Somebody bring me a mirror
In preparation for the February release of Raising Freethinkers, my darling webmasters Eliot and Joe of Twist & Twirl have completed Phase II of the sitewide nip-and-tuck, including new colors, layout, and graphics on the home page (to complement the new book cover), contributor photos on the PBB Contributors page, and a new reduced-fat URL for the blog, with 48 percent fewer keystrokes: MemingofLife.com (the old URL will still work as well). There’s a News and Events window on your left. Why, we’ve even created some new rank names for the PBB Discussion Forums.
Now tell me you’re not excited. Feel free to take a walk around, then show yourself out. I’m going to bed.
What’s your frequency, Jehovah?
It’s been a hoot this week watching various progressive bloggers (including myself) trying to stop writing about the situation tragicomedy that is the Palin nomination. Slightly more worrisome is the growing awareness that desperation, with all of its likely dark strategies, is overtaking the GOP.
So let me say goodbye to this riveting political week with some calm, cerebral meta-analysis from the New York Times. After which I promise not to mention the name Sarah Palin ever again. Or at least until the Earth has traveled fully 1.6 million miles through space.
I blogged about concordances about a year ago, noting that the frequency of words used in a book can say a lot (though not everything) about a book. (Harp music and wavy lines…)
Below are concordances for two parenting books, with the 100 most common words in order of frequency (in batches of ten for easier reading). One is about raising kids using biblical principles; the other is about raising kids without religion. See if you can tell which is which, and whether the concordances reveal anything about content, approach, and tone:
BOOK A
1-10: children—parents—god—child—love—own—husband—family—lord—word
11-20: wife—teach—heart—sin—christ—father—need—life—things—even
21-30: kids—should—man—must—son—proverbs—parenting—mother—does—scripture
31-40: kind—wisdom—evil—first—church—shall—may—home—fear—authority
41-50: marriage—obey—christian—ephesians—law—work—right—come—principle—means
51-60: take—truth—wives—woman—time—true—good—himself—solomon—give
61-70: live—men—let—paul—role—society—duty—honor—commandment
71-80: obedience—responsibility—teaching—against—gospel—know—therefore—verse—discipline—people
81-90: submit—something—themselves—jesus—want—women—wrong—world—day—think
91-100: instruction—faith—always—attitude—command—ing—certainly—spiritual—genesis—nowBOOK B
1-10: children—god—parents—religious—time—people—child—good—things—life
11-20: family—religion—world—think—believe—secular—know—even—beliefs—may
21-30: years—questions—own—right—kids—human—death—reason—first—school
31-40: idea—need—day—should—ing—moral—see—live—want—new
41-50: book—help—now—find—say—take—work—answer—others—something
51-60: church—come—wonder—bob—values—age—friends—get—go—little
61-70: does—without—long—often—true—thinking—feel—stories—must—love
71-80: exist—part—give—important—really—animals—two—great—kind—might
81-90: humanist—best—look—seems—still—atheist—few—thought—mean—mind
91-100:kobir—different—though—meaning—experience—problem—always—fact—adults—ceremonyBook A is
Book B is
The first observation is among the most interesting: that these two books, though different in many, many ways, have the same top three words. Even more interesting is that the secular parenting book mentions God more often. Not entirely surprising if you think about it. The top four words in Quitting Smoking for Dummies are SMOKING, SMOKE, TOBACCO, and CIGARETTES.
I went on to note that the religious parenting book used words related to OBEDIENCE 22 times more often (relative to total word count) than the nonreligious parenting book.
Now the New York Times has created a graphic concordance for the principal speeches in the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, selecting 23 “big theme” words or phrases common to speeches at both events, and it’s equally revealing.
The most common of the selected words for the Democrats? CHANGE, which was heard 89 times per 25,000 words. Most common Republican word? GOD, at 43 times per 25K. (For all their pragmatic pandering to religion, Democrats could only muster half as many references to Jehovah — 22.)
Second of concern to the GOP from the list is TAXES (42), followed by CHANGE (30), BUSINESS (30), and ENERGY (26). BUSH was mentioned only seven times per 25,000 words, and the phrase “FOUR MORE YEARS,” for some inexplicable reason, not even once.
Ten of the words were in the mouths of Democrats more often than GOD. Second to CHANGE was MCCAIN (78), followed by ENERGY (49) and BUSH (46). And the phrase “FOUR MORE YEARS” occurred 14 times on this scale.
