Need for Cognition

International Ask an Atheist Day

2011-04-15T13:30:00.004-05:00

I know this event was aimed at campus freethought groups, but I figured why not do my part. I'm a big believer in normalizing mistrusted fringe groups by as many people as possible being public about it. Works for nursing in public, works for atheism!

So I printed out a couple stickers to wear, and I changed my Facebook profile picture to the sticker and put up a status welcoming questions.

I was very disappointed with the non-reactions to my stickers. I wore them at the YMCA, but no one asked me any questions. Facebook didn't yield much more. My best friend asked me if I think people are intrinsically good or bad (short answer: yes), and we had a bit of a conversation with another friend who jumped in and confirmed she was an atheist. So it was cool to realize that other friend was a non-believer. And another freethinking friend said she liked my picture.

And that was it.

Well, wearing the sticker did have one big effect: I was exceedingly polite all day. I'm naturally very friendly and courteous, but I was certainly more aware than usual of trying to project a positive image. Perhaps we should all wear nametags identifying our cherished group memberships - as representatives we would probably all be nicer to each other!

Speaking of eating placentas . . .

2011-04-07T09:37:00.003-05:00

When some folks I know started talking about having their babies' placentas made into pills so the mother could ingest them, I asked the obvious question - why would you want to do that?

Answers were passionate and certain, full of bare assertion and lacking all but the slightest actual justification:

"prevents post partum depression and helps with milk production!"

"give you back your energy too"

"all the hormones that your body needs...its like your own specialized concoction of vitamins and hormones that are made especially for you"

"I think that every mammal eats the placenta after birth... the placenta holds all the vitamins that the... body is depleted of during pregnancy, so it makes sense to put those back into the body after birth"

One person linked to a blog post that had this citation:

"181 out of 210 women who were given dried placenta to increase milk supply had positive results and saw an increase in their milk supply.
Placenta as a Lactagogon; Gynaecologia 138: 617-627, 1954"

Now, first let me say, if you would like to consume your baby's placenta on the off chance it will do you good, I suppose you should go for it. I don't see much harm. If it does nothing, you'll lose some money to a professional encapsulator. Of course safe handling is important, just like with raw beef or chicken or whatever. But really, whatever floats your boat.

I'll also grant that it's possible that placentophagy could have some benefits. It's not completely ridiculous, the way homeopathy is. It's at least feasible that recouping iron and hormones could be beneficial.

But here's my problem - this is at best a hypothesis. It's testable, but hasn't really been tested (as far as I can tell, that study didn't use a control group, and the sample is small to boot). It's a pretty big leap from "animals do this" and "it contains hormones" to "ingesting dried placenta prevents depression and low milk supply."

And why are people so eager to make that leap? Because it's "natural." You won't see this wide-eyed credulity when it comes to vaccines, for damn sure. People who avoid ingesting acetaminophen or corn syrup jump at the chance to chow down on placenta, because that's what sheep do. It just doesn't make sense to me. And I'm worried about the general mentality because it leads to distrust of science-based medicine and encourages faith in altmed woo.

I've got my conclusion, now where's some evidence for it?

2011-03-27T12:02:00.001-05:00

This seems to be the way our brains naturally work. If we didn't model the world with a mental construct resistant to change, we probably wouldn't have survived very well. But science and rationality are all about minimizing the effect of this tendency, and I would hope that's something we aspire to.

Of course, we see this faulty arrangement very blatantly in Creationism. Step 1: Assume God created the world as told in Genesis. Step 2: find evidence that appears to support this conclusion.

But I see this all too often in the alternative parenting world. Step 1: Assume breastfeeding is totally sufficient and perfect. Step 2: find some way to twist or ignore evidence that babies might need Vitamin D supplementation.

Most recently, I'm seeing some troubling tendencies from Nancy Mohrbacher, the author of the new reference book used by LLL Leaders. She has come out against swaddling. And she hasn't done it in a terribly thoughtful way, laying out what the benefits are or were perceived to be, and comparing new information that may advise caution or revision of our use of swaddling. Nope. Swaddling is Evil seems to be the message, and she is willing to be disingenuous in supporting this conclusion. In her initial post, she notes that "While swaddling may be helpful when used occasionally, routine swaddling during the first months associated with greater risk of . . . SIDS in prone sleeping positions."

Now, in my experience, most people do not understand the word "prone," mistaking it to mean "lying down." It actually means lying face down (supine refers to lying face up.) So I find this misleading, possibly intentionally. And of course, we already know that sleeping face down is a huge risk factor for SIDS. Telling people they shouldn't swaddle their prone-sleeping infants is like telling people to buckle up when they drive drunk.

This really irritates me because maybe swaddling is something we should rethink, but if you try to manipulate me with misleading statements, it's just going to make me want to discount everything you say. And more generally, I think a balanced, empathetic approach that allows for the feelings and beliefs of the community before demonstrating something that is incompatible with some of those beliefs is going to bear more fruit than this underhanded style.

Unconditional Parenting

2011-03-24T13:49:00.003-05:00

I really do pride myself on being open-minded. I try to be a true skeptic - willing to accept new evidence even if it overturns my beliefs.

I found just such an opportunity when some friends started discussing Alfie Kohn. At first I was very dismissive. When people objected to time outs as "love withdrawal," I scoffed. I wasn't withdrawing love, I was separating an out of control kid from society until she could be civil and safe again. But, since I'm intrigued by ideas that challenge my beliefs, I started reading some of Kohn's articles online. Then I bought his book Unconditional Parenting. And it totally transformed the way I see parenting.

The thing I most appreciated was his use of actual research to bolster his suggestions. And perhaps the fact that his suggestions often seem more like questions. Just questions I never thought to ask before, such as, "Is training a child to comply compatible with helping her become a fulfilled, happy, confident person?"

The other essential ingredient for me was a clear statement that this is not mere permissiveness. I've seen way too many advocates of "gentle discipline" whose children were unholy monsters, dangerous to themselves and others.

For me, Unconditional Parenting can be boiled down to two ideas. First, my children deserve to feel that they are loved unconditionally, just for being them. It's not enough that I do love them unconditionally, but that they perceive that I love them unconditionally. Second, children should be respected as people. They aren't just robots that emit certain behaviors when certain input is received. They are human beings with internal lives of thought and emotion. And I need to keep that internal life in mind when their behavior conflicts with my desires, not just run roughshod over them for my convenience.

There are a lot of details that go along with those basic ideas. Some of them are quite important and challenging, such as the damage praise can do to the development of a confident and engaged person. But quite early in my reading I zeroed in on the underlying philosophies above, and they are becoming my touchstone as I try to react with unconditional love, and still keep appropriate limits, in day to day life.

Scene from an Acupuncturist's

2011-03-17T18:01:00.003-05:00

Patient: So, I've never done this before. Can you tell me how this goes?

Acupuncturist: Well, first I clear an hour for your appointment. We spend a lot of time sitting and discussing your problems, your life, and what you're looking for in treatment. I try not to talk too much, but just to listen to you.

Then I have you get comfortable and completely relaxed in our treatment room. It is decorated in a serene theme, and has scented candles and soft, tranquil music. You lie down on our padded table and close your eyes.

In my practice, I focus on respecting you as a complete person. I don't treat you like a broken machine with one part that needs fixing; rather, I concentrate on supporting your total wellness, including mental and emotional health.

I provide caring, supportive human touch in a professional context that is all about you and what feels good for your body.

Oh, and I also stick needles in you.

Patient: Maybe we could just skip that last part?

My take on Worthless Women

2011-03-16T08:06:00.003-05:00

Single Dad Laughing has a thought-provoking post called Worthless women and the men who make them. His premise is that men should take some responsibility for creating self-loathing in women when they ogle perfect specimens of beauty.

It's an interesting read. But I think the article itself suffers from chauvinism. Women are positioned as helpless victims of men's actions. Our self-definition rests entirely on the regard of men. It doesn't ring true.

I don't really think the problem is that men like to look at hot women. That's normal, and in the right context is OK. I think the problem is our entire societal attitude towards women. Instead of valuing beauty as one of many desirable traits, we tend to value women primarily (or even only) for sexual attractiveness.

How many times have you seen people write or talk about being disgusted by someone's appearance - not because they were filthy or covered with running sores, but because they were fat, or wrinkly, or had a big nose or crooked teeth? And how many times are such comments directed at women, versus men?

There is an underlying notion that we women owe it to others to be attractive. Thus you get women apologizing for their flaws, often by pre-emptively insulting themselves. "My hair is a mess today." "I'm way too fat, I'm disgusting." "I don't wave anymore because of this jiggly triceps, ha ha!"

We also get people saying, "I don't want to see that!" or complaining that fat people (especially women) make them physically ill. We get jokes about "butterface girls" - everything is beautiful but her face. (Also, have you noticed that fat women in movies are often depicted not only as comical and repulsive, but as hypersexual and in constant pursuit of unwilling men? What's up with that?)

When did "not sexually attractive" become a synonym for "offensive?" What's it to you if someone (who probably has no interest in dating you, by the way) has acne or cellulite or crow's feet? Why do we take it as a given that all people, but especially women, should be judged on their attractiveness?

Is it possible we could start valuing people for other qualities, while still enjoying the sight of a beautiful person? I think this might be yet another area where women deserve to share in what men already have. Men are surely judged by looks and sexual attractiveness to some degree, but I'd say usually we judge men by what they do, what they think, and what they produce, and way down the list is attractiveness. Women seem primarily judged by sexual attractiveness, then perhaps how well they take care of other people, and quite a bit down the list is what they do, what they think, and what they produce. And neither sex seems particularly valued for kindness and compassion.

I don't think we need to make average women feel more "worthy," meaning "pretty." We need to upend our definition of "worth."

Quick and Easy Guide to Spotting Altmed Bunk

2011-03-10T16:32:00.009-05:00

Immersed in the world of breastfeeding and attachment parenting as I am, I am unfortunately bombarded with loads of alternative medicine hogwash. As I dutifully (and usually futilely) research and dissect the latest advice from someone's naturopath, or the information they got from their chiropractor, I have noticed certain signs that will cause my bullshit meter to bury the needle. What follows isn't a detailed discussion of why altmed practices are unscientific, or how to decide if a research study is reliable, or a treatise on the philosophy of science. It's just a quick and dirty list of features that anti-scientific quackery tends to share.

1. Most of the hits on Google are sites that promote or sell the product in question. Typical site names are phlebotinum.com, phlebotinum-advisory-group.net, drlaceyunderall.net, yournaturalhealth.com, and so on. Many strive to look like health information sites, but if they have only good things to say, and an easy link to purchase the product, you can bet it's just a commercial site shilling. If you get a high proportion of hits like Webmd, Mayo Clinic, National Institutes of Health, and maybe stuff like CNN or ABC stories, it has a much greater chance of being a real thing.

2. The remedy is promoted as a solution for vague and ubiquitous maladies. Usual suspects are fatigue, insomnia, body aches, headache, mood problems, low sex drive, weight gain, nausea, and constipation. Now these can be real symptoms of real problems. But when you see a product promoted as solving a long laundry list of these issues, it's time to raise an eyebrow. These symptoms are typically experienced by most people at least some of the time, especially in a culture plagued by poor diet, low rates of exercise, too little sleep, social isolation, and chronic stress.

Most of these symptoms are self-limiting, or can be alleviated by lifestyle change. But most people don't relish a prescription of "eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, exercise regularly, and get 8 hours of sleep a night." Lifestyle changes are difficult to initiate, harder to maintain, and are frankly a total drag. But give us a pill, a cream, or someone waving their hands over us once a week, and we perk right up - seems easy!

3. Self-diagnosis is encouraged. Whether it's checking off the laundry list of vague symptoms, or buying a test kit you can do at home, do-it-yourself is the name of the game for quacks. And if you did get tests at the doctor's office, they encourage re-interpretation. Doctor says your thyroid levels are fine? Well check your number against this web site's "more accurate" scale. Doctor says your hormone levels are healthy? Take a saliva test to find out more!

4. Remedy is promoted by an actress of fading fame. E.g., Jenny McCarthy and Suzanne Somers.

5. Proponents laud how natural the remedy is, and decry the toxins in the environment and/or conventional medicines. Arsenic is as natural as it gets - it's an element! Hemlock is a plant (make sure you get organically grown). Meanwhile insulin for diabetics is synthetic. Using "natural" as a synonym for "good" doesn't make sense. (Also look for the keyword "allopathic" to describe conventional medicine.)

6. Relies on testimonials, anecdotal evidence, appeals to authority. Approaches that work don't need this type of weak support, because they have strong scientific evidence - the kind that attempts to sweep away all the human foibles that can prevent us from seeing what's really happening, and determine if an intervention has a real effect.

7. Provides citations as though they refer to peer-reviewed scientific journals, but the cited material is actually a book, presentation, or web site of an individual proponent of the remedy. It doesn't matter how many letters are after your name - just because you say it doesn't make it reliable. Publication in a respected journal indicates your claims have been examined and probed for mistakes and found robust. Publication on a website means you successfully Googled GoDaddy.

8. Users respond to skeptical inquiry and questioning of the evidence by saying, "I KNOW this works - it worked for me." When the people trying to sell you on something have no clue about placebo effect, confirmation bias, coincidence, self-limiting conditions, and general methods for removing human perceptual bias, you can dismiss pretty much everything they say.

9. Praises or demonizes according to fad. Acai berries are magically delicious, but ~~VDTs~~, ~~power lines~~, ~~electrical transformers~~, ~~cell phones~~, Wifi is evil.

10. Invokes the Pentaverate. Promoters wave away criticism as the result of wide-reaching conspiracies involving doctors, pharmaceutical companies, the CDC, and other entities.

11. The remedy is said to have no possible side effects or risks. Generally if something can have an effect, it can have a side effect. If it can change your body in some way, that change might turn out badly for you. Even such benign and universally prescribed practices as exercise and high fiber diets have risks and side effects.

