can death give birth to wonder? (revised)
[NOTE: In preparing the following blog entry, I fell prey to a classic critical thinking error that goes by several names: “selective reporting,” “confirmation bias,” and “being an idiot.” Though the first several paragraphs are impeccably sound, the section on the Woodward paper is, unfortunately, complete rubbish. I say ‘unfortunately’ because it would have been fascinating if true. Ahh, but that’s how we monkeys always step in it, isn’t it now? I’ll leave the post up as a monument to my shortcomings and prepare another post about the specific way in which I misled myself.]
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You’ve probably seen the studies confirming the low frequency of religious belief among scientists, and the fact that the most eminent scientists are the least likely to believe in a personal God. Very interesting, and not surprising. Uncertainty would have been profoundly maladaptive for most of our species history. The religious impulse is an understandable response to the human need to know, or at least to feel that you do. Once you find a (much) better way to achieve confidence in your conclusions, one of the main incentives for religiosity loses its appeal.
Psychologist James Leuba was apparently the first to ask scientists the belief question in a controlled context. In 1914, Leuba surveyed 1,000 randomly-selected scientists and found that 58 percent expressed disbelief in the existence of God. Among the 400 “greater” scientists in his sample, the figure was around 70 percent.1 Leuba repeated his survey in 1934 and found that the percentages had increased, with 67 percent of scientists overall and 85 percent of the “eminent” group expressing religious disbelief.2
The Larson and Witham study of 1998 returned to the “eminent” group, surveying members of the National Academy of Sciences and finding religious disbelief at 93 percent. All sorts of interesting stats within that study: NAS mathematicians are the most likely to believe (about 15 percent), while biologists were least likely (5.5 percent).
[Here’s where the nonsense begins. Avert your eyes.]
But I recently came across a related statistic about scientists that, given my own background, ranks as the single most thought-provoking stat I have ever seen.
As I’ve mentioned before, my dad died when I was thirteen. It was, and continues to be, the defining event in my life, the beginning of my deepest and most honest thinking about the world and my place in it. My grief was instantly matched by a profound sense of wonder and a consuming curiosity. It was the start of the intensive wondering and questioning that led me (among other things) to reject religious answers on the way to real ones.
Now I learn that the loss of a parent shows a robust correlation to an interest in science. [Not.] A study by behavioral scientist William Woodward was published in the July 1974 issue of Science Studies. The title, “Scientific Genius and Loss of a Parent,” hints at the statistic that caught my attention. About 5 percent of Americans lose a parent before the age of 18. Among eminent scientists, however, that number is higher. Much higher.
According to the study, 39.6 percent of top scientists experienced the death of a parent while growing up—eight times the average.
Let’s hope my kids can achieve the same thirst for knowledge some other way.
Many parents see the contemplation of death as a singular horror, something from which their children should be protected. If nothing else, this statistic suggests that an early encounter with the most profound fact of our existence can inspire a revolution in thought, a whole new orientation to the world — and perhaps a completely different path through it.
[More later.]
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1 Leuba, J. H. The Belief in God and Immortality: A Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical Study (Sherman, French & Co., Boston, 1916).
2 Leuba, J. H. Harper’s Magazine 169, 291-300 (1934).
3Larson, E. J. & Witham, L. Nature 386, 435-436 (1997).
4Woodward, William R. Scientific Genius and Loss of a Parent, in Science Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 265-277.
Anatomy of a Frequently-Asked Question
[This column also appears in the April 16 edition of Humanist Network News.]
ANATOMY OF A FREQUENTLY-ASKED QUESTION
by Dale McGowan
In a recent article in USA Today (“Am I raising ‘atheist children’?”, March 17), author Nica Lalli addressed a common question for nonreligious parents: “How would you respond if one of your children became religious?” As the topic went rippling through the nonreligious blogosphere, both the consensus inside nonreligious parenting and the false assumptions outside of it were revealed in comment threads.
Like so many questions we hear, the way it is asked is at least as revealing as any answer. Sometimes I can barely hear the question itself for the clatter of the thrown gauntlet. The tone of the question often implies that all my high-minded claims of parental openness are a self-deluding sham—that hearing that one of my kids had chosen to identify with religion would cause me to fly into an icon-smashing, garment-tearing, child-disowning rage, well before the child had reached the stirring refrain of “Jesus Loves Me.”
There’s a strong consensus among nonreligious parents against putting worldview labels on our children or guiding them by the nose into our own. It’s not unanimous; some of the blog comments I’ve seen since Nica’s piece made me wince, like the atheist mother who said she would not “let” her child identify with religion. Fortunately, no hot or staining beverages were in my mouth when I read that. Let? Let? I’m not even sure what that means. But that view is happily rare. Most of us are more committed to parenting our children toward genuine autonomy than churning out rubber stamps of ourselves.
One of the many problems with the question is the implication that religious identification is a single point of arrival, like the day a young adult’s daemon takes a fixed form in His Dark Materials or palms begin flashing red in Logan’s Run. Did it work that way for you—or did you pass through a number of stages and try on a number of hats along the way? I thought so. And see what a lovely person you turned out to be.
