Blasphemy and Other Fun Stuff

I'm feeling better and better about our forthcoming move to Lexington. Yesterday was our first day of classes at a secular homeschooling co-op and it was AWESOME! The kids had fun, learned a lot, and got to hang around lots of other kids without any focus on religious beliefs. They are counting down the days until returning next week. We'll enjoy it even more when it's a short drive from our new home instead of the hour plus we have to drive each way now.

And speaking of new home, were getting closer to our actual move, as we now have both a buyer for our current house and a contract to purchase a home in Lexington. Now we just work through the processes to get both sales closed within the next couple of months.

Our family is excited to be more active in the growing humanist/freethinker community after we move. We're particularly looking forward to next month's first annual Kentucky Freethought Convention. Check out this list of amazing speakers lined up to speak! I still kind of can't believe an event like this is coming to Kentucky, and I can't wait to be in a whole building full of freethinkers and skeptics.

Though Lexington itself is far from nonreligious, it offers our family a network of other secular families and individuals who recognize that religious faith is not necessary for morality, who place value on critical thought, education, and reason rather than on faith (i.e. belief without proof), and who know that rights and respect belong to human beings, not to ideas and beliefs. 

This concept of rights belonging to human beings rather than to ideas and beliefs is very relevant in the aftermath of the US Embassy killings and continuing unrest in the Middle East in protest to a blasphemous movie. Let's reword that a little bit. People are being killed because other people's religious faith is being offended. Human beings are dying because someone offended an idea. A myth. A story. And anyone who thinks Islam holds some kind of monopoly on this kind of behavior needs to read a history book or two.

Long live blasphemy. The Onion does a wonderful job of it here. (Image not safe for work. Or kids.)

Changes

I'm sitting at the kitchen table watching a pair of cardinals feed their three babies at our bird feeder. This is perhaps the third clutch we've had the joy of watching this year. My mom fed birds here, and sat in this same spot (different table and chairs) for years watching and enjoying birds. I'd like to think these cardinals are descended from the ones she observed years ago. Could one of these parents even have been a fledgling my mom watched? As Kelly and I prepare our house to sell so that we can leave this small town, my childhood home, for Lexington, I can't help but regret that I won't be watching more baby cardinals here through the years.

It's always hard when plans change, even when you know it is for the best, as we do now. This was our "forever" house. The peace I felt when we decided to buy it from my siblings after my parents passed away, the idealism of raising my kids on this beautiful spot of earth that helped form my childhood, is hard to let go.

We won't be giving up this idyllic setting for nothing. In exchange for the woods and the serenity, we will have access to a growing humanist community, as well the ability to join a large established secular homeschooling cooperative. And we will be able to put our money where our mouths are in regards to our carbon footprint. Kelly will work in the same city where we live, losing nearly two hours of commute time a day, and we plan to live in close proximity to a bus line, as well as within walking distance to stores and parks, reducing the time the kids and I spend in our vehicle as well.

Allowing my kids to have access to nature is imperative to me, and I recognize that this move will require a concentrated effort on my part for that to continue. There will be no more walking into the woods 30 feet from the house. This change is probably the aspect of the move that's most difficult for me, but our isolation up here is also a big part of why we need to move.

I'm so very excited for my family's future, one which includes my kids having much more time with their dad, as well as developing and sustaining relationships with other freethinking families. We've built an awesome little nest up here, but it's time to soar.

Fun at the Library

This summer we're participating in a cool program at the library where we go once a week for a catered supper and book discussion. Last night was our second time going, and it was wonderful.

We read and discussed three children's books, including Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. When the discussion leader asked us some ways we can all work through bad days, the kids answered with responses like "think of happy thoughts", "go back to sleep", and "do something really fun." But a truly amazing thing happened when one of the dads raised his hand and said, "I know when I have a bad day, I fall down on my knees and remind myself that no bad day can be as bad as Jesus's final day."

Nearly everyone in the room cheered. No kidding. Kelly and I looked at each other in amazement. He whispered to me, "Shouldn't these people be at vacation bible school instead of at the library?"

A Tuesday Anti-Religious Rant

I'm self-admittedly anti-theist now, and the more isolated I feel within the surrounding religious community, the more frustrated and angry I seem to be becoming. It's summertime, which means nearly everyone I know is sharing stories and pictures from their kids' experiences at religious indoctrination camp, sorry, I mean vacation bible school. Sigh.

Why does the concept of bible school bother me so much? I suppose it's the word school. You see, there is no education going on at these "schools," only one-sided indoctrination, where the methodical stamping out of critical thought is a necessary stepping stone to making kids accept faith. They must stop asking "why" and accept "just because," and they must learn to accept interpretations from a 2000 year old Bronze Age text as superior to answers given by modern science. Rational thought and questioning, demanding proof for all assertions, must be rejected to at least some degree in order for any religious worldview to be accepted. It's really that simple. And Christian parents know this, otherwise they would not send their little kids to Sunday school and these religious summer camps. Get them while they are young, before the age of reason. Make sure they know that "because I said so" is a valid reason to keep from taking a bite of that apple. Nevermind that the apple is fucking delicious.

And of course all the Sunday school classes, vacation bible school sessions, and other children's church activities lead to announcements by people that their children have "chosen Jesus" and that they are so "proud." What exactly are you proud of? Successful indoctrination? Did you think there was a chance your eight year old was going to stand up in the middle of group prayer and announce his life-long dedication to Allah? Or Krishna? Are you surprised that he chose the only faith you've exposed him to?

I love Richard Dawkins. His words in The God Delusion helped me realize I have to be vocal about my atheism in order to show my kids the importance of leading an authentic life and questioning everything. This particular clip shows Dawkin's answer to the "most simplest question" during one of his book tours, when an audience member asks, "What if you're wrong?"

