I never did tell you about the article I wrote for the Humanist Network News back in March for their Secular Parenting column. Here’s how it starts…

The “Out” Parent

I walked into my child’s preschool one day right before class was to let out. There was a lobby full of parents and one of them raised her voice above the crowd to say to me, “I noticed your license plate says AGMOM. What does that mean?”

Those of you who have read my articles or blog will recognize it as my blog name, Agnostic Mom. While most of my friends know about this, it wasn’t something I wanted to shout across a crowded room of parents at my child’s preschool. Yet there they all were, staring at me, curious.

Would you like to read the rest of the story? Then please click here.

If you’re newer to Agnostic Mom and would like to read all of my articles when I had a regular column with them, you might want to head over to this page.

The Podcast

Tomorrow on Chuck Bryant’s Something Happening Here podcast, an interview with me will air. I’ll be back to link to it, but I thought I’d give you a heads up…you know, since I’m not around so much lately. =)

You might want to check out his site and show by then, too.

That doesn’t mean we can’t help. Here is what Dale said we could do:

A polite expression of curious interest combined with excitement for the appearance of such a reasonable and respectful book — that’s the ticket. Something like this:

Dear Mr. Windybottom,

I just came across a great new parenting book and wondered if you’d heard about it. It’s called “Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion” and is co-written by a number of prominent authors ranging from Richard Dawkins to a Unitarian minister. Early reviews are praising it as evenhanded and down-to-earth, not an angry screed. As a longtime reader of [insert mag name here], I’d love to see a review of this book in your pages. Would you happen to know if that’s in the works? I look forward to hearing from you!

Regards,
Sandy Subscriber

As for the list of mags I’m most eager to break into, here’s my top ten:

Parents Magazine: www.parents.com
Parenting Magazine (circ. over 2 million): www.parenting.com
Informed Parent – includes prominent book reviews: www.informedparent.com
Brain, Child – very good content fit: www.brainchildmag.com
Family Resource.com – prominent reviews: www.familyresources.com
Gay Parent – many gay parents are secularists: www.gayparentmag.com
Cookie Magazine: www.cookiemag.com
New Parent Magazine: www.newparent.com
Wondertime Magazine: www.wondertime.go.com
Mothering Magazine: www.mothering.com

I’d be very grateful for help in gently contacting the editors at these publications. Thanks Noell, and thanks to your readers!

Some days my seven-year-old daughter believes there is a god. Hers is a god of lost pencils and favorite foods. On other days, when said god doesn’t come through to grant a wish, she announces, “I guess I don’t believe in god anymore.”

To read more, follow the link to this week’s article in the Humanist Network News. Feel free to write a letter to the editor in response. Or come back here if you’d like to comment on my blog.

I wanted to thank everyone for the great response to the previous post about Parenting Beyond Belief. It was great to see so many links back to my posting and to the book; so many purchases, even multiple purchases, and gifts to local libraries! Awesome.

Somebody asked which of the magazines and stores are rejecting the book. I contacted Dale McGowan about this. So far he is waiting to hear the specifics from the publisher. Once he gets the information I’ll be sure to update you so all the interested activists in this readership can start writing letters.

Here is a positive review from Library Journal. This is a publication that is instrumental in getting libraries to purchase copies:

McGowan, a professor, freelance writer, and novelist, has collected essays from some of contemporary secularism’s big names, e.g., Richard Dawkins, Margaret Downey, in support of those nonreligious American parents who seek to “articulate values, celebrate rites of passage, find consolation, and make meaning” sans religion. Contributor Ed Buckner writes that secular means “not based on religion” rather than “hostile to religion.” Though a few entries do evidence anger or resentment, it is clear that all of these astute essayists have thought carefully about God’s nonexistence. Most of the 30-odd contributors recommend imbuing children with the ability to think well independently; when pressured or rejected by real and figurative institutions that tend to favor the religious (e.g., schools, scouting, holidays), parents are advised to stick to their nontheistic guns. The book considers parents as pedagogues, recalling Deborah Stipek and Kathy Seal’s Motivated Minds: Raising Children To Love Learning. Engaging and down-to-earth, this collection balances the scores of religious parenting titles shelved in the average library and is highly recommended for large public libraries and parenting collections. — Douglas C. Lord, Connecticut State Lib., Hartford

Thanks for your interest, everyone! Don’t forget to stop over to HNN for a little reading.

Several parenting magazines are declining to review the book for fear of offending religious subscribers, and a few retailers are declining to stock the book, claiming there is no market for it. It is essential that we demonstrate otherwise, so please put all promotional oars in the water as soon as possible.

I know that a huge percentage of AgnosticMom readers have blogs. Will you please promote the book on your sites? You can also send a link to the friends and family members on your email lists. Plus, if you can spare the change, how about ordering one for your local library?

Here is a link to the book, Parenting Beyond Belief. Let me know when your order your copy!

Thanks for all your thoughts on the last two posts! They were amazing to read. And they just kept coming and coming. So many of you posted for the first time and I really appreciate it. You’re all welcome back if you have more to say!

My apologies, by the way, on my wording of the first question in the last post. It made the assumption that we have a soul and that was purely accidental.

But for now, if you don’t already get HNN in your inbox, head on over to read my article, When The Sympony Stops Playing. If you have thoughts you can write a letter to the editor at HNN or you can comment here on my blog.

DALE MCGOWAN is a writer, editor, and critical thinking educator in Minneapolis. His satirical novel Calling Bernadette’s Bluff has been called “an undoubted triumph of satire” and “wicked funny.” He recently completed Northing at Midlife, a humorous narrative of a midlife crisis encountered on the trails of Britain. McGowan is editor of Rumors of Peace, the international newsletter of Nonviolent Peaceforce, is a board member of the Critical Thinking Club, Inc. and has taught critical thinking skills in the college classroom, the corporate boardroom, and public venues.

Dale met Becca, now an elementary educator, in 1984 when they were both members of the University of California Band in Berkeley, CA. They live near Minneapolis with their three ethical, caring kids

I read on the Parenting Beyond Belief forum that you grew up going to church. What religion were you?

We attended a UCC (United Church of Christ) dutifully every Sunday, but there wasn’t much presence of religion in our home the rest of the week. I grew up in the sort of nominally Christian home that’s so common.

Your dad died when you were thirteen years old and that event was the catalyst to a long journey of trying to discover truth about what happens after death and whether God exists. When I say long, I mean it lasted until you were about thirty three years old. Is that right? Throughout this time did you lean toward believing or not believing?

It was at Dad’s funeral that I began to feel that questions about God were important and interesting enough to pursue. Over the next twenty years I chased the answers to five questions:

1. Can I ask these questions?

2. May I ask these questions?

3. Even if I can and may, are answers possible?

4. If so, do the answers matter?

5. Am I alone in my conclusions?

For the sake of the inquiry, I had to assume the answer to the first question was yes. I gradually realized that a decent God was unlikely to care if I was honestly wrong about him, which took care of #2.

Question #3 took much longer. At last I realized that “Is there a God?” was the wrong question. “Why do people believe there is a God?” – now there’s a question I could actually pursue. If it turned out that people had good reasons for believing, I too would be justified in doing so. It was the process of learning why people believe that took most of twenty years.

I began to recognize the terribly negative effects of religious belief in my early thirties, which answered #4, and discovered (through AN Wilson) the astonishingly rich and largely concealed history of disbelief, which answered #5. At that point, in my mid-thirties, I felt I could express my disbelief with a greater confidence in its reasoned foundation.

You attended nine denominations throughout your church-going days. What were they?

The experiences varied from a few visits to several years. Let’s see if I can do it from memory: UCC, Mormon, Unitarian, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist megachurch (five years, please shoot me), Catholic, Episcopalian. I always forget one. Uh…Presbyterian!

Which played the most dominant role?

Unitarian. I attended Neighborhood UU Church in Pasadena, California for two years in high school and actually looked forward to the services. The minister (whose name I would swear was something like Reverend Lovejoy) would talk about life, actual human here-on-this-planet life! I felt challenged, inspired, and enlightened every Sunday.

Is your wife a nonbeliever and freethinker as well?

