Keeping forbidden fruit from taking root
|
It’s funny/sad/scary how many things we humans get not just wrong but precisely backwards.
We try to make ourselves safe from terrorism by military force—in the process, creating deeper anger and much more fertile ground for terrorism.
We try to raise moral kids by inculcating unquestionable rules and commandments—which turns out to be “worse than doing nothing” because “it interferes with moral development.”1
We try to prevent teen pregnancy by abstinence-only sex ed, which results in equal or greater rates of teen pregnancy. 2
Some of us try to protect our kids from religious fundamentalism by shielding them from all exposure to religion—an ignorance that results in many secular kids being emotionally seduced into religious fundamentalism.
And in our fervor to protect our kids from risks, we often deny them the chance to develop their own risk management smarts—which then puts them at far greater risk.
The whiplash reply to this line of thought is often, “Oh, so you’re saying we should raise kids without rules, encourage them to enjoy unprotected multispecies sex at age twelve, and let them cartwheel down the middle of the freeway while smoking?”
That’s right. Those are the two choices–ya diametrical, dualistic, black-and-white, not-more-than-two-options-seeing putz.
(Sorry, that was harsh.)
One of the decisions parents have to make is how best to approach the issue of alcohol. Since most of us can be assumed to share the goal of raising kids who will use alcohol responsibly and safely once they are of legal drinking age, the question is about how best to get there.
Once again, it’s research to the rescue. And once again, it turns out that the advice of our jerking knee is precisely wrong. Children are more likely to develop dysfunctional and unhealthy habits regarding alcohol if it’s made into forbidden fruit and a magical rite of passage into adulthood.
“The best evidence shows that teaching kids to drink responsibly is better than shutting them off entirely from it,” says Dr. Paul Steinberg, former director of counseling at Georgetown University. “You want to introduce your kids to it, and get across the point that this is to be enjoyed but not abused.” 3
In his landmark 1983 study The Natural History of Alcoholism, Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant found that people who grew up in families where alcohol was forbidden at the table but consumed elsewhere were seven times more likely to be alcoholics that those who came from families where wine was served with meals but drunkenness was not tolerated.
Vaillant also looked at cross-cultural data, finding a much higher frequency of alcohol abuse in cultures that prohibit drinking among children but condone adult drunkenness (such as Ireland) and a relatively low occurrence of alcohol abuse in countries that allow children to occasionally sample wine or beer but frown on adult drunkenness (such as Italy).
Moderate exposure coupled with mature adult modeling is the key.
Vaillant concluded that teens should be allowed to enjoy wine on occasion with family meals. “The way you teach responsibility,” he noted in 2008, “is to let parents teach appropriate use.” 4
Religious and cultural traditions that forbid forbid forbid often end up with more dysfunction per acre than those that teach and encourage moderation. Southern Baptists joke even amongst themselves about their hypocrisy regarding alcohol. My mother-in-law once went to a hotel that was completely filled with conventioneers — yet when she went to the hotel bar, it was completely empty.
“Where is everybody?” she asked the bartender.
“It’s a Baptist convention,” he said, “so they’re drinking in their rooms.”
____________________
Fascinating article about the Baptist resolution condemning alcohol consumption — complete with a demonstration of the weak art of argument by scriptural cherrypicking (on all sides)
____________________
1Quoted in Pearson, Beth, “The art of creating ethics man,” The Herald (Scotland), January 23, 2006.
2Abstinence 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.
3Quoted in Asimov, Eric, “Can Sips at Home Prevent Binges?” New York Times, March 26, 2008.
4Ibid.
Introducing…Foundation Beyond Belief
Being a humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead. — Kurt Vonnegut
I don’t give as much as I’d like to the causes I care about. I consider myself a pretty generous guy, and when I give, I give generously. But I get to the end of each year and realize that I just haven’t given as much as I wish I had. Again.
Another thing: When religious folks give through religious charities and churches, it registers as an expression of their worldview. I want that too. I want my contributions to “count” as a visible expression of my secular humanism.
Then there’s this: Multiple solid surveys by philanthropic research organizations like Independent Sector and the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey1 show that churchgoers give a much greater percentage of their income to charitable causes than non-churchgoers like me. Arthur C. Brooks (author of Who Really Cares) is pretty sure he’s got my number: he says it’s “evidence of a gap in everyday virtue” (p. 40) between the religious and nonreligious.
I think he’s missing something obvious. If people in Group A are asked to pass a plate full of the generous donations of their friends and neighbors and either add to it or not, 52 times a year, while people in Group B have no such regular and public nudge — I’d say something other than virtue is in play.