I get a kick out of how oblivious American Christians are to the fact that they would most likely be worshiping another god if they had been born in a different world location. But you can't accept both that only Christians will be saved by god AND that geography is the main reason you are a Christian, can you? Certainly not if you also want said god to be both all-powerful and merciful. Really, what's merciful about a little Muslim baby being burned in hell for having the bad luck of being born to Muslim parents? And if you accept that all people, regardless of belief in Jesus, are worthy of being saved by god, then that kind of makes Jesus rather unnecessary, so that's no good either. See? It's all very confusing when you try to apply things like reason and logic, so I can understand why Christians need to put some of these questions into a box labeled "faith," and make sure their kids know at a very young age that those kinds of questions are not acceptable, or that they can be explained away by a simple non-answer such as, "God's ways are mysterious." And what better way to get kids to stop asking the complicated questions than through fun group activities like Bible camp and Sunday school?

Three Good Books

I try to surround Bonnie with lots of good books and let her choose what interests her. Sometimes her choices are right up my alley too, such as is the case with the following three.

Lynne Kelly's  Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal does a great job of debunking popular superstitions and mysteries, including psychic readings, Nostradamus, telepathy, alien abductions, crop circles, astrology, and more. I like that the book gives practical advice to the reader on ways to think through and debunk the superstition for herself. One of my favorite chapters is the one on ESP, in which the author discusses the dangers of using anecdotes as evidence for anything. My kids will be faced with all sorts of anecdotal "proof" from religious folk trying to persuade them into believing in a supernatural god. It's good for them to realize that they need to find their own evidence in these cases.

Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos, does a wonderful job of helping us understand the vast and brutal history of the sugar cane industry, with a focus on the institution of slavery. It talks about how the farmers who grew sugar cane and planned on making sugar faced special challenges that caused the growth of a new form of farming: the plantation.

The only way to make a lot of sugar is to engineer a system in which an army of workers swarms through the fields, cuts the cane, and hauls the pile to be crushed into a syrup that flows into the boiling room. There, laboring around the clock, workers cook and clean the bubbling liquid so that the sweetest syrup turns into the sweetest sugar. This is not farming the way men and women had done is for thousands of years in the Age of Honey. It is much more like a factory, where masses of people must do every step right, on time, together, or the whole system collapses. (Sugar Changed the World 27.)

I want my kids to fully understand our nation's special history with slavery. Most of our founding fathers owned other human beings. What does that say about everything it means to be an American? I'm not sure how to get past all the questions that are raised through in-depth research into our history. But I know we have to ask them.

Finally, Bonnie loved Susan Campbell Bartoletti's Growing Up in Coal Country, the story of children growing up in the coal country of Pennsylvania in the early nineteen hundreds. The author was able to offer glimpses of hope and happiness while conveying the incredibly difficult, dangerous lives these children and their families lived. I love that Bartoletti discusses the banding together of miners to form unions. This book, perhaps more than any discussion I've ever had with Bonnie, has shown her exactly why we have unions today and why we must continue fighting for them. Though set in Pennsylvania, this is Kentucky's coal history too.

Liberal. And Homeschooling.

I often vent my frustrations with the religious right, but an article by Dana Goldstein entitled "Liberals, Don't Homeschool Your Kids," serves to remind me that as much as I don't fit into the religious homeschooling community, neither do I entirely fit into the liberal community at-large. In fact, as a nonreligious homeschooler, I often feel like I don't "fit in" anywhere.

I believe all American children deserve access to good, free, secular education, but that does not mean I am going to send my own kids to a school that cannot meet their needs. The suggestion, as in this article, that my choice to homeschool is at odds with my belief in public education is as off-base as suggesting I am not a feminist because I choose to be a stay at home mom. I stay at home with my kids and homeschool them because it works for my family, and our current situation, and not because I think it's the only suitable parenting and education choice for every family.

Goldstein posits the question "Could such a go-it-alone ideology ever be truly progressive—by which I mean, does homeschooling serve the interests not just of those who are doing it, but of society as a whole?" First, let me say that in making pretty much every parenting decision, I am not thinking of society as a whole, but about my children in particular. Then let me finish by asking this, does society as a whole really benefit more by me sending my child to a mediocre public school in a below-average state, or by teaching her at home to be a strong, well-educated, freethinking individual?

The Logic of a Four Year Old

On a very long car ride today, I had a discussion with my four year old about gum. He wanted a third piece (in less than 10 minutes) and I didn't think it was a good idea. He would not let it go after I listed all the reasons why he could not have another piece. His logic reminded Kelly and me of discussions with religious believers who think they are being rational when they defend their supernatural beliefs. This "discussion" continued for half hour, but I will spare you and summarize.

Fred: It's not fair that Bonnie and Jack have gum. (I believe Jesus Christ is our savior, the son of God sent to redeem us if we only believe in him. The Bible tells me this.)

Me: Actually, you've already had one more piece than they had, so that's not fair, is it? (The only "evidence" you have are bad copies of copies of Bronze Age texts. Those don't seem like valid sources for an entire belief system to me.)

Fred: It's not fair that Bonnie and Jack have gum and I don't. (I believe Jesus Christ is our savior, the son of God sent to redeem us if only we believe in him. The Bible tells me this.)

Me: But you still have the gum in your belly. It's not good to swallow so much gum. (You already said that. You dismiss much of the Bible yourself, how do you choose which parts to believe?)

Fred: I accidentally swallowed it. Both times. I promise I won't swallow it if you give me another piece. (The Bible is written by man, and only inspired by God, so of course you can't take it literally.)

Me: But that's what you said last time. (But how do you decide which parts to believe?)

Fred: It's not fair that Bonnie and Jack have gum and I don't. If you don't give me a piece of gum, I won't like you. (I believe Jesus Christ is our savior, the son of God sent to redeem us if only we believe in him. The Bible tells us this. Faith is a virtue!)