Okay. That’s it — the last installment of my tangent into politics. Next time it’s back to parenting, humanism, critical thinking, and Sarah Palin.
Dammit.
[See the complete Times graphic here.]
Thinking by druthers 5
[The fifth installment in a series on confirmation bias. Back to druthers 4]
Leave it to The Daily Show to give the most devastating exposition on confirmation bias I’ve ever seen. And once again, as Twain said, only laughter can achieve this kind of surgical strike:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
Sarah Palin Gender Card | ||||
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(Rove I can understand. But how in the world something so perilously identical to spin found its way into O’Reilly’s No Spin Zone…I need a moment to collect my thoughts. Please, just…just scroll away.)
ADDED THURSDAY NIGHT:
I have to add this bitterly-true quote from Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen:
Probably the most depressing thing about Palin is not her selection but the defense of it. It has produced a parade of GOP spokesmen intent on spiking the needle on a polygraph. Looking right into the camera, they offer statement after statement that they hope the voters will swallow but that history will forget. The sum effect on the diligent news consumer is a feeling of consummate contempt for the intelligence of the American people — a contempt that will be justified should Palin be the factor that makes McCain a winner in November.
Laughing matters 6: Crossing lines, thank gawd
- September 03, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In humor, Parenting, schools, sex
- 12
Your [human] race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug push it a little weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage.
–Satan, in The Mysterious Stranger by MARK TWAIN
This brilliant piece of satire immediately brought that Twain quote to my mind:
When Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist posted it, several commenters said they found it “inappropriate” and “in poor taste.” One sniffed, “I highly question the integrity of someone who would post it.” That the commenter’s incoming link was from a conservative blog is, I’m sure, a coincidence. An equal number of the protestors were surely my fellow Democrats. Our knees have a long history of turning to Jell-O when someone implies we’re being unfair — whether or not they’re right. It’s the one implication we can’t bear.
I don’t care what the perspective is — when a piece of satire is smart, funny, and relevant, I’ll defend it to the death. This parody-poster brilliantly condenses fact and implication by juxtaposing the abstinence-only position of a vice-presidential candidate and her pregnant teenage daughter.
As many others have noted, the McCain campaign made her pregnancy an issue. This parody simply (and quite mildly, folks) makes use of establish facts to drive home a crucial point: Abstinence-only sex education does not work. Over $176 million has been poured into the promotion of abstinence-only sex education, despite studies indicating that a majority of kids taking a virginity pledge fail to keep the pledge, are more likely to have unprotected sex than non-pledgers when they do have sex, and are equally likely to contract STDs.1
Fortunately, teen prenancy is on the decline — but not because of abstinence-only education. According the Guttmacher Institute’s 2006 report, teen pregnancy rates are down 36 percent from 1990 to the lowest level in 30 years, but just fourteen percent of this decrease is attributed to teens waiting longer to have sex. The other 86 percent is the result of improved contraceptive use.
Obama wisely put the topic “off-limits” for campaign staffers, threatening to fire anyone who went after it and rightly noting that he was himself the child of a teenage mother. That’s smart politics. Making the necessary connection to Sarah Palin’s views on sex education is appropriately left to the rest of us. And if we can do it humorously, so much the better.
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1“Abstinence Education Faces An Uncertain Future,” New York Times, July 18, 2007; Bearman, Peter and Hannah Brückner: “Promising the Future: Virginity Pledges and First Intercourse.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 106, No. 4 (Jan 2001), pp. 859-912.
thinking by druthers 4
[The fourth installment in a series on confirmation bias. Back to druthers 3]
She does know about international relations because she is right up there in Alaska right next door to Russia.
—Fox and Friends host STEVE DOOCYShe’s the first journalist ever to be nominated, I think, for the president or vice president, and she was a sportscaster on local television. So she has a lot of interesting background. And she has a lot of experience. Remember that, when people worry about how inexperienced she is, for two years she’s been in charge of the Alaska National Guard.
— Former Speaker of the House NEWT GINGRICH (Republican)
I tried. Oh lawdy, how I tried. I’ve been pacing a hole in my office carpet all weekend, trying to figure out how to not blog about Sarah Palin. Her selection as John McCain’s running mate has everything to do with politics and little to do with the supposed reasons this blog exists, I told myself. If you don’t maintain focus in a blog, the terrorists win.
