Can you hear me now? (Intro)
A Charlotte Allen published an op-ed in the LA Times about just how dreadfully sick she is of atheists.
A Facebook friend asked me what I consider to be the “negatives of church.” A good question that I answered.
Another Facebooker asked why I am “so against God.” An unanswerably silly question. He rephrased, I answered.
Yet another FB friend went positively ballistic when I strayed from the apparent party line in response to the President’s Nobel Prize.
After seven years, my youngest daughter stopped sucking her fingers. Just boom, stopped cold.
A participant in one of my recent seminars wrote to thank me. She had followed my advice for talking to her religious father. A four-year rift was healed, she said, in about five minutes.
I received my 27th email from a Christian gentleman in Missouri letting me know he’s praying for me.
I de-friended an old HS friend on Facebook whose page was filled with Bible verses (perfectly fine) and unfiltered hatred of those unlike him (not fine). Then I wished like hell I hadn’t.
I saw that seven new reasons for not believing in God have been added to a website that for some reason lists such things.
Robert Krulwich of my beloved Radiolab interviewed Richard Dawkins and made me nearly drive into the Hudson River. And I live in Georgia.
I came across a fascinating quote from Charles Darwin with great whacks of modern relevance.
I read the now infamous article in Newsweek in which (atheist journalist Chris) Mooney and (agnostic biologist Sheril) Kirshenbaum suggested that science is done no favors by insisting that it is necessarily incompatible with religion — followed by an epic blog-tizzy of sarcastic proportions.
I read the Richard Dawkins interview in Newsweek, and the blog-tizzy that followed, including many atheists who wondered if Dawkins had become an “accommodationist.”
They probably seem disconnected, this baker’s dozen. But as each happened, the same string was plucked in my head. I decided to blog. The topic strikes me as pretty much all we should be talking about, and I’ve thought about it so intensely for the past ten years or more that I think I might have something useful to say. Who knows. It’s too big for one post, so it’ll be an occasional series for the remainder of 2009.
I’m motivated half by anger, half by frustration, and half by hope. The first two make me want to chuck the whole topic. It’s the third half that makes me care enough to blog — the hope that some of us are finally on the verge of learning how to communicate effectively, both within and between our “camps,” and that naming the problem and suggesting ways around it might do some good.
That’s the topic, by the way — communication. How to stop talking past and through and around each other. Hearing and being heard.
In order to practice what I recommend, I’m going to try very hard to frame this thing in terms of what I have learned, what I have found effective, and how I have changed in my approach in recent years. I don’t plan to scold anyone for how they approach these things, since that puts an end to listening, and hearing and being heard are my primary goals here. But I might ask that others consider how lovely and useful those two goals are, and whether it isn’t a shame that we all give them so damn little attention.
(I tried four more ambitious expletives before settling on ‘damn.’ Like I said, I’m half motivated by anger here. But then I remembered my objectives.)
My intended audience for this series is my fellow atheists etc. Any religious believers who drift in are more than welcome to read along and even comment, but know that even as I talk about how to talk across lines of difference, I’m not doing that now. This is an in-house meeting.
I’ll start next time with Delaney’s fingers.
Raising a Ruckus in Atlanta
I’ve done a metric flurry of interviews recently, including one for the holiday issue of Parenting Magazine about what nonreligious families do at Christmas. My usual reply is some variation on, “Oh…there’s a religious version too?” (But nicer.)
Talked to Dr. Zach Moore for the Apologia podcast a while back. Last week it was a radio program in Denver called Mom’s the Word, and yesterday, after speaking at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, I sat for a filmed interview for a planned documentary on Camp Quest.
Another interview I did last week particularly caught my attention. It was for an article in a brand spanking new parenting magazine distributed locally here in Atlanta. It’s called Ruckus — “the parenting magazine for Atlanta families who don’t fit the traditional mold – blended, gay, bi-racial, adoptive, tattooed, pierced, just different” — and Volume 1, No. 1 is currently on the racks.
From the editor, Lea Holland:
The magazine’s name reflects our feelings about raising kids. We’re teaching them to stand up for what they believe in and to share their opinions, even if it creates a ruckus. Actually, it’s better if it ruffles some feathers! We want our kids to have fun, be active and learn there’s more to life than following the leader.