Me: Well I will still love you! (There is no logic whatsoever in anything you are saying, but I still love you.)

Fred: Give me GUM!!! (Jesus is our savior! The Bible tells us so!)

Me: I'm sorry, but you've already had your share of gum, and you can't have any more. (You've already mentioned that. Do you have any reason for your beliefs other than indoctrination?)

Fred: But it's not fair that Bonnie and Jack have gum and I don't. If you don't give me a piece of gum, I will be mad at you. (I believe Jesus Christ is our savior, the son of God sent to redeem us if only we believe in him. The Bible tells us so. Belief is the only option if you don't want to go to Hell. God is loving.)

Me: [No comment.]

And my four year old's final "argument" for receiving a third piece of gum?

Fred: It's not fair that they have gum and I don't! If you don't give me gum, I will fart and not say 'excuse me.'

You know what? I do have faith... in my four year old eventually learning how to argue logically. For now, he's a great source of entertainment, as well as occasional exasperation, such as when we are trapped in a car with him from Toronto to Kentucky.

Survery of Non-Religious Parents

Wendy Thomas Russell writes a wonderful blog and is working on a new book for non-religious parents. She's gathering information for her book with this survey. It's not exactly short, but she needs lots of participants!

Three Books for Skeptical Kids

Teaching my kids to think skeptically as they are bombarded with information and various worldviews is of great importance to me. I've said it before, but as a homeschooling mom, my goal is to teach my children how to think and not what to think. Of course we learn math facts, grammar rules, and history, but more important than filling their heads with particular knowledge now, is teaching them to love learning and to continue schooling themselves for their entire lives. To this end, here are three great books for teaching kids to approach life skeptically!

1. Bonnie loved reading The Magic Detectives. The book features thirty short real-life mysteries, from Bigfoot to the Shroud of Turin to UFO sightings. After studying each case, the reader can think it over before flipping the page to read the solution to the mystery. Bonnie flew through it, then we adapted one of the suggested assignments in the back of the book. She wrote a small essay on the ethical difference between tricks used by phony "psychics" and stage magicians.

2. Nibbling on Einstein's Brain: The Good, the Bad and the Bogus in Science is another great book for budding skeptics. This book teaches kids to spot bad science, question new information, maintain a watch on the media, avoid their own mental pitfalls, and to employ lifelong strategies to think clearly and critically about science. The format is fun and easy to read for late elementary and middle school aged kids. I particularly appreciated the lessons on critiquing advertising, as I'm trying hard to teach Bonnie to see the dangers of television for herself.

3. Bonnie and I read How Do You Know It's True?: Discovering the Difference Between Science & Superstition aloud together. It's a little heavy, but we paused often and enjoyed reading it. Bonnie was moved by the account of the Salem witch trials, which we'd also discussed previously in history. I love the author's definition of superstition: "A superstition is a belief that is held despite evidence that it is not true. Superstitions are based on the belief that some people, plants, animals, planets, stars, words, numbers, or special things have magical powers...Superstitions are examples of fairy-tale thinking. But, unlike fairy tales, which people know are imaginative fiction, superstitions are wrongly believed to be true." Well said!

Have you found any other good books for little skeptics? Especially for younger readers?

Highlights from a Creationist "Science" Book

I ran across this amusing/sad list yesterday that highlights some interesting excerpts from a creationist science textbook. Anything published by Bob Jones University Press will be entertaining, and this book doesn't disappoint. I especially love the section on electricity, which is number ten on the list. Can you imagine giving this explanation to a school-aged child in science class? "Electricity is a mystery. No one has ever observed it or heard it or felt it ... We cannot even say where electricity comes from." 

In some ways, what I find most interesting about this list is the author's commentary at the end. He says that, while he has no problems with creationist parents teaching their kids that God made everything, he does have a problem with books like this that essentially "trick" kids into a certain belief. "It's not only disrespectful to [children], it's disrespectful to your beliefs. It's a tacit concession that you don't think your beliefs can hold up in the face of a counter-argument... or that you don't think you can properly impart your beliefs to your children in an above-board way."

I'm in agreement with him except that he seems to miss the fact that "science" books like this and other propaganda are the very foundation for teaching creationism to children. Saying something like "If you want to teach your children that everything was created by God, I also have no problem with that at all," doesn't really mean anything if the only way to teach them that is by using the type of tool you thoroughly and awesomely lambasted.

I believe that it would be difficult to read this list and not interpret it as "anti-creationist," yet the author spends much time trying to convince us that it's not. What's seemingly at play here is the silly notion so many of us have that beliefs in and of themselves deserve respect. As human rights activist Maryam Namazie often says, "Respect is for people not for religions and beliefs."

Teaching Kids to Turn Off TV

Bonnie and I are still working out the kinks in our new system for time management, and I feel like she is starting to get a real concept for the value of time. She can see first thing in the morning all of the activities she has allotted for that day and how much free time she will have if she completes everything in a timely fashion. She's learning the hard way that piddling away time between and during subjects is a poor use of her free time. Of course I told her that before, but seeing it is making it more real for her. She remains most excited about the extra time we've "uncovered" for her to read more books. (She's still working her way through the Mensa for Kids recommended reading list, in addition to regular school reading.)

Another topic Rafe Esquith discusses in his book Lighting Their Fires is television. He quotes Raymond Shaw in the Manchurian Candidate: "Have you noticed that the human race is divided into two distinct, irreconcilable groups? Those who walk into rooms and automatically turn television sets on, and those who walk into rooms and automatically turn them off." Esquith goes on to state, "Parents, television is killing your child's potential...Everyone seems to know that children should not be spending enormous amounts of time in front of screens, but the fact is, they are, and not enough is being done to stop the development of a behavior pattern that is fatal to a child's potential."