12. Oprah.

The Constitution doesn't apply to pregnant people in Florida

2011-03-07T14:53:00.003-05:00

I . . . just don't know what to say. As a civil libertarian, birth choice activist, and abortion rights supporter, I don't know if I'm more stunned or furious about a Florida court's unlawful imprisonment of a woman and removal of her right to refuse medical interventions, all in the name of protecting her fetus (by means that aren't even supported by evidence)!

Arguments for the Existence of Cthulhu IV

2011-03-04T18:41:00.004-05:00

The Argument from Degrees of Evil

We notice that things around us vary. Some things are "more X" or "less X." And sometimes X has a source, and something closer to the source of X is thereby made "more X."

We see that instability, chaos, and suffering are all "more evil" than their alternatives.

But if these degrees of evil pertain to being and being is caused in finite creatures, then there must exist a "worst," a source and real standard of all the evils that we recognize belong to us as beings.

This absolutely evil being—the "Being of all beings," "the Evil of all evils"—is Cthulhu.

(Ow, my brain hurts. Was that some rambling paraphrase of St. Anselm or something? I'm astounded even True Believers could find this logic convincing.)

Arguments for the Existence of Cthulhu III

2011-01-26T19:06:00.006-05:00

The Argument from Time and Contingency

(The closest this comes to making me believe in a god is it makes me say, "Christ, this argument is a mess," but here's my attempt to disentangle the active premises in a coherent manner.)

If an entity has the possibility of not existing, then in an infinite time, it must realize this state of non-being.
There has been an infinite period of time,* and the universe still exists.
Therefore there must be an entity that does not have the possibility of not existing, from which the universe derives its longevity.
Such a being is called a necessary being.
This necessary being is Cthulhu.

This jibes well with scripture: "That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die." - Nec. 3:16.

*remember folks, we're not discussing the validity of the logic, or the accuracy of the premises, just seeing if the arguments as given can equally apply to Cthulhu as to Yahweh.

Arguments for the Existence of Cthulhu, Part Two

2011-01-25T16:45:00.004-05:00

The Argument from Efficient Causality

Everything that exists does so due to some cause. The only thing that might conceivably exist without a cause is a supernatural being which is self-existent. Therefore, Cthulhu must exist: an uncaused being who could move to cause the universe.

(I apologize/say "you're welcome" for trimming these arguments of their excess curlicues of language and making them slightly more coherent. I suspect part of the apologist's tactic is to give people a headache, making them give up and assume he must know better than they do.)

Arguments for the Existence of Cthulhu, Part One

2011-01-25T12:18:00.003-05:00

The Friendly Atheist provides an apologetics link that would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Let's see if I can use all the arguments to "prove" the existence of Cthulhu.

The Argument from Change

We can see that things change. And in order to change, they must have some outside force act on them. A seed cannot grow into a plant without soil, water, and sun acting on it. A planet cannot move without the gravitational force of other objects affecting it. And each item that changes things is itself acted on, ad infinitum.

Since the universe is full of constant change, and is itself changing, it must therefore have something external acting on it. This being, outside space and time, is Cthulhu, who lies dreaming in the inky void.

The Argument from Placenta

2011-01-11T09:34:00.003-05:00

Last week I heard the dumbest Christian apologetic I've ever encountered. I'll just let that sink in for a moment . . .

Ravi Zacharias was being interviewed on the Christian radio station. The interviewer mentioned a talk by Dawkins and (IIRC) Lawrence Krauss. Krauss had said that arguments against homosexuality are claimed to be based on the Bible, but that's inconsistent when the same Christians don't advocate other biblical imperatives like stoning disobedient children. The interviewer wanted to know Zacharias's answer to this.

His response was in two parts. First, he failed to address the question as such, and used a lot of meandering words to say, "Times have changed since the Bible was written." Yes, that doesn't address why we would retain some prohibitions and not others, and it's theologically problematic when Yahweh is supposed to be unchanging, but that's not even the dumbest part.

His second "argument" was to reference a story told by Dawkins about a chef cooking and serving a human placenta. He made sure to include gross and shocking details, and then said, "Is that the kind of world you want to live in?"

This is the level of discourse on the ground. All those snooty theologians who complain that atheists don't address deep theological theory need to realize that "the great apologist of our time,"* when confronted with a thorny question, replies, "But, but, but, LOOK OVER THERE - people are eating placenta - EWWWW! Therefore, Christianity."

(For the record, Dawkins recounts the placenta story in A Devil's Chaplain, where it's clear it wasn't necessarily atheists doing this, and he doesn't endorse it in any way. It was an example in his discussion of stem cell research and how we decide what is ethical and what isn't.)

*a quote from Chuck Colson, via Wikipedia

Catholicism Exit Interview

2011-01-02T10:14:00.004-05:00

The Friendly Atheist links to an article about taking a marketing research approach to plummeting attendance at mass. Seven "starter questions" are outlined in the article. Here are my answers.

Why have you stopped attending Sunday Mass regularly?
When I stopped going to the Catholic Church I was a teenager - it would have been around 1989 I guess. It's difficult to recall the specific chain of events and thoughts. But generally speaking, I would say that the attitude towards women in the church, the colossally silly ban on birth control, and the whole top-down, "you need this old guy to talk to God for you" structure drove me to explore other options.

More importantly though, apprehending the mere possibility of questioning church teachings led me eventually to atheism. Like many people, I just kind of assumed what I taught was The Way Things Are, and that other religions were different and wrong. Once I opened the door to scrutinizing church teaching, a giant vista of skepticism opened up, and I couldn't go back to complacent belief - in anything.

Are there any changes your parish might make that would prompt you to return?
Sure - just drop all supernatural dogma, apologize extravagantly for the abuse scandals, give all conspicuous riches to worthy causes, and start functioning as a social support group much like Ethical Culture. Can you get right on that please?

Are there any doctrinal issues that trouble you?

Yes. Everything.

Does your pastor or anyone on the parish staff know you by name?

No, but they might once I get off my duff and send that letter of defection!

Are you in a mixed-religion marriage?

Yes. I'm an agnostic, atheist, secular Buddhist, non-practicing naturalistic pantheist. He's an apatheist/post-theist.

Do your children go to church?

Not yet. I'm too lazy to take them to the UU congregation. If they get invitations to visit friends' churches, once they are old enough to comprehend instead of simply absorbing, they will be allowed to go.

Did you ever really consider yourself to be a member of a parish community?

I guess. My hometown had both kinds of people: Irish Catholics and Italian Catholics. Again, Catholicism was just what you did, like going to school or shopping at the grocery store. I remember going to youth group activities and confirmation class. But weirdly Catholicism was so pervasive, it became like wallpaper. And as I said, once I realized that it wasn't a given of the universe, it evaporated quite quickly for me.

Stupid prayers

2010-12-11T15:00:00.003-05:00

By Googling "stupid prayer requests," I discovered Kim Kardashian used to pray for smaller breasts. Actually, this is more understandable than people praying for lost keys or lotto jackpots - especially since she was 11 and being teased. Still, is this something The Grand Master of the Universe is going to tend to?

"You know it's a myth."

2010-12-11T14:56:00.003-05:00

I certainly think religious folk get overly hysterical about atheist billboards and bus signs. However, I do think AA's new sign is kind of jerkish. It's rude and obnoxious to tell people you know what they're thinking better than they do. Which do you find more annoying, someone who says, "Jesus is Lord," or someone who says to you, "You know Jesus is the one true God in your heart, you're just denying it."

A little project - "Please pray"

2010-12-02T14:20:00.005-05:00

I'm going to start collecting some prayer requests.

Asking an omniscient god for stuff makes no sense. Especially when it's Yahweh, who is pretty tetchy about puny humans thinking they know anything better than he does (see his response to Job, e.g.). But when this is pointed out in debate, apologists tend to respond that prayer isn't for asking for stuff, it's all about giving thanks, or just checking in with your buddy Jesus, or something. It's all related to the objection that atheists never pick on sophisticated versions of Christianity, just the comically backwards beliefs that a very small, benighted group of people hold.

Well, here's some evidence that lots of believers (many of them in the mainstream) believe in asking god for stuff:

Currently circulating on Facebook:

We are asking everyone to say a prayer for "Darkhorse" 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines and their families. They are fighting it out in Afghanistan and have lost 9 Marines in 4 days. Please re-post this. IT WOULD BE NICE TO SEE IT ON EVERYONE'S PAGE!! Even if it's only for an hour. Come on......people show your support.

A quick Google search turned up pleaseprayfor.org, where you can ask people to pray for everything from healing children with brain cancer to helping you win online sweepstakes!

Answers in Genesis is doing a radio upgrade, and they ask, "Please pray for no installation problems, improved reception and clarity." They have a whole page devoted to constantly updated prayer requests, and a page where you can pledge:

Believing that Prayer is our most strategic weapon in waging the war against compromise, I make a commitment to lift up the rebuilding of biblical foundations in our church and culture. I will pray throughout the day as God brings Answers in Genesis to mind and fast once a month, asking God to glorify His name in the specific requests relayed to me. This commitment is for one year.

And you give your digital signature and e-mail address to seal the deal. Nifty!

In which a goddess bestows a parking spot

2010-11-29T13:16:00.003-05:00

Over the weekend I hit Target. It was MOBBED, but I happened to get the primo parking space, right in the first spot next to the doors. On my way out, I saw a car approaching that aisle, and it slowed down to let me cross. I decided to be nice and point out where I was about to pull out. As I gestured ostentatiously at my fantastic space, I realized the driver was a friend of mine!

Divine intervention? Some people might really think so (see previous post), but it was actually just a combination of dumb luck and my own awesomeness.

Package-deal Skepticism

2010-11-23T10:12:00.006-05:00

In the crunchy mothering world, I run into this odd phenomenon. Women get involved in some aspect of mothering that is counter-cultural: extended breastfeeding or natural childbirth for instance - practices that are actually supported by evidence or are merely matters of personal preference. By engaging in this "weird" behavior, they find themselves battling against social norms and doctors' expectations. They find support in a group of like-minded people, and get used to filtering, altering, or outright rejecting advice from uninitiated people, from mothers in law to pediatricians.

Now, it can be perfectly rational to take uninformed advice with a grain of salt. And sadly even experts can be terribly uninformed about, say, breastfeeding. Doctors don't get a lot of training in this area, and often even well-read laypeople will be more up to date on the research than medical professionals.

The problem is, many people seem built not to question everything, but to act more like they're choosing between competing clubs. So many women just seem to see it as a choice between boilerplate belief systems, rather than an investigation into the truth. Either you eat processed factory farmed foods, have an intervention-heavy birth in a hospital, feed your baby formula, vaccinate them, and keep them in a car seat or crib 24/7, OR you eat organic whole foods, have a homebirth, nurse your child until they decide to stop, skip vaccinations in favor of homeopathic remedies, and wear them and cosleep with them.

The choice to reject medical authorities on one subject (which may make sense) tends to lead to rejection of all scientific authority and adoption of crunchy-culture alternatives, even in cases like homeopathy, when it is completely stupid.

"Jesus and Mary, please help me win a million dollars!"

2010-11-21T13:19:00.003-05:00

We watch The Amazing Race, and one of my favorite things is to choose teams to root for, and against. Usually it's the teams that are horrible to each other that I like to wish disaster on. But in the most recent episode, I realized that Gary and Mallory were running way behind, and I really didn't care. I would have felt bad if the doctors or the home shopping gals got chopped, and Gary and Mallory share a lot of their positive qualities - almost always being upbeat, interested in their surroundings, and friendly. So why didn't I care whether they won or lost?

Well, one factor is that Mallory has a really offensive habit. She's a wealthy, privileged beauty queen in a reality show race to win a million dollars, and she's constantly praying for help. I know, I know, she's not really thinking about the theological implications, and her invocations probably don't mean much more than when I say, "Oh my god." But truly, it is somewhere between tacky and horrific to pray to Jesus to help you win a million dollars. Especially when He doesn't seem to interested in preventing babies from being born with cleft palates, or cerebral palsy, or Spinal Muscular Atrophy, or scores of other horrible problems.

I'm sure it's very comforting to feel that the creator of the universe is your personal buddy looking out for you. It probably helps people stay calm and get through difficult days, even if "difficult" is just a frantic high stress day, with no life and death issues. But the implications of Jesus caring enough to find you a good parking spot, but leaving millions of innocent children in unimaginable suffering are truly monstrous.

The morality of using Facebook

2010-11-19T14:18:00.006-05:00

So a New Jersey pastor has told married church officials they must delete their Facebook accounts, because Facebook breaks up marriages.

He's concerned because he's seen many people re-connect with exes on Facebook, start flirting, and wind up having an affair.

I can actually see what he's saying - I have heard enough stories from my own circles about such issues, even if it only ever gets to flirting. Facebook makes it easier to get back in touch with old loves. Getting back in touch with old loves can be dangerous to your marriage. It's not really Facebook's fault - it's just that Facebook is an easier and more available method of chatting with old flames than periodic high school reunions and whatnot.

But I think it's interesting that this is a big problem among churchgoers, seemingly as much as the general populace. Because I think this kind of thing stems from a failure to give some sober thought to your morality and where your limits are. And of course, ex-religious atheists tend to examine these moral issues much more than many religious people.

Most people are religious without much inquiry. As products of our culture they probably hold enlightenment ideals and interpret their faith to be consistent with them. They go to church, but only on occasion. They have vague notions of God's rules, heaven, and hell, but don't seem to examine their beliefs.

IMHO, it goes hand in hand with this fuzzy notion of religion that people don't sit down and think about their marital obligations, and whether one has a duty to stop short of flirting, the appearance of impropriety, or just actual intercourse.

I also think religious people may fall into a trap made of their own piousness. "I'm a good person," they think. "I can go to lunch with Mr. Wonderful and I'm not doing anything wrong. I can control myself." I personally have a much more practical approach - stop before you get to a point where you might get carried away. Well before. It's all too easy to rationalize, rationalize, rationalize . . . then "lose control" and do something you regret. Or at least that you'll tell yourself afterward that you never planned to do.

Woo creeps in everywhere

2010-11-17T08:48:00.004-05:00

Sometimes it's so frustrating being a skeptic among a sea of the credulous. People don't understand why you have a problem with irrational garbage, because they don't examine it themselves.

