Are We Alone Out Here?
On January 9th, a new AgnosticMom reader made the following comment and request:
I’m a new parent, a stay-at-home-dad, and born-again agnostic doing my initial groundwork for making sure our nest is well lined, insulated from destructive influences, and harmonious!
I am looking for resources, community, and information for agnostic parenting. I am surprised at how challenging this has been - there are assemblies (both real and virtual) for every kind of person imaginable, but the oft demonized ‘teaming masses’ of secularists are in reality very hard to find! Makes the claims of our influence and numbers seem awfully questionable.
Would it be possible to supply more links, if you have them - more connections to similar blogs?
I am sorry to disappoint you, Ron, but I have been scouring the internet, and what I have to report is bad. In terms of agnostic parenting blogs, there is one. Only one. Mine.
On the off-chance I am wrong, and I somehow missed a good blog that deals with agnostic/athiest parenting, I would love for someone to send me a link. I created AgnosticMom after 3 years of finding very little regarding secular families. At Ron’s request, I repeated my search of the blogosphere in hopes of finding newer ones. Nothing.
Almost all agnostic/athiest blogs fit into three categories:
#1 Pure Philosophy (not dealing with day to day practicalities)-I’m sorry, but I find this so boring. Many of us secularist types are already philosophical people. We lay in our beds philosophizing. We daydream, with our lattes in hand, philosophizing. I am full of philosophizing, and I need some practical ideas for practical living, especially for my children.
#2 Ranting and Raving I like a little ranting and raving. I do it myself. But if ranting and raving is all you are doing, where is your life? Once again, the practicality is missing. The rants and raves should be intermittent side notes.
#3 Watchdog Watchdogs are good. I like watchdogs. But it only meets a portion of parental needs. In my searching I found a good watchdog that I like: Be Reasonable
One of my readers, Zoe, has an interesting blog. I like that it has a personal touch, which I find lacking in most of the other agnostic/athiest blogs. Hers focuses on the difficulty of leaving born-again fundamentalism. She shares experiences she has with her still-fundamentalist friends. She is thoughtful and, while not afraid to point out her frustrations with religion and its culture, she is respectful. She shares interesting personal experiences. (Side note: when I went to her site to copy her address for this post, I noticed she has a link to AgnosticMom. Thanks, Zoe!). A Complicated Salvation
For real exposure to other agnostic/athiest blogs, go see the Carnival of the Godless. Every two weeks, godless bloggers submit an article. Every other Sunday those articles are showcased with links to the contributers’ blogs. You get a variety of ranters, philosophers, and watchdogs. None of them really fit Ron’s request, so I’m just providing a link to the entire carnival. The Carnival of the Godless
I’m sorry this is all I have to offer in terms of blogs. There is a very informative website (not a blog) called Ethical Athiest. It has a lot of educational articles. They have a parent-related section, but it is very general, and it is not yet complete.
Things are bleak for non-religious parents. This is why I encourage everyone to share their experiences and ideas, concerns and difficulties, here in comments on AgnosticMom.
9 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
January 15th, 2006 @ 8:12 am
Hi Noelle,
Hope you don’t mind me linking to you without your official permission? Thanks for the point in my direction. I was pleased to read your take on my blog. It suggests to me that I’m being true to myself…and that is a good thing!
Ron, keep searching. I just keep on clicking in deeper & deeper through certain sites & their links. That’s how I found Noelle. Some agnostic/atheist sites may come across very militant &/or harsh in style. Thing is, don’t leave until you check out some of their links to other blogs & sites. Sometimes you can find real gems if you keep searching.
January 15th, 2006 @ 9:02 am
Noell,
I really enjoy your blog site. This posting in particular was interesting to me. I followed your link to Zoe’s site and read several of her entries as well. I’ll be adding her site to my short list of daily reads.
I have a habit of reading not only the articles but all the comments others have posted. I may be a bit of a voyeur. Anyway, I noticed you had made a couple of comments in Zoe’s site. Very insightful!
I may find a need to start my own blog site someday, but for now I’m content to steal Larry’s space in the office for my morning fix before work :>
Not everyone posts daily … I’m counting on you!
January 16th, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
Thanks very much N!
I am bookmarking on your every word with regards to this subject.
The hole out there when it comes to information about agnostic family living is very very strange. How is it that I can find hundreds of sites about Bigfoot, and have agnostics remain elusive? Truthfully - I find it fairly disturbing. Surely it indicates that we are outnumbered by none other than massive crowds of Sasquatches!
Bet you never thought you’d be the first in line to discuss an important social group! Being first at anything on the internet is right incredible! Thanks for all the research and for your always-entertainging and informative blog!
January 17th, 2006 @ 5:57 pm
thank god i found your site
January 17th, 2006 @ 8:12 pm
Yes, John. I’m so glad God brought you to AgnosticMom.
Thanks for joining us!
