Down 22 pounds in 41 days! And so sick of eggs and lettuce, but with an Atkins suppressed appetite for a Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger & a blueberry fritter. I can't even celebrate.
I believe everything and nothing.
A small but significant part of my religious beliefs include offering food to God before partaking of it, and whenever possible, feeding my co-religionists a feast of such offered food. Had one on Saturday evening, for instance, to honor a visiting lady monk. The vegetable stew turned out particularly well.
Actually, we'd like to feed lots of people the offered food, not just the co-religionists. I am, millimeter by millimeter, pecking away at the project of figuring out what the legal requirements of distributing cooked food are and how one might affordably procure a properly permitted kitchen to do so.
Ooh, this is very timely! I very much want to believe in God because my husband does and we're going to raise our kids to believe in God. However, I was raised an atheist and I feel nothing: no presence, no guiding spirit, nothing. So we're going to church and I listen to the service, but I think it would be much easier if I could believe.
We're going to an Episcopalian church, by the way, so I don't have to listen to any sermons about how people like me are going to hell.
I have to say, LizSpigot, that seems very kind and loving of you towards your spouse.
3: Are you sure that just sneaking under the radar wouldn't work? If it's pretty small-scale and you're not taking in money, I think there's a fair chance that nothing would happen that would trigger enforcement.
4: Thorn's in a similar position, I believe -- taking her daughter to church regularly despite being an atheist herself, as her partner is Christian.
4: Thinking of that post Heebie linked to on that thread, how do you plan on answering your childrens' inevitable questions?
Thanks Ile! I grew up in a household that was somewhat hostile to people with religion. My parents were raised Catholics and were subjected to too many judgmental lectures. But being raised an atheist is no fun either because it isolates you from your peers (at least in my town). And I would much rather believe in God than feel so alone in the world.
I think it makes more sense to raise children in a religious but non-judgmental household. Episcopalians are about as relaxed as you can get and still talk about Jesus. And there's a lot of value in having someone remind you every week to be a good person.
But being raised an atheist is no fun either because it isolates you from your peers (at least in my town).
Yeah, Newt's gotten a certain amount of hostility for not believing in God.
8: I saw something on her Twitter feed about that. I should really read her blog posts to get some insight.
9: I don't think I know about that thread but so far we're worked out that if the question is about interpreting the Bible literally, I'll explain that it's using stories to teach people. If I get a direct question about whether I believe, I'll have to deflect or lie until they're 18 (or maybe teenagers). Because we don't want to establish early on that I don't believe. Not because it's shameful but because the goal is for them to believe. And since it appears to be impossible for me to believe having been raised an atheist, this will protect them.
At some point I told my five year old that I didn't believe in God, and he took this to be a family-wide stance that he needed to adopt and defend to all and sundry. Meanwhile Molly started taking the kids Quaker meeting, and eventually I started going, too, although I still don't believe in a personal God. (I do believe in the value of sitting quietly for long stretches of time with other people.) So now we go to meeting every week and Joey is still announcing to everyone that he doesn't believe in God.
Junie (wife) and I are both Pagans (I'd call myself an animist), but generally don't like other Pagans and are also lazy, so we're not particularly active/observent. We're of two minds on how to raise our kids. We'd both like them to have some sense of the sacred in their lives, but also have the freedom to find their own beliefs/path. She was raised Lutheran and has something of a reflexive desire to make children attend some sort of church (likely UU), on the theory that they would gain some important discipline or something from it, despite the fact that she hated church and fled the first chance she got. I'm much more of mind to build ritual or reflection in where it feels meaningful, but realize that my "don't force it" approach would likely ammount to "don't do much of anything." Guess we'll start figuring it out in six months.
because the goal is for them to believe.
Why?
Also, by hiding your beliefs, you are sending a clear message that they are shameful. I don't think you can avoid that.
7: It very well might, for a while, but I don't think it would be sustainable or consistent. I mean, on a very informal basis, sometimes we pack up extra plates and drop them off with various people who are settling in for the night in various doorways, and that works fine as far is it goes, but it doesn't go that far. The basis of this goal is approximately threefold: 1) Theologically, we are supposed to seek a consistent 'service' that we can fully and deeply engage with, not just by the labor of our hands but with the fullness of our skills and attention. If we could make a larger, more permanent arrangement, more members of our community could engage with their service consistently. 2) There are just so many hungry people around; the informal gifting that has been going on and off for years just doesn't feel adequate. It feels like we can do better than that. 3) It would ease the strain on individual family kitchens for the few really big festivals we put up.
12 seems like a very uncomfortable sublimation of self thing to me. Are you sure you want to teach your children that your beliefs matter less than your husband's?
If I get a direct question about whether I believe, I'll have to deflect or lie until they're 18 (or maybe teenagers). Because we don't want to establish early on that I don't believe. Not because it's shameful but because the goal is for them to believe. And since it appears to be impossible for me to believe having been raised an atheist, this will protect them.
Telling may not make much of a difference. My dad's not religious but my mom is Mormon and took all the kids every Sunday. We all knew my dad wasn't going because he doesn't believe. Out of the five kids three are still observant.
because the goal is for them to believe.
Same question as Rob: why is this a goal?
I'll have to deflect or lie until they're 18
This is baffling to me. Why not just tell them that their parents don't believe the same things? Religion will hardly be the only place they realize this.
15: I think it's easier to be part of society if you believe in God. Atheists are a minority and atheist children have a rough time. I was like your son and became the token atheist at my school that was hostile to anything religious. I wouldn't say "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. I would argue in class. I had to defend against charges that I was going hell, I believed in the devil, etc.
I agree with you about the shameful part, but I don't have a better idea yet. Mineshaft?
The beet is the enemy of Christ. Pickled, boiled or borscht, it is an abomination to be met with fire, sword and prayer.
Also, but to a slightly less unholy extent, zucchini.
16: I guess I was envisioning a place of worship with a kitchen and a community room, and a sign out front saying "Dedication of food (or whatever you'd call the ceremony) at 10:30, dinner in the community room at 11:00 -- Everyone welcome regardless of your religion", and going out and collecting people for the meal.
I would guess, without real knowledge, that you could get away with doing that for a while without getting hassled, and that when someone regulatory did find you they'd be helpful about telling you how to get into compliance.
21: Roasted and tossed with a little goat cheese?
atheist children have a rough time
Hasn't affected my oldest the least bit. The others are too young for it to be much of an issue, but I don't really see it becoming one.
It is a fascinating fact that the two countries in the world with the highest proportion of creationists both have constitutional prohibitions on religion in public schools. (USA and Turkey). Latvia is third.
My sister and BIL never went to church, but their eldest, who is now nine, started expressing an interest in going a couple of years ago, due to friends talking about God, etc., at school. They decided to facilitate her interest by letting her attend church with her friends and talking to their very religious (and nice) neighbors. This seemed like a sensible alternative to trying to indoctrinate her.
Since previously people here quibbled about the use of "orthogonal" exhibited in "your point is orthogonal to my argument", I would like to announce that in John MacFarlane's dissertation one encounters the pronouncement that one line of argument is "skew" to the argument he is pursuing.
Now that I have all this new data, I might push a policy where, when the question comes up, I'm more honest about my lack of faith. Maybe something along the lines of, although I don't believe in God I believe in the value of community and being a good person and that is why we go to church.
23: Sounds like someone's summer menu plans need a little more preachin' at.
Hasn't affected my oldest the least bit.
Same here. My kids are in the 8th and 6th grades. I have yet to hear anything about our non church going ways.
I shouldn't overstate how much hostility Newt's gotten. Other kids have told him he's going to hell, but he's not an outcast over it or anything. And I've never heard of Sally having trouble.
As a lover of beets whether pickled, roasted or in borscht, and a Jew by birth, and atheistic in belief, if I ever met Flippanter, I would fear for my life.
28 sounds good to me. Some atheist children may have a hard time, but your kids will almost inevitably (you're commenting here after all) have some aspect of themselves that makes it hard for them to fit into society. They may be nerdy or queer or have hair that just won't take proper styling. Life will occasionaly be hard for them, and, if I can be so bold as to say so, that should be OK.
30: Interesting. I've heard a lot of stories from non-Mormon kids getting a lot of grief from Mormons. For example, Mormon kids aren't allowed to play with them. Another example was a basketball coach not letting the Catholic kid participate in games until the kid's father threated to bring everyone from his church to pray with their rosaries to let the kid play. Another was the Boy Scouts being run by Mormons that tried to get the non-Mormons to go to church as a requirement for being a Boy Scout (but that was in the 70's).
It's good to hear that this isn't always the case.
if I ever met Flippanter, I would fear for my life.
Add to that his propensity for swooping down from the heavens like some sort of demented war owl, and your fears seem completely reasonable.
And since it appears to be impossible for me to believe having been raised an atheist, this will protect them.
I do not think this is necessarily true for anyone, though it might be true for you. I know people who were raised Atheists who became conservative/Theistic Jews (2), Christians (2), and "Hare Krishnas"/Gaudiya Vaishnavs (many). (I feel like Buddhists don't quite count, since they're often Atheists too.) So far they all seem pretty steady. Honestly, I'm terribly curious about this process, but the last group is the one I'm most familiar with and I am uncomfortable probing deeply on the topic because it seems so personal. It's a little different with GV too, b/c so much is centered around connecting to Krishna as a Person, and it's possible to deeply contemplate Him as a Character without believing in Him as God or even historical. My vague understanding of my acquaintances who made the transition this way is that they started a project of studying Him for some other reason--academics, development work, art project, fascinating with a children's picture book---and at some point their fascination flared into a mystical sense of belief and connection (how you might see it) or rather, as they've mostly told it to me, they opened up to the idea very slowly and He revealed Himself in a combination of waking feeling and dreams. There are some other people who took to our practice of chanting/singing & dancing, initially for its own sake but then, somehow, it too ignited a sense of belief.
I really have no business thinking up ways for you to try and grow a belief in God Episcopalian-style, because I don't know much about Episcopalian theology and it's not clear to me how much you'd want it. But extrapolating from my acquaintances, it seems like that if *you* actually want *you* to believe in God, and not just be a convincingly silent so that your kids have the opportunity to grow with such a belief rather than without, you're going to have to seek that belief on your own a bit more. I'm not sure how comfortable Episcopalians are with engaging with the concept of Jesus as a Person, but perhaps that's a place to start? Or, you could join the choir, if you like to sing.
I'm an atheist, though I have some animist and buddhist sympathies. Buddhism because the basic elements are simple and make a fair amount of sense and animism because if I absolutely must deal with god I want a low level command-line style user interface, not some fancy-ass GUI.
The beet is the enemy of Christ.
Just as I was thinking about the impossibility of articulating beliefs, along comes this to enlighten me. I believe Flippanter is a monster.
I've heard a lot of stories from non-Mormon kids getting a lot of grief from Mormons.
I think the last 20 years or so have made a big difference up here. A lot more Mormons have gone the Catholic route of "raised as but not practicing". And of course there's been an influx of people from other states and most of them (particularly the Hispanics) aren't LDS.
22: Ah, we have no common place of worship. We worship in each other's homes. At one point a bunch of the college kids got a group house and as a group we subsidized their rent and used their common spaces, but otherwise, no temple. This seemed like a worthwhile medium size goal, smaller than a real temple. If we had a real temple, we would have no problem, and feeding the public would be the default assumption.
You know, I think it depends on where you live. I've mostly lived in CA (Pasadena, Bay Area) and have to say, being deeply religious my whole life: I always felt like I'd be better off, socially, if I was an Atheist.
As a lover of beets whether pickled, roasted or in borscht, and a Jew by birth, and atheistic in belief, if I ever met Flippanter, I would fear for my life.
Hate the beet, love the beet-eater, I always say.
Pickled beets are fine and if you put hard boiled eggs in with them, they turn red.
36 is pretty good, but resented because I was developing the "idea of desire becoming desire" for a Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger into a really outstanding parable.
I've never had borscht, but I'm afraid of Russians.
39: My very Catholic aunt and uncle lived in Utah in the 50s and 60s with no trouble at all.
45: Borscht is awesome, especially with dill and sour cream! Out of all the things my Slavic relatives make borscht and potato pancakes are the only things I like. Everything else is far to meat heavy.
My daughters have their First Communion this weekend. I'm ambivalent, but I suppose if they go the route of mostly-lapsed-but-eternally-conflicted Catholic like me, they'll at least have a hook to hang their ideals and feelings of inadequacy on when they're adults.
I envy people who have faith. I don't much care for churches larger than a neighborhood. I am quite fond of Buddhism, can't get over love for family being an obstacle though.
49: You try to get adult-adopted by huge assholes.
39: Do attitudes vary by region of the state? I have the impression that SLC is less thoroughly LDS than the Provo area and/or the southern UT, but I can't even assess that impression's validity. Are there perceptible (to locals, I guess) variations even in the SLC metro area?
they'll at least have a hook to hang their ideals and feelings of inadequacy on
Don't put that on the card.
I was raised atheist and got a little bit of grief growing up, but mostly I was told to hide it, which now is internalized, and I can't tell to what degree I actually need to.
I was dumped for a religious girl once, because of the religion, but this was the end of camp in 8th grade and I didn't care much about the boyfriend.
At the same time, I'm really glad I was raised atheist, because I feel positively towards my beliefs, and I'm glad to have them. I could have arrived here anyway, but I like being here.
40: Have you looking into renting or otherwise arranging to use space in a liberal church/synagogue? They usually have kitchens and community rooms. If you had a UU or UCC church around, I'd bet they'd be good with it, and might be a useful source of advice on the regulatory issues.
Out of all the things my Slavic relatives make borscht and potato pancakes are the only things I like. Everything else is far to meat heavy.
Properly done, borscht is meat-heavy.
Or it could be a food thread.
I made a cake! Also, I'm pretty sure this has been the best two weeks of my life, food-wise, ever.
On topic - I enjoy going to church sometimes because I appreciate community and ritual, but I lack the belief. I've always wondered about how to give children a similar sense of community without actually dealing with the whole Jesus thing; perhaps concentrated volunteering or something else that provides that same feeling of getting together with people like and not alike to do something bigger than yourself?
I think it's easier to be part of society if you believe in God. Atheists are a minority and atheist children have a rough time.
At the risk of annoying everyone, I'll repeat the thing that's often said: the US really is unusual in its non-secularism. It's the only country I've been where anyone in an informal social context has bothered to ask whether I'm religious.
As it happens, I have spent a lot of time in Anglican churches, mostly through being part of a choir. Also, we had a bishop in our family: evangelical Anglican. It was his idea that I go to a Christian summer camp at the age of thirteen. There, they succeeded in making me Christian (they laid it on quite heavy with the shame and forgiveness). Since it was an evangelical conversion, I then had a go at trying to convert my family, which they all thought was hilarious. Over the following two years I talked myself out of it. This didn't mean an end to church: after choir, came boarding school, with daily services. In the end, I decided that it was all just incredibly boring, and the compulsory aspect mildly oppressive. Even liking the music doesn't hold off the boredom forever: there's only so much sacred music. I must have sung the St Matthew passion about ten times, and it is not cheerful stuff.
