reason
All posts tagged reason
You hear it a lot: teaching your kids to be an Atheist is no different and no better than teaching your kid to be a Christian/Muslim/Hindu etc. It’s brainwashing them, just the same.
I actually used to think this was a frustrating and somewhat valid argument. That is, until I actually became a parent.
Kids don’t invent God. They don’t usually require that you introduce am omniscient, omnipotent being into their lives in order to help them make sense of the world. They have what they need. Raising an Atheist (at least during the early stages) doesn’t require you to do anything at all. You just don’t talk about God. You don’t teach them about it. When they have questions, you answer them honestly.
That is very different from raising a religious child. In doing that you are forced to introduce a whole other realm of “reality” that they cannot see or touch. You answer fairly simple questions with complicated answers involving a man who lived and then died and was raised from the dead over 2000 years ago (Or insert other weird religious story here). You must teach prayer and how to behave in church. You must drill them on how to pray and how to incorporate religiosity into every day occurrences. You must teach them to rely on more than their own sensibilities. You must enforce the idea that they are being watched (and how every subtly you introduce it, judged.) You must introduce the idea of heaven (and by extension, hell) and salvation and the idea that everyone in the world is not equal. Some people are like us, and others are not. You teach them, before they have had the chance to evaluate the evidence for themselves, what is true and not true and demand that their tiny, developing brains embrace a world view that they don’t have a chance to test.
A child without religion experiences love it its truest form – unconditional and with no strings attached. Religious children learn very early on that love is often tied to the choices they make. That there is judgment to receive, guilt to feel and apologies to be made.
The one thing about valuing rational thought is that you don’t get to pick and choose where you apply that thought. As parents, my husband and I believe strongly in teaching our kids how to evaluate evidence and make considered, educated decisions. In turn, I have to do the same thing when it comes to parenting – and it isn’t always easy.
Today’s parents are afraid. We are afraid of perverts and pedophiles. We are afraid of cars and traffic and head injuries. We are afraid of sex and drugs and what teenagers will do when given any opportunity at all. We are afraid of razor blades in candies and terrorists in airplanes and serial murderers. Now don’t get me wrong – we should be afraid of some of these things but we need to be rational about it.
I recently read the book “Free Range Kids” by Lenore Skenazy. If you don’t know who she is, she’s the mom who let her nine-year-old son take a ride on the NYC subway and was subsequently called the worst mom in the world. Yikes. I read the book and it confirmed a lot of what I already believe. Kids are too sheltered and parents are too worried. The 24-hour news cycle has made us aware of every single bad thing that happens to a child. It has vastly exaggerated the risk our kids face in the world. I was comforted to read that violent crime, sexual predation and abductions are all far lower than they were in the 70s and 80s. It is much safer now than it was when me and my pals were traipsing through the woods for hours, armed only with backpacks full of matches and lemonade.
The dangers we don’t consider when looking at our perfect little angels are actually far more menacing, and statistically more significant. Obesity. Heart disease. Isolation. Fear of the world beyond their front doors. Over-dependence. Disconnection from their community. An inability to perform certain tasks (there is some evidence to suggest that more kids are getting hit by cars because they’ve never been taught how to cross a street – because they’ve never had the opportunity to try it!) and an increasing reliance on electronic entertainment. These risks are more than risks. For some they are guaranteed outcomes.
I don’t suggest we should stop parenting or that all of us should put our kids on the subway (although really – the subway? Where you are surrounded by people/witnesses, police offers, video cameras etc.? What on earth is unsafe about that?!) but we do need to stop and evaluate a risk before we make a decision. Don’t parent how others are parenting. Don’t parent out of fear. Rationally evaluate the risk. And prepare to be judged:
Last week I took Paisley swimming at the local rec centre. Afterwards, I decided (for the first time) to leave her at the front while I ran and got the car. Her hair was wet, the wind was howling and the car was in the parking lot, two minutes from the door. I thought about it and despite an inner voice telling me I should never leave my child, I did it anyway. Paisley was put on a bench right in the entrance with a cookie. She was told to wait (I could tell she was pleased as punch to be left alone) and I went and got the car. It took me four minutes to get to the car and pull into the loop at the front of the building. Paisley was sitting there, eating her cookie. Right next to a woman who appeared to be having a heart attack. “There is a child alone!” she was saying. I said, “It’s okay. She’s mine.” The woman looked at me, still flustered and (right out of a movie) fanning herself! “I just, oh my goodness, I am not okay. That is not okay. I am not comfortable with that.” I wanted to say, “Good thing she’s not your kid then, isn’t it?” But I didn’t. I just smiled and collected Paisley and her things.
