American Atheists Billboard #2

The recent American Atheist billboard ad campaign in Alabama has me irritated.  As an atheist, I think the billboard is indeed insulting and in poor taste. The smug message of "we have the truth and you don't" is arrogant and demeaning regardless of your ontological perspective.  American Atheists, if you want to attract more to the cause, be creative, not stupid.

The Skepchick, Rebecca Watson, sums it up nicely with her satire and wit here:
A Shitty Ad Campaign

a gentle holiday reflection on being a dad

I love being a dad.  For me, there is no higher purpose.  For my children to know that I love them beyond all measure, that I respect who they are, and would do anything to anchor their happiness and joy in this life is my grandest desire.

As it is the time for the giving of gifts in this most festive season of the year, I ever wish to bestow upon my wonderful children, Maia and Ian, the warmth of my boundless love for them, the resonating joy in my heart when I am around or think of them, the steady strength of my hands to guide and support them, and the admiring twinkle in my eye reflecting their beauty and awesomeness right back at them!  What a blessing life has given me in the sweetness of these little ones!  I love you Maia and Ian!

Merry Christmas 2010
Love,
Daddy

CriticalThinking.org - Becoming a Critic Of Your Thinking

CriticalThinking.org - Becoming a Critic Of Your Thinking

New day....

I woke up this morning to a fresh blanket of snow on the ground. As I sit here in the early part of the day, the flakes continue to dance lightly through the soft, crisp air.  It's a refreshing sight.

Amy is off to work at the hospital and I have the quiet house to myself for a short moment.  Our daughter is still sleeping in her crib and I have the monitor from her room by my side.  She will stir momentarily and I'll make her blueberry pancakes for breakfast.  Her small voice and infectious laughter will warm my heart.  However, right now, the house is quiet other than the sound of the furnace blowing the soothing warmness throughout and the clock marching the seconds around.

I am happy for the newness of the day.  The rhythms and routines of the week can dull my senses to the wonders around me so that I don't notice the crispness, the softness, the beauty in each moment.  This tiny respite is small but powerful as it reminds me that I am alive, I am connected to the wonderful world around me.

....there's the little voice in the crib....awake and ready to take on the day....."MOMMY" she says and here I go, the DADDY!

Answer me this...

Listening to the radio the other day I heard an interview with Mr. Jim Gulley, a Colorado resident and missionary who happened to be in Haiti at the time of the earthquake last month.  After more than two days without food or water, he was rescued from the rubble that once was the Hotel Montana.  When the interviewer asked Mr. Gulley what one thing he is taking from or would remember from this experience, Mr. Gulley quietly and respectfully reflected and said that while "it's easy to spout platitudes, about, you know, God saved my life, well he didn't save the life of my two colleagues."  He couldn't answer, from a theological perspective, the question of why he was fortunate while his coworkers and thousands of Haitians were not.  Of course, I wouldn't expect him to be able to answer that question.

I found a local newspaper that also was covering Mr. Gulley's story and in it was a quote attributed to the survivor.   Apparently, a large receptionist desk in the hotel lobby had prevented slabs of concrete and beams from crushing Gulley on the floor. To quote Gulley, "It was totally black and very dusty, but that desk saved our lives." One answer to why Mr. Gulley is alive may be that desk.  Pure luck or god's divine providence?  To the latter, I say, hell no, but let me continue.

From my perspective,  Mr. Gulley's story is inspiring and intriguing.  I appreciate the gracious humility of Mr. Gulley, grappling with the question of his own survival,  while his coworkers and thousands of others were not so lucky.   He provided no soft, easy answers.  He had no answers to why he lived while others perished.  

A basic question raised in response to a tragedy such as the earthquake in Haiti is "Why?"   By asking the question, is there some hope that an answer will be given to right the wrong or bring back the loss of a loved one?  Does someone or something owe an answer?  If there was an answer, what would it be?

Some folks only answer the why questions of life or death with some canned or superstitious story. We all know people who have pat answers for everything. Consider the jester of pat answers, Mr. Pat Robertson himself.  Robertson, as we all surely know by now, takes answering the why questions to the idiot extreme.  He didn't fail us when he concluded that the earthquake in Haiti was the result of the Haitian's "pact with the devil."  The Haitians were cursed.   How easy, how convenient Mr. Robertson.  How insulting!  His bs is pure evil!

As I've reflected on this topic over the past week, I have struggled in writing down my thoughts.  I don't have any answers nor do I expect any.  I don't think anyone or anything owes an answer.  Things just are.  Earthquakes happen.  However, IF there were to be a god, and to my best understanding and reasoning there is not, how capricious, how callous and cruel this god must be to cause, through the design of the world, the unspeakable loss and suffering of anyone or anything.

I get tired and am repulsed by the common and trite responses to tragedy or the answers given to people faced with loss.  These answers are generally offered to console, however, I consider them to be nothing less than odious and they do nothing except cheapen the ultimate price that was paid.  "There's a reason for everything." "It's god's will."  "They are in a better place now."  "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."  "There but for the grace of god go I." "We can't know the mind of god." "Just pray about it."   Some may say that the desk was god's way of saving Mr. Gulley for a greater purpose.  "His work on this earth is not yet done," some may offer.  I'm sure I missed some examples, but I think you get the point.

The horrific and unfathomable loss of life in Haiti can never be reclaimed.  Those who remain, the ones who have lost the little of everything they ever had may indeed have questions.  They may even demand answers.  I argue that the only decent, just, and respectful answers we may offer them or anyone facing loss for that matter, will not come from ancient superstitions circulated by empty words or catch phrases but it will come in the giving of our time, our money, our hands to labor with them to rebuild and our arms reaching out to embrace them during a time of utter devastation.

