Our Heavenly Nico!

OK, so now I'm in Minnesota where my parents have been taking care of my kids for two weeks during our trip to Italy.

Upon arriving in Minnesota, I was a little jet-lagged and not quite in line with the local schedule. So I warmed up some leftovers for a solo meal (while chatting with family in the kitchen), and just as I was about to eat, my 8-year-old Nico suddenly announced that he was going to say the prayer!

Naturally, I was a little shocked (this is what happens when the atheist family leaves their kids in a religious household for two weeks?), but I didn't object or try to stop him.

Nico started by explaining that everyone has to be quiet until he says the magic word: "Amen!" Then he began his prayer:

"Our Heavenly Nico..."

He then said a few things about the food and about being thankful that Mommy could come. Then he gave a bit of a pause (as if waiting for a drumroll) and gave an enthusiastic "Amen!"

It was kind of a cute approximation of a standard Mormon prayer. It had the same basic structure, but he didn't quite use any of the standard phrases. Notably, he didn't close "in the name of Jesus Christ."

Later my mom took me aside to explain that they didn't tell him that he needs to pray or anything like that -- he was just spontaneously imitating what they do at their house. I replied that it's totally obvious that they hadn't actively taught him to pray. If you teach a kid about prayer, the one thing he's not going to mess up is who the prayer is addressed to!!

It seems pretty clear that it was just a question of "when in Rome..." Nico -- being a curious kid -- wanted to try out the strange customs of this new household. I imagine he'd heard my dad giving a prayer (starting with "Our Heavenly Father") and cleverly guessed that that was the spot where you insert your own role. (OK, he was wrong, but it was an interesting guess nonetheless.)

And, ultimately, I want my kids to learn that different households and different people do things differently; that the way Mommy and Daddy do things is not the only way. And I think we're on track. We'll have plenty of opportunity to discuss "What is prayer?" with Nico and Leo as they grow and have more experiences, and it's great for them to discover things on their own.

An even worse reason why religion may be adaptive

The story of "Abraham's Sacrifice" is frequently cited as evidence for why the Bible should not be used as a moral guide. (Not to mention the slightly-less-popular story of Jephthah where the Lord required a father to actually go through with the sacrifice of his child.)

Today, however, I think it would be interesting to look at these stories in a little more context. Like last time, I'm using the word adaptive only to describe things that get one's genes successfully into the next generation -- I don't mean to imply any value judgment.

The thing is this: I understand that human sacrifice was more common in prehistoric societies than modern people realize -- and there was an adaptive reason for it.

Starvation/malnutrition was a major cause of death, if not the major cause of death. Often there would be lean seasons when there won't be enough food in your area for your entire clan/tribe to survive until the next season of plenty. And humans -- being capable of planning for the future -- can identify a dangerously lean season. Ultimately, your clan may have more/healthier survivors if some people make the ultimate sacrifice as soon as you see the crisis coming, rather than having everyone eat what they can until the day they starve to death.

Naturally, this is where religion comes in. Religion is famous for the grand moral re-direction (or cop-out). People can do unethical (even horrific) things -- and feel good about it -- by sincerely believing the simple formula: "it's not my will, it's God's." (See here for a recent example.)

In the case of human sacrifice -- even if it rationally benefits the tribe's survival -- it would be extremely difficult to put it into practice using objective reason alone. Thus, there is adaptive value in believing that the seasons and the plants are controlled by (unseen) intelligent beings that have thoughts and intentions. If you believe that it's the God of the seasons who demands a sacrifice in order to make the plants come into fruit again, then killing one's own child can go from being an unthinkable horror to being a pious duty, perhaps even an honor, that a parent would be willing to carry out.

Anyway, that's just a thought as to why religion may have been adaptive in the past, even if it's not always relevant or helpful in our modern society.

Blog Retrospective: Religion & Atheism!

Of course, Mormonism isn't the only religion out there! Sometimes I like to discuss all religions and none:

First of all, there's another religion that's a part of our family religious heritage: Catholicism. My husband is a cultural Catholic in about the same way that I'm a cultural Mormon. So, naturally, we took our kids to Lourdes and had lots of amusing adventures there!

Non-belief doesn't obligate you to give up your holiday traditions (unless you want to), as I've discussed on Easter and Christmas -- including a list of Merry secular carols!

As for Christianity in general, I have to admit I'm not too pleased with it. It seems to inspire some disastrously short-sighted politics, and I'm not convinced you can do much better when saddled with the morals of the Bible. And -- as far-fetched as Mormonism's story seems -- it annoys me to see Christians applying a double-standard of evidence when it comes to the Jesus story. (Their position on the death penalty is also a little counter-intuitive.) Ultimately, I think polytheism makes more logical sense than monotheism+omnipotence. (Spock and Harry Potter also make a good showing.)

Sometimes the believers indicate that they don't think very highly of faith/religion, either, when they try to discredit atheism by calling atheism a faith or a religion.


That said -- even if we disagree -- I think it's important to get along and make a real effort to understand one another. As I explained in a couple of parables about belief, just because we disagree doesn't mean I think you're stupid. And when it comes to personal relationships, it's generally not constructive to harass and harangue people about how wrong you think their beliefs are. Interfaith relationships can be a challenge, as I discussed in "He has his faults, such as being a perverted-democrat-atheist, but....

Even politically, I think that fighting for a shared secular space is more constructive than trying to stop religion (which led to my joke about being a sniveling milquetoast).

Of course, being an atheist isn't all fun and games. That whole death thing is a bit of a drawback. Plus, we're so despised that sometimes even the other out groups shun us. So it's not easy to be "out". Are you? ;^)

Why I don't think religion is a spandrel

Here's a very brief outline of the debate for those who don't know what I'm talking about: A "spandrel" (in architecture) is the roughly-triangular piece at the top of a column between two arches. It can be beautiful, but it isn't built for its own sake -- it is created as a by-product of a building structure based on arches. Biologists sometimes use this term for traits that are not adaptive by themselves but follow from other traits. A classic example is the red color of blood. The red color itself doesn't confer any advantage -- the chemistry of the way our blood carries oxygen just happens to have a bright red color as a side-effect. Some biologists have suggested that religion is similar; that it's not adaptive, but rather is a by-product of other adaptive traits.

First and foremost, any human behavior as complex as religion is unlikely to have a simple cause. Religion almost certainly has some effects that are adaptive, some that are maladaptive, and some that are probably side-effects of other complex human traits (which, themselves, have adaptive and maladaptive aspects...). I think it is nearly impossible to tease apart the different aspects and definitively sort them into neat little "adaptive" and "spandrel" boxes.

Now, when I say "adaptive" here, I don't mean to imply any moral judgment. An adaptive trait is not necessarily good or bad or right or wrong -- it is merely a trait that helps an organism get its DNA represented in the next generation.

For humans, your social status (wealth/power) has a huge impact on the long-term success of your descendants. Investing heavily in a few kids is typically a better strategy than just having as many kids as possible and letting the chips fall where they may. A simple illustration is that if the nobleman has one son and the peasant has nine, the nobleman wins out if his son is the one giving the orders (from a safe location) to send the nine to the front lines of battle. An even bigger consideration historically has been nutrition -- being able to command enough resources to ensure that your kids have enough to eat is critical to their health and survival.