On the way home I started to second-guess myself. Did I make the wrong decision? I re-evaluated the risks…that a mad-man, who happens to lurk around the local rec centre, would see an opportunity and in front of other parents and kids, run in the front doors and throw Paisley in his truck, all within four minutes? That she (a bright, capable four-year-old) would wander out into the wind and into traffic, of which there isn’t any? What was that woman afraid of?
A child being alone – she had said it herself. How are we supposed to teach kids self-reliance if they never get a chance to practice it? How can they learn to manoeuvre through the world if they are always protected from it? How do we foster community from behind closed doors?
While I do not teach my children to have faith in God, they must learn to have faith in themselves and in humanity.
I’m curious to hear your opinion on this…have you read the book? Would you have done what I did? Do you have any ideas or suggestions for those struggling with the concept of free-range parenting?
We all knew he was dying. For the past few weeks I have thought about him for that split second before I turned on the radio or computer and wondered. I sent him a letter, two actually, in the weeks before he died – thousands of people did. We all wanted him to know that he had changed our lives, made us a little braver, a little less afraid and a lot more certain that we weren’t alone in our non-belief. Despite all that, I felt so sad when I heard.
For me, Christopher Hitchens made the arguments I felt but could never articulate. His way with words often left me in awe. How could someone think so clearly, rationally and linearly and then describe his thoughts so powerfully?! He was passionate, incredibly prolific and a powerful advocate for rational thought. Some people found him to acerbic, confrontational and controversial. I loved him, even when I disagreed with him. I get tired, in this day and age of political correctness, of people mincing words. If you have an opinion, fight for it. If you have the gift of language that Hitch had, you use it. When you see something so absurdly wrong about the world, you change it.
Hitchens was a humanitarian in the truest sense of the word. He aspired for greatness for all of us, for everyone. He wanted us to rise above our base superstitions and fears and long-expired wisdoms and think for ourselves. He saw religion and dogma and theocracy for what they are – shackles on humanity. Dogmatic thought (whether religious or otherwise) keeps us from reaching our potential for creativity, happiness and kindness. He knew we could be better, even when faced with evidence to the contrary. No wonder he sometimes seemed so angry.
He was a voice for atheists everywhere. He, along with his neo-atheist counterparts, made being an atheist something to be proud of. He made being religious look silly and infantile. He cut through all the bullshit and held a mirror up to religion and the religious – this is what your book says, this is how you act, this is what you claim to believe and this is what you’ve done to the world. It was not a pretty image. Nobody wanted to see it.
Christopher Hitchens was a giant and all I can hope for is that his memory will live on and make all of us aim to articulate a little better, think a little harder and feel proud of the fact that we used our brains to come to a conclusion that we aren’t afraid or embarrassed of. We are atheists and we are fortunate to have kept company with one truly great man. May he live on in reason.
“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer
I get a lot of emails and comments from parents who are recently “out of the closet” atheists and are feeling very alone. Many of you readers are the only atheist family you know and are struggling with how to parent and don’t have anyone to talk to. The comments I read always make me feel frustrated – there really are a lot of us out there but we haven’t figured out yet how to form a cohesive group without getting churchy about it. :) I am glad that this site has made some of you feel less alone and I am always happy to hear from you.
This book is a great read and an excellent resource for those of you who are new to secular parenting. It has a lot of funny/sweet anecdotes and some really practical advice from leading atheists on how to provide our kids with a sound foundation in secular life. One of the biggest misconceptions about raising atheist kids is that they will be immoral. (Despite unending evidence to the contrary- because who needs evidence when you’ve got yourself an opinion?!) This book is further proof that it is possible to raise ethical, kind, critical-thinkers who do the right thing for the right reason and show empathy towards their fellow human beings. It will make you laugh, it will make you think about what you’re doing as a parent and at the very least it will remind you that you are not alone. Not even close.
Ok, first, read this.
Here is my favourite part of the article:
“If a student prays and they think that the tight ‘formfitting’ clothing is accepted by the Lord, they have not asked, or have not asked the right question, or they have chosen an answer for their own gratification. I don’t believe the Lord would give approval to anyone to be disobedient to the CES Dress and Grooming Standards.”
Wow.