She was a mainstream Christian when we started dating and for about the first nine years of our marriage. And though I’d vigorously dissect the service on the way home from each ordeal at our Baptist megachurch, I never set out to change her views. But she’s wickedly smart (in addition to being perfect in every other way) and eventually began to question her own way out. She now calls herself a “humanist who prays ‘to whom it may concern.’”

Parenting Beyond Belief isn’t your first book. You’ve also written two novels. What drove you to switch over to nonfiction and write for secular parents?

The novels were written when I was a secular humanist professor at a Catholic college. They were satirical releases, born out of the frustration of that situation. Calling Bernadette’s Bluff was published in 2002; the sequel, Good Thunder, is finished but not yet released. I’m very happy with them, but I really think fiction is the aberration for me. My first love is narrative nonfiction, including a humorous travel narrative I wrote while living in England in 2004 (also pending release).

PBB came about because of the crying need for it, a need I discovered while editor of the Family Issues page of the Atheist Alliance WebCenter. I simply could not believe how little there was out there for parenting without religion, so I created PBB.

I realize the book hasn’t been released yet, but what kind of response is Parenting Beyond Belief getting?

It has been overwhelmingly positive – a kind of ripple-hallelujah from people who’ve been waiting for just such a thing. And word is spreading like wildfire. Googling the phrase “Parenting Beyond Belief” on January 1 gave me 49 hits. Last week it passed 12,000. I daresay we’re onto something!

Why is now the time to publish this book?

Ooh, I like that! Makes it sound like I sat on the project until just the right moment. In fact, this is when I got around to it. But I do think the timing is unbeatable, for three interrelated reasons:

(1) Publishers are ready. Ten years ago, no mainstream publisher would have touched it, but now disbelief is coming into its own. The enormous and recent success of the Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett books showed the publishing industry that nonbelievers exist in large numbers and that they read.

(2) Our numbers are increasing. In 1990, 8% of respondents to a USA Today poll identified themselves as non-religious. By 2002 that sector had grown to 14.1%. I don’t think 18 million people stopped believing during that time; for the most part, I think 18 million people started being comfortable with saying they didn’t believe. And that’s the point when we start getting comfortable sharing our disbelief with our children, as a value, not as the absence of one.

(3) Five years from now, with any luck, the book will have competition. At the moment there is essentially none, which makes this a better time!

Do you know how many non-religious families there are, and how this compares to estimates from years past?

This can only be guesssed from other statistics. The U.S. Census in 2000 counted 37.3 million households in the U.S. with school-age children. Assuming the same rough percentage of nonbelievers among parents as non-parents, these numbers yield a conservative estimate of seven million individual non-religious parents in the U.S. today, or roughly five million families.

What do you think is the number one reason for the boom in interest in leaving religious belief behind in our culture today?

The rise of fundamentalism, both Christian and Islamic. When George W. Bush was elected for the first time, I found myself in a room full of long-faced humanists bemoaning the end of the enlightenment. “Chins up!” I said. “This is the best possible news for us.” And I was right, imho. It is difficult to get people to see religion as a cultural cancer when it is moderated and under wraps. Only when religious zealotry takes the reins of power does the evidence become overwhelming.

We’ve had a chance to see the true face of religious orthodoxy in recent years, from a president who says God wanted him to invade another country to a religious electorate that seemed willing to permit him any course of action so long as he said his prayers. We can’t see priests without thinking of the hundreds who abused their authority to molest trusting children. Nineteen devout young men perpetrated mass murder on 9/11. Some people, gratifyingly, are beginning at last to connect the dots.

Disbelief isn’t automatically morally superior. We don’t need to make such an arrogant claim to earn our place at the table.
All we needed was the removal of the assumption that belief granted automatic supremacy. Now that that is a harder argument to make, people can think for themselves — and more people than ever are thinking their way out of superstition.

Has there been any public criticism from the religious side or do you anticipate any?

Nothing yet, and a number of Christians who’ve read excerpts have expressed pleasant surprise. The book does not attack religion or attempt to “recruit” people away from religious parenting. It is intended to encourage and support those who have already made the decision to raise their kids without religion and simply want a little help in doing so. Our hope is to help create a world in which disbelief is accepted as a normal and acceptable choice. Reasonable readers of all perspectives should be able to accept that.

A major concern of AgnosticMom readers is dealing with social situations and people who may not want to associate with atheists and agnostics. Do you have a section that addresses this subject? If so, tell us about it.

It’s not a separate section, but a thread that runs through several chapters, popping up in discussions of church-state separation, “mixed marriage,” and the chapter of Personal Reflections.

Do you envision following this with another book or project on a related subject?

Yes indeed. Since this was the first major book on the subject, we couldn’t hope to accomplish everything in one fell swoop. We hoped to play out some threads that could be continued in other projects. I see three immediate needs: a book devoted to dealing with death and loss, another on being secular in a religious extended family, and a practical book of activities.

I have some stories to tell plus an article to write for next week’s issue of HNN. You’ll be hearing from me soon.

Yesterday’s installment of the Humanist Network News included my article, Coping With Parental Difficulties. Feel free to share your own thoughts or experiences in a comment below!

I have an idea of what you can do to celebrate it. Some of my articles are now up and running on ClubMom. You can rate them and leave comments at the end of each article. All of them have appeared on this blog at some point but I have edited the ClubMom versions. Some have only slight changes while others are very different.

Make your statement to the mainstream folks by rating my articles and leaving a comment about why these topics are important to you!

Note: If you want to find my articles from the homepage, look under the main box to find the button, “Expert Writers.” Then click on “Religion and Beliefs” (yes, that is how they classified me) for a list of all the writers in that area. Scroll down until you find me, Noell Hyman.

Ben is right. Religious leaders did (do) not just throw a dart on the wall to randomly pick rules of conduct. But many of the rules sure seem arbitrary, especially when you see headlines like this one from the Los Angeles Times:

“Reverend equates kneeling at wrong time to ‘mortal sin.’”

Surely there is more to this story than what the title says, I thought when I saw it.

Well, there is! It’s not just a story of one power-hungry ecclesastical leader who believes that kneeling during the service “is clearly rebellion, grave disobedience and mortal sin.”

The Diocese of Orange is in on it, too! There are two of them!

According to the article, members of a dozen different U.S. parishes are committing a mortal sin RIGHT IN CHURCH despite the Vatican’s new instructions of four years ago allowing bishops to play god to decide whether worshippers should kneel or not.

The article begins, “At a small Catholic church in Huntington Beach, the pressing moral question comes to this: Does kneeling at the wrong time during worship make you a sinner?”

What lies at the heart of this problem is change of time and culture. What may have seemed appropriate at one time in one culture can be inappropriate to another because of customs and associations.

And I’d add the power-hungry need to control dominions is also responsible for the standing dilemma.

So while rules of conduct may have made sense at one particular time in history and were not actually arbitrary at conception, they can sure appear arbitrary to an outsider. At the very least, they become meaningless over time. This is especially problematic since we have become a global society. Many of the rules of various sects conflict with each other.

Plus, some people become obsessed with rules. Why is the pressing moral question of any group something as miniscule as kneeling versus standing? Are there not more critical crises to worry about?

Many people lose sight of what is important because they are so worried about the rules.

And it is not just specific rules that cause a problem. Even more general principles about lying, gossiping, “going the extra mile,” etc. can, in certain situations, do more harm than good when we place them in a context of morality. We have to make all kinds of exceptions for those principles.

For example, we have no qualms about publicizing the residence of a child molester even though to do so is public gossip that causes real social and financial harm to the perpetrator. How do we justify this gossip when religion says gossip is a sin? Because it helps decrease instances of even worse harm to innumerable innocent children.

Even not-so public gossip can be important and helpful in personal situations and small group communities.

These rules, and even principles, do not stand the test of time or specific situations.

This is why I propose a system for morality that is based on situational analysis rather than rules.

We can teach our children to use their powers of reason and empathy to evaluate whether their choices would increase overall happiness or pain. Including their own. (There is a balance).

So going back to the topic of this post: Religious ideas of morality can become irrelvant and meaningless. But was my use of the word “arbitrary” inaccurate, as Ben suggested? I think so.