So, no thank you. I do not want further religious beliefs. And I think that it's at least somewhat wrong to make children go to church. Children do what adults tell them: that's how they are. Don't bore the shit out of them by arranging their participation in something repetitive and intellectually conventional to the degree that organised religion is. They can go when they're adults, if they want.
51: SLC is only 50% Mormon. Outside of SLC is 80%. Within SLC, there is probably a lot of variation. The part of SLC where I live has a lot of people who are non-Mormon.
Provo appears extremely Mormon to me as evidenced by the inability to find a single restaurant other than Subway that is open on Sundays.
get adult-adopted by huge assholes
Popular in the Roman empire. With the right laws, could definitely make a comeback. Adopting a gay partner for inheritance purposes recently got struck down in France, though-- excuse me, western Gaul.
I'm fond of my parents, but I really love my kid, have a hard time seeing that particular attachment as a bad thing.
I've always wondered about how to give children a similar sense of community without actually dealing with the whole Jesus thing; perhaps concentrated volunteering or something else that provides that same feeling of getting together with people like and not alike to do something bigger than yourself?
If it were convenient enough, I'd consider going to a Unitarian church as an openly-atheist-friendly community/do-gooder kind of organization. But we'd have to schlep an hour downtown to get to the closest one.
I do believe in the value of sitting quietly for long stretches of time with other people
That is a very strange belief to me. Isn't that called nap-time? Well I suppose sleep does have value.
Do attitudes vary by region of the state? I have the impression that SLC is less thoroughly LDS than the Provo area and/or the southern UT, but I can't even assess that impression's validity. Are there perceptible (to locals, I guess) variations even in the SLC metro area?
Yeah, varies a lot. The city is minority LDS and trends noticeably more liberal than a lot of the state (previous mayor an ACLU lawyer, current one is a professor and urban planner). By extension the metro area is also skewing more in that direction. The county mayor is now a Democrat as well.
Some of the suburbs (particularly the whiter ones) in the metro are still more LDS than the city. Provo/Orem area is also still noticeably more Mormon than SLC. Doesn't seem to be the same up north in the Ogden/Layton areas. Probably due to the presence of the airforce base and Weber State along with Ogden now being around 20 percent Hispanic.
Children do what adults tell them: that's how they are.
This is the wrongest thing ever written in the whole history of the internet.
63: No one told me to set off all those firecrackers in the house, for example. Or to try to make fudge with cocoa powder and vegetable oil.
60: That's basically what my parents did. It worked out well for both of my parents, who were raised Christian and still derive comfort from spiritual activities, but for me it was always a little too ... supernatural.
I've always wondered about how to give children a similar sense of community without actually dealing with the whole Jesus thing;
I second the UU recommendation. Our main group of friends all attend the local UU church, although it conflicts with soccer, so we haven't figured anything out yet. When the kids get school-age though, I'd like them to have an answer to the "What are you?" question.
(At least, that's why my parents took us there. In practice, answering "Unitarian" was a giant nonsensical pain in the ass in 5th grade.)
Also, how else are your kids going to be compelled to watch a grown man tasting his own semen?
67: Why do you hate public transit?
62: Mind you, the county mayor Peter Coroon is a Democrat that is against abortion except for rape, incest and the life and health of the mother; he's against gay marriage; and he loves guns. But coming from a state that has criminalized intentional miscarriages this is probably better than we should expect.
SLC is only 50% Mormon. Outside of SLC is 80%
IME a pretty good chunk of that 80 percent isn't really practicing or is just going through the motions on Sunday and wouldn't notice things like if their kid had a friend who's not LDS.
In other anecdata my buddie's wife is an esthetician. From the stories she hears while waxing cooters it would appear the whole swinging lifestyle is a much bigger thing around here than I would have guessed. Even in the suburbs.
69: Billboards that I have seen in and around SLC suggest that "loves guns" is likely to be sort of a requirement for local candidates.
70: Fascinating! I can see many non-practicers being in the 80%. I had all these misconceptions about Mormons after reading books like "Under the Banner of Heaven." After working with some Mormons and learning about their own opinions I've realized that the religion is not nearly as extreme as it's portrayed by the media.
I'm an Anglican (i.e. Episcopalian) priest. Clearly I'm the outlier here (but I knew that already).
Like most people, I have and hold beliefs, though sometimes it is less intellectual assent and more daily practice. Going to church is, in my opinion, about 10% actual belief in something specific and 90% everything else: how do you live your life, how do these beliefs shape how you approach the world and those in it, what gives you strength, keeps you going, keeps you grounded in the path you want to follow. What does it mean to belong to a community and learn to love, forgive, grow together?
Practices like living in community and daily prayer (silence, space to remember that I am whole/beloved of God/etc regardless of my own efforts, daily recall back to the principles I aspire to and away from my own emotions and desires) are more important than parsing exactly what is meant by (e.g.) "virgin birth".
Though I don't want to dismiss the importance of the theology/beliefs, because I _am_ Christian, not just abstract humanist. Theology is important as grounding and direction for the whole, but focusing on dogmas obscurs the importance of the whole, imho. Lots of people attend church without necessarily being sure about all the dogmas. I think God can handle such messiness; we're not so good at it.
Speaking of mormons, the soundtrack for the Book of Mormon musical was posted online this week: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/136054170/first-listen-cast-recording-the-book-of-mormon
Isn't that called nap-time?
There's a bit in 100 Years of Solitude which describes a wise priest whose afternoon meditations on scripture had become so subtle he was actually asleep. I've had something like that happen to me both in Buddhist meditation and Quaker meeting, although it is not really appropriate for either.
71: Seriously. My favorite billboard says "For only $50 you can get a concealed weapons permit!"
76: I was at a Quaker wedding where they did some kind of "meditate in silence until the Spirit moves you to say something about the couple." The Spirit told me to be quiet and my wife told me I wasn't allowed to sleep.
72: It's not like the Mormons don't have a history of being a little unconventional in their ideas about marriage. Mix in the Shiite temporary marriage with old-school Mormon plural marriage and you could have quite the scene, all blessed by scripture and the church.
I think I'm going to start a religion. Only the best bits from Mormonism, Shi'ism, and Rastafarianism. And Hinduism - those guys have the coolest temples.
77: I keep forgetting to go get a permit, but apparently I am well qualified under PA law. I don't know why I want one, but I do.
74: And this is exactly why I like the Episcopalian Church. I've been to two services in SLC so far and both had a few minutes dedicated to saying that belief isn't necessary, everyone has doubts, dogma can vary, just be a good person.
Only the best bits from ... Rastafarianism.
That's Haile Selassie of you.*
* Stolen from Alan Alda on M*A*S*H.
I actively believe that there is no god. "Je n'ai pas besoin de cet hypothese" (Laplace). Ultimately, although I have no scientific knowledge worth a damn, I came to the conclusion that the material universe, even to the limited extent that I can understand it, is immeasurably more awesome than any version of god that I have been offered. And believe me, I've been offered plenty. I have no interest in a deity which seems to be smaller than the world - there's no point.
As a teenager, I experimented with mysticism, inside and outside Christianity. To the extent that I learned anything through this, it was respect for the technical skill of certain poets, musicians and architects. I never experienced a higher plane, except to realise that human creativity, as personified in Bach or the builders of the great cathedrals could give you a "fuck, yeah" moment as striking as a photograph of the Andromeda galaxy. Good for human creativity, still no god.
I deeply hate the kind of religiosity represented by the modern fundamentalist movement, because, like fascism and Stalinism, they are committed to restricting human potential for their own ends. Episcopalianism, Reform Judaism, Buddhism, I couldn't care less about. They don't bother me and I don't bother them.
79: I don't think you need to add LDS to get plural marriages into Shi'ism.
84: I have a soft spot for magic underwear.
They might pull my Episcopal credentials for this, but in my view if you affirmatively don't want to have faith you probably shouldn't go to Church; it will just start to seem like a bunch of pointless and annoying ritual. On the other hand, since a lot of "being religious" is just showing up, with a somewhat more open spirit you may find yourself getting into it, and the Churh becoming a valuable part of your life for reasons that go beyond being a pleasant place socially or whatever. Something like that happened to my parents; they started going to church based upon some combination of "hey why not" and some vague notion that maybe they should because my sister was in an affiliated school, and it ended up being a spiritually important part of their lives as well.
On the more general post (a) thanks for putting this up and (b) I hope that it will lead to a conversation that's more about lived experience than theology. Just as when you fall in love with someone, it becomes an important part of your life without necessarily referring to a "theory of love" (though, if you're intellectually minded, you may spend a bunch of time puzzling over questions like "what does it mean to say I love this person? What evidence do I have that love exists?) for most religious people the attraction is primarily experiential, not about agreeing or disagreeing with a set of propositions. But for me, it's hard to know where to start, at least in the form of a blog comment.
it will just start to seem like a bunch of pointless and annoying ritual.
I'm actually very fond of ritual, and wouldn't find that aspect annoying.
I should be clearer about what I mean by "don't wan to have faith.". Doubt, wondering, uncertainty are all super cool. But I do think that a strong affirmative commitment to "There is no God and I have no need for one and that's that" would make going to Church unpleasant and kind of emptying, as most hypocrisy gets after a while.
but in my view if you affirmatively don't want to have faith you probably shouldn't go to Church;
That is very different from wanting faith and not having it at the moment.
I like the analogy in 86.2. I think the point of the theology is, ideally, to inform and augment the lived experience, rather than to be an intellectual playground. Reading and meditating on scripture is useful because it shapes us by the shaping the metanarrative we live into.
LizSpigot's story here is depressing. Let me get this straight: you're an atheist, but you're planning to raise your kids in your husband's religion and try to avoid the issue of what you believe until they're 18 (would the discussion come up on their birthday, or will you wait until the following weekend?) mostly to avoid public shaming, but also at least somewhat because "there's a lot of value in having someone remind you every week to be a good person"?
I skimmed or just skipped most of the long comment thread debating exactly how horrible outspoken atheists are, but I certainly hope that somewhere in there someone pointed out that you don't actually have to be religious to be a good person. I hope you'll tell your kids that before their 18th birthday. And as for the rest of it about taking it for granted that your kids will and should be religious, well, I get that you people wind up making compromises in daily life and you can't control what your kids will believe, but it seems like you think there's something wrong with atheism, which, if so, is sad.
Sorry if I'm assume too much or come across as judgmental, I've already established before now that I know nothing about raising kids, I hope I don't start another thousand-comment vituperative thread with this. But, really, of 4, 10, 12, 20 and 28, only the last doesn't sound like Stockholm Syndrome. Re: 20, if you don't mind my asking, what was your school like growing up? I didn't start calling myself an atheist until college, but wasn't particularly devout at all, and I can't remember anyone making an issue of that or anything else regarding religion in my hometown, except as caused by my own stupidity in the school newspaper.
86, 88, as an ex-Episcopalian with almost episcopal connections, I have to say that I entirely agree.
Children do what adults tell them: that's how they are.
I spent a couple of years in high school being strongly involved with churchy youth group stuff (ELCA Lutheran, although the specific pastor/congregation were very liberal and my parents went to multiple other kinds of churches at various stages during my upbringing).
On a trip with other youth group people, on a long bus ride, I had a conversation with a friend that I still think about occasionally- we were talking about other religions and other beliefs, and I made some offhand comment about how if my parents brought me up as some other religion, I would presumably believe that other religion, instead of this one. The friend was very taken aback by this. He thought it was obvious that, regardless of the religion of your parents, everyone should be expected to realize that ours (Lutheranism) was the correct religion, and that people who did not believe this were to be proselytized at, not respected and left alone.
Then I was very taken aback about THAT, and we both sat there feeling surprised by each other and (I think) much less close, as friends, than we had been feeling a few minutes before.
Re: prasad for Ile:
The people who do free food as more of an anarchist thing constantly run into trouble with the cops (most famously in San Francisco, but other places too). It's not even so much the health department usually, as the anti-homeless people tendencies. Obviously, as you know, having a temple where you can do the service, hand out the prasad and keep up health code standards is the ideal. But maybe checking in with your local officials won't be so bad. It really just seems to depend a lot on the specific town, and where people are at on "the homeless problem" at any given time.
I think the evolution of this thread is perfectly representative of the way in which it seems like, given the right environment, there is no social penalty for atheism and some social penalty for theism. It's a much more milder and respectful tone than most of my social circle's late night parties.
LB: I had not, actually, thought of the Unitarians. I'm not that familiar with them b/c I've never met a dedicated one, only people who say they went to a few services as kids. I guess I was under the (perhaps false?) impression that they're still fundamentally Abrahamic--indeed, that the very reason for the Unitarian was to be a more positive way of saying anti-Trinitarian, and that their roots are in espousing an even less idolatrous spin on Christianity. Since we are not the all-is-one with the great light mergy sort of impersonalist Hindus, but in fact serious idol worshippers* with a monotheistic system that essentially looks on the trinity as a poor approximation of God's expandability using n = 3 instead of n = infinity (and no, those are not the Hindu 'many gods' you always read about in middle school world civilization), I shy away from trying to use any sort of Abrahamic space. But maybe modern UUs are pretty cut off from their roots? I am talking to some local Buddhists and Shintos about using their space.
*I sometimes fantasize about making a t-shirt that says "Monotheistic idol worshipper and proud of it" except no one would be offended enough to make it fun.
[I]f you affirmatively don't want to have faith you probably shouldn't go to Church....
I stand by my anti-beet comments above, but if I think anything about religious belief that might be interesting or relevant to anybody else, it is that perfection, and certainly the perfection of consistency -- perfect love, perfect knowledge, perfect faith, perfect wishes, perfect intent -- belongs to the Big J, not the person believing, wondering or thinking about believing or wondering.
95: They busted the anarchist food bus that came here for the G-20. They got busted for parking like shit, which they probably were because the kids park like shit all around here. Anyway, I think they may still be suing for an illegal search or something.
96.1: Where in the thread did the social penalty for theism come in?
I guess I was under the (perhaps false?) impression that they're still fundamentally Abrahamic
I'm not one, so I could be wrong. But I think that while they're historically Abrahamic, in that they're descended from a Christian sect, that they now have almost no doctrine, just a broad set of humanist values and affirmation for whatever religious beliefs their members have. I'm pretty sure they'd be absolutely chill with idol-worshippers.
Natilo: we are in the Bay Area, and SF would be the logical place to distribute prasad at any sort of large scale, and the trouble I've heard anarchists have is exactly one reason I feel like it's worth looking into official regulations. The other thing is, Hare Krishna/GVs have a local history of doing things unofficially and winging it in all sorts of ways, some good and some bad, and I (along with a lot of my 2nd generation co-religionists) feel like it's time to do things 'properly', and the only way to do that is to find out what that means, make it a goal, and then slowly work towards it, rather than always winging it. Sounds like you've had some experience with prasad.
UCC on the other hand, is an ordinary Christian sect, just politically liberal and very ecumenically oriented. I think it'd depend on the particular congregation if sharing space with GV was an issue, but there's a good shot that if you didn't mind them, they wouldn't mind you.
Chris Y's 83 almost exactly captures my feelings.
I have no religious impulse, and have been a life-long atheist with nary a religious feeling, ever. I do find a great deal of aesthetic pleasure, verging on the sort of transcendence some religious writers talk about, in art and in nature, but most profoundly in music, but I don't really think of that as a religious feeling, although I get a lot out of it anyway.