Mmmmmm.
That such a thing comes out of Atlanta shows how much the urban South has changed in the last 20 years. Thanks to a huge influx of transplants (like me and mine), even up here in the relatively red suburbs it’s much more diverse than ten years back (or 20 miles further out of town). Within 100 yards of our front door are families from ten states and at least six countries. That ain’t Brooklyn, but it ain’t yo daddy’s Atlanta, neither. And I couldn’t be pleased-er.
Read Ruckus online at their wickedly cool website, and fan them on Facebook if you like what you see. They’re currently mining for story ideas. You know you’ve got ’em — so give ’em!
Foundation Beyond Belief website goes LIVE!
Y’all have been SO patient. At last it’s October 1, and thanks to your generous support in the recent Fund Drive, the pre-launch website for Foundation Beyond Belief has gone LIVE!
This site will carry us through to the full launch on January 1. During this period, you can sign up for membership, watch a video about the Foundation, learn about our first featured causes as they are announced, nominate charities for future consideration, donate to the Foundation itself, apply for volunteer positions, and follow the development of our multi-author blog.
In January we get the whole magillah: a vibrant social network, a discussion forum on these great issues, a full slate of beneficiaries to support, and a member profile panel so you can distribute your monthly donation as you wish.
But for now, let’s get our oars in the water. See you there!
God(s) in the classroom
ERIN (11): Mohammed is believed by Muslims to be directly descended from the Angel Gabriel.
DAD, looking up from his book: Uh…really? I didn’t know that.
ERIN: It’s a question, Dad. True or false.
DAD, suddenly interested: Is this homework?
ERIN: Yes Dad, it’s homework, social studies, world religions, I’m terrible at it, so is it true or false??
DAD: Well you won’t get better at it if I just give you the answers.
ERIN: Plee-he-he-heeease, Daddy.
DAD: First tell me who Mohammed is.
ERIN: (*Sigh*) I don’t know. Some Jewish guy.
I could barely contain my delight. Not that she had bar mitzvahed the Prophet, which gave me the shpilkes, but that she was learning about religion in school — something I didn’t think the district would dare do.
Contrary to the fears of many nontheistic parents, and despite irritating nonsense from the occasional evangelical teacher, the vaaaaast majority of U.S. public school administrators are not the least bit interested in injecting religion into the classroom. On the contrary, they are terrified of getting into a constitutional row over it. In the early 90s, Becca’s principal forbade teachers to so much as put up the word DECEMBER in alternating red and green construction-paper letters lest (by associative property) one religion be invoked above others, however distantly.
But this isn’t that. Erin is studying religions, in the essential plural, an entirely good thing when done right.
I surfed over to the Georgia state social studies standards for sixth grade and found this standard tucked away under SS6G11, “The student will describe the cultural characteristics of Europe”:
b. Describe the major religions in Europe; include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
By grade seven in Georgia, “The student will
explain the diversity of religions within the Arab, Ashanti, Bantu, and Swahili ethnic groups
and
explain the diversity of religions within the Arabs, Persians, and Kurds
and
compare and contrast the prominent religions in Southern and Eastern Asia: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Shintoism and the philosophy of Confucianism
and even
describe how land and religion are reasons for continuing conflicts in the Middle East.
I LOVE THIS.
It would be wrongheaded (and unconstitutional) to favor any one religious perspective in the classroom, though that was the practice in the U.S. for generations. But a well-designed and well-taught curriculum in comparative religion would go a long way to improving our shameful status as one of the most religiously faithful AND most religiously ignorant countries on the planet.
My co-author Jan Devor put it this way in Raising Freethinkers (emphasis mine):
Europe and the United States are diametrically opposed in not one but two religious respects: belief in and knowledge of religion. The U.S. is both the most religiously enthusiastic and the least religious literate country in the developed world. We believe with great fervor but know very little about the tenets, history, and elements of our own belief systems, let alone those of our neighbors. Europeans, on the other hand, show very low levels of religious belief but, thanks to formal religious education in the schools, tend to have a very deep knowledge of religion.