As I was reading the above words, I nodded in agreement and thought of all the media limits I've imposed with my kids, but Esquith helped me realize that it's not enough for me to set limits on the amount of screen time my kids have. As he says, "The ultimate goal in raising a child is to get him to turn off his own television set." While the boys have no problem turning the television off by themselves, they will sit in front of a computer game until I make them stop. Bonnie isn't even close to self-monitoring her television usage, and if unsupervised, I'm not sure she would ever turn it off.

I enjoy watching certain television programs, but Bonnie enjoys watching almost anything on television. If there is nothing on that she really wants to watch, she'll watch something she doesn't even like. (For example, it might be a show geared toward toddlers.) I can't stand this! She and I have spoken at length about the dangers of television and of advertising. She watches very little commercial TV, and our family has a rule that commercials have to be muted. If we are watching something as a family that includes commercials, I try to use them as an opportunity to talk about marketing. But at the end of the day, Bonnie LOVES commercials, and the only reason she mutes them is because I tell her to. Sigh.

As Esquith points out, it doesn't help a parent who tries to limit screen time to live in a society that encourages more and more screens. His book is set at a baseball game, and he mentions the screens there. A live baseball game isn't enough entertainment on its own? In addition, I don't remember the last time I was in a waiting room that didn't have some kind of media playing on a screen. Don't even get me started on screens in class rooms, but the amount of non-educational television viewing in our local public school played a huge role in our decision to pull Bonnie out and start homeschooling. And what was the number one sought-after toy for kids this holiday season? The LeapPad, another screen. I love my local library and have always taken my kids for "story hour" there, but I have a problem with the fact that they occasionally show short movies during the 45 minute program. Seriously, can't we stick to books in the library, of all places?

Thankfully Esquith gives us a game plan for teaching our kids to resist the draw of television and other screens. At his suggestion, Bonnie, Kelly, and I are currently reading Fahrenhiet 451 out loud together. I first read this book in college, and while I loved almost every word of it, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have considered reading it with my ten year old had Esquith not suggested it as necessary reading for all middle and high school students. It's a powerful and disturbing book. We are working through it at a slow pace, and I hope that Bonnie takes the messages to heart. In Esquith's words, the book is "downright brilliant and shocking enough to jolt young people out of their submission to their own 'parlor walls.'" In the spirit of transparency, I have to admit that she only agrees to read it with me in order to be allowed to watch a little television after her brothers are in bed. Another sigh.

Of course Esquith also points out that it takes time for kids to learn to turn their own televisions off. Another advantage to our work with time management is that Bonnie can clearly see that a choice to watch television takes away the option to do something else, and time can never be recovered. When I tell the boys it's time to turn off the computer or set the iPhone down, I need to be clear about why we are turning the screens off, so I can start building their own ability to monitor themselves. Teaching my kids why we need to limit screen time is proving considerably more difficult than simply limiting it. I want them to be in the group of people who walk into rooms and turn television sets off!

For the Bible Tells Me So

I watched an interesting documentary a couple days ago: For the Bible Tells Me So. (Available for streaming on Netflix.) The documentary follows several "normal" Christian families, one of them from Kentucky, as they recount their experiences surrounding having gay sons and daughters. We get to see the "coming out" stories, and how each family responded in turn. I want to point out that while this film is definitely not an anti-Christian work, it does shed an unfavorable light on a history of using the Bible to justify hatred, violence, and bigotry towards gays and lesbians.

Bonnie watched some of this movie with me, but she got very upset after one of the featured mothers described her lesbian daughter's suicide after coming out to and being rejected by her. I am thankful that she cannot comprehend such utter rejection by her parents. Of course I let her know that she should never be afraid to tell me if she's gay.

B: "I know. But I'm not gay. I definitely like boys."

Me:  "You're only ten, so you don't know for sure."

B: "No, I think boys are really cute."

Me: "Well that could change."

B: "I don't think so. I really like boys."

Me: "Just remember you can always tell me."

B: "Okay, but I won't."

I love that kid!

I believe much of this movie should appeal to freethinkers and liberal Christians alike. As an atheist, I would have loved for this film to go one step further, to admit what is obvious, that our morality on the subject of homosexuality (as in all subjects) need not come from the Bible at all. I do not need to interpret the words of the Bible one way or the other to know in my heart that there is nothing morally wrong with two adults loving one another. It would, however, be immoral for me to raise my own children to think it's okay to commit acts of violence, hatred, and bigotry against another group of people because I don't like what they do in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

Finally, here's an awesome piece of standup by Patton Oswalt that touches on the subject of homosexuality and the Bible at the beginning. He also hilariously talks about something with which I personally struggle: respecting people without respecting beliefs. This video is not for kids. Or for people who don't like lots of cussing and/or blasphemy. Seriously, don't watch if you're not up for it.

'Twas the Month Before Christmas

This will be my first holiday season as an outed atheist, so as December approaches, I've had an internal monologue going about whether to say "Merry Christmas" (as I've always done) or "Happy Holidays" (or something else similar.) After much deliberation with myself, I've come to the conclusion that I'll say... Merry Christmas! Here's why.

First, the holiday season was always Christmastime when I was a kid, this despite the fact that it was not about Jesus. Sure, my mother told us about Jesus and Mary and the virgin birth, but not in much detail. It's obviously too late to ask her what she really thought about religion, but whether she considered herself a Christian or not, I definitely have the feeling Mom didn't buy into the literal story of Christ's birth. I have vague memories of attending midnight mass as a young child, but church wasn't part of our Christmas season in any way for most of my memories. My parents' gradual separation from the Catholic church provided me an almost non-religious, mildly "Christian-ish" childhood, for which I am thankful.

While not about Jesus, Christmas for me is and always has been about family. Yes, the gift giving and receiving is fun (and not related to Jesus either, despite the retrofit of Jesus's birthday to the pagan holiday that already occupied the calendar.) It's a time to share love and season's greetings with your family and friends, to reflect on another year, and to spread wishes of peace through the world. Rum-spiked eggnog is also really, really important.

