Oh, Cary Tennis, he of well-meaning but often just wrong-headed advice. Today he has a father who has to stand by while his ex-wife feeds his daughter a set of damaging—emotionally and mentally and when the girl reaches an age of sexual awakening, physically—religious beliefs, and Cary’s advice is to play along. Now the mother has custody, so he really has to accept that this is going to be the girl’s primary religious instuction, but damn. First the question, and it’s heart-breaking:
As my daughter gets older, however, she has started to become fearful that because I am not a Christian, I am going to hell. When I try to explain my beliefs (that I don’t believe in God or a higher power), she cries. I am certainly not trying to deny her mother the right to take her to church, but I don’t want to cut my two weekends a month with her short to take her back to her mother’s to attend church. Nor do I want her mother telling her that I am going to hell.
It has gotten to the point that if I even try to broach the subject of religion (mentioning my belief in evolution or that homosexuals are not sinners), it upsets my daughter greatly. Obviously, this is not what I want, but I do want to be able to communicate to her what I believe.
Her mom thinks that I am denying her freedom by not taking her to church on the weekends that I have her, but I am just trying to help her see that other people believe other things and that having an open mind is a good thing.
What am I doing wrong? And more important, how can I talk to my daughter about this without making her cry?
I’d tell the guy to chill out a little—don’t push too hard, or you will make the backwards religion seem charmingly rebellious. But or god’s sake, don’t coddle the insanity. But Cary says coddle it.
What I am trying to say is, the way to help your daughter grow is not to debate the existence of God. It is to go to church with your daughter and experience what she is experiencing….
Her problem is not that she believes in God. It’s that she believes you are going to burn in hell when you die. It’s her concern for you, and her fear for you, that are the problem. She wants to believe otherwise but has no solid grounds on which to place any hope. If you go to church with her, you will make it possible for her to believe that there is at least a chance that you will not burn in hell. From this she will derive great benefit. It will give her some peace of mind. The peace of mind she derives from it will help her in her schoolwork and in her relationships with others. It will help her sleep at night and it will improve her attitude toward you. It will be one less complaint she has against you. It will be one less wedge her mother can use between you. And it will be the only way you will ever be able to argue with her about religion with any credibility, should you choose to do so when she gets older.
I actually agree with the general principle he’s making here, which is that the dad is coming on too hard about his atheism and needs to take two steps back. First of all, there’s the control thing—we don’t tear down the master’s house with the master’s tools. Treating young women like objects of patriarchal control is the crazy Christian stance, and the atheist who wants to distinguish himself shouldn’t ape that tactic. Let her go to church, but don’t go with her. Say, “Because I am a liberal, atheist, secular humanist, I believe all people, even women and girls, have a right to choose.” Use those words, because I guarantee to you, the idea that women get to “choose” is condemned viciously in her church.
And then I’d probably enroll in a secular Bible study class and learn about the Bible itself. This will help ease the hellbound tensions, and will give you an opportunity to talk about religion without encouraging her to immediately set into wingnut “flail around until they give up trying to use logic” mode. Tell her, perhaps, that you’re still not a believer, but that there’s value in learning the Bible and that Jesus had some good ideas—and explain exactly what those ideas are. The Sermon on the Mount is a good place. But I’d focus on getting her to actually read the entire Bible, not just the parts carefully selected by her minister.
Once trust that you respect the book itself (which you can do by telling yourself that it has some evocative stories, interesting historical debates, and if it’s the King James version, some nicely written poetry) has been established, you can slowly and carefully start pointing out that the values of tolerance and open-mindedness that you’re demonstrating should go both ways. She doesn’t have to believe in evolution, but maybe she should at least tolerate hearing about it, and giving it a fair shake? The great part about this is that the Bible itself is something of an instrument—passages where Jesus preaches the Golden Rule, love your brother, etc.
Sara Robinson has a great series on how to reach out to people trapped in the fundamentalist cult and help ease them back to reality. (Which doesn’t necessarily mean atheism, but could be being a believer who nonetheless respects that our state should be run on secular humanist principles.) Go to Orcinus and scroll down until you see Sara’s “Tunnels and Bridges” series—read the whole thing, especially if you have contacts with fundamentalists that you want to help out of the system. It can be done humanely, without coercion. In fact, it has to be. You’re trying to get them out of an authoritarian hellhole, and the only way to accomplish that is to show that secular humanists are anti-authoritarian, a genuine alternative.
The common theme running through her suggestions is to personalize everything, because demonizing and dehumanizing the enemy (everyone not them) is how they work. The picture above is a classic example—in Fundieland, people who accept evolutionary theory run around shooting people. Easy to counteract—a little field trip to the Red Cross where you learn about how doctors who work for them go out and save lives and are genuine, noble heroes. Who can’t actually do their work, whose entire field doesn’t make sense without evolutionary theory. In this case, the girl already has tunnels and bridges through her father—her pressure to get him into the fold is about making sure that she has minimal contact with outsiders who will humanize the outside world to her. So if he wants to get her out of the cult, the best strategy is not to get involved in the church but to stay on the outside so she has a landing spot should she choose to leave.
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With respect, I think you are underestimating the amount of soft power exercised by a parent (usually the mother) with primary care and control of a minor child.
Any attempt to angle the child away from what the mother wants frequently results in either outright interference with the father’s time with the girl, or a more gradual manipulation of the child so that she reduces her time with her father and believes that it is her own choice. While I concede that Cary Tennis is usually a wishy-washy nincompoop, I think that not putting the father-daughter relationship in the retaliatory crosshairs of a person may be the only sane course for the child’s teen years. The downside of such advice is obvious: by the time the child is old enough to think for themselves they may have lost the ability to do so, or be 18 and trapped in a loveless marriage as a two-legged baby mill.
That said, I think that your advice is wise, sound, and sensible. My only caveats are these: custodial parents are often none of those three things, and dislike their even being there if they get in the way of Control; religious fanatics are rarely-to-never wise, sound and sensible, and will destroy the father-daughter relationship in a heartbeat if they think that Jeebus wants it so.
I have lost count of the number of sad cases that crossed my desk where the custodial mother lost all ability to distinguish between what she wanted and what was good for the kids. (The latter was usually arbitrarily defined by the former.) How reasonable do you think such a person will be when they think that they are doing God’s Work?
So, being an atheist and stating so out loud and explaining why (holes all over the bible, etc) makes me militant. But paying for a billboard that equates atheism with giving kids guns and a license to kill is what? Good family values?
That’s really good advice Amanda. Especially about learning the bible (there is good stuff in there) so the dad can at least talk to his daughter about something important to her.
I would add that he could spend more time talking to her about how she feels about her religion and why. And maybe find out what she enjoys (outside of church) and try to take her to some fun, interesting non-religious activities and just let her experience the world.
Direct her to http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2015:32-36&version=9;
Lots of people realize how backwards and illogical the Bible is once they actually read the unsavory passages, instead of being given the sanitized version by the
snake oil salesmenpastors.By confirming the madness?
Ugh. What an ugly situation.
Good suggestions all around, though.
Agreed, seeker, he may lose her. But the one thing he really doesn’t want to do is lose his ability to save her if she needs help. Fundamentalists lose kids a lot; it seems that even minor contact with the outside world can cause rifts. He needs to be that outside world and hope she wises up.
It wasn’t clear from the original question if the mother wanted him to take the girl to a particular church (probably) but I wondered why he didn’t find some liberal denomination and take the girl there. When my fundie cousins would come visit during the summers, they always wanted us to all go to church (they too feared my family’s eventual residence in a lake of fire) so we took them to the local Unitarian church. It was ‘church’ but it didn’t focus on the supremacy and truthiness of any one belief and getting to interact with all the really nice liberal unitarians definitely had a positive impact, I think.
Amanda, HOPE SHE WISES UP? great advice, dont quit your day job! Whats wrong with a father just loving his daughter explaining his beliefs and letting her have her own beliefs? Cant they mutual exist? or is it because shes a Christian, then holy crap we need to change her, dont believe in those fairy tales and so called, WISE UP!
Wow. I’d seen that picture before, but I didn’t know they had billboards. I mean, wow.
There is some good stuff in the Bible. I get a little choked up reading Matthew 25:34-40, even though I wasn’t raised Christian and the Christian context at all meaningful to me.
There’s a lot of interpretation being done with the original letter to the editor; he doesn’t say anything about trying to convert his daughter, just that he can’t “talk” to her about his own beliefs and hers. Of course, it’s quite legitimate to read an attempt at conversion into that, but he may be a domineering blowhard or he may be someone just trying to impart a bit of tolerance.
I guess all you can do in this instance is lead by example and show tolerance without compromising your own principles… but would that even help, when part of the fundie teachings is that other people are obligated to show deference to the fundie religion, because it’s special.
Amanda -
I actually really disagree with you here.
I equate what the mother is doing here with a light version of child abuse. She is obviously telling her child that the child’s father is going to suffer some horrible, horrible fate, and it’s causing the child pain and hurt.
The child crying because she thinks her Dad is going to some mythical Bad Place ISN’T the father’s fault. It’s the mothers. I don’t think the father should pander to the abuse of the mother by furthering it through either following that dipshit Carey’s advice of going to church (I mean, WTF?), or even going to some secular bible-study group.
I’m no militant atheist, but as i see it, the solution for me were I that child’s father would be to quietly introduce the child to atheism, through discussions and talks (not just the two of them, but going to events). Sure the child may squirm a bit initially, but we don’t tell a gay dad to stop being gay just because his child is in the room (or at least, no one with an ounce of rationality does).
Yes, I agree, with Carey is doing is coddling, but I don’t really see how what you are suggesting is not coddling either. Pretending to be interested in the bible is LYING to your child. Seriously. This is her future we are talking about, and the repurcussions (particularly so at this age) will be huge.
Sure, don’t demonise or dehumanise the other, as that is what the religious ones will do, and we do pride ourselves on being better than them. But be that island of rationality and reason in the sea of fantasy and intolerance that this child is otherwise immersed in, and one does that showing your child when to compromise and when to be proud of yourself. This is a moment for the latter.
Yeah, it may shock your child some, but sometimes it’s for her own good.
Imagine being raised by cookie. Now imagine what this poor girl is going through. How come being raised rabid Xtian isn’t classified as child abuse? It promotes ill-health, self-harm, and delusions, all to the detriment of mental and physical health. How is that not child abuse? How come it has to get to the point where the mom is putting the kid’s body in danger?
Excellent advise about learning the bible. I like it from the ‘literary learning’ point of view.
Why not take her to a liberal church, if church is that important to her and her mother? I mean show her another side of religion.
I take my kids to church not so much out of my beliefs but out of my desire to expose them to positive ideas. Like love you nieghbor, forgiveness, etc. Approaching it from that direction lets me believe what I want and throw out the rest.