A close relative of mine went through a period of experimentation with different worldviews. After being a fairly conventional New Testament Christian for a while, she became something of a Manichaean dualist, believing the world was divided into good and evil, darkness and light. She eventually went through a sort of Einsteinian-pantheist phase before adopting a benevolent, utilitarian humanism.
Then she turned six.
I encourage my kids to try on as many beliefs as they wish and to switch back and forth whenever they feel drawn toward a different hat, confident that in the long run they will be better informed not only of the identity they choose, but of those they have declined. Were I to disown my kids each time they passed through a religious identity, I’d have to keep a lawyer on retainer.
Now let’s get specific. My child has become “religious,” you say. Is it “Love-your-neighbor” religious…or “God-hates-fags” religious? “Four Chaplains” religious…or “9/11 hijackers” religious? Dalai Lama…or Jerry Falwell?
Adding to the difficulties is the almost comic range of meaning of “religion.” A good friend of mine has verses from the Book of Psalms scrolling around the walls of his bedroom and believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the sole path to salvation—yet describes himself as “not at all religious, really.” Then you have the Unitarians—the majority of whom are nontheistic—who tend to insist, sometimes downright huffily, that they are religious.
Just as troubling as the idea that I’d protest any and all religious expressions in my children is the notion that I’d applaud any and all nonreligious outcomes. Though many of the most ethical and humane folks I’ve known have been nonreligious, some of the most malignant and repugnant SOBs have been as well. So, then: Is it “Ayaan Hirsi Ali” nonreligious—or “Joe Stalin” nonreligious?
Perhaps you can see why I consider the question, “What if your child becomes religious?” as unanswerably meaningless as, “What if your child becomes political?”
I have three compassionate, socially conscientious, smart, ethical kids, with every indication of remaining so. If they choose a religious expression, it’s likely to be one that expresses those values. They might become liberal Quakers, or UUs, or progressive Episcopalians, or Buddhists, or Jains, framing their tendency toward goodness and conscience in a way different from but entirely respectable to my own way of seeing things. We could do far worse than a world of liberal Quakers.
If instead one of my kids were to identify with a more malignant religion, I’d express my concerns in no uncertain terms. But the consequences of the belief would be the main point of contention, not the fact that it is “religious.” And my love for my child, it goes without saying, would be reduced by not so much as a hair on a flea on a neutrino’s butt.
Looking back…and it’s about time (1)
Guest column by Becca McGowan
Alright, alright…I admit I haven’t been reading Dale’s blog. He’s been blogging for about nine months – oh, a year? – but somehow I never get around to reading it. Oh, I hear about what he writes on occasion as the day winds down and he shares a response that a reader had to a particular entry…it’s just that I never get around to actually reading the blog myself.
Nevertheless, I’ve been invited to write an entry. I don’t even remember the last time I had to write something of this length that others would read. I can’t even keep up with an easy book journal. I find writing intimidating. But as I thought about writing an entry, I actually became excited and curious: What would I write about, who would read it and how honest would I be?
Here goes…
I find people’s personal stories fascinating. We learn so much about each other when we know something about each other’s pasts. So I’m going to start with my personal story, specifically my family of origin and the role of religion in my upbringing. I feel very strongly that our families of origin play a significant role, positive and negative, in how we ourselves parent.
My mother is the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister. Let me emphasize the Southern. My mother and her three siblings seem to have loved their father dearly. Their descriptions and my memories of him are of a very loving, generous and kind man. Our son is named after him.
My father was also raised in a Southern Baptist family, and his father was in the military. I don’t know how regularly they attended church or with what intensity their beliefs were practiced. My parents met at Oklahoma Baptist University, and when I was born, my parents attended First Baptist Church, Atlanta.
Since the word “Baptist” has occurred four times in two paragraphs, it’s safe to say I have a Baptist background.
But my parents eventually left First Baptist because of disagreements with church ideas and wound up at Mount Carmel Christian Church. Notice the missing denomination.
The change did not go over well with my mother’s parents.
My parents eventually divorced. When I was in second grade, I moved with my mom, sister, and new stepdad to San Francisco. This reintroduced the Baptist thread, because stepdad was a Southern Baptist minister. Or had been, anyway—he left the church when the church turned its back on him during his divorce. His feelings of rejection and church hypocrisy were intense. Soon after we moved to San Francisco, by his orders, our family stopped attending church.
Not exactly how my mother had envisioned our new life in California.
My stepfather eventually began playing racquetball on Sunday mornings, which gave my mom an idea: she could take us girls to church during racquetball time. He wouldn’t have to go. But another family dynamic comes into play here – one we definitely don’t have time to get into: Our family, he said, did things “as a family” or not at all. Either we all went to church, or no one went to church. Since he wasn’t going, neither would we.
What’s a well-intentioned Christian mother to do? Well, since Tuesday nights was our stepdad’s late night at work, we started praying before our meals on Tuesday nights. After the meal my mom would choose a passage from the Bible, read it to us, and try to discuss it with us. If we heard his car come up the alley, we quickly put everything away.
This went on for years.
During this same time, our family began going to Grace Cathedral, the Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco—but only for Christmas and Easter services. (My stepdad was raised in the Episcopal Church so perhaps he felt some desire to reconnect with that denomination.) Since Mom got to pick what we did on Mother’s Day, we went to church on that day as well.