So let’s get this straight. You need to go and pray but if you don’t get the same answer I do then you’re either lying or you prayed wrong. (This is the same approach they apply to knowing whether or not the Book of Mormon, or the church for that matter, are true. Pray and if you get the right answer it’s true. If you get the wrong answer, you’re not deserving and you need to try harder.) Also, God is backing up the Rexburg dress code nazis because, hey, he’s not busy.
There are so many things I could say about this article. In some ways it made me laugh because it is just so ridiculous. It also makes me feel sad and angry. To me, this is exactly what comes from asking people to put critical thought up on the shelf and stop thinking for themselves. It’s scary and let’s be honest, it’s a fundamental building block of all religions. My husband went to BYU Idaho (formerly Rexburg College) and when he was there, part of the dress code was that they couldn’t wear shorts on campus. The only exception was the school issued gym strip that they had to wear whenever they worked out. Oddly enough, this gym strip included shorts..
One day hubby (Bri) decided to buck the rules (what a rebel!) and make the short (2 minute) walk from his dorm to the gym in his shorts. When he got there, the student behind the counter refused to give him his gym strip because he was wearing shorts. Bri pushed him and said “Let me get this straight, you’re not going to give me my shorts because I’m wearing shorts?” I think he assumed that when faced with how silly that was, the kid would just hand over the clothes. Nope…he still refused. Eventually, Bri stopped a guy who was also there getting his strip, asked if he could borrow his pants and then put the pants over the shorts right in front of the kid behind the counter. The kid promptly handed over the gym strip because Bri was now wearing pants. (Which he was about to remove and give back to their rightful owner and then change into another pair of shorts. You couldn’t even make this shot up it’s so crazy.)
Another interesting sidenote to this article is that BYU Idaho and the main BYU campus in Provo, Utah have different dress codes. So the Lord is cool with certain items of clothing in Utah, but not in Idaho. It doesn’t take a genius to stop and think about that for a moment and realize something is fishy. It does however take someone who isn’t afraid to think their own thoughts, and there’s the rub.
Today, a Canadian court upheld our anti-polygamy laws, in a case I have been following pretty closely. This case centers around the polygamous group living in Bountiful, British Columbia specifically and the law has been used to try and protect young women from being forced to marry. Now obviously, I think Bountiful and everything it stands for is sick, twisted and wrong. These young girls are born and raised in a sexist and abusive culture and have very little say in who they marry. Being wife number 6 to a 79-year-old man while still in your teens is wrong by anybody’s standards (well, I guess not everyone…yeah, I’m talking to you Warren Jeffs) and by no means do I support what those crazy Mormons are doing. (On a sidenote/rant: It drives me crazy to hear the rhetoric that the Mormon church and its members are using in order to distance themselves from all this muck. Do you know how many times I’ve heard people say “They aren’t Mormon!” or deny that they are a break-off from the Mormon church? This is what Mormonism looked like 100 years ago folks, deal with it. Ahh, that feels better.)
However, I don’t know that I’m really opposed to polygamy so much. I guess this is where some of my more libertarian views come crashing into my socially democratic ones. I don’t like the government telling people who they can and can’t be with. I’m a big supporter of gay marriage and straight marriage and any other kind of marriage provided everyone within said marriage is an adult and is happy to be there. I’ve looked into this a little and it turns out there is a whole community of people living in polyamorous relationships and they don’t look anything like they do in the cults/compounds of BC. There are women living with two husbands, men living with more than one wife…every configuration you can imagine (and I’m sure a few you can’t). They aren’t hurting anyone and if they want to have two husbands God help them that’s their choice.
Surely there are already laws in place to protect adult men from marrying under-aged girls several times over. I mean, really. If not then there should be. I’m just not sure that it should ban polygamy outright. There are days when a sister-wife would come in pretty handy.
Yesterday our close friends baptised their baby in the Greek Orthodox church. We happen to know that the Dad is an atheist and the Mom, well, she may believe in God but I would hardly call her religious (let alone orthodox). Like many cultures, religion and family are intimately tied together and these celebrations are opportunities to do just that – celebrate. The ceremony was held at the same church where we attended our friends’ wedding – where he (a red-haired Scot) was officially baptised into the Greek Orthodox religion and partook in all kinds of weird ceremonial dress and dance to do it. It was a total blast to watch – nobody could help but draw parallels between what we were witnessing and the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”.