Ditto on the distrust of fundamentalism.
I have some intellectual sympathy for certain ethical/spiritual traditions, but not enough to adhere to any of them. All of my most deeply held beliefs are intellectual commitments, rather than religious in nature.
Here's some UU boilerplate on what they believe and value.
The UCC, expressly but gently repudiating Dobson-style hatin'-for-Jesus:
CLEVELAND -- Joining the animated fray, the United Church of Christ today (Jan. 24) said that Jesus' message of extravagant welcome extends to all, including SpongeBob Squarepants - the cartoon character that has come under fire for allegedly holding hands with a starfish.
"Absolutely, the UCC extends an unequivocal welcome to SpongeBob," the Rev. John H. Thomas, the UCC's general minister and president, said, only partly in jest. "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we."
For that matter, Thomas explained, the 1.3-million-member church, if given the opportunity, would warmly receive Barney, Big Bird, Tinky-Winky, Clifford the Big Red Dog or, for that matter, any who have experienced the Christian message as a harsh word of judgment rather than Jesus' offering of grace.
The UCC's welcome comes in the wake of laughable accusations by James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, that the popular SpongeBob and other well-known cartoon characters are crossing "a moral line" by stressing tolerance in a national We Are Family Foundation-sponsored video that will be distributed to U.S. schools on March 11, 2005.
I'm mostly on the same bench with 83 and 102. We were raised more non-church-going than atheist, and we actually did go to church until I was six or seven (at which point I think my parents turned to each other and said "Wait, I thought you were the one who wanted to keep going to church." And there was the sewing machine incident.)
I spent some time in college reading apologetics on the theory that God would be important enough, if any such thing existed, that I should devote some attention to figuring out if there were any good reasons to think that that was the case. Didn't come up with anything that stuck, and grew bored with the project after a while.
To the OP: I discarded the last vestiges of my Christian upbringing about the age of 12 or 13 and have never missed them since. I continued going to church and our church's youth group until I left for college because I had lots of friends there and it was an extremely liberal, politically active Baptist church that had a fair percentage of members who, in retrospect, were only vaguely Christian at best.
I've found it useful to stay fairly familiar with the Bible, though mostly for comic effect and friendly sparring with door-to-door evangelists (a pastime I generally enjoy). I know that a lot of people find comfort in ritual and more power to them, but I don't feel any need for it. I do kinda miss singing the bass lines in hymns.
99: Well, I wouldn't want to describe it as an overt penalty, but there's a simple unintentional penalty in being an outlier, as parodie described himself and I clearly am, and therefore having to take the time to carefully explain one's beliefs in a way that's both clear and accurate and yet safe from opproprium. For example, I thought I had some more suggestions for LizSpigot's quandry as originally posed, but I feel a little weird offering them now as the group has mostly converged around finding the very premise of her quandry somewhat problematic. As soon as I'm made aware again that I'm mostly alone and that most feelings in the local group vary from mild kindly interest to indifference to weak hostility, I usually feel like it's probably better to drop it. That feeling may only be a wrong misperception on my part, but it's still awkward and self-censorious. That feeling, and the awkwardness it engenders, is itself a social penalty. I always imagined this is exactly how most Atheists feel in the rest of the country, which is why so many of them have moved here. It's just a function of being in a minority, and one that's deemed 'chosen' as opposed to 'innate' at that.
I really had no idea, I thought the UUs were just very liberal Christians. I'll have to check them out.
86 sounds appealing in a way, but thinking about it I realize that my major hangup about it is a deep seated sense that if I start going to church that means I can't have sex anymore. I'd have difficulty sleeping with a churchgoer even if I wasn't going, too. I guess at least part of those sunday school lessons stuck. Better the no sex part than the part that considers jello salad food, though.
I realize that my major hangup about it is a deep seated sense that if I start going to church that means I can't have sex anymore. I'd have difficulty sleeping with a churchgoer even if I wasn't going, too.
"I only can properly enjoy carol services if I am having an illicit affair with someone in the congregation."
100: Yes, my aunt and her family are devotees. I always joke that if the Abrahamic faiths are "religions of the Book", then Gaudiya Vaishnavism is clearly a "religion of many, many books". But yeah, I haven't heard too much about how Food Not Bombs has been doing in the Bay Area recently.
Speaking of being 2nd generation, of course my aunt's children are that too, and now my cousin's kid is 3rd generation. That's going to be an interesting experience. Did you read the Cometbus about the Back to the Land movement (focusing on Humboldt County people)? It came out several years ago. One thing that seemed to carry through with all of the grown children of back-to-the-landers he talked to was just a profound ambivalence about the original motivations. Obviously, there's some overlap with ISKCON there, but the 2nd gen people I've met (sample includes my two cousins and my cousin's girlfriend) seem not only very devout, but fairly well-versed in the reasons their parents chose to embrace that faith. It would be interesting, if I live long enough, to interview the children of my anarchist friends when they're grown up. As one anarchist mom I know put it recently, speaking of her daughter's reading habits: "When I was growing up, all my books were about misfits who had a problem with authority. But she's not a misfit in her social circles, and most of the authority figures in her life are pretty cool."
Better the no sex part than the part that considers jello salad food, though.
I can't get behind this.
To the OP: I still hate religion, but I get along well with many religious people. Probably comes from being raised UCC.
Food Not Bombs
Taco Bell has finally had to get explicit in its labeling?
92: You're being a bit disingenuous. For example, when I said I wouldn't tell them about my beliefs until they were 18, I immediately followed the statement with "(or teenagers)."
I have no problem with atheists, I don't mind being one myself, but I think things would be easier if I believed in God if only so I didn't feel alone. I grew up with no sense of family, no sense of community and got ostracized by my primarily Catholic classmates. I would prefer my kids didn't have such a hard time. It will probably be 1000x easier for them, though, since I intend to raise them with social graces and the kind of awareness that my parents didn't find necessary to instill in me.
112: SpongeBob still loves you, Natilo.
104: I remember I actually turned on some sponge bog square pants after that whole controversy. I was prepared to hate it, b/c I had sort of arrived at this idea that all new children's programming was terrible, but I found it quite delightful: it was an episode in which SpongeBob gets a new box to play with and turns into all sorts of adventures. It seemed sort of shockingly non-commerical and encouraging on general play. Made me wonder if the real objection had to do more with anticapitalism and less with homosexuality.
As one anarchist mom I know put it recently, speaking of her daughter's reading habits: "When I was growing up, all my books were about misfits who had a problem with authority. But she's not a misfit in her social circles, and most of the authority figures in her life are pretty cool."
Middle-aged parent comes to view her authority as benign, not like the authority she had to live with when she was younger. Film at 11.
Sometimes when I'm feeling irritable with this place, I think of the scene in Manhattan where Isaac says "They probably sit around on the floor with wine and cheese, and mispronounce allegorical and didacticism" only it's "They probably sit around on the floor with wine and cheese, and misuse colons and the word 'orthogonal.' "
UU churches very considerably depending on their congregations and the beliefs and personalities of the ministers they've hired. Some are essentially non-denominational Christians or broad Western monotheists; others are effectively secular humanist communities (I once described my father as a sacred humanist; he didn't really believe in G/god, but found a sense of the transcendent in this wroldly connections between people); others define themselves as a community of seekers, who pretty much want to keep learning about other people's beliefs forever; and others still are more actively pluralist, with active Buddhist or Pagan or Renewal/Humanistic Judaism sub-caucuses.
116: Also, SpongeBob is happy, kind and generous, while James Dobson is a stale prune of cruelty and fear.
The beet is the enemy of Christ. Pickled, boiled or borscht, it is an abomination to be met with fire, sword and prayer.
You haven't had my mom's Christmas Eve barszcz (borscht). Heavy on the porcini, clear, with cabbage and mushroom dumplings. Yum.
On the OP, I was raised agnostic, everybody knew it, nobody cared except when they felt like having a friendly argument. The last happened often since I was friends with a bunch of WCC staff kids, all of whom were ultra devout left wing types who hung out at our high school's CCC group. I occasionally wonder what the American CCC staffers thought of this stuff, but they were certainly very friendly towards me, even though back then I was all Hitchens style 'belief in god is wrong!!!!'. I knew one of the CCC staffers fairly well since he'd take me and a few friends of mine hiking on occasion. My grandfather's maid once dragged me along to Mass as a small child, and my very devout grandfather exploded at her saying that small kids get the religious upbringing they want and can make up their own minds later on in life. I also went to a Catholic seminarian run summer camp a few times and the seminarians were really great people with very reasonable management of their hormone ridden charges (don't do anything you don't want, be careful, otherwise have fun except for the case of the fifteen year old girl and the thirty year old biker where they intervened forcefully).
To sum up, I suspect that part of my distaste for the Hitchens/Harris/Dawkins efforts is related to my never having dealt with intolerant religious people in person, at least regarding religious beliefs, while having met plenty of very tolerant ones.
LizSpigot clearly hasn't considered the possibility that if she goes through with her plan, her children will never feel comfortable commenting on Unfogged.
Yeah, yeah, 83, 102 nary a religious bone anywhere, even extending to a lack of communitarianism, identity, values, or belief in rocks until I kick them.
Where in the thread did the social penalty for theism come in?
However, after spending ten years in the left blogosphere, I somehow feel I need to wear a star like the Danes, or say I'm gay like Joanna Russ, or defend religion. Or pretend to be a commonist.
Were I in different circumstances I would troll otherways. This is of course hard to explain to people with rigid strongly-held dogmatic belief systems.
Oh I couldn't expose my children to something like Unfogged. I can't have them thinking for themselves after all.
121.1: Your mom can make beets invisible?
My parents were sort of weird about church- partly because they divorced and both remarried, so there were 4 different people's beliefs/opinions coming into play, but the number of churches we went to was greater than 4:
When I was really small I sometimes went to an Episcopal church with my mom (who was raised in that church, but in a very British way where she went to Sunday School but her parents didn't really attend many services) and sometimes to a UU service with both parents (while they were still married). In later years I attended, at various times, a different Episcopal church, a Lutheran church, a UU church, Quaker meetings, and some sort of Congregational thing.
The result of all that is that I majored in comparative/historical religion, in college, and am now an atheist. I still like church services, but don't really go to them unless I'm visiting parents (and not much any more even then, because it turns out church is super boring if you're deaf, and an atheist, and they don't have an interpreter).
Those weren't Danes, those were sneetches.
...but I suppose if they go the route of mostly-lapsed-but-eternally-conflicted Catholic like me, they'll at least have a hook to hang their ideals and feelings of inadequacy on when they're adults.
I think this was pretty much how my father felt about putting me through things like Yom Kippur services and my bar mitzvah and it's worked out ok for me. I gave up any religious identity the moment I gave it any thought (early teens) and have always felt good about the cultural identity/enjoyed blaming it for my woes.
To sum up, I suspect that part of my distaste for the Hitchens/Harris/Dawkins efforts is related to my never having dealt with intolerant religious people in person, at least regarding religious beliefs, while having met plenty of very tolerant ones.
I find it really hard to keep the intolerant religious people from dominating my whole view on religion. It's not fair or accurate, and driven more by anger than anything else.
(Like the twit who came to my book-signing, pursed her lips while she thumbed through the book, and proclaimed "I don't do bunnies for Easter. Too much of the rest of the world does that." She totally got under my skin. Sorry about bringing the corrupting message of tolerance, MA'AM.)
I would like to partake of some of this barszcz. What do I need to convert to? I can totally become Polish, if that would help.
Properly done, borscht is meat-heavy.
?! The only meat I've ever had in it was in the form of the broth base.
129: You wrote a book about the Easter Bunny?
130 Find somebody who is Polish and does a traditional Wigilia (Christmas Eve) and attend. You don't even have to be invited, part of the ritual involves setting out a place setting for a 'stranger'. Everyone I've talked to about that part says that they'd be a bit surprised if someone took them up on it but they'd serve them.
In practice, answering "Unitarian" was a giant nonsensical pain in the ass in 5th grade.
IME, there was often some confusion with the Unification church.
"I don't do bunnies for Easter."
Isn't Lent the time when you're supposed to give up bunny fucking?
132: Children's book w/ my mom. Email me if you're curious.
129: I don't actually know any intolerant religious people. (I'm pretty sure that's not an exaggeration. The only religious people I know, I think, are my mom and stepdad, who are extremely liberal in every way except about gun control. I'm facebook friends with a few people who seem like they go to church, but they're mainly leftovers from childhood, not actual friends that I talk to now).
The people who seem to dominate the discourse* in my social world are intolerant anti-religionists, who make me irate with what seem like very intolerant, bigoted, hypocritical nastiness about "Christians" all the time.
*I barely ever talk about religion with anyone, except in a comparative way like "what do those guys believe, again, exactly? Oh right. anyway..."
133: What would happen if the stranger said he was Elijah?
125 The beets are removed before serving. And in any case part of the beet part comes in the form of fermented beet extract.
NP: Buahahaha. That is very true. I came back from India last fall with so many books that the suitcase busted up. I've heard that this is actually how the Mughals got away with not converting us and just taxing us---they interpretted the language of the people of the book designation to apply to us just b/c we have so very many books. I wonder if I know your cousins, it's a small world.
Liz, I'm sort of in the inverse of your situation. My current boyfriend comes from a long line of Atheists on both side, to the point where it never even occurred to him to think about it. Oddly enough he's down with some aspects of GV--prasad and certain rituals. . .but he doesn't *believe*. I have to think about what that's going to mean for children. I can't imagine not raising my children as Gaudiya Vaishnavs. My greatest moments of joy have all been religious. I feel like being a minority and learning to defend my beliefs as a first grader made me more resilient and self-confident. When I got horribly depressed about dropping out of grad school and living alone, I really felt like it was my religion that kept me from going off the deep end. My mom's been quite ill for years now, and I don't think we could have dealt with it without our religion. And it's just . . .I don't know, fun. We sing and dance and have big feasts and stay up all night telling our stories and go on these big pilgrimages. I could never stop doing these things, and I couldn't not include my children. I'm big on the fact that my ancestral connection doesn't make me any better of a devotee than someone who's a convert or a child of converts, but on the other hand I'm really proud of my great grandparents et al and how strong and accomplished they were, and I'd like to pass that sense of connection on. On a day-to-day practical level, it seems like it could work. In India, it works all the time---there are plenty of families, especially Bengali families, where one parent (very often the mother) is devout and the other one is a passive Atheist who goes along with the rituals. But that makes a little more sense b/c the other parent is essentially behaving like a secular Jew who still celebrates Passover. My boyfriend is a half Jew/half WASP, so that seems like a weird model to transpose to a Hindu sect. I just worry that if we have kids, and he plays along (which he seems willing to do, since he plays along with me, without kids) one day it's going to make their relationship with him . . . .weird? I don't know.
In later years I attended, at various times, a different Episcopal church, a Lutheran church, a UU church, Quaker meetings, and some sort of Congregational thing.
The result of all that is that I majored in comparative/historical religion, in college, and am now an atheist.