So, I think it's reasonable to claim that (for humans) traits that help you increase your social status are generally adaptive.

Here's my idea of what is adaptive about religion:

Like many animals, humans compete over territory and access to resources. For most such animals, the algorithm for deciding when to fight is fairly simple. When one rival is clearly the more formidable, the less formidable just runs away. When they're more-or-less evenly matched, they may have to fight. The fight may cause injury or death, but ceding your territory to another (instead of fighting) may also lead to death or decreased reproductive opportunities. The fight-or-not decision is made by instinct (where the instinct has been essentially optimized by natural selection).

With humans, it's a little more complicated. The conscious mind can get in the way. A human realizes "If I fight, I may die." (Reptiles and such may feel fear, but they aren't capable of making a conscious decision about whether to fight or not based on a calculation of the consequences.)

Now suppose we have a male human who is not desperate but who could greatly improve his social status through an aggressive confrontation (war, duel, etc.), but has a 60% chance of dying in the process. Suppose that for the individual the risk is high, but risk-to-reward ratio is such that the ones who take the risk are the winners overall. In this case, you get an adaptive advantage by having something that will convince you to take the risk, and that's where religion may enter into the calculation. You may be more likely to put your fear of your own death aside if you believe that supernatural beings want you to confront your rivals (and that they'll give you an advantage, and perhaps even reward you with a wonderful afterlife if you fail).

In this scenario, the advantage for women is even simpler. Suppose a woman has three sons, and if they don't fight the rival clan/tribe, her grandchildren will starve as paupers, but if they do fight, two of the sons will die and the third will gain wealth and power and plenty of resources for his children. The second choice is the adaptive one for her, but she loves each of her children individually and would hesitate to send any of them to their deaths. Enter "God's will" to counter any hesitation she might have had about encouraging them in their quest.

Now, I don't mean to claim that religion is wholly (or even mostly) about violence. This is just one tiny piece of the complete picture of the complex role that religion plays in people's lives. I'm just proposing this as one possible way that religious belief could confer a selective advantage.

If only I wanted to worship one God, I'd totally be a Muslim

Or at least according to this chart (hat-tip Friendly Atheist):



Otherwise, I've chosen correctly. ;^)

Results of My Religious Identification Survey!

Since I didn't specify an end date on my poll, I will aribtrarily pick today as the day to analyze the results!

3% - Mormon (believer)
29% - non-theist (atheist, agnostic) with Mormon heritage
57% - non-theist, no Mormon connection
4% - non-Mormon Christian
5% - other monotheist
2% - polytheist

So what do I learn from this? Well, it looks like my readership is about a third Mormon-interest. That's cool because it means that I've got a niche, but I'm not confined to it. Similarly, 14% of readers reported being theists of one kind or another. That may seem like a low proportion, but I figure it's not that I have so few religious readers, it's just that I have so many non-theist readers! :D

Also, from the comments, it looks like a lot of people don't fit easily into simple categories, but instead have varied, individualistic attitudes towards what may or may not be out there. I think this applies to some people who selected non-theist as well as to those who picked "other monotheist." I was surprised by how many people selected "other monotheist" (because I'd kind of just thinking in terms of Jewish or Muslim believers when I wrote it), but I think it's rather a reflection of one phenomenon that was discovered in some of the recent U.S. national-level religious statistics: many people raised in the Christian tradition no longer identify as Christian, even if they still believe in God.

My biggest surprise, however, was the very low proportion of polytheists -- only 2%! I totally thought that neo-paganism and Wicca were on the rise and that lots of people are reading my blog in India. And I thought that the polytheists would be flocking to my blog after that post I wrote a while back explaining that I think polytheism makes more sense than monotheism (here). I really do think that, BTW -- belief in the supernatural is one thing, but to postulate on top of that that all of this chaos fits into a coherent plan of one loving and omnipotent being...? Let's just say that's a pretty big additional stretch. Interestingly, that post was cited on a theological discussion thread on an English-speaking forum in Pakistan. But that was a while ago, and I guess those readers didn't stick around...

Oh, well. All-in-all, it looks like we've got a fun bunch! Thanks for reading and commenting, everyone!!! :D

My Religious Identification Survey

VJack of Atheist Revolution discovered -- through the highly scientific technique of internet polling -- that his readership is more than 97% non-theist.

"Ha! I can do better than that," thought I. And -- especially after his first commenter remarked on what a shame it is that religious people don't read atheist blogs -- I decided to put my stats where my mouth is and post my own poll:



I realize this one isn't nearly as amusing as my earlier poll (Who is the sexiest atheist blogger?) -- that's why I decided to use the tropical vacation poll theme. So you can pretend you're taking a tropical vacation while taking this poll. Don't let that influence your answer, though...

The Authoritarians!

This is what I get making a simple observation about the tea baggers:

The weirdest disconnect in the whole right-wing-anti-government movement is their relative silence on the torture issue. This is just me, but I would think that if your issue is to supposed to be protecting freedom against tyranny (from your own government), then preventing your government from being authorized to torture people at will, without trial woud be a very big issue.

As a helpful explanation, Jonathan Blake suggested reading the (free e-book) The Authoritarians. Thanks Jonathan -- it is an absolutely fascinating read! I couldn't put it down! (...even though I had a bunch of other stuff I was supposed to do yesterday... grumble, thanks a lot Jonathan...)

As a bonus, it also explains (((billy)))'s riddle posted recently:

Please, Christian religious right: MAKE UP YOUR MIND!!!!! Either Christians are a persecuted minority, isolated and persecuted by the courts, the government, the schools, the publishing industry, the music industry, basically, just about everyone, or Christians are the majority who get to make the rules. Either one. It cannot be both.

Note that when the author researches "Right Wing Authoritarians," he has defined "right" as supporting "the established authorities in their society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders" -- not the standard left/right political spectrum. Still, in North America the group he describes lines up pretty well with the Religious Right. Since his findings aren't very flattering to them (and you all know how much I love the Religious Right), I'll bet many of you are thinking "Confirmation bias!!!" (Yep, I've been playing Internet long enough to anticipate your next move.) But, seriously, the book is not long, and it's really quite readable -- go ahead and download it and read it. If you think this is just my bias talking, then I'd be very curious to have your reaction to the book itself, and discuss some of the author's points with you.

After that, we can all play a friendly round of the Global Change Game!!

p.s. to those who have already read this book: Were you thinking "Wow, that Global Change Game sounds like fun!" or is it just me?

p.s. to Bloggernaclers: You should suggest the "Global Change Game" for your next ward activity night. Seriously. It would be way better than that Plane crash object lesson.

Of Mormons and Jews...

E. L. Fay recently wrote an interesting post on cross-religion parallels -- referencing a guest post I wrote for the secular-Jewish blog "Lubab No More." Unfortunately, she discovered that Lubab No More has gone private, so (for reference) I've re-posted my earlier guest-post on Main Street Plaza: My Tribe.

And, while I'm in a redirecting-you-to-other-sites kinda mood, don't miss the 35th Humanist Symposium!! There were two LDS-interest posts featured this time, a satire on the Mormons' love for their gay members, and a post on Mormon Funerals (remembering to proselytize rather than remembering the deceased) from Living With Mormons, one of the newest additions to Outer Blogness!!!