Our daughter had never been to a church before and was full of awe, confusion and questions about what on earth was going on. In hindsight I maybe should have prepped her about what we were about to see but to be honest, I was more focused on the ouzo-infused after party than the event itself. As we sat in the hot and ornately decorated church (the walls are covered in gold, stained glass, pictures of haloed saints, complex imagery and oh, did I mention gold?), she asked me “Why is that man singing? What are they putting on the boy’s head? Why are they putting oil on his head? Why are there candles? Why do I have to be quiet? Why is the boy wearing that hat?” I am afraid I didn’t have many good answers for her. I couldn’t explain those things to an adult, let alone a three-year-old.
I explained that this was a church and that some people believe in God and they go to church. She knows that we don’t believe in God – that’s about as far as the conversation has gotten. When she asked me “Why do some people believe in God?” I sat there, baffled for a minute. “Because it makes them feel good honey. Just like you have pink blanky.”
She was happy with that and I realized, some of the tough questions really can be answered that simply.
I’ll try not to spew venom about the irony that this article is found on CNN’s “Belief Blog” because the article itself contains such good news. Provided it actually happens. And spreads like a plague.
After the news this morning about the horrendous earthquake and tsunami in Japan I can’t help but think about the people there and what they must be going through. I have visited Japan twice and absolutely loved it. It’s one of those places I could go to again and again (and often do, only these days it’s in my own imagination. Sigh.) I found the videos coming out of Japan so telling and reflective of the people and way of life there. People were calm and orderly. There was not a lot of screaming or crying. For the most part they evacuated as they had practiced doing a hundred times before, made sure the people they were with were safe and waited for further information/instruction.
I can’t help but attribute at least some of this to the fact that Japan is a secular nation. I understand that there are many cultural reasons why this is true but even those cultural reasons are shaped by a secular history. Nobody was running around screaming that God was punishing them or that Armageddon was upon them. Nobody will be holding placards urging fellow citizens to repent come tomorrow morning. They will not pray for deliverance – they will, as a nation, brush themselves off and get to work. They will use science and technology to analyze what happened and make preparations for a similar disaster down the road. They will re-build and they will mourn those who were lost. But they will not wonder what they did to “deserve” such suffering. They will not point fingers and find fault with atheists, lesbians or intellectuals. They know the only “fault” is the one that runs directly beneath their island and they will treat it as the natural reality that it is.
We received a frantic phone call on Friday night from my MIL informing us that my little BIL (who is serving his mission in Arizona) “blew out his knee” and might have to be released from his missionary duties in order to come home and recuperate. She was upset for a few reasons; she is a mother and of course, she wasn’t able to speak to her son directly, she was surprised and didn’t have all the information she wanted and above all, she was upset about his mission experience being jeopardized. My BIL is loving his mission experience so far and part of the appeal for missionaries and their families is that it is such a long stretch. Two years is a long time to do anything consistently. It is a long time to not see loved ones, only talk to them on the phone 4 times and to commit yourself as a servant of the Lord. Doing the time is part of what makes it such a huge deal, so cutting it in half would have been very upsetting for everyone involved.
My MIL wasn’t totally sure what had happened but was told by the missionary President’s wife (who apparently is responsible for keeping other Mother’s informed of their kid’s accidents/injuries etc.) that they would call back on Monday with more information. There was much concern and worry and discussion about what this would mean.
We called today only to be referred to an email that she had forwarded to us. Basically, my BIL is the proud recipient of a genuine miracle of God. You can only imagine my frustration upon hearing his version of events. He hurt his knee playing soccer and knew right away it was bad. They took him to a doctor who felt it and told him that he thought he may have torn his MCL and to stay off of it for the next few days until he could get an MRI. The bishop came and did a blessing on BIL’s knee. The pain did not subside and it was still pretty bad. On Monday the Bishop came and did another blessing after which my BIL’s knee started to feel a bit better. At the very least, he felt better. When they got the results back from the MRI it showed a small tear in the MCL but there is no need for surgery and his mission won’t be affected. I could hardly stomach reading the email as he launched into his testimony and assurances that he has re-committed himself with even more fervor into bringing the Gospel to the people and that he knows this and that is true and how blessed he is to have been a witness to the glory and power of God’s miraculous love. Blah, blah, blah.
Here is what I would like to say but will not:
1. Your first doctor? Yeah, he misdiagnosed your knee. Not difficult to do when you’re just feeling around someone’s inflamed joint.
2. If the blessing was so effective, why did it take two of them?
3. Maybe the looseness that you attribute to a torn ligament was just loose ligaments that tightened up after you followed the doctor’s suggestions to ice and rest your knee.