But I can’t not blog about this. I just can’t.
Then I began to realize how many threads in her story intersect with my topics. Her daughter’s pregnancy symbolizes the poor record of (religiously-fueled) abstinence-only sex education. She favors equal time for creationism in schools. She thinks the Pledge of Allegiance should retain the phrase “under God” because — if you haven’t heard this one, please stop drinking your coffee — “it was good enough for the Founding Fathers.”
So yes, there’s a bit of traction here for me.
But I’ll start with the meta-issue of confirmation bias, my favorite human fallacy, which has been on shameless and painful display by GOP commentators since her candidacy was announced. The Republican Party is breathtakingly adept at manipulating this particular bias to win elections, while the Dems are generally too painfully self-aware to even try it — at least not on the operatic level of doublespeak we’re seeing this week.
Take the Palin relevations of just 96 hours in the spotlight (former pot smoker, experience near nil, not smarter than a fifth grader in world knowledge, pregnant teen daughter, subject of corruption probe). Put them on a Democrat and they’d be evidence of moral and political outrage. On a Republican, they are said (by Republicans) to denote heroism (“They didn’t abort the baby!”), sinlessness (“She hasn’t been corrupted by Washington!”) and the common touch (“I’d love to have a beer/shoot a deer with her!”). Haven’t yet seen the corruption probe spun into gold, but the week is young.
Just as the manufactured link between 9/11 and Iraq stands as a lasting example of the fallacy of the undistributed middle, so the Palin candidacy — or more precisely, its defense — can give us a lasting benchmark for confirmation bias. There has never in memory been a clearer, more public playing out of the fallacy. And as long as the Palin candidacy continues to dip so very many toes into my topical pool, I’ll blog away.
[On to druthers 5]
__________________
COMING UP
This week: Site-level redesign to prepare for launch of Raising Freethinkers
Sept 20: Parenting Beyond Belief seminar, Cincinnati
Sept 21: Presentation at CFI Indianapolis
Sept 27: PBB seminar, Iowa City
Sept 28: PBB seminar, Des Moines
Dissent done right 2
- September 01, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In action, Atlanta, diversity, fear, Kerfuffles, My kids, Parenting
- 7
I knew my kids would feel violated, angry, and afraid. Their own attitudes toward dissent are being tested and formed. So we did what we do. We talked it through.
I told them our sign had been taken from the yard. (At this point we hadn’t found it again.) Erin’s reaction was utter disbelief.
“Really?” she said. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Really? Cause sometimes you joke. Really?”
“Erin, jeez, yes, somebody took our sign!” Connor said. “It totally stinks!”
She looked at the floor. “Omigosh. I feel like I want to cry.” She looked up at me with a worried forehead. “So people in our neighborhood are mad at us?” I could see the scared siege mentality forming on her face.
“Now wait a minute. How many people took that sign? It was probably one person walking by last night. That’s not everybody.” I really wanted to nip the generalizing assumption in the bud and had an idea how I could. “You know who would really be mad about this? Mr. Ryan.” Ryan is a neighbor of ours, a wonderful, soft-spoken guy. “And he wants McCain to win. But he doesn’t want it by cheating.”
They agreed, and Erin’s face relaxed a bit.
“So what do you think we should do?” I asked. “Maybe we should just…you know…not have a sign?”
All three erupted in indignation at the thought of being silenced. Exxx-cellent. I checked the box for moral courage on my mental list.
“But if we put another one out, it might be taken again by this doofus. What should we do?”
They started brainstorming. Connor wanted to put a sign out again and stake it out all night from his window. Erin wanted to put a sign at the top of our 30-foot tree. Laney suggested putting Obama and McCain signs in our yard so everyone would be happy. Erin suggested getting 100 signs, “And every time he takes it, boop! We put another one out. Like The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins!”
They all laughed. Finally we decided to put it out every morning and take it in at dinnertime.
By the end we had achieved everything I was hoping for. They refused to be silenced; they were referring to one perp, not a silent army; they were using their own creativity to get around the problem; and they’d relaxed and moved on to other things. I’ll let you know how it goes.
_________________________________
Side note…
Becca continues to simmer about it. Last night she said, “I hate to say this, but can you picture Obama supporters doing something like that?” I resist this idea too. My knee jerks, and I say, “Oh, I’m sure Democrats do it, too.”