Can anyone come up with a better way to phrase it so I can improve my article (before I submit it to ClubMom)?

Leave your ideas (about a better word choice, or about the concepts of this blog entry in general) in a comment, please!

If you ask my son what his favorite holiday is, he’ll tell you it’s Christmas. Then he’ll tell you that his second favorite is Darwin Day.

What is Darwin Day? It is a “global celebration of Science and Humanity.” Charles Darwin’s birthday is on February twelfth. There is a giant movement to make this day an “International Celebration to show our appreciation for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity” (this reference is from www.darwinday.org, the official site for the international recognition of Darwin Day).

Why single out Charles Darwin for the celebration of what science has offered us? An article on the website of Rutgers University had an articulate answer to this question. The article is called, Why is Evolution Important in Teaching, Science, and Society? (Dobzhansky, T. 1973) and contains the subtitle, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.”

Here is a summation of why:

“Evolution is the central theory of life. An understanding of evolutionary process and evidence is necessary for considering, not only the history of living things, but also many modern questions. For example; Why should we be concerned with a bird-flu epidemic? Why is HIV so difficult to treat? How does research on lab rats apply to humans? How did humans evolve from apelike ancestors? What is the best strategy for delaying the onset of pesticide resistance? Increasingly evolutionary understanding is required for appreciating basic questions in fields traditionally apart from basic biology and anthropology. Major areas of psychology, philosophy, computer sciences, and other fields now require a solid grounding in evolutionary thinking.”

What better cause have we to celebrate? I hope that the religious and non-religious alike will recognize the benefits that Darwin’s work has given us and join us in the celebration.

A goal of the Darwin Day movement is to build momentum and increase the number of celebrants and celebrations until the year 2009, when it will be Darwin’s 200th birthday, and the 150th anniversary of his book, On the Origins of Species.

How do we celebrate Darwin’s Day? If you go onto the website, www.darwinday.org, you can click on the events page which contains a world-wide list with links, ranked by country alphabetically (U.S. celebrations are toward the bottom under “U”).

Most events have speakers. A humanist organization in my hometown has had fish at a seafood restaurant (as in the Darwin fish). The organization pushing the Darwin Day movement describes having a “Phylum Feast”, a feast with an enormous variety of meats from various phylum.

Some groups celebrate for one day, on the actual birthday. Others extend the celebration out for the entire week.

As a mom who wants her kids to grow up with an appreciation for science and an understanding of evolution and our origins, I have created our own tradition of celebrating that is both fun and educational.

We have a five to six night celebration over the dinner hour. Our celebration centers on the book, The Tree Of Life: The Wonders Of Evolution by Ellen Jackson. Our meals over the evenings represent the various stages of life forms as Jackson outlines them in her books. I decorate the table according the the life form we are focusing on (two evenings take place under the sea, one has to do with dinosaurs, etc) and we quiz the kids with questions and evolution trivia throughout the meal. Each meal ends with a surprise treat that has to do with the life forms for that evening.

Mark your calendar for February twelfth and join us as we celebrate the advancement of humanity through scientific discovery!

Happy upcoming Darwin Day!

What finally motivated me to get it done? The great founder of COTG, Brent Rasmussen of Unscrewing the Inscrutible (Brent, what do you call yourself in relation to COTG? Probably not the founder?) commented on one of my recent posts and wrote up a little blog entry on AgnosticMom.

That was all the motivation I needed.

Amazing how all this time I’ve considered submitting an article but it just seemed like work I didn’t have time to do. It took, oh, about three minutes to pick the post and send the email.

So maybe I’ll get on the ball and submit all the time.

Anyway, if you don’t know what a blogging carnival is or you’d like to see one that is godless, click here and go have some fun. Get to know some of the other godless bloggers out there.

We’ve gone into some more complicated specifics and I feel I the need to break my system down into its smallest parts. Please excuse the nature of this post as it is more of a brainstorm than a concise article.

I think there is some confusion between what I am trying to say and what I am NOT trying to say. Maybe I can clear it up.

What do I mean when I refer to right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral? And what about that extreme word, “evil?”

Wrong: Causing another person unnecessary pain or increasing the amount of pain and suffering in the world.
Bad: Causing another person unneccessary pain or increasing the amount of pain and suffering in the world.
Evil: Causing another person an excruciating and horrific amount of unnecessary pain or increasing the amount of pain and suffering in the world.
Immoral: Knowing you are causing another person unnecessary pain or increasing the amount of pain and suffering in the world. And doing it anyway when you have a choice to do otherwise.
Right, Good, and Moral: The opposite of the above.

I did NOT say anything about violating the laws of a diety, nor did I say anything about a universal “force” of good. I don’t believe in either one. Morality comes from our ability to perceive, reason, analyze and be aware of others.

In the tradition of Existentialism and materialistic thought, it all breaks down to this:
We exist.
We can have pain and suffering. We can have happiness, peace, and joy.
We have the capacity for empathy: we are aware of others’ pain and suffering.
Morality and ethics are about experiencing happiness in ways that do not unnecessarily add pain to the world or others.

I am NOT saying that we have the ability to do this perfectly. I am not saying that there are not times when it is impossible. I am not saying that life is simple and without tricky dilemmas. The system is still the most reliable.

We need to nurture empathy to be able to better recognize pain and suffering in others.
We need to nurture wisdom to better recognize HOW to avoid causing pain.

What else did I NOT say? I did not give a list of specific rules regarding what I think is right and wrong. Religion does that. There are major problems with trying to tell others what actions are right or wrong (what I call “Rules for Morality”):

1. Life is far too complex to reduce every varying situation into an absolute list. For example, sometimes it is moral to be dishonest (think Holocaust, the Underground Railroad). Therefore, dishonesty, in and of itself, is not bad.

2. Science continues to discover new facts, so we must always be open to reevaluating our understanding and assumptions. For example, do chickens feel pain when we kill them for food? Do their fellow siblings miss them when they are gone? If science can conclude that the answer to both questions is no (and that is my understanding, but I am not sure), then MAYBE it is not immoral to eat them. Unless we find that chickens are more like us than we thought. Well, then it might be moral to learn to use tofu!

3. Cause and Effect is too vast for us to accurately draw absolute conclusions. For example, Hifi and Ron talked about how our economic structure, and most everything that we buy, relies on the pain and suffering of others (for example, child slavery, but go read the comments of the above post to see the specifics).

It would seem like the moral thing to do would be to only buy organic and grow your own food, make your own material and clothing, abstain from driving cars, and a whole number of other things. At least this is what Hifi and Ron both hinted at. Perhaps in another post or comment I will explain why I think this action will cause greater pain and suffering, while also not fixing the situation. Maybe at some point I will explain why I think there is a more effective approach to changing the system, one that already seems to be pushing things in the right direction (albeit at a slow pace). And if that is so, then THAT would be the more appropriate choice. (I don’t want to get off on a tangent by delving into that here).

But maybe I am wrong on the moral dilemma of buying the products of child slaves. Once I share my understanding with you, maybe you can enlighten me on why I am wrong.

Does this exemplify why I am not trying to outline a list of specific rights and wrongs?

I do not believe in Moral Relativism. There is one principle that stands true and transcends all cultures and religions: It is immoral to cause unnecessary pain and suffering in the world. This is the one moral absolute that exists and this absolute is not relative. All others are just RULES for morals that could be wrong depending on the situations. This is why I am a proponent of Situational Ethics.

When evaluating the ethics or morality of a certain action, we do not need a handbook of right and wrong. We must individually measure it by the one absolute I have outlined: Does it cause unnecessary pain and suffering? You and I may come up with different answers. That is okay with me. We also may not always have the willpower, or even the ability, to choose that action we think is right. The important thing is the general direction we are going.

Okay, now that I have outlined my views in their most basic form, does this clarify the topic or muddle it? What are your thoughts now?

Have you heard of ClubMom.com? It’s a mainstream mother’s website, an affiliate of momcentral.com, which has a new spot on the Today Show called, Parent Central. ClubMom has three million subscribers.

Thanks to my editor, Duncan Crary of the Humanist News Network, ClubMom has asked me to become an “Expert Writer” for the website. According to our agreement, I will be providing them with 25 prewritten articles (the “non-attacking” stuff you read here and in my HNN column) over the next month or so.

