An Atheist Goes to Church!

That's right, folks. I've seen the light. I'm going to Mass tonight!

HAH.

Well, I am going to Mass, but it is for a funeral remembrance. My grandma passed away two and a half weeks ago, I am sad to say. Her funeral was out of state, but the Mass is today and it is local. Of course I went to the funeral. But I've debated on going to this or not, for a variety of reasons... in the end I decided to suck it up and go, for the sake of family unity. If you've read my posts before, you are probably somewhat acquainted with my familial situation (to sum it up, they are all hardcore Catholics and have essentially estranged me because a) I'm divorced b) I got a boyfriend before I had my annulment c) I am now living with said boyfriend and d) I'm... *gasp*... no longer Catholic. They didn't even wait around long enough to find out that I am an atheist, to boot, but surely they've picked up some hints over the past couple of years. Anyway. Since my grandma's passing they have been marginally better. I even got an apology from my brother! That is a huge deal--as big as if the earth started spinning backwards. Or Michael Jackson being black again. Or JFK being, y'know, not assassinated.

They are still pretty insane, especially my mother, but that's a whole 'nother can of beans.

There is a good possibility that I will get called out on my not receiving the eucharist by the priest. This is the priest who has baptized all 6 of the children, performed my uncle's last rights, did my grandma's confession/communion/confirmation, aaaaaand who married me. So I guess you could say he is the family priest. Oh, this is going to be so much fun.

Everything has been really crazy and stressful lately, and there are several things I have been wanting to talk about that I have not had time to post. This is the first time I have had an experience with death since becoming an atheist, and I want to write about what that was like, especially in contrast to the experience as a Catholic theist. Coming very soon.

--BadSec

Review and Ad that Shows Parenthood Sucks

I was reading an article by childfree psychologist Ellen Walker yesterday, Are There Disadvantages to Being Childfree?

I've read some of her other articles and liked them, but I did not care for this one at all. She lists 5 possible disadvantages to being childfree:

Being a misfit among ones peers

Increased need for social support

Needing to plan one's estate more carefully

Too much free time

Need to identify meaning in life

...and I disagree with them all. I'll review each one in brief detail, but first I want to share the inadvertent irony I noticed. It wasn't till after reading the article that I paid attention to the advertisement on the right hand side:

Hmmm... if it's a disadvantage to not experience my daughter turning to drugs and alcohol at an alarming rate, sign me up! It's ads like these that reveal that parenting truly sucks.

Back to Walker's list of disadvantages to being childfree:

Being a misfit among ones peers. This just does not resonate with me at all. I care very little what other people think about my choices. It would be a waste of my life to worry about that. But if I did, I suppose I could make an effort to surround myself with peers who also do not have children, but I just don't care that much. If they treated me poorly that would be different, but as a rule I am not friends with people who are judgmental snobs, parents or not. Like Walker, I usually have very little in common with stay at home mothers, and struggle to even make interesting conversation. I usually find them to be very boring, uninspiring people. But feeling like a misfit? Hell no. Different, sure. It's different in a good way, though; I have more time, money, sleep, energy, and creativity than my parented peers. My life is so much better that theirs (in my opinion), and I enjoy the choice I made.

Increased need for social support. She has a point here, but I see no social support that cannot be gotten from friends or paid assistants. In fact, I think it's really wrong to expect my children to be built-in helpers when I am sick, injured or old. Children aren't a guaranteed safety net. I think that due to the fact that I will have more time, money and energy to take care of myself, in general I will need less social support anyway. And I would never trade my life for parenting as insurance for bad days.

Needing to plan one's estate more carefully. Ehhhh...not so much. I don't need to plan it more carefully, I just need to plan it differently. Instead of giving my assets to my children, they will be left to my spouse, nieces and nephews, friends or charity. I'll have thousands more to leave them. This is really a non-issue.