I think the difference has much more to do with whether or not you have systematic opportunities for giving than some “gap in virtue.” I speak at Unitarian fellowships and Ethical Societies all the time, places brimming with friendly atheists. And when that offering plate passes by, I give, and so do they, knowing that these places will use it to do some good.
The offering plate is also passing through a million mainstream church pews every Sunday, giving the religious an easy and regular way to give and to combine their giving with others as a positive collective expression of their worldview.
I don’t agree with those who insist religious people give primarily out of fear or guilt. That may be in the mix, but most I know give because they are challenged and encouraged to do so, because generosity feels wonderful, and because the habit of giving turns giving into a habit.
I want to do better. It’s time for those of us who are otherwise engaged on Sunday mornings to have our own easy and regular means of giving, one that focuses and encourages humanistic generosity and demonstrates it to the world.
Welcome to Foundation Beyond Belief.
> what it is
Foundation Beyond Belief is a new charitable and educational foundation created (1) to focus, encourage and demonstrate humanistic generosity, and (2) to support a nationwide nonreligious parent education program.
The Foundation will highlight ten charitable organizations per quarter–one in each of ten areas (health, poverty, environment, education, human rights, and more). Members join the Foundation by signing up for a monthly automatic donation in the amount of their choice, then set up personal profiles to indicate how they would like their contribution distributed among the ten categories. Maybe you’d like to give 25 percent each to human rights, poverty, education, and the environment. We’ll distribute it accordingly. By year’s end, you will have helped support a dozen organizations in the areas you care most about.
The centerpiece of the Foundation will be a lively online community. Active members can join a social network and discussion forums centered on the ten categories of giving, upload videos, recruit new members, advocate for causes and help us choose the new beneficiaries each quarter. We’ll also create and host a multi-author blog of world-class contributors focused on the cause areas, as well as humanism, philanthropy, and the intersection of the two.
Carefully selected for impact and efficiency, the beneficiaries may be founded on any worldview so long as they do not engage in proselytizing. At the end of each quarter, 100 percent of the donations will be forwarded and a new slate of beneficiaries selected.
On the educational side, the Foundation will build the next stage in nonreligious parent education—a nationwide training program for parenting seminar leaders. We plan to have 30-40 people teaching nonreligious parenting seminars in cities across the country within a year.
We’ve begun assembling a stellar cast to guide the Foundation through its infancy. The Board of Directors includes Hemant Mehta (author, Friendly Atheist blogger, Secular Student Alliance board chair), Dr. Wayne Huey (ethicist, educator, author, former Georgia and U.S. High School Counselor of the Year), Trish Hotze Cowan (Sunday School Director, Ethical Society of St. Louis), and executive director Dale McGowan. (That’s me.)
The Foundation will launch in two stages. On October 1 we’ll unveil the pre-launch website, where members can begin setting up profiles and basic donations. On January 1, 2010, we will launch the full site, including the ten featured causes, all profile options, blog, social networking, and the means for members to select and change their preferred distributions.
We’re making no little plans here, and there’s the potential to do something pretty earthshaking. But this is a community thing, or it’s nothing. We’ll need your help.
> what you can do now
There are two ways to stay in the loop as we work toward the Foundation’s partial launch in October and full launch in January:
Facebook users: Click here to join the Foundation Beyond Belief group on Facebook Causes. No donation required — just keeping yourself in the loop.
Non-Facebookers: Click here to put your email on our mailing list.
Either way, sign up and we’ll keep you informed as it takes shape.
_________________
1And the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, and the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census…the list goes on. The facts themselves are not in doubt.
Leave them kids alone
Orphaned boys were perhaps the cheapest Taliban recruits. An incensed Afghan official in one village presented [U.S. military anthropologist] Tracy with a boy who had wandered into the district governor’s compound a month earlier. The boy wore an explosive vest that the Taliban had told him would burst with flowers and candy, but he didn’t know how to make the vest work.
–from “Human Quicksand: For the US Army, a crash course in cultural studies” by Steve Featherstone, Harper’s magazine, Sept 2008
I’ve discovered something about myself recently: I’m sometimes made almost physically ill by the idea of helpless kids at the mercy of stupid adults. Since “stupid” describes all adults some of the time (yes, me) and some adults all of the time, and we all find ourselves primarily at the mercy of adults for our first 18 years, it’s a not uncommon problem.
Sometimes it’s fictional. Take the unbearable scene from the movie Babel in which a series of bad choices by adults leaves two kids alone in the desert with their terrified nanny, who leaves for help, then returns with said help but cannot find them.