They said they love the unusual niche (and my writing) regarding parents who want to raise their families without religion. They said they see a need for this!

The “Expert Writers” are pre-published book authors, professional writers who ClubMom compensates with publicity. They made an exception for AgnosticMom, a non-professional, non-book author, because they like the topic! I think we’re making a little headway here.

If you are not subscribed to the Humanist News Network, this week’s installment hit our emails yesterday. You can read my latest article, A System For Morality.

Just make sure you come back here and comment.

Aiden has added two undesirable words to his vocabulary. So far I have tried giving him explanations about the inappropriateness of the words, I have separated him from the rest of the family when he insists on using them, and I have tried ignoring it. Nothing has worked. In fact, he thought it was really funny to use his new vocabulary with his teacher. He told her, “You’re Poo-poo!”

Nice.

On the other hand, he tells me at random times throughout the day, “I love you, Mama.” When we drop the kids off at school he says, “I miss Blake and Trin.” Mostly good words come from that sweet boy’s mouth. Is he any different than any other three-year-old? Well, yes. He’s cuter.

I admit that with our crazy schedule, I have neglected to introduce the alphabet (except the song) to Aiden. He just turned three and it suddenly occurred to me that I should get him an ABC book when my sister told me her toddler, not yet two, can identify most of the letters. Coincidentally, my mom brought him one when she came into town Friday. To my delight, he opened the book and asked first about the Letter A, rather than the accompanying pictures. He’s ready to learn.

Trinity, six years old, sucks her thumb, despite the dentist’s and my own admonitions. She tells me all the time that she didn’t suck all night. But I still catch her.

She loves pretty things and pretty people. She has only just recently taken to heart the idea that some pretty people can also be mean. And some not-so pretty people can be very good, fun, and smart.

Trinity loves to take care of other people and animals. She’s one of those extraordinary people who LOVES to share. She enjoys the feeling of sharing something with others more than she enjoys the actual thing she could have kept to herself.

Trinity is an artist and she expresses it with her creative clothing designs, her visual artwork, her singing and dancing.

Two days ago she asked about a book she found in the garage. Blake told her it was a Bible. “What’s a Bible?” she asked.

Blake is more complicated. I realized he could understand deep and abstract concepts at only two years old. He is a thinker. In fact, when I had my third child, I noticed the world could fall apart all around Blake, and he wouldn’t notice. He was in his own world. Our toddling baby could have been screaming with something fallen on top of him, and Blake would be right there unaware of it all. What has surprised me most is that in this past year, Blake has somehow learned to be more aware of others around him. He no longer sits oblivious to siblings in need, but has become very helpful and compassionate.

I love that Blake takes responsibility for his choices. He acknowledges them, tries to figure out why he made them, and apologizes right away. He is so mature.

Two days ago the school sent a letter home stating that Blake’s teacher recommended him for the gifted program and they would like to begin testing him next week. Blake excels in every subject. Each week his teacher gives him five of his own spelling words to match his learning level. As opposed to words like, “we’ll” and “they’ll”, Blake gets words like “collaboration” “chronological” and “Afghanistan.” A few weeks ago Blake begged the teacher to give him the longest word he’d ever heard: “antidisestablishmentarianism.” She refused the first week, but when he kept on her the next week, she relented. Of course, he got it right on the test. And he taught the word to his babysitter.

Okay, so I am bragging a bit. All three of my kids are awesome. They don’t have religion, but they do have goodness. They don’t have doctrine, but they have ideas. They’re pretty great kids.

I thought I’d start off with a bit of drama. Just to get your attention.

We can find a legitimate answer by taking the emotion out of it and giving it a good analysis. Do they hate us, or do they FEAR us? And do they fear us, as individuals, or US as a whole?

AgnosticMom reader, Hifi, twice emphasized an important distinction we have to remember as we discuss how to improve our atheist/agnostic image:

Speaking of the UofM study about the negative view and distrust Americans have for atheists one commentator had this to say, “Agnostics like myself…would very much like to be considered full citizens and participate in American public life. The study found that “negative views about atheists are strong,” but that “survey respondents were not, on the whole, referring to actual atheists they had encountered.”

I reiterate my earlier statement, “In that light, personal revelations will do little to change the dominant view of atheists as the least trusted demographic in America – including the way our friends vote on religious issues. The last thing they will do is consider how promotion of religion by government is going to affect us.”

While you and I may be (or become) successful at winning our neighbors’ hearts, friendship, and even trust, it’s an entirely different story if we are ever to consider a fellow secularist gaining the presidency, or even lower-level government position. A successful “coming-out-of-the-closet” will hardly help us make gains when it comes to public policy that affects us.

It is time to dissect the problem. What do they fear about a secular society and secular influence? I think it is three things.

1) They fear the “removal of God” from the public domain as an abandonment of God, which will result in either his wrath, or in a loss of his protection.
2) They think anger motivates us more than charity, and fear a loss of goodness and good actions.
3) They fear a decrease in morality in our country.

It is the bottom two fears that we have the most control over. If we focus our efforts to improve our image in these two areas first, if we can convince the religious public that the non-religious can maintain a charitable and moral society, the first fear may prove less difficult to overcome.

I want to address morality in a separate post. In fact, I may initiate the topic as my next article in the Humanist News Network. It is a massive topic and I hope to address it over a few different blog entries. Let me just touch on the subject with a skeleton overview and the statement that we need to have a system for identifying moral choices. I cannot think of many other things that anger and scare the religious more than the idea of “Moral Relativism.” Therefore, Moral Relativism is just as much our enemy as it is theirs.

Moral living makes sense for two basic reasons:
1) Humans feel pain and suffering (as well as joy)
2) Humans have a capacity for empathy

We can choose to be moral, not because we hope for eternal blessings and fear eternal punishment, but because we can relate to and empathize with another person’s pain.

We should base our moral choices, not on arbitrary rules from an old book (a few that come to mind: don’t eat pork, don’t drink coffee, don’t flip the lights on the Sabbath, don’t expose your shoulders except when swimming); we should base our choices on whether they will cause others pain. To take it further, we should ask ourselves whether the action we want to take, if everyone were to take the same action in similar circumstances, would increase the overall happiness or the overall suffering in the world.

We will discuss this in detail later, but ultimately we have to show the world that we have a reliable system for making moral choices, a system that will agree with and make logical sense to all people, no matter the religion. We won’t all necessarily agree with the exact choice in every situation. The important thing is that we can show that there are reasons to be moral which extend beyond arbitrary religious rules.

The other image problem has to do with the inaccurate portrayal that some of us project on a regular basis: Anger. I see it in some atheist blogs: Cries for the termination of religion altogether (is that really going to convince religious people that they are safe with us leading?). I see blame against the religious for all of the world’s problems. I see hyperbolic claims about religious people that are simply not true.

Some atheists also project a lopsided amount of anger in the way they choose to demonstrate. The recent “War On Easter” was an example. One blogger I read said she was treating Christians to a taste of their own medicine by putting anti-Jesus literature in the church pews for Easter Sunday. I have never known a Christian to defame another religion’s god in the other religion’s holy chapel. The War On Easter was not a tit-for-tat pay-back game. It was an outrageous assault unlike any actions I have ever seen a Christian take.

It reminds me of a recent “Smut for Smut” campaign where college students set up a booth where they offered to trade smut for smut: They handed porn to anyone who would give them a Bible. The idea was to bring awareness to smutty passages in the Old Testament regarding women, sex, and war. While a genuine discussion with the religious regarding these problems with the Bible could be enlightening and educational to many people, offering pornography in exchange for Bibles only make us look crude and hateful.

On the other hand, we have people like the Ebay atheist, who is actually reaching his hand across the aisle of differences and having a real and positive affect. He is showing concern and striving to understand the religious. In return they are trying to understand him. He is taking a non-offensive, but very bold approach to bridging the gap between us.

Just look at what this article had to say about Hemant Mehta, the Ebay Atheist:

The stunt has racked up several ad campaigns’ worth of exposure for the product he was actually marketing: atheism as a wholesome American way of life.