I’d suggest trying to take her to a United Church of Christ. Meeting people who are Christian but still believe in evolution, abortion rights, and gay people might open her eyes a lot and make it easier for her to understand her dad. I feel really bad for them that they have that rift between them, but hopefully she’ll become more open minded and be able to look past her fundamentalism.
Sarah in Chicago is right!Terrorizing (yes,I WILL use that word) a child with the idea of an all-powerful,vengeful god is a form of abuse.*spiritual abuse of minors*If you google up on the family life of that lunatic Fred Phelps (especially what his four “treacherous” children have to say),you’ll see just how seamlessly physical and spiritual abuse can merge and how hatred is cultivated.*Barbarism begins at home*
Sarah, he’s not the custodial parent. He has lost the meaningful ability to steer his child’s life. He can’t fight a stand-up fight for the child’s belief system; he’ll lose. He needs guerilla tactics.
On my account, what he needs to play for is the part where she does something that steps out of line with her mom or church teachings and really gets in trouble. When the mom or the church overreact and punish her, he needs to seek review of the custody order. Once she has an example of how the intolerant framework works when she’s on the wrong side of it, his worldview might seem more appealing to her and more congenial to the court. At worst, the break comes after she turns 18, but he still has to be a part of her life to give her somewhere to run to.
BTW, Amanda, why isn’t Cookie banned yet? He has a track record of personal insults and he’s boring.
cookie, there are Christians, and then there are
“Christians”. The biblical rules for prayer are very clearly spelled out in Matthew 6. You should pray in secret, not in the streets, and you should pray using the Lord’s Prayer, which emphasizes forgiveness heavily. Most modern day “Christians” are actually “Paulians” who consider the evangelicalism of Paul to be more important than the words of the man they consider to be their savior.
That poor little girl is being led into being a “Christian”, one whose outward expression of faith is more important than the development of her ability to reason and to tell right from wrong independently. I certainly do hope the little girl “wises up”, because if she follows the hypocrites, by the word of her own faith she is doomed.
I have known less than a handful of real Christians in my life, and a great many secular humanists, Jews, and pagans who live their lives far more righteously than the average “Christian” (sin on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, repent and pray loudly on Sunday, rinse and repeat), and it is my firm belief that those who live a rightous life right now, being kind to others, striving toward social justice, minimizing their impact on the earth, being generous when they “have” and grateful when they “have not”, receive their reward here and now, and daily. If that little girl continues on her current path, she will miss out on a great deal.
And yes, dad should back off, but keep dialogue open. Gently showing her biblical contradictions, helping her to learn critical thinking skills, and teaching her the values of nonjudgment and generosity will go far longer in building a moral human being.
Oh, this hits close to home. As a tween, I was caught between my Dad’s hard-core Calvinism and my Mom’s Catholicism.
Surprisingly, my dad was the one who bent, and found a more liberal, less “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” church for us to go to — that way, his visitation wasn’t horked, and we still abided by the “kid has to be churched” custody agreement.
This was a good compromise, because it showed me that not all religions had to be screechy, dogmatic houses of pain, and that it was possible to compromise.
@ cookie:WE’re not the ones trying to change that poor girl.Her mother is.
I don’t see the problem with a secular interpretation of such a culturally important philisophical text like The Bible. I think it’s a good idea. As well, chances are that their church is only focusing on certain..quite frankly..immoral aspects of the text on their own. So revealing the entire thing, putting everything into its proper context is probably a good first step.
Which leads to the mother imparting her immorality on the daughter.
And that’s another thing. Chances are that the mother, due to her religion* lacks the judgement to make solid ethical and moral choices. For obvious reasons, this is not a good thing to be passed on to her daughter. I would put the focus on providing an example of solid ethical and moral judgement, in the hopes that can be tempered.
*Please note that I’m not referring to Christianity as a whole, just the pop culture, Get Out Of Hell Free card-passing version of it.
What has really upset me about this letter and this whole scenario is the fact that the problem is only coming to light NOW, when the child is 13. This isn’t something that the father can make up time on–he should have been talking to his daughter about his beliefs and his worldview since she was much, much smaller. She’s been at this fundamentalist church since she was little, and apparently he’s been pretty involved in her life (lived with her, presumably as primary caregiver, for at least two years, etc.). Why hasn’t he been giving her alternatives before this? Why hasn’t he been trying to counter the “hellbound” issue much earlier?
I’ve spoken here before about my husband’s issues with his fundie ex-wife, who has felt completely free to tell his two daughters (now nine and seven) that their father is evil and going to hell. One year she completely destroyed our secular holiday celebrations of Halloween and Xmas because she found out that the year before, the kids had happily participated in costume-wearing, pumpkin carving and tree-trimming, which they’d never been allowed to do while their parents still lived together. The next year, hell no, the older one was having none of that. But we’ve been working on them since then–more through discussions at the dinner table than anything else–and last year was pretty normal.
The mother still claims that the kids identify as “born-again Christian children” and that we have to accept that, as she has accepted that they’re vegetarians like their father (our argument is much like many respondents to Cary Tennis’s “football” argument–we’ve never told the children that their mother is wrong for eating meat, let alone that she’s going to burn in all eternity; she’s just made a different choice, like those who love football!). The kids won’t talk about it much with us, and we don’t push them to do so. I suspect now that they go along with their mother while they’re there (we have half-time residency) because they can’t shut her up otherwise, and she’s seeing their silent complicity as heartfelt belief. I believe strongly, however, that in the long run the fundie beliefs are not going to stick, because they’ve seen very clear opposition and very different worldviews for as long as they can remember–unlike the Cary Tennis reader, who apparently hasn’t made much of a deliberate attempt to guide his child so far! As our kids get old enough to really think about this stuff, that influence is going to matter. Fundies are so terrified about influence from the “outside world” because they have enough of a problem with losing kids who’ve been raised with nothing other than fundamentalism; kids who are raised side-by-side with other beliefs are going to be a lost cause.
We just won the right in court to take our kids to church, and the time to do it–we’ll be returning to a Unitarian Universalist church after a few years’ absence. I think the community there will help too. I was pleased to see so many Cary readers recommending UU-ism as a possible solution; I think having a positive, liberal religious community will be very helpful.
I agree there are wacko christians, Like Fred Phelps Klan, they are the far out fringe fanatics like so many religions have
The mother shouldnt be telling her the father is going to hell, thats wrong. My point is the father and daughter can coexist with different opions on religion without somebody trying to change someone.
as she gets older if she decides to change or beliefs, then so be it. love each other for who they are and dont try to change anyone.
I have a track record of insults? perhaps you should go back and read some of the posts directed toward me, i have been called every name in the book.
I totally agree here with almost everything you say, except that he has no meaningful ability to steer his child’s life.
Yeah, he’s not going to be the primary socialising agent in his daughter’s life (more’s the pity). However, he will have SOME socialising affects, and I think they are best served by NOT giving in to the fantasy she is being programmed with.
So, maybe I agree with your premise, just not your tactics
Oh, and unrelated, but I stand by my comment, and what others have said, that this IS child abuse on the mother’s part.
Even if one is an atheist I would still recommend reading works like the Bible and the Qur’an for some historical context. As Amanda once said (paraphrase), you can’t be an English major without some knowledge of religious texts and it useful to read them in an educational light if nothing else.
The church thing is a tough one. I think it would be good for him to take her to church and allow her the freedom to follow her beliefs, but I wouldn’t necessarily go with her. I would allow her to follow her faith as it is now while calmly rebuffing emotional entreaties to save his soul and reassuring her that according to his beliefs he is in no danger of “eternal damnation” and that he would be glad to share information about his beliefs and answer any questions she may have. I would maybe suggest to her that atheism and christianity are just a couple of the many, many different philosophies that one may live by and offer to help her with gaining information on any particular philosophy she may be curious about. He doesn’t have any more right to push atheism on his daughter than her mother does to push christianity, but nor does that mean that he has to stand for being slandered based on his beliefs.
It does sound very much like the mother is probably encouraging her daughter’s worries and is sacrificing her daughter’s emotional and spiritual health in the name of petty revenge on the father, which I find to be very sad and frankly unchristian, though not very surprising…that set is often a “do as we say, not as we do” sort.
Your memory is pretty selective there, cookie.
I agree that he should let her go to church but not go with her (he has to show some integrity to his daughter), but I have this to add.
First — most religious kids lose their religion as soon as their hormones have settled down. She’ll probably experience her disillusionment in time.
Second, if he really wants to help that along, all he has to do is study the writings of the founding fathers of the church with her. And by that, I mean, take latin and ancient greek in order to be able to read many volumes of the “Patrologia Latina.” Once she’s read what I’ve come to call “the underbelly of the christianity” and seen where and how many of the perverse patriarchal believes the church is founded on came about, she’ll think twice.
I tell you, it sure wiped out the very last vestiges of religiosity in me! When Christians try to talk to me about the bible, I just want to laugh. I’ve read it in Latin, before they cleaned it up and changed words to make it sound better.
The more one learns about religion — and I mean the texts a religion is based on — the more one can’t really maintain the pretense.
I wouldn’t even bother addressing cookie. If I wanted to talk to people with the maturity of a 12-year-old I’d go play Neopets.
@ Sheesh:Actually,I became an atheist by reading the bible.There you are!
I agree with taking the kid to a UU or UCC church. If going to church is so important to her, then she should be allowed to go. But she should also see that not all christians are as insane and hateful as the fundie variety, that you can be pro-choice, pro rational thought, pr gay rights, compassionate, etc., and still be a christian..
And even if the dad is atheist, this is something that’s important to his daughter and he should compromise at least a little. That isn’t to say that he should say that he’s a believer or lie to his daughter, but he can say to her that he sees that it’s so important to her and that he can attend with her because he respects her beliefs and wants to be a part of her life. Part of this is also to expect her to respect his beliefs, but she’s 13 and has apparently been thoroughly indoctrinated, so that will take some time.
And I don’t see that occasionally attending a church is some grave insult to his atheism. Sometimes, you have to compromise in life, even on things you feel strongly about. I’m an atheist, and yet I will still go to church with my grandmother (freewill baptist) or with my mom (catholic) when I’m visiting, because it is important to them. I sit quietly and respectfully while they participate, but I don’t participate themselves. They know my feelings on the subject, but they also see that I still respect and love them, and my behavior towards them about it leads to their being more open to my point of view on these things and to a more peaceful family life.
The Cary Tennis story is incredibly sad and hard to know what to say about. But the billboard? That is just ludicrous, I’m sorry. The twisted logic there is just too hard to resist making fun of:
If God doesn’t matter to him, do you?
Because if you’re atheists, then your son will kill you!
But if you believe in God… then He’ll ask you to kill your son!
And seriously, Dad, which sounds better to you, eh?
If God doesn’t matter to him, do you?
