A book request

Now here’s a difficult question from a reader:

Long time reader, but only very occasional poster here. A friend asked me
to recommend some books to read to small
children (2 -5 years old) to teach the basics of atheism. His son is
getting exposed to a lot of religious training from
his wife, and my friend wants something to present the alternative
perspective.

Any suggestions? Feel free to open this up to the blog.

BTW, he is also interested in short books about the sciences suitable to be
read to children of the same age as bedtime
stories. Suggestions in this category are also welcomed.

I don’t have a good answer. Usually, I’d just say that there shouldn’t be “atheist” children’s books — there’s nothing not to teach, and I’d rather kids were just brought up to think for themselves — but this is a request for specific counter-programming against religious indoctrination. Anyone have any suggestions?

Wanna go to hell?

Trade your soul for a DVD! All you have to do is post a video of yourself to youtube, stating that you deny the holy spirit, and you’ll get a copy of The God Who Wasn’t There. Why those magic words?

Whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit can never be forgiven.

Mark 3:29

More details on The Blasphemy Challenge are available online, and they have a trailer, even:

Some of the comments on that video are hilarious.

You know what I hate? Fanatic Christians? Know what I hate just as much? Fanatic Atheists. This ‘challenge’ is disrespectful on a level I can’t even verbalize. It’s juvenile and inane. What do you hope to accomplish by doing this? It’s obvious the only purpose is to get a rise out of people. Disgusting.

Poor fellow. What he doesn’t realize that there’s nothing fanatical about this at all. Stating that I deny the holy spirit only means that I have made an unambiguous statement about what I believe. It does get a rise out of people, but the fault lies in them, not us; should I get outraged every time a Christian recites the Nicene creed? Isn’t it more the case that a fanatical theist would get angry at people saying that they don’t believe as he does?

Oh, and this one needs no comment, since the inanity is self-evident:

STOP THIS! Please, if you’re thinking about blaspheming against the spirit, don’t! It’s no laughing matter, it’s the worst thing you could ever do.

Who was Jesus Christ? Liar? Lunatic? Lord? Those are your options. Those 3. That’s it. Liar? Yeah, right! He’d have to be a freakin’ genius liar to fool everybody in the bible! Hahaha, puh-leeze! Lunatic? OMG! Hahaha! You’re funny! That explains how He died for our sins then came back to life! Moron. He was Lord. Duh!

This one is also funny:

So athiests think their immortal soul is worth a free DVD. Intersting; sad, VERY sad, but interesting none the less.

Let’s get all reverent about that all-important “immortal soul”. What the complainers don’t realize is that it doesn’t exist, so it doesn’t count: what this really represents is trading a few minutes of effort to make a 30-second video for a free DVD.

I already have the DVD, so I’ll do this for free. I deny the holy spirit.

The full-throated howl of the uncompromising advocate

I’m going to rudely hijack one political issue to make a point about another. I think you’ll quickly figure out what it is.

NARAL has been undermining their own relevance by failing to support pro-choice positions in a misguided attempt to court moderates—basically, as Ezra Klein points out, they’re failing to recognize their role in the political ecosphere. They’re an advocacy group for a specific range of policies, not a politician who has to balance constituencies—they are supposed to be spokespeople for one particular constituency.

…one thing groups like NARAL have a tendency to do is accept vaguely acceptable-sounding or politically popular bills in an effort to remain in the center, believing their group’s moderate credentials — see also their early endorsement of Lincoln Chafee — somehow important. The alternative strategy — practiced by the NRA, among others — would be to wage all-out war on even these minor encroachments, thus fighting to shift the center left.

This strategy of trying to join the center rather than move it is a damaging one. If NARAL were totally dogmatic and absolutist, that would make life much easier on Democrats who could occasionally show their “centrism” by voting against NARAL-opposed legislation that actually doesn’t much matter. Instead, however, to demonstrate independence on choice, Democrats end up supporting much more onerous and repulsive legislation, because just aping NARAL’s priorities line doesn’t win them any points in the media. Elected politicians, after all, often have to remain “in the center.” Independent interest groups, on the other hand, can spend their time trying to redefine what “the center” is. NARAL — and others on the left — should do more to exploit that freedom.

Digby also reiterates this very important point.

I do not think NARAL understands its function anymore. It is not a politician from a conservative district who won with only a few percentage points and needs to pander. It is not a political party that needs to gloss over differences to come to consensus. It is an advocacy organization. Its job is to hold the line and then move the debate their way.

If this is true for NARAL, how much more appropriate is it for the independent voices we look for on blogs? The job of the blogger is not to triangulate and strain to express some hypothetical view of some nebulous ‘moderate’—it’s to state his or her opinion, unmellowed by that fawning desire to appeal to a majority. Our readers are presumably sampling multiple online sources, and what we have to expect is that they will make up their own minds on the basis of those many inputs, and the real arrogance is to pretend that we can read those minds and aspire to represent a majority. We can’t and we don’t. We are nothing but the enabled and accessible voices for nations of one.