A dedicated nonbeliever, Mehta auctioned his soul on the following terms: For every $10 bid to win, he would attend an hour of services at a local house of worship of the winner’s choosing. He promised to keep an open journal of his experience and an open mind to the possibility of conversion. The bait was the chance to win him over for God, but only the purest of souls could fail to see the hook in Mehta’s own bid to sell atheism as just another strand in our glorious tapestry of beliefs.

I also liked the friendly “demonstration” that gay and lesbian families held for the Easter Egg Hunt at the White House. It was hardly a demonstration at all. No shouting, no accusations. All they did was announce that gay and lesbian families would have a large showing at the White House for the Easter Egg Hunt. And they did! They showed up early to get in. They wore the rainbow-colored flower leis to identify themselves. They were happy and friendly and participated like any other family. They put a good face on gay families. We need to do something like that.

I have an idea of something we can do right away. Something to identify us with our real values. Something that will show that we mean business when it comes to working to solve the world’s problems. And it will be positive! Just give me a few days to present it to you.

In the meantime, clear your calendar for May 4th. Pencil in a two or three hour block for an activity which I will later disclose. Begin thinking about a cause you feel passionate about. I’m not talking about a cause for atheists/agnostics/freethinkers etc. I’m talking about a real problem in the world: hunger, abuse, the child-sex industry, disease. Which one moves you the most? Hold onto that thought and that date. I promise I’ll get back to you later.

The last thing I expected when I got married was to face the possibility of giving up Santa and the Easter Bunny. Deny my future children the magic of believing in those imaginary characters? Staying up late into the night, hoping to catch a glimpse of what no child has seen before. Knowing that the most popular person in the world thinks of you every year. The truth is, I knew they weren’t real for one or two years before I finally admitted it to myself. I made the joy last as long as I could.

My husband’s siblings, though, did not grow up “being lied to,” as they put it. My mother-in-law insists that learning about Santa devastated her as a child. She felt her mother betrayed her trust and lied to her. While some of the family members are still staunch against the tradition, a few of the others agreed to go along with their spouses, including my own husband.

With Easter only days away, I thought this a good time to discuss the topic. One question that enters the minds of some young atheist and agnostic parents is whether or not to have Santa and the Easter Bunny, if you decide to celebrate those holidays at all. How do we justify giving our children the fantasy of an Easter Bunny while denying them the security of a Jesus?

I love Santa and the Easter Bunny. I cannot imagine my childhood without those wonderful nights of exhilarating anticipation. They brought a joy that only Disneyland could match. Discovering they were not real did no damage to my psyche. It was more like discovering the secret to a great magic trick.

Having considered my mother-in-law’s experience, I set up a number of guidelines regarding the fantasy characters that grace our holidays. Hopefully, the use of these guidelines will not only prevent the rare devastation that a handful of children feel. They will demonstrate the difference between imagination and reality; between our perceptions and the facts, between the stories humans tell and the actual truths they represent.

First, parents need to take into consideration the child’s character. For example, my mother-in-law has an inner drive to get her facts accurate. In her mind, you don’t move forward on something without first verifying each detail. Most children are not this way, which is why most children walk away from their Santa beliefs with a smile and a tradition to pass on to their children. If you, yourself, are more like my mother-in-law, then you can guess that some of your children are likely to be the same way, as well. If this is the case with you, then you may consider banning Santa and the Easter Bunny altogether. But I think revealing the truth at a younger-than-average-age is also an option.

Age, in general, is another factor to consider. For most children, somewhere between six and eight is a good time. Part of the devastation, when it happens, is because the child has been defending Santa’s existence to friends. It is socially humiliating for an older child to learn they have been asserting something that everyone else knew was wrong. A good way to know it is time to reveal the secret is when the child asks you directly, “Is Santa real?”

So how do we make the Santa/Bunny scenario work to our advantage as atheists and agnostics? I figured it out as I was trying to avoid my mother-in-law’s mishap of my children perceiving us as lying. I made a decision at the beginning that I would not tell elaborate stories of how Santa gets his belly down the chimney or how the bunny gets those baskets into the house.

When my oldest son, Blake, starting asking these questions, I replied with my most common of all replies, “What do you think?” I encouraged Blake to think the problems through. The Santa/Bunny scenario provides an opportunity for both critical thinking and imaginary play. At the younger ages, imagination really goes to work. As they get older, they adopt critical thinking. As skepticism creeps into the questions, you know revelation time is near.

I prefer to wait until the child asks straight out, “Is Santa really real?” With many children, like myself and my first child, the desire to believe hangs on longer than the actual belief. We should allow them to believe for as long as they want. But when they want the truth, parents must give it.

And how do we handle the truth? We could say, “No, Santa and the Easter Bunny aren’t real.” But I don’t think that answer demonstrates the reality, nor the reason for the stories. As Joseph Campbell taught, humans have always couched real principles into stories we tell over and over and pass on through generations. Santa and the Easter Bunny are stories of life, love, and the joy of giving. Parents are Santa to kids in ways they won’t understand until they become parents themselves. Like the Easter Bunny, parents bring life and hope to their children.

So when it comes time to answer the golden question, a more meaningful reply is, “Do you know who Santa is? Mom and Dad are Santa and the Easter Bunny.”

Parents can use this revealing of truth to explain how humans are a story-telling people. We have always told stories to express ideas. Some stories generate more belief and conviction than others. The Bible is a compilation of stories which many people have come to believe as literally true. Santa is a good analogy of how people want to believe in the stories of gods. Most stories have an amount of truth within them, as well as an amount of embellishment.

I finally told my oldest child the truth before Christmas last year as he was turning eight years old. When the day ended, I asked Blake if Christmas felt different now that he knows Mom and Dad are Santa. He told me that maybe it did a little. But that somehow, seeing the unwrapped Santa gifts, and going along with the game for the younger siblings, the magic still felt real.

I have to wonder what kind of outcome this will have. Often non-religiously led biblical studies actually de-convert the religious and I heard some callers on a talk radio show both lamenting and rejoicing at the fact.

Of course, that usually happens at the university level, where students are ready to leave the nest. I see this less likely to happen at a high school level. Especially in Georgia.

Either way, you can bet the motivation behind the legislation was to strengthen religion in our country, not to deconvert the religious. I am less concerned about the fact that students will learn about the Bible (it was the New Testament itself that handed me my very first instance of doubt some eight years ago when I embarked on a re-read of the book). Knowledge of biblical stories will help students understand much of the world’s literature.

I am more concerned about the fact that Christians are becoming so bold as to enact the law in the first place; that they passed the law with no discussion, with 50-1 votes for it in the senate and 151-7 in the house.

What are your thoughts?

I do think it should be removed, but my main goals in terms of spreading secularism have been to support the scientific community, improve the education of science, and to show my friends and acquaintances that atheists and agnostics can still be moral people by allowing them to know my stance on religion. Obviously supporting other non-religious families through my blog is another goal of mine.

I think it is good that we all take a few different approaches in the overall goal to create a country more accepting of its non-religious minority. Hifi’s biggest contribution (that I know of) has revolved around the Pledge of Allegiance. You can look here to see his website and learn things about the origins of The Pledge that you may not have heard before. I want to start a discussion here on Hifi’s comment:

This news item just came out today about parents suing the school and state of Texas for the “moment of prayer. It brought me back to this topic of “What’s a Parent to Do” because there is more to it than leading and coaching and educating our kids.

We can also stand up and take individual responsibility for changing the system. When I was growing up in the sixties, the Pledge of Allegiance, among other conformist religious activities and indignities of the time, irked me to no end. Throughout high school, I stood silent and defiant (if you can be defiant while also feeling guilty.)

Now that I am a parent, I look back and am appalled that there was no one then who ever stood up for me. When my kids started school, I could not believe that in the 40 years since I had been in elementary school that the Pledge was still intact and going stronger than ever. This hadn’t already been dealt with by someone? Well, one thing I’ve done as a parent is to make sure my kids have someone who will stand for them and have taken this issue head on.