Another reason I will stick with "Merry Christmas" is that I don't want to call my Christmas tree a "holiday tree." I just don't. I tried it out and it just seems silly. Similarly, I want to give Christmas gifts and not "holiday gifts." I want to make Christmas cookies, send Christmas cards (though I've been known to draw a line through the word Christmas and write "Hanukkah" when sending one to a Jewish friend), listen to Christmas music...You get the picture. Now, I am not in any way opposed to and certainly not offended by atheists who don't want to use the word Christmas in these situations (hell, my whole point here is that it took me a while to decide for myself. I see the other side to this, too.) But for me, December 25th and the weeks surrounding it are and always will be Christmas. The bottom line is that I don't think of it as celebrating Jesus any more than I think of the month of January as celebrating the god Janus, and don't feel the need to rename either one.

And on that note, here's a very awesome, sappy poem by Digital Cuttlefish that I read this evening on the subject of Christmas from an atheist point of view. I love it.

The reason for Christmas is bigger than Jesus;
It’s bigger than even a God up above.
The reason we gather together this season
With friends and with family, simply, is… love.

The stories they tell of a wonderful heaven,
The myth of a savior’s miraculous birth,
Are mere consolation for leaving behind
All the love we encounter in one life on earth.

More precious, more rare than the greatest of treasures
This life we are living—each one, we know, ends;
I wish you a love even greater than Christmas
And hope you will share it with family and friends.

Road Trippin'

Last night our family returned from a last-minute road trip to visit family in Michigan, which we decided to take before Kelly started his brand new job today. We drove 450 miles on Friday, stayed two nights, and drove 450 miles back home yesterday. Visiting family was, of course, awesome! But some of the best part of the weekend was the time we spent traveling. It's not often we have 18+ hours of completely uninterrupted family time.

We don't have DVD players for the kids in the van. We watch little television at home, and have made a conscious decision not to have television in our vehicles, whether for everyday use or for longer trips. We made the decision after a trip to Florida when Bonnie was about two and a half years old, for which we had purchased a portable DVD player. It was one of the most peaceful car rides we've experienced; in fact, it was almost as quiet as when Kelly and I traveled before having children. Alas, we came home and returned the DVD player to the store, after realizing that maybe road trips with kids are supposed to be different than they were before having them, and wondering what sights and questions Bonnie had missed by looking at that screen instead of out her window.

Instead of watching DVDs, we listened to a lot of music on our trip. By a lot of music, I actually mean a little bit of music over and over again, because my kids usually listen to one thing they like until we all go crazy and need a break from it. For this trip, it was They Might Be Giants' Here Comes Science, which I've praised before. The music is ridiculously catchy and started a lot of questions and discussions about everything from white blood cells to electric cars. We're all still singing the songs today.

I brought a book to read aloud, not sure how it would go over in the car, but it worked out really well. I read about half of In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World, some on the way up, and some on the return trip. We heard short creation stories from Native America, Siberia, Guinea, Melanesia, China, Russia, Benin, and Australia so far. The book isn't heavily illustrated, but we stopped after each story and discussed it a little before continuing. It was fun seeing the connections the kids made between stories. Bonnie decided she didn't particularly care for the way First Woman is often portrayed! We'll finish reading the book this week and I'm sure will enjoy learning more creation myths, including those from West Africa, Zambia, Iceland, Nigeria, Babylon, Tahiti, ancient Israel, Egypt, and India.

In addition to the things we did as a family, Bonnie brought along her own books to read, and the boys each had a couple of small toys to play with while Kelly and I talked and listened to the radio. Thanks to the suggestion of an awesome friend, on long car trips I bring along several wrapped dollar store toys for the kids to open along the way. As always, the little presents were a huge hit. We tried to stop often and only at places that allowed space for the kids to run around and stretch their legs and have fun. It was probably the second most peaceful long car ride that we've had since having kids.

What We've Been Reading This Week

As usual, we've read a lot of good books this week. There are far too many to list here, but I'll recap a few of my favorites.

To go along with our study of German history, we read several books of German fairy tales, including stories by the Brothers Grimm. Bonnie and Jack both loved Paul O. Zelinsky's beautiful Rapunzel the best. I'd grown up being familiar with the tale of Rapunzel and knowing the line "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," but had never read or heard a version in which the wicked stepmother found out about the Prince because Rapunzel's pregnancy was starting to show. That made for unexpected family discussions.

The boys wanted to read Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story over and over again. Bright illustrations and simple, flowing text make a great introduction to evolution for preschool and elementary aged kids. The book was well below Bonnie's reading level, but she still enjoyed the pictures and story with us.

Bonnie and I read two books about religious faiths this week, What I Believe: Kids Talk about Faith by Debbie and Tom Birdseye and One World, Many Religions: The Ways We Worship by Mary Pope Osborne (author of the popular and awesome Magic Tree House series for young readers.) Both books did an excellent job of conveying the basic message that there are a variety of religious faiths, but that they are all basically the same. The books encourage religious understanding and tolerance, and are clearly written from the point of view that religious faith is a good thing. Osborne's introduction says this about the seven main religions she chooses to discuss in her book:

They all seek to bring comfort to their followers. They all offer thanks for the world's great beauty and goodness. They all express awe and humility before the mysteries of the universe. In this sense, they are all wise and enduring.

Obviously I believe the above passage reveals that the book is less about religious education and more about religious promotion. While her book does a great job of talking about the good aspects and customs of different religions, she completely leaves out minor details like the fact that the "big three" have been perpetuating horrors against each other for centuries, and the implied lesson is that any religious faith is better than no faith.