4. And perhaps my biggest complaint with all claims of miraculous healing…who do you think you are?! Let me get this straight. This omnipotent and benevolent God who has the power to heal the sick and dying skips over the truly needy only to fix your knee? While you were receiving a priesthood blessing in Arizona, countless women were cradling dying infants and children in their arms, begging and pleading for their lives. Terminally ill people begged for mercy. Innocent babies lay in the dirt, listless from starvation and dehydration. By morning, thousands of people have died painful, agonizing and wholly undeserved deaths but God fixed your knee. Are you kidding me? This to me is the height of egotism.
I thought about saying something but this boy has drunk bathed in the kool-aid and is now handing out free samples, so he’s beyond reasonable debate at this point.
One of the things I love most about reading other people’s blogs is that you get the opportunity to enter a whole new world. A completely different life, in another part of the planet, with a different point of view. I have a handful of blogs that I’ve been reading for years and one of them is Girl’s Gone Child. Rebecca isn’t wildly political or a baking savant – she is an intelligent, very hip Mom in the Los Angeles area who I happen to agree with on a lot of things. She is a little more ethereal in her approach to life than I probably am, but I find it refreshing. I love her little family and her little life and her closet full of clothes that I love on her but would never wear. One of the things I love about Rebecca (other than her poetic prose) is the amount of thought and consideration she gives to her parenting. Being a mother is a big, sometimes scary but always important job and too many people take it for granted and do it by default.
This most recent post by GGC got me thinking about death and what we tell our children about it. Death is as much a part of life as living and while I have always been sure I wouldn’t tell my kid some made up story about heaven and seeing their long-lost grandparents in the clouds, I would be lying if I said it was a conversation I am looking forward to. Reading Rebecca’s post however, made me feel a bit differently. Especially the part where she says that most people hold off talking about death to young people until they can understand it. I had never really thought how ridiculous that is. Nobody understands death. Why would kids be less capable than grown ups of wrestling with those very big ideas. If anything, they may have some very valuable insight – they haven’t learned yet to be afraid of death. To avoid thinking about it and dwelling on it until someone close to them dies and it is thrust into their life with fury. That’s no way to be introduced to death.
When it comes time to talk to my daughter about death, I want to treat it with the attention and respect it deserves. I don’t want to lie and I don’t want her to feel confused. She may feel afraid but at the very least, I want her to know that we can talk about it. That like other important subjects (sex, life, our bodies etc.) it is not off the table. I will tell her about heaven and what some people believe and I will tell her what I believe. Ultimately, the choice will be hers.
What conversations have you had with your children about death? What is your philosophy about death, dying and children?
I was interested to read some of the comments to my recent post On a Mission. I thought my approach was very tempered and a good way to open a dialogue. Nothing feels less comfortable to me than never addressing a major issue. I know there are times to address it and ways to approach things respectfully and lightly but never? Never, ever? That just feels wrong. So while I appreciate the idea that I should just leave things alone and the sentiment behind it, that ain’t me. I feel too strongly about this to just sit back and watch someone I care about become a morg. :)
The good news is, I got a great response from my BIL. I didn’t really think he would take it badly but I guess you never really know until you try. I won’t repeat verbatim what he wrote because I feel like that would be bad form but basically he agreed with me that credit should be given to doctors, technology, science etc. but that crediting God is also important because for many, it really is their faith that keeps them going. Fair enough I suppose.
He maintains that he has seen prayer at work (and gave me an example of a woman in his mission who has been trying to get pregnant and only a week after receiving a priesthood blessing, found out she was expecting. Oh, and the missionary correctly predicted it would be a girl) and that it is the greatest outward expression of inner faith. He wasn’t the least bit offended and so I am happy that I have started a discussion at the very least.
It is too easy for myths and stereotypes about atheists to persist when we fail to identify ourselves as such. So, in my reply to his email, I thanked him for his response and told him I thought it was well-considered and respectful (which it was) and that as an atheist, prayer is likely not something we will ever agree on but that there is always value in trying to understand the people you love. Baby steps.