We decided to hook Kitty up with a therapist to help her deal with some anxiety. No big problem, it just seems like her worries are making it hard for her to enjoy life fully, and I'd rather help her change her thinking now, than let her negative thought patterns get entrenched. So I asked my therapist (see above, re: entrenched negativity) for a recommendation. She only knew of one person who was good and took our insurance.

So I perused this lady's website. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy . . . good, good. Integrated approach . . . OK. EFT, which uses meridian tapping to relieve depression and anxiety - WHOA NELLY!

I'd never heard of EFT, but that description set off all my pseudoscience alarm bells. I looked it up, and sure enough, it's a load of codswallop about manipulating your "energy fields." It is, of course, untestable and unfalsifiable.

So now my anxiety levels were up. How to proceed? It's possible this person is relatively competent and would teach my kid CBT techniques, and all would be well. Also, no one claims that EFT fails to alleviate anxiety - it's just that it appears to be a combination of placebo effect and distraction. Would it be acceptable for her to teach my child this technique, if it helped her?

I finally decided no, it would not be acceptable. I'm not having someone indoctrinate my impressionable 7yo with magical thinking, even if it might confer some benefit. I decided to call my therapist back and use someone in her practice, paying the out-of-network price. It's worth it.

The scary thing is, you don't necessarily know if your health care provider is infected with woo-think. Not all of them will be kind enough to advertise it on page 1. Naturally, I'll be chatting with this new therapist to suss things out.

But sadly, I think sometimes you have to put up with creduloids. Actually, that name is a bit unfair. Most people are largely rational, with odd pockets of irrational beliefs. Probably that first therapist could have helped my daughter with proven, reasonable methods. And I could have discussed that I didn't want EFT used, I suppose. But that's a hard conversation, isn't it? "I'd like to hire you for your expertise . . . except this one thing you believe is total garbage, so don't use it." Ironically, she's probably used to and totally unoffended by people saying, "Don't use EFT, because we're Christians and it's against our beliefs."

Harnessing Santa

2010-01-06T16:10:00.003-05:00

Kitty has had such a ball being in on the big secret of Santa, I can't help but think it will contribute to her being a religious skeptic. Her personality is definitely oriented toward wanting to be right, in the know, and a keeper of knowledge. She adores being proven right when we disagree about something. And recently I had to pull her aside several times at a friend's party because she kept interrupting his Grandpa's magic show, yelling, "I know that's just a trick," and such. (A good opportunity for discussing the intersection of politeness and skepticism!)

So many people seem to think they are special, in on a secret, especially wise, or gifted because of their religious beliefs. I'm glad my daughter has a foundation for feeling these (admittedly sometimes venal) emotions as inspired by knowledge about the natural world, skepticism, and inquiry.

What "I Ought To" Really Means

2009-12-17T12:51:00.002-05:00

I'm working on Chapter 5 of Mere Christianity, and it occurred to me that Lewis is mistaken about the uniqueness of what he terms Moral Law. He notes that there is often an impulse that we ought to do good, even when we don't want to. And from that he deduces that this impulse, unlike all other impulses, must be a natural law implanted by a supernatural mind. Aside from being a humongous leap, stealthily importing a lot of assumptions not made explicit, this ignores the simple explanation of cost-benefit analysis and the difficulty of delaying gratification.

When we say, "I really ought to . . . " whether it regards going to the gym, giving to a charity, or abstaining from an extramarital affair, aren't we really saying, "I highly value an overarching or future benefit that requires this action, but there are powerful immediate benefits to not taking this action." The struggle isn't the result of a fallen nature battling with a God-given Moral Law, but simply the difficulty of turning down present goodies to obtain future ones. Remaining on the couch, keeping all your money to buy fun stuff for you, or having that smoking hot infatuation sex will all feel really good in the short term, or when we only focus on our immediate desires. But we are also aware of the wider picture, in which other (selfish!) motivations require that we do the opposite.

I just don't see why this has to rise to the level of the supernatural. Unless you are steeped in a Christian culture already. In Lewis's case, I suspect not only did he work out the "logical" steps to his conclusion AFTER coming to it, but that Christian moral teachings influenced how he looked at the issues. It might not occur to a person schooled in the Ten Commandments that adultery actually has some benefits - we all know adultery is wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!

While Lewis is really good at couching his arguments in convincing-sounding analogies, I think he fails at both perspective and imagination.

Mere Christianity - Not Impressed So Far

2009-12-10T15:23:00.003-05:00

I'm on Chapter 4. I'm continuing even though Lewis has instructed me to stop reading. (He says anyone who doesn't agree with his first argument should give it up.)

It boils down to this: because most people feel some sense of fairness and overarching morality (not only "I don't want you to do that" but "You shouldn't do that - it's wrong."), that means there must be an immaterial Lawgiver who put a sense of Moral Law in each of us. I think all of this is perfectly explicable by evolution and socialization. And supported by the indications we see that other animals have "moral codes," such as "Don't eat before the higher-ranked wolves" or "Don't have sex with anyone but the Alpha chimp, unless you can be really sneaky about it" (guilt!).

He also completely overlooks the selfish value of benefiting society. He starts well, saying, "[Human beings] see that you cannot have any real safety or happiness except in a society where every one plays fair," But three sentences later has completely forgotten this concept, and says it's silly to say it's good to benefit society, because wanting to benefit society is unselfish, so it's just begging the question. Except he started the conversation with an admission that helping society helps the individual!

He also misses the fact that human behavior all takes place in roughly the same environment, and this was probably even truer when evolutionary pressures were at their greatest, so it's not a supernatural-level surprise that we are hard-wired and socialized via long tradition to adopt similar cooperative behaviors. It becomes a (granted, complex) series of "if-then" statements: If no one in a clan can trust each other, they fail to cooperate and all die; If most people in a clan feel significant psychological pressure to be trustworthy, they can cooperate and survive.

If Lewis considered engineering, one wonders if he would find an extra-universal entity that bestows the Law of Design. "Look, all people throughout history have made boats that displace more water than that equal to their weight. Clearly this means there is a God of Boat Design!"

Talking About Death

2009-12-04T12:41:00.002-05:00

Humanist Homeschool Mom has a post referring to her article, "Mommy, what happens after I die?" It prompted me to compile some of my favorite bits & pieces about a naturalistic approach to death.

First, the quote I commented with: ""I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it," traditionally attributed to Mark Twain.

Then there's this lovely bit by Aaron Freeman, which can be heard at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4675953.

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.

Finally, there's a nice scene in the movie Houseboat, with Cary Grant and Sophia Loren, that expresses the same kind of sentiment. The widower explains to his grieving son that nothing is ever really destroyed or gone, only changed in form.

Do you have Krismas in France? Kriiiiiismaaassss!

2009-12-03T12:10:00.003-05:00

Maybe Ricky's mom was actually asking a coherent question there!

Well, probably not, since Krismas was named only a few years ago. But I kind of like the idea. It's what we've been celebrating lo these many years - a Christmas-type celebration without any religious belief.

It seems a little blasphemous at first, but heck, Christmas is just a hijack of pagan solstice festivals, grafted on to the birth of Jesus.

So Merry Krismas, in addition to Solstice and Humanlight!

Drop-side cribs too dangerous

2009-11-26T10:26:00.003-05:00

The ASTM is issuing new (voluntary) guidelines for manufacturers that exclude drop-side cribs. Toys R Us will no longer sell drop-side cribs. About.com has a good article outlining all the issues.

We have a drop-side crib (which is not recalled), and I gave it a good once-over to assure myself that it is safe. We seem to be fine (metal hardware, no indication a gap could form), but I think when we are done, we will junk this crib, rather than re-selling it. Drop-sides are particularly hazardous when purchased second-hand, as it increases the risk of the crib being put together wrong or with missing parts.

Scary stuff! But I am thankful we live in a world where such marginal risks are a big deal, since we have conquered so many risks that once killed babies and children.

The Catholic Church hypocritical? Nah, couldn't be!

2009-11-24T19:22:00.003-05:00

So the Catholic Church is having a snit fit at Washington D.C., threatening to withdraw social service programs that help thousands of people. Why? Because D.C. is considering a non-discrimination ordinance that would require the church to provide equal benefits to gay and straight married couples. "Oh noez," says the church, "this might force us to ~~participate in~~ ~~publicly support~~ um, be vaguely associated with gay marriage, which is totally against our precepts!"

But the church has evidently been providing employee benefits to spouses of straight people who have divorced and remarried all along. Divorce and remarriage is supposedly just as much of a sin as homosexuality. Why the difference? Gee, could it be that the Catholic Church is run by a bunch of bigoted idiots who are mortally terrified of teh gay?

How to be a good Christian man

2009-11-18T18:34:00.006-05:00

According to Steven L. Anderson, "real Christian men" can't sit down to pee. He has this bizarre rant about the bible demanding that men stand up to pee, because it uses "those that pisseth against the wall" as an occasional epithet referring to men.

He details how no man in Germany stands to pee (I'll give you a moment to drag your eyebrows back down from your hairline here), and he's seen signs in private homes and public restrooms that say "No Standing to Pee." This is obviously a sign of the apocalypse. He's fighting it, though. The next time he goes to Germany, he declares he Shall Never Sit to Pee!

Aside from the question of his ah, factual accuracy here, something really strikes me. He boldly states that the way to show you are a Real True Christian is to ignore societal rules and your host's gentle request, and be a rude, self-centered, splashing-on-the-tile boor. Yep, that's about my impression of Christianity in America.

Another reason why proselytizing sucks

2009-11-18T16:12:00.002-05:00

I've mused about the psychological underpinnings of witnessing before. But recently I had a personal experience that made me think about it in a slightly different light.

We have a Nursing Nina toy - a stuffed cat with three kittens, with magnets that let the kittens "latch on" to the mother cat's nipples. It's totally adorable and funny. I had been meaning to share it with my friend who was coming over for a visit, since I thought she would get a kick out of it and, frankly, I wanted to show it off.

The morning of the visit, she called to apologize for being late. One of their dogs had attacked one of their kittens that morning, and she had rushed the broken and bleeding little thing to the vet, only to have it expire in the car. After we got off the phone, and my mind had turned to humdrum house stuff as I tidied up, I came upon Nursing Nina and my first thought was of how cool it is. Then I checked myself and realized of course I'd better put it away to avoid rubbing salt in my friend's wounds.

I think hard-sell witnessers are in part like kids wanting to show of their cool toys, without any regard to the interests or feelings of the people they're showing them to. Even if their intentions are good, there's an underlying self-centeredness that's really off-putting.

Religious Education, Day One

2009-11-16T11:50:00.002-05:00

Cat really loved the RE class at the Unitarian Fellowship. She got to do CRAFTS! That would win her over even at the International Broccoli Tasting Festival.

I'm told they heard the story of The Blind Men and the Elephant, and did crafts, played with puppets, and had a snack. Sounds good to me. I went to the service and found it a bit boring, but I do find the idea of a supportive community somewhat attractive.

We will definitely try it again. No Jesus, no proselytizing for any one point of view - they surely do use a grab bag approach, referencing many different traditions (I noted Jewish, Wiccan, Native American, Buddhist, and Christian references) as sources of ideas, rather than dogma.

Doing something to help

2009-11-13T09:42:00.002-05:00

One of the sucky things about being an atheist is you don't get to feel like you're helping people as often as theists do. For them, hearing about someone's tragedy or difficulty triggers an instant response: "I'll pray for you." Now, a lot of people will do something substantive in addition, but there is a certain danger of complacency in believing that mumbling to your invisible omnipotent friend can have an effect in the real world.

Luckily, just telling someone you're thinking of them, sympathizing, and pulling for them does offer some real solace. So in that respect, whether you say, "I'm praying for you," or "I'm thinking of you," or "Damn, that totally sucks," or "I'll sacrifice an unblemished calf for you," the person hearing it does get some help.

Lately though, I've been lucky enough to be able to help for real: babysitting a friend's daughter for day after the friend's mother died unexpectedly and she had to deal with the logistics of death as well as the emotional load; taking dinner to a friend from my moms' group who almost had to be hospitalized for depression last week, and having her over today so she's out of the house and not isolated.

As hard as it can be (that was one looooong playdate, let me tell you), it feels good to do something substantive to help. And I like to think that my humanism inspires me to do so in two ways: valuing other people, and realizing that there are no magic words that will change their situation.

Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and God

2009-11-12T19:39:00.002-05:00

It was a big freethought day for Cat. First, she watched Bill Nye in class, which is unrelated to the theme of this post, but is cool.

Then evidently she got into a discussion with a classmate about Santa. She won't admit that she told them Santa isn't real - she says she can't remember how it came up - but I have my suspicions. The thing she wanted to tell me was that someone said, "If you don't believe in Santa, you don't believe in God."

I asked what she thought about that, and she paused and said, "I think if you don't believe in Godmother you don't believe in God." "Who is Godmother?" I asked. She said, "I think it must be God's wife." "That makes sense," I responded. Hey, it makes as much sense as Jesus, right?

So finally, she lost a tooth today. So I was jokingly talking about how the tooth fairy couldn't leave her any money until the lights were out and stuff. And then she brought up everything all balled up together in a knot of anxious confusion: "I just hate all made up things!" She said she didn't like made up things that aren't real, and that people write books about them to make people think they're real (I had to agree), and she knows that Santa and the Tooth Fairy and "all the other made up things" (*coughGodcough*) are NOT real, and she doesn't like reading books about made up things.

So I said, "Like Junie B. Jones?" And she had to admit that she liked Junie B. a lot, even though she is made up. Pretty soon we were laughing about how fun it is to pretend Santa is real and wrap up presents for Daddy with a tag that says, "From Santa." And along the way I assured her that she can change her mind about these kinds of things as often as she wants, and it's good to think about them and look at the evidence and try to come to your own conclusions. (Thank you, Dale McGowan!)

I feel glad and proud and anxious and concerned, but most of all I feel ever so grateful that I started researching this freethought parenting thing when I did!