The Birdseye book features the stories of six American middle school kids talking about their family's religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Native American. Bonnie liked reading about the different ways kids practice their religious faiths and about the different views they hold. And though Bonnie and I didn't discuss it (because I am letting her make those connections herself) I liked that the kids were pretty obviously just repeating what they've been taught about religion by their parents. Original, critical thought need not apply! I do see the beginnings of skeptical thinking in the Christian boy Alex, who says things like "I believe in God because there are some things that cannot be rationally explained" and "Some people think that God still works miracles. I believe maybe, occasionally." He also talks about not taking the bible literally and not being sure if he's heard god's voice personally, or if they were only his own thoughts.

The best book Bonnie and I read this week was Tobacco U.S.A: The Industry Behind the Smoke Curtain. It's written for young adults, and while Bonnie could read it herself, I read it aloud so that we could stop and talk any time she had questions. Tobacco is a personal topic to me, as I have struggled with smoking in the past, and I lost my mom to COPD and lung cancer. In addition, my siblings and many other family members currently smoke. This book does an excellent job of describing the role tobacco played in the founding of this country, the perpetuation of the slave trade, and in making anti-trust and child advertising laws necessary. Bonnie received a great introduction in our flawed political system that allowed Big Tobacco to remain unchecked for so long. For some reason that is inexplicable to me, there are some who would suggest this book is "biased" against the tobacco industry. To that, I would reply that much of the information found in this book is taken right from the records of Big Tobacco, such as their development and marketing of Joe Camel with the specific goal of attracting new customers in the 14-18 age bracket. In addition to bringing up discussions about child advertising and political lobbying, this book brought up the topic of globalization. We learned that much of the world's tobacco is now grown under the supervision of Big Tobacco in third world countries. The tobacco companies build the same fancy tobacco barns we have here and supply the farmers with the same toxic pesticides. The result is tobacco of the same high quality with farmers existing at a subsistence level and Big Tobacco paying less than 1/3 what they would for the tobacco grown here. Tobacco seems to have come full circle to its slavery roots.

Kelly brought next week's books home from the library yesterday. I love seeing my kids stand around the book bag, eager to see what it contains. And I love learning right along with them.

Raising Skeptics

This morning I read a blog by skeptic Kylie Sturgess, in which she discusses and suggests books that encourage skepticism in children. Bonnie's already read several of the books mentioned, with plans to read more. Sunday and Monday are usually when I reserve my library books that we'll use the following week, giving the library time to gather the books from different branches by the end of the week. Choosing which books to reserve is one of my favorite things about homeschooling, and parenting in general. I love raising my kids to be skeptics and find that, for the most part, it's easy and fun to do.

One of the reasons raising little freethinkers is easy is that all children are born skeptical. One of a toddler's favorite questions is "why?", and as long as kids get positive affirmation that questioning is good and that no questions are off-limits, they will continue to ask why. This of course means that the parent of a skeptical child will be answering lots of questions, and equally and possibly more importantly, teaching the child how to find answers on his or her own.

This brings me to a key point of raising skeptics, that the kids have to know that parents are one source of information, but not the end-source of all information. It's not just okay, it's vital for parents to sometimes answer, "I don't know, but that's a good question!" and then work together to find the answer. The awesome thing about this is that we parents get to learn so much through this process, because kids ask some pretty amazing questions. For example, Jack and Fred recently asked Kelly what skunks eat. Did you know they eat insects, larvae, worms, rodents, lizards, frogs, birds, eggs and berries, roots, leaves and nuts, among other things? We didn't!

One of the best ways to allow skepticism to thrive in our kids is to surround them with a wide variety of books, from all ranges of history and written from many different points of views. Even though I am an atheist, I do not shelter my kids from reading books written from Christian or other religious world views. Much of the greatest literature written has come out of mythology, whether Christian, Greek, Norse, Muslim or other, and my kids read it all. Because I do not sit over their shoulders constantly elevating one particular mythology as fact, they naturally view them all as fiction. In addition, our method of teaching history chronologically with the classical method of homeschooling reveals an undeniable evolution of religious mythology throughout time. It would take considerable effort on my part to keep my kids from seeing these obvious connections of all mythologies and religions.

Along the same lines as surrounding kids with books, I encourage my kids to remain skeptical by surrounding them with science, sometimes through books, occasionally through television programs, and most often by placing them outside in nature as much as possible. A couple weeks ago, we were watching one of our family's favorite TV programs, PBS's Nature, and it was all about hummingbirds. The kids were enthralled, and Kelly and I enjoyed it as well. At one point they mentioned something interesting, that hummingbirds are the evolutionary cousins of swifts and swallows, and used slow-motion video to show them hunting insects in the air, much the same way as swallows do. We had observed ruby-throated hummingbirds coming to our feeder all summer, but had no idea the sweet-looking birds were formidable little hunters as well.

This brings me to a disturbing thought that I often have when watching nature documentaries that inevitably mention evolution: I think of all the little children of creationist parents who either do not get to watch these programs at all (because they mention evolution), or whose parents have to spend time explaining why their Bronze-aged bible knows more about science than actual scientists in the year 2011. The amount of energy necessary to squelch the natural skepticism that would allow kids to buy into such a outrageous concept is mind-boggling to me, especially when contrasted with how easy it is to feed their natural skepticism instead.

Keep on Readin' in the Free World

The kids have been up to some fun reading this week!

We checked out And Tango Makes Three from the library and have been reading it with the boys. It's the wonderful, true story of two male penguins in Central Park Zoo who became a pair and raised an adopted chick. Jack and Fred love it! And the underlying message, that there is no single right kind of family, is beautiful. After reading it, I understand why some (most?) people in the conservative right don't want their children reading this. Opening your eyes to non-human homosexuality kind of makes the whole being-gay-is-a-choice-and-not-natural thing, well, not believable. I'm glad I saw this one on a banned books list and decided to get it.

