The Atheist Mama

So, things have been pretty exciting in the atheist blog community, huh? Four sites that I know of (including this one) were hacked and brought down. All of my backups were wiped out too. I don’t know if I should be pissed or feel honored… But I do know one thing - hacking blogs and their hosts? How Christ-like!! Your savior would be proud, huh? Does it piss you off that we all get back online? Do you know that these acts are criminal (in the US)?

I want to thank all of you who are blogging here. Allen, Amanda, Jim, Star and MomSquared (I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten your name) - thank you all!! LMAO, and feel free to continue if you would like! Things have been so nuts here… This is the first time I’ve gotten to sit down today (7:57 pm) - no exaggeration!

So tonight is Halloween. I went out before the trick or treating began to pick up some beer, and I passed an Evangelical church that I usually drive by on my daily route. There was a big shelter-like thing built on the front lawn. It looked like it was going to be a nativity. I was thinking it was a bit early for that… But as I got closer I saw the huge sign attached to it:

Not a trick, but the best treat ever.

I also noticed that it was a manger - complete with Mary, Joe and the baby Jesus (I think it was a doll). They were handing out candy to passers by. I have no doubt that they were slipping tracts into the bags of candy as well. I know the picture sucks. My normal digital is having battery issues, so I have to depend on my cell. But it’s better than nothing! :-)

Happy Halloween!!

Maybe it’s too soon to bring this up, but wasn’t Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, just a little over the edge?

Isn’t it safe to say he took a few too many risks, putting his life in danger more often than necessary? Don’t get me wrong, he did have many admirable qualities: he was energetic, dedicated, and sincere. I even sent an e-mail to his family with my condolences, and had tears in my eyes when Bindi, his daughter, spoke during his funeral.

But should we really be shocked that he died so young, or should we be amazed he survived as long as he did?

(By the way, the snake Irwin is fondling inches from his face in this picture is a Fierce Snake–only the most venemous snake in the world.)
–Allen

The Rev. Ron Carlson, a popular author and lecturer, sometimes presents his audience with two stories and asks them whether it matters which one is true.

In the secular account, “You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach 3 1/2 billion years ago. You are a mere grab bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a meaningless universe. You came from nothing and are going nowhere.”

In the Christian view, by contrast, “You are the special creation of a good and all-powerful God. You are the climax of His creation. Not only is your kind unique, but you are unique among your kind. Your Creator loves you so much and so intensely desires your companionship and affection that He gave the life of His only son that you might spend eternity with him.”

First of all… STRAW MAN and FALSE DICHOTOMY!

(blinks and readjusts self to former state of calm dignity)

Truth isn’t a popularity contest. Sure, it sounds pretty to live in a world where meaning and goodness are predefined by a wrinkled man with a beard. However, wanting to believe something (i.e. your pet bunny Foo Foo will never die) doesn’t make it an accurate representation of reality (rabbits have a life-span of approximately eight years and, to date, there has never been a recorded instance of an immortal rabbit).

I have no problem with the concept of making meaning. It’s like the life-review equivalent of good writing techniques; you sort through the mess of details of an event to identify, define, and present the essentials. However, when we decide try to randomly ascribe cause to our selected sentences, we’ve crossed the line from good technique to bad logic.

The article quoted above then moves to the ever-popular hobby of atheist bashing:

Across the globe, religious faith is thriving and religious people are having more children. By contrast, atheist conventions only draw a handful of embittered souls, and the atheist lifestyle seems to produce listless tribes that cannot even reproduce themselves.

Have you ever been to an atheist convention? I have, and between the engaging speakers, dinners with crowds of participants, and dancing at a three level club, there wasn’t time to be embittered. Sure, sure, atheists should continue to work to improve their general PR. However, the false idea of atheists being uniformly dour and boring is perpetuated mainly by articles and misrepresentations like this.

Lacking the strong Christian identity that produced its greatness, atheist Europe seems to be a civilization on its way out. We have met Nietzsche’s “last man” and his name is Sven.

(blinks) Was the greatness you were referring to simple imperialism or to the tendency of the Christian Europeans of the past to murder and enslave the “heathen� natives they would encounter?

Based on my experiences, I’m pretty sure the more secular version of European civilization isn’t on its way out. We’ve already established that you’ve likely not attended an atheist convention. Have you been to Europe?

The real difference is that in the past, children were valued as gifts from God, and now they are viewed by many people as instruments of self-gratification. The old principle was, “Be fruitful and multiply.” The new one is, “Have as many children as enhance your lifestyle.”

Or, “we have access to birth control and careers and thus have other options to pursue if we wish.� Not to mention, “seeing as the world population continues to grow and we have limited resources, it doesn’t seem like such a tragedy if some people chose to have one or even (heaven forbid) no children.�  Anyway, this blog is itself proof that atheists do indeed have children.