The shot of the empty spot of ground where they had been, followed by the nanny’s anguished face, haunted me for weeks.
Then there are thousands of real-world examples, from the ghastly and bizarre (children drowned in their car seats or bathtubs, kept in underground bunkers for 13 years) to the commonplace (children whacked in the head, taught to hate, deprived of education or vaccines) to horrors both ghastly and common in some places. Children told the C-4 in their vest is peppermint would qualify, as would the estimated quarter million “child soldiers” fighting in conflicts worldwide right now.
(I guess I should have warned you at the top that this post was headed into the darkness. I happened on that Harper’s article again last night for the third time, and it got me connecting loose ends—especially this idea of kids at the mercy of adults at their worst. It lightens up a wee bit now.)
What Shall We Tell The Children?
There’s another piece I come back to again and again—a really radical address by Nicholas Humphrey called “What Shall We Tell the Children?”, first delivered as the Oxford Amnesty Lecture in 1997. In it, Humphrey discusses the idea of children’s intellectual rights in a way both provocative and compelling. His thesis centers on the teaching of beliefs:
I want to propose a general test for deciding when and whether the teaching of a belief system to children is morally defensible. As follows. If it is ever the case that teaching this system to children will mean that later in life they come to hold beliefs that, were they in fact to have had access to alternatives, they would most likely not have chosen for themselves, then it is morally wrong of whoever presumes to impose this system. No one has the right to choose badly for anyone else.
It becomes clear, in the fullness of the piece, that Humphrey is referring not just to teaching about a belief system, but indoctrinating a child into it. So how do we determine whether they would have chosen a belief/value/action for themselves? Sometimes it’s easy to know, and sometimes it’s difficult. So when in doubt, don’t impose a belief.
Here’s a dry run—some beliefs, values, and actions I could impose on my children:
Committing murder-suicide with an explosive vest
Being circumcised
Disliking a given racial/ethnic/religious/political group especially much
Liking a given racial/ethnic/religious/political group especially much
The importance of avoiding prejudice
The importance of self-respect
The value of honesty
The value of thinking for one’s self
Believing/disbelieving a given worldview
For each of these, picture your child at age 30, looking back on childhood. If you can easily picture the child saying, “If I had the freedom and ability to make my own choice at that age, I wouldn’t have chosen x,” you’ve probably identified a value that should not be imposed.
Start easy:
“If I had the freedom and ability to make my own choice, I wouldn’t have chosen to commit murder-suicide with an explosive vest.” My confidence is pretty high on this one. For this reason (and others, I suppose), I don’t send my children into governors’ compounds with explosive vests.
“If I had the freedom and ability to make my own choice at that age, I wouldn’t have chosen to be circumcised.” Youch. The number of uncircumcised adults who choose the procedure (somewhere around 1 percent, if I remember correctly) speaks for itself on this one.
Liking or disliking Swedes, Republicans, accountants? I can certainly see my child’s likes and dislikes differing from mine, so I take care to avoid inculcating. But it’s hard to imagine someone actively resenting the fact that their parents taught them not to pre-judge others (“When shall I escape from this damnable tendency toward tolerance?”).
Then it gets even easier. Picture them saying, “Damn them for teaching me self-respect!” or “Curse the day they forced me to think for myself!” I teach my kids self-respect, independent thought, honesty, and a whole raft of values they are almost certain to appreciate rather than bemoan as adults.
Ah, but now we’ve arrived, have we not. How does the inculcation of a given worldview—any given worldview—stand up to this test?
Answer: It’s all too easy to picture an adult wishing that a single worldview had not been forced on him or her as a child. I wish I hadn’t been forced to consider myself a Catholic. I wish I hadn’t been forced to consider myself an atheist.
I’m proposing an even higher standard than Humphrey’s “most likely.” With some probable exceptions, a reasonable doubt is enough for me to refrain from imposing a belief or value on my child.
Humphrey suggests that the protection of our children’s lifelong intellectual rights demands that we not indoctrinate them to any given worldview—that we allow them to experiment with belief, try on different hats, and weigh different influences until they themselves can make an informed choice. And I agree.
Easy ethics and hard
“They shot him…he was running. It was during their exercise period. They said he just broke into a blind raving charge at the fence and started to climb. Right in front of them….We had such a good chance. I told him what I thought, but I couldn’t in truth say that we had more than a good chance. I guess Tom was tired of white men’s chances and preferred to take his own.”