Another book we've been reading and rereading is The Butter Man, a story about a little girl whose father grew up in Morocco. When she complains about "starving" while waiting for supper to cook, her dad tells her the story of when his family nearly went hungry during a period of drought in his childhood. I make an effort to teach my kids not to turn their noses up at food when there are people in the world who have far too little, and I believe books like this do much more to drive that concept home than my lecturing. It's one of the many books we've been reading to help better understand the current crisis in the Horn of Africa.

Jack and Fred are also currently obsessed with Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is?, which is a great book for helping kids of all ages understand relative size and the concept of the universe.We love it!

Bonnie is immersed in the recent Rick Riordan book, The Son of Neptune, which she is over halfway through after having checked it out from the library late yesterday afternoon, one day after it was published.  (I just interrupted this blog entry to confiscate said book because she was reading it while she is supposed to be working on a math test.) Today she said she can't wait to finish it but doesn't want it to end, which is surely a sign of an engaged reader with a great book.

We're learning about 17th century Persia in history this week, so we've been reading various tales from Turkey and Iran. Bonnie just finished Pea Boy and Other Stories from Iran yesterday, before I let her start the Rick Riordan book. I know that seems kind of mean, but I knew I wouldn't be able to get her to read anything else once she started her book. Because I've made the happy mistake of locating too many books to supplement this history chapter, we're going to continue exploring Persia next week.

As a homeschooling mom, I think putting a variety of good books in front of my kids is probably the most important part of my job right now. We're not in multicultural area, by any stretch of the imagination. The chances, for example, that my kids will see two gay men holding hands or caring for their baby in the grocery store is close to nil. But I can still make sure my kids know those people are out there and realize that they deserve the same respect and rights as the families we see out at the soccer fields every week.

Cue Reading Rainbow theme song. You're welcome.

Grief and Atheism

I was ten years old when my Grandaddy died, and I clearly remember being told that he was "watching me from heaven." It's a little hard to put into words how completely disconcerting it was to think for years that I was being watched, pretty much all of the time. It was like Santa Claus all over again, without the enticement of new toys in December.

When I was eighteen, one of my dear aunts passed away, and my crying was curtailed at the funeral home by my grandmother, who calmly told me I was being selfish, as my aunt was in a better place. I still picture my grandmother sitting in that hallway, stoic and dry-eyed, which strikes me as a strange image to have of her on the day that she buried her eldest daughter.

In both of the above cases, as with every funeral I've attended (and there have unfortunately been many because of my large extended family), the comfort I received was not from these ideas of heaven, but from the love and sharing of grief with friends and family members around me.

One of the questions I've received multiple times from people who discover I'm an atheist is "What about heaven? How can you think your mom is just gone?" The first issue I have with this question is that it assumes I have somehow chosen to be an atheist, which simply is not the case. Disbelief is not a choice. I could no more will myself to believe in a god than I could will myself to believe in Santa again.

The second issue I have with the above questions is that the Christian idea of heaven is simply not comforting to me. There is nothing about it that makes sense. I read a beautiful article written on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by blogger Greta Christina that explains how I feel about the idea of religion and heaven being comforting. She writes:

It’s comforting to think that you and your loved ones will live forever. Until you think carefully about what immortality would mean, and you realize that any sort of immortality would either mean being static and unchanging, or eventually changing so radically you’d no longer be yourself. Both of which would, in essence, constitute death, and would thus be a rather monumental missing of the point.

It’s comforting to think that justice will be done and good people will be ultimately rewarded. Until you think carefully about what Heaven would mean. Until you realize that there’s no way to be in a state of perfect bliss created by someone else without losing your ability to make choices. Until you realize that existing in a state of bliss while others are suffering would mean a fundamental loss of the best part of you. Both of which, again, would be a rather monumental missing of the point.

It’s comforting to think that justice will be done and bad people will be ultimately punished. Until you think carefully about what Hell would mean. Until you think about questions like, “how much worse is the best person in Hell than the worst person in Heaven?” Until you consider the inherent injustice, and indeed the cruelly grotesque disproportionality, of any kind of infinite punishment for finite crimes.

And it’s comforting to think that everything that happens is part of a plan — a plan dreamed up and brought to fruition by someone who’s infinitely smart, infinitely powerful, and infinitely compassionate. Until you start realizing that being a cog in someone else’s machine isn’t the most liberating experience in the world. Until you start realizing that the idea of everything being part of an all-powerful being’s plan is simply not compatible with the idea of any sort of free will… and no amount of saying “Is too! Is too!” will change that. Until you start realizing that any being whose plans include droughts, earthquakes, famines, hurricanes, tornadoes, parasites, birth defects, genetic diseases, pediatric cancer, and people flying airplanes into buildings has got to be either pitilessly callous or gleefully sadistic, and if you’re going to call that being “good,” you are re-defining the word “good” to the point where it has no meaning.

Christina writes multiple times in the article that religion is only comforting if you don’t think about it very carefully. The more you think and question, the less any of it makes sense.

My kids have already lost two grandparents. As an atheist, I have not tempered their grief with assurances that Granny isn't really gone or that Grandaddy is watching over them. Not only do I not believe those things, but I don't want to send an implicit (or explicit in the case of my grandmother) message that grief is not warranted or normal.

What I do tell my kids is that Granny and Grandaddy can live forever through our memories. Bonnie has a special responsibility to tell her brothers about their grandparents, since Fred was not born when Dad died, and only a baby when Mom passed away, and Jack can only barely remember Mom. We tell stories, look at pictures, and watch home movies. I try to make sure my kids have relationships with their great aunts and uncles, my parents' siblings. When I look at my beautiful children, I don't need to hold onto a false idea of heaven to see that my parents are living on, right in front of me.