A church gets put to good use

Ah, decadent Europe!



Here I am standing in the science section of a bookstore (in Maastricht, in the Netherlands during my past holiday vacation). Doesn't look like a typical bookstore, you say? Well, they've gotta do something with all those empty old stone churches they have lying around...

My MiL reports there's another one in town that was converted into a café.

(I was reminded of this when Too Many Tribbles posted about a church being turned into a home -- and it turns out she had an earlier post about this bookstore-church!)

Love, Science, and Unitarianism: Duck Egg Blue, by Derrick Neill

Since taking up my crazy hobby of studying Mormon and atheist novels, I've read a number of conversion stories and deconversion stories, portraying the path to accepting (or rejecting) a latticework of doctrines. Most religions have 'em both. But Unitarian Universalism seems like a bit of an outlier. Unlike most organized religions, this one doesn't appear to require belief in any particular set of doctrines, so it's hard to imagine how one could convert to or from this religion. If you've ever wondered how conversion to Unitarian Universalism works, then wonder no more: just read Derrick Neill's Duck Egg Blue.

Unitarian Universalism appears to be quite different in character from the kinds of religious traditions I'm familiar with because it doesn't center around the question of whether any given supernatural claims are true or accurate. It's okay for a Unitarian to be an atheist. It's okay to be a theist, even one that holds very specific beliefs about the nature of God, such as a Christian. It's okay to be an agnostic. And it's more than okay to believe that it's reasonable to redefine the word "God" to mean "nature" or "the universe." But combining all of these cosmologies into a single organized religion requires believing a different set of claims: (1) that one's conclusions about the supernatural are relatively unimportant, and (2) that it's interesting or useful to go to church.

I'm not trying to be flippant or dismissive with my claim #2. The thing is that religion can play a number of different roles in a person's life. "Providing answers for life's big questions" and "giving hope of life after death" are two of the most obvious ones, but it's easy to see how someone might not care about those two, yet might like some of the other perks of organized religion such as the traditions, rituals, community, and spirituality. I can't precisely define "spirituality" here (since I'm even less an expert on that subject than I am on the subject of Unitarianism), but it seems to be an emotion that is related to communicating with unseen beings and is also related to the sentiments inspired by beauty (such as through art, music, or nature), but isn't quite the same as either one.

The take-home message is the following: "Do you like church but hate what organized religion usually stands for? If so, have you tried the Unitarians?" Not a bad niche, really, since there are a lot of apatheists out there who are pretty pissed-off at the religious right these days. I suspect that at the moment the Unitarians are cleaning up just by getting their message out to the growing ranks of the "unaffiliated" and sopping up all the ones who are put off by the dogma of church but not by the Sunday ritual. That's what happens in this novel as science teacher Mark Edwards finds his soul-mate in the beautiful, sensual, and spiritual Harmony Anderson.

As the liner notes (quite accurately) tell us, "more than anything else, Duck Egg Blue is a love story." From the beginning the romance is one after my own heart: lots of honest, straight-forward passionate monkey sex, light on the roses, cupids, poetry, and whatever else it is that the chivalrous romantic hero is normally expected to do to prove the purity of his love before getting to the hot monkey sex. One highlight of their initial courtship is an amusing scene watching a life science video in which Harmony's question "How did they get that picture?!" [regarding the money shot] was the exact same thing I was wondering myself back way back when I saw that same scene from that same film at BYU, of all places. (After that I forgot about all the scientific content of the rest of the film as I spent the next few weeks contemplating the possible ways they might have filmed the shot. Those were the days. But I digress.)

Yet, all too quickly, the warning flags start waving. Harmony refers to working in her garden as "praying." She thinks the ending of Star Trek V is deep. (Star Trek five!) She says stuff like "I think it's like Jesus said. God is love...the center of life...the ground of all being. God's present everywhere, in all things and in all persons and at all times." [Anyone have a reference on that one? I don't recall the passage where Jesus supposedly said that...]

As with any entertaining novel, I immediately tried to put myself in the position of the protagonist. For the purpose of this story, I'm a nerdy, balding high school teacher. The chances I'll find mind-blowing sex like this anywhere else are pretty much zero. Is it worth putting up with the woo? I've gotten ridiculously lucky here since normally a chick this hot would be out of my league. Yet... tempted... to... dump... her... anyway...

I'm very big on taking a rational approach to relationships, and I think if I were a straight guy, I'd be inclined to lower the priority on some superficial traits (here: perfect-body redhead with carpet to match the drapes ifyouknowhatImean), so that I'd be in a position to be more demanding about other desirable qualities. Such as absence of woo. But then I remember I'm not the one who's being presented with this dilemma. It's Mark Edwards, agnostic apatheist who thinks it's crazy to believe in a personal God that answers human prayers, but when asked if he's an atheist, says "No way! That's crazy too!"

Never mind. They're perfect for each other.

Of course there's more to this novel than love, sex, and their relation to Unitarian spirituality. There are the central conflicts of the novel: Harmony's son Cameron is denied the Eagle Scout rank he earned when he admits he's not sure he believes in God, and the local Christian Coalition is running amok trying to get "Creation Science" taught in public school science classes. (This novel apparently predates the euphemism "Intelligent Design".) These and other nefarious schemes are masterminded by Harmony's evil Christian ex-husband, John Wright.

The issues raised are timely and interesting, but I felt like this book's treatment of them was too simplistic and heavy-handed for my personal tastes. Please see my parable of criticism as a compliment for my excuses, but I'm just that much less willing to softball a morality tale when it's one where I agree with the moral. This may be just a quirk of personal taste -- one fellow lit blogger likes to say "fiction is a lie" therefore the reader should be happy to swallow anything, no matter how eye-rollingly obvious the author's agenda may be ;^) -- but I really like a story to leave me a little breathing room to form my own opinions. I don't like feeling like the author is standing there saying "See how very right this character's viewpoint is? And how wrong and misguided this other character's viewpoint is?"

Regarding the Scouting question, despite being a girl, I have enough personal experience with the BSA to know that it has both very positive and very negative aspects which can be hard to tease apart. Exploring the justification for discrimination against atheists, gays, and even girls would be an interesting place to start a complex and nuanced story about Scouting. Instead Scouting is portrayed as nothing else but a grand opportunity to build service and leadership skills, and the fact that the kid is denied his rank for being an agnostic is presented as some hardly-Scouting-related fluke that's all the fault of the evil villain Christian ex-husband.

The villain himself is a little hard to swallow. He's around and clearly wants to play an active role in his son's life, but only to force fundamentalism on the kid, nothing else. Weird as that is, I guess it's not impossible. Still, I felt like the problem on the one hand was too simplistic (biological dad is just a nutty, narrow-minded, abusive fundy), and the solution on the other hand was too simplistic as well (the kid's high school science teacher replaces the defective dad both as the kid's father figure and in mom's bed). Even if the kid really likes and respects his science teacher and even if he thinks his biological dad is a jerk, this solution would still potentially be an emotional mine-field. Yet the possibility of the kid having confused emotions about his mom's relationship with his teacher/step-dad is glossed-over since it goes without saying that the kid wouldn't have mixed feelings about such an evil villain as his biological dad. I'm more than willing to believe that rigid religious beliefs can be used to justify intolerance and abuse, and still I felt like the villain came off as a bit of a straw-man. I found myself cringing even more at his over-the-top random fundagelical rants than I did at the atheist stereotype character (mean and bitter, but it's not his fault because he suffered a horrible personal tragedy).