Then I Googled these four phrases and got these hit counts:
Obama sign vandalized“: 309 hits
“Obama sign stolen“: 105 hits
“McCain sign vandalized“: 6 hits
“McCain sign stolen“: 4 hits
…and two of the McCain hits are from my own blogs. Also interesting: nearly all of the other McCain hits were during primary season.
Discuss.
Dissent done right 1
- August 31, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In action, Atlanta, diversity, fear, Kerfuffles, morality, My kids, Parenting, values
- 12
More than just about any other single value, I want my kids to get the importance of dissent. I want them to be willing to voice a reasoned minority opinion and to encourage the same in others.
When we moved to the red-state South, I knew (blue to the core as we are) that at some point we’d end up taking our lumps from one majority or another. No big brous-haha so far, just some minor fish-out-of-water moments: Laney having the occasional Huxley-Wilberforce in the school cafeteria; Erin coming to terms with her evangelical cousins; Connor’s outrage when his (beloved) seventh grade Life Sciences teacher assured the class that evolution is “just one guy’s idea”; Becca, in her first week as a full-time Georgia teacher, having one of her first graders say, “Mrs. McGowan, are you a Christian? ’Cause I’m a Christian. Are you a Christian?”; and my early palpitations over imagined church-state issues. Peanuts, really.
Now we’ve had our first somewhat chilling incident—not over religion, but politics.
Becca and I support Barack Obama. Thursday night, after his convention speech, we put an Obama yard sign under the tree in our Atlanta front yard. By Saturday morning it was gone. An hour after noticing it missing, we found it chucked in the street several houses down.
I’ve spent enough time dissenting from majorities to know what it gets you, so it didn’t ruffle me. But Becca, bless her Anne Frankness, is always thrown when people aren’t good at heart, or fair, or tolerant. I love her for being repeatedly surprised by that.
I also know that the occasional kook is rarely representative of the majority. I used to think pointing this out was about being nice, but eventually came to realize that recognizing that fact changes my world.
We hosted an Obama house party last month and put flyers in 200 neighborhood mailboxes. Fourteen people came. Six other neighbors mentioned it approvingly at the pool or the bus stop, including some who differ politically. And we received two scrawled notes in our mailbox informing us that Obama is a Muslim, that “the terrorists want him to win,” and that “you are helping to destroy the foundation of this country.”
It’s easy to generalize the nastiness in your mind, until every silent house on your street seems to harbor a family that wants you strung up. But then we remembered that the tally I just described was ten thumbs up for every thumb down. And as Louise Gendron (senior writer for L’Actualité) reminded me last year, angry people are at least three times more likely to make their POV known than happy or indifferent people. If she gets three angry letters for every one happy letter after an article runs, she assumes the reader response was about even.
By that logic, perhaps 3-4 percent of the folks in our neighborhood are likely suspects for the angry notes. But our limbic response pictures the reverse, and two pissy letters become the tip of a 96 percent iceberg of hate.
I found myself falling into the same dark assumptions during my dissenting year at the Catholic college where I taught. I naturally began to assume that every silent person I passed on campus was wishing me hives. I found out later that the opposite was true: the majority were either indifferent or were silently cheering me on. (Note to self: DON’T SILENTLY CHEER PEOPLE ON. DO IT OUT LOUD. Knowing how much support I had would have changed everything.)
I was also extremely depressed at the time by the angry criticism I had received for my activism (which, btw, I will write about soon). It took (philosophy professor and later PBB contributor) Amy Hilden to point out the obvious to me–that the goal is not to avoid making people angry, but to make the right people angry for the right reasons. If everybody loves you, you probably aren’t doing anything of real significance.
So I had expected the minority opinion in our front yard to provoke somebody into doing something stupid and rude. And I knew that the silent majority, even those who disagree with us politically, would not condone that stupidity. But I also knew my kids would feel violated, angry, and afraid. Their own attitudes toward dissent are being tested and formed.
So we did what we do. We talked it through.
First Annual PBB Column Competition
In the wee hours of my sleepless nights, I edit the Humanist Parenting site for the Institute for Humanist Studies. One of my IHS duties is to solicit and/or write a monthly parenting column for Humanist Network News, which also then appears here on the Meming of Life.
In addition to my own columns, we’ve featured the writing of such freethinkers as Ed Buckner, Noell “Agnostic Mom” Hyman, Marilyn McCourt, Stu Tanquist, Jane Wynne Willson, and Roberta Nelson.