Popping the Bubble

Hemant Mehta wrote a great post today about the Internet's role in spreading skepticism and atheism. (You can read the full post here. Check out the cartoon at the end... it's awesome.) He points out that "when people have access to knowledge, they start asking questions… and that’s bad for Christianity."

This brings me back to an ongoing issue I've had with Christian homeschool groups in the area: the statements of faith required to join. It's been hard for me to understand why groups that claim to be about education would pointedly exclude certain people in the community. I understand having religious faith, but why keep your kids separated from all others with different beliefs? One would think they would be all over the chance to teach my kids and me all about Jesus, but they don't want us anywhere near them. Why is that?

From everything I've witnessed, conservative Christian parents work very hard to keep their kids inside a bubble, and it often starts with Christian school or homeschool. Because Christians dominate the homeschool market, I have to sort through an unbelievable amount of curricula written with a "Christian worldview" to find real educational materials. Here's a great article written on three of the most popular "history" curricula for Christian schools and homeschools. The following is an excerpt that disturbs me and should disturb anyone with even a little bit of historical knowledge of Christian colonialism and the havoc it has wreaked on so many societies around the world:

Materials from the three publishers have a recurring theme: that the lack of material progress in various Third World countries and among indigenous peoples can be attributed to their religious beliefs. The publishers also share a tremendous emphasis on conservative Protestant missionary activity; approving passages abound about individual missionaries and Christian converts and the need for both historical and contemporary evangelism.

It makes me a little sick to my stomach to think of a new generation of children being taught the above view of the world. These will be the kids who nod in agreement when someone like Pat Robertson claims that the devastating earthquake in Haiti was due to the "pack with the Devil" that Haitians made during Colonial times. Don't even get me started on the "science" books such as Apologia that are used in these settings, but clearly anything subtitled "Exploring Creation" belongs in religion and not science class.

But back to my original issue, why is it so important that my kids be excluded from the Christian homeschool groups? It's simple really, and it's found in Mehta's post when he quotes Christian Josh McDowell:

...the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism.

I couldn't have said it better myself! The more we know, the more we wonder, the more questions we ask. My kids are little skeptics (as are all children naturally), and as such they expect to be given reasons for things or pointed in the direction to seek those reasons for themselves. They do not believe certain ideas are above critical thought or discussion and simply must be "accepted." I can almost guarantee Bonnie will raise her hand and ask about the atrocities committed by Christianity if she hears someone try to paint it as a religion of peace, and she will likely point out that atheists are not known for flying planes into buildings in the name of reason if someone starts talking about the "evils of secularism." Jack, my five year old, has been known to conduct informal polls on the belief of gods at family reunions.

So why are my kids excluded from Christian homeschooling groups? I think it's pretty obvious that they, along with the Internet, secular media, and real science and history textbooks (you know, the ones written by scientists and historians) are a threat to the little bubble that is the Christian Worldview. Critical thought must be discouraged in order to keep the bubble intact, and secularism, humanism, atheism and skepticism must be regularly categorized as "evil."

On Freethought Parenting

I was going to blog about my latest canning experience (applesauce, and it was AWESOME) but have decided to write about something else on my mind today: freethought parenting. One of my priorities as a parent is raising my children in a manner that they never grow into someone's sheep. I want them to question everything! To this end, I try not to make rules for them that seem arbitrary. If I can't give them a good reason for doing or not doing something, I don't think I should expect them to follow my rule.

Of course, like with most parenting goals, this is more easily said than done. I would be lying if I said I didn't occasionally and loudly say "because I said so" after the umpteenth question on a particular subject. I grew up in an authoritarian household and there were some things we simply were not allowed to question, period. I don't want that for my kids, but it's very hard to get out of that mind set. It's not that I don't want my children to be respectful, because I do, but I don't want them to respect authority that is not derived through reason and fairness.

Dale McGowan's book Raising Freethinkers has been a valuable resource in my parenting quest. I love this passage in Chapter One:

I want the idea that questions can be feared because of the answers they might produce to baffle my kids. I want them to find hilariously silly the idea that certain lines of thought cannot even be pursued, lest they be caught. That requires a certain amount of parental self-discipline. It requires the ability, for example, to not paint the far wall with soup when the 5-year-old asks if monkeys have vaginas, or why black people have big lips, or who will put her blankie on her grave when she dies- all three of which have come up at our dinner table. It requires a firm conviction that there is no rock that can't be upended if you think there might be something under it. And of course, there always, always might.

It's not difficult to encourage a ravenous curiosity in young children, the questions come so naturally to them! But do they outgrow it, or do we as parents and our society stifle it? What made it suddenly "uncool" to enjoy reading when Bonnie was in third grade at the local public school, or to know the answers when the teacher asked the class a question? (Insert plug for homeschooling here.)

To go back to the concept of respect, I try to teach our kids to differentiate between respect for individuals (highly valued) and respect for ideas (totally subjective.) Even though there were some things exempt from this scrutiny in my house growing up, my mom did have the general idea with the rule that we were not allowed to call each other stupid, but we could call some actions and ideas stupid. I carry that rule on with my kids, though I prefer they use adjectives other than stupid (because it's a stupid word.)

We've adopted the following general family rules, framed on our wall and borrowed from McGowan's book. They were open to discussion before ratification and may change through the years as our family grows and changes.

So, where does religion fit into raising freethinking children? My kids are learning about religion in a world context. Our homeschool is secular, but we might just spend more time talking about religion than other homeschooling families, because I don't believe you can adequately teach history or current events without religious education. My hope is that Bonnie is learning to respect everyone's rights to choose his or her own religious beliefs, but I certainly wouldn't expect her to respect religion itself, unless she came to that conclusion through her own critical thinking processes. I would no sooner tell Bonnie what to believe than I would tell her how to feel. As a freethinking parent, my job is to teach my children how to think and not what to think, and I take my job very seriously!