–Atticus Finch on the death of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird
“Remember in To Kill a Mockingbird when Tom Robinson gets shot?”
It was in the middle of a silent car ride that Connor (13) blurted this out.
“Oh yeah. Worst part of the book.”
“He wasn’t really trying to escape, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well Atticus says he was trying to escape, but there’s no way! They just shot him because they wanted to and made up that story. I know it. But Mrs. Lawson and the whole class said he was shot trying to escape, just like it says.”
“…”
“And I said he wasn’t trying to escape, you’re supposed to read between the lines and figure that out, they shot him seventeen times, but they were all just saying, ‘No, no, no, he was escaping, that’s what it says, that’s what it says.’ I HATE that.”
“Hate what?”
“When you’re right but every other person says you’re wrong! Because then you basically ARE wrong.”
“…”
Now before anybody gets all hifalutin’ about being the Lone Voice of Truth or starts quoting Kipling to my boy, at least tell me you know what he means. If you’ve got your self-confidence polished up so shiny bright that you can confidently stand your ground against unanimous jeers without a flicker of self-doubt, without feeling even for a moment what it means to be rendered “basically wrong” by the judgment of the many—know that I hold you in the highest respect, and think you a freak.
It’s easy to picture ourselves in retrospect matching the courage of Galileo or Giordano Bruno, or Fulton and his steamboat, or Hershey and his chocolate bar. I can manage these fantasies, but only in retrospect. I am Bruno taking the nail through the tongue while KNOWING I’ll one day be vindicated. Being the Lone Voice of Truth is one helluva lot harder without that perspective.
So we talked about Kohlberg.
No, it’s not a tasty hybrid of kohlrabi and iceberg. Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg laid out a useful set of “stages” of moral development. Connor’s question isn’t exactly a moral issue, but the willingness to speak up about what you believe is right or true definitely is.
The six stages:
Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)
Stage 1. Avoiding pain
Stage 2. Seeking reward
Level 2 (Conventional)
Stage 3. Social conformity
Stage 4. Rule following
Level 3 (Post-Conventional)
Stage 5. Social contract (understand that rules are human creations and can be changed)
Stage 6. Universal ethical principles (standing on principle regardless of consequences)
Early childhood is usually limited to the pre-conventional. If you want your kids to spin their wheels in the lower levels, base your parenting solely on punishment and rewards. Later, most kids become obsessed to some degree with the next two, and would yes very damn well jump off a cliff if their friends did, or slavishly follow rules because they are rules, depending on age and stage. And plenty of adults never get beyond this conventional, conformist morality.
It’s the tug of Stage 3 that Connor was talking about—the fact that it can feel like the loud majority defines right and wrong just by dint of its loud majorityness. So we had a quick chat about Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.
Don’t laugh—kids can do this.
“Yeah, I know what you mean about feeling wrong when everybody else disagrees,” I said. “It’s a stage three thing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Something I remember from psych class—six different levels of moral development. For little kids, being good is all about rewards and punishments. Then you want to please other people, that’s stage three, or follow rules, that’s stage four.”
“My school is OBSESSED with rules,” he said.
He’s right, they are. “Yep. And that’s okay as far as it goes. But what you want to do is push yourself higher than that.”
“Like what?”
“Like standing up for what you think is right even when everyone around you thinks you’re crazy. That’s the top level. Gandhi. Galileo. Jesus. Darwin. Atticus. Connor McGowan. People like that.”
Wry smile.
It’s not that we leave the lower stages behind as we move up. Everybody still responds to punishment and reward and social pressure, even as we show bursts of high-level morality. But it’s worth talking to our kids about the difference between the easy rule-following moralities so many are so fond of, and the higher, harder levels that all of our moral heroes, if you think about it, seem to occupy.
vegehumilitarianism
A couple of years ago, Becca and I had a college friend over for dinner. Hadn’t seen him for years. An engineer and a gentleman. We had a great time catching up, and inevitably he asked about my work.
He listened thoughtfully as I filled him in on the nonreligious parenting book I’d just released, nodding his head, occasionally making a supportive sound or saying “Wow, that’s really great stuff you’re doing.” But I could tell there was something left unsaid.
Right in the middle of the Long Minnesota Goodbye (Step 2, I think — standing in the living room with coat in hand, talking), he came out with it.
“I think what you’re doing is awesome. I’m so impressed. I’m a Christian myself. Doesn’t make sense, I can’t support it, there’s no logic behind it, it’s completely unreasonable, but there it is.”