Now it’s your turn to become the quiet kind of famous. We are now accepting submissions for the First Annual Parenting Beyond Belief Column Competition. Your entry should tackle a subtopic within nonreligious parenting (as opposed to the topic on the whole) or a personal story from your own experience.
The top entries will:
— appear in Humanist Network News (subscription over 5,000);
— be posted on the Humanist Parenting website; and
— appear in the Meming of Life (which currently averages 2500-3000 visitors per day).
Submissions should be attached in a Word document 600-800 words in length PLUS a bio of no more than 75 words, and emailed to column [at] parentingbeyondbelief dot com with the word COLUMN in the subject line. All submissions become the sole property of Major League Baseball, and all decisions are final, though a little groveling never hurt anyone.
Deadline for submissions is September 30October 6, 2008.
the iWord revisited
One last ripple to address from last week’s posts…
In emails and comments, a few readers brought up another issue that cuts close to the bone for secular parents. In the conversation with my daughters, I described our condition after death as identical to our condition before birth. Some readers threw the flag at this point — Indoctrination, 10 yards against the parent, second down and 20! — because I did not say “I think our condition after death, etc.” or “other people think that when we die, etc.”
Wanna see a nonreligious parent turn cartwheels of panic? Accuse him or her of indoctrination. It’s the cardinal sin of freethought parenting. To avoid the appearance of it, we often bend over backwards to be evenhanded and neutral. Evenhanded is splendid. But in expressing ourselves to our children on these deeply-felt issues, we are not neutral, cannot be, and shouldn’t pretend to be.
Non-neutrality, however, is worlds away from indoctrination, and a source needs not be neutral to have value as a source. (My critical thinking students had trouble with this all the time, discarding one good source after another “because the author is biased” — meaning s/he had an opinion on the topic s/he was addressing.) Indoctrination is “Teaching someone to accept doctrines uncritically” (WordNet) — insisting they do so, in fact, often by invoking dire consequences should one stray from the party line. A parent can express his or her perspective without doing this. It’s all a matter of the larger context in which the expression takes place.
If this conversation with my daughters stood alone, the charge of indoctrination might stick. But parent-child conversations never stand alone — they build on everything that comes before. As regular MoL readers will know, freethought, not disbelief, is at the heart of my parenting, which makes the avoidance of indoctrination my Prime Directive. So my kids have heard from me, repeatedly, that different people believe different things, that they are free to form their own opinions, that my own statements are merely expressions of my opinion, that I would rather have them disagree with me than adopt my point of view only because it is mine, and so on. These are the foundational concepts in our family’s approach to knowledge. They’ve heard these things so often now that they roll their eyes and say “duh, I know, Dad” whenever I start in on one of those.
Once children hear that message loud and clear, a parent is freed up to express his/her perspective and welcome theirs without the burden of an added paragraph of caveat and disclaimer on every conversation.
Yes, a parent’s opinions will have a disproportionate influence on the child. As I said in a post last year,
there’s no use denying that, nor would I want to…Influence is sometimes passive and sometimes a matter of intentional teaching…My kids know — and are surely influenced by — my religious views. But I go to great lengths to counter that undue influence, keeping them off-balance while they’re young so they won’t be ossified before they can make up their adult minds:
“Dad? Did Jesus really come alive after he was dead?”
“I don’t think so. I think that’s just a made-up story so we feel better about death. But talk to Grandma Barbara. I know she thinks it really happened. And then you can make up your own mind and even change your mind back and forth about a hundred times if you want.”
That’s the idea. When influence exists in the context of direct encouragements to decide for one’s self and to seek out other points of view, it stops well short of that other iWord. That’s all I would ask of religious parents as well — not that they present themselves as neutral, but that they invite their kids to differ and ensure them that they will be no less loved if they do.
That’s influence without indoctrination.
Finks ahoy!
There’s plenty of nonsensical meme creation on the Internet (just so you know). One of my least favorites is what I’ll call the Fictional Narrative Cartoon (FNC, or ‘Fink’). Follow these steps to write a Fink of your own:
1. Select a life stance you have never held or attempted to understand.
2. Achieve a Vulcan mind-meld with people of that perspective. When that fails, simply pick a set of unflattering assumptions off the top of your head about what the world “must” look like from that perspective.
3. Weave a fictional monologue or dialogue to describe the world through the eyes of this worldview. Include acts of puppy smooshing for maximum effect.