The prophets of the disappearance of religion seem to have proven themselves to be false prophets. Even though the world is becoming richer, religion seems to be getting stronger. The United States is the richest and most technologically advanced society in the world, and religion shows no signs of disappearing on these shores.

Richest?? Well, perhaps if you ignore Luxemborg and Norway. Then again, they are part of that silly, declining Europe, so we can just ignore them anyway.

My conclusion is that it is not religion but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation. It seems perplexing why nature would breed a group of people who see no purpose to life or the universe, indeed whose only moral drive seems to be sneering at their fellow human beings who do have a sense of purpose.

No darling, I just sneer at people who write poorly researched articles accusing atheists of having no moral purpose.

Here is where the biological expertise of Dawkins and his friends could prove illuminating. Maybe they can turn their Darwinian lens on themselves and help us understand how atheism, like the human tailbone and the panda’s thumb, somehow survived as an evolutionary leftover of our primitive past.

- God knows why faith is thriving by Dinesh D’Souza.

Yes, logic is clearly a vestigial trait.

***

Oh, and…

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

(silence)

(silence)

(silence)

(peers outside at the friendly darkness)

(shrugs)

Who’s there? Well, nothing supernatural as far as I can see, but is that really so scary?

(shrugs)

I’m okay with getting my meaning from humanity and my groceries from my neighbor.

(cross posted at Irreverent Musings)

Since I’ve been designated the “Atheist Daddy,â€? I’d like to explore a parenting issue that isn’t discussed as much as it really should be: what to tell your kids about Santa Claus.

Is belief in Santa just innocent fun, or is there something harmful or even sinister about it?

At the risk of being branded something worse than an atheist–a dirty, stinkin’ grinch–I’d advise the godless fathers and mothers who celebrate Christmas to consider carefully before inviting jolly old St. Nick into their homes.

I think the most compelling indictment against the Santa tradition is that it involves lying to your children. Not exaggerating, not embellishing, but outright lying. And it’s not like you have to tell just one lie only one time, either; once you start lying, you find yourself telling more and more lies to counter doubts and questions. Then comes the day when your children finally figure out you’ve been deceiving them all along. They may shrug it off as innocent fun, but they may also see it as a huge betrayal of the trust they have in you.

But what concerns me almost as much as the blatant dishonesty about the Santa conspiracy is the way it fosters an uncritical acceptance of magic and miracles in very much the same way religion does. Skepticism is discouraged while faithfulness—believing without seeing—is the highest virtue.

And consider, too, how Santa himself has many attributes of a deity: he wields god–like omniscience to see us when we’re sleeping, to know when we’re awake, and if we’ve been bad or good; he controls space and time by visiting millions of houses in one night in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer; he rewards good (with presents) and punishes evil (with lumps of coal); and he answers “prayers� children send him in the form of letters. To encourage belief in such a fantasy undermines the ideals of reason and inquiry that atheist parents work so hard to instill.

This doesn’t mean, however, that Santa should be completely banned from Christmas. I think children can enjoy stories, music, television shows and movies about Santa while understanding he is just make-believe. They do need to know, of course, that other families take Santa much more seriously, and that’s all right for them. This way, you can preserve the integrity of your relationship with your children, promote the values of reason and honesty, and still have a merry Christmas.

–Allen

(I realize this is a decidedly uncheerful topic, especially for my first post on the blog. I promise to not only make the next post more cheerful, but also to start it with a knock-knock joke as a bit of compensation.)

During a terminally ill patient’s less lucid moments, he’d reach his arms up to the ceiling, ignoring everyone around him, the nurse at the head of the table explained. Eventually, when he was awake, he informed his family that he was reaching up to god and that they shouldn’t disturb him during these moments. Everyone around the table nodded approvingly. The nurse recounted another story, where a staff member’s grandfather, “a very bad man�, started yelling that his feet were burning as he lay dying in his hospital bed. Everyone around the table gasped and looked properly horrified. We all had ours stories to tell, of inspiring or scary end of life experiences, and everyone was able to happily file away the information as further evidence of the afterlife planned by a Christian god.

Well, everyone except me.

I’m five weeks into a seven week training program for a local non-profit Hospice and, as the only atheist (actually, as the only non-Christian), periodically find myself squirming in my seat in the unable-to-identify-yet-unwilling-to-dissent sort of uncomfortable that comes from being part of an often distrusted minority. My New Year’s resolution of this year was to be more outspoken, and one of the ways I’ve attempted to do so is by being more open about my lack-of-theism. However, sitting around that table, I was entirely uncomfortable with the idea of expressing my own interpretations of those stories and I instead just squirmed silently.