February 4th, 2006 @ 10:46 am
I just stumbled onto your site. Such a source could have been helpful to me some years ago. I am an athiest parent, but both of my sons are now in their 20s. I started a blog several weeks ago, (rapturenutballs.blogspot.com), and it has been a somewhat frustrating experience. I get a few hits, but so far, other than 1 comment from my younger son, I have only 1 respondent, one Jazzy Cat, a christian fundamentalist who loves to take me to task regarding all of my godless pronouncements. Actually, I have enjoyed sparring with him (it is a guy who writes under the persona of Jazzy Cat, a female feline,) but I have had no discourse with anyone of like mind. I’m not sure where my site would fall under your definitions.
I haven’t read through your postings as yet, so I don’t know what your specific situation is. As it happens we sent both of our sons to a catholic high school, mainly as it was the best option over area public schools. They are both independent minded and beginning to do well in life. My younger son graduated from Northwestern a couple of years ago and is hoping for admission to graduate school. He is, I suppose, more of an agnostic than his old man, but he is very skeptical of anything smacking of religion. He is a poet.
My older son is living in Germany. His situation is somewhat clouded as regards his belief in god. As it happens, he is a classic tenor. A good deal of the repertoire he sings is religious based. Most of the truly great western music was composed in a religious context. It could be difficult for him to renounce a belief in god while making a living singing his praises.
I also sang in an arts chorale for a few years, and most of our repertoire was also religious. My rationale (and I suppose it was in the end, a rationale) was that while the music may have been inspired by a belief in god, it was, in fact, conceived and written by human beings. All the great cathedrals were designed, engineered and built by human beings, not god. Anyhow, it works for me.
TLS
February 7th, 2006 @ 9:58 am
Hey,
I just read your date nite post. Such outings are reminiscent of similar adventures with our sons when they were younger. I remember our first trip to the first Borders Book Store that opened in the Indianapolis area. They hadn’t evolved at that time to the point of having a coffee bar, but what a treat for all of us to be amongst all those books. Daltons & Waldens had never been like Borders.
Your kid’s projects you mentioned sound ambitious but certainly interesting. Good luck.
Happily, our kids have always been readers. Both my wife, Joan and I read to them early on. One of their early favorites was Benji’s Dog House which Jo and I probably read to them a couple of hundred times. They had it memorized. There were others.
Later, I read them a number of different books by a variety of good children’s book authors including Madeline L’Engle, Gary Paulsen, and a fellow named Edward Ormondroyd. Eventually, I evolved to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings which I actually read to them twice.
What I think was more fun for the kids was Joan making up stories for them. She would make up totally off the wall things - a story about a blade of grass, or a feather. She would often have them howling - me too.
I think that the greatest benefit of getting our kids to read, is that it helps foster a love of learning, which both of my sons have. They are very curious. My older son, who lives in Germany, gets online and follows news stories through internet news sites. He will call me up or email me about a current news event and we prattle on.
Being a writer, my younger son has evolved into an insatiable reader. He reads a great deal of poetry and other literature and criticism. Much of it is beyond me. He also writes some great poetry. I’m tempted to publish some of his work on my blog, but I’m not sure he would want me to do that. It is his writing afterall.
I’m sure you will have many great adventures with your kids as they grow. It is always a little bittersweet when they pass some significant bench mark in their lives, because you realize that a part of their journey is over, never to come again. But the future holds much new promise.
Parenting is not easy, but it can be enormously rewarding.
TLS
September 19th, 2006 @ 4:35 pm
Hello! I was sent your link by my sister who just stumbled upon your blog.
While not everything on my blog deals with atheism, I am an atheist mom and my two sons are atheist as well.
I have been raising them without religion since they were born despite family pressure, outside pressure, and sadly, school pressure.
My kids who are now in 8th grade and 10th grade, are constantly being asked why they don’t believe in god or worse yet, called satanists for being atheist.
Both my sons have a firm grasp on what it means to be without god and handle the pressures and taunts from classmates very, very well.
On Sundays on my blog, I do a Sunday sermon. It’s actually atheist quotes from very well known people, or funny religious gag gifts.
Check me out sometime. I am definitely bookmarking and blogrolling your site.
It’s great to find another mom out there like me.
September 19th, 2006 @ 5:02 pm
I was relieved to see this site, and the few comments made by parents who are interested in raising agnostic kids. i find it frustrating to find any books on the subject for our little ones to enjoy, when there are whole sections in bookstores on religious books for kids. In my local library today I found three books that explain evolution to kids, they were in the bitter reaches of the place, on a bottom shelf. I should’ve known, and started looking there. I was thankful to find them, though.
Besides finding illusive evidence to satisfy my kids’ questions, I’d also love to connect with other parents, as I have a lot of the same issues they do, with teachers, and co-workers, and even my husband questioning my views/values all the time. I know we are out there, I see the Darwin fishes on the backs of cars sometimes, and I get an urge to flag down the driver and say, “Hey! I’m here, too!”