I really, sincerely don't understand why, as an atheist/nihilist, I can't believe in them all, or any combination in rotation. They claim to be exclusionary, but I don't have to believe that. We all manage to get through the day in a welter of epistemological/ontological contradictions. (Vast spaces between atoms, dude)
Take communion while chanting the nembutsu while facing Mecca. Why not?
133: I have some likely suspects, but would have to investigate carefully to make sure they were porcini-worshiping Poles.
Things I envy about church etc: the sense of community, the regular opportunity for singing. Atheism aside, my memory of Friday night services is excruciating boredom. I'd go to the bathroom and linger outside the sanctuary dreading having to sit there for another hour. So there's no real urge to join any kind of congregation. I guess what I'd like would be to join a big, friendly, not very good choir.
I really, sincerely don't understand why, as an atheist/nihilist, I can't believe in them all, or any combination in rotation.
...?
As an atheist, I'm pretty sure you can't believe any of them. If you believed in God, you wouldn't be an atheist.
Or perhaps you meant something else. Or perhaps you have a different definition of "atheist" and/or "believe" in mind.
Is anyone else having trouble reloading comments or having the blog crash the browser? :( I'm using Chrome maybe I should stop . . .
117: No, no, she wasn't just talking about herself, she meant the whole anarchist community, plus her ex and his GF. Plus, said kid goes to Montessori school, and is in an ultra-left, inner-city Girl Scout troop. She really does get along pretty well with everyone. Her mom just dyed her (the daughter's) hair a very bright color. So, yeah, I know they have conflicts about stuff, but it's not exactly like growing up with Fred Phelps or something.
Things I envy about church etc: the sense of community, the regular opportunity for singing.
This.
I guess what I'd like would be to join a big, friendly, not very good choir.
We could make this a sing-along blog.
Or perhaps you have a different definition of "atheist" and/or "believe" in mind.
Perhaps I do. Do you think existentialism/skepticism/nihilism/atheism requires an authentic, shall I even say, "religious" commitment?
Pyrrhonism and/or Veil of Maya
I step around the non-existent rock in order to avoid some small inconvenience of having to make the effort of re-asserting my skepticism. Straight is the gate of unbelief.
140: the mother is devout and the other one is a passive Atheist who goes along with the rituals
This describes my aunt's family, with the exception that my uncle is more of a doubting Blakean mystic than an atheist. And her daughter's husband was raised nothing-in-particular/sorta-Catholic I believe, so he's mostly going through the motions too. Frankly, I don't see why that has to be a huge problem, especially if you're not from a Bible-thumping, "all the unbelievers are going to HELLLLL!" tradition. As you point out, it's a pattern that is fairly prevalent in the US Jewish community too. I'm sure most children will be able to think of about 347,963 other reasons to hate their parents, especially when they are teenagers, besides "mom believes and dad doesn't".
One caution on the Uni-Unis, as I've mentioned here before, one of my HS friends was kicked out of a local, very liberal UU congregation for being too weird and outspoken and lesbian and green-haired. (I forget what their actual justification was, but that's what it boiled down to, especially since her parents did not belong to that church.)
140: Ile, this thread has me thinking that if your boyfriend is willing to go along with it, then that should be great. He can go to the services and if your kids have questions, he can answer them honestly.
Also, I understand your concern about not wanting to use spaces that employ the trinity, but since you live in the Bay Area I thought you might find this information helpful. Half Moon Bay has an Episcopalian Church that is less traditional and more embracing of other religions. I went to one service there and at the end of it they banged a gong. It's also in a converted farmhouse, which is quite pretty.
Pescadero also has a non-traditional Episcopalian church but it has more to do with their friendliness than their service. After one service, complete strangers hugged me. I've never seen this happen at any other Episcopalian church service so I was very taken aback.
Some see atheism as Malevich
My atheism is Kandinsky
Popular, Dawkins-Harris-O'Hare atheism is just another spiritual asceticism. Can't you see it?
"I am too pure for messy disorganized illogical belief," Spock said.
: I don't actually know any intolerant religious people.
It's really sticky, since most fundamentalist people around here aren't actually being threatened or challenged in any way, and so they are perfectly nice people who drop innocuous comments which imply that being evangelical is a shared, common experience.
Things like: having a religious tagline on your email signature about the path to salvation. Or whatever.
I pretty much never witness religious conflict where there is some overt intolerance, because I'm a scaredy cat or well-socialized. But it's a reasonable presumption of how things would unfold if you challenged someone directly.
One caution on the Uni-Unis, as I've mentioned here before, one of my HS friends was kicked out of a local, very liberal UU congregation for being too weird and outspoken and lesbian and green-haired. (I forget what their actual justification was, but that's what it boiled down to, especially since her parents did not belong to that church.)
I don't think that's a caution on UUs, just a demonstration of the fact that you can find tools within any group of people.
"If I get a direct question about whether I believe, I'll have to deflect or lie until they're 18 (or maybe teenagers). Because we don't want to establish early on that I don't believe. "
That's a terrible idea and will end in tears.
I'd somehow missed 74 before, but I agree with it 100%. Particularly the point about dogma. As well as the comment Flippanter made somewhere that I can't find about how you need to leave perfection in all things, including faith, to whatever your idea of divinity is. Anyhow, I hope that at least one message folks take away from this discussion is that unquestioning acceptance of dogma isn't necessary or even particularly important and that there's really no contradiction between being religious and doubting and enquiring, etc.
155: We interviewed a guy who had a tagline on his email for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That's equally presumptuous of your audience. I'm rather happy that he didn't join because not only revealing that you're an atheist but revealing that you're willing to mock theists (Christians?) demonstrates someone who is utterly lacking in business savvy.
I was raised not believing in God per se, but my mom is really big on "energies" and "the Universe" and I took things like reincarnation and karma as a given. In high school, I decided that Paganism fit most closely with my general belief system (such as it was) and identified as a witch for several years. Ritual definitely felt good and comfortable to me then. In my early 20s, I realized that I didn't actually have any basis for believing any of the things that I did and basically lost my faith in all of it. Coming to the conclusion that there are no immaterial "souls," there is no afterlife (re-life), when we're gone we're just gone was very depressing for a time and still bothers me. I miss the comfort of believing that, but I can't make that belief come back now that it's gone. I think most of the time I'd rather have never believed it in the first place.
(Let's see if I can fit a few hundred more iterations of believe/belief/believing into that comment.)
Hemm, I don't think I've ever known anyone who I knew to be religious. Drawing a blank.
Outside of Church, I've never been in a community where seriously religious people weren't regarded by most as being basically wackos. Being a hardcore evangelizing atheist would also seem a bit weird, but more as a kind of aggressive preaching to the choir.
159: That is definitely equally obnoxious. I'd say that's even more deliberate ass and less "I live in a bubble!"
161 Back in grad school, within the space of a couple days, I had two people mention to me how shocked they were to encounter religious/atheist people for the first time in their lives. The first was a Manhattan born and raised child of a card carrying Communist. The second a Berkshire raised person who had gone to Harvard. I was a bit skeptical about her statement since I found it very unlikely that she had never run into atheists as an undergrad.
I'm rather happy that he didn't join because not only revealing that you're an atheist but revealing that you're willing to mock theists (Christians?) demonstrates someone who is utterly lacking in business savvy.
While I agree that it's incautious having a tagline that will piss people off, and that an FSM tagline would be likely to, so it showed poor judgment, doesn't it specifically make fun of creationist/intelligent design advocates rather than theists generally? I think taking it as globally anti-religious is mistaken.
But it's certainly the sort of thing that's too risky to identify with in a professional context where you don't know the audience.
114
You're being a bit disingenuous.
No I wasn't. Accuse me of exaggerating, being inexact, glib, maybe inconsiderate, sure, fair enough, but I was being sincere about my general attitude. If you want to argue over exact details, I also don't really think you have Stockholm Syndrome. Since you mention the age thing, again this is ex recto, but I'll bet kids can handle discussions of religion long before they're "18 (or maybe teenagers)" [emphasis mine, of course].
I have no problem with atheists, I don't mind being one myself, but I think things would be easier if I believed in God if only so I didn't feel alone. I grew up with no sense of family, no sense of community and got ostracized by my primarily Catholic classmates. I would prefer my kids didn't have such a hard time. It will probably be 1000x easier for them, though, since I intend to raise them with social graces and the kind of awareness that my parents didn't find necessary to instill in me.
That's all understandable. I just don't think atheism has too much to do with this. (Although again, of course, I don't know what your childhood was like.) Kids are cruel. They pick on each other for not enough religion, too much religion, the wrong religion, the wrong race, being too smart, being too dumb, and not dressing right. The thing is, I think that planning to "deflect or lie" to your kids [your word] about what you believe will not help with any of this stuff while at the same time making other things worse. In other words, 157, although maybe I just get myself into trouble by expounding too much.
Since you mention the age thing, again this is ex recto, but I'll bet kids can handle discussions of religion long before they're "18 (or maybe teenagers)"
Given that they're going to be attending church services, I certainly hope so.
165: I guess I don't know enough about FSM, but I went to their website and I could see many kinds of Christians feeling insulted by the "he boiled for your sins" t-shirt.
Also, you've all convinced me that whatever happens I won't lie about my lack of belief to my kids.
Kids are cruel.
Especially when the loudly wonder why you haven't gotten them breakfast at a quarter to six.
And then bitch about the green stuff not being 100% gone from the strawberry.
Would you refuse to hire someone who had a tagline indicating affiliation with a denomination that emphasizes its beliefs that homosexuality or atheism is wrong? (Sorry Mormons and Catholics, if you're out, you're out). To me the FSM thing is simply a way of displaying atheist beliefs, and while in Utah it may be lacking in business savvy, not hiring them is no more for that reason is no different than someone in a basically secular environment like you often find in the upper middle class circles of the coastal blue metropolises refusing to hire someone who has a religious tagline.
The shirt looks questionable to me, and I'm sure that at least some people with FSM stuff are anti-religion generally. But the origin and the point of the whole FSM thing was an absurdist attack on the Intelligent Design people on the Kansas School Board. Here's the original letter that got it all started.
172: Well, there's a real business-savvy difference in that something indicating that you identify as atheist is genuinely going to offend a lot more people than something that indicates you identify as Catholic. If it's something like a sales job, that sort of lack of caution is probably a real disqualification.
To the original post: was raised with no religion. Have a vague fondness for my Dad's original Judaism (sorry to disappoint you, Pauly), which he doesn't share. My Jewish father and Christian mother divorced. He went on to marry a Catholic; they later divorced. My Christian mother married a Muslim; they later divorced. So far as I know, they were all atheist.
Me, now? If I could believe in god, I might start practicing Judaism. But I can't. I'm pretty quick to vest inanimate objects with spirits and names. And since my Dad (New York Jew) was heavily influenced by the Folk Revolution, we were raised with old-timey and Baptist hymns. For an atheist Jew (not that the conservative or orthodox would have me) from Los Angeles, I know a surprising number of fire-and-brimstone hymns (dozens if not hundreds), which I occasionally listen to on a Sunday.
170, 171: Every so often, I think that Moby and I are leading parallel lives.
172: No, I wouldn't refuse. And we actually made him an offer. I'm just relieved that he didn't accept.
We've also hired people that were Mormon and indicated such with a reference on their resume to serving in a mission.
But I'm a lawyer and I don't want anyone at my firm to send a message to clients with any indication that they are religious or non-religious. That doesn't belong in this workplace.
173: Okay, that post is awesome. The graph correlating the rise in temperature to the decline in pirates is hilarious.
to send a message to clients with any indication that they are religious or non-religious.
No Christmas cards?
178: "His Noodly Appendage" cracks me up. I am clearly a child in this.
something indicating that you identify as atheist is genuinely going to offend a lot more people
If the "something" is mocking religion, like FSM, then sure, but I don't think this statement is true generally, except perhaps insofar as there are relatively few things one could put in a tagline to identify oneself as an atheist that didn't in some way mock religion.
179: I think we chose a "happy holidays" card with an emphasis on plural holidays so as not to exclude anyone. But I wasn't really thinking of that scenario. I was thinking specifically of a tagline on an email or ending an email with "the lord be with you."
I mean, forget religion, I'm not sure something that's even arguably mocking anyone is a good email tagline in a sales job.
174 True, but that's why we have laws against religious discrimination. IANAL, but I wonder whether treating statements of religious affiliation differently depending on their popularity is even legal. Now if LizSpigot would also refuse to hire people using a Mormon tagline, that's different. However, as it is, her statements in this thread suddenly make me more sympathetic to aggressive in your face atheism.
"No hell below us, above us only sky..."
Nice non-mocking atheist tagline, but I still think it'd piss people off in a lot of the country.
183: "A fool and his money are soon parted."
184: But I didn't refuse to hire him! And I am also an agnostic. It would actually be nice to have an atheist in the office that I could talk to. But not if he causes us to lose clients.
I once had a very confusing argument with a pantheist who was offended that I was an atheist. She kept patiently explaining that the Universe was God. She got me to admit that I believe in the Universe, but was angry that I wouldn't take the next step.
161,162:As I've said, I grew up in a mostly RC community within walking distance of Amish/Mennonites.
I didn't talk to them, but the black and beards and buggies provided clues.
And it wasn't Witness, with the cruel antics of youth toward outsiders, since in the 50s and 60s we had plenty of our own men and women in black walking around. Just casual respect.
The Catholicism was mostly ritual, the Amish mostly observed everyday practice so that is a large part of what religion means to me. Along with a profound skepticism about what human beings materially need.
Although, really, why hire anyone with an email tagline period, regardless of content? Is there any professional context in which they're not in poor taste?
187: You're right about the business-savvy point. But I do think that lots of people, including lots of people who aren't very religious themselves, are very ready to interpret any affirmative statement of atheism as being an aggressive asshole about it.
185: that's a quote from a john lennon song. How is that not mocking religion?
194: This is going to be one of those conversations where I can't figure out whether you're engaged in an extended put on or are actually insane.
It's not mocking anything because it's not, you know, a joke, or funny, or anything like that. It's a line from a song standing for the proposition that atheism is nice and would make people happy. With a strong implication that atheism is better than religion, but the parallel implication is in any affirmation of religious belief or affiliation.
"put on" s/b "put-on". I have terrible hyphenation problems.
159: It may be that the dude's FSM sig is calculated to keep him out of jobs where he will have to work with serious theists. Would you feel that someone with a sig promoting, say, marriage equality was demonstrating their utter lack of business savvy?
I get all my taglines from Ziggy. He's the best!
184 Sorry, I misunderstood you on the hiring. But I do still wonder at what point being open about ones religious beliefs becomes a problem. I certainly wouldn't be offended bye a 'lord be with you' sign off. Find it a bit weird, but that's it. Someone asking me directly if I'd found Jesus on the other hand might trigger my snark impulses. (Nope, is he missing? Should we call 911?)
195: 194 was a bit tongue in cheek, but I do think Lennon comes with too much baggage. What about just a link to www.atheists.org? Offensive?
I think it'd be just as likely to upset people as the FSM reference or Lennon quote, and much more likely than a statement of religious affiliation.