Yay, critical thinking!

2009-11-11T20:39:00.002-05:00

I was proud of Catherine today. She and Eliza just got flu shots, and we were watching Sid the Science Kid on vaccines and how germs get passed along. She asked me about how we get sick from germs, and I described the usual ways. Later in the day she asked, "So, who was the first person to get sick?" What an awesome demonstration of thinking something through!

I tried to explain from an evolutionary standpoint, which is a little complex for her to digest at this point. But the important thing is she was praised for thinking of a great question, and reassured that I would at least try to explain answers to her.

Our religious education schism

2009-11-11T07:42:00.002-05:00

OK, my husband and I are not in a schism. But there are high emotions behind our discussion and negotiation of this subject. One of us wants to begin formal religious education for Catherine at a local church, while the other is not in favor of it.

The funny thing is, we are both atheists.

I think Cat could use some knowledge and grounding in major religions, and that the local Unitarian fellowship (OK maybe it's not, strictly speaking, a church) seems like a great place for it. From my research it seems they don't indoctrinate, except in thoughtful, liberal, caring approaches to life that I agree with. They don't have Big Truths they hammer into the kids' heads like Catholicism. Instead they encourage inquiry and reflection in a personal search for meaning.

From my husband's point of view, there is still danger. Six year olds are consummate conformists, and he suggests that whoever is teaching the classes will have a personal religious belief that they can't help inject in some way. Also, there will be the peer pressure of the other students, most of whom probably believe in some god or other.

Our compromise is this: I care more than he does, so I will take her and we will observe what happens. If, as I suspect, she merely comes home saying we need to cut our carbon footprint, or talking about an ethical dilemma they discussed openly, it won't be a problem. If she starts to spout off about how Jesus is the one true savior, I'll be the first one to yank her from class.

Here's the thing though - if we had to sit down and have a serious discussion about this, negotiate our position, and deal with deep-seated feelings from childhood regarding religious education, what the hell do people in mixed marriages do? How can you overcome an atheist/believer or Jewish/Christian divide?

Abstinence till marriage sex education

2009-11-06T12:44:00.002-05:00

I'd noticed in our school district's literature that part of the health curriculum standards is to teach children to abstain from sex until marriage. This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard, not to mention insulting and morally confusing, considering that about 95% of Americans have premarital sex, and this has held true since the 50s. Also, of course, gays and lesbians get the fuzzy end of the lollipop under this scheme. So much for diversity and tolerance!

Now, thanks to my reading of Raising Freethinkers, I realize that this educational standard is one set by the federal government as a requirement for getting DOE money. Thanks, federal government, for sticking your nose into my bedroom. I'm sure all so-called conservatives think it's great, too!

At least now I know it's futile to mention it at the school board level, so I won't be wasting my time.

I'm attempting to plant the seeds of sassy rebellion in the kids, but as noted in my last post, the time is clearly not ripe. And maybe it never will be. Quite possibly my weirdness (liberal, atheist, lactivist, civil libertarian, hippy-ish type smack dab in the middle of a land filled with SUVs sporting "W" stickers) will be an unending source of eye-rolling mortification to one or both girls. I will have to remember to let them have their own opinions.

Daughter's religion: Ceremonial Deism

2009-10-19T17:20:00.002-05:00

Catherine is in Girl Scouts, and we've discussed the Promise, which in part reads, "I will try to serve God* . . ." That asterisk is in the GSA original, by the way - and it is one reason I'm ever so glad to have only girls. The GSA doesn't discriminate, and they specifically allow for substitution of whatever word works for you there.

So I told Catherine, since we aren't religious and her dad and I don't believe in any gods, maybe she would like to substitute another word there. She told me she does believe in God. So I asked gently what "god" meant to her. She said, "It doesn't mean anything. I mean, it means something, but it doesn't really mean anything." Perhaps someday she'll be a Supreme Court Justice!

Seriously, I'm fine with her just going with the flow for now. She's 6! And I figure I'm better off letting her explore her own ideas than coming down on her just like a fundamentalist Christian would on his kid for doubting the family's beliefs.

Zombie Blog!

2009-10-16T18:57:00.002-05:00

It's been dead for over a year, but what the hell. Let's say cosmic radiation or overbooking in Hell has inspired a return!

Actually, it's more a confluence of life settling down (past year: surgeries! disease! insane levels of volunteer commitments! a toddler!), and a couple occurrences in Catherine's life.

She is now 6. The other day I turned down a request of hers, and she started whining, "Whyyyyyyyyy?" I answered, tongue slightly in cheek, "Because I said so." She immediately answered, "That doesn't make any sense!" I think we're doing something right!

The other thing is Girl Scouts and God, but I'll leave that for the next post - I've got to go bake two dozen chocolate chip cookies and prepare to teach two classes for a workshop tomorrow.

My evangelical friend

2008-08-28T15:36:00.002-05:00

Nope, this isn't some joke. I met someone who I really like - she has a similar personality and a lot of the same interests. Her approach to parenting is very similar to mine. She doesn't suffer fools gladly and has a wry sense of humor. And the other day we were chatting, and she mentioned that she wouldn't ever go to a church that allowed women to be pastors, because it's unbiblical. Needless to say, my jaw dropped. Luckily it was a phone conversation.

The thing that allows us to remain friends (at least so far) is that she makes such judgments about her own life, allowing others to make their own decisions without harassment. She also knows that I'm an atheist, and does not seem fazed. There has been only one reference to this between us. We work in a volunteer organization and wanted to use space at a church for meetings. She wanted my opinion, as a non-Christian, of the proposal letter for this, to be careful she wasn't tainting our secular organization with sectarian bias.

In short, she is cool.

Do I, when I reflect upon it, think it's kind of weird that my down-to-earth, sensible buddy believes in a magical sky spirit that doesn't want women to preach? Of course. No doubt she's a little concerned that such a nice person as I may be unsaved and condemned to hell. But weirdly, it hasn't wrecked our relationship, because we seem to agree to interact on this temporal plane and leave the supernatural out of our interactions.

I wish more people (on both sides) could be like this.

No Possum Zone Exposed as Hypocrisy Zone

2008-08-22T07:22:00.003-05:00

Normally I wouldn't share personal information about people they might find embarrassing. However, there are exceptions when said people boast of their alleged holiness, AND publicly accuse others of impropriety.

So here's the scoop: Tom and Nancy have been smugly accusing PMomma of perversion, immorality, and general sinfulness, while constantly citing their own moral superiority.

But it turns out that they're not so pure after all. Never mind that they had premarital sex, with the baby being born about four months after their wedding. Most of us in the reality-based community don't find that distasteful, though it does expose some hypocrisy. What is troubling is that evidently Nancy has at least once called the police because Tom was violent toward her, (and with her talk of submission one wonders how often he could beat her without her calling for help). They have also apparently been evading paying taxes. Yes, clearly they are a model of Christian morality. (N.B. these tidbits are care of Nancy's sister, erstwhile friend of PMomma, circa 2001. Tom admits to fornication, and implicitly admits the other actions by saying he has been forgiven "about those things.")

But really, there's something else that bothers me. They were pointed to PMomma by an old friend of hers who turned on her and clearly has been stalking her blog looking for revenge. This friend had once been very close and had access to private documents of PMomma's. She betrayed this trust and shared these documents with Tom and Nancy, and they happily complied in the betrayal and splashed private information on the web in an attempt to "get" PMomma. They are so contemptible.

Ezzo - Feeding Philosophies

2008-08-18T06:05:00.006-05:00

Miss Scarlet: Why?!
Wadsworth: To create confusion!
Mrs. Peacock: It worked.

- Clue

Earlier we saw that Babywise attempts to reduce the large array of real parenting options to two polar opposites: Babywise, or anything-goes. As Ezzo embarks on a discussion of feeding babies, he switches to the opposite approach. He flails around wildly in an attempt to make feeding babies seem ridiculously complex and confusing. He works hard to manufacture bewilderment among readers, so the author can then offer a seemingly sensible, clear solution.

"Demand-feeding. Hyperscheduling. Cry feeding. Breastfeeding and bottle. . . . why all the confusion? One reason might be the overabundance of parenting theories. With so many options it is no wonder parents get confused."

It goes on like that, with Ezzo reaching for odd, academic-sounding terms and italicizing them to emphasize their strangeness: demand-feed, demand schedule, self-regulating schedule, natural feeding, hyperscheduling, rigid feeding, cry feeding, responsive feeding, bottle-feeding. Seriously, he italicizes "bottle-feeding" like it's an exotic foreign term. He wraps up the obfuscation triumphantly: "Who can decipher all the terms and techniques?" No one, when you describe them Gary.

I Googled these supposed terms of art. The results were not surprising. "Demand feeding" and "Cue feeding" are treated as synonyms - they are two ways to refer to the same practice. A search for "rigid feeding" turned up some articles about whether to demand feed or feed by a schedule, but the term "rigid feeding" as a separate philosophical approach did not appear. All the other terms failed to return any references to them as feeding philosophies, except in articles quoting Ezzo himself.

Here's the bottom line: the first choice in infant feeding is whether you will nurse exclusively or use formula. The second choice is whether you will feed on demand (looking for baby's hunger cues and responding), or feed the baby on an imposed schedule. And that's pretty much it for choosing between feeding philosophies. Everything else is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. And I trust you remember who tells a tale like that.

So why the huge effort to create confusion? It’s simple – the smoke and mirrors are meant to create the illusion that Ezzo’s approach is a sane middle ground. In reality, Babywise is well known as the most rigid, schedule-driven advice around. To dodge this criticism, Ezzo must create a fantasy landscape of crazy, diverse feeding philosophies in which to situate his approach as a sensible compromise.

It seems I’ve written at least a post’s worth on the very first page of this chapter. I think I’ll save the rest for another post. There’s an awful lot of trickery to unpack in this chapter!

Ominous signs

2008-08-10T19:32:00.002-05:00

Hmm. Last night I dreamed that one of the kids got some new sneakers, and I came slowly to realize that they were evil, and were allowing the devil to possess us. Or something - you know how dream logic works. The weird thing was I started as my normal skeptical self, and got enough evidence to change my worldview on the whole supernatural issue. In the dream I was not only scared because, yanno, The Devil, but freaked out because my universe had been turned upside down. It was really nice to wake up to the real world!

Then today as I returned home from the grocery store, about eight huge crows took flight from my front yard. Is eight an evil number? It might have been more, but it was definitely less than 666.

I'm lucky I'm a rational person. I got a laugh out of this stuff. I know of people who would have taken such events as deadly serious signs of haunting, psychic powers, or demonic possession.

Ezzo Chapter One, Redux

2008-08-02T09:12:00.006-05:00

OK, having dealt with the obvious flawed premises, logical fallacies, and internal contradictions, I promised to unpack the subtext of this chapter as well. Let me start by simply laying out relevant quotes, and see if you follow these to the same conclusion I did.

"The husband-wife union is not just a good first step toward child-rearing. It is a necessary one. Too often, parents lose sight of this fact, getting lost in a parenting wonderland of photos, footsteps, and first words."

"Marriage is unique - totally without parallel. It transcends all other relationships."

"Where the marriage is intact, keeping this relationship a priority is your starting point for successful parenting."

"Too often when a child enters a family, parents leave their first love: each other. The spotlight shifts to illuminate the children, and the marriage gets lost in space."

"Date your spouse. . . . Continue those loving gestures you enjoyed before the baby came along."

See where I'm going with this? And don't for a minute think that Ezzo is concerned equally with each spouse's happiness. It seems very clear to me that these are exhortations to a new mother not to focus too much attention on her new baby, but to make sure she keeps her husband satisfied. See: (emphasis added in all quotes below)

"With child-centered or mother-centered parenting, parents intensely pursue the child's happiness." Seriously, he just throws "mother-centered" parenting in as an equivalent of child-centered parenting, without explanation.

"When you become a mother, you do not stop being a daughter, a sister, a friend, or a wife. Those relationships, which were important before the baby, still must be maintained."

"Date your spouse . . . The baby will not suffer separation anxiety from one night without mom."

"If you buy a special something for baby, select a little gift for your mate as well." Who generally buys items for the baby? Yeah, Mom. Or maybe I should call her Wife.

Oh, and I almost forgot this bizarre statement: "Since infants are entirely dependent on parental care, their dependency creates for new parents a heightened gratification." What the hell? I can only guess, but this seems to be another jab at mothers being "overly involved" with baby care (i.e., taking appropriate care of a newborn), as though properly responding to an infant indicates some pathological need on the part of the mother. If someone can explain this non sequitur, please enlighten me.

I'll just quote here the marginal notes I made when I twigged to all this: "OMG! This is written by a man who feared/resented having his boobies/mother figure taken away. What a weak, fearful, grasping man."

Really. This book seems to have been written by a man so insecure, immature, and petty that he is jealous when his wife buys a present for their baby. So sad. And sadder still that he has conned thousands of people into following his, "NO, I want to be the baby!!!" philosophy, under the guise of responsible parenting.

Am I alone on this fence about PZ Myers?

2008-07-24T19:21:00.004-05:00

In case you haven't heard the howling, PZ Myers has created the greatest stir of his career by soliciting a consecrated host to desecrate.

Now, I agree with every criticism of the Catholic church he makes in that post. I sympathize with his combined puzzlement and contempt for a group of people who somehow believe that the all-powerful creator of the universe becomes a wafer and can thereby be hurt by a puny human being. And by the way, the wafer is literally and truly the body of Christ, semi-human flesh, but it has no features of human flesh. They just know that it is, because, well, it just is.

To anyone outside the fold, this is patent insanity. Even to this confirmed Catholic (I suppose they still count me among their rolls, in fact), looking at it with fresh eyes, it is loopy beyond description. Furthermore, the history of pogroms inspired by fabricated cases of host desecration shows that this is not a silly benign belief, but can easily become full-on homicidal insanity. As do the death threats Myers has received.

So yes, let us skewer these stupid, benighted, harmful, ridiculous beliefs. Let us laugh at the overly earnest "defenders" of Christ's vulnerable flesh. Let us challenge the assertions made by these people and vociferously point out that their claims are contradicted by all evidence.

