Peaceful Parenting And Atheism

I obviously believe in parenting kids with love and attachment and affection. I also definitely don't believe in any gods, and to me, it seems as if peaceful parenting comes as a natural affect of atheism and skepticism in general.


Allow me to explain. If I start with no gods, that means I have no "divinely inspired" books to tell me how to parent. I have to rely on what I can see in the real world. So, when I wonder how the best way to take care of children is, My obvious first thought is that I should be nice to them. I would think that the more they can feel loved and safe, the better things would go for them. Then I wonder what possible exceptions there could be to the simplicity of always giving my kids what they want and need.


Well, if we can't afford a material object, I could have to deny them that. So, I'd explain how we couldn't afford something like that and that we would save up our money for it. If my child wanted to do something dangerous, it is only logical that I would stop them, and explain how it would hurt them, and why they shouldn't do it, as well as physically preventing them from doing the action in the future. If they aren't yet of a mind to understand, simply the physical prevention should suffice. 


The most powerful convincing tool for peaceful parenting is the question "why?" And when you start with the given of loving your child and caring for his/her/xyr well-being, the following things come up.

There's a good answer for why to hold your child. Being held makes the baby feel secure and releases hormones that encourage bonding. 


There's a good answer for why to breastfeed. It's the normal, natural way, and the wonderful things in it cannot be replicated by formula. 


There's not a good answer for the things that fall into the baby training school of parenting. Whether studies say they are harmful or not, why do them in the first place?


Why hit your child? why hit him or her gently? why on his/her/xyr bottom? you shouldn't. There's no reason to assume it's beneficial, and even if it's completely devoid of psychological harm, there is at least physical harm at that moment, and no reason to assume "oh, I should hit my child".


Why amputate a part of your child's penis? again, regardless of if there are no psychological effects, it's a simple violation of human consent to remove any part of your child that can never be replaced.


I could go on and on, giving examples of both, but I'll stop there and simply say that there's a connection between having a logical mind and avoiding behaviors that aren't clearly loving. This silly ideal of tough love is born out of a parental selfishness, as well as biblical and religious support of spanking. Skeptics and atheists should, by all logic, be more a part of the attachment parenting world. Our children want and need us, and it only makes sense we should give them the comforting, safe atmosphere, both physically and psychologically.

A Small Victory

The high school I went to, as I've mentioned before, shrugged off Church/State violations like they weren't a problem. Every veteran's day assembly had prayer involved, and I had to attend graduation for 6 years to play pomp & circumstance with the band; every year this started with a prayer. No one cared enough to report it and I kept quiet. During the earlier years, because I was totally apathetic to religion, and a little later, because I didn't think I had the resources to fight it, especially when it seemed 99% of the school wanted the prayer, and the other 1% seemed apathetic.

But, during senior year, sick of hearing a prayer at every assembly our school had, at national honor society inductions, I had halley record the prayer on her phone. You could barely make it out, but it gave me the momentum I needed to contact the Freedom From Religion Foundation They were incredibly helpful. I filled in their church/state violation form, and was contacted the next day. I gave them a little more information; nothing I didn't know. They wanted to know if a student gave the prayer and if I could give them stronger evidence it was pre-planned. This evidence wasn't necessary, but they said it could help. I let them know it was rehearsed the previous day in front of the principal and sent them a copy of the pamphlet that listed "opening prayer", along with the recording. They didn't actually wind up using the recording  (or needing it) because it was so fuzzy.

Within two weeks, they sent me back a copy of the email that they'd sent to my superintendent and principal, and in less than another week, they sent me my school's reply. Thankfully, they were cooperative. They agreed not to plan a graduation NHS prayer again. And, on my high school graduation day, a student gave a prayer, in private, in his capacity as a student, without the condonemnent of my high school, or the captive audience of everyone attending the graduation. And halley and I walked away from it. I was thrilled, because my school didn't sponsor prayer.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation does some amazing things, so, everyone who can should support them in general.

Religion and Sexuality

This article will also be published on generation atheist so go check it out if you happen to read my blog, but not it.

I've grown up in an area with a church on every corner. This is not much of an exaggeration. There are two churches within ten minutes walking distance from where I'm sitting, and four within 20. I live in a place where church/state violations are brushed of as silly and people roll their eyes when asked to include religions other than christianity, and find it unthinkable to not believe in a god. a vast, vast majority of people around here are christian. My high school had between 400 and 500 people in it, and the number of (out) atheists was at 7, at the highest, while I was there. Most people attended a church every week, at least. 