The example of “prayer in action” that he gave me is so typical and so pervasive. To be able to see the example for what it is requires a lot; an acceptance of true coincidence, an understanding of basic statistics and probability, an appreciation for the human brain to create what it wants (“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” – Mark Twain) and the maturity to recognize that a lot of stories, are just down right lies. How do you effectively deconstruct this example in a way someone of faith can grasp where you are coming from? I mean, I know that there is only one way to end a drought (whether it be of the moisture or the baby variety) and so a prediction like that will almost always be true with time. I know that there are only two options for a baby and that predicting it’s a girl is not statistically relevant – not even close. I know that people tend to count the hits and ignore the misses and that it’s just as likely that the missionary told her she was going to get pregnant several times before she actually did, or that the story was revised to be even more faith-promoting with each repetition. I know that by no means does this example prove that prayer works and yet, for some, it does.
I feel lucky to have a strong background in science and I credit that largely for my atheism. I studied neuroscience with some very impressive people with wicked minds and an almost universal lack of belief in God. I learned how to think, deconstruct, spot the faulty assumption or premise and apply the scientific method to the world around me. It is not realistic to think that everyone could (or would want to) have that kind of experience. So, how do you teach basic critical thinking to young people in a way that isn’t threatening?
This could be a whole other post, but I’m a big believer that this should be taught to every student in the world. At least it would be a start.
Will keep you updated on BIL.
Here is an excerpt from a recent email I wrote to my little brother-in-law who is serving his mission in Mesa, Arizona:
I saw the video of the LDS woman who was in a plane crash and survived. It was a very moving story and that woman was very brave and obviously very strong. It did raise a question however that I have had for some time. I hope you are okay with me asking you a religious question – I figured now that you are a missionary you probably get asked difficult questions all the time. You are an intelligent person and someone who I know thinks about things very deeply so I am hoping you can give me some insight. My question doesn’t pertain to the Mormon religion per se, but to faith in general. In the video, I was disturbed by the part where the woman credited her survival to God and prayer. I watched the video only a few days after my experience in hospital and had been thinking about this already. In fact, it has always bugged me. I remember when 12 miners were rescued years ago in Pennsylvania, people crying and saying they were saved by prayer and by God. While rescue workers who had risked life and limb stood by. I think of all the doctors who worked on that poor lady in the video, and all the amazing science and technology that went into saving her life. The nurses, the physiotherapists, not to mention her own inner strength and perseverance. I find it so frustrating and difficult to understand.
Many people say that faith is not something that can be measured or tested. That is true. However, certain things can be measured. One of those things is prayer. It’s a simple thing really; pray for 100 people, don’t pray for the other 100 and see what happens. You can have control groups and measurable outcomes. It’s been studied and tested hundreds of times over, by those of faith and those without, in many different countries and there has never been a measurable difference. While prayers certainly brings peace to those offering them, it doesn’t actually increase the odds of the sick or injured getting better. Now, what has been proven to work is medicine. Time and time again people are saved by medicine and technology and doctors, and yet, many people of faith insist of crediting prayer when things go well (and God’s will when they don’t, but that is a whole other story) rather than thanking the people who actually deserve it.
Anyway – I don’t mean to go off on a tangent. I saw that video, and it was fresh in my mind and I know you are religious and also smart and so I naturally thought to ask you. I truly hope that you don’t feel offended or put off in any way and if you don’t feel comfortable addressing my question, than by all means just ignore me. :) Having said that, I would really like to know what you think about this. I guess, to summarize, the question would be: why insist on crediting God, when there are so many more obvious and tangible people who deserve recognition?
Now for those of you who are seasoned rational thinkers or atheists this email might seem very mild. There were a million other points I could make – I could tear his world asunder if I wanted to. The thing is, he’s an awesome kid and we have never talked about religion. Ever. Nobody in my husband’s family discusses it at all. We all just tip toe around the fact that they are Mormon and we are not. I hate it but it’s hard to engage people in a conversation when they are unwilling. So, I decided that this topic was safe. It isn’t specific to Mormons, it hopefully won’t be perceived as a personal attack, and it might just get him to think a little. Since this is my first attempt at a religious conversation, I have no idea what to expect.
I asked my husband how he thought my BIL would take it and he said he didn’t have a clue. When my husband told T (my BIL who was 16 at the time) that he was never coming back to the church, T cried like a little kid. Full on bawling for an hour. This kid is not a crier and actually pretty reasonable, level-headed and unemotional. Ever since then, my husband feels like he has little insight into his younger brother which leaves me out on my own. So, I sent him the email and I guess I’ll wait and see what he says. I’ll keep you posted.
Oh, and please check out the video. Sad story of course but another example of how incredibly awesome the church is at marketing, communications and spin. I’m in awe.