I have more or less documented my progress (not inconsiderable for a lone individual) in the following posts on the Bright’s Pledge forum
- Petition to the Board with media attention
- Code of education modified
- Taking it directly to the teachers

I think my point here can be summed up with a comment made by another poster on the Brights’ forum in defense of my efforts in answer to a niggling critic. “hifi is one of the few people here actually doing something, not just talking. To actually achieve something there are two obstacles that need to be overcome 1) public opinion and 2) public opinion sensitive school boards, state legislatures, Congress, and courts. Any effort towards making progress is better than nothing and cheap talk is nothing. If parents around the country started doing what hifi is doing that would have a real impact.”

I would add that you do not need children in school to do this local work. Everyone’s property taxes pay for schools and everyone can provide input and criticism to public officials within their districts.

For those who have children, certainly, raising strongly secular kids is an equally important parallel effort. I am heartened that discussions here are sprouting concrete efforts, beyond the talk, toward that end. But, please, let’s not stop there.

I would love it if everyone clicked on the links, read about Hifi’s efforts, and then came back here to share your thoughts.

Do you agree with this cause? Why or why not?
If you agree, is it one you will get behind?
If yes, what are you going to do about it? Or what have you already done?

If this motivates you to some future action, please come back here and report your efforts and results.

You know, I listen to my parents’ stories about how “the Spirit is leading my mom in her church lessons” or how “God blessed my sister” by providing her with a free fridge through her husband’s construction job. And I always put myself back in my old Mormon world, congratulating them and telling them how wonderful their god-filled experiences are. They know I don’t actually believe in that world anymore, but I put myself in their shoes during these conversations out of respect and civility. I almost never even show them my own shoes, let alone ask them to try them on.

But I don’t want it to seem like I am hiding parts of my life either. This was, in fact, their wish (no, it was their demand) when I outed myself. They wanted everything on the table. As long as they were the only ones dining. None of my siblings would be allowed.

I have a blog. I am starting a new column. It is Agnostic. To reveal this news a year or so after the fact would have consequences.

So what was my mother’s reaction? Not outrageous. I think we’re beyond outrageous reactions by now (although, SHE was not the source of them. She was calm, thank goodness). Her reaction this time was a sudden drop on the Enthusiasm Dial.

Before I told her my news, we had been discussing other non-related family achievements. She rejoiced with me in some of the other exciting things happening with my husband and children. Her voice was in that high range that announces great joy.

So I took my opportunity. “Well, you know what else? I have been writing a blog for about six months for other families like mine, who don’t have the benefits of a church community.” I kept it as positive as possible. “And an editor of an E-zine noticed it and liked it. They asked me to write a monthly column for them!!”

My mom, suddenly quiet, all signs of excitement vanished, asked, “What is the column called?”

“AgnosticMom. The E-zine is the Humanist News Network. Do you know what Humanism is?”

“Yeah!” Her voice-inflection shouted, Do I ever know what that is! Why, I oughta . . .

But that’s not what she said. She said, “Yeah! It’s about taking God out of the picture and giving all credit to humans.”

Ok, so now I am aware she already has a negative association to the worldview I find so beautiful and uplifting. I let the conversation die out. She was happy for a change of topic.

There was no, “Congratulations! I don’t agree with your beliefs, but congratulations.”

Nothing like, “Wow, I didn’t know you write.”

Not even an, “I wish you weren’t spreading evil, honey, but it’s amazing that other people are interested in your thoughts.”

I don’t want to complain. I am counting my fortunes that my family is as gracious as it is.

And I understand. She was probably in shock. Maybe after she’s had time to digest my announcement she will be able to congratulate me on my next success. I just wish she didn’t have to be so sad.

How do we celebrate Darwin’s Day? AgnosticMom is creating some family-oriented traditions for our families to adopt, because from all I have seen, the current celebrations are adult in nature. If you don’t have kids, look at this page of events. It is a world-wide list with links, ranked by country alphabetically (U.S. celebrations are down toward the bottom). The lists give a description of the event, and all the information. Most events have speakers. A humanist organization in my hometown, is having FISH at a restaraunt (as in the Darwin fish). The organization pushing the Darwin Day movement describes having a “Phylum Feast”, a feast with an enormous variety of meats from various phylum.

Some groups celebrate for one day, on the actual birthday. Some groups extend the celebration out for the entire week.

As I mentioned before, I have been formulating ideas for a family holiday, celebrated in the home, as a yearly tradition. My kids are on pins and needles. It should be a fun, highly anticipated, but also educational holiday for the kids, a cornerstone holiday for secular families.

Over the next few days, I will give you some ideas so you can decide how you want to celebrate it. These ideas will range for toddlers, to elementary ages, to young teens, whether you want a one-day celebration, or a week-long one. I will give food and actvity ideas. It’s going to be FUN! I can’t wait.

Why do I think Darwin’s accomplishment is important enough to warrant a holiday? What basis would there be in testing animals for disease research if we are not related, according to the theory of evoution? We have Darwin to thank for so many of our life-saving and life-extending accomplishments. One of AgnosticMom’s readers, Ed Darrell pointed me to an anti-evolutionist’s blog where Ed commented with a list of the many ways Darwin’s discovery of evolution has blessed our lives. I copied it for your reading pleasure.

“It’s the theory behind infectious disease control, crop development, animal husbandry, cancer treatments and cures, diabetes diagnoses, treatment and hope for cure, treatments for cystic fibrosis, the fight against crop pests (notably cotton boll weevils, wheat smut and wheat aphids, and imported Argentine fire ants), wildlife management, and flower development”.

Here is what you can expect at AgnosticMom over the next few days:

#1 A review of a children’s book which explains the evolution of life from the beginning lifeless days of the world, to the world in which men and women walk. I will be using this book as the guide to our weeklong celebration.

#2 A map of my weeklong celebration, with meal and treat ideas.

#3 Game and activity ideas for toddlers, elementary-age children, and teens.

If you have children’s books about Darwin, or activities to recommend, post your comments please!

One last thing. You can help move this cause forward by writing letters to your news editor to announce the upcoming holiday. AgnosticMom readers span the country, from Pennsylvania to Washington to California. Let’s get the word out.

Happy upcoming Darwin Day!

Also, Ron wrote a letter to the Humanist News Network, praising them for giving a column to AgnosticMom. He copied it in a comment here. What a huge compliment. He made some points that I want to focus the rest of this post on:

Ron said:

“The easily cited presumption by the religious culture is that we do not thrive because we lack the moral fortitude to be strong, joyful, loving families. Humanism in all its forms must not be invalidated as a fringe group of rebelious students, or codgers with too much time on their hands and bad experiences with the church.”

This comment interests me for two reasons. First, I have heard and read comments in the newspaper and on the radio, such as, “You never see any athiest charitable groups!”

Clearly we have an image problem. And we lack visibility. There are, in fact, athiest/agnostic, humanist, and other secular groups, doing charitable work. Charitable work is one of the foundations of the humanist philosophy, since we cannot wait for a god we don’t believe exists to solve the world’s problems. We have to do it ourselves.

But we are a minority. People don’t know of our organizations. Also, Americans are still scared of athiests. So our tiny groups don’t get the news coverage of, say, the Salvation Army.

I will admit, there is also some in-fighting. Secularists are individualists. We fear being locked into a box where we won’t agree with every stand an organization takes. The result: either we stay isolated, or in rare instances, we make a new organization. This fact comes to light with the various names and groups representing secularits: “Brights,” “freethinkers,” “the godless,” and “existentialists” are just a few to add to the typical list. And then there is the spectrum of athiesm and agnostism: strong athiest, weak athiest, positive athiest, athiest-agnostic, etc. Why do we care about these minute details? We are all secularists and we are dealing with the same issues.

In the past, this spectrum of secularist groups allowed the concern of defining themselves override the idea of banding together to unite in purpose. Only recently, in light of the growing power of the religious right, are these groups beginning to set aside their differences, start pooling resources, and work together.

It is time that people get to know us for the good we want to accomplish: strong families, strong democracy, strong ethics, and the freedom to exercise a moral choice based on our own beliefs, not to be compelled by someone else’s.

The other reason I am interested in Ron’s comment: he mentioned how religious folks dismiss us as people with bad experiences in the church. AgnosticMom has received a few comments from religious readers, apologizing for bad experiences they thought I had. Maybe they have made an assumption. Or maybe I have portayed myself with some inaccuracy. As Ron implied, not all of us are here because of bad experiences with religious life, myself included. I am in here because I wanted truth.