Because as we know, God = Father.
And if “God is Dead,”
then ohhh shiiit Father is Dead too noooooooo
If God doesn’t care about you, nobody does.
Because the only thing keeping the universe from not existing is that God Cares.
So if he doesn’t care about you, oooooh boy you’re in troubblllllle.
Can I have your Nintendo when you disappear?
You are far too kind to Cary Tennis. His response opens with the line “Does football exist?”
He lost me right then and there. There is no point in discussing what the most reasonable course of behavior should be for this parent. Cary Tennis is enabling an anti-atheist attitude, which is part and parcel of the photo you show and of the terror that the mother in question is pouring into the brain of her daughter.
Coddling Cary Tennis is entirely inappropriate.
Why hasn’t he been giving her alternatives before this? Why hasn’t he been trying to counter the “hellbound” issue much earlier?
Just from having been a young teenager myself who also had friends who belonged to fundie churches, there does seem to be a big upsurge of devotion around age 13-14. That was the age when I insisted on being confirmed in the Catholic church even though my parents were at least mildly opposed and my best friend at the time gave away all of her albums of “devil’s music” after getting a huge lecture at her church.
So, in a way, I think this is a not-unusual development. I came out the other end agnostic, so it’s not like her being really into religion at age 13 means that she’ll be trapped in it FOREVAH!
I agree with Amanda that he needs to play it cool, remind her that his beliefs need to be respected, and inform himself about the Bible so he has some talking points if she starts claiming things that her pastor says are in there that just aren’t.
@ Holly:Thou hast maketh me laugh out loud!
I really hope my comment went into moderation, or I’m gonna be annoyed.
Sarah in Chicago:
Yes. The pernicious misdeeds are being perpetrated by the mother. She is the one at fault in this situation. It’s not up to the father to pander to the insanity being poured into his daughter’s head; it is up to the mother to cease damaging her child’s intelligence with her prattling nonsense.
mnemosyne -
Yeah, ditto.
One can teach children critical thinking without ever mentioning religion.
True, but then will she ever apply it to her own religious beliefs? I know a lot of smart people (scientists, businesspeople) who have a severe critical blind spot when it comes to religious belief.
This is the battle: the effort to sever the tie between irrational beliefs and moral behavior. They’re orthogonal factors.
It’s always worth pointing out that morality isn’t only a human phenomenon. Chimps have died saving other chimps from drowning, and this is exactly what it means to be “moral” or “ethical” - to value another’s well-being over one’s own. And chimps don’t have god-belief.
Also, the most atheistic nations are the most moral by any measure. They’re more generous to those in need (domestically and internationally), have the lowest violent crime rates, and have the most civil societies. Now, correlation doesn’t equal causation (ie, it doesn’t mean that atheism = morality, but it does prove that atheism doesn’t = immorality), but it hints that there’s some very positive relationship.
We can train our children to be good to one another without ever lying to them once, and once this idea becomes mainstream, religious adherents will be corroded down to the few who insist that the creed’s claims are literally so. What keeps religion popular is this one myth.
I agree with taking the kid to a UU or UCC church. If going to church is so important to her, then she should be allowed to go. But she should also see that not all christians are as insane and hateful as the fundie variety, that you can be pro-choice, pro rational thought, pr gay rights, compassionate, etc., and still be a christian..
I third this suggestion. A good UU church is a great place for learning the difference between personal spirituality and “religion”, and either church is great for learning tolerance and how to focus on the whole message of “love one another” instead of “judge one another”. (I have been told that the Quakers are great for this too, in that they focus on “doing the right things” instead of “having the right thoughts”.)
I also agree with learning the Bible, if nothing else from the standpoint of “know your enemy”. If the mother and the preacher are giving the girl selective, out of context, highly skewed Bible passages, the father would have to know the text himself in order to spot that and counter it. I always recommend the Skeptics Annotated Bible for this (it’s online and Googleable): it even highlights contradictory passages.
Also, some historical and linguistic Bible study background (along the lines of “Mis-quoting Jesus” or “Understanding the Old Testament”) would help understand the issues with late insertions, missing historical context, mistranslations, etc.
As for the whole “But Daddy, you’re going to Hell!” problem, I would probably reply with something like,
Oh, and read CS Lewis’s The Last Battle for the best analogy of “god trascending religion” I had ever read: it was instrumental in removing the Catholic fear blinders when I was a teenager.
That’s an outrageously bad piece of advice. It’s saying, lie to your child about your core beliefs to make her feel better. If he’s an atheist, he shouldn’t go to church and pretend. That’s called living a lie, and it’s really never ever a good idea.
I’m all in favor of him learning about her religion. It’s obviously important to the girl, and it’s good parenting to be knowledgeable about the things that are important to your children. But to pretend to accept it to make her feel better? Wrong. So wrong.
My advice would be to be honest about his beliefs when the topic comes up and reassure her that he’s not going to burn in hell just because her pastor says so. But I would avoid arguing about it or pressing the issue. Just keep teaching her good thinking skills, stay involved with her life and let her know he loves her no matter what. Keep that relationship strong and eventually she’ll learn to think for herself and make her own choices about religion.
Actually, the intensity of her concerns is probably getting stronger because she is starting to question and think for herself, is starting to think about the consequences of her church’s world view. Throughout her teenage years, she may go through all sorts of periods of religious fervor, religious doubt and religious exploring. That wouldn’t be terribly unusual. Dad’s job throughout is to be honest with her and to stand by her.
I’m with you all here, too.
We have to hold people responsible for each individual, specific lie they tell someone else. Especially children. Reference to heaven should be questioned and references to hell should be questioned. Links between religiosity should be questioned.
When people posit potential states of the universe, reasons have to be supplied.
I seriously doubt that a fundie kid would be amenable to going to a UCC (never mind UU) church any more than they’d be amenable to going to a mosque. Fundies have very clear ideas about who is and is not a Real True Christian.
I know, I know, I’m not supposed to feed you, but… how exactly is that a response? No; this is wrong. The only officially atheist state in history was Enver Hoxha’s Albania, an authoritarian nightmare if ever there was one. (If you want a more current example, consider China.) The true factor at work here is authoritarianism–the idea that things are right because Jesus, Mohammed or Enver Hoxha said so. (See Vox Day’s forthcoming baby-chopping spree as another example.) Religions are not necessarily authoritarian (see the UCC, for example), and atheism is not necessarily non-authoritarian.Thanks for using my picture!
The father’s problem is that he has to deal with the daughter as she is now. He can work on the mother’s emotional/spiritual abuse of the girl in the courts but he has to use his time with his daughter in a manner that builds his relationship with her and he can’t do that if all she is going to do is cry because he is going to hell.
I agree with the ‘take her to church’, you can’t create an atheist in one day but don’t just use one- take her to a different one every Sunday. Perhaps she will see that Bible-worshipping is against the first commandment and start thinking about her faith choices. Introduce her to some real Christians, they are out there and they do things that appeal to teenagers. Take her to volunteer at Christian charities that he approves of and introduce her to activities that respond to her need for faith but also widen her perspective. What he doesn’t need to do is sit down and read the bible with her in his limited custodial time.
I’m sorry — Cary is correct here: the Dad is going to lose his kid if he doesn’t play along in some fashion or another. His atheism is not going to suffer one bit if he has to take her to a Unitarian church or somesuch on Sundays, but his ability to have any positive influence in his poor child’s life will suffer greatly if he doesn’t.
Access to his child at this vulnerable point in her life is way more important than doing things that may be distasteful. Exposure to religion or religious ideas doesn’t threaten my atheism in any way, shape or form.
While I am not a devout Catholic, I always like to point out in discussions like this one that the Catholic Church teaches that everyoe can go to Heaven. It is an abomination that so many fundamentalist religions teach otherwise.
In my observations, there are plenty of mothers who “will destroy the father-daughter relationship in a heartbeat ” (or the father-son relationship) for non-religioius reasons as well as religious. seeker6079 makes a good point - “I have lost count of the number of sad cases that crossed my desk where the custodial mother lost all ability to distinguish between what she wanted and what was good for the kids.” This is not to say that fathers would necessarily be less inclined but, at present, they have less opportunity.
But, I think most of you have too little faith in the child’s ability to grow up to be an adult capable of making rational decisions for herself. I’ve known plenty of people who grew up in fundamentalist backgrounds who moved away from such in adulthood. And, I’ve known some who grew up in more liberal backgrounds that moved to fundamentalism.
@ ks, queen mother of the peach pie:
I think you can be respectful of someone’s beliefs and right to go to church without feeling the need to include yourself in their rituals. It is not disrespectful to politely state that you are a non-believer and do not wish to attend church services (which is an implication that I took from your words that I really didn’t appreciate, to be honest). It’s nice that you feel it is something to do in deference to your relatives, but not necessarily something that all non-believers should feel obligated to do. Our views and wishes are also worthy of taking into consideration and a non-believer is not being disrespectful of believers if they avoid church.
My parents were divorced when I was little and when my non-custodial mom had us on weekends she would drive us to church and then wait in the parking lot to pick us up after the service to continue our visit. (My dad and step-mom were in the church with us during the service). I did worry about her soul when I was younger, but her obvious goodness and generous nature helped me to see that God does not equal moral and it was one of the first revelation of TRUTH vs. Doctrine that allowed me to question some of the things I had been taught about religion. She didn’t preach at me or question my faith, she showed me in everyday life how she could exist outside church as a loving, good person.
I agree that it’s a form of child abuse and needs to be resisted, but this is about effectiveness. Do you take a stand (not letting her go to church) and fail? Or do you want to get her out of the hellhole she’s sucked into? I put people before principles—belligerently going after this religion won’t fix the problem. The girl’s only hope of getting out is seeing for herself and the best chance of that happening is if she has someone on the outside she regards as tolerant and forgiving, someone offering a safe place. We do not fix abuse victims by bullying them and saying, “Why do you stay with the church/your mother/your abusive husband?”, if we want them to get out. We huge them with love and say, “When you need to get out, you can always come to me.” Which is what I’m suggesting the dad should do.
I went through a similar situation with my niece and nephews when they spent their vacations and summers with me growing up. Their stepdad was never my biggest fan because I did not attend church. We worked it out.
At first the kids said the same thing. The priest said I was going to hell because I was pagan and was I scared. I replied I do not believe God is that mean and hateful and the priest was weird to believe he is. They are allowed to be weird and say mean things about others and God. You can choose to believe them or not. Think about this if God created the planet and everything on it to be dependent on each other to live and thrive do you think he’d be mean enough to torture people like the priest said or is he a better “person” like you and would not be so mean?
Then I explained that Church can teach them good things and bring them comfort like it does for Grandma but that the priests being people are not perfect either. They will have to decide if they believe everything the priest says or just some of it and they can do that by taking time to think about God on their own and looking around them.