My daughter is old enough that she asks hard questions that I don't have an easy answer for. She's very curious about death, for example, and asks questions that show she's trying to process it. (My wife and I have been joking that if she ever walked in on us having sex, we would distract her from asking any embarrassing questions to bringing up death.) I sort-of feel bad that I don't have an easy answer. Part of me wants to just tell her "you go to heaven when you die", because that's what my parents told me. Another part wants me to tell her the story of Siddhartha and how he learned about death. I'm not even sure what I would want her to take away from the story. It's just what comes to mind.
Honestly, aren't all proselytyzing taglines and slogans annoying and offensive? Maybe that's what you all are saying.
I disagree with 201, too, at least here. That is, I think having "atheists.org" as your email tagline would be viewed as weird and unnecessarily provocative, but no more so than adding a link to Lutherans.org at the end of every email.
I disagree with 201, too, at least here.
Well, yeah. In the most secular locations in the country, where you live and where I live, they'd look about equally weird. Get outside the bubble and one would freak people out and the other wouldn't.
Interestingly, I'm sort of the antiLizSpigot. When my kids ask what heaven is, I never say it's the place people go they die, even though I believe it is. I say that "some people believe" it's the place people go when they die. And similarly for basically all other religious concepts. ("Some people believe there's a god".) I don't know why, but stating these things affirmatively as facts feels dishonest to me. That probably means I'm ruining my children, I know.
I have this belief that you're a churchgoer -- don't they go to Sunday school or something?
206: I don't live in the bubble and I think weird and unnecessarily provocative covers it. atheists.org is probably worse marketing than lutherans.org, but it's not more offensive.
Yeah, maybe. I just don't know; I can't really imagine a business context where putting a religious email tagline would be appropriate anywhere I've worked (and I've practiced a bunch in Texas) but maybe you're right.
I have this belief that you're a churchgoer -- don't they go to Sunday school or something?
Not yet, although they go to church with us.
I have to admit that I'm relying on Heebie for my belief that religious taglines aren't odd at all where she is.
204 gets it right. Except that I would probably interpret someone with a proselytizing religious tagline as a person who inherited their beliefs in childhood without questioning them, and interpret someone with a proselytizing atheist tagline as a person who wants to argue and rebel all the time. So they aren't the same at all.
I liked this post about raising small atheists, mostly because of the "I think his name is Odd" comment from the daughter.
Especially when the loudly wonder why you haven't gotten them breakfast at a quarter to six.
With my shift ending at midnight and my wife having to get up early for teaching I've taken to just making something and putting it in the fridge before I go to bed. Granted it's usually not traditional morning stuff but my kids don't seem to mind eating something like a turkey sandwich for breakfast.
Not sure if it will make you feel any better or not, but I was "ruined" that way and am pretty happy about it. I grew up more or less agnostic and am now a Quaker, though still agnostic on a lot of the logistics (life after death, who knows?).
I grew up in a world in which vaguely observed Christianity was common and overtly religious people (of any persuasion) were some mixture of odd, inappropriate, or benighted. I am sure that I would have gotten ridiculed by friends for stating an outright disbelief in God, but I didn't have a deep conviction about it that I can recall. My strongest religious memory is deciding based on some Bible stories that any divine being that described itself as jealous and vengeful was not one I wanted an acquaintance with.
I now work in a world in which a significant number of my close colleagues and clients are religiously observant, and as an adult have become observant myself. It's interesting how many of my family and childhood contacts this has made vaguely uncomfortable.
It does provide an excellent conversation point, and sometimes facilitates things I would like to be able to do (e.g. hosting dinner for people here on interfaith dialogue programs through the State Dept - facilitating those conversations is muuuuuuuuch easier as a Quaker).
The first part of my 216 was supposed to be responding to urple's 207:
("Some people believe there's a god".) I don't know why, but stating these things affirmatively as facts feels dishonest to me. That probably means I'm ruining my children, I know.
176: So you're why I can never switch lanes without a near collision.
What I find weird is that I feel uncomfortable even telling them "I believe in god". It's always "some people". If asked (which I'm sure I will be soon enough), I would definitely include myself in with those some people. But I'm not yet sure my kids are old enough to distinguish between things that I believe are true and things that are, affirmatively, true. So I feel the need to hedge; they're still too impressionable.
I want them to make up their own minds on this stuff. But, yet, and this is probably where I think things get most weird: I think I would be sad if they turn out irreligious. Although that seems to be obviously what I'm setting up, which is why Witt as a counterpoint in 216 is actually very encouraging.
I'm not sure if I've ever knowingly met a Quaker.
It is hard to tell if you can't inspect them for horns.
I owned a Quaker once. They're quite loud, ironically.
But delicious once you realize how loud they are.
I think anyone who uses any sort of personal tagline for work communication should suffer eternal damnation.
I grew up going to church with my mum, but always knew my dad was an atheist (his email tagline: I support www.humanism.org.uk). I tried very hard to believe for many years, but as soon as I went to university I stopped going to church and felt relieved that I could sort of admit to myself that no, I wasn't expecting God to speak to me.
Now, I am an atheist. Although I sent my kids to a religious youth organisation (mainly for the social side, partly as some religious education, as they weren't going to be getting any at home) and now help out there, which also involves going to church about 9 times a year. The singing is definitely the best bit.
Anyway, my kids so far are 2 atheists, 2 agnostics (my 14 year old described herself as a Pastafarian for quite a while), and they are all interested in what people believe and why, and I am fairly confident that I haven't just managed to make them believe what I do.
I should add that the belief part wasn't voluntary. I didn't have a sense that I could tell myself to have faith, it just emerged. Conversely, I'm not sure I could tell myself to lose it, although it's possible it could go away on its own.
For me, the religious observance (going to Meeting, mostly) was parallel to but did not cause (as far as I know) the faith. Quakerism is sometimes affectionately described as a "do it yourself' religion, and actually that's one of the things I like most about it.
221: Philadelphia is basically the epicenter of Quakerism in the US. There are only a couple hundred thousand in the whole country; it would almost be odder if you *had* met one.
(There are more Quakers in Kenya, but they're very different from the liberal, unprogrammed ones you tend to find in the US.)
I rather like the Quaker and the UU versions of quiet, humble, non-evangelical observance. However, the church I do not attend is the Mormon church, and my family would be (quietly) offended should I start attending some other church, I think.
Of course, given the fact that I was raised in quite possibly the most liberal LDS ward in the country (my mother, married to an atheist, with 2/3s defection in her children, is vice-poohbah of the women's group), I may have an overly expansive notion of what sort of religious practice might be possible within the church. I was the only religious person I knew growing up.
I agree with what Halford said earlier about the CHASM between what theology holds and how religion feels to live. I haven't been religious in any way for a long time, but armchair theologizing during, say, the Mitt Romney run in 2008 can annoy the heck out of me.
As the child of a religiously mixed household, I can only say to Liz to be straight with her kids. My dad never came to church, thought it was mostly nonsense, but didn't belittle it. He told us very directly, starting at 8 years old (the age of baptism in LDS tradition), what his position was and expected us to respect him back. It was a little traumatic at first, but eventually we all figured out that a religion that condemned him to hell for it wasn't the sort of religion any of us were interested in.
eventually we all figured out that a religion that condemned him to hell for it wasn't the sort of religion any of us were interested in
Whereas your mother, understandably, had no problem with this.
No, it turns out that she has rather idiosyncratic ways of being Mormon as well.
I have to admit that I'm relying on Heebie for my belief that religious taglines aren't odd at all where she is.
Well, no place is homogenous, right? It would seem weird on the end of an email from a lawyer. It doesn't seem weird on the end of an email from the lady who runs some random student life program.
Here's another example of religion of the ilk "it's only not intolerant for lack of opportunity, but generally nice people": when I was pregnant with Hawaiian Punch, a colleague's wife gave me Christian Poetry and Essays for Christian Mothers. Some kind of heavy-handed thing that was not written with the intent to convert anyone, but for people who prefer the religious version of everyday items.
But also, people blithely say stuff in conversation, and I never know how much religiosity to read into it.
185: "No hell below us, above us only sky..."
"The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning - no prospect of an end."
- James Hutton
From 148: I should probably RTFA.
I've actually been deliberately discreet on Unfogged about it, although I did way too much embarrassing self-promotion on Facebook, and went into more depth on LJ. Now that Easter's over, it seems less important to not mention it.
My parents were not believers, but like many non-believing Jews they raised their children as Jews. They didn't go so far as keeping kosher or going to synagogue weekly, but we did observe the major holidays, and were sent to Sunday School for a few years, etc. I don't know think that they ever explicitly lied to us about what they believed -- but still, my sister was shocked and confused when my father told her he was an atheist. She was around 12-13 at the time, I think. She just couldn't understand why he would consider himself Jewish and celebrate the holidays if he didn't believe. My father tried to explain that it was about culture, etc. but my sister just didn't accept it and seemed to feel she had been tricked, because she did believe in God.
Of the four of us, she is the only the one that has remained Jewish. We all married non-Jews, but she made her non-Jew convert. My sense is that she still does believe in God, although she isn't particularly religious.
My parents were entirely mum on theology. They dumped me in Hebrew day school from nursery school onwards, and were pretty gung-ho about observing along with me, although I was kind of a terror in first grade. It is tradition that you eat the head of the fish on Rosh Hashanah! Why don't we have a head of a fish?
I think by six or seventh grade we would quiz each other on whether we believed in God. I like the idea of giving my hypothetical children the undergirding mythology and a baseline of rituals and letting them figure out how they relate to it. The only thing I'll really cram down their throats is the Passover seder, and how the real mitzvah is connecting the Exodus story to ongoing struggles for liberation.
The hard part, I think, will come if they ask me what I believe too early. I think there's a point at which it just doesn't make sense to kids to participate in something if you don't think it's literally true. Yes, Dad, stories have meanings. Did it happen or not? But they'll be okay either way.
Heh. What a strange new variety of pwnage, peep.
E-mail taglines of any kind are questionable, and in most business contexts would generally be instantly disqualifying if I were king. "We've turned on this feature in the software to allow the fools and assholes to more easily self-identify themselves."
On both sides of my family, Judaism was swapped out for Communism. My dad's mom was a fervent Communist, and my dad's dad indifferent. His second wife was practicing Jewish again. On my mom's side, the grandparents were the ones who were communists, and my grandparents joined a UU Fellowship when my mom was growing up. My mom really really loves secular Christianity.
I too endorse Urple's "some people believe that" approach. This seems absolutely right: But I'm not yet sure my kids are old enough to distinguish between things that I believe are true and things that are, affirmatively, true. So I feel the need to hedge; they're still too impressionable.
I was raised Catholic, with a Catholic father (non-Church-going but observant of, say, Lent, Ash Wednesday and so on, as well as the more obvious Christian holidays), and a Protestant mother (completely non-observant). My mom chose to let my father set not just the family surname but the 'family religion'; I don't think it was a consciously arrived at decision on her part, but just an assumption that the father rules the roost.
While it was required that I go through catechism, First Communion, and Confirmation, we were a little haphazard about attending Sunday services, and I got essentially no religious belief espousal in the home itself: the emphasis seemed to be on observance of the requisite rituals -- a sort of tipping of the hat -- and that was about it. My agreement with my parents was that once I was confirmed (age 13-14), I could choose to go to church or not, and I chose not, with no parental objection.
That's a long-winded way of saying that my parents' approach was: here, here's this thing, Catholicism. We're sending you to classes about it, and you will go through the paces until you're confirmed as an adult member of the Church, at which point the Church has said that it's up to you, you can decide how you want to proceed. I find this much more preferable than what LizSpigot was initially proposing early in the thread (pretending to believe in order to inculcate in the children a belief in God).
Of course I've wound up an atheist. I don't manage to detect any of this lapsed Catholic guilt of which many people speak!
235.1: Funnily enough, I couldn't stop my parents from keeping fish heads around the house.
If they'd eaten the head, it wouldn't have been so strange.
E-mail taglines
And background wallpaper! Don't forget background wallpaper.
I actually feel kind of bad making fun of it, because some otherwise monumentally wonderful people I know (like, moving mountains to help young people who really, really need it) tend to be users of this so-called feature. But on behalf of extremely myopic people everywhere, I feel justified in complaining.
237: Me and another guy once raised the bar on foolness by getting our emails to send "out of the office" messages back and forth to each other at the rate of dozens a minute.
Oh, and one more thought on telling children: Some (most?) children are going to feel much more more betrayed that you didn't tell them (your) truth than by any other transgression you might commit.
IMO, it's not very difficult to discern whether you're raising that kind of child. If so, I'd vote for preserving long-term parental trust over whatever short-term compliance (Grandma wants us to go to church!) you're trying to elicit.
Of course, I was raised by people whose full embrace of the cultural mythology of the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, et al., did not preclude the one and only answer on the topic, when pressed: "Santa Claus is the spirit of love." So.
I was raised by a lapsed Catholic and a poor soul searching for some religion to call her own. I honestly have no idea what either believe now, or at the time, but they took us to a few different churches in my early childhood. Fire and brimstone came up in Sunday School.
I was incorrigible generally, but that stuff really got to me and stayed with me until shortly before puberty. At that point I pretty much stopped believing in anything except materialist understandings of the world.
As I progressed in education I think I sort of assimilated a "god in the gaps" sort of viewpoint that originated from progressive discovery of the intractabilities that render impossible the ever-preferred "closed form solution."
After a while, though, even that passed, leaving basically no very comforting beliefs of that sort. It is sort of the worst of both worlds, from a certain standpoint.
On the other hand, there's a small relief in thinking that once we're done here, we don't have more to do. In my mind, it also incentivizes good behavior.
I guess I'm a member of the Church of Not Stopping at the Bottom of the Escalator and Not Paying With Exact Change When There's a Line.
MO, it's not very difficult to discern whether you're raising that kind of child. If so, I'd vote for preserving long-term parental trust over whatever short-term compliance (Grandma wants us to go to church!) you're trying to elicit.
Of course, I was raised by people whose full embrace of the cultural mythology of the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, et al., did not preclude the one and only answer on the topic, when pressed: "Santa Claus is the spirit of love." So.
I have a hard time now justifying maintaining any of those harmless fictions. Just don't like it. I also think that on the "what do you believe?" question it is acceptable to go with "that's personal, and you'll have to figure out what you believe on your own."
244.1 gets it exactly right.
I honestly have no memory of the "Santa Claus isn't real, honey" conversation: maybe I'd figured it out myself, so there was no need for a revelatory exposure. I do recall that my brother was very upset when the time came.
My father continued to act as the town Santa Claus through his 50s. Dressing up as Santa for town events, having an agreement with the Post Office that children's letters addressed to Santa at the North Pole be redirected to him, and so on. He was terrific at it. I was too uncouth to properly appreciate what he was doing, I fear.
243: Most likely sysadmin configuration error. You two were the *victims*. "Reply All" storms were the most fun. The righteous "Stop replying all!!!!" sent to all by some random recipient truly is humanity writ small ... but read wide.
245: As I progressed in education I think I sort of assimilated a "god in the gaps" sort of viewpoint that originated from progressive discovery of the intractabilities that render impossible the ever-preferred "closed form solution."
I have no idea what this means, TJ, though I can take a wild stab at it. Can you explain, or should I just look it up?
parsi, in physics and math at the lower levels a lot of emphasis is placed on problems where you can write down the solution in terms of elementary functions. As you progress you find fewer and fewer problems where that is possible. In fact you find that most problems are only approximately solvable at all. Gaps.