A few people have referred to the “oppressive religion”of my past or “strict childhood.” I am sorry I gave the wrong impression. I say this, both to clear up any misunderstanding about myself, and also to give the Mormon church a little slack. I was a happy Mormon. I loved being a member of the church. I loved my religion enough to make the choice to serve a mission for a year and a half when I was twenty-one. I accepted, and sought after, responsibilities within the church. I held a number of leadership positions in my congregations.

Over time, contradictions and issues I didn’t agree with, accumulated to a degree that I had to face the existence of my serious doubts. Confident that God would answer my prayers and bring me back to complete faith in his church, I set out to get some answers. The more scripture I studied, the more inconstinencies I discovered. Six months later, I felt sure the LDS church was not true. Still, I could not walk away. I hope this demonstrates how much I loved being a Mormon. It wasn’t until another six months later that I was ready to leave. It is only in retrospect that I have since become aware of what I now regard as the silly little insanities of Mormonism, which I sometimes refer to in my posts.

I know that some Mormons who leave say they felt oppressed, or that they couldn’t live up to the standards. I implied this when I referred to my childhood hero, Nephi, in the post, “What’s Missing Is A System.” I was mostly joking when I made the comment, “No wonder I have overwhelming and unrealistic expectations of myself.” Nephi didn’t really cause me anxiety. I expect my perfectionism is related to some degree, but I give most of the responsibility to my genes. And I am not complaining about my over-achieving tendencies. I never had feelings of inadequacy as a Mormon.

Some concerned religious readers lamented that I wrote off all religion as a result of my Mormon experience. This was not the case. After questioning the Mormon church, I naturally sought after Christianity in general. In my studies, I found the Bible to be just as problematic than the Book of Mormon. I learned about the history of the various and evolving manuscripts that became the Gospels. I also noticed the changing personality of God from the Old Testament to the New, to modern times, including the very American Jesus so popular right now.

Religious readers: I appreciate that you come to my blog. I appreciate that you are not afraid of us agnostics here. I appreciate your willingness to understand us. That is what we want. I appreciate your concern for my family and me. I don’t want to persuade you that your religion is wrong. I just want you to understand where I am coming from. My agnostic readers are here to support each other, to make a place for their families, and to help each other to leave a positive mark on the world.

I received my first correction! After reading, America In Decline, Skysinger clarified for me that we do not have a cure for polio, just a vaccination. Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? I’m sure I’ve got many more corrections coming in my blogging future, so I am glad the first one came in such a nice manner; a warm-up. Thanks for your input, Skysinger!

Mary said:

I enjoy reading your blog because, regardless of my religious leanings (I’m still trying to figure that out), I most definitely believe in science as the basis of humanity.

Because my children are not yet in school, I understand that I am now free to remain “blissfully ignorant” of the extent to which religion is impeding true learning in our public schools. But at least I know where in the world (here! and your new column!) to go for an opinion I can respect.

Mary, I’ve wondered if you were even agnostic and what motivates you continue to read my blog! Now I know. I am glad that I don’t offend (at least too much?) my thoughtful and reasonable religious readers. I harp on religion, mainly when it infringes on my life as a secularist. And sometimes I tease and make playful jabs, but I am not trying to convince anyone to leave their religion. I just hope they will understand the plight of the secularists.

As for religion impeding learning in public schools: maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt you will find your California schools as affected as in places like Kansas and Dover. Regardless, the lack of a basic understanding of science is a national dilemna with national consequences to come if we don’t turn it around. I’m glad you and I have a common respect for science.

Speaking of science and American culture, Ron made an interesting observation at his local Barnes&Noble:

I was at Barnes and Noble today – and they moved the Science section, they also reduced it in size. They moved it over near blank journals – where no other literature exists – somewhere west of the bargain books!
There is ONE shelving unit of science books (not including the specific section on physics)! That is 33% the amount of space they give to ‘religious fiction’ (possible oxymoron) – and roughly 20% of the space ‘devoted’ (literally?) to religious books. At Barnes and Noble! The religion shelves are all centrally located in the store, as well – with a good 6 or so signs leading you to them.

It’s unnerving to enter a huge ‘secular’ bookstore and see that the history, and science sections barely add up to the amount of space allotted for religious books.

I am so glad you brought this to our attention. Tami and I were there last night, and realized that ours has an extremely small science section as well. I doubt it reflects Barnes&Noble’s values, rather the demands of the customers. Nobody’s buying science-related books! We have a long way to go. Do you all feel our country is taking giant leaps backwards? (Oooh, wait until you see what I have to blog about next! Look for a future post regarding women. We’re going backwards, people).

Well, I have a few more comments to respond to tomorrow. Thanks for being patient with this unusual weekend format. We’ll be back on track next week lots of hot topics.

Silence filled the space that my loss for words left. I stared at Blake for a minute. What other heroes have I introduced to him? Rosa Parks died not long ago, and we discussed her. Black again. I searched my brain files for any other heroes I must have introduced to him.

A-ha! Benjamin Franklin! We have a video about Benjamin Franklin learning how to harness electricity. In the movie, Franklin had to battle a religious fundamentalist who was trying to impede his research. It took much perseverance and faith in himself to finally prevail. Blake loved that video.

“Well, they’re not all black, honey. Benjamin Franklin was a hero, and he wasn’t black.” It was a step in the right direction, but clearly I had failed to provide my son with more than three or four examples of excellent human beings.

Growing up, the hero of my childhood was Nephi from the Book of Mormon. Nephi was a perfect person, with the exception of one tiny flaw. Nephi’s one sin was that he sometimes felt anger toward his wicked brothers who were trying to kill him. No wonder I have overwhelming and unrealistic expectations for myself: the biggest childhood hero of my life was AT LEAST as perfect as Jesus.

When I had kids, and especially when I left my church and all of its out-of-this-world heroes, I vowed I would expose my children to the world’s many great real heroes. I am now facing the reality that I haven’t done so well.

Yesterday, as I analyzed, and over-analyzed, the situation, I realized what is missing. I realized one of the reasons we, as agnostic parents, are feeling such a great need for a guiding source. We are missing a system for imparting our values to our children, that religious families normally get from their church.

The Mormon Church is the master of systems for teaching children. This is why the community is so tight, their familes are so strong, and such a large percentage of them actually make it to marriage in pure and complete innocence!

Let me show you how structured the Mormon community is in regard to teaching their young:

• Weekly church and Sunday School lessons
• Weekly Monday night Family Home Evenings (lessons)
• Daily family prayer and scripture reading
• Monthly visits from Home Teachers (each family is assigned two men who come to the home to give a lesson.)
• Weekly activities for teens, monthly activities for the children
• Monthly children’s magazine with lessons, stories, and learning activities
• Multiple free handbooks for family lesson plans on various moral and doctrinal topics

It was SO EASY to be a Mormon parent. The church put material directly into our hands. Agnostic and athiest parents have to conceive our own system for providing “lessons” to our children. Even more difficult, we have to do our own research to find the material. No one is giving us free handbooks with activities to demonstrate our values, arranged in formats that appeal to children of all ages.

I actually have been developing a system of timing. I’ve been using holidays as a sort of schedule to trigger ideas.

Some examples of holiday-triggered values:

• New Year- goals, ambition, ability to change and improve
• Civil Rights Day- courage, accepting others, forgiveness
• Easter- nature, spiritual rebirth
• Independence Day- patriotism, democracy, liberty and freedom
• 9/11- awareness and gratitude of our local firefighters and police officers and their families, community

I think the holidays, regular reading time, play groups, and other day-to-day experiences provide an adequate scheduling system to cover all the important things we want to share with our children. The difficulty is coming up with the tools for sharing the ideas, such as activities and books. That is the part that requires so much research when you don’t have a handbook given to you from church.

Civil Rights Day was so easy, because the school recommended books. The other holidays will require much more research. And since many of those other holidays also demand planning for giant feasts, extra shopping, and other activities, that just doesn’t leave as much time for educational research, does it?