While I do not attend church I did have the kids attend Mass with my neighbors while they were here. It was after all normal for them so I saw no reason to interfere with that.
The father like me can explain his beliefs but he’s got to tailor them within her understanding. The older she gets the more complex her questions will be. Finding a church near him to broaden her experiences to a less radical sect of punishment and suffering is a possibility. Discussing what she learns in church, comparing beliefs will give her a foundation to make decisions and judgement calls as she gets older and the bonus is they get to know each other better as people.
It’s nice that you feel it is something to do in deference to your relatives, but not necessarily something that all non-believers should feel obligated to do. Our views and wishes are also worthy of taking into consideration and a non-believer is not being disrespectful of believers if they avoid church.
Sheesh, I would ask you to consider this one caveat: if it is what your relative considers to be an important religious day (ie Christmas and/or Easter) or if there is an important ceremony going on (first communion, confirmation, wedding, funeral, etc.), I do think that even the most militant atheist should suck it up, be quiet, go to church, and snicker about it all later. Otherwise, you’re no different than the fundie who refuses to attend his/her relative’s wedding because it’s not in the “right” church.
It would be easier for him if he got past the idea that church has any thing to do with faith, beliefs or ideas.
Jesus explained how to pray,
“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly……. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking”
The bible is poetry, not prose.
Church or temple isn’t mentioned; they exist to promote (or enforce) social cohesion. Dad should take his daughter to a variety of churches; go to the UCC and the UU, Quakers too. Seek out a rabbi and ask for assistance going to temple, since Judaism is not evangelical, everyone knows each other at the temple and they be wondering who hell you are. The same for a Greek or Russian Orthodox Church. Nothing rocks like a storefront Spanish evangelical church. Then hope that the difference between sincere belief and mindless social subservience becomes apparent to her as she gets older.
To me the role of religion should be to cultivate empathy and sincerity. Unfortunately, most of the “faithful” want only to put god in a box of their understanding, the evangelical god is too small for me.
Bob Marley said “ Jah put us here to be the best person you can be, and doing that is the only true gift you can give him in return”.
How to do that?
I was told that in the Talmud there is something to the effect of “ The important thing is to treat with others as you would have them treat with you, all else here is commentary”
In a nutshell, as the prophets Bill & Ted said, “Be excellent to each other”
The person kneeling before an alter of gold, handling snakes or preaching on a street corner has no more authenticity than the island native who climbs up a hilltop every morning to throw clams to the sun god, its an outward expression of belief. The crux is whether it is a sincere action of wanting to belong, a fear of isolation or a cynical act to manipulate their position in society.
Or he could join The Norse Brahmanist Faith,
RAGNOROK IS COMING; BE THERE
Memosyne, I couldn’t disagree more.
I was raised Catholic, and once I was an adult I attended church with my family on important holidays.
Then, I went to a co-worker’s Catholic wedding with my partner about a year after getting married myself (we were together 8 years before Canada allowed same sex marriage.) The co-worker had invited both of us and had said a few times that she and her fiance saw my partner and I as having a relationship they wanted to emulate.
The priest chose to make the sermon about how the Catholic church “knows what marriage really is” and went on a rant about how the politicians who supported same-sex marriage would all go to hell. He ridiculed the new gender-neutral forms for marriage licenses and had most of the congregation laughing with him. My partner and I didn’t walk out because we didn’t want to make a scene, but we really should have.
I don’t argue with my relatives about their beliefs (and most of them disagree with a lot of the church’s teachings and are very supportive of me and my partner - or at least keep quiet if they’re not.) But I will not go where I am not welcome and may be subjected to abuse and ridicule.
My close friends and relatives know this story, and they know that I will only attend religious ceremonies if the denomination is anti-gay. The only time I have been to a Catholic mass since was for my sister’s wedding, and the priest was a liberal Catholic who’s known my family for 20 years. My sister and her husband made it very clear that they would personally intervene if any anti-gay statements were made. There were a lot of non-Catholics at the wedding, and everyone was treated with respect.
The bottom line is that I’ll go to religious events important to the people I care about only where I, and others who don’t share the beliefs, are respected too. Otherwise, I’m happy to send a gift, go to the reception, help set up the party while the religious ceremony is going on, and support them in other ways. A priest, minister, rabbi, whatever can say what he wants in his church or temple, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit there while he says it.
Uh, that should be “will NOT attend religious services if the denomination is anti-gay.”
Having been a non-custodial parent who experienced conflicts with my son’s redneck stepdad — though not of a religious nature — I echo the prevailing sentiment here, which is that the father needs to be the Bigger Person. The idea of a UU church sounds nice, but it sets up a kind of competition, the terms of which have already been proscribed by the fundie mom.
He needs to spend as much time with her as he can and connect with her lovingly as a person as much as he can and make it clear that he will always be there for her. And if she insists on going to church, he can drop her off and pick her up. When he picks her up, he should park the car and actually approach the gaggle o’fundies loafing outside the chapel and retrieve her personally. He should interact with the gaggle o’fundies briefly, superficially, with the most cordiality he can muster. The more frostily they respond to the cordiality, the more he should lay it on the twisted fucks. The study in contrasts, I suspect, might prove instructive.
>>And I don’t see that occasionally attending a church is some grave insult to his atheism.
And I don’t see that occasionnally attending a pro-life rally is some grave insult to her feminism.
@ Mnemosyne:
For my own part, I will attend special church events like weddings and funerals with the family if they come up without a fuss (I attend these as an observer and make a point not to bow my head in prayer or take part in any of the other religious trappings, though I am always respectful in this). I will participate in family holiday traditions such as family dinners and present exchanges (since I view these as based in more communal traditions that pre-date the christian aspects of it), although I will not attend church on christmas or easter holidays and my family is aware by now that it’s futile to put the request forward). I feel that this is entirely reasonable behavior.
I will do everything in my power to avoid feeding the assumption of many believers that the rest of us are under some obligation to either pay deference to what we don’t believe in, keep our beliefs hidden or quiet, or walk on eggshells in voicing our feelings and criticisms about religion. Capitulating to such assumptions are part of why we’re having to fight so hard to have a voice now.
Woland: The priest chose to make the sermon about how the Catholic church “knows what marriage really is” and went on a rant about how the politicians who supported same-sex marriage would all go to hell. He ridiculed the new gender-neutral forms for marriage licenses and had most of the congregation laughing with him.
That’s really, truly, horrible.
My reaction to that, though, would be not to refuse to go to a service if given by an anti-gay denomination - it would be, if invited, to tell the inviter about past experience (as for example, the priest deciding to be homophobic from the pulpit) and say that you’d really like to come but that you don’t ever want to have to sit through something like that again - and if the inviter can’t be sure the preacher won’t be homophobic, you’d really rather not come to the service.
This won’t guarantee that the preacher won’t be homophobic, but it will make the inviter feel really terrible about the preacher if they do…
Sometimes Miss Manners has the coolest ideas about activism.
I don’t think getting all involved in the Bible or going to church to appease the child is a very wise thing to do. It would reinforce in the child that crying, throwing a fit, or casting aspersions (like “you’re going to hell”) is a successful way of controlling people.
I would remain calm. Let her cry. State that I’m not going to hell because it doesn’t exist and that people are filling her head with nonsense and then move on to something else.
I actually agree with the general principle he’s making here, which is that the dad is coming on too hard about his atheism and needs to take two steps back.
Is he? It seems like all he’s said so far is “I’m an atheist, which means I think there’s probably not a God.”
Is that coming on too strong? Is that something like how anybody that writes a book about their atheism is a “militant atheist”?
Oh, no it isn’t. I didn’t mention anything about official state policies regarding religion. There should be none, ever. I said:
When a culture is skeptical, particularly in regards to fantastical religious claims, it functions better. It has nothing to do with law or state policy.
Yet, China is one of the most atheistic nations and is one of the least moral by any reasonable person’s standards.. doesn’t this mean I was lying? If so, you would be right to say:
But I literally said exactly that:
Do you only look for key words in sentences and then go for knee-jerk corrections, or what? Sheesh.
The fact remains that you want (1) a democratic and civil society and (2) atheistic values, one of which is (1). This produces the best sort of civilization we know of, insofar as maximizing happiness and equity.
Re: Ad;
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I, have, no, coherent, words, *AHHH!*
As for the father, he needs to take up a secular class regarding the bible, and read up on CULTS. He has to be there being himself, to offer her an out, without being neither confrontational nor enabling.
While I am not a devout Catholic, I always like to point out in discussions like this one that the Catholic Church teaches that everyoe can go to Heaven.
It’s my understanding that Evangelicals don’t consider Catholics to be Christian. How on earth they rationalize that, I have no idea. But there you go. Still, it’s a good argument–if everyone not of her religion is going to burn, then that leaves out a lot of people, including ones whose only “sin” was to be born in a country with no Evangelicals or even Christians living there–and any God who’d punish someone for eternity because they didn’t to believe in something they didn’t know even existed, well that’s not a real loving God, now is it?
I agree with whoever said they thought reason Dad didn’t intervene sooner is probably because it wasn’t an issue before now. Teenagers are big into conformity, whether it’s getting dad “saved” or getting a pair of those pants everyone at school is wearing. They can be downright fanatical about fitting in–it’s like life or death to them. There’s a decent chance she’ll grow out of it, especially if she’s got regular contact with someone on the “outside” to demonstrate another way of thinking and behaving–like Dad!
I also agree the bible is worth reading. It’s every bit as fascinating and thought-provoking as any other mythology you might care to study. Personally, I thought Celtic, Norse and Greek had more believeable characters, but it’s still an interesting read.
Simple question, Amanda:Would you so blithely write off a woman losing access to her child in such a fashion?
I can’t speak to your answer, but I do know that most of our culture believes that a man’s role in parenting can be reduced to almost nothing without ill effect on the children. I don’t believe that an egalitarian society will result from increasing women’s roles in previously male areas to where the levels should be whilst simultaneously telling men that they are not really entitled similar gains in the previously female spheres. Amongst other things such a disparity diminishes male buy-in to feminism. After all, who would buy into a philosophy which posits gains for thee but not for me? (Other than working class Republican voters, naturally.)
Well, there’s your mistake; you’re expecting rationality out people whose world-view is inherently anti-rational. It’s like expecting a horse to suddenly start producing wool … I mean, it COULD happen, just if it does, you’re kinda going to be a tad surprised.
I totally have to agree with this, I adored Greek myth stories growing up. I honestly find the christian myth stories a tad boring after that.
I went to a Catholic high school. One of my religion teachers was as doctrinaire, pro-life, impatient-with-other views as they come. And even he referred to the notion that only Catholics or Christians go to heaven as “nonsense”, in a tone bristling with disdain.A priest, minister, rabbi, whatever can say what he wants in his church or temple, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit there while he says it.