Keep in mind that I care quite a lot about science and science education, which is why I'm holding this novel up to such a high standard, perhaps an impossibly high standard. After all, some ideas are just plain wrong, and the idea that "Creation Science" (I.D.) is science (as opposed to being a deliberately deceitful attack on science) is among them. That makes it tricky to come up with a story about it that's at once realistic, even-handed, and complex enough to be challenging. Kudos to Derrick Neill for tackling this subject. The world needs lots more stories about math and science educators. To start us off, for a fun portrait of Unitarian Universalism and the single science teacher, grab a copy of Duck Egg Blue!

The Religious Right vs. Young People

Recently some new studies came out showing that today's young people (in the U.S.) have a strong negative opinion of Christianity, dramatically more so than ten years ago. The only surprise to me is that anyone was surprised at this news. One main reason is quite obvious, and it's not an intrinsic problem with Christianity. It's that the political movement known as the "religious right" encourages people to think their movement's political positions are one and the same with Christian beliefs and theology. And the religious right's political positions practically amount to generational warfare, the old vs. the young. Frankly, it's a formula for driving the next generation away from Christianity.

Look at the religious right's set of pet issues:

The study discovered that young people are concerned about the environment. Can we say "No duh"? If it looks like we have maybe thirty or forty years left where we can continue consuming oil at the current rates, and we'll probably be able to keep up our current lifestyle's waste-and-pollution rate for the next few decades, then it's pretty convenient to tell yourself that Jesus will be coming to burn and/or fix everything eventually. If you're sixty, that is. If you're fifteen or twenty -- whether you believe in the rapture or not -- you're likely to have concerns about what Earth will look like in 2050. Really, who do you think is going to be paying for our little joy-ride on this planet? I'll give you a hint: they're currently wearing diapers, and I don't mean adult depends.

Going to war for what's left of the oil rather than putting the priority on diminishing our dependence on fossil fuel? That's quite a task to be placing on the shoulders of our young.

Science education? It would be nice for our kids to have some, wouldn't it? They'd love to have the skills to compete in the global marketplace. But, gosh, implementing a serious math-and-science curriculum, and attracting qualified people to teach it? That's pretty darn expensive. (And giving it to kids for nothing? Isn't that communism?) Teaching them straight from the Bible is a whole lot simpler, and cheaper.

Then there's "abstinence education" and reproductive rights, i.e. sex. Nothing but nothing says "old people vs. young people" like wanting to see maximum punishments enforced for sex. 'Nuff said.

As a subset of the sex question, there's discrimination directly focused on gay people. What a dog of an issue! This one really highlights the short-sightedness of the religious right's strategy, focused on energizing their base today without a thought for tomorrow. Young people have grown up alongside gay people as ordinary people. The opinion divide on whether homosexuality is a choice isn't along liberal vs. conservative lines nearly as much as it's along the fault line of old vs. young. So when a group stands up and says their number one issue is keeping marriage contracts away from (gay) people who want to get married, all the young see is pure bigotry.

All of these ideas are embodied in our illustrious president, Dubya. The corruption, the illegally spying on his own people, the torture: all excused because at least he's not afraid to be outspoken about his relationship with Jesus. He thinks God told him to invade Iraq, and he's apparently incapable of even considering the possibility that that might have been an error since God can't be wrong. It would be one thing if it looked like Christians were booing him off the stage clamoring that that's not Christianity. But when Christians excuse his crimes and incompetence because they're impressed by his grand declarations of piety? How do you imagine that affects people's view of Christianity?

Apparently polls show that not only is Christianity significantly down but atheism is on the rise in the rising generation. I'd like to give the "new atheists" all the credit, but I honestly think the main recruiters have been the religious right and Dubya himself.

Good Christians: Don't look at the religious right and think "Well they're Christian, so at least their heart is in the right place." If they're on the wrong side of the issues above, then their heart is not in the right place. Their heart is in the place of maintaining their current consumption level and putting it on their grandchildren's tab. I know, I know, it's just that they grew up in an era when people didn't have to worry about our footprint on the planet, and now they're too set in their ways to change. So maybe it's not really their fault. But in that case, maybe it's time to take away the keys.

Now I know many people will read the above and think "Chanson, you big meanie, you don't want granny to have her medication?" Au contraire. I want granny to have her medication. The United States of America is a rich enough country to be able to afford correct health care for everyone if correcting the health care system were a priority. But the religious right waving these generation-warfare issues in granny's face is ultimately a tactic to scare her into voting against her own interests as well as her grandchildren's.

I'd like to see good Christians loudly proclaiming that the short-sighted theocrats of the religious right don't represent them. That xenophobia and hating gay people aren't what Christianity is all about. I don't want to be too hard on liberal/progressive Christians for not shouting loudly enough because, frankly, the theocrats are so loud that it's difficult for anyone to be heard over them. But what I'm saying is for the benefit of the faithful as well as the skeptic. We need a candidate who -- when questioned about his/her faith, regardless of his/her beliefs -- will look the camera in the eye and say "I'm running for president, not for first pastor."

Now I'd like to address the young people (teens and twenty-somethings) reading this if I may.

If I can give one piece of advice to young people today, it is this: Aspire to something more important than equal or greater material comfort than what your parents enjoyed. Aspire to pass a livable planet on to the next generation.

Now some of you are probably asking: "Why should we be the responsible ones? Why should we be the ones to think of future generations before thinking of ourselves, if our parents and grandparents didn't?" Well, somebody has to think of the future, and if your parents and grandparents aren't doing it, then it will fall on you. Remember you'll be living farther into the future than they will. Being young today means advantages and especially challenges that no previous generation has faced.

Right now you're probably more worried about your friends, and having fun, and finding your talents and your place in the world -- as well you should be. But if you're also thinking a little bit about what kind of planet you'll be leaving for your (future?) kids, then prepare to be a leader. Your country, your species, and your planet will need your leadership skills, whether you end up influencing five people or five million. Start walking in the right direction and others will follow you. And if you think I might possibly be talking to you, then I'm talking to you!!! :D

What you'll face won't be easy, but I believe in you. For all of our sake, I hope you'll rise to the occasion.

The "War on Christmas" and the war on being considerate to others...

So apparently the forces of Christmas have won the battle in Boston to call their public holiday tree display a "Christmas tree."

Here's my first reaction:

Considering that there's an actual war going on -- one where real people have given their lives -- how is it possible that it's not considered poor taste for the religious right to be calling this a war? And, really, could they even think of a stupider issue to use to distract the public from real issues like the president threatening to start yet another real war?

I don't even want to touch the whole first amendment establishment clause issue because it's been thoroughly and repeatedly covered by others. What I can't figure out is why anyone would even want to wage a war against the imaginary forces of anti-Christmas.

Apparently -- throughout the public sphere -- theocrats would like to see "Merry Christmas" replace "Happy Holidays." This is because "Happy Holidays" threatens Christmas's position as the one and only holiday people might possibly be celebrating during the holiday season. And poor Christmas feels degraded when it gets lumped together with less-important holidays like New Year's and Boxing Day and whatnot.