So let’s sum up: We have the Southern Baptist preacher’s daughter who occasionally goes to the Episcopal cathedral and one night a week secretly teaches her daughters about Christianity. We have the former Episcopalian turned Southern Baptist minister turned church-rejecting stepfather. And you have me, the quiet, observant, relatively compliant teenager.
Decision number one: When I go to college, I’m going to church every Sunday.
Decision number two: When I get married, we’re going to pray before dinner.
I headed to UC Berkeley, and sure enough, began going to a local church. I don’t even remember the denomination. Even after spending a Saturday night at a boyfriend’s place (okay, that’s my first sweaty-palmed honest phrase…what if my mother reads this?!) I would get up on Sunday morning, put on my nice clothes and walk to church. I continued going to church during college and during grad school at UCLA. And all along, it had more to do with defiance of my stepdad than belief.
When Dale and I got married, we didn’t pray before meals but did attend Wooddale Church, a Baptist-aligned megachurch in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. We went to Wooddale for about five years and even participated in a commitment ceremony with our two-year-old son, promising to raise him in a Christian home.
But it was wearing on Dale, and one day, as we were driving home from church, he said, “I just can’t go to church anymore.”
Let me stop there for a moment. As an elementary school kid, I wanted to go to church to make new friends and participate in the social activities I remembered from our time in Atlanta. As a teenager, I was completely neutral towards the Tuesday night prayer and bible verses. I was more in love with the fact that we were doing something behind my stepfather’s back. As a college student, I was in control of whether I went to church. And now, as a married woman, I was going to church with my family.
So “I just can’t go to church anymore” didn’t sit well.
Looking back, though — and it’s only recently that I have looked back — I realize it still wasn’t about belief vs. disbelief. I was still “siding” with my mom against my stepdad, still fighting a battle that was long since over.
There’s more, of course…but why not leave you with a cliffhanger until next time?
[On to Part 2]
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BECCA McGOWAN is an elementary educator. She holds a BA in Psychology from UC Berkeley and a graduate teaching certificate from UCLA. She lives with her husband Dale and three children in Atlanta, Georgia.
happy birthday, big blue
One year ago today, Parenting Beyond Belief was born. The doctors were a bit worried at first — she was mostly blue, for one thing — but her spine was straight and she had two hands. Different sizes, sure, but two.
PBB opened on Amazon at 3300, the top one-tenth of one percent. A book that opens around 3000 typically settles contentedly into the 30-40,000 range after 6-8 weeks. Though the rank has gone up and down, it has been remarkably steady in the long haul, averaging around 3600 out of 4.5 million. Last night I checked the rank: 3302. So the audience continues to find the book, which is lovely.
This site now averages 1400 visitors a day, including a secular parents discussion forum, this blog, a page of resources for nonreligious parents, and the seminars. And the manuscript for a follow-up titled Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief is due to the publisher in five weeks and should be released around December.
the seminars
I am not a people-person. Folks always tell me they’re shocked to learn this. I suppose I do navigate PeopleWorld fairly well when necessary, but it doesn’t come naturally. I’d always rather be with a few familiar old shoes than a crowd of any kind. Parties suck the energy out of me, even as they make a bass-drumming bunny out of my wife. I disappear once or twice during any given party — simply decamp to the bathroom to splash water on my face and not chat for a few minutes. I’m not proud of this social ineptitude, but there it is.
Hiking alone for five days straight, on the other hand, or working alone in my home office every day, seeing only humans with whom I share DNA (in one way or another) for days on end, even weeks? Bliss.
So saying a seminar tour is more than a tad out of my comfort zone is…well…accurate. But we all have to move out of our comfort zones, or so I’ve heard.
Which is why I am surprised and even a bit pleased to discover, with six cities down and hopefully 30 to go, what it is that I look forward to as I leave for each trip.
It’s the people and their stories.
I am endlessly fascinated and moved by the human stories I’ve been hearing on the road. I simply can’t get enough of them. The mother of a newborn who is wrestling with her mother-in-law over baptism. The couple who recently found their way out of fundamentalism together and were immediately cut off (along with their daughters) from the rest of their family. The mother who pulled her daughter out of a religiously-saturated public school in the South to homeschool her — only to find the local homeschooling group required a pledge to follow “Christ-centered curricula” and to never teach evolution. The father whose ex-wife has converted to conservative Islam and now seeks full custody of their daughter — and appears close to getting it.
Then there are the adult nonreligious children of nonreligious parents, who wonder what the big deal is, as well as couples from families that are both religious and entirely open.
I’ve met people with deep scars and deeper resentments from having the fear of Hell drummed into them as kids, as well as the parents of a seven-year-old currently being terrorized to tears with that grotesque idea by his playmates.
Those most wounded by religion in the past often have the hardest time hearing that their kids need to be religiously literate. They want to keep the damn stuff as far from their kids as possible. I try to make the case that this is a recipe for producing a teen fundie — an attention-getting claim if ever there was. (I’ll make that case in an upcoming blog.)
One gentleman argued that we must say the word “evidence” as often as possible to our kids, suggests calling the winter holiday “Chrismyth,” etc, to drill home the difference in the religious and nonreligious approaches to knowledge. I’m not a big driller-homer, myself. I like to achieve the same things more subtly. But we all have to find our level.
