Millions of words have been written this weekend in memory of Christopher Hitchens, who died Friday following a long fight with esophageal cancer. One of the original “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheist movement, Hitchens, along with Dawkins and fellow authors Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, launched a veritable revolution among the godless. Their popular books brilliantly expressed centuries of atheist thinking in a way that was not only accessible, but also catalyzing for members of the most reviled minority in America. Hitchens’ work is one of the primary reasons millions of atheists are mad as hell, and not taking it anymore.

Hitch’s contribution, “God Is Not Great” was the second of the four books I read. At the start of the book, I still harbored the ex-believer’s common warmness toward religious stories — Jesus seemed like a pretty nice guy, and the Bible still seemed to contain much that was commendable, even if I didn’t believe it was true. By the end of “God Is Not Great,” I wanted to punch JC in the face. He laid bare, in a single volume, the moral horror that religion entails when it places dogma over human needs (which is to say, always).

Quite apart from his work on behalf of rationality, the thing I’ll miss most is Hitch’s inimitable writing style. He was an absolute master of the high-brow put-down. In a time when smug cleverness is often mistaken for wit, Hitch showed what the latter really meant, simultaneously delivering both seriousness and humor that gave an intimidating glimpse into the mind of what must have been one of the most well read people alive. Even if he was writing on a subject about which I knew little, I devoured his columns just for the pleasure of reading some of the best writing on the planet.

We’ll miss you, Hitch. There’s not another like you.

But I digress.  We were talking about death.  And have been,  a lot.  This comes up in 2 main contexts: squished or no longer moving insects, and warning him against doing dangerous things that could, in his words, “make me dead.”  When a family friend’s mother recently died, it became slightly more concrete with people.

Because we don’t believe in an afterlife, I don’t want to shield him from the idea of death.  I’m hoping (in an age-appropriate way) to help him understand what it means, and that it’s a natural part of life.  Our current working definition of death is “sometimes someone gets very sick, or hurt, or just old, and their body just wears out and stops working.  When that happens, they can’t do anything anymore.  It’s like going to sleep and not waking up.”

So far, this has sufficed to explain things without visibly terrifying him.  But, man, do I feel like we’re walking a tightrope.  I want him to understand the basic concept and its implications enough not to do reckless things.  But no one wants to get a preschooler preoccupied with the idea of dying.  That kind of stuff can really haunt a kid.

I think back to my religious days, when it would have been so easy to say “our friend’s mommy went to heaven.”  Easy, but so much less honest.  And, in a real way, so devaluing of the loss.  When you accept that there isn’t another world beyond where we’ll be reunited, it makes the finality of death horribly tangible.  But it also challenges you to value the one and only life the deceased had to live, and how they lived it.  And to live your one and only life as richly and presently as possible.

I used to be one of those people.  And in my rural Indiana church, prayers for the nation were always bracketed with the conviction that we were a lost people, living in depravity, losing our way from the God who could guide us.  That was 20 years ago.  In the 2 ensuing decades, this kind of rhetoric has continued, but is now buttressed by historical revisionists declaring that the US was founded to be a “Christian nation,” a fusing of a political party and a religion that is so complete as to make an openly non-Christian running as a Republican laughable, and a 24-hour “news” channel willing to promote this worldview while willfully excluding any inconvenient facts.

One of the attendees summed up the hopes of evangelical Christians nicely:

“Yeah, I think it would be extremely beneficial to our nation to hear some of our top leaders, especially if he gets elected as president, to take stands like this,” [Jason Cole, who drove a bus from the Church of Glad Tidings in Austin] said, “and preach from the White House, ultimately from the White House.”

“Preach from the White House.”  Those words should concern anyone who believes in secular government, because they are part and parcel of the single largest segment of American religious people.

Spotted this in a Philly shop that frequently features Christian kitsch aimed at an African-American audience in its front window.  In case the imagery isn’t brutally clear, a wad of cash + gun = drug dealer.  So, according to the artist, a young person’s choices are: (a) be a Christian, or (b) be a drug-dealing street thug.  In a city with no shortage of churches in rough neighborhoods, it would be far more accurate to substitute a math book for that bible.

I googled the image, and it is indeed a “guardian angel” coin.  We have no idea who put it in there.  I strongly expect My Very Catholic Mother-in-Law, but there are certainly other possibilities – my mother, a babysitter, a good friend who dog sits on occasion.

I was a little irritated at first, but now it’s just amusing.  The religious are, almost by definition, fairly superstitious, but this just takes it one step further.  Do they really think the spirit or essence or something of an angel is held within a cheap little coin?  Or does one have to bribe guardian angels to come near with pretty, shiny objects?  The whole thing is just too silly.

It triggered memories of my time as a believer when the existence and presence of God was just an assumption.   I didn’t question it.  I didn’t explore it or consider why I thought it was true.  Daily experiences didn’t really confirm or disprove it, because it was a proposition beyond evidence.  If pressed, I likely would have said I just “knew” God was real, maybe would have invoked the bible.  If pressed further, “faith” would have been my only refuge.  Push a little more and the conversation would stop.  I was and am a very academic person, but my belief wasn’t buttressed by anything like the reasons I myself would have demanded of any other discipline.

It was not until I began questioning my beliefs that I could even step outside myself and see how I thought about God.  Therein I see the starting point of my future dealings and debates with the religious — trying to help them see how they think about religion, and how different it is from how they think about anything else.  Try to make their own cognitive dissonance apparent to them.  I expect a quick retreat into defensiveness in most instances.  But perhaps it will help someone at least start thinking about the God assumption.  It seems like a productive path, at least.  And I’m all for pushing God back into the ghetto of “faith,” where we can at least stop arguing whether there is evidence for his existence.