I guess I can almost sort of see the logic to that when it concerns people who celebrate Christmas. I love Christmas, and I'm happy to wish a very Merry Christmas to all my friends and family members who celebrate Christmas. The problem is that the crusaders for Christmas seem to want to insist that a Merry Christmas -- and only a Merry Christmas -- be wished to everyone, regardless of belief, by stores, by municipal holiday displays, at office parties, etc. In that case, what does "Merry Christmas!" even mean?

Here's what it means:

"I hope you have a warm and wonderful Christmas celebration! However, I don't hope that you have a happy Hanukkah. I don't hope you and your family have a happy (Pagan) Yule or Solstice celebration or a good Ramadan. And if you and your family celebrated Diwali this year, I don't care if it was a merry one or not."

What kind of person would want to say such a thing? Have they got something against being considerate to others? Call me crazy, but to me well-wishing should have some sort of (theoretical?) connection with actually wishing the person well. And especially during the holiday season, what's wrong with a little goodwill to all? Even to those people who are **shudder** a little different from yourself.

When it comes right down to it, the so-called "War on Christmas" isn't about the Christians vs. their favorite whipping-boy the atheists, as much as they'd like to paint it that way. Atheists sometimes join in the fray just on the principle of separation of church and state, but really, the apathetic-to-non-believing set aren't the ones being excluded. Atheism has no competing holidays, so non-believers tend to just stick with familiar traditions. That means that American atheists actually celebrate Christmas more often than not. Really, the "War on Christmas" is about Christian supremacists picking on other traditions and on other "people of faith."

Porn and Me

At one point during the fabulous Paris Exmo Expo 2007, I gave my usual spiel on porn and feminism. I can't remember why the hell I brought up porn at the "Kingdom of Beer" (and the other ladies are probably also wondering). But since the subject came up in the meatspace version of Outer Blogness (and because we've been talking about people's biases here lately), I figured perhaps I'd share with you my history (hence bias) on this subject:

I was raised in a religion (I'll just let you guess which one) that is extremely patriarchal as well as repressive and negative towards sexuality.

Then, when I gave up that religion at the age of seventeen, I was free to embrace my sexuality and my feminism with equal abandon. (Obviously feminism and women's sexual freedom go hand-in-hand, right?) So I became more and more interested in reading books and articles about feminism. To show you just how ready I was to accept and embrace any and all of feminism, I stopped shaving and wearing a bra for a few months for no other reason than because I'd heard that that was some sort of feminist thing to do. And as I was reading along, I learned that the feminist movement is opposed to porn.

My first reaction was surprise and bewilderment. Agreeing with the church on any sex-and-gender issue seemed like a humongous red flag. Those shame-sodden lectures that taught me I was a deviant for fantasizing about sex and that I'd be as worthless as chewed gum if I acted on my desires: they also contained a message about how pornography leaves your mind permanently impure. Naturally I had filed all of these hate-your-sexuality messages in the same mental drawer -- and later moved them all together into my mental garbage can.

My post-Mormon experience with porn started when I took a look at the magazine collections of various boyfriends. (Yes, they were physical, printed magazines. Yes, I'm that old.) I also watched some porn movies with another boyfriend. I didn't find any of it particularly objectionable. As a straight woman, I figured that being aroused by the sight of naked women was an appropriate quality in a boyfriend.

Naturally I also looked for materials that would be arousing for me. I found that stories did more for me than pictures, but even sex stories aimed at women left me going "meh" if they were really graphic. I liked the erotic scenario better than having the mechanics spelled out for me. And one of the main themes in my favorite erotic scenarios was the thought of a man being aroused by seeing and/or touching a woman (see here). I guess that makes me a rather unique type of pervert.

Anyway, I'd analyzed my own sexual responses, and found the anti-porn faction of feminism treating me every bit as much like a piece of chewed gum as the church had: they told me, in essence, that I should feel ashamed of turning men on with my body; of letting a man "use me for his pleasure." It was a harsh blow to see feminists -- the people I hoped would counter shame I learned from the church -- were giving me the same "poor, fallen woman" crap in new words.

But I was determined to be a feminist, so I was determined to figure this one out. Then I learned the slogan "Porn is the theory, rape is the practice."

"Aha," I thought. "Pornography is bad because it causes rape. Well, if porn has been shown to cause rape, then I certainly agree that it's bad." The next natural question was "So does it lead to rape? Is there some hard evidence to back that up?"

Um, no.

Reading along in various feminist publications, I discovered a curious excuse as to why it was okay for feminists to fight to suppress porn -- on the grounds that it leads to rape -- despite the lack of real-world evidence to that effect: Women can see intuitively that porn inspires men to harm them, and we women need to value women's type of reasoning (intuition) more highly than we value masculine reasoning (logic and evidence).

Let me tell you that I was about to breathe fire when I saw that argued as a feminist position!!!

Now, I really hope that I misinterpreted that feminist article I read so many years ago and/or that it was just in some student publication or something. Because if any serious, respected feminist intellectual argues anything even remotely like that I really, really, really don't want to know about it. There I was -- a female Mathematics major -- fighting with all my heart and soul to demonstrate that reason and logic aren't something unique to men, and that girls can do math too if they're encouraged to try.

So I fundamentally disagreed with the anti-porn squad on practically every level right from the beginning. (Did I mention censorship? And how obscenity laws often get used first against gay materials and women's health information? And how a Dworkin-inspired anti-porn law has been ironically used to censor Dworkin's own anti-porn book?)

Yet I've never really been an activist about this subject. I read a few books (like Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights). I canceled my subscription to Ms. when I got fed up with its Dworkin-MacKinnonite stance and what a waste of feminist energy it was: a bunch of privileged white women navel-gazing about whether they feel "degraded" because some schlub is masturbating in the privacy of his own bedroom. Then I figured I was being a hypocrite since what am I on this issue but a privileged white woman navel-gazing about my sexuality? So I decided social justice was more important, and kind of put this issue on the shelf for a bit and focused on other issues.

I still think social justice issues are more important, particularly as they pertain to building a sustainable future for our species.

So why am I bringing this up now?

Hell, this is a blog -- I can talk about whatever I want. Navel-gazing about porn is no more a waste of my time than posting pictures of whale genitals... ;^)

A couple of parables about belief

Suppose two students are taking a math test. Suppose that for a particularly difficult problem one student writes "7" as the solution and the other writes "65000*pi/sqrt(3)". It is reasonable to conclude that at least one of the two students got the problem wrong. Is it also reasonable to conclude that at least one of the students must be an idiot? No.

Does it mean they can't be friends? Of course not. (They might have difficulty collaborating on an engineering project that uses the same techniques as the math problem, but that's not the only thing in life.)

Is it reasonable to conclude that the two solutions are equally valid or equally likely? Not necessarily, but it depends on the problem (both solutions may be completely and obviously wrong).

As you've probably guessed, all of this is to explain how I can consider myself a strong atheist and at the same time caution against dismissing religious people as stupid, closed-minded, or willfully ignorant.

Why do I think my conclusion about God(s) is right?