But, I do think that stealing a consecrated communion wafer is, well, dickish. And probably technically illegal. It seems to me overly inflammatory, and therefore counterproductive. Most people who are cheering PZ on are already on his side in this. People who might be convinceable that Catholicism is crazy bunk, but are not yet convinced, are more likely to be put off by something so intentionally rude. And as we've seen, believers are driven batshit crazy by it.

Actually, though, that brings me back to thinking maybe this was a good thing in that it exposed how dangerously out of their minds many true believers are.

***

By the bye, many critics called PZ out for not targeting the Koran. They imply he is a coward to spit in the eye of the relatively peaceful (i.e., only threatening death, rather than following through) Catholics, while carefully giving Muslims a free pass.

Now PZ himself was not involved, but I'd like to point out that when the Danish Mohammed cartoon debacle occurred, one of the very few publications to reprint the offending cartoons was Free Inquiry, a secular humanist magazine. When it comes to boldly facing up to would-be theocratic thugs, atheists are one of your best bets. Probably because, as PZ points out, we don't request a general "hands off" rule regarding beliefs in order to shelter our own. When you submit your own beliefs to rigorous criticism, you become free to stand up against the faulty beliefs of others.

So, here I am on my fence. Part of me says, "Yeah, go PZ!" and part of me cringes, and part of me raises her eyebrows and says, "Well regardless, the reaction is very illuminating," and I just can't come down anywhere solid. Am I the only person not successfully polarized by this scenario?

Babywise, Chapter One: Your Baby Needs a Family

2008-07-22T13:10:00.006-05:00

First, let me note that Ezzo uses two "examples" of children raised in different ways. I put examples in quotes because they are not real children, just made up characters crafted to support Ezzo's views. Chelsea has the perfect parents according to Ezzo - married, committed, and bound and determined to be her authority figures, not her friends. Marisa, meanwhile, is apparently the daughter of unmarried lesbian democrats who crave her constant approval and dare not thwart her. Got it? Let's proceed.

Ezzo starts by painting all other parenting approaches as ineffectual, naive, and downright stupid: "You think [these parents] are too sweet. Too kind. They all have the best of intentions. If wishes and dreams were bright lights and lollipops, every day would be bliss. But there's much more to parenting than just high hopes."

He then goes on to lay down the prerequisite to parenthood: good old Judeo-Christian marriage. "The husband-wife union is not just a good first step towards child-rearing. It is a necessary one." OK, pretty clear - traditional marriage is absolutely indispensable to good parenting. Except two sentences later, when he tells single parents they can use his method too. OK - marriage is completely vital, except it's not really. I didn't expect things to go off the rails this quickly.

Credit where credit is due, I can see a lot of wisdom in promoting a solid pair-bond in parents to make kids feel secure and prevent excessive anxiety. A stable home is important to kids - not the most profound revelation, but at least he's getting that part right.

Then he says, "To be a good mom or dad, all you need is to continue as before." Seems like he is echoing a sentiment that seems prevalent in our culture - having a baby shouldn't cause even a ripple in your life. Anything a baby does to disrupt your sleep, your schedule, or your leisure time is a problem to be fixed. This is confirmed when he trots "Marisa" out as a bad example. He describes her parents making room for her needs in their lives (not going out for a few months because she doesn't do well with sitters, and not force-feeding her a food she rejects) summing up with, "Welcome to the circus." Yes, these parents have done two things to accommodate their baby - mass chaos will surely ensue!

I'm coming to see that Gary Ezzo is extremely fond of the False Dilemma fallacy. In fact, it appears to be the foundation of all his parenting advice. Follow Babywise, and your child will be secure, cooperative, kind, good, charitable, honest, honorable and respectful. She will be "a joy to have around." Fail to follow Babywise, and instead follow your instincts or "the La Leche League attachment-parenting style" and your parenting will be "disabling . . . emotionally crippling . . . devastating." You will be catering to your child's every whim, making her totally self-centered and selfish for the rest of her life.

Clearly Ezzo is unfamiliar with the actual tenets of attachment parenting, which emphasizes loving guidance, including using authority and behavior modification techniques. Surely there are parents out there who ascribe to a passive, lazy approach, or who consider their little darling a creative genius not to be squelched with the slightest redirection. But these have nothing to do with attachment parenting. More to the point, wherever attachment parenting falls on the continuum, it is patently true that there is a continuum of parenting choices ranging from the very permissive to the very authoritarian. There are a lot of points on the continuum between Ezzo and utter permissiveness, but he refuses to acknowledge them.

All in all, this first chapter paints a picture of an author terrified of losing control. The implication is that one must keep utter mastery of children, from the moment of their birth, or all will be lost and the child will be unruly, selfish, and miserable forever. To him, placing an infant at the center of attention and care in a family, even for a few weeks or months, is a recipe for disaster, never mind how utterly dependent newborns are.

There is another subtext to this chapter, but I'll leave it for a separate post, as this is quite long enough already.

Ezzo ahoy!

2008-07-18T12:51:00.004-05:00

I've obtained a copy of Babywise at the consignment store, and I'm reading the Preface. So far I'm seeing two themes. First, the focus is on results, results, results. And for them "results" means the baby sleeping all night long without any parental intervention, and the mother being well rested. No mention so far of meeting baby's needs, fostering empathy and closeness, or listening to one's mothering instincts. The other focus is on how they are right and everyone else is wrong. La Leche League gets called out specifically, and the tone seems to be, "Go ahead, look at what those other methods get you" - any mother who is stressed or tired, and any child that has any behavioral hiccup must be the result of inferior baby training methods.

For me, the biggest problem will probably be differences in basic assumptions. They assume that babies should sleep all night without any intervention, and that tired parents are the greatest problem to be avoided. I assume that babies are primates who are wired to need parental intervention quite often when young, and that this intervention brings benefits. It also becomes less frequent, on average, as the baby matures, and the key at the beginning is finding strategies to deal with the need for intervention, rather than trying to extinguish the baby's calls for help.

We'll see - I imagine that there will be a substantial amount of advice that I find perfectly reasonable (for instance, I believe the Ezzos promote a pattern of sleep-wake-eat rather than eat-sleep-wake, which coincidentally seems to serve my baby well). But in a way that may make the poor advice more dangerous.

Chapter 1 will be dissected soon . . .

A housekeeping joke

2008-06-28T09:27:00.002-05:00

I've decided to Do The Right Thing and read Babywise before commenting on it. It'll be painful, but I'd like to be able to address it head on, not simply based on excerpts and accounts of failure to thrive cases.

So, for today, I have a joke.

Q: How dirty does a toilet have to be for a man to clean it?
A: Dirty enough that a woman tells him to clean it.

Seriously, this was inspired by my own experience, which was echoed again and again in the comments at Ask Moxie regarding the splitting of household chores. Most people seem able to divide the tangible tasks fairly equitably. However, several women mentioned that they hate having to be the one to coordinate everything. I call it being the general of the household. A poster there called it having to be the Great Oz.

The point is, lots of women wind up de facto coordinator of all household tasks, from diapering the baby to planning the finances. In our house, my husband is willing to do pretty much any task I ask him to do. However, I have to ask him to do it right then - saying, "Can you do X by the end of the month" gets decidedly mixed results. And if I don't ask, it doesn't matter how filthy the house is, he will drift into the study and play computer games until he is summoned to do an assigned task. The other problem I have is that he will do it, but he often makes it very clear that he's not happy that I asked him to do it, sighing or rolling his eyes like a damned teenager. In his view, this is acceptable, as long as he complies with the request, since I couldn't possibly expect him to like doing it. Suffice it to say, I disagree.

So what's the answer? Can we great and powerful wizards of the home at least delegate some of the task delegation? Is is possible to say, "Honey, from now on, you're in charge of noticing when the bathroom needs cleaning"? I don't know. Maybe I'll try it and let you know how it works out.

(For the record, my husband does have regular chores that are all his, like doing our laundry every Sunday, and he's pretty good about doing it without reminding.)

Cry-It-Out Parenting

2008-06-19T11:32:00.003-05:00

Darling Eliza brings to mind this issue. She is even more high-needs than her older sister, and life with her right now is really tough. It reminds me of the t-shirts I've seen that say, "You can't scare me - I'm a mom!" Sleep deprivation, extremely limited ability to get anything done during the day, and either remaining housebound (well, neighborhood-bound) or enduring screaming for the duration of any car trip. It really sucks in many ways. Luckily, I know from personal experience that it ends, and that fussy babies can become lovely little girls. It's just a question of battening down the hatches and doing what it takes to survive these few months, while respecting baby's needs and still allowing the parents some opportunity to catch their breath. In my opinion, having a securely attached child who can trust me and know all her needs will be met (NB: that's not to say in the future all her wants will be met) is well worth the trial by fire at the beginning.

However, many people disagree with this. The mainstream idea in our culture seems to be that babies should not inconvenience their parents too much, that their crying is not vital communication but obnoxious noise pollution to be stamped out, and that babies must be pushed toward independence as soon as possible. Thus, the cry it out advice. And in an exhausted state, many parents latch onto the advice as the holy grail of infant parenting - a way to get some sleep, some chores done, and some peace and quiet. It's understandable why people choose to do this. And it does "work" with many average babies - they give up trying to communicate their needs, or get exhausted, and go to sleep. I just can't bring myself to adhere to this technique when I consider the baby's point of view. Imagine being unable to move out of bed on your own, unable to take care of even your most basic needs, and in a scary, unfamiliar place. You call for your caregiver again and again, with increasing panic. No one comes. Eventually you become exhausted and fall into sleep. I just couldn't do that to my child.

Add in that high-needs/fussy/spirited/intense babies don't stop and fall asleep. They tend to cycle up and up and up, making themselves and everyone around them miserable. And mothers are wired to ache at their babies' crying like that, to intervene and make things better. It's almost as cruel to a mother to tell her she must not respond as it is to the baby. Message board postings about CIO attempts abound with phrases like, "my husband forced me to stay out of the room," "my husband had to hold me down," and of course, "we both cried for an hour."

In addition to all that, there are indications that practicing attachment parenting actually promotes healthier independence in older children, whereas babies left to cry and pushed to grow up tend more toward clinginess. Given that, and that the tough infant times last less than a year in most cases, why would anyone practice "detachment parenting?"

Next post: Ezzo parenting

Gay Marriage

2008-06-06T08:15:00.003-05:00

PMomma reminded me about California's groundbreaking move, and it inspired me to write a little about the subject. First of all, yay, California! In practical terms, I'm all for gay marriage. I don't see how anyone could look at anti-miscegenation laws and the case law striking them down, and then argue that gay marriage can be banned. Just fifty years ago, people were panicking over mixing of the races, and claiming that the definition of marriage meant two people of the same race. Sound familiar?

However, I have to say that I think the government should get out of the marriage game altogether. Those "civil unions" that some fence-sitters advocate? The government should indeed provide civil unions - to everyone! Part of the hysteria over gay marriage is that "marriage" is steeped in religious history. Since it seems impossible to disentangle the word from religious trappings, shouldn't the government keep its hands off entirely? Two people who want to get hitched should be able to go to a government entity and get certified as a couple, in order to ease financial and legal issues. If they also want to get "married," they can do so in the house of worship of their choice. There, now everyone's equal under the law, the government isn't entangled with religion, and the homophobes get to keep their sacred vocab word.

Nice humanist sentiment from Augustana's frontman

2008-05-29T08:14:00.002-05:00

On Weekend Edition last week, I caught part of an interview with Dan Layus, singer/songwriter for the band Augustana. You may know them for their song, Boston, featured on Scrubs.

It turns out the guys in the band went to a private Christian college, and Layus studied Christian music. He has some pretty negative things to say about his sheltered and indoctrinated upbringing. But what really made my heart glow was when host Ari Shapiro asked whether Layus's music retained a "spiritual" element, even though he'd left his Christian education behind.

Now, I detest the word spiritual. I think it's a mush-brained weasel word that basically means someone has rejected organized religion, but is too scared or lazy to examine their fuzzier irrational beliefs, so they slap a positive-sounding label on their mishmash of unfounded suppositions about the supernatural.

Well, here's what Layus said in response: "I have a more positive and realistic place to put it now," Layus says, "which is my wife and my daughter and our music. And writing songs and being able to love my family like that, is more than enough for me."

Pseudonyms for the kids

2008-05-24T07:20:00.002-05:00

I've decided to give the children blognames. So for those wishing to keep track, Kitty is the older girl, about to start kindergarten. Eliza is the younger, only three months old. And why yes, I do like Pride and Prejudice, why do you ask?

Medical Professionals and Breastfeeding Ignorance

2008-05-23T07:11:00.002-05:00

A couple of personal experiences recently that underline why breastfeeding rates in our country are so poor.

First, my husband's aunt came to visit us when our baby was about two months old. About an hour after I'd nursed the baby, she started fussing, and I said, "She's probably hungry." Auntie cried in astonishment, "ALREADY????!!!!" She was also generally uncooperative about handing the baby over to be fed during her whole stay. Guess what Auntie does for a living? She's a labor and delivery nurse.

Second, a PA at our family practice prescribed some medication for me last week. "Since you're nursing, I'll give you a topical treatment, rather than oral medication," she said. The week was not going well - the baby was fussing, and needed me seemingly all the time, but also wouldn't latch on for long. I started to feel my depression coming back with a sudden vengeance - I had quickly lost the ability to take pleasure in anything, and suddenly everything in life seemed overwhelming and unfixable.

Well, when I started having a separate issue with my medication, I looked at the package insert and did some internet research, only to find: a.) blood levels with the topical drug are the same as if you take it orally; b.) it transfers readily into breastmilk; c.) it makes breastmilk TASTE BAD; d.) it can cause depression. Needless to say, I stopped taking it and called the doctor's office. From now on, I'll have to advocate for myself more, and call upon the doctors and pharmacists to look out for these issues.

But imagine, if someone like me, who is very educated and is trained as a breastfeeding counselor, has difficulties along these lines, how devastating this ignorance and lack of support can be to women who are trying to breastfeed, but don't have a lot of knowledge about the subject!