4. Post!
I’ve seen atheists do this to religious folks and vice versa. It tends not to be a true Fink if the person once shared the worldview — the atheist who was once a genuine theist, or the theist who was once a genuine atheist. In those cases, the risk of nonfiction sneaking in is too great. The true Fictional Narrative Cartoon must spring entirely from willful ignorance.
My Google alert for “atheist parents” brings Christian FNCs about nonreligious parenting into my inbox once in a while. The gods of cyber-serendipity smiled on me yesterday, delivering a Fink about an atheist dad talking to his child about death just days after I had posted a nonfiction narrative of the same thing.
The blogger, a Christian father of seven, begins by describing his approach as a Christian parent talking to his children about death:
Have you ever had a surprise party thrown in your honor? You walk through the door and the lights come on and the horns blow, close friends cheer as ribbons and balloons are thrown into the air? Have you ever watched as an athlete’s name is announced and he runs from the dressing room tunnel and onto the field as 60 or 70 thousand people cheer his arrival?…When my kids ask about death, these are some of the analogies that I use…
What a difference it must be for atheist parents, especially for those who want to be honest with their child.
He’s right — it is certainly different. And yes, it’s a much greater challenge than contemplating death as a stadium full of angels doing the Wave. Unfortunately he doesn’t stop with what he knows, but begins to construct a Fink:
“Dad [says the child of the atheist], what happens when we die?”
“Well, nothing really. We come from nothing and we go to nothing. Either your mom and I or someone else will put you into the ground and cover you with dirt and the person that we knew as YOU will just totally and completely cease to exist.”
“But how can I just come to an end? What if I only live until I’m five years old? I won’t get to do anything important.”
“My dear boy. Five years or five hundred years, it doesn’t really matter because none of it counts, not ultimately anyhow. Humans are part of a dying species in a dying universe. You’re an accident little buddy. An absolute accident to which we gave a name. Don’t get me wrong. We love you, and perhaps some day you can even manipulate some other people to love you too. But apart from that you’re pretty much on your own.”
“But what are we here for? Is there any meaning or purpose to all this?”
“Use your brain son. How can there be meaning and purpose to something that’s an accident?…Reality is, you come from nothing and you’re headed to nothing, just emptiness, a void. That’s all there is son. That’s not a bad thing son. It just is. The fact is, our life has no meaning, no context and absolutely no purpose save the purpose that you pretend to give it. Pretty cool huh?”
“But daddy, shouldn’t I at least try to be a good person?”
“Oh my precious little munchkin. Good and bad are just subjective words that some people use to describe things that they like or don’t like…All I know is, live good, live bad, live for yourself, live for others, none of it matters because the end of the good and the end of the bad, the end of people, pigs and insects is exactly the same, we rot away and become a different form of matter. Now, why don’t you run along. I’ve got some useless and pointless things to do.”
“But dad, that’s absurd! How do you expect me to be happy if life has no meaning, context or purpose” If that’s the way things are, why did you make me in the fist place?”
“Well, sweetpea, now you’re starting to ask what’s beginning to feel like a lot of questions. First of all, I couldn’t not make you. My genes compel me to reproduce. I squirt my semen here and there and everywhere…”
You get the idea.
I was once at a family gathering where the subject turned to gays and lesbians. I chimed in that homosexual sex is disgusting. They all nodded, mildly surprised.
“You know something else that’s disgusting?” I added. “Heterosexual sex.” Reduce the sexual act to the physical slapping of flesh and it doesn’t matter who is involved — it’s disgusting. Gay rights opponents recoil at the idea of gay sex because they strip it of the emotional component that transforms their own rutting into something entirely else.
Reducing a nonreligious parent’s description of death to the slapping of dirt on a coffin achieves the same brand of reductionist nonsense. The Fink starts and stays with sterile facts, never granting the atheist parent the human faculties of compassion or love except as a laugh line. I do think we die, for real, and that love and understanding can help us live with this difficult fact quite beautifully and well — even without invoking balloons and confetti.
The best thing about the growing nonreligious parenting movement is that we no longer need be content with Finks about nonreligious parenting. We’re living the nonfiction versions. Which points to the most important difference between this blogger’s take on the atheist parent-child conversation and mine.
Mine actually happened.
[Link to the fictional conversation]
[Link to the nonfictional conversation]