I met a young woman for whom the section on helping kids deal with death had a special intensity: her husband, the father of their kids, has been diagnosed with brain cancer. I’ve been haunted by the thought of her and her kids nearly every day since we met. It completely breaks my heart, in no small part because my own dad died when I was young. I saw my own mom, widowed at 39, in that woman, and myself in her son.
A lesbian couple is currently working on pregnancy, even as they worry about coming out as nonbelievers to the evangelical parents of one of the women — something they want to get out of the way before a child arrives. “I love them dearly,” she said, “and they’ve just come around to accepting that I’m gay, and we’re talking again. Now I’m going hit them with this?”
I spoke at length with the parents of an impressionable seven-year-old (what other kind is there?) who has been invited, repeatedly, to join his friends at a Wednesday night bible study. The hitch? No parents allowed. One wonders why.
The seminar ends with suggestions for helping kids think about death. A child who becomes obsessively fearful of the idea of her own death is often stuck in a false concept of oblivion — what I call “me-floating-in-darkness-forever.” I offer a few specific ways to reframe this. After one seminar, a man approached and shook my hand.
“That thing about ‘me-floating-in-darkness’? I’ve always been terrified of death because that’s the way I’ve always seen it! I never even realized I was seeing it that way until you said that. I’m walking out of here today less afraid of death. That alone was worth the price of admission!”
All that after six cities.
The trick, as you might imagine, is coming up with a seminar that serves all those different needs, and what a trick it is. Any given issue has a wide range of significance to the audience. Take extended religious family. For some, this is a non-issue: the family is secular, the family is religious but open, or the family is 2000 miles away. For others, it is THE ISSUE.
Up next: Dallas/Fort Worth. I can’t wait to hear what y’all have to say.
DEUTERONOMY (bookin’ through the bible 11)
You’re a thirtyish Israelite. You’ve been wandering in the desert your entire life and are now poised on the doorstep of the Promised Land. You can practically taste the milk and honey—which, after nothing but manna all your life, sounds pretty damn good. Just one ordeal remains: the Trial by Sermon. Moses is geared up to give you Israelites a three-sermon thrashing, telling y’all (1) why you don’t deserve the reward you are about to get, (2) all the arcane rules you must henceforth follow, and (3) the many, many people you will have to exterminate — Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites — for not vacating the Promised Land. For though Yahweh was apparently able to promise you the land, he was not in a position to evict the previous tenants himself.
(For the actual slaughterfest, read Joshua. Deuteronomy is just the marching orders.)
Hangest thou in there, O Israel, until the end of the third sermon, and I promise you, Moses will finally die. Then you can proceed to the Promised Land and get on with the holy business of genocide.
So who’s ready for the most delightful combination of comedy and genocide since Springtime for Hitler?
SERMON #1: Dad reminds us what happened last time…like we’d forget
Moses reminds the Israelites of the reason for their troubles: God tried to lead them into the Promised Land 40 years earlier and they had disobeyed. (Okay, Moses was the one who actually incurred God’s wrath, but as he makes clear in Deut 4:21, the Israelites made him mess up. Did I promise comedy or did I?)
Now, as they enter the suburbs of Canaan, Moses is essentially turning around in the front seat and saying “Now listen, we’re about to pull into my boss’s driveway again, so I’m going over the rules one more time. And if you kids embarrass me again, so help me, it’s Deuteronomy 28! Got it?”
SERMON #2: The Rules
Moses: “Now listen carefully. I can’t go with you into the Promised Land, because—as I believe I mentioned—you made me disobey Yahweh. So I’ll give you the rules and then die. They are simple rules—so simple even a Hittite could follow them:
“Once you’re inside the P.L., worship only Yahweh, and only in the designated areas. Don’t listen to people from other cultures and religions. In fact, kill them. Drink, but don’t get drunk. No shrimp or pork, and if you enslave another Hebrew, be sure to let him go after six years. No fortunetelling or witchcraft. Kill stubborn sons and all Amalekites, but NOT fruit trees, the mothers of newborn birds, or livestock that have fallen over, because that would be mean.
“No mixing fabrics, crops, or genders. Follow thus-and-such rules for marriage, loans, hygiene, and military service. Don’t sacrifice blemished animals. And if you’ve murdered someone, we have designated three cities where you can flee for asylum.
“I believe that covers everything. Oh, one more, this is important: Women are forbidden to grab the groin of their husband’s enemy (Deut 25:11, lest ye doubt). Can’t believe I almost left that one out. That is all.”
That’s the gist of the sermon, but the way it proceeds is interestingly different from the earlier attempts to lay down the law—much more lawyerly and tight. He doesn’t just instruct the Israelites to worship only one god; he backs them into an epistemological corner with a pretty impressive rhetorical Q&A. It’s like Socrates, with worse logic but a much better beard—all circularity (“Yahweh is the only real god because he’s the one who spoke from the midst of the fire,” etc.) and argument from authority. But a tip of the yarmulke for at least making an effort at argument.
Take a moment to read and appreciate the breathtaking bloodlust in Deut 20:16. I’ll use the happiest, breeziest translation possible for this (The Message), and it still retains the ability to disgust an ethical humanist:
But with the towns of the people that God, your God, is giving you as an inheritance, it’s different: don’t leave anyone alive. Consign them to holy destruction: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, obeying the command of God, your God. This is so there won’t be any of them left to teach you to practice the abominations that they engage in with their gods and you end up sinning against God, your God.