Imagine there's a street sign near my house that I pass every day. Imagine that one day there's a bright red political sticker sticking to the middle of it that wasn't there before. I don't know how it got there, but I can make some conjectures:
1. Some person came by and put it there.
2. A race of sentient bats made the sticker and stuck it there (but no one has ever seen them because they're invisible).
3. The sticker was actually applied at the factory when the sign was made, but it just wasn't visible until recently because it was made with a new technology of perfectly invisible stickers that become visible after a fixed length of time.
4. The sign and sticker don't exist -- I'm really just a brain in a jar, and my entire reality is an illusion.

To me, choice #1 is the reasonable conclusion, and I would feel very confident that it is the correct answer -- it conforms with experiences and observations. I don't think that #2 or #3 is rational conclusion, even though I can't disprove either one. I would be willing to reconsider my rejection of #2 or #3 if someone showed me evidence that the species (resp. new technology) exists. I think Greta Christina covered the solipsism argument (#4) pretty well. I'll just add that I've never met anyone who seriously believes that the solipsistic model of the universe is correct -- it's typically just thrown out there to bolster the post-modernist argument that we can't be sure of anything, so theories contradicted by evidence are just as reasonable as theories that are consistent with evidence.

This is the reason I feel completely confident in my conclusion that God(s) -- as typically defined by humans -- do(es) not exist.

I also know that if you are religious, you probably disagree with my second parable and/or my interpretation of it. That's fine -- I'm not trying to debate you on your perception of the universe. I'm just explaining what it looks like to me.

Around the Internet, I see a lot of people trying to explain away people who disagree with them. There's a whole lot of "those guys just won't listen to reason because..." These assessments are essentially always wrong (in my humble opinion). Or to be more precise, I think they're a little bit right mixed with a whole lot of wrong. In my experience, most people have many complex reasons for believing as they do, and what's more, just because two people have reached the same conclusions it doesn't mean that their character, motivations/biases, or even their reasoning style is the same.

It is false to say that all people who believe X are closed-minded and refuse to listen to anything but what they want to hear. It is false to say that all people who believe X have failed to think critically about their beliefs. It is also a fallacy to confuse confidence in a conclusion with closed-mindedness: Just because you've analyzed a question and feel confident that your conclusion is right, that doesn't mean you wouldn't consider new evidence and new arguments.

So in short I recommend critical thinking and sincere introspection (for everyone, me included). And I'm not going to look at your answer and from there presume to tell you how you reached it.

Why I'm a bad mom, part 4: the Internet

Whew, this is getting to be a long series! So far we've covered naughty words, taking the kids on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and giving them wedgies. Now, on to the worst offense of all: The Internet.

My adorable husband is a big-time Linux geek, so he loves to build computers, set them up all over the house, and network them together. The result -- I'm ashamed to admit -- is that a non-trivial amount of our family time is spent all in a row in the computer room, him reading Linux and Math blogs, me reading Mormon and atheist blogs, and the kids at their computer googling for pictures of dinosaurs.

When I admit this to people, though, I keep getting a reaction I didn't really expect. I thought they'd say "Wow, what a lazy mom you are, teaching them to type words into the google image search page themselves to find pictures without help!" Instead people say "Watch out -- now they'll know what to do when they want to find porn."

Note that they're only six and four years old. Personally I don't understand why people are so obsessively horrified by the thought that their children will one day develop sexual desires. Then I don't get that a child's enthusiasm for learning new things on his own would immediately be linked to the bogeyman that one day this child might grow up and masturbate.

On the other hand, it might be just a worry about getting accurate information. After all, real live porn experts agree that porn is very poor as sex ed. But to me that's all the more reason to be glad that they know how to find accurate information as a supplement.

After all, I don't think it's realistic to imagine that I could forcibly prevent them from figuring out how to find porn, even if I wanted to. I'd rather ensure they that they know what it means to behave responsibly and that responsible behavior is what we expect.

My passionate secularism

If you've got your finger on the pulse of the atheist community (like I do!) you're probably aware that there's a lot of discussion these days about following the gay community's example of increasing visibility (and consequently positive impressions) by being "out and proud" about one's unbelief. I think this is a great idea, and I'm all in favor of it!

To learn from their example, though, we need to do a bit of analysis of the differences between the atheist community and the gay community. I think the real biggie (in strategic terms) is that homosexuality is not contagious. In fact, that's one of the messages the newly-more-visible gay community has stressed: meeting gay people, befriending them, hanging out with them, touching them, etc., will not make you gay. It won't make your kids gay either. Not that there's anything wrong with being gay, but if for some reason you've decided that you don't want to be gay, inviting your gay neighbor to your backyard barbecue is not going to have any effect on your orientation either way.

Not so with atheism: indeed, quite the opposite. It's very common for someone to spend half a lifetime as a sincere and devout believer, then one day become an atheist and stay that way. And preliminary evidence seems to indicate that this is strongly linked with talking to pre-existing atheists.

And so we atheists are faced with a strategic dilemma: Should our "out and proud" campaign focus on demonstrating that we're ordinary, nice people, and (like gay people) we're your friends, neighbors, and family members? Or should we go straight for conversions, and skip this half-assed "we're here!" step? After all, they'll figure out that we're here and we're cool once they've become atheists themselves...

If you've been following this blog, you probably know that I favor the "friendly visibility" model for myself. I've talked about it a little here. In a nutshell, my reasons are the following:

1. It's easier to form alliances on critical political issues if we're willing to work with people who believe differently. Sure it's nice to agree on the ground rules of reasoning and what constitutes evidence, but I don't favor a strategy of saying "We can't discuss politics until after I've talked you out of your irrational faith." Some issues just can't wait that long.

2. As long as people agree on the importance of separation of church and state, it ultimately doesn't matter much what their beliefs are. Many believers are as passionate as we are about the separation of church and state because it protects their own freedom from having other beliefs imposed on them as well as preserving their church hierarchy from the corrupting influence of (secular) power. And it's that much easier to get believers on board with us if we make it clear that having a shared, secular public sphere is not a stealth tactic to destroy religion. (Many atheists disagree with this position -- see the Exterminator's recent article -- so there's definitely room for further discussion and analysis.)

3. A big problem with having a "zero tolerance" policy for taking religious belief seriously is the following: When you only discuss ideas with people who agree with you, there's a danger of starting with a good argument and then sending it through a group-think feedback loop until it turns into "I can't understand how anyone would be so stupid as to disagree with me on this point!!!" Really you're not doing yourself a favor when you work yourself into a state where you have no comprehension of another's viewpoint.

On the other hand, it appears that it's possible to go too far in the other direction. Via Friendly Atheist I saw the following quote by/about Harvard's Humanist chaplain:

"I have a religious personality, without a scintilla of religious belief," he says. "If it's an oxymoron to believe that people who have ceased to believe in God still need caring and community, then I'm proud to be a walking oxymoron."