I can’t think of a moment where atheism is more of a challenge to a Christian belief system than when it comes to death and the concept of an afterlife. When considering heaven and hell, Christians can’t brush us off as just a misinterpretation, as they might other varieties of Christianity, Judaism, or even less related religions, such as Islam or Hinduism. Atheism isn’t just another version of theism, but instead a direct rejection of the biblical idea of the afterlife. This is a touchy subject when it comes to loved ones who people desperately want to believe “live on.�

I’m not scared of death. Certainly, I’m in favor of living. However, the thought of slipping into an unknown doesn’t terrify me; it just gives me incentive to live more deeply and savor the time I do have. I’m okay with not knowing what might come after death, even if, as I think is likely, it’s nothing at all. It’s a question that I’m willing to leave unanswered, for the moment at least. Deciding whether to be vocal when others come up with answers that I find implausible? Now, that’s more of an immediate challenge.

I think that after I move past the training and into the volunteering itself, it should be less complicated. My goal is to be a Hospice volunteer specifically for nonreligious families, because I think the end of life concerns and questions are a bit different. It would perhaps be a bit easier for a terminally-ill freethinker to talk about this with a fellow freethinker rather than even a well-intentioned believer.

My questions to you: as atheists, what are your views towards death and dying? Do you feel the end of life issues and inquiries are different for an atheist than for a believer? How can we provide support to terminally-ill atheists? Finally, have you had situations where you’ve discussed dying with theists? How have you handled these discussions? I’d appreciate any input.

(cross posted at Irreverent Musings)

Hello all! Hope you’re having a great week. Glad to be a guest blogger here. This is somewhat of a long post, so please bare with me. Feel free to visit my website and blog at www.myspace.com/starlitexprss.
A Christian friend of mine recently asked, “What led you to your current beliefs?� Here I will try to describe the evolution from my Christian childhood to my current state of atheism. I can’t, of course, cover everything – but I will attempt to touch on the most important aspects.

To say the least, my childhood was rough. Granted, it could have been worse – a lot worse – but it was bad enough. I don’t have many memories up until the age of six. That was pretty much when the shit hit the fan. My younger brother, age four, was hit be a car while riding his bike. I won’t get into the horrific specifics of the day, or the following months in the hospital, but the events left his body broken and he was in a vegetative state for four years until his death. It was also around this time that I was sexually molested by my uncle although I wouldn’t realize the full implications this would have on my childhood until later. It was also around this time that my mother had her first mental breakdown and was labeled manic-depressive, later to be renamed bi-polar. This also was the start of a constant state of anger and resentment my parents held for one another during the rest of their broken marriage.

You could say my doubts started then. I was taught that Jesus was a loving man who loved little children. I was taught that God loved his people. I wondered why God could let my only brother get hit by a car. Why that God could then let him live for four years, my mother constantly praying and faithful to the very end. Where was my guardian angel when my uncle was taking “naps� with me? Why didn’t God help my mommy and daddy when they were screaming at each other? Why did God allow my mother to see things that weren’t there?

These questions tugged at my heart through childhood. But every Sunday morning I would be assured that “God is an awesome God.� I sung in the choir. I attended youth services on Wednesday nights. I was in Christian musicals and went to vacation Bible school every summer. I recited loved Bible verses and played the bells in musical productions. I honored my mother and my father. I prayed to God every night. I was a good Christian. When my youth ministers asked me to repent because they knew I was not being the good Christian I should be, I cried and repented. I had entertained doubts. I had laughed when one of my friends had made fun of someone. I had felt anger and hate in my heart for someone who had taunted me. These were bad things for a good Christian girl.

I grew up listening to Christian music. I remember a specific incident in middle school in which we were supposed to pick a song and do a “music video.� Most of the kids formed groups and did popular, secular songs of the time. I performed an Amy Grant song that I practiced constantly for day in and day out. I thought the choreography rocked. I was totally unprepared for the laughter and the teasing that followed for weeks after the performance. Even though these children were Christians who went to church, I was mercilessly tortured because I had sung a Christian song by Amy Grant. I didn’t know any other music. From the music I did know, I thought it was the coolest. I started to realize then that there was something I was missing from life; something that these other children were privy to.

My parents originally met at a Bible college and my father attended seminary while I was growing up. He was a hospital chaplain for a short time, and then in my ninth grade year he became a Southern Baptist preacher. The year he became a preacher is the year I started having even stronger doubts about Christianity.

I formed fast friendships with a group of outsiders at my high school. They were hoodlums and smokers, but they were real. They were passionate. We would hang out every morning before school and sometimes skip it altogether. We would go to a coffeehouse, play dots and talk about existentialist ideals all day. We would listen to Pink Floyd and occasionally watch A Clockwork Orange. Eventually I was moved to a different high school where I would meet my future husband.

Robert was the first person I would actually have debates with who didn’t believe in Christianity. Sure I had posed questions to my parents, but they believed in Christianity and always had an answer.