Too much free time. What?! This makes no sense! How is that a disadvantage? My free time is spent working, getting enough sleep, traveling, learning, reading and enjoying life. I could never possibly run out of things to do. Walker even says,

When interviewing adults without kids for my book, I expected to find that people were bored with too much time on their hands, but this was simply not the case. These childfree adults were busy with hobbies, careers, and personal relationships, plus they had more time for healthy meal preparation, exercise, and sleep.

Bored? No way! I have no patience for people who are bored, whether they have kids or not. If you're bored, it means you have no imagination, no desire to learn and explore, and you need to change your life. If you're bored, you are letting yourself be a victim and I have no respect for that way of life. If you're bored, get off your ass and do something, learn something, make something happen.

Need to identify meaning in life. Oh, please. Walker is right in the sense that we all need to understand who we want to be as people and to know what we want from life. But I take offense at the suggestion that if you're not a parent, you have to work really hard to fill in the gaps and find a way to define yourself. For the childfree, there is nothing missing and there are no gaps. We make our own meaning in life, and obviously we place a higher value on titles other than Mother and Father!

*sigh* I was disappointed by this article. I agree that there are differences and consequences to choosing to be childfree, but this article makes me have the sense that Walker feels like some things are missing from her life. All of her disadvantages I see as either positives, or neutrals with better alternatives out there.

--BadSec

Shit My Kids Ruin

I was a kid once. I've ruined a few irreplaceable family portraits and tubes of lipstick in my time. If only I knew the power of devastation that lay at my fingertips if I just tried a little harder. I salute these Satanic children for ruining far more than I ever did:

Shit My Kids Ruined. Photographic reality of day-to-day parenting (that you never see in the movies).

I have several friends who are pregnant or planning on being pregnant soon. They all idolize parenting and children, and have lengthy discussions on how they will do such fabulous jobs of parenting their children. They'll never be angry, they'll never miss a soccer game, and they would never, ever leave their child unattended. (That woman whose toddler died because she got up from her nap, took her mother's car keys, and locked herself in the car during the summer while her mother was sleeping--shame on that woman for ever taking a break!) Oh no. Those people who complain of their DVD players being ruined or walls crayoned, why, they're just poor disciplinarians who don't keep an eye on their children.

I just laugh, because in this regard, my friends are idiots. Their children will hurt themselves, and they will destroy things. Many things.

Prepare to have crayons, paint, shaving cream, peanut butter, sodas and candy smeared into your chairs, cars, carpets, computers and walls. Hope you didn't care too much about that TV, or laptop, or couch--oh, and sorry about your car. Get used to pee, poo and vomit on pretty much everything, and set aside many hours a week to clean and repair. Oh, it's all so worth it.

Yeahhhhhhh, think I'll pass. My home and my vehicles are a safe haven of calm and order, and I prefer my life that way.

--BadSec

Children are so expensive!

VisualEconomics.com put out a nice chart on the cost of raising a kid:

These numbers are based on 2009 figures. It is considerably more conservative than solely the estimate from the USDA of $280K.

I think I'll pass.

--BadSec

Most of the credit goes to you!

Time after time you will hear religious people praise God for his help in the accomplishment of their successes. Let's ignore for now (and this is difficult!) how frequently God completely ignores millions of other cases of starvation, abuse, disease and destitution. But never you mind, he's busy.

These people will say that they did something by the grace of God, or that God blessed them, or that they would be nothing without God--any number of variations. When I hear this, I get extremely frustrated, especially when it is directed towards me. I feel a lot like Eliza Doolittle, actually.



In this scene from My Fair Lady, the men are congratulating themselves exuberantly for having pulled off their goal: training the cockney Eliza well enough so that she passes for an educated Englishwoman at the ball. They completely ignore the accomplishments of Eliza herself. "Now wait, now wait, give credit where it's due. A lot of the glory goes... to you!," Higgins says to Pickering, ignoring Eliza while she is standing right there.

Last week my partner's father was commenting on how "blessed" we are. We live in a beautiful house, make good money, are generally very healthy and have a good relationship. We take care of our house, our bills, our cars, eat well and have some very nice furniture and such. He kept on and on about how everything we did was because Jesus had our backs.