I am strongly pro-choice, so much so that my views probably make many other pro-choice people uncomfortable…and that should be OK. I am not trying to stand for a consensus, I am staking out my position.

This is also true for my views on other aspects of the political argument, on science and evolution, and on religion vs. atheism. I simply do not understand why apologists for religion, for instance, think they need to carp at me and tell me to be less radical, to moderate my stance and to quit alienating those hypothetical fence-sitters that they are trying to woo. That’s not my job. My goal is to shift the debate towards my position (without expecting that everyone will adopt my specific views), and I can’t accomplish that by letting the rope go slack and drifting towards someone else’s position.

So, loud and proud, baby. Fight for your ideas, not those that someone else tells you are examples of what the majority wants to hear. Majorities are made of individuals, and the only way we’ll ever get an honest consensus is if everyone is singing out frankly for their own beliefs.

Atheists and morality?

The Atheist Ethicist has written a book: A Better Place: Essays on Desire Utilitarianism.

When I was young I decided to try to leave the world better than it would have been if I had never lived. To do this, I had to know what ‘A Better Place’ actually was. Thus, I spent 12 years in college studying moral philosophy. This book contains a set of essays describing pieces of the answers I think I found. I argue that we cannot reliably find those answers in scripture, in subjective sentiment, or in evolved dispositions. In fact, those who look in these places for answers often leave the world worse than it would have otherwise been. Instead, I argue for ‘desire utilitarianism’ – the idea that morality involves using praise and condemnation to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and to inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires. The details and my defense of those answers can be found inside this book. I hope that what you find inside will also inspire and help you, too, to try to make the world a better place than it would have otherwise been.

You can find a more detailed summary of the contents here—it looks interesting, but I have this intimidating stack of books I have to finish first, and my own mountain of writing to do. It’s on my list now, though! If anyone else has read it, let us know more about it; a rebuttal to the theist claim that there is no morality without god always benefits from another counterexample.

The most disturbing 8 year old in the world

This cute kid makes a nice rant that I completely agree with, but yeesh—those aren’t her words. She’s playing dress-up and prancing in front of a camera, and reciting with child-like enthusiasm words someone else wrote for her. That bugs me.

My kids were brought up without religion, and I know what a genuinely godless kid is like. They’re interested in Where’s Waldo and Dr Seuss, not Richard Carrier and Robert Ingersoll and Richard Dawkins. They play video games and like the swings at the local park. They run into religious practices when they visit their friends, and they’re curious, but it’s not a big deal…it’s exactly like discovering the different foods their friends’ families eat. They don’t care about religion.

So sure, this kid is cute, but she rings false. Please, atheists, don’t use your children as props in this kind of anti-religious tirade—speak for yourself.

(via Echidne)

It’s “Sod off, God!” week

My favorite ferocious feminist has declared this to be “Sod off, God! Week” at I Blame The Patriarchy. There’s no respite from the patriarchy blaming, but she is taking a sledge to a few sacred cows as a sideline. Like this:

Take ritual, for instance. My suspicion is that ritual is no deep human need. As a concept it gives off quite the lip-wrinkling whiff of eau du primitif. And what about that trio of stinky undertones — conformity, obeisance, and orthodoxy — that comes with it? Add the collateral conditions of exclusivity and tradition, and you got yourself all the field marks of one of those bogus assumptions that status-quoticians are always trumpeting as “natural” or “instinctive” but which are really just tools of the patriarchy or opiates of the people or what have you. You know. “Big tits are sexy.” “Women’s minds are naturally less inclined toward mathematics.” “Van Morrison is a genius.” Etc.

I’ve heard that so often: that people need ritual, that there’s something beautiful and comforting about the predictable and stately. Why? I get along fine without it, and find it a nuisance when I’m subjected to it, so it’s clearly not a universal human need, like food or love. If you’re brought up with it, if it’s dunned into your head that you must attend Sunday services or you will go to hell, I can understand how the relief from an artificial anxiety might feel good…but why not cut the problem off at the roots and raise kids who aren’t instilled with those foolish fears?

Ritual is a head game. It’s the droning repetition of nonsense that the church has used for millennia to kill the muses of creativity and individuality—and once they’ve punched that god-shaped hole in your head, they’ve got you hooked on the weekly or daily pap sessions needed to fill the gap with the sacred version of gelfoam.*

*That reference may be a little obscure. In my neurosurgical days, we used to chop bits of brains out of experimental animals, and you don’t just leave a hole—you pack it with light space-filling foam. They only need it because we’ve cut out something more essential.

Indoctrination?

You know, people don’t believe me when I say I don’t give my kids weekly or daily instruction about atheism, but it’s true: my daughter asked for my videos of “The Root of All Evil?” and “The God Who Wasn’t There” for the first time the other day, and I let her watch them. She has posted her reaction.

The sure sign that I didn’t tell her what to think is that she likes the idea of the Brights movement, which I’ve curled up my lip at from the beginning. She also thinks Dawkins could have been a bit tougher. Uh-oh—if you think I’m ornery, wait until the next generation takes over.