Cross-stitch THAT one on your throw pillow, Grandma.
Okay. So there’s the LAW portion of our program. Now for ORDER.
SERMON #3: THE THREATS
Sign no treaties with the heathens. Show them no mercy. Kill them all, smash their altars, chop down their sacred trees. And if your brother, or your son or daughter, or your wife, or your closest friend urges you to worship a rival god, show him no pity or compassion. Take his life. “Let your hand be the first against him to put him to death.”
And then it gets serious. Remember the hypothetical dad threatening his kids with Deut 28? Here goes. If you break Yahweh’s laws:
“You shall become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your carcasses shall become food for all the birds of the sky.”
“The Lord will strike you with hemorrhoids, from which you shall never recover.” (28:27)
“You shall not prosper in your ventures, but shall be constantly abused and robbed.”
“If you pay the bride price for a wife, another man shall enjoy her.”
“You shall be in terror, night and day, with no assurance of survival. In the morning you shall say, ‘If only it were evening!;’ and in the evening you shall say, ‘if only it were morning!’—because of what your heart shall dread and your eyes shall see.”
“She who is most tender and dainty among you will secretly eat the afterbirth that issues from between her legs because of utter want.” (sometimes translated as eating the newborn itself)
Moses, creatively exhausted, dies, then (according to those who continue to assert that he wrote Deuteronomy) writes about his burial and the thirty days of mourning that followed.
Looking for the milk of human kindness in the Bible? Stick with the gospels—no no, better make that the synoptic gospels—and cherry-pick the epistles and proverbs, but steer clear of Deuteronomy. On the biblical wind-chill scale, Deuteronomy — please forgive the expression, Wiccans — is the witch’s tit.
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ADDENDUM: FROM THE “HONEY, THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES” DEPT.
How amazingly strange to learn that the very same evening I wrote about the death of Moses, Charlton Heston died.
Next time: ACTS
(date TBA)
april updates
- April 03, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, Parenting, PBB
4
1. I’m still at work on the Deuteronomy post and plan to post by Sunday. (More to say than I remembered…Holy Moses!)
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2. We’re now into Chapter Four of Northing at Midlife, my still (dammit) unpublished travel narrative describing my secular midlife crisis on the trails of Britain. Chapter 4 is one of my favorites in the book. In today’s installment, I chat with my colon and trash-talk a beloved poet. Check it out.
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3. One of my regulars (ondfly123) had a *spectacular* idea: a guest column by my wife Becca!
I, stupidly, had never even thought of it. She doesn’t even read the blog. (Her loving reply “And when exactly am I gonna find time to read your blog?!” is just one of the many ways she protects me from dangerously high levels of self-esteem.) Earlier this morning, I told her about the suggestion that she guest-blog. She screamed, then laughed and said she’d do it. Woohoo! Watch for it.
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4. That has given me an even better idea. I’m going to see if my kids are interested in writing occasional posts. Turn this thing into a family affair! (Without Mrs. Beasley.)
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5. I’ve been asked to write a feature for AAI’s Secular Nation magazine — “an overview/critique of several ongoing atheist and Freethinking projects that increase visibility of this community in the public square.” Vacillated, hemmed, hawed, then agreed. Hard to pass up a chance to do 3000 unpaid words when I’m under so many deadlines. It’s a topic I’ve been thinking and talking about quite a bit lately, so I fear I’ll find something to say.
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6. Working with the brilliant and cool Matt Cherry at the Institute for Humanist Studies on an initiative we’re calling ONE SAFE GENERATION. The idea is to break the cycle of inherited violence by working toward a single generation safe from the fear of physical harm under which so many kids now grow up — everything from corporal punishment to forced conscription in war. Matt noticed that the London-based International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), which has resolutions on a number of important social issues, has no stated policy position on corporal punishment. He asked me to draft a resolution, which we’ve now submitted to the IHEU for consideration at their upcoming General Assembly in Washington DC in June. I’ll share the text eventually.
7. For those of you who’ve asked about PBB events and other news: We’ve now added a NEWS box to the PBB homepage below the main menu.
the father review redo
- April 02, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In reviews
- 23
Okay, I’m feeling properly chastened. As some of you pointed out, both in comments and in email, my review of The Golden Compass was a tad harsh. You’re right!
Let me explain. There are two things in particular that really make a movie for me: originality and music. Golden Compass (the film) is brimming with brilliance, but it let me down on those two points by including intrusive, overwrought music and by dropping the ball on the most original aspect of the book: the intensity of the human/daemon relationship. As a result, I sulked out of the opening day showing, went straight home and wrote my unbalanced review, leaving out much that was awesome in the flick. And there’s a lot.
So mea culpa.
Nearly four months later, when we finally got around to posting our father-son review, I slapped mine up there without reconsidering it in the light of passed time. So here it is again, this time with commentary in italics:
10. It’s bloody difficult to make a 2-hour reduction of a book of the scope, depth, and texture of The Golden Compass. That said, they blew it.