Women as Creduloids

2008-05-12T14:55:00.002-05:00

First, let me give credit to, er, someone at the Straight Dope Message Board for introducing me to the term "creduloid." Brilliant, brilliant word. As you may have gathered, it refers to a person who believes in pseudoscience, magic, psychics, alien abductions, or anything of that stripe.

In my experience, women seem more likely to be creduloids than men. As a group, I find men to tend toward practicality - while they may not all be razor-minded skeptics, they often don't bother with supernatural/paranormal garbage because it doesn't do anything appreciable for them. Women seem to be more likely to be searching for something ethereal to latch onto. Of course these are major generalizations - plenty of women are skeptics, plenty of men are devotees of woo. I'm just talking about average trends.

This phenomenon makes participation in woman-centered groups trying at times. My cloth-diapering message board strays into vaccination hysteria and off-topic stories of hauntings. My breastfeeding group discusses the latest studies and their scientific worth at one moment, then people advocate homeopathy and cranio-sacral therapy the next. Discussions of pregnancy inevitably incorporate talk of astrology and old wives' tales for determining gender.

Then of course there is the issue of religion. While churches are often patriarchal in official structure, I'd say it's often the mothers and wives in the congregations who make sure their families attend and participate in church functions. On the flip side, there is a notorious dearth of female atheists, much to the chagrin of single male unbelievers.

So what's up with this? Are my observations horribly flawed? I'm open to that possibility! Do women tend to be wired for belief more than men? Is it linked somehow to our different approaches to social interaction? I don't pretend to have the answers. All I have is a lot of frustration and embarrassment when I see so many women happily embrace all manner of claptrap.

More preschool theology

2008-04-19T10:25:00.003-05:00

Since the Kid started to talk a lot more about praying to God and Jesus in school, I felt the need to step in a bit and tell her "a big secret" that she's not allowed to tell the teachers or other kids, but I wanted her to know about - that Mommy thinks Jesus and God are just pretend, like Cinderella.

Last week, we were talking about remembering things, and she told me she remembered the secret I'd told her, and she hadn't told anybody. Then she mused out loud about the nature of Jesus and God, and concluded that they are real, but live "on the other side of our planet,"* and that there's a giant gate so we can't go there (the pearly gates maybe?). She also recounted some of the Easter story, though she was most focused on the "the lady and her sweet little daughters" who approached the tomb, and the fact that Jesus was alive after all (no mention of actual resurrection).

In other news, she went to play at the neighbor's, and afterward told me that one of their dogs had gone on an airplane. At first I thought she meant they'd taken him on a family trip. But then she elaborated that he was up on a plane, and would be flying around forever, and couldn't ever come home. Now, I haven't asked them, but I'm guessing that they told her that the dog is "up in heaven," and she parsed that using her materialistic context. She is still sad though, that the dog can never come home - and that's the upshot of death, isn't it?

*That's also where the dinosaurs live, per other conversations.

Interesting art incorporating breastfeeding

2008-04-16T09:21:00.003-05:00

Sadly I can't find a very good image of the photograph, but Kate Kelly just won an award for a photo riffing on the madonna and child motif, called All Things To All People. She says it was party inspired by obnoxious comments against breastfeeding in public.

It looks to me like the subject is wearing a business suit, and has a sexy black lace bra showing, which also happens to be a nursing bra. So I guess a woman is expected to earn a degree and get a high powered job, look gorgeous and sexually enticing, and be the perfect mother, all at the same time.

Interesting . . . I can't see a wedding ring on her finger. Kathy Dettwyler has observed that ads in parenting magazines regularly show bottle-feeding women wearing rings, and breastfeeding women without them.

Nursing "discreetly"

2008-04-14T10:29:00.002-05:00

This is one of those concepts that seems on its face to be supportive of breastfeeding, but in reality smuggles in a lot of negativity, much like "Breast is best."

I must admit, I'm a bit torn on this subject. Many women feel very uncomfortable nursing in public, and worry a lot that someone will see their breasts. And I don't want to discourage these women from nursing in public in whatever way makes it possible. If someone feels she needs a shawl or other cover to go over the baby and her breast, I don't want to tell her she shouldn't use one. Especially since being unable to nurse in public is very likely to lead to early weaning or supplementation with formula, since mothers in our culture definitely need to do a lot of running around: errands, shopping, school activities for older children, and so on.

However, I think I may safely target those who offer advice to women along these lines: "Of course you should breastfeed! And if you need to do it in public, there are ways to do it discreetly." Or, "You're going to nurse? Great! You'll need lots of nursing tops, and this nursing wrap, and a pump and bottles so you can use a bottle when you're out." The surface message is that you should breastfeed your baby, but the subtext is that nursing is dirty, shameful, and abnormal, and must be hidden.

In addition, sending the message that one needs to buy lots of paraphernalia to nurse puts impediments in the way of nursing. You know what you need to nurse? A baby and a boob. Even one will do! Now of course it's nice to have some nursing gear (and a pump and bottles are very important if employed mothers want to exclusively use breastmilk), but it is not necessary, and it should not be pushed as a way to hide what you're doing!

Nursing is normal. It is not sexual. It is feeding a baby, and there is no need to push women to hide that they are feeding their babies.

So I say, if you are bold, if you are not shy, please go out and nurse indiscreetly! The more of us who do so, the more likely our daughters will live in a society that accepts breastfeeding as normal, and looks on nursing shawls and scurrying to the restroom to nurse as quaint artifacts of the olden days.

Horton Gets Expelled?

2008-04-02T12:46:00.004-05:00

(See Expelled for a treatment of this really dumb creationist movie.)

So we went to see Horton Hears a Who, and it was surprisingly good. The Kid and I enjoyed it, and it was some nice time away from the Interloper - er, baby for my daughter.

There was one point when I was a little worried about the underlying message, however. I'm all for "a person's a person, no matter how small," and the idea that every person can make a difference. Very humanistic ideas, those. But I squirmed a bit when the arrogant, controlling kangaroo insisted that Horton not teach his students about his idea that there was an invisible world on his speck, inhabited by undetectable (to anyone but him) people. The kangaroo haughtily insisted that without evidence, Horton could not teach the existence of Whos, and pursued the issue to the point of using main force to prevent him from doing so, and indeed of trying to destroy the touchstone of his wild theory. I think you'll see where I'm going here.

I doubt the writers had any intention of presenting a creationism parable here. We all know that Horton is indeed correct, and in the end he is able to prove the existence of the Whos, even to a contrite kangaroo. But it's still troubling that from The X-Files to kids' movies, our culture tends to paint skeptics and scientists as the bad guys, while dreamers and believers are always seen as heroes.

Hmm, maybe Someone is upset with me

2008-04-01T15:25:00.003-05:00

Though I think it's more likely to be Eris, Loki, or Anansi than Yahweh, given that the events are annoying and stressful, yet decidedly lacking in murder, rape, and grievous bodily harm.

The baby seems to have colic - an odious and stupid diagnosis which means simply, "Your baby cries all the time and we doctors don't know why." On Sunday the Kid came down with a cold. Not a proper, lying on the couch with no energy watching cartoons cold, but a snotty nose that makes taking her to daycare unethical, while still allowing her to bounce around the room saying, "MOM, watch this!" ten thousand times an hour.

Then yesterday I went into the garage and wondered idly why my car's windshield was wet, when it was raining, you know, outside. Then I remembered those shingles that blew off the roof last week. The upshot - thank goodness it didn't leak into the house proper, but the garage ceiling may be toast, and the roofer can't work on the leak this week because it's supposed to rain every day. This, during a severe drought. You see why I suspect a trickster god, don't you?

So later that day I was surfing the web and my computer locked up. Turns out my hard drive is toast, the partition didn't work and everything is corrupted, and thank goodness I have an awesome and intelligent husband who has managed to resurrect most of my data, but I am currently using the Kid's computer to post while he works on things.

I better wrap this up so I can go sacrifice a chicken to whoever.

A pop culture hymn

2008-03-19T10:01:00.002-05:00

So the kidlet has been in YMCA preschool since September, and just as in daycare, they have taught them Christian stuff. However, without the background and support of a Christian household, it is interesting how this knowledge gets integrated into her experience. I think she thinks Jesus is either a regular person, or a character in a story, and that's all. She was telling me a story the other day about a friend taking someone's balloon and giving it to Jesus, and how that wasn't nice, and you shouldn't give other people's things away.

They also say grace before snack time every day, but the teacher tries to make it "fun," for instance by using the Superman theme song tune:

Thank you God, for giving us food
Thank you God, for giving us food
And we praise you
And we praise you
For giving us food

(She's not much of a poet, IMHO)

Last week, the Kid laid this one on me, as a bedtime song:

Thank you God, for giving us food
Thank you God . . .
Barbie, Barbie, Barbie, Barbie!
Ninja Warrior, Ninja Warrior,
Aww-man, Aww-man

And to think, I was worried she would be indoctrinated!

OK I'm back!

2008-03-17T11:42:00.003-05:00

We have our new baby, she occasionally sleeps, and I reckon it's time to post some new stuff here. Of course she's waking up right now, so I think I'll have to wait to post actual content.

But yes, I'm still alive, and so is the blog!

The First Church of Swiper the Fox

2007-08-24T08:16:00.001-05:00

Interesting things happen when you live in a religious culture, but have not yet educated your young child about religion.

The Tot attends daycare at our local YMCA while I exercise. I have struggled a bit with my feelings toward the Y, mostly because they have lots of propaganda festooning the walls. Which makes sense, since their mission is "To put Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all." But really, except for the Christian banners, they seem much more focused on building healthy bodies and minds than the other stuff. So I've decided the whole package of benefits they offer more than counterbalances the Christian themes.

Anyway, as she sometimes does, the Tot was singing snippets of a song she heard that day. I couldn't really make sense of it at first, but then I realized it was some insipid religious song she must have picked up at the Y. ("Thank You for the puppies" is the line that stays with me.) Then I realized she was singing this refrain:

"Aw-w-Man, Aw-w-Man."

Well, it makes sense, right? She referred the phonemes back to something with which she is familiar. And since she's never been taught to pray at home, the closest match was Swiper's catchphrase.

This makes me feel a lot more comfortable about her being exposed to Christian ideas and rituals. It's going to happen, and the idea tends to make me nervous. However, this incident makes clear that the parental influence is a real determining force in how children interpret new ideas. Since she's going to the Y for preschool too, I'm sure there will be some great teaching moments when she comes home to ask me what the heck the teachers are talking about, and (in the words of Oolon Colluphid) just who is this God person anyway? And I also realize sometimes she'll just sit and listen to the story of Noah (the ark, not the naked drunkenness, presumably) or whatever, and interpret it as a fictional story like many others, without any further intervention from me.

But I am starting to wonder if one day she'll come home and ask, "Hey, why is everyone at the Y so crazy about Cheez-Its?"

Okay, let's say a fetus IS a person

2007-08-22T13:40:00.001-05:00

I still think abortion should be legal. Now, I don't happen to believe that a fetus is a person - for me that hinges mostly on cognitive capacity, rather than DNA or "living" status, or obviously on what the Bible supposedly says. But for the sake of argument, let's grant that the fetus is a "person," a fully fledged human being with the rights and protections of an independent adult.

I still think abortion is perfectly justifiable. That is because it is perfectly justifiable to kill a fully fledged adult human being, under certain circumstances. And those circumstances are always present in a pregnancy. If someone is threatening you with imminent, severe bodily harm, you are allowed to kill them. Even if they are not mentally competent, and even if they aren't trying to kill you. I think in pretty much every U.S. jurisdiction, deadly force would be justifiable to prevent an assailant from forcibly inserting a large object into the victim's vagina.

It is true that this assault is not imminent at the point most abortions occur - it is still months away. However, the situations are analogous, because there is no opportunity to avoid the assault other than by use of deadly force. In an attempted rape, you can kill the attacker if you have no reasonable ability to obtain protection by retreating or contacting law enforcement. Likewise, it is justifiable to kill a fetus because you have no reasonable ability to prevent significant bodily harm in any other way.

So, there we are. I don't see how anyone could accept killing an insane rapist in self defense, while simultaneously arguing that abortion should be illegal. Perhaps some people are truly so pro-life (across the board) that they would object to killing a mad attacker in self defense. But I'm guessing that position is rare.

Some additional thoughts on Christians and stupidity

2007-08-13T07:10:00.000-05:00

Overnight I thought of a couple more reasons why atheists may latch on to the "Christians are stupid" idea.

First, it is true that atheism is associated with higher levels of education. And people with PhDs and professional degrees are typically thought of as smart. Also considered smart are leading scientists, such as members of the National Academy of Sciences (in 1998, a survey found a measly 7-8% believed in a god or immortality of the human soul).

Second, in an effort to convince others through logical means of beliefs not arrived at by logic, believers (the majority of whom are Christians in this country) will spout some astoundingly retarded statements, such as:

"The second law of thermal dynamics proves that evolution can't be true."
"God must exist, because if he didn't, then there wouldn't be a God to disbelieve in, in the first place."
"It was a miracle that Ms.Guided was the sole survivor when the plane carrying 100 people crashed into the ground."

(All of these come from merely the first page of this thread, which, granted, contains items that are simply weird or which espouse standard tenets of faith, but many of which are shockingly stupid, jaw-droppingly cruel, or both.)

Third, Christianity often encourages ignorance and anti-intellectualism. Sure, there are a lot of mainstream, liberal Christians who pursue knowledge with vigor. But the closer you get to literalist, fundamentalist belief, the further you tend to get from honest inquiry and well-rounded education. Most obvious are evolution deniers, who must wall off most of modern biology from their brains. Interestingly, reading Bart Ehrman led me to the realization that Real True Christians are carefully hamstrung even in studying the Bible. It's only "safe" to do so under proper conditions, or (like Ehrman) you might find yourself losing your tenuous grasp on fundamentalism and realizing, whether you like it or not, that the Holy Bible is an error-prone work of man.