248: Probably so, otherwise it would probably happen more often. Still, we intentionally tried to see what would happen if we both set the auto reply and then one sent a message to the other.
22: If you renovate a church kitchen and make it too fancy, it has to get inspected as though it were a restaurant.
250: Right, okay. Philosophy knows that, you silly! I wasn't sure why god would be in the gaps, except insofar as either (a) these things are unknowable, like god, man, OR (b) seeking after these things anyway becomes a sort of looking for god, seeking perfection, finding more answers, filling in the gaps. Or something.
No big deal, I just didn't understand the phrases you were employing.
238 My dad's mom was a Communist after the war, though that worked a bit differently in Stalinist Poland than in the US, I imagine. She initially raised her kids Catholic during the war for safety reasons, and they didn't know they were Jewish until several years after the war, though I think my uncle suspected a bit - the difference between being six and being three when they suddenly became very observant Catholics. Like so many kids do, my dad revolted against his religious upbringing and became strongly anti-Communist by his late teens, though he did believe in Marxism-Leninism and his Prophet Stalin earlier in his childhood.
I keep forgetting to go get a permit, but apparently I am well qualified under PA law. I don't know why I want one, but I do.
Come on man, it's time to pack some heat. I never got around to getting one myself and there's not much point now as federal law exempts me from all that.
I do pack heat. I was just thinking about starting to do it legally.
You know they never search middle aged white guys who wear Oxford shirts and loafers.
20
... Atheists are a minority and atheist children have a rough time. ...
This is variable. I never had any problems.
I HACK PEAT ALL THE TIME AND I DINNA NEED GEORGE BOOSH TO ALLOW IT.
226
I think anyone who uses any sort of personal tagline for work communication should suffer eternal damnation.
I don't understand this attitude. I see nothing wrong with displaying a little personality. And in a lot of business contexts being a little easier to remember is an advantage.
Tighter pants work better for that.
Or bright colors. Though I was specifically warned against wearing my red pants for a recent set of interviews. Must be a firm seeking to quash any individualism.
I wonder if anyone else got Next Restaurant showing up in the "quaker parakeet" google search in #224. It seemed incredibly random, as I really doubt they talk about serving quakers or parakeets. Neither sound too appetizing.
I hear one tastes like pork, the other like chicken.
Stanley closed the other thread, which means the world will never know why I didn't show up at the Indian Ocean with my scuba gear. I had a really good reason, too.
I used to have a religion. Its one commandment was "always trust a man who looks like Lee Majors, especially when proposed capers based on A Weekend at Bernie's."
Apparently I was wrong. So now I'm an atheist.
I was going to make a joke about how I look like Lee Majors in The Norseman, but then I googled a picture, and I really do kinda look like Lee Majors in The Norseman, which doesn't seem so funny anymore.
DS, I'm just trying to raise you to a higher level of trust. You must learn to trust me even though I am not trustworthy. Whenever you are at the Indian Ocean, and you can't see me, you must think "But he's here, man. He's here."
Welllll... okay. That sounds like a more sophisticated form of belief. I'm in.
But dammit, if you let me down again, there had better be something in the vicinity vaguely interpretable as an apology for your ongoing, limitless play with the concepts of prescence/absence.
267.1 is of course not funny, but awesome.
Do you feel the ground under your feet? I am there. Do you feel the air fill your lungs? I'm there. The electrons that flow to your computer is the blood in my veins. And always know that I chose you, and you alone, to be my partner in my ill-conceived plan for world domination.
Yeah! Now we're getting somewhere!
Except:
The electrons that flow to your computer is the blood in my veins.
Mortals are capable of error, as my own humble posts demonstrate, but the immortal Lee Walt Majors Norseman Someguy would have known to use "are" there. Guess I'm an atheist again.
Damn it! When my seventh-grade teacher told me that my poor grasp of grammar would be my undoing, I never knew what she meant ...until now.
Has anyone told you two to get a room yet? because get a room you two.
248 must have been working in my office, when what Microsoft laughingly calls an e-mail system broke down.
4 and sequelia are a bit sad and strange to me, as religion just never ever comes up in everyday life here, other than perhaps in casual remarks about picking the children up from Sunday school or something. Friends, family, co-workers, you can be quite close to them and not know their religion, if any, because it so rarely comes up with most people. There are exceptions of course, but for the most part we get on very matter of fact with religion. The "deeply religious and assholes about it" fringe is v. v. small, sometimes vocal but largely ignored.
Myself I was raised Christian, of the "very strict Reformed but hippied up vicar with guitar" protestant variety, stopped going to church at about ten, both because of my disbelief and my parents' belief in a good lie-in on Sunday, came out as atheist to some good dinner discussions but little disapproval, apart from my very believing, hell fearing and worrying grandmother. Despite living in the Dutch Bible Belt and going to Christian schools, religion or lack of it barely played a part in day to day life.
Which is how I prefer it.
Being Scottish we had a school Minister, and there were regularly official services all pupils were expected to attend at religious festivals and ends of term. There were also RE lessons which at primary school were strongly Christian in focus, but in high school were more of a general comparative religion/moral and ethical studies sort of thing. I can't remember ever finding the religious stuff bothersome. It was interesting then, and still interesting to me now, but never sparked any belief. I did once publicly argue with the Minister, aged about 7, over some point of biblical fact [he accepted I was right]. Which caused a frisson of disapproval among the more bible-bashy of the school parents.
Our primary school minister was a fairly hellfire and brimstone Ulster type, but at high school it was a youngish liberal woman, the Church of Scotland being somewhat earlier with ordaining women than the English variety. My main memory associated with her was that her daughter, who was a year older than me, was really hot.
No fruit basket for parodie? It would be interesting to have an Anglican priest around here from time to time.
169 makes me very happy.
She got me to admit that I believe in the Universe
I was once asked by a vicar, presumably as prelude to something about faith, the question:
"You believe in the existence of Canada, though, don't you? Even though you haven't been there?"
He was not really prepared for the reply (of which I am still proud thirty years later)
"Not really, no".
To this day (even though I have now been to Canada several times), I don't, not really. I mean, we're meant to believe that there's another America, just conveniently located in a great big empty cold space that's too cold to check on? And that this "Canada" doesn't do any of the awful things that people hate about America, but has all the good things? So when someone who dresses in the latest American fashions and speaks with an American accent says "oh no, I'm canadian", then that makes it all OK? It's really quite unconvincing when you think about it.
273: Can't two men love each other without getting a room? Christ, don't you have public parks in your town?
276: Is parodie new? I thought I remembered seeing the pseudonym before.
I went to church as a kid with my parents and never thought about it. My father was an agnostic tending to atheism who loved to sing in the choir and my mother was an agnostic tending to atheism who went along to support him.
I was confirmed and everything, but the process of confirmation started me thinking about what I'd previously accepted as simply part of life's background. So it didn't last long.
The guy who prepared me for confirmation was one of the most formidably intelligent people I've ever met, and a brilliant teacher. A year later he threw in his cushy job in London and went to teach maths in rural Bechuanaland, as it was then called. (I suspect this was before Togolosh was born.) Within six months he had contracted some parasite borne disease, reacted violently and died.
My Dad's family are Catholic, but he gave up that for Marx and Trotsky in his early teens. My Mum's family aren't religious at all. Nominally CofE, but my grandfather, who is approaching 100, seems to think it's all bunkum and there was no religious observance at all in their house.
Did I say that my sister and I tried to bug Santa one Christmas? To get audio recordings that would definitively prove his existence or otherwise, once and for all?
The results had my grandad (on dad's side)'s accent. He knew how to give a joke full value.
I don't see what's wrong with (tastefully chosen) desktop wallpaper, as long as it's chosen so that the icons and such on the desktop are easily visible. Wallpaper anywhere else is usually an abomination, especially on websites where lots of text is placed with poor contrast over an image.
||
I need arsehole cancelling headphones. Three of the five people sitting near me on this train are carrying out top-of-their-voice conversations in the business-dick mode. Loud over confidence, odd grammatical locutions, faux-bonhomie, hail fellow well met laughs. The whole panopoly of it-would-serve-you-right-if-someone-chibbed-you-in-the-throat bastardry.
>
I'm sure everyone is pleased to see that David Laws is being severely punished, too.
282: I think she was referring to people who set a wallpaper background for their e-mail messages.
ttaM, you could use an shove an earbud in to close up those arseholes.
Into my own ears? Or into them? With them I think their phone would have more poetic justice.
286 was a mess, sorry. Into them. Though I could definitely see stowing their phones in their apostroholes being a merited response (having witnessed many an irritating jagoff on the train).
It's a perennial complaint, and I don't normally get that bothered by the odd quiet/short conversation, and it was a busy train so no real expectation of silence. I was unfortunate enough, though, to have two neighbours for whom death would not have been disproportionate. I had the music on my 'phones turned up so loud it was uncomfortable, and I could still hear every word one of them was saying. He was apparently oblivious to the eye contact.
284. Yeah, Steal £40k and get sentenced to a week's paid leave. Frightening.
289. Carry an old fashioned reporter's notebook and start ostentatiously making notes of their conversation. Usually shuts people up IME.
re: 291
Heh, I had a notebook. Either that, or I'll start blowing them kisses.
Last semester in my Ethics class we were having a "what do you want in life" discussion, which is something I do every semester. One of my students replied "I want to be the kind of person a perfect God would want me to be." This struck me as the least helpful way to make decisions imaginable. But the student had clearly thought a lot about the issue, and had settled on this exact formulation to express what he thought he should do.
Something about having the abstract god of metaphysics and the personal god of religion smooshed together in one sentence really bugged me.
285: Which is why I disabled HTML mail.
It's interesting to see that so many people here had the experience of either nominally-believing-but-not-serious-about-it, or nominally-atheist-but-still-expect-the-kids-to-go-to-Sunday-School parents. As I've mentioned, I grew up in a very permissive household, and in a very liberal congregation in the UCC, which is saying something. And yet, I spent an average of 8 hours a week at church during my childhood. Even after I was confirmed, was out about being an atheist and an anarchist to my parents, and didn't have to do anything for church, I went anyway and was the assistant teacher for the pre-school/kindergarten Sunday School class. My father, who comes from a long line of Lutheran (ELCA nowadays) ministers, writes hymns, and my mother, who grew up in a nominally-Congregational-but-serious-about-it household, has a great interest in both her own faith and comparative religion. And now my sister is a minister in the UCC. Church was always a HUGE part of my life, and I think that's had a pretty strong influence on my anarchism. (The Congregational model of decision making, with meetings and committees and seeking consensus, is obviously a big point of connection.) If I had even an iota of faith in Christianity, I would totally be going to that church on a regular basis. So unsurprisingly, I've always had a strong visceral distaste for Christmas-and-Easter Christians. What's the point? It smacks of buying indulgences or something.
A couple of times, when I was a kid, I went with my friend (who was 2 years older than me and also belonged to our church, where his parents were just as involved as mine) to sessions of some religious youth thingy -- Maranatha maybe? -- that was all about earning stupid merit stickers or something. I didn't pay that much attention, because it was creepy and cult-like and boring. I wonder if that's where all the atheism and anarchist tendencies came from? I certainly never had that cliched "I hate God because he let Grandma die!" experience. Hmm.
274: when what Microsoft laughingly calls an e-mail system broke down.
One of my favorite overheard comments was from some Microsoft event back in the 90s about the time they were launching Exchange. "My users were so excited when they found out they could send information instead of just text."
Claude Shannon wept.
And yet, I spent an average of 8 hours a week at church during my childhood.
Bloody hell! Even when I was 13 and taking it seriously, if I was there more more than an hour and a half a week I was looking for the exit.
296: To a first approximation, that guy was correct.
298: But just look at all the text on this here blog.
OT: My belt is too big for me. I've got an inch of extra space on the smallest setting. Too bad it is a brand new belt I bought yesterday.
303: Have you lost weight since yesterday?
I think maybe I should have been more careful at the store.
We can fix that for you, Moby.
But I don't want to use the gravy to etch a new hole in my belt.
297: Well, maybe 8 is high, probably closer to 5 when you figure in vacations and that sort of thing. It wasn't like that was all structured time. The breakdown was something like: 1 hour in Sunday school, 1.5 hours waiting for Sunday school to start while my parents were in meetings, 1.5 hours waiting while my parents were in after-church meetings, 1.5 hours hanging out on Wednesday nights while my dad was in choir practice, various amounts of time on Saturdays for confirmation class or youth group programs, and occasional workdays or hanging out while my mother worked on the newsletter. So, not like a huge amount of memorizing catechisms or whatever people do, but still pretty churchy.
Well, maybe 8 is high
There's no need to start making accusations just because 8 doesn't dress the same as the other kids.
310: So, what were doing all that time while you were waiting at church? Did you pray?
Combination Taco Bell and KFC
That's not how the song goes.
I dunno, kids stuff. Reading, talking with friends, exploring weird nooks and crannies if the doors had been left unlocked, sometimes doing little projects -- my friend who invited me to the cult thing was really energetic about finding projects to do, e.g. cleaning out the disused staircase that was full of tents & other equipment from a defunct Boy Scout troop.
I read 294 as a response to 293.2 and thought it a reasonable response.
Everybody always said that there were bodies buried in the basement of our church, but we never got down there without supervision to check. There were a bunch of mounds of dirt (the whole basement had a dirt floor), but I don't think they contained graves.
There were certainly bodies buried under the floor of our church. They were mostly parish worthies from the mid-19th century.
And pizza delivery guys from the late 20th.
Remarkably relevant Dear Prudence question: http://www.slate.com/id/2293834/
I've only gotten a chance to read the first few posts, but LizSpigot, feel free to email me at motherissues at gmail if you want to talk about this more. I'm very much pro-honesty toward kids and I'm working on a blog post about being the parent who's more active in Mara's religious world despite being a happy atheist.
In our case, I'll say, the choice was driven by the expectation we'd be dealing with an older foster child, most of whom seem to be coming from an expectation of Christianity, and we wanted to have a congregation where they could have their needs met, Lee could have hers (for a LGBT-positive church with a black worship style, which is unsurprisingly hard to find and yet not impossible even here) and I would go along to make sure I could make corrections for accuracy as needed. I'm actually fairly active in the church, running the tutoring program and until recently serving dinner to hungry people once a month. This is because I value service and because the kids desperately need tutoring, basically, but it's helped me find a place for myself. I can link to the posts about outing myself as an atheist among evangelicals, but there's been very little backlash and I'm accepted there even though Lee no longer attends and I'm in a tiny minority of white people.
Sorry that got so long. I'll just add quickly that Mara's judge is deciding this week to terminate her parents' rights, but while there was a chance she'd return to her birth family I wanted to keep up things that would help her reentry into that world be smooth even if they're not my favorite things, which is why WIC and church seemed important.
More, probably much more, once I've read.
serving dinner to hungry people once a month
I think most people eat more than that.
277
And that this "Canada" doesn't do any of the awful things that people hate about America, but has all the good things?