“Blew it” is way too harsh. They did many things incredibly well, though I don’t know how anyone who hasn’t read the book could follow it. It’s gaspingly beautiful and imaginatively textured, and the acting is great. Then there’s the daemon thing. I’ll get there.
9. Despite predictions to the contrary, it is made entirely clear that “the Magisterium” is the church and the Authority is God. The officers look like catholic cardinals, the Magisterium buildings are decorated with saints and icons, Asriel is accused of “heresy,” its opponents are called freethinkers, and Mrs. Coulter refers to the “error of our ancestors” that brought “dust” (sin) into the world. Plenty clear.
They did this reeeeeally well. Many freethought types were worried the war-on-the-church core of the book would be compromised, a la Da Vinci Code. It isn’t compromised. Support the troops!
8. The human/daemon relationship was made so intensely real in the book that both Connor and I longed for daemons of our own. This was the most remarkable, most brilliant, most emotionally captivating element of the book, yet the movie fails to make daemons anything more than beloved pets.
Considering how disappointed I was in this aspect, this part of the review is too mild. When Connor and I reached the intercision scene while reading, we were both nearly in tears. And Roger holding the dried fish in the shack… jeez, I’m tearing up now. In the movie, I didn’t feel either moment much at all. Only by showing Mrs. Coulter in slo-mo and (somehow) ratcheting the music up even more was the intensity of the moment made noticeable.
7. In the book, the witches are thousand-year-old beings, transcendent and wise, with an entirely different perspective on existence, amazing and original seers and sages. In the movie, they fly. That’s about it.
Again, a movingly original aspect of the book is left fallow.
6. I spent the six months prior to the film’s release depressed because I thought chirpy, doe-eyed Dakota Fanning had been cast as Lyra. Turns out it’s Dakota Blue Richards, and she’s PERFECT. Strong, petulant, independent, but also vulnerable and good.
This was an enormous relief. After watching Dakota Fanning transform strong, gutsy Fern into a cutie pie in Charlotte’s Web, I couldn’t believe they had cast her as Lyra Belacqua. You can’t imagine my relief when Dakota Blue Richards came on screen instead. Heh.
5. The music is absolutely terrible — a combination of overwrought wallpaper (never shuts up) and Mickey Mousing (imitates small visual actions with musical gestures).
Way too harsh. The music itself is not at all terrible. I’ve since heard it separated from the film, and it’s a lovely, brooding, harmonic clockwork kind of a thing. Very nice. The problem is the scoring— that is, the use of the music. Among other things, it is way, way too present, which is a mortal sin for film scoring after about 1975.
I’ll blog about film music at some point. Having studied it and considered entering the field myself for several years, I’m full of opinions and preferences. What does poor scoring do to me? Picture Tom Hanks in The Green Mile when, with John Coffey in the chair, he says “Roll on two.” Now picture Richard Simmons doing “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” behind him. Distracting, eh? Tell me about it.
4. The bear fight, despite some fine CGI, somehow manages to be a yawner.
3. Sam Elliott is spot-on as Lee Scoresby.
2. Coulter’s monkey is exquisitely creepy and hateworthy.
1. The ending is indescribably, epically, abysmally lame.
That’s not true. The ending is describably lame. I’m talking about the whole ending, all the way back to the escape from Bolvangar, when the fleeing kids confront the random hoard of Tartars — whose identities and loyalties have not been sufficiently established in the film for the confrontation to mean much more than Cute Kidlets vs. Bearded Baddies. The disappearing wolves are cool, though.
You should definitely see the film. It’s a visual feast, the acting is superb, and Pullman’s worlds are so incredible it would be a Dust to miss a chance at seeing into it. Even with an insistent, moaning orchestra in each ear.
The Golden Compass Father-Son Review
- March 31, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In reviews
- 20
PARTIAL SYNOPSIS (from www.imdb.com)
Lyra Belacqua is an orphan living at Jordan College in the Oxford of an alternate universe. In Lyra’s world every person is accompanied by a daemon, a physical representation of their soul in animal form. Because she is young, Lyra’s daemon Pantalaimon can change his shape to appear as any animal he chooses. Adults’ daemons settle into one shape and don’t change.Lyra overhears a conversation between the master of Jordan College and Fra Pavel, a representative of the powerful and sinister religious body called the Magisterium. They’re discussing an expedition to the far north planned by Lyra’s uncle, Lord Asriel; he wants to study a mysterious substance called Dust that seems to enter Lyra’s world from parallel universes.
Even before we meet Lyra, boys and girls have been disappearing, snatched off the streets. The children call the kidnappers Gobblers. Lyra and her friend Roger promise one another that if either is caught, the other will come to the rescue. That night, while Lyra is at dinner being introduced to Mrs. Coulter, Roger and another friend, Billy Costa are taken by the Gobblers.
Lyra is taken with her new acquaintance and agrees eagerly when Mrs. Coulter, who is also planning a trip to the far north, proposes that Lyra come along as her assistant. The morning of Lyra’s departure, the master gives her a strange golden instrument called an alethiometer. He tells her that it is capable of telling the truth, but he can’t tell her much about how it works. He admonishes her to keep the alethiometer to herself…
I saw The Golden Compass with my son Connor on opening day after reading the book to him. I promised y’all a dual father-son review at the time, but life intervened. Here it is at last, a few weeks before the DVD release…
THE GOLDEN COMPASS
review by Connor McGowan (12)
I thought the movie was very good, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking, “Why did they skip through that so fast?” and “What happened to that other thing that he took a whole chapter explaining in the book?” After the movie, my dad agreed with me but explained that you can’t fit a book that large and detailed into a two-hour movie and keep it interesting for kids.