I am going to continue what I started this month, which is to share my ideas and resources for educational and values-sharing activities and books for our children. They will mostly happen around the holidays, but I will add some other topics in here and there. I hope some of you will share your ideas as well.

“Then what DO you believe?”

At the time I was still trying to figure it out. Agnosticism is all about what we CAN’T or DON’T know. Agnosticism on it’s own is empty.

Through my studies of science, I grew fascinated with the nature of the human mind and our enormous capabilities. I began to consider how in a very short amount of time, humans figured out how to fly across the world, how to communicate with anyone in real time, how to cure all kinds of diseases.

The tsunami that affected so many millions of people last year? We knew about it here, on the opposite side of the world, within minutes of its occurance. Nations were able to gather resources and get them to the countries in need within days. We still have improvements to make (and we WILL make them), but imagine this same tsunami occuring only 100 years ago. How long would it be before anyone who could help would even hear about it? How much longer before we could get that help to the people? How much less help would we have to give?

Becoming agnostic, and reexaming my beliefs gave me greater hope in the amazing capabilities of human beings. I came to believe that we have the potential to solve the world’s greatest problems. Searching the internet for other secularists, I found a name for my faith in humankind: Humanism. Specifically, Secular Humanism.

Here is a definition from wikipedia:

Secular humanism is that branch of philosophy that advocates the use of reason, compassion, scientific inquiry, ethics, justice and a presumption of equality within a worldview centered upon human beings. The term was originally coined in the 20th century to make a clear distinction from “Christian humanism”. A perhaps less confrontational synonym is scientific humanism, which the biologist Edward O. Wilson termed “the only world-view compatible with science’s growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature”.

Its basic tenets may be simplified as:

* Humans have value and can solve human problems;
* Science, free speech, rational thought, democracy, and freedom in the arts go together;
* There is no proof for anything supernatural.

Below are some organizations that work toward the humanist ideals listed above. Their mission is to educate on humanism, and also work to affect public policy. The last one has links to local chapters who meet regularly. Maybe you have one in the area you live!

The Institute for Humanist Studies

The Continuum of Humanist Education

Council for Secular Humanism

American Humanist Association

Maybe I’m naive. Maybe I have too much faith in the human race. Or maybe some people just don’t have enough of it.

Israel and I both grew up with Christmas. Even though I don’t believe Jesus was born of a virgin, or that he rose three days after his death, I choose to celebrate Christmas because I believe traditions are healthy for the soul. I also recognize the power of ritual and symbolism, which religions capitalize on. What is it about the human mind that is so effected by ritual and symbolism? Christmas is rich with symbolism.

As a child, this memorable holiday provided benchmarks for my life. It added a magical, mysterious element to my world that I would never deny my children. Christmas gave me evenings with my family, playing games, trying new foods, bringing treats to friends and neighbors.

As an adult, Christmas has taught me to be more aware of others. I am not a natural gift-giver. To some people, nothing says “I love you” better than a gift. I am more receptive to gifts of praise! While I enjoy receiving a present, it’s not important to me. This is why, I have also never been good at thinking of what someone else might want. Over the years, because of Christmas, I have worked on improving my gift-giving skills. Preparing for Christmas has taught me to pay more attention to others and the things they enjoy.

I want to extend an invitation to my readers. I am curious to know how many athiests, agnostics, and other non-religious types, celebrate a religious holiday for this season. Whether you know me personally or not, whether you have commented before or not, I hope you will participate and give the following information:

1. Explain your non-belief or beliefs (example: I am agnostic).
2. Tell us whether you choose to observe one of the religious holidays of the season, and which one.
3. Explain why you justify celebrating or not celebrating.
4. Tell us if you have adapted the holiday a certain way to accomodate your secularism.

He even said members of the school board lied to hide their religious motives.

This will hopefully set a precedent for others who are trying similar schemes of religious infiltration with anti-science agendas. Kansas is among those on the side of ineptitude. This doesn’t surprise me. I finished my last two and a half years of high school in a Kansas public school, and remember well my surprise, when a few different teachers proclaimed their belief in Jesus during class time.

The Discovery Institute, the monster driving the ID machinery, reacted with the expected spin. Their comments are entertaining, so check it out.

I have found that evolution doesn’t “make sense” to a high percentage of Americans. I will give two reasons for this: biblical beliefs of creationism have put blinders on many Americans, so that their minds are not open to understanding evolution; and our educators have failed. When people give reasons for evolution not making sense, it is often apparent, by what they say, that they don’t understand how it works.

When I was religious, I would not admit that much of creationism, and the Adam and Eve story, was confusing. Once I really learned about evolution, the puzzle pieces found their place.

If you don’t understand evolution, if it does not make sense to you, get educated! America cannot afford to continue falling behind on matters of science and education.

In Larry’s Apology/Surrender/Rebuttal/Challenge, he fakes concession. Larry concedes it might be (arguably) appropriate for an agnostic to acknowledge spirituality, but not for athiests. What my readers may not realize, is Larry is taking a jab at me. He knows that I am on the athiest end of the agnostic spectrum.

Larry believes it wrong for an athiest to acknowledge a spiritual aspect of life, because he only regards spirituality as being supernatural; as transcending the human experience. This is why he thinks it intellectually inconsistent, whether athiest or agnostic. Once again, I have to disagree with my good friend, Larry Keim. Religious people have misunderstood spirituality. It is a human experience, purely physical, transcending nothing except the mundane. This is why even a strong athiest is intellectually consistent in his or her search for a strong spiritual life. I will explain.

Larry wants to separate a human being’s “vital core” and “moral nature” from “brain function” and “genetic proclivities.” Larry knows that I believe everything we think and feel is simple brain function. What he doesn’t seem to get is that spiritual feelings are part of brain function and nothing more. It doesn’t make it any less desirable, wonderful, healthy, and necessary. Spirituality only transcends normal day-to-day feeling. It does not transcend the natural.

For example, one thing I do to tap into my own spirituality, is to run on my treadmill. Running is meditative and calming for me. It allows me to regroup; to focus. It is my time to take a step back from the daily grind, evaluate it, and get new ideas. Running also releases endorphins, and I get to experience a high. During and after my run, I feel accomplished, empowered, and confident. I am ready to return to my world with clarity and cheerfulness.

For all these reasons, running, for me, is a spiritual exercise. The feelings and thoughts are also purely physical.

Another reason I think spirituality is physical, has to do with the experiences I have had when learning new ideas. When I was religious, I had spiritual feelings as I read scripture. They were “A-ha” type moments, that made me feel elated when I learned something. I considered those spiritual experiences to be a kind of communication between God and myself.

Since becoming agnostic, I can read things entirely contradictory to scripture, and still have the same “A-ha” moments. I have come to the conclusion that the feelings are just a part of human experience; it is a type of brain function to feel elation when learning something new, or when making a cerebral connection. The idea doesn’t even have to be true. It just needs to connect with your experience. This would explain why people, all around the world, with different beliefs, can have such strong convictions.

Perhaps we evolved this ability to experience a high at learning a new idea. It would increase our chances of survival, because it would compel us to more learning and understanding. It drove the human race to the level of knowledge and technology that we are at now.

Once again, this physicality of spirituality, or the idea that it is a product of evolution and natural selection, doesn’t make it any less wonderful or valuable.

Since I am a proponent of using scientific evidence, rather than relying on pure philosphy, I found a few articles you can read regarding the subject of spirituality and the brain.

Steven Pinker is probably the greatest living genius that my studies have exposed me to. He wrote an article about how the brain and the soul are one and the same.

Here is an article about research on brain function and spirituality, specifically regarding seratonin levels and how they effect our individual spiritual natures.

I also found this amazing article about a type of research called “transhumanism,” that seeks to understand the biological, physiological, and physchological causes of spirituality, independent of religion. This article is very long, and slightly academic, but I definitely recommend it. The farther you read into it, the more relevant the article it becomes to our discussion. (Larry: I think you, in particular, will find this article valuable, considering your sensitivity to “memes”).

I want to answer Larry’s charges on “moral nature” in a part two rebuttal. This may take me another week, since the next seven days will be filled with cookie baking, Christmas parties, present wrapping, etc. In the meantime, I will be posting articles that require less brainwork than the part two rebuttal!