Yes, but that’s a different situation than one that an atheist is in. The problem wasn’t that you didn’t share their beliefs and were rolling your eyes every time they said “Jesus,” the problem was that they were personally attacking you, whether they knew it or not.
I wouldn’t insist that someone attend a Christian Identity church ceremony just to make a relative happy, either, but that’s not because of the theology, it’s because of the prejudice (racism, in that case).
I think it’s perfectly rational to draw the line at attending a ceremony at which you expect to be personally attacked. I just don’t think that most atheists are being attacked at most church ceremonies.
(And you make me happy once again that I decided to go with a UU church instead of the Catholic church wedding I’d always assumed that I’d have. I didn’t want to take even half a chance of my brother-in-law having to be subjected to that kind of attack. And since our minister was a lesbian, I was pretty sure we didn’t have to worry.
This is so unfortunate for the father, and so cruel of the mother. However, I think the father should attend a church with his daughter, at least periodically. Showing up doesn’t mean converting, and it is a form of participation in her life. I think of this in much the same way as going to your kid’s band concert. Plus, by being there with her, he can discuss the messages afterwards and perhaps counteract the dangerous ones.
For the record, I’m pagan (ADF Druid, if you know what that is) and my husband is sorta-agnostic. I periodically ask him to show up to a ritual or two because I want him to share in a particular experience (special oaths, whatever). There’s no expectation or even real wish that he convert or worship my gods in any way, just that he’s there supporting me in something important to me.
For my own part, I will attend special church events like weddings and funerals with the family if they come up without a fuss (I attend these as an observer and make a point not to bow my head in prayer or take part in any of the other religious trappings, though I am always respectful in this). I will participate in family holiday traditions such as family dinners and present exchanges (since I view these as based in more communal traditions that pre-date the christian aspects of it), although I will not attend church on christmas or easter holidays and my family is aware by now that it’s futile to put the request forward). I feel that this is entirely reasonable behavior.
Again, it depends. My father, brother and I go to church on Christmas — no one else in the family does. My (step)mom stays at home because she’s an atheist and doesn’t want to go. This has been the routine for so long that I think it’s probably been that way since she and my dad got married. So setting a new routine with your family is totally legit. It’s part of being an adult.
However, if your elderly 90-year-old grandmother begs you to go to Christmas or Easter mass with her one last time and you refuse, you’re being a jerk.
See the difference?
@bluevervain I know back in the day the Catholics taught that people should have known about Christ, as obviously Virgil had that idea when he wrote the Aeneid. For this reason Dante has an entire circle for the “virtuous pagans” or people who had not heard of Christ and thus not Christians. Nothing terrible happens to them, though they’re in hell. I don’t remember what he did with people who had heard but didn’t convert.
Are you telling us that you follow druids that write software or that your druids are heavily armed Diggers?Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
Any possible impetus I had towards Christianity (at least the Catholic and most Protestant forms of it) was wiped out by reading two books:
1. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
2. Conciousness as the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes.
The first book (and other books I was let to by this) totally trashed the idea of Christianity for me–half of the available texts got edited out of the canonical text collection and I’m supposed to consider this a complete collection of data? Sorry, does not compute.
Also reading about early Christian Fathers and how the religion spread doesn’t make me feel any more kindly towards them. Read what the mob did to Hypatia, a Neo-Platonist mathematician. Until Christians realize how much blood was spread in the name of their religion, and the Church sincerely atones for the crimes it has committed, I have no interest in listening to anyone about this “sweet and gentle religion.” For me, as a neo-Platonist, stepping inside a Catholic church would be like a Jew stepping into a meeting hall created by German Brownshirts .
The more I studied the Bible, studied how it has been edited and mistranslated, and studied religious history, the less possible belief I had and the more disdain I had for Christians who babble about their belief without knowing any of the history. (One reason why I can’t stand a lot of modern Protestant so-called “scholars.” 99% of them don’t realize the exact same issues they “wrestle with” were gone into in much more detail and depth–and logic–by Scholastics and others. A so-called scholar who can’t even be bothered to do research on what has already been written is no scholar at all. Of course, reading the medievalists would require actually knowing such nasty stuff as Latin and actually require some “book-larnin’” which is anathema to such clowns. )
/end rant.
Going to her church with her really seems like the worst of both worlds — unless the father makes some kind of public humiliation the folks there will just keep coming after him.
I don’t know how it would be possible to handle this without at least implicitly attacking the daughter’s faith (as it now seems to be constituted). At some point he’s got to say he doesn’t believe he’s going to hell, and that people who insist that he is are being — at the very least — impolite. If there isn’t enough room for at least that much plurality of belief in the daughter’s world right now, then so be it…
There are a number of good options here.
One is, if the Dad has Christian friends of a more moderate disposition, to include them.
An important sociological fact about fundamentalist Christianity is pain - the pain that people are experiencing in the rest of their lives that makes the painful, brutal stories of right-wing Christianity resonate, both at the individual didactic level and in the social construction of “reality” in the fundamentalist worldview. Examine the folks who attend right-wing churches and you will see people who identify directly with Jesus of Nazareth on the cross - in a way that Roman Catholics are symbolically comfortable with but most Protestants aren’t.
You can tell this in the inventories of right-wing Christian bookstores, which carry not only images of Jesus on the cross (less common among Protestants) but even 6 inch nails that you can use as Christmas ornaments or even “hide” as a personal secret. (hmmmm.) How do I know this? My wife attends such a church and it has been a fun ride since the days since we were BOTH atheists,
You will see sexual abuse; physical abuse; alcoholism; drug addiction - PAIN in the faces of the people coming out of those churches. You won’t see this same sort of thing at a Unitarian church; they are people and people do hurt but it’s a different emotional timbre, completely. A Jewish psychologist of my acquaintance who takes referrals from fundamentalist churches when more enlightened pastors want their counselees to get advice that “a Christian” cannot give (e.g. “divorce the child-molesting motherfucker”) confirms my experience: pain. Moderate Christians may be an ally for Dad here.
I’m getting stuck on this point: Why does the kid have to go to church on Sunday morning? Lots of churches these days have scheduled services at off-weekend times, saturday evenings, etc. Many of these are specifically geared at minors, and the kid could be dropped off without either mother or father in attendance without it being weird.
The issue here of “mother with primary custody is dragging child further and further into fundamentalist religion which is estranging child from father, mother is using this as a wedge to manipulate both child and father” seems like an incredibly difficult one, one that I don’t even know how to begin approaching a solution to.
The issue of “kid wants to go to church, partial-custody father doesn’t want to give up that time block”, on the other hand, sounds like a really easy issue of simple scheduling.
@Mnemosyne
I would probably group the latter scenario into the “special occasion” category (although “special” wouldn’t be the best word…). I would be there to comfort her and hold her hand if she wished it, but I would not pray with her or for her (and I am fortunate that, although they are religious, my family respects my beliefs enough that they would never ask such a monstrously selfish thing of me).
I think the people who are suggesting that atheists grin and bear it and go along to get along are underestimating how strong some of our feelings are about this subject. For me, the “expecting a feminist to go to an anti-choice rally” comparison is right on.
The problem here is that he is going up against organizations with centuries of practice at brainwashing children. The Evangelical movement may be relatively new, but they still have all that teaching to fall back on when it comes to ‘guiding children down the RIGHT path’. I think the best solution to this as a society would be to teach the history of religion with no emphasis on any particular religion. Just explain the texts and beliefs of all the various sky fairy myths as history.
I think the people who are suggesting that atheists grin and bear it and go along to get along are underestimating how strong some of our feelings are about this subject. For me, the “expecting a feminist to go to an anti-choice rally” comparison is right on.
It depends — if not going to that anti-choice rally will cause a breach in the family that will never be healed, you need to think long and hard about the way you articulate your reasons for not going. And you need to accept that some people in your family will never feel the same way about you again.
In other words, if not going to that rally means that you will be shunned by the rest of your immediate family for the rest of your life, at least be aware of what you’re doing and don’t complain about how the religious people are being mean to you and not respecting your beliefs. You are rejecting them, like it or not.
I should say that everything I’m saying about people needing to suck it up for special occasions applies to religious people, too. If you go to a fundamentalist Christian church and refuse to attend your niece’s wedding because she’s being married in a Catholic church, you’re being a jerk. I’ve heard plenty of stories along those lines, too, including an uncle who was a retired priest refusing at the last minute to go to his niece’s wedding because she and the groom had been living together. Hello, you may disapprove of them having lived together before they got married, but what the fuck are they supposed to do about it now, dumbass?!?!
You’ll note that even here, on a secular, rationalist blog, we are playing the game mostly according to the god botherers’ rules: we have to adapt to them, we have to explain ourselves to them, we are subject to what they want.
@ashley
I’m probably best described as an apathetic agnostic (or some sort of generic pagan) but I have some very Catholic relatives. My mother is fully aware that I don’t share her beliefs, but I still acknowledge their importance to her and will therefore on occasion attend a mass with her on a major holiday. I don’t actually pay listen or participate beyond standing or sitting when everyone else does, but I make the gesture because it makes her happy. Attending the odd Catholic mass* might make me a bad atheist, but refusing to make that small concession for the sake of my mother’s feelings would make me feel like a bad person.
*I don’t equate this with endorsing the father going to an Evangelical church with his daughter. If I was at a service and the priest started spouting intolerant rhetoric, I’d walk out. Which is why I find attending holiday services the best compromise; they tend to focus on the holiday so you’re a lot less likely to hear intolerant sermons–mostly you get “Yay, Jesus is born!” or “Waaah, Jesus is dead!” and then they break out the grape juice and crackers. Which I can live with.
@tzs
half of the available texts got edited out of the canonical text collection and I’m supposed to consider this a complete collection of data? Sorry, does not compute.
Add to that the multiple translations and variety of writers, all of them human and looking to codify their own existing values, and…yeah. Pretty much my conclusion, too.
@Sarah in Chicago
Indeed. Their logic is not our Earth logic. And Loki makes everyone look boring.
Maybe, but I would say laying that kind of guilt trip on you is an even worse rejection by them of you.
If a moment is so particularly special, WHY is it necessary for them to have it at a church? I mean, if they so truly want you there, they should do so in such a way that doesn’t alienate you, doesn’t insult you.
And seriously “Come to church or we will never speak to you for the rest of you life”?! If a family member were like that, then I’d have a really quick answer; “Bye.”
I mean, sure, if it is a family wedding or the like, I’d swallow my disgust and go, but only because it were a family member I really cared about (and only then stay if there were no prejudiced or bigoted statements made. I’d have no trouble making a scene by walking out down the aisle if there were).
But a non-unique-situation “just come to mass or else”? Even if it were from my 90 year old relative? Fuck them.
I have nothing to add to this except to say how much I emphatically agree with your observation hon.