The truth is, we are "blessed" because well, yes, we have gotten lucky, but mostly it's because we have been wise in managing our money, and have worked very hard to get where we are. It took me over six years to finish my college degree because I worked my way through and did not take on any student loans. We both have very little debt, and what we do have is for vehicles. We both have two vehicles, and one of each is paid for--the second could be sold to pay for itself if need be (that being said, I will never take on debt again as my financial philosophies have changed, but that's another story). We have a fully furnished office, fully furnished guest room, a 65" tv, baby grand piano, pool table, an exquisite China cabinet, and a high-end gun safe for our pistols and other valuables.

We rarely buy anything new. All of our vehicles are used, though you wouldn't know that by looking. 90% of our furniture is used, and we don't buy it unless we practically steal it. You would be shocked at how little our furnishings cost. We scour Craigslist, eBay, garage sales and antique shops, and trust me, it pays off. Practically everything used always needs a little TLC, but we're very handy, and our things look brand new. I have things that are 10 times nicer than my broke friends who don't realize they can buy used. All but a few of my fine jewelry items are pawn shop finds. I buy my clothes on eBay, at Goodwill, and at discount shops like Marshall's. If a business is going out of business, we are there to get some deals on things we need. We haggle and barter for everything. We buy one thing at a time, and it's taken us 3 or 4 years to get to where we are. I hope it is only the beginning. I drink my wine on my $75 leather couch from my $0.25 Goodwill wine glass, and look good doing it.

My point is, of the things in life that can be controlled, we can and do control them. We are very responsible. We are creative when it comes to problem solving. Sure, we have fun too, and we definitely buy stuff we don't need, but it's kept to a responsible minimum. We have not saddled ourselves with debt, and we have not burdened ourselves with children.

Nothing that we have done, have accomplished, or will accomplish in the future has anything to do with God. As Higgins says, we must give credit where credit is due, and the glory of our "blessings" is from our own blood, sweat and tears. We have worked our butts off, made [mostly!] wise choices, and it has led to a nicer life.

My father-in-law had the audacity to claim that my partner's life was saved because of Jesus protecting him. When he was a kid, he fell down a hill and collided into an edge of a picnic table with his throat. He's lucky to have not bled to death, let alone still have a voice. It was extremely traumatic for him and his family, not only physically but financially and emotionally. He had to have multiple surgeries over several years. And his own father can seriously look us in the eye and say that Jesus "protected" him. Jesus is a shitty protector, then. Maybe next time he could just prevent the incident from happening at all? My partner was saved because of receiving quick medical attention, and having some excellent surgeons. Humans did a hell of a lot more to help him out than God, and they were able to do so because of their own hard work and sacrifice for years to get their medical training.

I wish people would give themselves credit for the good things that they do. The idea that God is a silent, invisible puppeteer is beyond ludicrous. I can't tell the difference between him being his silent, invisible self, and him not existing at all. God is gratuitously given credit for all the good things, but for the bad things God is mysterious, or everything happens for a reason, or some other excuse. Convenient, isn't it? It makes no sense at all to congratulate God for my good job when others are starving. Why am I worth more than them? Why can I eat and they can't? If God works in mysterious ways, then he needs to get hit shit together, and quick, because that system is not working.

God protects and heals you... but you still need doctors and medicine.

God will get you a good job... but you still have to gain experience, get an education, prepare a resume, apply and do an interview, and you still have to show up and do quality work.

God will hear your prayers and help your relationships... but you still have to listen, compromise and show respect.

God will help you with your financial woes... but you still have to work, get your money organized, be on a budget, pay your bills and set goals.

God will help the poor and abused... but you still need to volunteer at shelters, donate money to charities and the church.

It seems that we are doing all the work here. God is like that irresponsible guy you get stuck with in speech class for a group project, who is never around to help study or prepare, yet on presentation day he wants credit for his half. And if God were really looking out for you and your family as a result of your prayers and worship to him, then statistically, believers would have better health and lives than non-believers.