I was in constant defense of Christianity and God in my discussions with Robert. But in my mind, I doubted my own defense. Christianity began to look even more and more irrational to me. It was at this time that I read my first science book for fun – Cosmos by Carl Sagan – this book literally changed my life. When you begin to realize just how large the universe is, and just how small humanity is, it changes you. My whole perspective on life changed.

I was doubting Christianity at this point, but it still had its claws in me. It’s hard to un-brainwash yourself. I had been taught that dinosaurs and man roamed the earth together. I had been taught that Noah’s flood caused the great geological miracles of our times. I was taught that the Bible was the literal word of God. I was taught that God had a plan and that everything in my life was happening for a reason. So I was still a Christian, but of a different breed.

During this point in time a tragedy happened upon Robert’s family – the death of his brother George. I had formed a relationship with George and we had talked about his beliefs in God – or rather his lack of beliefs. He wasn’t a Christian and I questioned the location of his soul – was he now in hell? My mother assured me that he was most certainly in heaven because he had only been a child – fourteen years old. But this brought up even more questions – who gets to decide at what age you need to be to accept Christ and be saved at death? What about the people who are never exposed to Christianity? What about the people who actually got to SEE God? How was it fair to the people who had to accept blindly on faith?

My parents and I moved 400 miles south and I found a Christian church that catered to the kind of people I like. It was a youth ministry for goth-types and hippie-types such as myself. I met up with some older friends and we got along splendidly. Here I found a place where I could have my cake and eat it too. It is interesting how I always seemed to have sexual conflicts in my childhood, from molestation to almost-rapes and other things I don’t want to mention. During this time my youth minister pressured me into having “sexual relations,� if you will. He was adamantly sorry – but I never attended the church again.

It was after this that I encountered the new age revolution and began learning about the “healing� properties of rocks and crystals, the power of our own minds, hypnosis, dreams, etc. During this time I also read up on Buddhist and Hindu beliefs although neither struck my fancy. I did however like the tenets of Wicca. “Live and let live,� try to be kind, enjoy the spirituality of nature, oh yeah – and do fun rituals that are basically elaborate prayers. I learned that these types of prayers didn’t work either.

During this reflective time in my life I would not only realize how vast the size of the universe is, I would realize HOW LONG the universe and earth have been in existence. I would realize that humanity is but a speck of time in our long history. How could we be the realization of a creator if we didn’t come until much, much later? How could Christianity be right when there were thousands of gods and religions that came before? The great expanse of all these things shaped my beliefs.

While I studied Wicca, over the course of a few years, I came across a wonderful book, The Magickal Year by Diana Ferguson. This book described how Christian holidays were based on earlier Pagan holidays and described the mythological tenets of religion. After reading this book I was finally able to throw off the lingering shackles of Christianity. Not soon thereafter I gave up religion of any kind and realized that my life was not any less wanton for lack of spirituality.

I guess I went around for several years calling myself an agnostic – or pretty much ignoring what I was at all. Spirituality had lacked to have meaning in my life and I didn’t really pay it any mind. But society had a way of shaping the person I would become today.

I began to see in the news – accounts of groups of Christians getting together and rallying for the teaching of “Intelligent Design� in public classrooms. I felt inner outrage at the thought. They wanted to teach the same lies and bullshit that I had been fed my whole childhood – in public schools. When you have been lied to your whole life – you can’t help but feel some sort of resentment for the people who spread such lies.

This initial outrage led me to form more specific beliefs about the non-existence of a god. I became more interested in scientific pursuits and have since decided to become a science teacher in high school. Richard Dawkins is my new hero.

I haven’t even discussed my love for evolution and what affect that had on my previous beliefs. There is no way for a rational individual to deny evolution. It is a fact of life. There is evidence for it everywhere. If you deny the evidence and reality of evolution, how do you determine what reality is? If evolution is not safe from irrationality, what is? You can irrationalize-away anything. For me, I cannot equate the scientific facts of astronomy and the “big bang� (or however the start occurred,) geological time, anthropology, biology and more specifically evolution – with the existence of a god.

The fact that I don’t believe in a god means that I call myself an atheist. It doesn’t make me less moral, or more evil. I love my children; I want good things for humanity. I don’t have a desire to maim or kill, rape or plunder. I want to make a good mark in this world and be remembered for my kindness and intelligence. I was born an atheist, and I’ll die an atheist.

Well, sorry the site has been down for the last few days. Somehow the database became corrupt, and we had to restore from backup. Apparently it hasen’t been backed up for a little while. So we lost a whole bunch of posts and comments. :-(

There was also another issue that may suggest sabotage. No, this isn’t paranoia, a certain bit of information was missing that caused the site to disappear. That’s all I’m going to say about it at this point. We are in the process of digging for more info.

There is a possibility that it we may be able to back up the site with a more recent backup, but we’re not sure. So stay tuned…