Friendly Atheist (Hemant Mehta) indicates that the author of the article deliberately plays up the conflict in the atheist community, so I'll give Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein the benefit of the doubt here. But for his sake, I hope his quote was taken out of context and his very next line was: "But of course it's not an oxymoron, because -- as everyone knows -- atheists are just ordinary people who believe in a few fewer supernatural beings than average..." Otherwise his statement looks dangerously like he's granting the horrible stereotype that atheists are some sort of heartless monsters, and he's claiming to be some sort of exception because of his "religious personality." Holy expletive, talk about counterproductive!!! Just because you want a seat at the table, do you have to buy it for yourself by throwing your fellow atheists to the wolves??? Hopefully, though, the quote is not quite so bad in context, and I won't have to turn in my Humanist badge. ;^)

So while I would like to see atheists and believers getting along, you can see that it would be wrong to imagine that I'm the arch enemy of the "new atheists." In reality I'm thrilled about the new visibility of atheists. I'm thrilled to see atheism finally hitting the mainstream of American public discourse and recognized as a serious, legitimate viewpoint, as I discussed in the comments of my infamous nice vs. mean atheist joke post.

What I don't like is when atheists on either side make it look like the only two possibilities are that either you despise religious people and can't talk to them without trying to deconvert them or you're practically a church-goer yourself, and you're telling unapologetic atheists to shut up.

There's a third possibility, which is the following: to be out-and-proud with your atheism -- and be willing and happy to explain the reasons for your unbelief to anyone who asks -- yet also be willing to befriend believers and deal with them as reasonable people on a "let's agree to disagree" basis. In practical terms, I think that most atheists I know fall into this third category.

So, no, I don't think Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens should shut up. I certainly don't think PZ should shut up -- his blog is one of my favorite daily reads. Religion should absolutely be fair game for criticism. (Hey, if we respect our religious friends, we can't imagine they're too fragile to be challenged at all...) Naturally the critique of religion should itself be fair game to be criticized, as should be the critique of the critique of the critique... ;^)

And all of it in the spirit of productive discussion and friendly exchange of ideas.

Morals for children in Cars and Happy Feet

lead elder: Harmless? It is this kind of backsliding that has brought the scarcity upon us!
a foreign penguin: Excuse me smiley, could you speak plain penguin please?
Mumble: He thinks the food shortage has something to do with me.
lead elder: Do you not understand that we can only survive here when we are in harmony? And when you and your foreign friends lead us into your easy ways you offend the Great Guin -- you invite Him to withhold His bounty!
an elder: He rules the seasons.
an elder: He giveth and He can taketh away.
Mumble: Wait a minute -- happy feet can't cause a famine.
an elder: If that kind of pagan display didn't cause it, then what did?
Mumble: I think it comes from outside -- from way beyond the ice. There are things out there we don't understand.
foreign penguins: Mysteries! Mind-boggling mysteries! Mystic beings!
Mumble: Yeah, aliens. I've heard they're smart.
an elder: He's insane!
Mumble: No, they might be smarter than all of us -- who knows?

an elder: He drove the fish away, and now he's ranting this rubbish.
a foreign penguin: Let me tell something to you.
an elder: Don't touch me, you filthy varmint! [smacks him]
Mumble: Watch it!
lead elder: So it follows: dissent leads to division and division leads us to doom! You Mumble "Happy Feet" must go.
Mom: Don't you take one step, Sweetheart. You have as much right to be here as any of these daffy old fools.
all: [shocked gasps]
Dad: Norma Jean, I'll deal with this.
Mumble: Pa?
Dad: Mumble, you must renounce your so-called friends, your peculiar thoughts, and your strange ways. If we are devout and sincere in our praise, the fish will return.
Mumble: But Pa...
Dad: Listen boy, I was a backslider myself. I was careless, and now we're paying the price.
Mom: What's this got to do with Mumble?
Dad: That's why he is the way he is.
Mom: There's nothing wrong with him!
Dad: Face it, Norma Jean! Our son's all messed-up!
Mom: He is not messed-up, you hear me?
Dad: Believe me, I know he is!
Mom: How can you say that?
Dad: Because when he was just an egg, I dropped him.
all: [shocked gasps]
Mom: Mumble! Oh, my poor little Mumble!
Mumble: Ma, I'm perfectly fine.
Dad: No you're not, boy. For all our sakes you must stop this freakiness with the feet.
lead elder: Your father speaks wisely. Heed his suffering heart and repent.
Mumble: But it just doesn't make any sense!
lead elder: Then your arrogance leaves us no choice!
Dad: No, wait! [to Mumble] Son, you can do this. It ain't so hard.
Mumble: Don't ask me to change, Pa. Because I can't.

Why was I surprised to see this scene in a big-budget animated feature for kids? The answer leads me to another favorite film at our house: Disney/Pixar's Cars:

Cars and Happy Feet are both charming films with a lot to recommend them -- not just in terms of stunning visuals (both are excellent on that count), but also in terms of storytelling. Regardless of what the Disney-phobes say, sometimes kids' blockbusters aren't too bad. And it matters for my sake as well as my kids' sake since any film they love I end up having to watch a million times myself.

For the moment I'm not doing an overall movie review, though, I'd just like to talk about each film's message. (For this topic I'm only covering films that are worth analyzing, which is why I'm skipping Thomas and the Magic Railroad, a film whose story and dialog are so formulaic that I swear the screenplay was written by a computerized script-generating program and whose moral is "if you need to cut corners on your medium-budget film, skimping on writers isn't the place to do it...")

Cars is very much a sports film, so its primary moral is standard sports film fare: learning that there are more important things than winning. The secondary moral deals with the charming little town of Radiator Springs and how it became run-down and forgotten.

Radiator Springs was a jewel strung along the necklace of Route 66: a lively and bustling town back when people used to travel a whole different way ("to have a great time, not to make great time"). It deteriorated to the point of being nearly deserted after it was bypassed by the interstate highway that cut through the land instead of following its contours.



The thing that impressed me most about the heart-string-tugging emotional center of the piece (the song Our Town), was the way they took a political issue (the deterioration of small-town America) and presented it in such a way that it would appeal to both liberals and conservatives. I don't think anyone out there is seriously arguing that we should eliminate the interstate highway system. So presenting the interstate as the culprit is a safe choice: Republicans see the characters pining for the nineteen-fifties -- back when everything was simple and innocent -- and Democrats can read "the interstate" as a metaphor for "Wall-Mart."

Naturally I saw Cars as another example of the law that no big-budget kids' film can be made without passing the generic-moral no-parent-offended committee. That's why I was so surprised by Happy Feet. Skeptical/secular parents: this film is for you.

Here's the story in a nutshell:

Mumble is different from the other penguins from the moment he hatches from the egg. Emperor penguins are supposed to sing and not dance, yet Mumble is the opposite. There's a shortage of fish and none of the penguins know why. The religious leaders make up an explanation and they're wrong. Mumble doesn't accept their explanation and instead is curious and starts piecing together bits of evidence to find that the fish shortage is caused by "aliens" (humans overfishing). His travels lead him to a preacher/guru penguin who has apparently had some contact with the "aliens" (evidenced by a man-made object attached to him), but he doesn't want to help Mumble at first because he's too wrapped up in the wealth and status he gets from pretending that he has the power to contact mystic beings. Eventually he comes around and sets off with Mumble and friends to find the aliens. The happy ending is that Mumble finds the aliens and makes contact with them through dance, persuading them of the importance of protecting the area around Antarctica from over-fishing.