Mnemosyne: It depends — if not going to that anti-choice rally will cause a breach in the family that will never be healed, you need to think long and hard about the way you articulate your reasons for not going. And you need to accept that some people in your family will never feel the same way about you again.
Actually, if someone in my family invited me to come to an anti-choice rally with them, that invitation would cause a breach in the family that would never be healed, and I would never feel the same way about that person again.
So how I articulated my reasons for not going would not be the chief problem: the chief problem would be the breach in the family caused by this person’s anti-choice beliefs, and how the rest of the family chose to deal with it.
Would you so blithely write off a woman losing access to her child in such a fashion?
You misinterpreted me. I don’t mean custody. I meant that he’s not going to be the person who makes the final decision for the girl about her relationship to reality and to religion. She’ll make that for herself. The mother is trying to control it, but in the end, she won’t have final say, either. Children do, you know, grow up, was my point.
It’s always worth pointing out that morality isn’t only a human phenomenon. Chimps have died saving other chimps from drowning, and this is exactly what it means to be “moral” or “ethical” - to value another’s well-being over one’s own. And chimps don’t have god-belief.
No, that’s altruism. Chimpanzees also slaughter other chimpanzee’s children. Both of which can be theorised as being genetically inspired.
Morality and ethics require a theory about a two-sided relationship between yourself and the rest of society which inspires considerations of duty. You do not act morally because of love or self-interest; you act morally because you feel a duty to do so - it is the right thing to do.
Skipping to the end of the comments to point something out (maybe someone else has said this already) about the billboard:
“If God doesn’t matter to him, do you?” is exactly the opposite of what the Bible says! Anybody remember 1 John, where “God is love” comes from? Twelve verses later it says:
“If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”
So they’ve got their philosophy backwards. Great surprise.
Because the dispute with the mother is also the mother’s desire for control as well as a religious one; you’re letting the religion lay a smokescreen between your understanding and the fact that the mother may be a prize shit.
If the child were 6 years old, I’d be more likely to agree with you. However, at 13, it’s more likely that she’s thinking about her friends at her youth group and that, like, totally cool youth minister, and how much fun they’re going to have and it sucks that her dad won’t go to church so she can see them.
As other people have pointed out, I think the whole “OMG Daddy’s going to hell!” is much more a manifestation of that adolescent desire to make sure you know who’s Popular and who’s Not Popular than proof that his ex-wife is a controlling bitch who’s turning their child against him.
Also, yes, from personal experience–13-year-old fundamentalist kids ARE at a peak religious point….and they CAN grow up into saner people, and being exposed to real live human beings who think different things but are still people helps immensely. And doesn’t even mean they lose their religion.
But a non-unique-situation “just come to mass or else”? Even if it were from my 90 year old relative? Fuck them.
Well, I’d have a hard time telling my grandmother to fuck off if she really, really wanted me to go. Your relationship with your grandparents may vary.
Just to make sure I’m not being misunderstood here, I am only arguing that special occasions need to be sucked up for, not ordinary run-of-the-mills visits (or even ordinary run-of-the-mill holidays).
And, yes, if you’re sitting in the church and the minister starts to go on a rant about how all pagans are devil-worshippers, or how atheists are ruining the world, you have every right not only to walk out publicly, but to refuse to attend any future ceremonies at that church, because they are personally attacking you.
What I am saying is that if you go to a Jewish wedding, just put on the damn yarmulke.
I didn’t mean offense, and if you feel that strongly about it (and are polite about it), then you have every right to do what you think is right. But I also agree with Mnem in #50, 66, and 68.
Mnemosyne, I will have to respectfully both agree and disagree with you in that the dynamic may not be an “either/or” one. Is there another dynamic at play? Quite possibly. The one you posit? Quite possibly. But to deny the possibility that the ex-wife may be deriving much of her negative energy from her own domestic situation would be naive on my part, and not in accordance with my professional experience.
I would, add, though, that the reasons may may interact. One of the causes of the parents’ split may have been religion in the first place. For a religious fanatic to up stakes and refuse to be with an areligious person and who won’t be a party to the indoctrination of the child would not be unlikely nor unprecedented.
But to deny the possibility that the ex-wife may be deriving much of her negative energy from her own domestic situation would be naive on my part, and not in accordance with my professional experience.
It’s possible. It’s also possible that the father is mocking religion every time he sees his daughter and pressures her to not to go church and he didn’t mention it in his letter. There are a lot of unknowns here.
Yes, some women act like assholes after a divorce. So do some men. And yet for some reason it’s only the actions of the women that seem to have made an impression on you, and you talk like you’ve never seen a case where a father tried to alienate the children from their mother, or played custody games. Why is that?
People act badly after a divorce. It happens. But insisting that only women act badly after a divorce, and that any post-divorce problems between parents and children must be the mother’s fault is, frankly, sexist. And that’s what you’ve been insisting on through this whole thread.
I don’t really feel attending a ceremonial event that takes place in a church undermines your personal beliefs — particularly in the case of weddings, where those who prefer a bit of pomp (only Christ knows why; they may not be your friends, but they’re your cousins or siblings) tend to tie the knot even if they themselves are only nominally religious. It’s really about showing support for the couple. Same goes for funerals. How inflated would your sense of self-importance have to be for you to withold support for, say, the bereaved parents of an untimely departed friend, on the basis of your precious philosophical beliefs? Okay, okay, untime-lily departed. He was on time to his own funeral, for Christ’s sake.
But everyone will do what they want and draw their own lines — as it should be. Going to Easter Sunday service to please gramma is almost certainly an unnecessary humiliation, sez I, whereas others would burst into a rousing chorus of Where’s The Harm?
However, if your elderly 90-year-old grandmother begs you to go to Christmas or Easter mass with her one last time and you refuse, you’re being a jerk.
I have many, many ways of showing my family that I care about them that don’t involve going to church with them. While my family goes to Christmas mass, my partner and I are cooking dinner for them - 35 people. If someone tried to emotionally manipulate me into going to church with them and didn’t respect my reasons for not going, I think they would be the jerks, not me.
Yes, my experience involved being personally attacked. I’m not sure that’s any different from an atheist going to a church that’s convinced his daughter that he’s going to hell. I also realised at that wedding how damaging my religious upbringing was, that the Catholic church was a big part of why I felt very bad about myself as a teenager and young adult, and that religion does this to many, many people besides me. I won’t be part of a religious service for a denomination that attacks others - for being female, for having an abortion, for being of a different religion or no religion, or for who they love. I hope that even if I were straight I would have been horribly offended by that wedding.
The comparison to going to an anti-choice rally is spot on. Many people who don’t belong to an organised religion make that choice because they see some religions as destructive and hateful, not just because they don’t share the beliefs. If someone I cared about tried to get me to participate in any event - religious, political, etc - that hurts others, I would simply explain that I care about them but don’t share their beliefs. If that caused them to never speak to me again, that’s their choice. I realise that religious rituals are important to people, but I won’t take part in intolerance. I find other ways to take part in their important life events. That’s different from refusing to go to someone’s wedding because you disapprove of their religion or life choices.
The father can take his daughter to church to show that he respects her right to chose what she believes and how to worship. But he has a right to his own beliefs as well - a lesson it’s extremely important for her to learn as she grows up.
“For a religious fanatic to up stakes and refuse to be with an areligious person and who won’t be a party to the indoctrination of the child would not be unlikely nor unprecedented”
Nor would the other way around, which is what happened in my husband’s situation. I actually think that’s more likely, in fact; the religious person is far more likely to believe that the areligious person will eventually succumb to the great love of their spouse and God and form a happy little cultish family. My husband’s ex STILL believes that might happen in spite of the fact that he’s told her in all sorts of ways that he a) can’t stand her religion, b) can’t stand HER, and c) has been happily married for more than three years to someone who respects him and his beliefs. None of that’s stronger than Jesus, of course.
However, if your elderly 90-year-old grandmother begs you to go to Christmas or Easter mass with her one last time and you refuse, you’re being a jerk.
I have many, many ways of showing my family that I care about them that don’t involve going to church with them. While my family goes to Christmas mass, my partner and I are cooking dinner for them - 35 people. If someone tried to emotionally manipulate me into going to church with them and didn’t respect my reasons for not going, I think they would be the jerks, not me.
Yes, my experience involved being personally attacked. I’m not sure that’s any different from an atheist going to a church that’s convinced his daughter that he’s going to hell. I also realised at that wedding how damaging my religious upbringing was, that the Catholic church was a big part of why I felt very bad about myself as a teenager and young adult, and that religion does this to many, many people besides me. I won’t be part of a religious service for a denomination that attacks others - for being female, for having an abortion, for being of a different religion or no religion, or for who they love. I hope that even if I were straight I would have been horribly offended by that wedding.
The comparison to going to an anti-choice rally is spot on. Many people who don’t belong to an organised religion make that choice because they see some religions as destructive and hateful, not just because they don’t share the beliefs. If someone I cared about tried to get me to participate in any event - religious, political, etc - that hurts others, I would simply explain that I care about them but don’t share their beliefs. If that caused them to never speak to me again, that’s their choice. I realise that religious rituals are important to people, but I won’t take part in intolerance. I find other ways to take part in their important life events. That’s different from refusing to go to someone’s wedding because you disapprove of their religion or life choices.
Note, too, that I only take this stand when the denomination is homophobic or otherwise intolerant. I’ve been to plenty of weddings, bat mitzvahs, etc. at reform Jewish, United Church, etc. congregations. But my evangelical friends (yes, I have some) know that I will go to their weddings, but I’ll be helping decorate the reception hall or sitting outside meditating on their happiness during the actual church service.
The father can take his daughter to church to show that he respects her right to chose what she believes and how to worship. But he has a right to his own beliefs as well - a lesson it’s extremely important for her to learn as she grows up.
Because we are talking about the Cary Tennis article and the woman in it behaving badly. I’ve discussed men acting badly on other threads where that was at issue. A simple google search for this blog would also reveal multiple occasions when I have made exactly that `’many people act like assholes in a divorce’ point.I’m not obliged to micro-guilt-check each post and provide ritual demonstrations of my decency or loyalty to feminism or egalitarianism to satisfy the pissant label-slapping, orthodoxy-sniffing likes of you. And, you will note that when I moved from the specific of this “mother(s) behaving badly” of this case and thread to the general situation of religious parents, I moved to gender-neutral language. But that doesn’t fit into your eagerness to fling the sexism insult, so you glide on past that.
I’m on a feminist blog because I believe in feminist principles. You, apparently, believe that my noting that the woman acting like a shit in the Tennis case may be acting like a shit because she’s a nasty control freak is “sexist”. It seems to me that you’re the sexist here, not me.