Ah, that assumption is wrong. Sure, Canada could have had all the good things from America, and in fact could have most of the good things in the world, but instead it wound up suffering from a cruel twist of fate. Canada could have had American technology, British culture and French food. Instead it got American culture, British food and French technology.
people who set a wallpaper background for their e-mail messages
People do that? I'm glad I've never seen it (or have blocked it out).
313: Fuck a bunch of Pizza Hut, yo. Marinara-spattered jerkoffs.
320: Isn't that funny? My husband is always trying to get me to believe that coincidences are actually signs from God. The combination of last week's sermon, Unfogged having this thread and Prudie touching on the issue are pretty close to a sign. Helloooo God!
321: Thanks Thorn! I will do that soon after I read your archives. And good luck with the termination proceedings.
295: I grew up in a very permissive household, and in a very liberal congregation in the UCC, which is saying something. And yet, I spent an average of 8 hours a week at church during my childhood. Even after I was confirmed, was out about being an atheist and an anarchist to my parents, and didn't have to do anything for church, I went anyway
I wanted to ask after this whether you (or anyone else) feels that something like this is a function of the extent to which (some, a lot of?) US culture is saturated with churchiness, though your 310 clarifies that a lot of it had to do with hanging around while your dad was in choir and so on.
Still I want to ask that: to what extent do people feel the need to perform religiosity/churchiness just because everybody else seems to? I'm thinking again of LizSpigot's thoughts upthread to the effect that raising her children without God would, in this society, marginalize them.
Sorry this is a tad unclearly put: I'm still perturbed over Walt and DS's near estrangement. Trust Terry Eagleton to tear unfogged apart. I just knew he would.
I'm bemused by the fact that I now see Walt as Lee Majors dressed as a Viking. That's just odd.
Still I want to ask that: to what extent do people feel the need to perform religiosity/churchiness just because everybody else seems to?
I don't at all, myself, but I do live in NYC.
326: Lee does that too with the coincidences and it really makes me angry. She has such a stupid, naive version of theology, but I guess I don't really get to judge that. That, and lack of time, is why I stayed out of the other religion thread. I'm exposing Mara to a lot of religions and expressing my disapproval with magical divine coincidences and "things happening for a reason."
This is the post about my coming-out letter to church people after an anti-atheist comment and the post about the church response, though the woman who thought I was a demonic influence has since decided that she likes me fine, especially since I gave her daughter some ACT prep books.
328: Now I want to see if The Fall Guy is on Netflix, but I know that would just crush another positive childhood memory.
327: From my perspective, I don't know how else you meet people in a town. I don't want to hangout with my co-workers because I already work too much. I've thought about befriending other birders, but most birders in this town are above 50. I don't have kids yet so I can't do PTA type activities. I really don't want to socialize with other lawyers because I'd like to have easy conversations where I don't have to defend all of my viewpoints (sorry lawyers). Someday when I'm in better shape I'd like to try befriending people in a bike club. In the meantime, church seems like a nice way to meet other young people.
330.2: Demons are best at standardized testing.
Instead it got American culture, British food and French technology.
American culture isn't all bad. Rock 'n' roll, bitches.
And the fucking archives are full of Brits telling us the food thing is, at best, a stereotype from the early 1980s. And they're right about lots of other things, so I'm inclined to believe them.
The French have baller nuclear power. It's no iPod, but have you seen Coal Country, USA? Mountaintop removal is not the height of technological advancement.
In sum, please get some new stereotypes.
335.last: Iowans appreciate beat poets on a deeper level than people from Minnesota.
Mountaintop removal is not the height of technological advancement
Dude, we're removing the tops off of fucking mountains. That is like god level technology.
335: Wow. Was that Stanley or Ernest?
Nobody in Delaware can get the two sides of a Ziplock bag's top lined-up right on the first try.
I do "coincidences as signs" in the spirit of why not, and as a homage to Joyce/Mann modernist kind of thing that would probably take too long to explain.
I'm somewhat Blakean:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon Pittsburgh's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On Western Pennsylvania's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In the Tri-State Area's green and pleasant land.
342: I think you should include something about the Immaculate Reception in there.
343: The British/Swedish porn star?
Till we have built Jerusalem
In the Tri-State Area's green and pleasant land.
Wow, take that shit elsewhere, dude.
coincidences are actually signs from God.
As a cranky mathematician, this pains me a bit.
347: God only uses the natural numbers?
346: Hay fever week? The green stuff is better than the decayed buildings most of the time, but I can't go outside for more than five minutes until the trees stop humping each other at a distance.
coincidences are actually signs from God
Believing this ought to require somebody to also believe the Pat Robertson line on Katrina hitting New Orleans due to its persistent iniquity. I am not a mathematician, but "everything happens for a reason" is possibly my single largest source* of crankiness.
*I do realize that my list of crankiness sources will soon be longer than the Federal Register.
333: From my perspective, I don't know how else you meet people in a town.
Joining a church because it's the only way to meet people seems daft, to my mind, but that's just me. Ideally one wants to identify one's areas of interest and seek out organizations/coalitions that engage in endeavors in that area.
If you're interested in social justice or providing for the poor, there are soup kitchens, possibly nascent free stores, cooperative bike shops ... Natilo can expand the list tremendously, and did do not long ago. If you're interested in the arts or poetry or literature, there are open mike poetry readings (who need helpers to run them), and there are Friends of the Library organizations. If you're interested in food -- you're a vegetarian, if I remember -- there are vegetarian potlucks (check the bulletin board or flyer or website of your local health food store).
The main difference between these things and church is, perhaps, that the former are somewhat activist: you have to do something, however small (running their website, say, or just helping to arrange the chairs for a meeting). There's a sense in which you don't have to do anything but show up for church -- though they'd like you to do something as well.
I was a bit struck by someone's recounting (in this thread or the Other One) a particular church meeting in which attendees hugged one another, and how surprising and great that was. My first thought was: man, hippie/activist participants aren't really sparse with the hugging!
341:Synchronicity, coincidence, correspondence, using myth to organize...yeah, Jung and Freud are in there too. Every modernist used myth (and symbol) a little differently.
I-Ching.
I have about given up on explaining the profit and pleasure of the arbitrary and temporary uses of belief.
The version of that I heard also featured Russian communications and Italian government, but I can't remember which unfortunate country it was.
I'm apparently incapable of writing a short comment these days.
You mean the heaven and hell joke?
Heaven in Europe is a place where the British are the policemen, the French are the cooks, the Germans are the engineers, the Italians are the lovers and the Swiss run the place.
And hell is where the British are the cooks, the French are the engineers, the Germans are the policemen, the Swiss are the lovers and the Italians run the place.
possibly nascent free stores
You can't tell if it is going to be a free store or a 7-11 until the leaves come out.
355: If the internet pron stereotypes are right, I think we can take comfort in the Germans not being the lovers regardless.
325: THIS PEPSICO ON PEPSICO VIOLENCE MUST STOP!
355: LB did the non-misogynist version. How typical.
Heaven: An American salary. A British home. Chinese food. A Japanese wife. Hell: A Chinese salary. A Japanese home. British food. An American wife.
And 361 shows its age in more ways than one.
French technology? Even apart from nuclear power, it's all pretty cool. Citroen cars with hydropneumatic rear suspension. Free Minitel data network terminals for everyone in the country (they really did that!). TGVs and turbotrains. Proper mobile phones without having to wait until 2007 for the Jesusphone (although that's more pan-European). Driverless robot tramways. Ariane space rockets. Independent fourth generation jet fighters. The first airliner with a bar. Lots of hilariously dramatic modernist buildings. France believes in the future, as JG Ballard said, and it's the future with a capital F and rockets
They do tend to go for the "weird but cool" solution.
Men on scooters with little vacuum cleaners to get the dogshit off the streets of Paris (although I don't know that they still do that.)
Honestly, I think I'm a little bit in love with heebie.
Not that I want anybody to be jealous. I have enough love in my heart to go around, amigos!
where the British are the policemen
If this was ever true, it's not any more. Vide armed police more widely deployed, equipping with heavier weapons, equipping with hollow point ammunition, delpoyment of a national DNA database, deployment of a national surveillance infrastructure, including automatic license plate recognition and internet surveillance.
Combine this with apparent institutional immunity to prosecution for unlawful killing, false arrest, kettling, harassment of protest, etc.
351: Natilo can expand the list tremendously, and did do not long ago
I'm assuming Liz doesn't want to go all out and come to work in stained Carhartt overalls and a black baseball cap with an Amebix patch, but yeah, if I was looking to meet halfway-decent people in a newish town, I would:
Volunteer at a theater that puts on the kind of plays you like
Volunteer at an art museum
Volunteer at a film society, if possible
Join (or hey, start) a weekly women's bike ride (or women and trans if that makes sense where you are)
Start a book club
Take or teach a community ed class
Sit around at the bar looking lonely
I forgot where Liz is located (Provo? SLC? Bay Area? Too many clues), although I feel like she just said recently. If it is someplace on the Provo scale, I imagine that you might have to start the kind of social network you want to see in the world.
342: Since I apparently want to abandon my last shreds of dignity, here is my contribution to that genre:
O hai, can haz feets in ancient time,
Walkin' on Englandz mountainz green,
Can haz Ceiling Cat
On Englandz pasturz seein'?
Can has face of Ceiling Cat,
Shinin' on clouded hillz?
And can haz Cheezburgerville,
Among Basement Cat's mills?
Can has Bow of burning goldxorz!
Can has Arrowz of wants!
Can has Spear, unfold cloudxorz,
Can has Chariot of Cats!
Cannot haz ceasing from hed Fight,
Cannot haz sleepy Sword in hand,
Til we can haz Cheezburgerville,
For Englandz tiny, pleasant cats!
354: You did it! Your comment is false!
369: I really love your occasional poetry. Do you just do that here, or do you do the drop-of-a-hat verse thing offline as well?
On the assumption that this has turned into a food thread.
371: When I'm bored or stressed mostly, or someone announces a contest here or on CT. I'm still really proud of the "Oh Shiela" sonnet.
I ragequit NPR this morning. It was Krasny and some asshole from Rice going on about how science just doesn't understand the wonderful mysterious paranormal shit that happens.
The asshole described a completely textbook episode of sleep paralysis as an out of body experience and spiritual awakening. He even mentioned the sleep paralysis phenomenon, yet somehow decided his personal experience of it was special and different.
Krasny was all excited about how he was taking a break from a Philip Roth novel, read some Bertrand Russell, then returned to the Roth novel where he then encountered a Russell quote. Amazing! And not at all explicable via confirmation bias, selective memory, or birthday paradox.
Like Natilo, I spent a fair number of hours in and around our church (mainstream Presbyterian) through most of my youth (services/Sunday School, evening "youth groups", choir/bell choir practices plus the occasional weekend retreat or other activity). However, I cannot remember ever really believing in God (I'm sure I did at some point) and certainly not the rather important parts of the Jesus story. I gave it a try, though; I mostly recall the non-social parts as being frustrating attempts to puzzle out a framework that made sense to me*. About 13 or so I gave up on that, although I had a very significant and somewhat interesting involvement in my church's governance as a senior in high school which really sealed the deal. (Protip: Don't let idealistic youth see too much of the workings of the sausage factory.)
*I think this was due in part to the rather haphazard and inconsistent youth "Christian Education" program at our church. For instance something like, "Why did The Bible stop getting new books several thousand years ago?" led to variable responses depending on the minister you asked:
McCarthyite head pastor: "Shut up."
One in a string of old guy associate pastors: "mm mumble mumble something ... another year and half of this and I get my pension, wait did I just say the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet?"
Young firebrand associate pastor: "Interesting question, but let me bore the shit out of you because I actually have no clue whatsoever on how to teach kids."
372, 373: But you added value by placing it in the context of a discussion of religious beliefs.
376: The footnote reminded me of the Philip Roth story, "Conversion of the Jews" which I'm now thinking may be my favorite of all his works.
And I'm sure 375 didn't have any influence on my thinking, so this is clearly another God-proving coincidence.
http://www.nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/6/roth/jews.htm
"Why did The Bible stop getting new books several thousand years ago?"
Shorter: because it got taken over by the government.
Obviously coincidences don't prove the existence of God. They prove that flying saucers are really time machines.
379: Not because God ran out of things to say?
378: Peep, your 234 sounded very similar to my wife's fairly secular Jewish family (although technically Conservative). Her two brothers did make it through to having Bar Mitzvahs* (was not clear whether you did or not, I'm guessing not). My father-in-law once said, "All I ask is a chuppa, a briss and a Bar Mitzah." And we delivered on the first.
*No stinking Bat Mitzvah ceremonies for girls in her place and day, nor mine; when did they become common?
You know, I don't think I've ever met a Conservative Jew. Most Jewish people I know are either Reform or so secular that they're not affiliated with a congregation, but of course you meet plenty of Orthodox as well in NY. Conservative, I don't even have a stereotype about -- I know it's sort of midway strictness-of-observance-wise, but I don't know who falls into that category, or what they're like socially.
382: Good guess, JP! Not bar-mitzvahed, hence my failure to ever become a Man.
I'm not sure when Bat Mitzvahs became common. I guess even some Orthodox Jews have them now.
383: Just your regular garden-variety Jews.
383: Our old neighbors sent their daughter to the conservate congregation's school/day care. From this, I know that Conservative Jews like to get direct TV and leave the older dish up on the roof.
383: My experience of meeting Conservative Jews here in the midwest is that they are exactly like Reform Jews, but more likely to be prickly about Jewish holidays. And you don't even wanna think about mentioning Israel.
i believe in coyotes
and time as an abstract
383 is not what I would have expected.
387: If you replace "prickly about" with "want full rabbinical pagentry for," that's my experience as well.
Further to 387: The Conservatives I've met usually seem to be at pains to point out that their congregation is not one of those really Conservative ones that you may have heard about. But then I expect a lot of people from those congregations don't wind up in the same social circles as me.
I'm surprised to discover that there are now more Reform Jews than Conservative. Just to stereotype, Conservatives are older, more traditional, and more conservative (although still liberal by American standards). As Natilo suggests, they are more likely to be unwavering supporters of Israel. They tend towards the traditional Jewish professions - doctor, lawyer, accountant,etc.
The survey found that of the 4.3 million strongly connected Jews, 46% belong to a synagogue. Among those households who belong to a synagogue, 38% are members of Reform synagogues, 33% Conservative, 22% Orthodox, 2% Reconstructionist, and 5% other types.
390: If you replace "want full rabbinical pagentry for" with "to stay in the Antarctica for," that's penguins.
Come to think, what's probably going on here is that my friends are going to be way out on the liberal secular end of anything, which means Reform. People I know professionally, I wouldn't have any particular reason to know what their religious affiliation was (Jewish might be obvious, but not Reform v. Conservative v. secular) unless they were Orthodox and I had concrete dress-code tells. So I probably do know some Conservative Jews, I just don't know who they are.
My parents were raised Catholics, were Catholic-college liberal hippies, and then in grad school had some kind of conversion to hardcore Catholicism with opposition to birth control and the whole bit. I'm the oldest of four and the two brothers after me are atheists and the third is an engineer, which is almost the same thing. (Okay, I'm joking, but he's only 19 and I haven't quizzed him on belief post-high school.)