I knew by his tone and tempo that he was uneasy divulging this, figuring I’d think less of him, or worse, try to talk him out of it. To discourage this, he’d headed straight into L.M.G. Step 3 (slip one arm into jacket, keep talking) just in case he’d have to bolt.
I assured him it was completely cool, to each his own, etc. But my inner jag-off was thinking, “No, it’s not OK. Different belief, fine. But you don’t get to just sidestep the question of whether your worldview makes any sense. Beliefs have consequences. You don’t get to hear my evidence and then say, ‘I just don’t wanna!’ ”
And that’s when I heard it — another person in my head, clearing his throat and staring accusingly at my inner jag-off with a wry smile. The jag fell silent and wet himself, ever so slightly.
The accuser was my inner vegehumilitarian.
Ever get into a discussion of religious beliefs, only to have the other person sort of glaze over and look away? Nod, grant you every point, then just…shrug and smile? Nothing drove me nutsier during my brief secular-evangelical phase than this shrugging disengagement. I mean, what’s the friggin’ point in having Kevlar arguments if the other person refuses to shoot??
Then came the day I felt myself doing exactly the same shrug.
For me, the topic is vegetarianism. I should be a vegetarian. When my dad died, my doctor told my mom that a genetic vascular defect in Dad’s head most likely caused the aneurysm, and that we kids could easily have it as well, and that to keep our blood pressure under control and for several other reasons it would be a good idea for us to consider vegetarianism.
When Mom shared this with me, I glazed over, shrugged, and took another bite of my wiener.
Years later I came across the moral dimension, most vividly in the documentary short Meet Your Meat. I was and remain horrified at such depictions of animal cruelty in our food production system. I had to glaze over and shrug especially hard to finish my tangerine beef.
I told myself for years that we need the protein, or that there’s not enough variety or interest or texture in vegetarian cuisine, despite massive evidence to the contrary. Let that phrase echo a bit: Massive evidence to the contrary…ary…ary…ary.
Please don’t think I’m being glib. I’m exposing myself as indefensibly inconsistent and hypocritical. I’m much worse than people who don’t know why they shouldn’t eat meat because I KNOW WHY. Have I examined and refuted these arguments like the good rationalist I am? No, because there is no refutation. I don’t go vegetarian for one vague and pathetic “reason.”
I don’t wanna.
I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. Why don’t I want to? Dunno. It doesn’t get patheticker than that.
So whenever my inner jag-off tries to kick-start a smug, self-righteous response to someone who’s sinking into glazed disengagement in the face of the three hundred excellent arguments against religious belief, I have only to call forth my inner vegehumilitarian. This does NOT mean I disengage from challenging toxic religious ideas. I obviously don’t. It simply means I start from a position of empathy for the believer — a much more effective starting point if we’re ever to make headway.
And I hope for similar mercy from all the vegetarians shaking their detoxified heads at me. Don’t stop trying to get through my glaze, but please — have mercy.
_______________
CODA
A dose of humility for carnivorous atheists
Excellent reasons to be an atheist
Excellent reasons to be a vegetarian
Famous atheists
Famous vegetarians
Great vegetarian recipes
Great atheist recipes
Bringing in the sheaths
On March 17, while on the way to Africa, Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI) said that HIV/AIDS was “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem.”
The first two clauses are sensible. The third was a dumb and ignorant thing to say. It contradicts very solid empirical evidence to the contrary. Worse yet, it is dangerously ignorant—and certain to cost lives, precisely because Mr. Ratzinger’s word—especially when spoken under his pseudonym—is held to be unquestionable. (Which is why I refer to him by his human name.)
The problem is not that he said it. I’m a fierce advocate of the inalienable human right to say dumb and ignorant things. I like to claim that right myself once in a while, thank you very much. The best way to find out whether an idea of mine is dumb and ignorant is to let it get past my lips. My fellow humans aren’t shy about setting me straight. And that’s good.
The problem with Mr. Ratzinger’s statement is that no matter how self-evidently dumb, millions will not only refuse to set him straight, but try their best to prevent others from doing so.
This wasn’t the first time a member of the highest Catholic ranks has made a disastrously ignorant remark about condoms in Africa. In 2007, the Archbishop of Mozambique claimed that many condoms were intentionally infected with the AIDS virus by European manufacturers.
Forward two years and up one rank—now it’s the Pope.
For the most part, the reactions were predictable—outrage from non-Catholics and a closing of ranks among Catholics — including the claim that you simply may not criticize the Pope.
