use a tall person at all! I’d get two people who were both…” She paused. “Normal.”
I told her she had just removed a variable. She got it.
“But you’re obviously tall. The pennies are exactly the same.”
I admitted that they might be, then motioned her into the basement. We looked at the pennies under our microscope. Sure enough, canyons and craters loomed.
By this time she’d thankfully forgotten that her big sister had ended up right. It was just cool.