On this third note, I leave you with a quote from Martin Luther, the "great reformer" and founder of Protestantism: "Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason."

Why we atheists think Christians are so stupid

2007-08-12T10:20:00.001-05:00

That ^ is irony, for the impaired among you.

First, let's talk about the idea that atheists think religious people in general are stupid. I actually think there is something to this criticism of atheists. Many don't fall into this trap, but I have come upon the meme often enough that I don't deny it is prevalent. The mistake people are making is in confusing a selective, compartmentalized rejection of rationality with stupidity. It is abundantly clear that manymany intelligent, otherwise reasonable people turn off their critical thinking when it comes to religion. I don't think this detracts from their intelligence, merely from their rationality. And yes, intelligence and rationality are often treated as synonyms, or at least closely linked, in our culture, so it's understandable that people conflate them.

In fact, if you are religious and reading this, you probably bristled when I accused you of being irrational. Generally rationality is highly prized, and you probably protested in your head that you're very rational. Perhaps you even defend your religion as a rational conclusion, pointing to various apologetics. However, if any facet of your religion requires faith, (in the "belief regardless of evidence" sense), you are rejecting rationality. I don't dispute that in every other facet of life, you may be highly rational, and I don't think you're stupid.

But when someone rejects standard methods of discovering truth, and embraces beliefs pretty much just because they feel good, it is understandable that someone who doesn't share this propensity is going to feel a gut reaction that the person is stupid, or crazy, or both. Sometimes it's hard to get beyond that gut reaction to the empirical truth that lots of intelligent people are religious.

As a thought experiment, imagine some belief you consider total, obvious codswallop - whose roots and causes are clear to you as mistakes of observation or well-known foibles of human perception. Perhaps alien abduction stories, the healing power of crystals, astrology, or bigfoot sightings. Now, don't you just have a visceral reaction along the lines of, "How could anyone believe THAT? How could someone be so blind as to what is actually going on?" If you know a believer in this stuff who is otherwise bright and sane, don't you boggle at how they can carry both of these personality aspects in the same brain? That mystified disbelief is just how your atheist friends feel about you!

The second issue here is that Christians seem to feel that atheists unfairly target them, above all other religions. Some Christians complain that we're not anti-religious, objecting to irrational beliefs whatever their form, but that we seem to be gunning for Christianity and ignoring Islam, Hinduism, Wicca, Jainism, and so on. Perhaps it's just the natural tunnel vision we're all subject to falling into. Perhaps it's that Christianity teaches a lot about how its practitioners have been persecuted. But take a step back and realize that English-speaking atheists seem to focus on Christians because that is who surrounds us! 85% of the U.S. self-identifies as Christian. Christianity is the established state religion of Britain. The people trying to inject their religious beliefs into the schools, politics, and laws of my country are certainly always Christian, in my experience. Trust me, if the Wiccans mount a campaign to teach that the Goddess gave birth to her consort the Horned God in public school science classes, we'd go after them with equal gusto. If Buddhists smugly proclaimed from campaign platforms that those without Enlightenment were obviously incapable of morality, we'd be writing invective against them too. It's nothing personal - you're the most powerful people out there right now. Sorry.

Stuff Ma Ingalls never had to worry about - Please Comment!

2007-07-31T16:30:00.000-05:00

So, I have this love-hate relationship with Ma Ingalls. Many will recognize her as the mom from Little House on the Prairie on TV, some will know her from the series of books written by her daughter, Laura Ingalls Wilder. They are great books - both entertaining and educational.

Now, I love Ma because she seems to exemplify a lot of qualities I'd like to cultivate. She was loving, protective, artistic, thrifty, and a good cook. But I hate Ma because she makes me feel monumentally inadequate. I mean, as a modern woman with tons of technology at my fingertips, only one child to mind, and a plethora of convenience items, I should be able to keep things in order, right? I don't have to cook in a woodstove, try to keep a dirt floor swept, or make my own butter and cheese. I have not only a vacuum, but a robot vacuum, for Chrissakes! So why is my floor covered in crumbs? If Ma could do it all, why on Earth can't I?

So I've been re-reading the books, and I'm starting to realize that perhaps my job is not so terribly easier than hers. So I'm starting a list of things Ma didn't have to worry about. First, let's look at a typical day, reconstructed from my reading so far.

Wake up. Take off nightgown, put on dress and shoes, make bed (sans decorative pillows, chenille throws, etc.). Most likely Pa built the fire, so next step is to make breakfast, probably biscuits, molasses, tea, and maybe some salt pork. Wash dishes (no need to sanitize). Daily work probably included gardening, sweeping (a very small house), and possibly taking care of animals, though Pa would probably do that. If there was a baby, I'm guessing diapers needed washing daily. Dinner was the main meal, in the middle of the day - meat, cornbread, molasses or fruit/preserves, vegetables if they were in season. Clean up dishes again. Each day of the week had its own chore as follows:
Wash on Monday,
Iron on Tuesday,
Mend on Wednesday,
Churn on Thursday,
Clean on Friday,
Bake on Saturday,
Rest on Sunday.
Washing was probably the biggest chore, being done by hand, and presumably including all clothing and linens. But again, "all clothing" was a few items per person. Supper was small - basically starch with flavorings: bread with molasses, cornmeal mush with pumpkin puree, that kind of thing. After cleaning supper dishes, Ma would do handicrafts like knitting or quilting. There does not seem to be a separate "child care" category - either the kids were entertaining themselves in the attic or outdoors, or they were working with Ma, from making their bed in the morning to helping churn the butter or washing dishes.

So, OK, Ma was definitely no slouch. There's a lot of hard work in there, much of it hard physical labor.

But let's think of all the crap we deal with that Ma never had to concern herself with:

Bathing daily - baths were on Saturday night only
Armpit sweat, "feminine odor," bad breath, shaving
Going to the gym because exercise is lacking from daily work
Maintaining a wardrobe - everything from dresses to underwear were changed/washed less often
Fashion sure, there were trends, but it's not like now when each season changes radically
Hairstyling - brush and braid, that's pretty much it
Grocery shopping
Driving to and fro generally - some modern mothers practically live in the car
Car maintenance
Home maintenance
Outside employment
Getting the kids to school
Kids' extracurricular activities
Paying bills
Getting the mail
Sorting through the junk mail
Filing and other paperwork
Answering the phone
Checkups at the doctor
Vaccinations (I'm grateful mind you, but it is another thing to deal with)
Entertaining children who have no siblings close in age
Stimulating kids' minds so they can be supergeniuses and get into the good preschool
College loans
Updating her blog ;)

OK, that's a good start. Tell me if you come up with some others. Gotta go entertain the child . . .

A little example of faith versus science - in an unexpected place

2007-07-28T15:20:00.001-05:00

This is not a post about religion at all. It is about warring approaches within the field of medicine. Specifically, how we in the U.S. deal with birth.

There are two layers of faith involved. First, and more obviously, is the faith people have in doctors. Sure, one should "have faith" in one's doctor in the sense of feeling trust and believing that the doctor knows what they're doing - the sense of "having faith" that refers to trust or dependability based on prior observation and evidence. However, (and yes, it was the homeopathy discussion that prompted this) many people seem to "have faith" in a more religious sense, i.e., they believe doctors are infallible authority figures, and promptly turn their critical thinking and confidence off when in one's presence.

The second layer is even more disturbing, especially combined with the first. In the field of obstetrics at least, doctors practice medicine by faith. And I mean "faith" in the full-on "believing things contrary to evidence, and stopping your ears and singing 'lalalaIcan'thearyou' when presented with such evidence" way. It all starts out very reasonably - giving birth is an uncomfortable, sometimes painful experience. It would be nice to alleviate the discomfort. Also, sometimes moms and/or babies are injured or even die during the process. It would be terrific if we could prevent that.

To this situation, add new technology. For instance, electronic fetal monitoring. It makes perfect, rational sense that EFM, which allows doctors to constantly monitor fetal heart rate during labor, would improve outcomes for babies. Babies that might have suffered hypoxia and brain damage or even death during labor could be identified and quickly rescued via c-section. All of this is perfectly reasonable, and I agree with the reasons EFM came into use. Of course at that time, there was no research available on actual outcomes with EFM - doctors went on logical deduction that it would be helpful.

Except, once research was done, it became clear that EFM is associated with poorer outcomes for mother and baby. The main reasons seem to be twofold - first, having constant information on heart rate means a very high "false positive" incidence for fetal distress. Scientific study indicates that intermittent readings with a hand-held doppler device actually result in more healthy moms and babies, perhaps because troubling trends that can be identified with this method are much more likely to be indicative of real trouble, versus isolated decelerations that are picked up by the always-vigilant EFM.

The other big factor is that EFM requires the mother to be lying in bed, stationary, so she can be strapped to the machine. As far as I know, every single study of labor and delivery has found better outcomes when mothers can stand, squat, walk, and otherwise remain upright and move around. Looking at the mechanics of birth, this makes perfect sense.

The story is similar for many other technological interventions - from epidurals to inductions to ultrasound estimates of size, it would seem that the innovation would improve birth outcomes, but they actually result in lots of pain, fear, and unnecessary surgery, injury and side effects to mothers and babies, and often disruption of breastfeeding, which has ill effects for both as well.

So it makes me cringe when I hear mothers blithely say, "Oh, my doctor said this is a big baby, so I have to be induced next week," or "Why wouldn't I get an epidural - the doctor says it's perfectly safe!" These people are handing over their intellect to a person who is a product of a system that rejects evidence-based practice in favor of authoritarian received wisdom and perceived infallibility.

Gee, that reminds me of something.

A Harry Potter Sabbath

2007-07-20T07:41:00.000-05:00

I'm gearing up today - getting the shopping done, cooking dinner for tonight and tomorrow, tidying the house, and so forth. I probably won't drive my car tomorrow. I won't be refraining from microwaving the pre-prepared dinner, nor agonizing over whether opening the fridge door (and thus turning on the light) is allowed, thank goodness. But truly, I'm trying to set things up so I don't have to do any work tomorrow. My husband (in respectful recognition of this holy day) will be taking our daughter out of the house to play, and I will be planting my rear on the couch until I find out if Snape is really evil, and whether Harry gets to talk to Dumbledore and Sirius one more time.

Happy reading!

Nancy Leigh DeMoss embraces moral relativism - hurray!

2007-07-12T15:51:00.000-05:00

Some days I really enjoy listening to Christian radio. Sometimes it's good for a laugh, sometimes it provides some cathartic recreational outrage, and sometimes it even reminds me that I'm not so terribly different from the people who listen in earnest.

Today was more of a laugh-providing day, as I heard a major figure in a literalist ministry explicitly advocate reading the Bible figuratively, in the context of a moral relativist philosophy.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss is evidently a very popular preacher among women, and it is clear why. In listening to her, I hear a great gentleness in her voice. She seems to have a lot of sympathy for the practical struggles women have in marriage and motherhood in particular. She mines the Bible for material which she weaves into inspirational, consoling messages about how to cope with stresses common to women in traditional roles. Note I said "mines" and "weaves." It seems apparent to me that she gets an idea for a nice message, then uses bits and pieces of scripture to support it. One wonders why this is necessary - presumably the omnipotent creator of the universe could have made the messages apparent on a simple reading of a single story, but even the hardcore Christians often have trouble with that approach.

Today's teaching was about the Book of Ruth. From listening, then doing a quick Wiki perusal, I gather that Ruth was the daughter-in-law of Naomi, they both became widowed, and they lost their family property and were pretty much destitute. DeMoss talks about how Ruth's request for protection from a strong family member mirrors the sinner's relationship with Jesus as savior. I guess that sounds nice enough, if you buy the premises. But here's where it gets interesting.

Before delving into further details, Nancy says,

As we enter into verse two, we’re going to see a scene that will sound a little strange to our modern ears, because it’s going to draw upon some ancient Jewish culture that is Jewish, and that is ancient culture that most of us are not familiar with.
If the things that took place in this chapter happened today, they might not be appropriate. They would be out of the realm of what would be right. But in this context they’re going to be absolutely appropriate.

Hmm, that sounds like moral relativism to me! Not to mention that it implies the Bible is not a clear catalog of directives for living a moral life, but at best some parts of it are literal directives, and others are merely educational or inspirational stories, not meant as instructions on how to live a moral life. And how one decides which is which? It's not mentioned, but it seems clear that modern secular moral thought is the guiding principle.

See, the reason she falls all over herself to exempt the story from literal moral education is that it basically involves a woman offering her daughter-in-law as a piece of chattel to a male relative, so that her husband's estate will remain in the family. Naomi directs Ruth to wash and perfume herself, and wear her best clothes, "to prepare herself as a bride prepares for marriage," in DeMoss's words, and to lie down at Boaz's feet in his sleeping place, and to do whatever he tells her when he wakes up. Yeah, I can see how you wouldn't want to model this behavior for modern women and their daughters. I guess in the end Boaz refrains from just screwing Ruth there on the threshing floor, but it seems motivated out of concern for another (male of course) relative's possible superior claim to her. In any case, it's clear what Naomi was setting Ruth up for, and it rightly makes DeMoss squeamish.

Don't get me wrong here - I'm always glad when modern religionists twist their teachings to conform to more enlightened morals. However, I can't help sniggering a bit when this teaching comes so overtly from the agent of an organization which states that

We believe that the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is God's authoritative, inspired Word. It is without error in all its teachings, including creation, history, its own origins, and salvation. It is the supreme and final authority in all matters of belief and conduct.

Homeopathy, a/k/a "Placebos"

2007-07-01T06:20:00.000-05:00

I hate to impugn my sex and my job, but damn, hanging out with moms can be a skeptic's nightmare. Especially moms who are a little crunchy and into breastfeeding. For some reason, this set has a LOT of believers in homeopathy. Not to be confused with "holistic medicine," which may be associated with a lot of bunk, but not necessarily, as it can just mean treating the whole person, involving psychology in medical treatment and such.