In response to an editorial cartoon in the Times of London related to Mr. Ratzinger’s comments, Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy O’Connor sounded the predictable note of outrage: “No newspaper should show such disrespect to a person who is held in high esteem by a large proportion of Christians in the world. To pillory the Pope in this way is totally unacceptable.”
So because he is held in high esteem by large numbers, his statements must be respected by the rest of us. I think not—in fact, I seem to recall a whole fallacy devoted to that idea.
The same hollow claim of immunity is captured in this editorial headline in a major Tanzanian daily: Politicians have no moral authority to question Pope’s stand on condoms. (Cue derisive laughter.)
Papal spokesman Federico Lombardi noted that Mr. Ratzinger was merely continuing the line taken by his predecessors, as if this is relevant. In 1990, Karol Józef Wojtyła (aka Pope John Paul II) unhelpfully opined that using condoms is a sin in any circumstance.
Before we even assess the sense or the consequences of that, enjoy a good snort at the idea that a statement is more legitimate only because someone else—anyone else—said it. (Secularists do this, too. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard some form of “Yuh huh, Richard Dawkins says so” offered in full defense of a position.)
The most encouraging part of this whole fece-fling is the voice of Catholic dissent. There are good folks living inside the belly of the beast who have the cojones to ignore repeated orders to switch off their frontal lobes until the Captain says it’s OK to use them again—those with the willingness to think about and openly criticize the statements of a religious leader on merit, regardless of the shape of his hat.
Jon O’Brien of Catholics for Choice said, “It took the church hierarchy 359 years to stop continuing the line taken by their predecessors on Galileo. We hope that this error does not take so long to change.”
The health ministry of Spain (81% Catholic) said, “Condoms have been demonstrated to be a necessary element in prevention policies and an efficient barrier against the virus.” The statement was issued in the course of announcing a shipment of 1 million condoms to Africa—on the same day as the Pope’s remarks.
Now that’s cojones from the country that invented the very word.
But the Academy Award for Outstanding Scrotal Fortitude has to go to Robert McElvaine, professor of Arts & Letters at Millsap College and self-identified Catholic, who wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog titled “Impeach the Pope” :
Benedict XVI opens a visit to Africa by telling the people of a continent decimated by AIDS that the distribution of condoms “increases the problem” of the spread of AIDS. I am a Catholic and the idea that such a man is God’s spokesperson on earth is absurd to me.
There are, of course, no provisions in the hierarchical institution set up, not by Jesus but by men who hijacked his name and in many cases perverted his teachings, for impeaching a pope and removing him from office. But there ought to be.
It didn’t take long for the holy knives of umbrage to come out for McElvaine. Edward Peters, author of Excommunication and the Catholic Church: Straight Answers to Tough Questions, said that “A canonical penal process should be undertaken against Robert McElvaine” for criticizing the Pope’s statement. And he’s not talking out of his hat—he points to the elements of canon law that support this position.
If there’s a clearer indictment of religion at its most ignorant and counterproductive than that sentence and the article in which it appears, I haven’t seen it.
Many Catholics can and do think for themselves. Many, many more, though, will take Mr. Ratzinger’s opinion as gospel. Think of all the good the Vatican could do with its influence—and of the murderous damage it so often chooses to do instead.
_______________________________
(For a glimpse of what a Catholic hornet’s nest looks like when whacked with a dissenting thought, read the comments on the McElvaine piece.)
The other shoe
I mentioned last time that I’m getting a sudden flurry of conversion attempts in my inbox.
One is particularly persistent. It began last November:
Dear Dale,
I’m writing an essay on the negative effects of spanking children and while researching I couldn’t help but come across your web site. I skimmed through it and I’m kinda confused; you mentioned your religious beliefs and I can’t help but wonder if you are an anesthetist or a Christian?B___
I amazed myself by foregoing about 37 different wiseguy responses to “anesthetist.” Instead, I replied Here are some useful links to corporal punishment studies. And I am an atheist. All the best to you.
The reply:
Thanks for replying Dale and just to let you know, you and your family will be in my prayers. Maybe one day soon you will open your hear to God.
I sure hope you do
God Bless
B___
Fair enough. On Thanksgiving I received this:
Dale,
I just wanted to wish you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope that one day you and your family will find God in your lives.
God Bless and your all in my prayers
B___
I haven’t the slightest objection to this kind of thing. But I knew, from long experience, that the other shoe would drop. It took less than thirty minutes:
Just wanted to say one more thing, I know you don’t believe in God, but one day he will return and when he does it will be God, who you will explain yourself to God. Not me or anyone else.
This is the carrot and stick — first the appeal to love and comfort or high principle, and then…The Stick.