Has anyone has experience with this line of argumentation?  Can believers be lead to view their beliefs as they view the rest of the world?

One of the Qubo shows is a silly sci-fi farce called 3-2-1 Penguins!  Simple premise – 2 kids have a toy spaceship and penguin dolls, and imagine adventures flying through the galaxy.  There’s always a nice message; yesterday’s show was about valuing people’s character more than their looks.  And there are a number of in-jokes for the parents.  So far, so good.

So imagine my surprise when, at the start of an episode, I overhear the little girl’s mother quoting the freaking Bible to her!  And then the show ends, and the two little kids are kneeling at their bedsides saying prayers that encapsulate the lesson of the show!

It’s not enough to keep us from watching, but seriously?!  You have to proselytize to children in a show about space-faring penguins?!   At least we’ve still got Dinosaur Train (with Dr. Scott the paleontologist) on PBS to inject a little reality.

From  one pumpkin to another!!!!!!!

A woman was asked by  a coworker, ‘What is it like to be a  Christian?’

The coworker replied, ‘It is like being  a pumpkin.’   God  picks you from the patch, brings you in,   and  washes all the dirt off of you.    
Then  He cuts off the top and scoops out all the yucky  stuff.  He removes the seeds of doubt, hate,   and  greed.   Then  He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside  of you to shine for all  the  world to see.’

This was passed on to me by another  pumpkin..   Now  it’s your turn to pass it to other pumpkins.

I  liked this enough to send it to all the pumpkins in my  patch.

Just a few thoughts:

1) “He cuts off the top”?!?!?!  I used to be a Christian, and I can’t find a theological analogue for what this is supposed to mean.  He removes your brain (with thinking for yourself being “yucky stuff”)?  A veiled reference to circumcision?  WTF?

2) He apparently is kind of sloppy with that spoon, because there are as many ”seeds of … hate and greed” in Christians as there are in anyone else.

3) Personally, I like a few “seeds of doubt.”  They tend to make the world a little more palatable.  Especially when toasted in butter and sprinkled liberally on the spice cake of irrationality that religion feeds people.

4) “He carves you a new smiling face” puts me in mind of Heath Ledger’s Joker.

I’ll think twice before ever calling my kid “pumpkin” after this.

Story #1: Most prominent was the story of Kurt, the gay son of an auto mechanic.  Kurt’s dad has a heart attack and goes into a coma, and we subsequently learn that Kurt is an atheist when his friends begin to offer religious assertions as comfort.

The Good: Kurt is unapologetic and consistent in his disbelief.  When challenged that he “can’t disprove God,” he gets in a zinger involving Bertrand Russell’s Celestial Teapot (although Kurt jazzes it up a bit by putting a dwarf that shoots lasers from its boobs inside the teapot).  The show closes with a great human moment when Kurt tells his dad that he doesn’t believe in God, but he does believe in their family.  I thought it was refreshing to have a character so openly profess his disbelief, and NOT be converted by the end (and I was nervous at a few points it might go that way).

The Bad: Kurt violates the Phil Plait rule, and sometimes comes off as a dick.  He calls the class “mental patients” for believing in God, and tosses several of them from his dad’s hospital room when they show up to pray.  (I defend him on this point, though.  If you make your views known and people shove their religion in anyway, I think you’re entitled to be pissed.)

Story #2: Finn, the dim but earnest football player, makes a grilled cheese and, due to a fluke of the George Forman Grill, ends up with Grilled Cheesus.  After carefully excising the half of the sandwich without the lord’s countenance (because Finn was, after all, really hungry), Finn begins praying for various selfish things: to win a football game, to get to second base with Rachael, to become quarterback again.  Every wish comes true, and every time Finn expressly gives credit to Grilled Cheesus.  It all unravels, however, when Finn realizes all that happened was for completely explainable reasons, and his newfound faith dissolves with a rendition of “Losing My Religion.”  And the consumption of Grilled Cheesus.

The Good: First, it’s just funny as hell to watch Finn pray to a grilled cheese.  Best line: “I never went to Sunday School, so I don’t know if you’re like a genie and I get three wishes.”  Also interesting to show a shallow but common form of Christianity, what Kurt called “Santa Clause for adults.”  Nice scene when Finn gives credit to god for his romantic success with Rachael, and is reminded that Rachael let him touch her, because she cares about him.

The Bad: Not much to complain about here.  Finn’s a nominal believer, then an earnest but selfish believer, then decides it’s all crap.  Works for me.

Story #3: Cheer coach and villain extraordinaire Sue Sylvester gets wind that the Glee Club is singing religious songs and takes Will to the principal’s office for violating the separation of church and state.  We also learn that Sue prayed as a child for her sister, who has Down’s Syndrome, to “get better,” and when her prayers weren’t answered and people treated her sister cruelly, concluded that “it wasn’t that I wasn’t praying hard enough.  It was that no one was listening.”

The Good: Sue is also unabashed about her disbelief.  And it’s one of the “sincere Sue” moments.

The Bad: She comes off as a “bitter atheist.”  Her disbelief seems more of an angry reaction to her sister’s situation than a considered position.  Toward the end, she appears to soften toward belief for no other reason than her sister offering to pray for her, which again makes her disbelief seem shallow.

All in all, I think the show offered a mostly fair portrayal of atheism and atheists.  Despite his snippish moments, Kurt is sympathetic and grateful for his friends’ concern, even if he doesn’t share their beliefs.  Sue provides a genuine emotional critique of religion, if it is isn’t all that philosophically sophisticated.

And Finn? Grilled Cheesus.  Hee hee.