 Luckily for me, somehow, my parents don't happen to be very religious. My mom is something of an agnostic, but went with the label "christian" for a long time, because she'd gone to church as a kid, and she didn't utilize her own mind very much until a few years ago, preferring to let my dad decide these things. My dad grew up in an abusive home, and tried to get religion to save him from it around age 15, and since, even though he's not gone to church or read the bible, has been a weird sort of religious that seems to mean he thinks that there's a god who wants you to worship him and believes a few randomized passages in the bible. I'm not really sure why someone with such an insanely cherry-picked religion that seems totally unique to him would feel he could criticize others, but he somehow finds a lack of religion laughable.

Enter- My homosexuality, and screw with all of my family relationships. I didn't come out until about a year after my parents decided they found out. It's all a little difficult to explain, but my dad heard rumors that I was gay, and kissed my girlfriend at school, then, I gave xem a goodbye kiss on xyr forehead one day, and he decided that he knew enough to guess that, yes, I am a lesbian, and I should never be allowed to talk to my girlfriend.

The only reason I could ever get out of him was that god said homosexuality was bad. This utterly insane man had somehow chosen the verse about stoning homosexuals to believe, out of all of them. He called me disgusting, and told me I was going to hell. He told me I wasn't his daughter anymore. And the only reason I could get out of him was religion. My mom just cried and said she loved me, but she wanted me to change so god would love me. I was so confused at the time. How was this random Leviticus verse the one that would send me to hell when none of us kept the sabbath holy, attended church, prayed before dinner, or even learned about the bible? But, religion around here seems to be all about intolerance.

So, my parents' reaction to my homosexuality was because of religion. My friends? Actually, most of them didn't care. That's why they were my friends. But my pool of potential friends pretty much evaporated at school. I lived a dangerous double life that, in hindsight, seems crazy to have attempted, but, I digress, the point is, at school, I was an out, proud, lesbian, and that people knew this made them look at me with disgust. No one wanted me as their teacher-picked partner for assignments, and it was hilarious to point at me and say "that's the lesbian" When halley (my girlfriend) was holding hands and walking with me, asking explicit questions about out (then nonexistent) sex-life was okay. Teachers looked the other way for the most part, because really, we deserved it for defying god this way. It seemed every way I turned, someone hated me for loving xem because their sky dad said so.

This caused a little shame, but luckily, most of the time, I just felt depressed that everyone seemed to hate me without actually thinking about it. But I did feel a little shame. I tended to laugh it off. And I labeled myself a "bad girl" because I wasn't listening to my parents for the first time in my life, and, even though I didn't believe in god, it was still something I was doing that was yicky, according to most people I knew. I thought maybe something was wrong with me, and I was terrified that there was some premise I was missing that made their logic make sense without god involved, and I lived in fear of debates, because what if they proved that it was bad? would I stop loving xem? could I stop loving xem?

But what ultimately saved me was my halley and my friends. They reminded me that loving hurts no one, even if imaginary sky dad says it does. I have one conversation I'd like to share with everyone reading, paraphrased to the best of my memory between me and a friend on facebook chat. We'll call him Jeremy. He's the kind of guy who is always joking about everything, so one night, as I was telling him I watched the spanish channel on cable at four in the morning and it was utterly bizarre, the conversation went little like this

Jeremy: well, there's basically porn on HBO at four a.m.
Me: lol. okay
Jeremy: yeah, so now you can watch all the naked girlies you want, and no one will know.
Me: haha. I'm too much of a sweet innocent little girl for that.
Jeremy: ... yeah, I'm sure you are. lol.
Me: well, it's not like I haven't thought about it. But sometimes, I forget I'm not a good girl anymore. haha. It's like I was for so long, I don't remember that that changed.
Jeremy: Brittany, you are good. You are sweet and kind and you loving a girl doesn't affect this. Anyone who wants to tell you otherwise is just a narrow-minded fuckhead who is jealous that you have someone who loves you.
Me: I think that's the sweetest think anyone's ever said to me. I didn't know you could get that serious.

And it continued. But that reminded me, without this nonsense god stuff, sexual orientation of any sort is okay, and it doesn't affect how good or kind you can be, so no one experiencing this should be ashamed.

