bright kids

I'm always climbing up on my soap-box to rail about the reprehensible mental and emotional crippling of children through religious-ideological indoctrination. But what is to be done about it? Miso's question yesterday in A&S, followed by Lauren's & Matt's & Dean's reports, all underscore the urgency of freeing children from this persistent, insidious virus.

Here's important new video on empowering the next generations of free-thinkers, featuring Dan Dennett and others, at The Brights site. Let's give kids the tools they need to break out of unreflective conformism, and watch what happens. The rippling effects of a relatively few enlightened parents, nurturers, and educators taking the simple initiative of speaking honestly and plainly on this subject in public, in schools, and in our homes could be astonishing and game-changing. Why don't we try it and find out? The Parenting Beyond Belief movement, too, is making impressive strides in this direction. (PBB video)

I used to think Richard Dawkins was over the top with his "child abuse" charge, but no more. Dean described being led by his "youth minister" to draw images of himself in Hell, at age 10. If I learned that any adult had attempted to implant such horrific ideas in my daughters' minds, at that or any age, I'm very sure "abuse" would be one of the mildest epithets to come immediately to mind.

Vonnegut family values

Noticed an Indiana license plate the other day, inscribed "In God We Trust," and was reminded of the deep conservative strain in many of the Hoosiers I have known. Most of them are stand-up human beings who'd give you the shirts off their backs, etc., but there does seem to be something very traditional about that neck of the heartland that imprints itself ineradicably on its natives. The land of Quayle's coded "family values" seems no seed-ground for free thinkers. (It did spawn some public-spirited libertarians dedicated to spending, lavishly and liberally, the interest of Pierre Goodrich's fortune... I enjoyed my Stoic weekend in Indy two years ago. That's another story.)

But then I recall that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was from Indianapolis. Hi-ho!

So it's not quite as big a surprise, on further reflection, to discover a "magnificent victory monument for a rational outlook on life." The man who said "love may fail, but politeness will prevail" did not spring up from a vacuum.

His great-grandpa was Clemens Vonnegut.*

Perfect! Love may fail, but irony will also prevail.

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*"We believe all that science teaches until it is superseded by new discoveries and knowledge...Our belief is built on reason, observation of nature, history and experience. We believe in the brotherhood of man...We believe in virtue, in perfectibility, in progress, in stability of laws of nature, in the necessity of improving the social condition and relations." Clemens Vonnegut (1890)

Free-thinking 1st ladies

Isn't it great to have a pair of free-thinkers in the White House again? Thinkers period?

As I grew older I questioned a great many of the things that I knew very well my grandmother who had brought me up had taken for granted. And I think I might have been a quite difficult person to live with if it hadn’t been for the fact that my husband once said it didn’t do you any harm to learn those things, so why not let your children learn them? When they grow up they’ll think things out for themselves.

And that gave me a feeling that perhaps that’s what we all must do—think out for ourselves what we could believe and how we could live by it. And so I came to the conclusion that you had to use this life to develop the very best that you could develop.

I don’t know whether I believe in a future life....

A future life elsewhere, post mortem, and as herself, I think Mrs. Roosevelt meant. (I like what Andrew Carnegie said about this too, btw: it's not our place to worry about a future life, but to "pitch this one as high as we can.")

But she did believe in our collective future. That's a form of faith, too. I prefer to call it hope.

Hoosier epiphany

Another way to respond to obnoxious altar calls. If it happened in Ft. Wayne, it could happen anywhere. Maybe even here...

Finding comfort with non-belief

Free-thinkers set goal of changing local attitudes

Free thought [is] “a philosophical viewpoint that holds that beliefs should be formed on the basis of science and logical principles and not be compromised by authority, tradition or dogma.” Free thought does encompass atheism and agnosticism, he says, but the group consists of people with many belief systems and anyone is welcome... The group also maintains a Web site at www.freethoughtfortwayne.org and a presence on Facebook and Twitter... The most recent addition: “Dial-an-Atheist,” once-a-month call-in editions of the show in which Chad Butterbaugh of Fort Wayne and others in the group field questions from viewers live.

“An atheist in the broadest sense is simply one who lacks belief in any god or gods – that’s ‘a’ as in ‘not’ or ‘without’ and ‘theism’ as in ‘belief in God or gods,’ ” says Butterbaugh, 29, introducing the June 15 edition, “What is an Atheist?”

“It’s a descriptive term, and that’s all. It’s not an insult, it’s not a club, and it’s not an indicator of some other big, broad philosophy,” Butterbaugh continues, with the bespectacled, earnest demeanor of a 19th-century law clerk.

“And under that definition, I would say that I am an atheist. Jake, comfortable saying that?”

“Oh yeah. I’m an atheist, definitely,” replies co-host Jake Doelling of Fort Wayne with a cheery smile.

“We want people to know we’re normal people. We have our own joys and fears and disappointments and sorrows like everybody else...”

Raising free-thinkers

Dale McGowan has good ideas about how to "parent beyond belief," humbly and respectfully but confidently, in our religion-saturated culture. A good complement to Chris Phillips' Philosophers' Clubs.

Free-thinking about felines

It is more fun being a contrarian, an iconoclast, and a free-thinker. But I seriously doubt it's more fun being a Republican.

I went to a party the other day and heard the word "torture" and said that I didn't think we should prosecute the Bush lawyers who wrote those torture memos, and people jumped all over me like I was an escaped Nazi, so as long as I was persona non grata, I said some more stuff — that America would be a better country if we took the vote away from people over 65 because they are selfish and greedy and the future of America is its young. People about dropped their drinks. And then I said that cat ownership is a sign of emotional immaturity and a good predictor of a tendency toward violent crime. I saw lifelong friends turn away in disgust. And you know something? I Don't Care. It felt good. Garrison Keillor

As for the catty comment: sorry, Zeus... and family. But I stand with my dogs.

Happy Birthday, Bertie

May 18 is the birthday of philosopher Bertrand Russell, born in Trellech, Wales (1872), into one of Britain's most prominent families. His parents were free-thinkers, and his father was an atheist, but both his parents died by the time he was four. They left their son under the care of radical friends, hoping he would be brought up as an agnostic, but his grandparents stepped in, discarded the will, and raised Bertrand and his brother in a strict Christian household.

As a teenager, Bertrand kept a diary, in which he described his doubts about God and his ideas about free will. He kept his diary in Greek letters so that his conservative family couldn't read it. Then he went to Cambridge and was amazed that there were other people who thought the way he did and who wanted to discuss philosophical ideas. He emerged as an important philosopher with The Principles of Mathematics (1903), which argued that the foundations of mathematics could be deduced from a few logical ideas. And he went on to become one of the most widely read philosophers of the 20th century. His History of Western Philosophy (1946) was a big best seller, and he was able to live off its royalties for the rest of his life.

He said, "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."Writer's Almanac

He also said:

Nobody really worries much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen in this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out -- at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation -- it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things. ("Why I am not a Christian")

Dr. Flicker read his Russell.