No, homeopathy, is uniquely, demonstrably, bullshit. It is not based on any science, but on magical thinking. It is allowed by the FDA because a bigtime homeopathic practitioner was involved in the legislation founding the FDA, not because of scientific merit. The "remedies" have no active ingredients - and this is touted as making them especially effective! What happens when people get relief by taking them is so well-documented, it is accounted for in any reputable drug trial: the placebo effect. You take it (or give it to your kid), and your perception of the situation changes due to your expectations. It's like the Tinkerbell of the medical world - if you truly believe, and clap your hands, magic can be real!

And yet intelligent women, women who can rattle off the latest study on iron absorption in the newborn gut or the current research on the risks and benefits of continuous fetal monitoring, have somehow missed all the information on what utter tripe homeopathy is. It drives me so nuts, I want to stomp and scream!

Maybe it's a lost cause - a lot of them use chiropractors as their family "doctors" too. Sigh.

Christianity - I just don't get it

2007-06-25T13:58:00.000-05:00

On a message board I frequent, there was a recent question, "What is your main beef with Christianity?" I thought about all the problems I have with Christianity (which is not to say Christians, btw). The attitudes about sex and gender. Strings-attached missionary work. Celebration of ignorance and irrationality. And probably several dozen more.

But the main problem I have is that, at its heart, Christianity makes no sense. God is infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient. Moreover, He is good. And He knowingly (by definition) created the world, and people, in such a way that people would be "sinful" and "deserve" to go to hell. Then after a few thousand years (if we're taking it literally) He decided to make part of Himself into his own son, send the son to Earth, and torture the son to death in a kind of goat sacrifice writ large, in order to pay the penalty for everyone's sins (or at least everyone who came after that time, it's not clear). But maybe not everyone's sins. Apart from the Universalists, most sects seem to think people need to say some magic words, or do proper rituals, or even do good works and be a good person (I can hear the Evangelicals gasping), in order to take advantage of this limited time offer.

Frankly, that is nonsensical. If God were omnipotent and good, He would have just made the world properly in the first place. And what could possibly be constraining God so that a blood sacrifice would be required for forgiveness? Even the beloved C.S. Lewis had to resort to a "deep, old magic" that had power over Aslan and required his sacrifice.

This story makes perfect sense from an anthropological point of view, as a permutation of traditions and beliefs of a nomadic people who originally believed that their god required sacrifices of everything from grain to fatted calves to innocent children ("Woops, just kidding!"). As a description of the actual reality of the universe, it fails right out of the gate at internal consistency and logic, without ever getting to pesky issues of evidence.

Behold! A comment!

2007-06-24T07:53:00.000-05:00

It was very nice of Rachel to drop by and leave a comment, and how do I repay her? With total neglect of the blog for weeks on end! Sorry, Rachel - hopefully you will persevere and see I've finally got new content. Such as it is.

I've got an excuse for my slackness, however - I've just found out I'm pregnant, which is a big relief, because I was starting to wonder what the hell was wrong with me. Sleeping all the time, feeling vaguely nauseated, and just not right - I was reminded of my bout of mono in college.

Oh dear, the Tot is demanding I read Beauty and the Beast with her. More later!

Dueling Bible Quotes

2007-05-04T09:24:00.000-05:00

"I tell you that even so there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance." Luke 15:7

"As it is written, 'There is no one righteous; no, not one.'" - Romans 3:10

This one goes out to the ones who love

2007-04-23T18:58:00.000-05:00

Listening to Christian radio today, I heard them exhorting people to share the gospel at their workplaces, at their schools, to (blurg) "reclaim them for Christ." And I got to thinking about why Christians sharing their faith are so astoundingly obnoxious. You know, not people who matter-of-factly acknowledge their Christianity, and try to live well to teach by example. We're talking about people who feel they must Witness to you. I think we can all agree they are astoundingly obnoxious, even many of the witnessers themselves, if the Christian literature urging people to overcome their reticence about it is any indication.

So I thought, honestly, if people are genuinely trying to share something with you, something they believe to be the key to everlasting joy, why is it so freaking irritating? I mean, it's an offer, isn't it? It's something generous, right?

Except, maybe it isn't. Maybe the reason these interactions are so annoying is that they mirror the obnoxious door-to-door salesman far too much. The guy who knocks on your door (or calls during dinner) and tells you he has a fabulous offer for you. Who will. not. admit. that he is selling something. Perhaps we are getting the sense that underlying that surface generosity is nothing more than selfish opportunism.

Not that it's conscious on the proselytizer's part, heavens no. See, I think a lot of this febrile witnessing, this obsession with the Great Commission, is an attempt to prop up faith. I think maybe a lot of people have questions and doubts, and part of making that go away is bringing in new believers. If you can convince ten new people to believe, why, that must mean that your beliefs are true! It also gives you something to concentrate on besides pondering the real posers like the Problem of Evil, while also projecting your own doubts onto someone else, and taking a purely adversarial position toward such doubts: armed with predigested apologetics, witnesses assume the truth of their position, and use every trick to turn the arguments of the target. Much more comfortable than actually thinking about the questions. And if you fail, it's not because the faith is utter codswallop, rather it feeds the tempting idea that you're part of a persecuted group.

No wonder people get rude when a co-worker asks if they have a personal relationship with Jesus, or strip naked to greet the Mormon missionaries. We're sussing out the subtext of the message. On the surface, it is, "I love you, let me share this gift with you," but underneath it's clear: "I don't see you as a person, as an end in yourself, but merely as a means to prop up my own beliefs and prove my worth." No wonder people get offended. At least the salesman on your doorstep, however insufferable, is offering a good or service. Christian proselytizers really just want something for nothing.

Dueling Bible Quotes

2007-03-19T13:44:00.000-05:00

I'm watching this nice piece from Nick Gisburne (disclosure: it's mostly quite sedate, but ends up with "Fuck off, God," so maybe not so safe for work), and it reminded me that at the YMCA we belong to, they have a whiteboard featuring bible quotes. A certain quote will be up for a few weeks, then it'll change. And I always have a totally evil impulse to sneak up and write a contradictory passage underneath it. Of course, I would never actually do such a thing.

But this is my turf, so let's make it a feature. Whenever they put a new one up, I'll post a response.

Current quote: "For with God nothing shall be impossible." Luke 1:37

This is almost too easy: ""And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." Judges 1:19

They don't believe what they believe they believe

2007-03-19T10:41:00.000-05:00

A year or two ago I read a short article, I believe in Free Inquiry, regarding what people say they believe, versus what their other beliefs and actions reveal. And it showed that people often seem to genuinely think they hold a belief, yet everything except their subjective assertion indicates that they don't.

I think religion is rife with examples, probably because it encourages compartmentalized thinking, avoiding inquiry, and denying dissonance. For instance, most Christians seem to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient god. Whether you're a hardcore Pentecostal or a cafeteria Catholic, that is a pretty basic shared belief. Also nearly universal is petitionary prayer. Tell your friends and family that you have cancer, and most of them will tell you that they will pray for you. People pray for huge things like an end to war, and ridiculously minor things like finding their car keys. There's a show on the local Christian radio station that is just a laundry list reading of prayer requests: "A woman in Greensboro prays that her swollen foot be healed . . . A man asks that his daughter find God . . ."

So my question is, how can you simultaneously believe that God knows everything that has and will happen, and knows the contents of your every thought, that He has a plan, that His will is not to be questioned . . . and then ask him to cure your psoriasis? Presumably He gave you the psoriasis, knowing full well how torturous it would be, and how much you would wish it gone. Indeed, He knew you would beg for relief, yet went ahead and caused it anyway. It makes no sense to ask for HIS WILL to be undone, given the omniscient/omnipotent/has a plan meme.

Another example struck me this weekend while listening to another Christian station (yes, I am a skeptomasochist). The preacher was going on about how people essentially choose to go to hell. If someone has heard the gospel, yet does not believe, that person is culpable and will go to hell. He strongly stressed that if you go to hell, it's your fault. But of course, this is in the context of a religion that believes that one omnipotent god created all of us, deliberately (since He knew Adam and Eve couldn't avoid sinning) to be inherently evil, vile, and irredeemable sinners. So how again is it our fault? We're created flawed, condemned for those flaws, and if we fail to say some magic words or lack the ability to believe in "things not seen" we get eternal torture? It makes no sense, unless you're discussing Original Sin and the crucifixion in one speech, and in an entirely unrelated speech discussing how we humans are really all to blame if we make the wrong choices. Then it seems it's easy to forget about the glaring inconsistency.

I'm not saying I'm immune to thinking I believe something and then acting to the contrary, or holding contradictory beliefs. However, I welcome being made aware of such inconsistencies. I like to examine my positions and modify them when presented with appropriate evidence. As Adam Savage said recently on Mythbusters, "I've been proved totally and completely wrong - I love it!"

The Vagina Moronologues

2007-03-16T12:56:00.000-05:00

So, three high school honor students were suspended for uttering the word "vagina" at a school talent show. It seems the administration felt it would be traumatic for the attendees to hear this word, despite the fact that about half of them were carrying one in their pants that very night. So in anticipation of the event, the school told the performers they could do their reading from The Vagina Monologues, but they couldn't say the word "vagina." They said it, and they were suspended.

According to AP, "Principal Richard Leprine said Tuesday that the girls were punished not because of what they said but because they disobeyed orders not to say it." Oooooh, OK then. Dick Leprine (may I call him Dick? I think I may) is clearly a legal genius. If only he'd been around during those pesky Vietnam protests that culminated in Tinker v. Des Moines - see, the students aren't being punished for saying something - nonononono, that would be suppression of free speech. They are being punished for disobeying an order not to say the word, so everything is peachy keen with the Bill of Rights. Is this George Orwell High School?

I guess we're all just lucky the girls didn't offer a different portion of Eve Ensler's show, in which she intensely repeats, "Cunt . . . CUNT . . . cuuuuuuunt."

In related news, a theater in Florida (where else?) changed the title of Ensler's play to "The Hoohaa Monologues," after receiving a complaint from a passing motorist. Get this: the woman said she drove past the sign, and her niece asked what "vagina" meant, and that she was offended she had to answer that question from the child. Hell yeah, I'd be offended, too - offended that a kid old enough to read, and in possession of a vagina herself, didn't know the correct word for it. But clearly that is not the source of this phobic ninny's complaint. She evidently thinks no one should talk about such a dirty, evil, disgusting organ.

All this hysteria (new spin on that etymology!) ties in well with a little movie we just rented, This Film Is Not Yet Rated. It's not a fantastic movie, but it does highlight the fact that the MPAA, the de facto gatekeeper of movie distribution, seems to really hate vaginas. Well, really the whole related area, and its most popular use. You can show people having their brains blown out, being eaten alive by zombies or monsters, getting hung on meat hooks or having their nipples ripped off, and get an R rating. But, if you show female pubes in a sexual situation, you get an NC-17, and your movie makes no money because few theaters will show it. HEAVEN FORBID you should show someone going down on a girl, and the girl liking it. If people under 17 see such things, our civilization will collapse. It's a well known fact that kids do everything they see in movies, and we don't want our children having good sex. Please confine their viewing to shootings, stabbings, chainsaw massacres, and flayings. Heterosexual rape is OK as long as it's clear the victim is not enjoying any sexual pleasure. In this way, our children will remain innocent, and our girls will remain virginal until marriage, which is the most important thing, after all.

Seriously, what is going on with this weird phobia of the human body, never mind human sexuality? People have parts, and they have names. Are we so infantile as a culture that we can't bear to say "vagina" without at least giggling, if not outright fainting? Or is it indeed a perverse desire to keep teenagers from knowing about sex, in the patently stupid hope that then they will never have sex? And if so, why is the very word "vagina" so verboten? Sure, sex often involves vaginas, but plenty of vaginas exist sex-free. Most of us came through one to get here, for Pete's sake! Can we not simply acknowledge their existence, using a legitimate biological term? Apparently, many people still can't, and that's both frightening and sad.

Sex, Death, and Santa

2007-02-16T14:17:00.000-05:00

I was reading Possummomma’s blog today, and it inspired musings beyond the scope of the comments page. So, why not start my own blog?

As a parent, I’m surprised by my child’s ability to absorb concepts that are usually defined as “adult,” and to extrapolate from what I’ve told her to more general ideas. She’s only three and a half, but like Possummomma’s P#3, she can tell fantasy from reality. This is a skill I believed only much older children could master, but the Tot seems to be doing just fine.

Last December, there were lots of cool shows on TV involving Santa Claus. Naturally, Tot wanted to know when Santa would come to our house. I simply explained that Santa is pretend, like other things we see on TV. I pointed out that in real life, we’ve never seen cars talk (Pixar’s Cars is a favorite) or bunnies wear clothes, and so on.

A few weeks later, Tot drew my attention to some fantastic cartoon character and told me, “He’s only real on my TV.” Right around Christmas, I picked her up from daycare, and she told me, “The teacher said ‘yes,’ but I said ‘no,’ and she said ‘yes,’ and I said, ‘NO!” I soon gleaned that this was a discussion of the existence of Santa, presumably brought about by some innocent comment like, “What did you ask Santa for?” While I tried to instill a little bit of diplomacy, I still couldn’t have been prouder of my kid.

Incidents like this have encouraged me to be straight with her on pretty much all issues.
“What’s that bump? It’s your clitoris.”
“Why are armadillos afraid of maned wolves? Because the wolves want to eat the armadillos.”
“What happened to Daddy’s fish? It died.”

Contrary to my concern that discussing sex would be awkward, or that the concept of death was too traumatic, Tot has received all this information with aplomb and continued curiosity. I now have hope that she will not have to undergo a wrenching realization that living things die, nor have a pathological fear of death like I did when I started questioning my religious belief. I am confident that she will know the facts about sex, and be able to weigh all the complex issues by the time she is old enough to contemplate romantic relationships, all without that dreaded, awkward event known as “The Talk.”

I feel a bit sorry for families that feel they must shield their children from some idea or another. The kids are left without vital knowledge – especially considering the avoided issues tend to be those central to the human condition. Meanwhile, their parents have the added tension and work of trying to obfuscate, delay, or even construct elaborate ruses to “protect” their innocent children. I say, protect them with the facts, and everyone will be much happier.