An all-knowing, all-powerful, all loving deity and evil

Is a god reconcilable with evil? In order to understand if a god is compatible with evil, we must first define which god we mean, and what its attributes are. In this essay, we will disprove a god who is omnipotent, omniscient and omni benevolent, such as Christians will often claim their god is. A god who is not defined by these criteria, is obviously not disproven by the existence of evil, and will not be addressed.

It is easy to understand that there is evil in the world. In this world, we've seen flooding destroy crops and houses, we've seen infertility hurt those who long to be parents, we've seen good people be killed by drunk drivers, we've seen soldiers killed defending their respective countries, we've seen the deaths of hundreds of innocent people on 9/11, we've seen, recently, an earthquake and tsunami ravage Japan, destroying nuclear facilities that leave even survivors at high risk of contracting deadly diseases from exposure to fallout, and, closer to home, in every community, we've seen children raped and beaten by the people who are supposed to love them most. If there was a loving god,goddess, or genderless deity he/she/xe would simply fix these things, unless of course, he didn't have the power. But, that would disprove an omnipotent god. What if, perhaps, this god was unwilling to fix them? That would disprove him or her by the malice that he or she should lack by basic definition. Is he/she/xe unaware that these awful things are occurring? Again, this excludes such a deity from existing, based on his lack of omniscience, which is one of the central defining characteristics of this being.

(for length purposes, and because commonly, these deities are male in the mythology, we will use "god" and masculine pronouns from here on out)

One of the most commonly heard answers for how this evil came to be and is allowed to exist is the complication of free will. The story goes that the perfect christian god wanted humans to have free will, but as we are not perfect, like this god, we (referring to humans in general) used it to create evil. It seems to make sense as an excuse upon early examination. But it is not as simple as that. There are several problems with this defense.

First of all, if this god was truly all powerful, why would he create us with the capacity to hurt one another? Why wouldn’t he create us perfect, like him, so we did not have to hurt? If we act as if we have misused our free will, we forget to address the idea of why we have the will to choose evil in the first place. A god who loves us would simply avoid giving us the will to do evil. It makes no sense for god to purposefully create beings with flaws. We run into the same problems as we do with the argument before free will is added. Creating the capacity and the desire to do evil should be judged on the same terms that creating evil itself. If god did not intend to, he made a mistake and cannot be omnipotent, if he purposefully created this desire, he is malevolent, and if he was unaware, he cannot be truly all knowing.

Many will try to refute this, saying that their god had to create the capacity and desire to do evil in order to give us true free will, and without true free will, we could never be happy, but if this god was real, and all powerful, he is the one who made the previous statement true. The free will dilemma plays on our emotions as well, appealing specifically to fear. We all hate the idea of having no choice at all, so we think of this removal of free will as something terrifying and horrible in itself. But, our fear of lack of free will proves nothing. Lack of free will does not indicate suffering, and therefore does not indicate evil. In itself, lack of free will harms no one and it is only our desire to be free that makes this bad, and, again, with an all powerful god, our desire to have free will could have not been created, making us happy with our lack thereof free will. If we claim that free will simply cannot be true without the choice for evil, we leave the definition of true free will outside of god’s power. A god that is good would not knowingly make something that caused all sorts of horrible suffering the only way to true happiness, and a powerful god wouldn’t be powerless to change the definition of true happiness.

A second problem with the free will argument is that many evil things are not controllable by humans. Drought, flooding, tornados, tsunamis and other natural disasters fall into this category. These things, despite being unable to attribute to free will, cause death, destruction and heartache. The recent earthquake in Japan is a strong example of this. No human causes could be said to have created this earthquake; so obviously, free will had nothing to do with this destruction. Did god make them happen, if so, how can he still be all loving? Obviously the answer is that he can not.

Attempts are made to explain evil as deserved, or a natural consequence of defying the perfect god, because it was all part of this perfect being's plan. This works okay for fornicators who, now married cannot conceive and for those who do not worship a god and have lost their money or power. But it is inconceivable that a loving god is punishing the 6 year old who prays to him every night to make her daddy stop raping her, or the teenage boy who gets beaten every day, and beaten more often if he cries about it, who goes to church and thanks his god that his parents haven't killed him yet, or even the god fearing, churchgoing woman who prayed for a baby and conceived, but her child died before he had a chance to be born. If evil was a punishment for our own misdeeds, we would see only bad people hurt. We would see no one who follows god be harmed and everyone who does not listen live an entirely miserable life. This is in stark contrast with what we see happening in reality. The randomized application of painful circumstance is irreconcilable with a perfect plan. No god who would willingly inflict such an awful life on people who have done everything he asked of them can be considered truly loving.