I should thank you, though. In taking such a kneejerk position lacking in subtlety or perspective you rather prove my earlier point. A feminist man on a feminist blog in a discussion about a woman interfering with the relationship between a father and his daughter discusses mothers behaving badly in such situations and is promptly labeled a sexist. You’re every pinhead MRA’s poster girl of what feminism is. Congratulations. Have a cookie.
martinet: conceded; you may be quite right. I only handled a couple of cases like that, both briefly, so my experience is limited. In both cases it was the religious parent who was the angry one and who went on at length in the affidavit materials about the alleged moral failings of the other parent (mostly along the lines of equating disinterest in fundamentalist Christianity to lacking all morals whatsoever, a refrain often discussed here). I had been raised rather vanilla — almost soporifically catholic, so seeing so much Jeebus anger up close was both novel and disconcerting to me.
Cary Tennis can sure kiss my ass. If I were in that guy’s place, I’d sit down and have a nice long heart-to-heart talk with my daughter. One which repeatedly employed the words “lies” and “bullshit.”
I’m supposed to act with respect toward religionists? You first, religionists!
W. Kiernan,
You’d be absolutely right if she were 19. But she’s 13; you’d accomplish nothing but making her feel like a pawn in a parental game of tug-of-war. Have “faith” that the kid does have a mind of her own somewhere in there, expose her to alternative points of view without prozelytizing [sp.?] and try to hold back the bile: Broadly speaking, that’s the only emotionally responsible course of action.
Oh, yeah, Cary can kiss my ass too. What he recommends is unmitigated kowtowing. Both his prose and his advice are uneven, to say the least, but both have their moments, (very) occasionally simultaneously.
He should find the nearest Metropolitan Community Church and take her there. She’ll get prayers and songs in familiar formats, and 90% of the congregation is GLBT. She won’t worry about missing church, she might meet some kids there, she’ll have a good time. If the mother kicks up a fuss, challenge her to go to that church too.
The ideal solution is to negotiate things out. If they’re willing to compromise it might be possible to rework custody so the mother can take the child to church on sunday and the dad gets some other time.
But, really, if parents clash like this I don’t think it’s good for anyone. If problem’s like this persist it’s inevitable the person with custody will get their own way - eventually. Arguments like this cause more stress for everyone than they’re worth and just hurt the child. Things are just so bad after separation if there is conflict that it’s not worth trying if both parents are willing to give it a shot. The sad truth is if they can’t work things out he should just cut the child out of his life. Obviously he should continue to pay child support, but if the mother opposes the relationship and if it’s making the child unhappy and contacts are stressful for him then he should just walk away.
You, apparently, believe that my noting that the woman acting like a shit in the Tennis case may be acting like a shit because she’s a nasty control freak is “sexist”. It seems to me that you’re the sexist here, not me.
Uh-huh. I notice that a single line from the letter writer saying that his ex-wife “thinks that I am denying her freedom by not taking her to church on the weekends that I have her” has turned into an entire narrative of how his ex-wife must be a horrible person who’s abusing the girl with religion.
I don’t fling the “s” word around lightly, and I’ve been here far longer than you — I started commenting in the Jesse and Ezra days. I have noticed this trend in your comments before and I am now calling you on it. You may not have a “card” you need to show me, but you sure need to take a look at your assumptions.
Considering that you were the very first comment on the thread, that you immediately jumped to the assumption that the mother was actively interfering with custody, and that you pointed to this specific case as indicative of divorce cases in general, why did you think no one would question your assumptions?
uh, james? you’re a damn idiot. “cut the child out of his life”?
Why? I’m not making definitive pronouncements based on a letter. But it’s not much of a relationship they have if he’s seeing her two weekends a month and she’s crying a lot and thinks he’s damned, and if there are problems with the custodial parent that doesn’t bode well.
I know the vogue and MRA’s opinions is that you should walk over hot coals for an hours supervised contact every six months, but - really - I think there is a stage when you should just give up. When it comes down to it most people will agree with that if you push them, it’s just a case of where you draw the line. I’m all for giving it a go, but if you’re not going to have anything resembling a normal parent-child relationship I think there’s a lot to be said for calling it quits and everyone getting on with their lives.
It’s less traumatic if your parent or child dies than if your relationship with them falls apart over a prolonged period in one of these hellish disputes. I’m not sure the ’stay in there and fight’ mantra really is the best policy.
Another reason to take the kid to a liberal church with out gays and lesbians and transgendered people and such - if the kid starts in with the Sinner’s Prayer “Are you saved? Are you sure you are going to go to heaven? When were you saved?” schtick, someone’s likely to disabuse her of the notion that all Christians think this way. eg: “I was saved about 2000 years ago, on a spring day.”
Can someone explain to me how they could even use the word “pagan” or “druid” without being seriously embarrassed, let alone describe oneself as one?
I wanna know more.
I could wiki it but would prefer a Pandagonian’s explanation.
Here is what you say:
“Honey, I’m not afraid of Hell. Mostly becauuse I don’t believe there is such a place, but let me tell you this: if it turns out I’m wrong, and I end up there, I still won’t mind. And you know why? Because no matter what they do to me, I’ll know my little girl is in Heaven.”
He could try taking her to a Unitarian church. Very humanistic and teaches about all different kinds of religions.
That’s sweet, pbg. Depressing and macabre, but sweet.
Hahaha every other weekend and summers, blahblah
What a joke. The advice should be “Stop being a loser and bad father.”
Well, I think kids are actually smarter than we give them credit for being. If the father is honest and open about his atheism, she’ll learn to respect him and his choice and she may even make the same choice in her future.
If I were in the father’s shoes I’d probably stick to not letting her go to church on my weekends. (Just like when my nephew comes to visit me, he must abide by my rules: vegetarian foods only). But I’d plan something else that’s lots of fun instead. To the daughter it wouldn’t be a choice between Sunday morning at home watching TV or church with friends, it would be a a choice between something super fun or going to church. (Just like when my nephew comes to visit me I make a point to show him how lots of tasty, sweet deserts are vegetarian, too.)
I agreee with k here:
Yes, attending even a UU church may indeed be a grave insult to his belief system. But the entire underlying point of the secular humanist belief system is that people are what matters, not churches. So a wilingness to bend on the issue of the institution for the human being seems a reasonable, ethical choice.
And this is the critical part that she will never, ever hear as a fundie:
Having a fundie up-bringing the two things this girl is not getting are RESPECT and VOICE. He can give her both. I assure you she is not getting much respect, esp for “wrong” choices. Being wiling to go to church (obviously not a hateful one) is about his daughter. It is about teaching her that you can love and disagree with someone.
One of the problems with being raised a fundie female is that you have no right to say “no” or “yes” or anything else. What he will be teaching her by going with her is that she is worthy of respect. He is teaching her about love and forgiveness. And he is easing her mind about his burning in hell, because no doubt mom has told her that if she doesn’t drag his ass to church he is going to have a fate worse than death. Mom sez daughter is worse-than-killing dad by letting him not go to church.
Probably stealing money from the collection plate to give to the ACLU is not optimal, but tempting….
Honestly, Kyle, your request is boggling my mind.
Like Ashley, I’m also an ADF Druid, and proud to be pagan. The only embarrassment I feel from describing myself as one is that it’s been probably 3 or 4 years since I’ve been to a ritual as I moved away from my grove in 2001 and I haven’t kept up with the people.
Paganism is a full set (and a wide range) of beliefs, and covers everything from Wicca to Druidism to Asatru. If you look for Isaac Bonewits’ explaination of “neo-paganism”, that’s a pretty good description. He’s also one of the founders of ADF, and although he’s kooky as hell, he’s also quite intelligent.
Bringing this back on topic - this post reminds me of a couple of somethings.
Six years ago, my BFF moved home with her two daughters after leaving an emotionally abusive relationship. The girls were 5 and 6 at the time, and had been raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses. After a phone conversation with their father, they suddenly became insistent on knowing that I shared their faith in Jehovah. They were in my care, and I really felt that it was not my role to educate them about other religions at their ages, and I was quite uncomfortable with him manipulating them in that way. Still am, but thankfully I have very little contact with him as the non-custodial parent.
And, more recently, my uncle was barred from walking his oldest daughter down the aisle when she got married because she opted to marry in an LDS temple - and he never converted. Doesn’t seem to have affected their relationship much, as he’s head over heels about her son. A lot of the family refused to attend, though, feeling like it was inconsiderate of her and her husband to make her father unwelcome at their wedding. They made their choice, the rest of the family made choices in response.
You know, my father took me to sports tournaments I wanted to compete in every sunday for a couple of years. I don’t see what the big deal is if the daughter wants to be taken to church every sunday.
My friend became obsessed with spelling bees as a young girl and her mother, who had little interest in them, acted as a makeshift coach, reading off words for her to spell so she could get practice.
Seriously, I understand why someone might want to sleep in Sunday mornings, but if your daughter says, “I want to go to church,” is it really worthwhile to say “no”?
uh, James:
“I think there is a stage when you should just give up. When it comes down to it most people will agree with that if you push them, it’s just a case of where you draw the line. I’m all for giving it a go, but if you’re not going to have anything resembling a normal parent-child relationship I think there’s a lot to be said for calling it quits and everyone getting on with their lives.”
I truly hope you don’t have children. If you ever do, look into some good, seeeeerious therapy. Like, a lot of it.
My husband grew up in a conservative, evangelical church, the grandson and son of preachers. I grew up in a secular Jewish family. Neither my husband nor his siblings are religious. A lot of religious families would be beside themselves with grief and anger and allow every family gathering to deteriorate into either a fight or a hard sell. Instead, my mother-in-law has decided the most important thing to her is to have an open relationship with her children. She doesn’t hide how she believes, and neither do we, but we don’t dwell on it.
I realize the mother of this girl might not be that kind of Christian. But the father can strive to be that kind of aethist. I don’t know that it’s that important whether he go to church or not. I think he just needs to keep engaging with his daughter in an open, honest, loving, understanding way that doesn’t feel too forced. She may never come to terms with his beliefs, but she will grow out of the crying. It’s a tough age, when emotions are very raw and intense.
demonizing and dehumanizing the enemy (everyone not them) is how (X) work
Man, that statement works for a lot of the conversations here, as well.
Has anyone yet noted that the Unitarian Universalist communities have a substantial proportion of self-identifying agnostics and atheists? Or am I stating the obvious?
Tyro, as others have tried to clarify previously, the sports and spelling bee analogies are not appropriate in this situation because sports and spelling, etc. are morally neutral. No one on the soccer team or at the spelling bee is personally attacking members of the participants’ families, saying that they are going to hell, are evil, or are in any other way reproachable for not loving soccer or not subscribing to the rules of the spelling bee, and no child is going to suffer psychological damage or rifts in the family as a result. There’s a huge difference. It’s a shame that it seems so difficult for people to see that–I suspect that those who can’t have never dealt with a fundamentalist up close, or seen what that kind of upbringing can do to children.