Because U.S. schools shy away from teaching about religion, religious education falls to the parents—all parents. Religious parents can take advantage of whatever religious education is offered at church but have the detriment of a single, limiting point of view. Nonreligious parents reverse the polarity—the responsibility for the religious education of their children is primarily theirs, but unhindered by an organized doctrinal system, we have a greater opportunity to bring multiple perspectives to bear. And we must. Children who are ignorant of the elements of religion will be easy targets for religious zealotry and will be hobbled in their own free decisionmaking. Ignorance is impotence. Knowledge is power. (p. 69)
Gah, that’s a good passage.
Granted, the curriculum Fulton County is using is lame and uneven. Erin’s class watched three short films about the Abrahamics, then completed worksheets full of typos and oversimplifications ( “T/F: Judaism is diferent than other religions because there is onky one sect” — oy vey).
I don’t like the fact that each of the three is presented as a single thing — “Christians believe that…” is pretty close to meaningless, given the presence of 33,830 Christian denominations by last count — nor a hundred other things about it. But I can quibble with curricula in almost every subject. The important thing is that the kids are seeing Christianity placed side by side with other religions. This simple act has an automatic dethroning effect — mild for some, startling for others. And what balance and depth is missing, I’m helping Erin discover.
I helped her get past her confusion of Judaism and Islam in part by putting them in historical perspective with this insanely cool flash map showing the spread of the five largest religions:
Even this required supplementing, of course. For one thing, I had to point out that the grey areas certainly had beliefs of their own before they were subsumed into one or another of the corporate faiths, and that not everyone in a given color believes the same. I, for example, am not (at least in this respect) blue.
So I’m with Steven Prothero in supporting MORE religion in schools. Let’s call it Worldview Studies to include the nontheistic perspective. If the worksheets linked below are any indication, the current curricula vary from lame to awful. But done well, such a thing would enhance the ability of kids to make informed decisions in the long run.
I’ll expect your curricula on my desk by Friday.
The worksheet on Islam used by our district
The worksheet on Judaism
The worksheet on Christianity
International Day of Peace 2009
(A revised and updated post from September 2007.)
War is most often unnecessary, ineffective, immoral, or all three.
Discuss.
Let’s define necessary as “something essential; something that cannot be done without,” and effective as “something that accomplishes its stated objectives.” I believe war most often fails to meet both of these criteria. It’s usually unnecessary, because there are almost always alternatives that have been proven to work brilliantly if the intervention happens early enough. It’s usually ineffective because it most often exacerbates the very problems it seeks to solve. And it’s usually immoral because (among other things) it brings with it massive unintended consequences for the innocent — my main objection to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some stats to consider:
One in seven countries are currently at war.
More than half of war deaths are civilians.
There are now over 250,000 child soldiers worldwide.
Children account for two-thirds of those killed in violent conflict since 1990.
An increasing percentage of world conflicts involve poor nations (formerly one third, now one half).
The average civil war drains $54 billion from a nation’s economy.
25 million people are currently displaced by war.
Mortality among displaced persons is over 80 times that of the non-displaced.
Half of all countries emerging from violent conflict relapse into violence within five years.
[SOURCE: UN Development Programme Human Development Report, 2005]
Yes, stopping Hitler was a terrific idea. Unfortunately, our public discourse now evokes WWII as the justification for all wars instead of recognizing it as one of the very few necessary wars in our history. (See Ken Burns’ documentary THE WAR for a powerful condemnation of the ongoing misuse of WWII to justify discretionary wars.)
Here’s a nice nutshell: Except in the rare cases when war is necessary AND effective AND morally defensible, peace is preferable.
Seems reasonable — which may be why so many atheists and humanists have added their voices to (among others) the Catholic, Quaker, and Unitarian Universalist peace traditions in opposing war.
This position isn’t universal among the religious, of course. Nearly every day I wind up in traffic behind someone with a bumpersticker collage in praise of God, Guns, Country, and War.