Satan: he is one of the easiest excuses people have used. Satan created evil. He is the one who instilled this bloodlust, sadism and vengeance into human kind. Their god can obviously not be blamed for something that he didn't do. So, we can all blame Satan and rejoice in god to help keep ourselves from going astray. Luckily, even if we succumb to the desires that Satan, god is willing to forgive us. This sounds wonderful so far, but as with the other excuses the religious have for still believing, this falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny. We must question why this god made Satan and why he continues to allow Satan to exist when he only causes pain. Is it that he can’t bear to delete him from existence? Why would a god who decided to torture everyone who did not follow him correctly for all of eternity have an issue with ridding the world of the ultimate evil and make suffering disappear. We come around to the willing able and aware dilemma again. Did god intentionally make this thing knowing he was going to create evil? He is malevolent. Was he unaware of what he was doing? He is not omnipotent. Or did he somehow find himself unable to avoid creating him? He is not all-powerful, so this explanation, as the others, falls apart.

Another common response is that without evil, we could not know what good is. This concept is patently ridiculous. Humans do not need to experience pain to know that it exists, or that pleasure is good. Think of it this way: Can people, without having experienced an abusive relationship, know that a loving, respectful, emotionally supportive relationship is good? Most of them, myself included, can understand this perfectly. We can all recognize good and pleasure without experiencing pain. Also, even if we could not recognize good without it. We are limiting god’s power if we assume he can not change this about us. And if he will not change this about us, that makes him evil. Even if we take for granted this is true, and that god for some reason made it so, it is still possible to understand the concept of evil without seeing it occur, that is to say that we need only be able to conceptualize evil and we can do that without it’s existence in the real world. The all powerful creator could have given us the idea of evil without its existence, through stories, or simply our capacity for imagination. To say that god could not let us conceptualize evil without seeing it is to again, limit his power. 

Once we acknowledge that god is responsible for the things we call evil, many theists will attempt to explain this away by saying that there is no such thing as evil, or good for that matter. They say that it’s “limiting” to define things this way. So, when we see evil, it’s really good but we don’t realize it. There is a point to this argument. No, all things cannot be blindly attributed to black and white categories, all good and all evil. But there are things we call evil. The most meaningful definition of evil given by dictionary.com is “characterized or accompanied by misfortune or suffering” and we can see that misfortune and suffering exist. Taking away the power of the word “evil” or showing that good and evil have blurry lines and things that appear good can be evil and that seem evil can be good does not disprove the existence of evil. All that this does is prove that definitions of words are subjective and the world is complicated. This does not address the fact that, if there is a god, he is responsible, directly, or through negligence, for every bit of suffering, physical or emotional, that any being has experienced thus far. He has refused to use his power to prevent this evil from happening. Subjective definitions of evil aside, god allows pain and suffering on this planet, else he doesn't exist.

If it is not that evil is not real, we often hear theists resort to the claim that god can be unwilling to prevent evil, but also not malevolent. He is letting us learn from experience, like parents that would let their child try to do something beyond their skill level and allow them to fail. There are a few different problems with this comparison, though.

The first is that god, unlike a father or mother on earth, supposedly has power to do anything and this includes impart to us the knowledge of what will happen when we do things without making us experience the horrible things. This excuse also has the same problems as with evil being a deserved punishment. It seems like it may make sense for those who choose to do horrible things, and god makes them suffer the consequences. A murderer being jailed, for instance, or more directly, the man who participated in cock fighting, tied razor blades to his chicken and wound up dead from a slit throat. But what did that six month old do wrong, that she had to die from SIDS in her crib. How does the notion that god was just letting her “see the consequences” of her actions go?

Another problem is that more painful evil can not be compared to something as petty as a failed art project or attempt to cross the monkey bars. These are things like the holocaust; people being tortured, day in day out for their entire lives, people being worked and then beaten to death, children being locked in closets to starve and only let out to be hurt, babies being nearly drowned to be supposedly scared into listening to their parents. This sort of cruelty is on a whole different level than letting one’s children try something they aren’t ready to try. If a god would let this go on, it is inexcusable. This sort of thing can not be brushed away with the notion of letting people see what happens to them when they do not use their free will as they were told to.