One of my favorites happened in May 2007. After a profile about me and my work appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, I got a letter:
Dear Dale,
I’m sending these booklets to you so that you know God loves you. When you die, you don’t die like a dog. You will go on forever!I’m 74, & received Christ into my life at age 11. I’ve never regretted it for a minute.
Love, & Rejoicing in the Lord Jesus,
Virginia H—
Again, very nice. But enclosed were two signs of God’s (shall we say) burning love for me: a Jack Chick tract, including this panel:
…and a second pamphlet:
YOUR FIRST SIX DAYS IN HELL.
As I said — I’ve seen that second shoe drop too many times to be surprised anymore.
I’ve always found it curious, and telling, that Christianity offers release from our greatest fear — death — but is so factually implausible that it’s been necessary to back up the gift with the threat of eternal hellfire if you don’t accept it.
Morality works in the same carrot-and-stick fashion. I saw this at work last summer as I stood in an endless line at Six Flags Over Georgia. A teenage scamp with a Christian day camp T-shirt ducked under several of the rails and cut in front of us in line.
Two minutes later his bright pink tie-dyed Jesus-fish shirt was spotted by one of the camp counselors. The counselor sidled over and reasoned with the lad, using the reciprocity principle:
“Michael, what are you doing? How would you like it if these nice people all cut in front of you?”
Wait for it, now…
“If I see that again, you’re out of the park.”
Whenever somebody insists that anyone who lacks the guiding example of Christ in their lives will quickly arm himself and bloody the streets, I
1. Note that I, though bereft of Jesus’ influence, have (so far) resisted this temptation, and
2. Note that street bloodying has actual, legal consequences beyond the Tsking of the Christ.
In other words, even if all positive appeals to principle failed to reach me, there is an earthly stick ready and waiting right behind that carrot.
What’s most interesting to me, though, is how effective the appeal to principle and conscience generally is — how well, on balance, we tend to behave. But when we don’t — and sometimes we won’t — there’s another shoe.
The easy ones and the hard ones
- February 02, 2009
- By Dale McGowan
- In death, morality, My kids
20
“Omigosh. Some of these things are soooo easy, but this one is totally hard.”
“What things?”
“These Question Book questions. Some are just so easy they’re dumb.”
Delaney (7) has been reading Gregory Stock’s The Kids’ Book of Questions on and off for a few weeks now. Two hundred sixty-eight questions to ponder. And she’s right — some are so easy they’re dumb.
“Like this, listen,” she said. “Number 110: ‘If it would save the lives of ten kids in another country, would you be willing to have really bad acne for a year?’ That’s so dumb!”
“So what’s your answer, then?”
“Of course I would do it. I mean, it’s their lives, Dad.” She paused, crinkled her brow. “What’s acne?”
“Pimples.”
“WHAT?! That’s even stupider. I thought it was a bad sickness or something. Who would let ten kids die just to not have pimples?!”
I thought back to junior high school, trying to recall how many strangers I’d have whacked for clear skin, and decided her question was rhetorical.
“But this one is really hard. Listen — Number 50: ‘If everyone in your class but you would be killed unless you sacrificed your own life, would you save everyone else or save yourself?'”
Long pause.
“I don’t know! That’s soooo hard! I really love to be alive. But so do they!”
She seemed genuinely tormented by the dilemma. It’s precisely the sacrifice that makes the Christ story so compelling. The willing sacrifice of one’s own life is just so hard to fathom. Until you add the heavenly out, at which point I suppose Christs and hijackers alike gain a decided advantage in nerve.
Laney, having no such advantage at the moment, prefers to live.
This Is Only a Test
ERIN (10): Dad, I’ve been thinking.
DAD: I’m telling Mom.
ERIN: Dad, seriously. Okay — If God is real, I think I figured out why he would mix really bad things in with good things in the Bible.
DAD: And why is that?
ERIN: It’s to see if we can use our brains and figure out what’s good and what’s bad, then only do the good things…or if we’ll just do everything it says, like robots. It’s a test to see if we’ll think for ourselves.
(CORRECTION: I wrote this conversation down without attribution shortly after it happened. When I added it to the blog a week later, I credited it to Delaney (7). I have since learned that it was Erin (10) who said it. Mea culpa.)
Humanist Parents Seek Communion Outside Church (Wash Post)
By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 21, 2008; Page A10
BOSTON — They are not religious, so they don’t go to church. But they are searching for values and rituals with which to raise their children, as well as a community of like-minded people to offer support.