Martinet,
I agree with that it’s not a spelling bee or a hockey match or whatever, but the parent in question needs to avoid engaging in an ideological pissing contest — for the sake of his child. For that reason, he should take her to church if she wants to go (although he need not attend himself) and mount a stealth campaign to make her see the light of reason — without lecturing her, merely by providing a window. Take her to a Tony Kush play, for Christ’s sake, and then discuss over dessert — shit of that nature. Demonizing or forbidding his daughter’s mother’s ideology, while tempting, would be a very damaging route to take.
By the way, people, Unitarianism is fucking cheesy. There, I said it. And I know of what I speak, leave it at that.
I was reading more of Tennis’s article, and it’s even worse than I thought. Not only does he recommend lying, he recommends lying in a way that would be almost sure to be found out. Meet with the fundies at the church, he says, talk about your beliefs with them, and then come back to you daughter and tell her that you have no worries about going to hell. Cue daughter telling pastor how glad she is her father is saved, pastor telling her no, he’s doubly damned for bearing false witness.
Another side of this that we really haven’t touched on so much is the daughter’s motivation for religion. If her parents are divorced with limited visitation, and there’s this serious philosophical gap between them, one of the things a fundy church can offer is certainty, structure, a sense of belonging — all things she may not be getting at home. Cults have a habit of preying on troubled youth.
How often did they spread and glorify outrageous lies about the nature of the universe at the sports tournaments or spelling bees? If the answer is “constantly,” then I understand how you couldn’t see the difference.
But if the answer is “almost never,” then the comparison doesn’t work.
Thank you. Every word of this talk is making me cringe. Unitarians, druids, pagans, agnostic-whatevers.
If you use one of these labels or identify with these groups, you’re essentially saying “we need superstition in our lives, but if I join a fringe religion/identity I’m on safer ground.” I don’t care if you’re more peaceful or pro-gay rights or anything else in comparison to the Big Time religions! I will begrudgingly admit that these beliefs aren’t a fraction as dangerous as Islam or Catholicism, for example, but they are even more intellectually bankrupt because you don’t have the excuse of being indoctrinated by culture at large.
There’s no evidence that we need to lie to ourselves to find purpose or happiness. Just because most people have, and most people still do (and I’m talking beyond religion here, into issues of identity, persona, and self-conception), doesn’t mean that we always have to. If you like nature, drop the druid nonsense and just go outside and enjoy it. Invite some friends. That is a genuinely good idea and we would all do well to absorb that notion into our lives. I think having an official sabbath (as in Judaism) would do wonders for our work-crazed culture, and taking five fifteen-minute breaks a day (as in Islam) to calm our stresses would be extraordinarily productive. But we don’t need labels to do these things, and we don’t have to lie about anything.
As committed you are to your own personal “label” for your unjustifiable beliefs, you are exactly as committed to the practice of people having labels for all manner of unjustifiable beliefs. And that practice is problematic.
Thank you. Every word of this talk is making me cringe. Unitarians, druids, pagans, agnostic-whatevers.
If you use one of these labels or identify with these groups, you’re essentially saying “we need superstition in our lives, but if I join a fringe religion/identity I’m on safer ground.” I don’t care if you’re more peaceful or pro-gay rights or anything else in comparison to the Big Time religions! I will begrudgingly admit that these beliefs aren’t a fraction as dangerous as Islam or Catholicism, for example, but they are even more intellectually bankrupt because you don’t have the excuse of being indoctrinated by culture at large.
There’s no evidence that we need to lie to ourselves to find purpose or happiness. Just because most people have, and most people still do (and I’m talking beyond religion here, into issues of identity, persona, and self-conception), doesn’t mean that we always have to. If you like nature, drop the druid nonsense and just go outside and enjoy it. Invite some friends. That is a genuinely good idea and we would all do well to absorb that notion into our lives. I think having an official sabbath (as in Judaism) would do wonders for our work-crazed culture, and taking five fifteen-minute breaks a day (as in Islam) to calm our stresses would be extraordinarily productive. But we don’t need labels to do these things, and we don’t have to lie about anything.
As committed you are to your own personal “label” for your unjustifiable beliefs, you are exactly as committed to the practice of people having labels for all manner of unjustifiable beliefs. And that practice is problematic.
The fact that the father is an atheist makes things a bit more awkward for the child in my opinion. At the end of the day, either the mother or the father has to be wrong, and the child will feel compelled to decide. You can’t really reconcile “There is no God” with “There is a God and these are his rules”. It’s a bit much to ask a thirteen year old to engage in that level of cognitive dissonance.
He would get a lot more wiggle room as an agnostic. The mother could be right and the father might become right in the future. Much easier to keep that held together in the mind of a teenager. It’s tough to argue against a firm “maybe”.
Wow Kyle, tell us how you really feel. Go ahead, because I haven’t been called stupid quite enough for being a heathen. You’d rather alienate progressive people of faith because you think we’re feeble minded.
I get calling out religions for enacting their bass akwards shit on the world, I get speaking out against theocratic dirtbags, I don’t get why atheists feel the need to actively piss on people who aren’t involved in oppression. You know, especially since people in non-mainline faiths are usually your biggest progressive allies against theocratic assholes.
You’d rather be “right” than make friends. I don’t get that.
Sorry about the double post. :p
Hey, don’t label people as atheists.. its a word that shouldn’t exist. My whole thing was anti-labeling, so that we can address each religious claim as it comes, instead of having a dozen different identities dueling on a grand scheme. That goes nowhere.
I’m against intellectual dishonesty in all its forms, and I think I made a persuasive argument for the elimination of these hundreds of fringe religions (which, as you were getting at, have no direct harm):
The problem is belief. They are not all equally bad, but none of them are benign. Each one contributes to a general agreement that “faith/belief/religion is good,” and that is extremely counter-productive.
It’s true - at least, in internet discussions it is. Optimally I’ll make friends through being right.
Thanks for pointing out that the 13-year-old might be more interested in the social aspects of the church than the religious ones. Children of divorced parents need to have stable social lives as much as any other children - if not more so. I’m past 30 and it still stings when I think of how my non- custodial parent kept asking “why do you need to go to debate club?/girl scouts?/ the church youth retreat?/a movie with your friends? Do that on your own time, this is MY time!” Oddly enough the non- custodial parent was perfectly happy to let me go to events (like dance class) if it was something the non-custodial parent decided I should do.
The father in this case should drop her off at church on Sunday, pick her up, and have calm discussions of her beleifs and other people’s. As a 13 year old, she is old enough to know and express her own mind…even if he thinks that her mind has been “brainwashed” by her religion (and this is HER religion, not just her mother’s religion, at this point) he should listen and discuss the issues calmly, not dismissing her points, but raising his own.
I don’t get why atheists feel the need to actively piss on people who aren’t involved in oppression.
Because you are actively involved in the oppression.
When you act like it’s ok to believe things on the basis of no good evidence - that supernaturalism and deluded wishful thinking are every bit as good, or better, as rational inquiry into the world around us - you’re providing cover to the fundamentalists who, essentially, have exactly the same beliefs as you, only they take them a lot more seriously and to their natural conclusion.
You know, especially since people in non-mainline faiths are usually your biggest progressive allies against theocratic assholes.
Oh, yeah, some allies. It’s thanks to your “help” that we’re in the place we’re in, now.
::applauds::
When you act like it’s ok to believe things on the basis of no good evidence…
Ah, the rationalist extreme. I hope you have good evidence that those cherry Pop-Tarts you’re eating are better than the strawberry ones you passed up; otherwise, you’re complicit in the oppression.
We shape our lives around many, many judgments for which there is either no good evidence, or for which the good evidence would be prohibitively difficult to gather. This is not supernaturalism and wishful thinking; it is realism concerning the incredible complexity of the universe and the extremely limited ability of our tiny meat brains to order it rationally.
Evidence is great and so is scientific thinking. But most of us can’t live our lives via an exclusively scientific thinking modality (and even those who try end up having to rely a lot on assumptions and arbitrary preferences which have no evidence to back them up).
I’ve got no “good evidence” that rape is wrong or that I am obliged as a decent person to treat members of other races like human beings or any of a number of other things. Am I complicit in fundamentalism if I decide to engage in only enthusiastically volunteered sex? I don’t think so.
I would argue that you do, indeed, have good reasons to believe those things. You have an understanding of what you consider a “decent human being” to be, you have a desire to be a decent human being, and you have evidence that acting in certain ways would make you other than the “decent human being” that you want to be.
That others believe something actually is a pretty good reason to believe it yourself, as long as there is no better reason for believing the opposite. You probably haven’t personally verified that helium atoms have two protons, but, for various reasons, you accept the conclusions of those who say they have studied the issue. When it comes to religion, though, I disagree with the majority because I believe that religious beliefs (unlike “scientific” beliefs) did not arise from methods that lead to accurate beliefs, and that these beliefs are generally inconsistent with what I personally observe.
I hope you have good evidence that those cherry Pop-Tarts you’re eating are better than the strawberry ones you passed up
Sure, abundant evidence - the evidence of having eaten both.
We shape our lives around many, many judgments for which there is either no good evidence, or for which the good evidence would be prohibitively difficult to gather.
And so that excuses every single conclusion reached by wishful thinking? That excuses, say, a public health policy based on teaching abstinence to high schoolers even though there’s no good evidence that it works, and abundant evidence that it does not?
This is not supernaturalism and wishful thinking; it is realism concerning the incredible complexity of the universe and the extremely limited ability of our tiny meat brains to order it rationally.
So the answer is to give up, and substitute supernaturalism and religion for skeptical inquiry into the natural world?
Sorry, I’m not willing to say that rationalism is worse because it’s hard to do. Sure, it’s a lot easier to simply leap to conclusions with no model testing. The fact that such leaps are nearly always wrong more than cancels out the advantage of easiness.
But most of us can’t live our lives via an exclusively scientific thinking modality (and even those who try end up having to rely a lot on assumptions and arbitrary preferences which have no evidence to back them up).
Every human being can live their life not believing things on the basis of no good evidence. Every human being can live a life that doesn’t depend on leaping to conclusions because its easier than supporting your views with evidence.
I’ve got no “good evidence” that rape is wrong
You actually have abundant evidence that it is, including the testimony of every victim of rape that it’s god-fucking-awful.
Am I complicit in fundamentalism if I decide to engage in only enthusiastically volunteered sex?
You give cover to fundamentalists when you pretend that conclusions reached by wishful thinking are every bit as good as the conclusions best supported by evidence. In that sense, yes, you’re complicit.
Dough and Chet, I’m curious about what you think about deism.
Dough and Chet, I’m curious about what you think about deism.
It’s nonsense for people with too much intellectual timidity to even tell people they’re agnostic.