Despite any attempts to explain this dilemma away, it will always be present that if god could change these things, but won’t, it is cruelty, if he can’t change them, but wants too, he is limited in power, and if he is completely unaware then he cannot be all knowing. Any additions made to this simple statement just create another thing that this god could have changed but didn’t, or something that this god wanted to change but couldn’t , or something of which this god was simply unaware. All of this disproves, by definition, a being many define as their god.

Video Games and Atheism

So, I'm a pretty big fan of scribblenauts and super scribblenauts. These are both games for the nintendo D.S. with a really cool concept. The gameplay is simple and creative, as you can have any item you can spell (minus some deemed vulgar, or some that are too obscure to be programmed in) and in super scribblenauts, you can add adjectives. You use any items you can think of to solve puzzles designed to have multiple ways of completion. Anyone who is a fan of puzzle style games should really pick this game up; It's well worth the money you'll spend.

Anyway, enough about the game in general; I'm here to praise one specific concept that spoke volumes to me, as an athiest. I always played with god in the original scribblenauts. There's something satisfying as an atheist to make god and kill him with a shotgun, nuclear bomb, poisin, acid rain, fire, and just any number of things you can think of.

Only last night, though, did I ever think to put "atheist" into the little notebook. I expected that to be too specific a concept or religions or lack thereof to be considered too controversial for it to cover without being accused of "stereotyping", but, no, to my suprise, a small, black haired guy in blue jeans and a skull shirt showed up for me to place. I happily showered him in gifts, flowers, food, some golden wings, money, and the little wrapped box with a bow that shows up when you use "Gift". Okay, so I get to feeling way to warmly towards video game characters. That's not the point.

The reason I'm writing this is what happened when I made god, to see how he and the atheist would interact. What happened? My little atheist guy ran over to god, the gear (far as I can tell, stands for thinking, working or fixing something) symbol came in a thought bubble, and god disappeared. Some people have said the athiest killed him, but I don't think that's the case. You see, in super scribblenauts, everything has four little life points, shown as red circles above them before they die or disappear. And god didn't lose his life points in this, he simply disappeared in a flash. I interpret the entire following as the atheist disproving god, and making him disappear. He does the same to a goddess. He does the same to zeus (looks just like god) and odin. I couldn't get the game to recognize any other gods I knew the name of, but I plan to try more. The general point: atheism disproves god.

So, to whoever on the creation and design team was responsible for this: Thank you, from an atheist for making your game represent atheism as correct. I know it's a small thing, but this mention and following makes me so happy. Let me say it one more time

Thank you, super scribblenauts creators
Sincerely,
a happy atheist

Introduction

Hi! My name is Brittany. I am 17 years old, and can describe myself in a lot of ways. I am as liberal as they come. I am a screaming advocate for peaceful, natural parenting, and a proud sister to 6 year old Joey. I try to care for him in the ways I would care for my own children, but sometimes his parents get in my way. It's hard to practice peaceful parenting with a child that isn't yours. haha. I am also a lesbian, and proud of it. I'm in love with My beautiful, precious girl, Halley. I am proud to be with her and love her so much. I'm kinky; Naturally submissive, but usually playing the dominant role, because Halley loves it so much. I'm a girly sort of girl. I love dresses and sparkles and pink and rainbows. I am an atheist, and consider religion frankly dangerous, therefore hate it. I do not hate religious people, though. I love some of them a lot and hope to "show them the light" so to speak. I am a total child at heart. I love dolls and kids' shows. Especially Moose and Zee on noggin. I have one new, special doll. She's 18 inches and her name is Lellianna. I love to play with her and be a mommy. Speaking of which, I am the type to want to be a stay at home mommy. I want to take care of my babies and cook and clean for my wife. I don't feel anyone should be forced to do what makes them unhappy. I feel I should have every right to work any place that offers jobs to people, but that I should have the right to opt out. I am a gamer and a let's player. I love the classic series like Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy. I also love Kingdom Hearts and have played quite a few other games. Shooters are not my thing and I am not even interested enough to pick up a controller for them. As for let's plays, Joey and I have started a let's play of majora's mask. If you want to find it, the channel is SissyandJoeyLP. Anyway, guys, I don't think I've left any of the main things I wanted to cover out of this, so I'm done!