Dozens of parents came together on a recent Saturday to participate in a seminar on humanist parenting and to meet others interested in organizing a kind of nonreligious congregation, complete with regular family activities and ceremonies for births and deaths.
“It’s exciting to know that we could be meeting people who we might perhaps raise children with,” said Tony Proctor, 39, who owns a wealth management company and attended the seminar at Harvard University with his wife, Andrea, 35, a stay-at-home mother.
Humanism is both a formal movement and an informal identification of people who promote values of reason, compassion and human dignity. Although most humanists are atheists, atheism is defined by what is absent — belief in God — and humanists emphasize a positive philosophy of ethical living for the human good.
The seminar’s organizers wanted to reach out to people like the Proctors — first-time parents scrambling for guidance as they improvise how to raise their daughter without the religion of their childhood.
“I’m often told that when people have kids, they go back to religion,” said John Figdor, a humanist master’s of divinity student who helped organize the seminar. “Are we really not tending our own people?”
Across the country, religious observance hits a low for people in their mid-20s and steadily increases after that, “in conjunction with marriage and children,” said Tom Smith, of the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago, which has polled people about religious affiliation and practice for decades.
Religious congregations are good at supporting parenting, said Gregory Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard who organized the seminar. Although most humanists may not believe in God, he said, they do believe in sharing their lives with others who share their values.
“Why throw the baby out with the bath water?” Epstein asked.
Most Americans are religious and believe in God, but a growing number of people have no religious affiliation. In 1990, 8 percent of respondents in the General Social Survey said they identified with no religion. In 2006, the last year for which statistics are available, the figure had doubled to 16 percent.
In recent years, the chaplaincy at Harvard has hosted humanist speakers such as novelist Salman Rushdie, evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and U.S. Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.). Student interest is booming. But something happens when those students graduate, marry and become parents.
For the Proctors, especially for Andrea, who grew up in a Catholic household, arriving at the seminar took a lifetime of questioning.
Growing up, she attended church each Sunday, took Communion and was confirmed. She became disenchanted after a sex scandal at her parish was poorly handled, she said. Then in college, she was “exposed to a lot of different beliefs in religions and science. It causes you to question.”
Tony grew up fascinated by his neighbors’ ability to find community at church, which he sometimes attended with them. “Every Sunday they would go to church and see friends. That was a neat thing,” he said.
The Proctors found themselves making decisions about religion when they had a daughter last year. Andrea said her parents asked, “Of course you’re going to baptize her, right?” She answered, “Actually, no.”
Instead, Andrea did a Google search for someone who might perform a nonreligious ceremony to mark Sienna’s entry into the world and found Epstein, the Harvard humanist chaplain.
Epstein officiated at the ceremony, while both sets of grandparents spoke about their hopes and dreams for the child, Andrea said. The Proctors named “guide parents” instead of godparents.
By the time they got to the Harvard seminar more than a year later, they were ready to organize a larger community of families like themselves.
A room full of concertedly nonreligious people has its idiosyncrasies. At the seminar, someone sneezed, and there was a long silence — no one said “Bless you” or even “Salud” or “Santé.”
For sale were T-shirts saying “98% Chimpanzee” or showing a tadpole with the words “Meet Your Ancestor.” There were also children’s games from Charlie’s Playhouse, a Darwinian toy company, illustrating the process of evolution.
A recent study found that many Americans associate atheists with negative traits, including criminal behavior and rampant materialism.
People often ask, “How do you expect to raise your children to be good people without religion?” said Dale McGowan, the seminar leader and author of “Parenting Beyond Belief.” He suggested the retort might be something like, “How do you expect to raise your children to be moral people without allowing them to think for themselves?”1 He advocates exposing children to many religious traditions without imposing any.
At the seminar, Andrea Proctor was thrilled to meet another mother who would like to start a group of parents and children meeting weekly or biweekly.
“We just put a huge pool in our back yard,” Tony Proctor said. “We might have to start humanist barbecue pool parties.”
(Read and comment online. Caution: Many of the comments, as usual, are tending toward the vicious at the moment, so have some eggnog before you read them.)
_____________________________
1Robin did a nice job on this article, but this is not quite what I said. The quote above assumes that all religious parents do not allow their kids to think for themselves, a false and ridiculous assumption. For the record, my suggested reply to the question, “How are you going to raise your kids to be moral without religion?” was this: “Calmly reply, ‘Why, by avoiding moral indoctrination, of course, which research has shown to be the least effective way to encourage moral development. And what’s your plan?'” Oh well. I’m a silly, oversensitive monkey to even point it out.