Ichabod

Concerning religion, I've been angry a lot over the last few years. Honestly, it's been longer than a few years.  Some of this anger is present as I reflect upon my childhood teachings about how I was to fear god yet accept "his" love at the same time.  Of the dual nature of god,  I could never reconcile the polar opposites of this celestial being.  By the way, I loathe the divisive and conscious use of male pronouns and the propagation of such by the church patriarchy through the years when referring to deity.

I am also angry at the behavior I observed when believers of one persuasion treated the believers of another persuasion with scorn or disdain, OR, more close to home, how believers treated their own when they did not measure up.  My own sweet mother, who loved to sing solos in church and still does, was politely told that she would NOT be singing for a locally televised sunday church service because she and my father were separated.  The self-righteous minister said her personal situation, being widely known in our small community, was not an image the church wanted to air, literally or figuratively! I was in the 8th or 9th grade at the time.

Skipping ahead, after college I went to seminary, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, in North Carolina. I was there in 1987 when the fundamentalist contingency of the Southern Baptist Convention had come into majority power and started to mandate that all professors sign an infallibility statement indicating their agreement that the Christian Bible was the infallible and inerrant Word of God. The seminary president, who happened to be the uncle of a dear college friend of mine, resigned during this time, very likely under the pressure of the right wing arm of the seminary board.   Many professors and students led by their own convictions followed his lead and went elsewhere.  I was one of those who left, angered yes, but more confused due to the upheaval of my own set of beliefs.

During this tumultuous time, a friend of mine drew a picture of the seminary chapel with the word "Ichabod" written boldly above the chapel doors. The Hebrew word Ichabod means "the glory has departed." Furthermore, the word glory in this context denotes presence as in the manifestation of god's presence. My departure from seminary and from my former Christian faith is symbolized in my friend's apt drawing.

I ditched the religious calling some 20+ years ago when I left seminary though I returned once more to leave yet again for a final time without completing my degree.  Since then I have been quite content to explore and have participated in various religious communities and/or spiritual expressions of faith. I have dabbled in the mysticism of eastern religions, read many books by the self-help gurus to gain enlightenment, and listened to the "attract anything you want, if you just believe" secret of the religious science church (the latter now striking me as oxymoronic).

To be clear, I am angered by the duplicity and the self-righteousness exhibited by certain born-again religious types from my past.  The misguided and sometimes abusive behavior of some has made an indelible impression on me to be sure and has left me with me contempt for religion in general. As an aside, I do not think all religious folks are pricks as I have many dear friends who profess faith.

However, I must note that my disbelief in god, let alone a personal god, is not determined on how religious people treat others, good or bad.  The glory did not depart overnight, but during my years of questioning and searching, I find myself in a new day, a new light.

A place to start...

Let's clear "this" up.....

I grew up in a fundamentalist religious environment in the South.  Lucky, I guess.  For the greater part of my life, I took my ability to think for granted.  Was it the adherence to the rigid principles of fundamentalist Christianity in which I was taught to fear god that abused my natural childlike curiosity to think openly and without shame?  I feared thinking the wrong thing(s) so much that I policed my thoughts laboriously and incessantly used prayer to wipe out any impurities in thought or otherwise.  Original sin? My ass.

As a child and adolescent, I wasn't taught the benefits of thinking clearly, let alone how to think critically.  I was, however, taught the virtues and "blessings" of blind faith and belief.  I was taught that it was a sin to think impure thoughts.  "You shouldn't think like that" was a repetitive thought in my head as I tried to maintain a pure conscience.  I spent many hours on end worrying and fearful that I'd somehow screwed-up and not had "enough of" or the "right" belief in god and I'd spend eternity in hell.  It wasn't until college and I was in my early twenties that I began to shake loose from this twisted web of illogic and fallacy.

As a rule, logic was not in my lexicon of belief as I grew up.  As could be expected, my belief engine was so strong that I would accept without question, most, if not all of the claims made by the preachers and teachers in my life.  I didn't know there was such a thing as skepticism, nor did I realize how valuable reason and logic could be.  The absence of skepticism was in no doubt (pun intended) a result of a guarded and warped belief system.  Skepticism or having doubt in god or in things of god, pastor, church, bible, etc. was, in my mind, a sin.

Okay, that was fun!  At a later time, I'll come back to some of the topics raised above.  Let's skip to today, now that I'm in my mid-40s.  I am different now.  I think, I question, I doubt, I feel, I laugh, I love, I live.  I continue to have a natural curiosity about the world that instills excitement and wonder.  I have a healthy and skeptical perspective.  As a father to a, now, 22 month old daughter, I owe it not only to myself but to her to embrace curiosity and the ability to question and reason.  To the best of my ability, I will teach her the value of inquiry, doubt, and logical reasoning.

For the record, I am not religious nor Christian nor new-age nor, would I say, spiritual.  I am a human with a genuine desire to connect deeply with others in this life.   Hence, the reasons for me to blog:  to connect as well as to share with others, to challenge and liberate myself emotionally and intellectually, and to solidify my humanness.

Most of the time my thoughts whirr about in my noggin' and they don't have a chance to settle and crystalize.  My hope is to use this blog to dive into the depths of my understanding of the world, current events, and life and formulate into words those ideas, hopes, rants, and raves that make living a once in a lifetime event.  Read on...