I remember thinking the same thing in the first Harry Potter movie. One of my favorite scenes in the book was the potions room in the dungeon, when Hermione solved the task. I was SO MAD when they left that out! But they have to make choices, I guess.
The special effects were just amazing, especially with the snow bears and the daemons. But I didn’t feel the same connection between the daemons and the humans as I did in the book. I wanted my own daemon more than anything.
Overall for me, keeping in mind the limitations of the movie’s director, I liked it enough to see it again. Unfortunately, it did horribly on its opening weekend and there were only a handful of people in the theatre with us.
THE GOLDEN COMPASS
review by Dale McGowan (45)
[NOTE: I’ve reconsidered and rephrased some of these comments in the next post.]
TOP TEN THOUGHTS
10. It’s bloody difficult to make a 2-hour reduction of a book of the scope, depth, and texture of The Golden Compass. That said, they blew it.
9. Despite predictions to the contrary, it is made entirely clear that “the Magisterium” is the church and the Authority is God. The officers look like catholic cardinals, the Magisterium buildings are decorated with saints and icons, Asriel is accused of “heresy,” its opponents are called freethinkers, and Mrs. Coulter refers to the “error of our ancestors” that brought “dust” (sin) into the world. Plenty clear.
8. The human/daemon relationship was made so intensely real in the book that both Connor and I longed for daemons of our own. This was the most remarkable, most brilliant, most emotionally captivating element of the book, yet the movie fails to make daemons anything more than beloved pets.
7. In the book, the witches are thousand-year-old beings, transcendent and wise, with an entirely different perspective on existence, amazing and original seers and sages. In the movie, they fly. That’s about it.
6. I spent the six months prior to the film’s release depressed because I thought chirpy, doe-eyed Dakota Fanning had been cast as Lyra. Turns out it’s Dakota Blue Richards, and she’s PERFECT. Strong, petulant, independent, but also vulnerable and good.
5. The music is absolutely terrible — a combination of overwrought wallpaper (never shuts up) and Mickey Mousing (imitates small visual actions with musical gestures).
4. The bear fight, despite some fine CGI, somehow manages to be a yawner.
3. Sam Elliott is spot-on as Lee Scoresby.
2. Coulter’s monkey is exquisitely creepy and hateworthy.
1. The ending is indescribably, epically, abysmally lame.
Anyone who has not read the book should read it before seeing the movie, then skip the movie. [Fine. That was over-the-top. See the movie.]
LEVITICUS (bookin’ through the bible 10)
[back to ECCLESIASTES and SONG OF SONGS]
Now Moses was very humble—more humble than any other person on earth.
Numbers 12:3 (The traditionally-claimed author of Numbers is, well…Moses)
The wicked man desires the booty of evil men.
Proverbs 12:12
Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, remove the foreskin of your hearts.
Jeremiah 4:4
There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.
Ezekiel 23:20
There are many candidates for funniest verse in the Bible, but for me there’s a clear winner—and it’s found, surprisingly enough, in Leviticus, the least funny book of the Bible:
If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death.
Leviticus 24:17
During the ethics portion of my half-day nonreligious parenting seminar, and in a previous post, I talk about what I call “boiling-pot parenting”—the notion that our children are, at root, boiling pots of depravity, and that our foremost occupation as parents is sitting hard on their lids lest their naturally sinful natures o’erflow.
I quote Christian parenting author Reb Bradley who warns that “all children are born delinquent….Given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a killer, a thief, and a rapist.” I mention The Lord of the Flies, a novel that convincingly plays out Bradley’s nightmares.
I then make what I hope is a convincing case that this is all rather silly and thoroughly unsupported by the best research in the social and developmental sciences.
Leviticus (“of the Levites”) is the book of the Bible that most directly reflects the boiling pot mindset. And though it’s tempting to lay the blame at the foot of Leviticus, that would be silly, too. The Bible didn’t create this mindset any more than it created self-delusion, self-contradiction, bigotry and fear. These are far more ancient and basic human frailties of which the Bible is merely a potent reflection, a handy place to go when we need to feel good about our lazy inability to do any better than ignorant Bronze Age goatherds.
Because I’ve come to see Leviticus as a reflection of our fears rather than the inspiration for them, it doesn’t get under my skin anymore. It’s fascinating anthropology. The fear of disorder—the absolute terror that the second law of thermodynamics governs human life as well as the physical world—is at the root of all Abrahamic religion. We’re all hurtling toward a cliff every second of our lives, says the Salvationist, with Sin leaning on the accelerator. That’s why Leviticus, the “morality” chapter in the OT, is not a steering wheel but an emergency brake. Don’t do X, never do Y, watch out for Z. Leviticus boils down to this idea: Follow God’s rules or die.