Nor do all nontheists agree. Bob Price lays out an opposing POV in a piece that is surprisingly weak for him. Among my several objections to his essay: he doesn’t mention unintended consequences, my MAIN reason for opposing war; he seems to oppose atheist pacifism in part because it “seem(s) to embrace social ethics that mirror in startling ways the stance of Christianity,” as if any common ground is automatically “startling”; and he presents a straw man of moral equivalency that bears zero resemblance to my position — nor Bertrand Russell’s, for that matter. No surprise that WWII was the sole exception in Russell’s opposition to war. (Price’s depiction of anti-capital punishment positions is somehow even weaker. I oppose capital punishment not because I refuse to “cast the first stone” at a murderer, but mainly because of the high error rate in convictions.)
(Anyway.)
So why bring up war and peace today? No, it’s not Tolstoy’s birthday. Today is the International Day of Peace, an observance created by the UN in 1982 “to devote a specific time to concentrate the efforts of the United Nations and its Member States, as well as of the whole of mankind [sic], to promoting the ideals of peace and to giving positive evidence of their commitment to peace in all viable ways… (The International Day of Peace) should be devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.” (from General Assembly Resolution UN/A/RES/36/67)
News organizations have offered their annual yawn. A Google News search today brings up all of 399 references to the phrase “International Day of Peace” and 355 to “Peace Day” — mostly in non-U.S. media.
Not only do the stats and history seem to support the futility of war, but the foundation of secular ethics is this: in the absence divine safety net, we are all we’ve got, so we ought to try very hard to take care of each other. If war generally fails to accomplish its objectives while impoverishing and killing millions of innocent bystanders, secular ethics ought to oppose it — except in the rare cases when there really is no alternative.
When it comes to this standard, most of our national violence is far more analogous to the Mexican-American War than to the fight against Hitler.
Talk to your kids about your preference for peace, the futility of violence, the situation of child victims of war — and the fact that all of these opinions flow quite naturally from a secular worldview. Donate to Nonviolent Peaceforce, Doctors without Borders, UNICEF, or another organization that’s out there doing the heavy lifting for humanity.
New video from Nonviolent Peaceforce
Wordclouds
- September 18, 2009
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, Parenting, PBB
- 11
I’ve written before of my love of distillations that capture the essence of otherwise ungraspable things.
One of my favorites is the concordance, which ranks the frequency of words in a given text. In that long-ago post, I compared the concordance of Parenting Beyond Belief with that of What the Bible Says about Parenting by John MacArthur. It’s a word-wonky post, but I had a ball writing and researching it.
Words like THINK, QUESTIONS, and IDEA are prominent in Parenting Beyond Belief (#14, 22, and 31 respectively) while OBEDIENCE, SIN, DUTY, EVIL, FEAR, AUTHORITY, DISCIPLINE, COMMAND, COMMANDMENT, SUBMIT, LAW, and INSTRUCTION are all in the top 100 in What the Bible. I find that revealing.
You’ve probably seen wordclouds as well — a kind of graphical concordance. The more often a word occurs, the bigger it is. A few months back, I generated a wordcloud for this blog using Wordle. Liked it so much oi hung it on the wall in me study, oi did:
Struck me funny at first that the most common word I use is “one,” but looking back I see that it’s among my favorite ways to start a paragraph, as in “One of the most…” or “One way to…” That word is followed by Just, Religious, Kids, Parenting, Know, Like, and Children, with Religion and The Great I Am rounding out the top ten.
Erin (11) was apparently the most mentioned of my kids at that point, followed by Delaney (7), then Connor (14). And my dearest love and co-parent is mentioned about as often as Jesus and Santa. That just ain’t right. She’s done infinitely more for me than those two put together. Let me correct her infrequency here and now for later wordclouds:
Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca
Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca Becca
(Good luck catching up with that, J.C.)
Wordcloud for Parenting Beyond Belief
Wordcloud for Raising Freethinkers. (God gets a severe demotion in RF.)
Generate your own wordcloud from any text
Oh hey P.S. In response to repeated requests from Memlings Who Tweet, the Meming of Life is now on Twitter! I don’t plan to tweet much, but I’ve set up a nice application that sends followers a tweet every time there’s a new post here. So if you’re into it, follow me. (And tell me if it works. I don’t follow myself, so I wouldn’t know.)