If conversation goes on here, I'd be happy to keep talking, but I think at this point I have too much to say. It's also hard for me to imagine what I'd be doing if I had a white biological child instead of Mara, in which case I'd be more comfortable just saying, "Look, we're atheists and we get to stay home and have brunch on Sundays."
But with Mara I want her to have the experience of loving her preschool teachers who "ax" her questions and have really damaged processed hair even though those aren't things that are part of our family culture, because I don't want her to look down on that or see it as alien. Similarly, I want her to be informed about world religions (and I do say "Some people believe..." whether I'm talking about the Quran or the goddess mother in Ponyo or Christianity) but also to have the experience of being in and being part of a black church. Plus, I can't resist putting her in a situation where she's with other kids who are also black and have lesbian moms. So church it is for now and the foreseeable future for us.
So I probably do know some Conservative Jews, I just don't know who they are.
Indeed. IME, what religion/lack of religion people belong to simply doesn't come up any more. I assume by default that anybody I know is irreligious, period. In fact among my current set of friends, setting aside the observant Muslims, I know one family who are churchgoing agnostic Anglicans and one couple where the woman is also a vaguely observant Christian and the man is technically Jewish but demands to eat a huge baked ham at Christmas. As to the rest, haven't a clue. Never comes up. I'd guess some people are Jewish by their names, but I could easily be wrong.
Still mulling over single payer health care in Vermont.
This and the previous thread moved me to get Sen's _The Idea of Justice_, which you might like, LizardBreath. My inane cod-understanding of _A Theory of Justice_ got me through the last 20 years; I figure Sen will keep me busy until I'm too old to be expected to change my mind.
if I was looking to meet halfway-decent people in a newish town, I would:
These are very good suggestions, Natilo. Since I just did move, I will take them to heart. Thanks!
This and the previous thread had me reading the NYRB review of Ronald Dworkin's Justice for Hedgehogs more closely than I wanted to, for some reason.
I found the review a slog, I'm not quite sure why; probably I'm just out of touch with the topic, so that I couldn't quite tell which bases the reviewer was tapping as he rounded each mark. Nonetheless, the announcement of a new classic is quite a thing.
Trapnel! In SF? Check out your local bookstores, too.
If you're not too busy or distracted to say, have you any familiarity with the Dworkin?
Some - I mean, I took his & Nagel's legal/social/political philosophy colloquium back in the fall of something-or-other, and sat in on it before and after, and he presented some of the chapters there.
Well, if I have something more substantive about this Hedgehogs thing to say or ask, I might. Right now, I'm not getting why it's so revolutionary.
Meanwhile, I hope you're settling in okay.
I think part of it is that it's his first and only real attempt to bring together his thoughts on the nature of moral & political philosophy together as a sustained, book-length argument. So if one's had the sense that there might be something to what he's been going on about for all these years, well, here it is, in one big doorstop.
I haven't read it yet, myself--not yet available on the pirate sites I got 99% of my reading from while abroad. I suppose I could actually go buy a physical book now.
Settling in okay, more or less; thanks. Lovely city. I should get offline now, though, and use the last day of my 3-day free gym pass.
351: Joining a church because it's the only way to meet people seems daft, to my mind, but that's just me
Certainly I can't recall my parents e.g. when they still went to church regularly ever making friends there or even talking much to people they didn't already know. Get in five minutes before the service, bugger off home quickly afterwards for coffee and cake.
I'm a mostly lapsed Catholic who drifts between agnosticism and some kind of deism - but still can't see me joining a different religion, though pantheism was very attractive to me when I was younger. I go to Mass on most of the weekends when I'm back where I grew up (which I am maybe twice a month since it's only fifty miles away and my mother and a lot of friends are there).
Anyway my brother goes occasionally to a Mass here in Dublin where they have tea and coffee afterwards. And still my instant reaction to 'going to church to meet people' is "Eww, creepy".
One last thing on the religiosity of Texas: On the way up here we drove through (apparently) the Church Chair Maker's District. We saw billboards for "Chairs4Church.com" and "ChurchChairs1.com" and a few others.
Also we saw a billboard for the (presumably for-profit) Midwestern State University, whose name keeps cracking me up.
408.2: Midwestern is one of four independent (not affiliated with a state public university system) public universities in Texas, and is the state's only public liberal arts college.
Other than that you're right.
Huh. It just sounds so made-up, like Yom Kippur. Or twenty-eleven.
410: Yeah, kind of like Southwest Xyx State being in the eastern half of state Xys and also not that far south within the state.
387: My experience of meeting Conservative Jews here in the midwest is that they are exactly like Reform Jews, but more likely to be prickly about Jewish holidays. And you don't even wanna think about mentioning Israel.
I will admit that the last is one area of discussion where my wife and I rarely go since when we do it works about as well as Internet discussions of the same topic. For the most part "prickly about" (or per 309 "want full rabbinical pageantry for") the holidays has gone by the wayside. We were "caught out" on this last when the son of a distant cousin of hers started at a local university and the cousin contacted us to see if he could do services for the High Holidays with us since he was new in town. It turned out we were able to legitimately say that we were going to be away on vacation, which as my wife pointed out implicitly delivered the news that seemed difficult to deliver explicitly.
411: Jesus. "x" s/b "z" and "y" s/b "z" and I s/b able to read and verify text as I am writing it as text rather than sounding it out in my head where it magically becomes exactly what I meant to write rather than what I actually did write--but apparently I cannot. I actually do think I suffer from some variant of whatever cognitive processing deficit ails MY.
I do have religious beliefs, but a lot of it is tied up in beautiful worship and language. It shouldn't be so, but I'd probably quit going entirely if the Book of Common Prayer got too out there.
Watching Vertical Ray of the Sun by Anh Hung Tran and feeling that seen thru the camera eye, the world seems composed, I had to go check out Kant's third Critique. I'm glad the S Palmquist's, Christian Kantian(?) book is still online
The third characteristic of judgments of taste, corresponding to the category of relation (of 'ends') [Kt7:219], requires the object of such a judgment to exhibit 'the form of finality ... apart from the representation of an end.'[10] In other words, Kant is arguing here that, in order for us to judge an object to be beautiful, we must see in it something which exhibits a kind of purposiveness, but which as such, has no real purpose. A judgment of taste 'is uninfluenced by charm or emotion (though these may be associated with the delight in the beautiful), and [its] determining ground, therefore, is simply finality of form' [223], not 'sensation' [226] or any other representation which might reveal an end. The subject estimates an object to be beautiful 'on the ground of a mere formal finality, i.e. a finality apart from an end' [226]. This means that, whereas delight in the agreeable or the good has a finality which points beyond itself to a real existing end (e.g., eating is agreeable because it satisfies hunger), delight in the beautiful has a finality which points only to itself, with the sole aim of 'preserving ... the state of the representation itself' [222].
I have long thought that the three critiques, foundationally, run the opposite direction from their publication dates and assumed importance. The aesthetic/teleological => ethical => rational/scientific.
"Preserving the state of the representation itself."
Lemures exist.
415: Vertical Ray of the Sun by Anh Hung Tran
The thing with that is, if people are noticing your composition, you have failed in a cinematographic sense.
That movie really irritated me. The heroic Vietnamese people deserve something better.
That movie really irritated me.
I fucking loved that movie, but I have a soft spot for sustained mood and prettiness.
The heroic Vietnamese people deserve something better.
I'm going to assume that you have cheek-tongueitis, because I'm not sure which earnest intreptation of that statement would be more annoying: that post-colonial people can't afford/be allowed poetically composed fluff, or that Tran ought to be composing agitprop rather than meditations on family, love, beauty and self in middle-class Vietnam. I mean if you just wanted grittiness, you already have Cyclo, and if you really want a depiction of national struggle, ala Flame or The Battle of Algiers, there's no reason to presume Tran should be the one to produce it.
417: Maybe I just completely missed the point, but the way I read it, there's this middle-class family, in post-Communist Vietnam, and they're kind of disconnected from everything, and prone to ennui, and some of them have vaguely interesting sex lives, and some of them are sad sometimes -- it was like some horrible emo/shoegazer song, stretched out to two hours, so that whatever meaning or interest it might have had was completely diluted with the aforementioned self-consciously arty production values.
I mean, I KNOW interesting shit is happening in Vietnam right now. Economically, socially, culturally, historically. And I bet that there's some ways that all of this interacts with people's family and relationship dynamics that are funny, or sad, or brutal, or tragic, or uplifting. But none of that was in this film. And yet, I read it as making a claim to be documenting exactly those things. It was like the whole film was some lecture by your parents about how you'll appreciate this kind of thing more when you're an adult.
Too subtle for me? Apparently. They should have called it Last Tet At Marienbad for all I could stand to sit there and hope against hope that something might be said.
No, I don't think it was trying to make big statements about anything. In fact I think in many ways it was trying to eschew big statements. The relationship between the one sister and her author husband is to some extent a case study in what's unseen and unsaid in a relationship that seems perfect to outsiders (or even one of the two participants), but ultimately it's just the two of them. At the end, she's not sure what if anything will change for them and neither are we. Personally I think there is Stuff There in terms of love, family, relationships and the human condition, but it's all done with a very light hand.
I can easily see you and other folks not digging the film. It's not for everyone. What I find obnoxious is the patronizing idea that non-Western film-makers are shirking some responsibility to The People by not always making political films. It reminds me of how Alfonso Cuarón got shit for making a film about wealthy Mexican kids, despite the fact that he even stuck voiceover narration in there explicitely underlining the bigger world of widespread poverty existing around the main characters.
419: Huh. I hated the voiceover in that movie, precisely because it was trying to add a political meaning that the movie didn't really support.
I'm guessing that Natilo hates non-political Western firms just as much.
I'm 99.9% sure that movie would have bored and irritated me regardless of where it was made. But if it had been made by the French, or the British, or the Americans, they might conceivably have been said to deserve it. Vietnamese people have been through a lot of shit, and it would be nice if they could have good movies to watch.
Yes! I pwned someone on the contents of his own head! Now I must retire from the Internet, for it will never be this good again.
Look, movies don't have to hit you over the head with politics to be interesting to me. But they ought to connect with something. That movie was like mid-century New England adultery novels -- dreary and pointless and not even sad.
On Y Tu Mama Tabien, it was kind of having your cake and eating it too, but I thought the voice-over was spare enough that it worked as pointing out the world around these characters that they, just like us, had the privilege of ignoring.
On The Veritcal Ray of the Sun, I didn't find it dreary or pointless at all, I found it sweet and gorgeous. Cyclo was dreary, but it was about crime and poor folks, so maybe you'd like it.
Vietnamese people in fact do have other movies to watch. As you might expect the popular titles seem to be essentially Hong Kong-style action films set in Vietnam.
423: I didn't intend it as a criticism. Somebody has to only like political movies. The world doesn't have a shortage of people who only like non-political movies. Well-roundedness is beyond the ability of any one person; we'll have to do it on the species level.
I liked Y tu mamá también, despite the voice-overs. They struck me as neurotically defensive. It's a movie. If you want to make a point, then show it, don't just add some omniscient narrator to tell the audience what to think. Though I liked Cyclo, so maybe my opinion is suspect.
ummm, natilo
1) I don't understand Vertical Ray yet, and will need to think about it, and watch it again. I feel it is much much darker than it looks. It is about deceptive appearances.
As bro and sis are arising, this is what Lou Reed is singing.
"It was good what we did yesterday.
And I'd do it once again.
The fact that you are married,
Only proves, you're my best friend.
But it's truly, truly a sin.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes."
2) Anh Hung Tran is a direct disciple of Bresson. He also, I think, alludes to Ozu at several points (no one is into toenail cutting like Ozu). IOW, formalism as message in itself. You know I think Ozu was a left revolutionary director in ways Oshima and Yoshida couldn't grasp until they were in the 50s.
3) I can't find anything written that is worth jackshit about this movie online. Nothin. All blissed out by the images, shallow reviews. One person in passing mentioned it as a critique of the bourgeois.
Yeah, I haven't seen it yet, but reading about Scent of Green Papayas that looks like what Anh Hung Tran is doing, showing the political in the personal.
Like Hedda Gabler, Doll's House, Miss Julie, Dubliners, the politics of living room and bedroom.
There was a Japanese film academic of the 90s, name escapes me, that drastically influenced an entire generation of East Asian filmmakers:Tsai, Hou, Yang, Koreeda, etc.
Incredibly important theorist.
426: I liked Cyclo too. The scene with the paint is one of the most haunting things I've ever seen. But it is very grim.
Hasumi Shigehiko, This Guy, I think.
John Ford, and people throwing things. The language of cinema is visual.
424: Cyclo was dreary, but it was about crime and poor folks, so maybe you'd like it.
But my favorite movies include El ángel exterminador and La Dolce Vita. I'm leaving open the possibility that there's something that I missed, but my suspicion is that it wouldn't be material to my critique of the film.
428: what Anh Hung Tran is doing, showing the political in the personal
Because, yeah, I get that. What I'm arguing is that the politics that this representation of the personal explores are to say the least useless, and are most likely actively harmful.
427: I can't find anything written that is worth jackshit about this movie online. Nothin. All blissed out by the images, shallow reviews.
This is because the vast majority of film critics are idiots. When I was writing movie reviews, I would frequently spot 2 or 3 obvious errors of fact per major movie review, in the reviews of films I had also written about. It is absolutely unconscionable that reviewers are allowed to get away with such shoddy reporting, but the problem is also largely structural -- ultimately most of the editors and copy editors are totally clueless about film, and rarely even watch movies, much less think about them. Even the arts editors. It's a sad state of affairs, given the central position of the cinema to so much of our culture. Journalism professors are the worst. Most of them still seem to think that every arts & entertainment article is just a crowd story that you can write according to some formula (whether it's the old inverted pyramid, or the very slightly better 'nut graf' style makes little difference.)
The thing with that is, if people are noticing your composition, you have failed in a cinematographic sense.
For one, presumes a clergy-laity relationship between the artist and the viewer, when plenty of viewers have decently informed opinions about art. For two, showing and concealing the wires are two different, equally artful tacks.
On the topic of religious experience, this gives me some idea of what it might mean to spend your life preparing to meet her lord and savior.
Okay, at one point AHT says VRotS is not a "documentary", and likens it to a lazy summer dream. Just as a theory, let's say most of what is on screen isn't "real" but fantasies of the characters.
The youngest sister, 18-20, doesn't fucking know that if she gets her period, she isn't pregnant? This ain't 1950. If true, then these three sisters have a sucky relationship.
But could youngest sister have any reason to want to fantasize herself as sexually innocent? Yes, if she just fucked her brother.
Here's what AHT says on the French website, emphasis mine.
In order to create and impart a physical sensation of this illusion of harmony and the characters' quest for happiness (while remaining faithful to those first impressions of Hanoi that reminded me of the siestas of my childhood) I needed a style that could suspend time, a rhythm that would allow for motionlessness.
The images in the film have no documentary substance, nor do they depict the present as experienced by the characters. Rather, they are incessantly repeated images, burnished into the characters' consciousnesses. Images that the characters will keep, like secrets or recall like memories of harmony. The harmony they convey has a particular beauty, a beauty tainted by bitterness and melancholy.
The Vietnamese title is more like "At the Height of Summer"