And such rules! There are rules for the wringing off of pigeon heads, precise instructions for the killing, burning, distribution, cutting, and “heaving” of animal sacrifices, for the all-important “waving” of the entrails, for the girding of men with “curious girdles.” There are rules for allowing fields to lie fallow and for washing pots, cautions against mixing this and that—different grains, different threads, same genders, the sacred and the profane. Don’t touch a menstruating woman. Don’t think an impure thought. And if you do… If you do… (Damn. What should we say?) I’ve got it! An invisible and quite powerful force will smite you.
No, that’s not exactly right, is it. One of the things I find most curious about Leviticus is that God is telling the people to do the smiting. He’s quite busy, granted, but I can’t help thinking it strange. Why bother with intermediaries? How much more efficient it would be if God would simply set things up so the scores of capital crimes in the bible are rewarded with a nice, sudden aortic rupture. Imagine Hitler crumpling on the spot before he quite got the order to invade Poland out of his mouth. Imagine how many children would have been spared if the first child-abusing priest had keeled over, pants around his ankles, as a warning to the others. Imagine all the disobedient children, astrologers, seed-spillers, marriers of their wives’ mothers, every one of them dropped where they stand. Instead, this weird system of intermediaries. I’m sure there’s a reason.
Leviticus is often maligned for its clear and happy endorsement of slavery. But dig deep enough—granted, you’ll need a big, big shovel—and there’s a hint of moral progress here. The Israelite is instructed to treat all Israelite slaves generously: “You must not rule over him ruthlessly,” and he must be released before the periodic “Jubilee year.” A miracle of progressive thinking.
You quickly note the obvious flipside—that non-Israelite slaves are designated as property “for all time” and can be treated however you like—that this is just bigotry compounded by distinguishing between those worthy of mercy (those most like one’s self) and all others. Give me a break. I’m digging for gold under a latrine here.
The book ends with an epic speech by Jehovah in which he promises bad juju if the rules are broken:
If you reject My laws and spurn My rules … I will wreak misery upon you … you shall sow your seed to no purpose, for your enemies shall eat it … I will break your proud glory. I will make your skies like iron and your earth like copper. … I will go on smiting you sevenfold for your sins. I will loose wild beasts against you, and they shall bereave you of your children … though you eat, you shall not be satisfied … your land shall become a desolation and your cities a ruin …
And then some stuff about taxes.
Leviticus is an early attempt to impose the order of rules on the perceived chaos of the human condition, to articulate a workable morality. In the absence of systematic evidence, we were feeling our way forward, trying to come up with rules to live by, trying to avoid screwing up—an activity in the midst of which we generally screw up far worse.
And there’s the human comedy for ya.
Far less forgivable to me is the fact that anyone in the 21st century—anyone with access to the knowledge and insight and history these guys didn’t have—still finds a single scrap of Leviticus good for anything beyond cultural anthropology. And the occasion chortle.
UP NEXT
April 3: Deuteronomy
Believers on Deuteronomy
Skeptics on Deuteronomy
Slate blog on Deuteronomy
awakenings!
- March 25, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In Parenting, PBB
- 8
Doe! — H. Simpson
Those of you who visit regularly — and hey, thanks for that, by the way — surely noticed a drop in activity at the Meming of Life in recent weeks. I found myself awash in 2 much 2 do: the webinars, the seminars, working on the follow-up book for Parenting Beyond Belief, finishing enormous freelance projects for the clients who feed my children, researching a proposal for a third book, and more. Oh, like parenting. Heh.
I’m emerging from it now, gradually. As a result, the Meming of Life is reawakening, blinking in the bright light of the Internet like a spring fawn. Stick that freakin light, says wee blinking fawn.
What to expect:
I’ll be back to a regular posting schedule of twice a week, usually Monday and Thursday.
The serialization of my occasionally humorous death-obsessed secular travel narrative Northing at Midlife is back on track. The current post is the end of chapter three and the Cotswold Way, after which we head into the north of England and the Coast-to-Coast Walk, where I nearly or actually die, I won’t tell you which.
I’ll put some new links into Ten Wonderfull Things very shortly.
The next installment of Bookin’ through the Bible will go up later this week. Leviticus, uh…woohoo!
I’ll also continue the Laughing Matters series, trying ever so hard to remember my original point.
I’ll share the single weirdest and most thought-provoking statistic I have ever heard.
I’ll fill y’all in on how the seminar tour is going (pretty darn well, and getting better all the time) and share some of the content, as well as the joys and silliness of life on the road.
I’ll bring you up-to-date on the next book, which has just been titled–and hey, titled well!
Several recent fun facts indicate that nonreligious parenting continues to grow and flourish around the country:
1. Parenting Beyond Belief has climbed in Amazon sales again, recently rising to 2400–the top one-tenth of one percent, and even higher than it opened nearly one year ago. It is (at this writing) once again the #1 Parenting Reference on Amazon and #2 in Parenting Education;
2. Several nonreligious parenting groups and humanist children’s programs have formed in recent months around the country, including Portland OR, Albuquerque NM, Raleigh NC, Palo Alto CA, and New York City;
3. Each month since last September, this website has logged thousands more visitors than the previous month. Yesterday the PBB site had over 1400 visitors –the most ever in a single day;
4. I’ve begun to get a steady trickle of unintentionally funny emails from fundamentalists.
So I’m back in the saddle as we head for the one year anniversary on April 9. Happy spring, you secular parents you.