If I am able to buy a car, it is because I worked and saved up money and paid for it. If I am injured and surgery saves my life, it is because of competent medical professionals and my own body's natural defenses.

There is no reason to believe that there is an almighty, all-knowing, silent, invisible being floating around, ensuring all your successes yet is mysteriously absent for failures and hardships. You'll do much better to recognize the reality of your own power and creativity, hard work and ingenuity.

--BadSec

The Baby Trap

I began reading Ellen Peck's The Baby Trap book today, and so far am enjoying it very much. Though originally published in 1971, I am so far blown away by how current it feels, 40 years later. I will have to write a better informed review later, but I came across this quote and just had to share it:

"Being mature assumes a certain amount of personal power, and the right to decide in what way that power will be exercised. And selfishness, in the sense of being aware of, and proud of, the self, is certainly a factor in a balanced personality. It's the weak personalities that completely resign themselves to the role of consumer of child-centered gee-gaws who are in trouble. Being aware of one's own adult sensuality, personality, and material preferences is good.

Peck wrote this in a response to people thinking that people who want adult things (a den, zebra throw, bar and a woman) and not child things (baby shoes, cradles, musical potties) are immature and selfish. I just love her meticulous response to what we childfree call a "bingo".

You can read The Baby Trap in its entirety, for free, here.

--BadSec

Thought of the day

Do you want to know yet another reason why I am an atheist? No? Well, too bad. Here it is.

If God were real, he would make himself known, make himself seen and heard. There would be interviews with God on the BBC, David Letterman and Fox News (CNN does not get first dibs, are you kidding?).

But God is not visible, audible or tangible. The best believers have to go on are ancient texts, ancient stories, traditions, dogma, "personal experiences" and feelings. I'm not impressed. All of this "evidence" reeks of humanity.

Instead, the fact that we can't actually discuss questions with God, get clarification for anything, settle disputes, or hell, feed starving people and inform murderers in the error of their ways? stop wars?--these things indicate that either God has no care about earthly suffering, or doesn't exist. However, not caring about these things is completely contrary to any concept of the character of God of which I am aware.

Do you really think that God is so petty, so butt hurt, that he sits up there in heaven and refuses to help people because they're not perfectly good, and he's pissed off about it? So he sits there, lip stuck out, refusing to help people--except football players and actresses in their acceptance speeches--and is content to let us believe that while he loves us SO GODDAMN MUCH that he sent his only son to be sacrificed for our own salvation, he has to stick to his mysterious plan and let us suffer? One would think that the author of the plan could change the plan and come up with a better plan that doesn't include pain and suffering! This God is an asshole, or woefully inept.

Think of all the religious disputes that exist or have existed, from minor theological quabbles to violent wars. God appearing, making his existence known and administering commandments, would stop the chaos instantly. We wouldn't argue over dogma, or have religious wars, and the possibility of atheism would be ridiculous, laughable! We would have no choice but to, at the least, believe in the one God.

The theist is sitting here reading this, saying to himself, "Oh, God could do all these things, just doesn't want to." Well, to hell with that! Dare I ask, does the same moral code apply to humans? So I can stand by and watch people starve, be raped, murdered, etc, and take a picture for my scrapbook? If God does it, so should I. Supposedly God is perfect and benign and unchanging, so his moral code must be totally awesome.

If I had the power that God supposedly has, I would eliminate all suffering and wrongdoing immediately. I would appear to my people, get to know them and let them get to know me, and take everyone to heaven and have a wonderful, blissful eternity. I'm human, and I can imagine what I would do with that kind of power--yet we are expected to worship and believe in someone who can do all that things, and simply doesn't?

God is supposedly benevolent, loving, just, merciful, all-knowing, omnipotent, etc. I'm pretty sure that someone with those character traits would be able and willing to make the universe a perfectly lovely place, regardless of free will. Free will shouldn't be a cop out for God to let things be shitty, especially for innocent children who have no ability to help themselves.

He either doesn't give a shit, or he doesn't exist. The latter makes much more sense.