On the surface this looks like a retelling of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: the misfit is rejected until his unusual trait saves the day. But Happy Feet also has a strong theme of reason and evidence trumping the closed-minded shackles of religion. The one twist that may superficially look like a jab at skeptics is the fact that tales of "alien abduction" turn out to be true. The difference is that in our human universe the tales one hears of alien abductions don't have evidence to back them up. This film correctly illustrates the fact that the skeptic will take an outlandish tale seriously as soon as the evidence warrants it.

The scene I quoted above is probably the most daring part of the film. The religious elders claim that God's wrath for Mumble's deviance is the cause of an unrelated disaster. Mumble's father blames himself for Mumble's deviance, and tries to persuade him to repent and try to be like everyone else. Even though Mumble (like all of the characters in the film) is clearly straight (and he has a rather generic straight love story in the film to back it up), I can't avoid seeing Mumble's situation as a transparent metaphor for being gay; illustrating how religion can inspire injustice.

(Actually, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the writers of this film were gay men. There's the mom and the love-interest who are framed entirely by their relation to Mumble, and aside from that it's male-male buddies all the way...)

Mumble's situation could also be taken as a metaphor for being an atheist since everyone knows that atheist is the new gay. ;^)

The point that stands out, however, is that -- unlike practically every children's story I've seen in my entire life -- Happy Feet presents the conflict of reason versus faith and doesn't give a single nod towards faith being the better choice.

The ending message of environmentalism and cross-cultural understanding is the icing on the cake of this bold film with courageously modern morals to guide our kids as they prepare to take the reins of our globally-interdependent world.

One last thing about Lourdes

and then I promise to shut up about Lourdes. Until next time I visit Lourdes. ;^)

One positive thing I saw at the convent was that they specifically listed bringing a message of peace to Muslims and to Protestants (on a huge poster illustrating the goals of their religious order). I'm not up on all of the latest world religion news, but I get the impression that the current pope isn't as big on cross-faith friendship and understanding as the previous one was. But fortunately it looks like at least some sub-organizations of the Catholic church have put interfaith peace on their priority list.

When I saw this poster, I felt a little left-out at first. Why just make peace with Muslims and Protestants? Why not atheists too? Then it hit me that they've probably decided to focus their message on groups the Catholics tend to go to war against.

The closest thing I saw to a mention of atheism during my whole visit was one book in the convent bookstore: Dieu Versus Darwin [God vs. Darwin]. With a title like that, I could easily guess who wins according to the book (even if I hadn't seen it in a religious bookshop). After all, Darwin set out to explain a natural process, not to pick fights with people or supernatural beings. The title kind of reminds me of the Jehovah's Witness anti-evolution book: Life -- How Did it Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?. That book occupies a place of honor in the religion section of my bookshelf -- it's cover-to-cover one of the most hilarious books ever written. It's also a great resource to have on hand in case you're discussing creationism with religious friends and they try to make claims like "real creationists' arguments aren't that stupid..."

Anyway, back to Dieu Versus Darwin: sheesh, that's not a fair fight at all. If we suppose that God is omnipotent, what's He doing challenging a mere mortal? Can't He pick on somebody His own size?

On the other hand if we suppose that God doesn't exist, it's still not a fair fight (since Darwin actually existed). Now that Darwin is dead I guess that evens out the odds a little. the smart money's still on Darwin, though...

Why I'm a bad mom, part 2

Recall from part 1 that I was teaching my kids some naughty words. Well, along those same lines, I've started teaching them about Jesus. The system I've been using is very similar to the one used by the Exterminator as he explained in his atheist confessions ("I say 'oh, Christ!' and 'oh, shit! about an equal number of times each day, even though I believe in only one of them").

Despite my efforts, though, during my recent visit to Lourdes, I discovered that my kids don't know who Jesus is apart from his role as an expletive.

We were staying in a convent, so of course every room had a crucifix in it. We got a room with a really gory one -- where you could see the blood dripping down His dead, drooping head -- hanging right over the bed. (Sweet dreams!) Honestly, it blows my mind that anyone could find such a gruesome image uplifting. Anyway, my little four-year-old Leo was sweetly playing on the bed when he noticed the thing and asked "Mommy, who's that?"

My husband and I looked at one another for a second and I said "It's a picture of someone being executed." Leo doesn't know that that means, but it was sufficient to get him to go back to playing.

On the other hand, I found that my kids can recognize Buddha. We were walking past a Chinese restaurant one day, and Leo said "Look, Mommy! It's Buddha!" I looked where he was pointing and, sure enough, there was a big golden statue of Buddha.

I taught my kids about Buddha kind of unintentionally. One time a colleague went on a business trip to China and brought back tiny Buddha statues for everyone, as souvenirs. I gave mine to my kids to use as a toy. All I told them about him was that his name is Buddha, so naturally they put him with their Spiderman, Batman, and Superman figurines (and dubbed him "Buddha-man").

Since then I figured I should try to make an effort to teach my kids about religion at home since they're bound to hear about it from other kids at school and get all sorts of wrong information. So I bought them an excellent book Les Religions du Monde, and put it on the shelf next to that other in-case-they-have-questions book I bought them (It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health).

I like the book on religions because it's quite even handed -- it covers all known major religions including extinct religions and some fairly obscure religions (although Mormonism didn't make the cut, unfortunately). The bigger the religion, the more extensive the description, but they don't favor one over another (in terms of presenting it as better or more reasonable) nor is there a subtext of "of course this is obviously all a bunch of hooey..." All we've learned from the book so far,though, is that Buddha is really huge. There's a Buddhist monk on the cover sitting next to a statue of Buddha, and the monk is no bigger than Buddha's hand! Now that's big!! (I know you're all waiting for me to add a comment about my earlier post here, but I would never stoop to that level... ;^) )

I can't seem to find a way to explain religion to my kids though. I feel like they're still a little too young to understand the difference between live people, historical figures, legendary characters loosely based on historical figures (eg. Santa Claus / Saint Nicholas), legendary characters that may be based on historical figures (eg. Jesus), fictional characters, etc. And how do you explain to a kid that many people think that there are invisible beings with supernatural powers? And that people think these beings really exist -- they don't see it as just imagination or playing pretend. And how do you explain that some people think they can communicate with mystical beings through lighting candles or saying particular phrases??? So for the moment we're at the point where "Buddha is huge" and the kids can see he's a statue and draw their own conclusions.

I'm happy we've had the opportunity to take the kids to Lourdes so they can see their Catholic heritage in its true context (something they wouldn't normally get from us). I made a point to take them to the basilica and get a picture in front of the giant golden crown.


"Big enough that Buddha could wear it!": the kids were duly impressed.

When we got back to our room, Nico looked out the window at the basilica and asked "Is that a castle, Mommy? Does the king live there?"



As usual, I was at a bit of a loss to explain.

The little angel on my one shoulder was saying "Tell him the truth! Tell him that some people believe there's a super-powerful magic being who likes people to worship him, so people build these elaborate buildings..." And the little devil on my other shoulder was saying "Ick! He's only six -- does he really need to hear about such things? Can't he stay innocent a little longer?"

So I just said "No, the king doesn't live there. We don't have a king anymore."

Nico was a little disappointed with that answer, so he invented a fanciful story about how every country (including France and the US) has lots of kings, and they live in castles with huge gold crowns on top.

Well, why not? He'll hear the standard myths in time, but for the moment he can have the fun of inventing his own. :D