Reading Time: 5 minutes The past couple of weeks there has been a lot of discussion about religious indoctrination and abuse. A couple of weeks ago I received a good bit of pushback from my readers because I asserted that you shouldn’t call teaching creationism “child abuse.” If you check out that article (linked here) and sort the comments by number of […]
Parenting & Family
Exploring the world of family and parenting from a secular, nonreligious perspective.
Posted inGeneral, Parenting & Family, Religion, Secularism
Cutting Off Your Family in the Name of Jesus
Reading Time: 9 minutes “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” When I started dating my girlfriend a little over three years ago, her parents seemed to think I was a godsend. In fact, I’m pretty sure I recall one of them saying […]
Posted inParenting & Family
Godless Little Girl Drops Rhetorical Bombs At School
Reading Time: 2 minutes William Scott, aged 38, was gobsmacked when his seven year old daughter’s principal called him in the early afternoon last Tuesday. His daughter, Mikayla, had been expressing her love of logic on the playground earlier that day which had left many of her classmates in tears and others very angry. The principal reported that the […]
Posted inGeneral, Parenting & Family, Secularism
Atheists Need Help Mourning, Too
Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s always painful when someone you love dies. The loss and the separation inevitably hurt, and it takes time to adjust to the new reality of life without having him or her around. Because this is a recurring thing, society has evolved ways of marking and mourning the loss of loved ones which speak to the […]
Posted inGeneral, Parenting & Family, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Secularism
Do People Become Atheists Because They Had Bad Fathers?
Reading Time: 4 minutes I shouldn’t even have to answer this question. It’s so inane that I almost didn’t write a response. It’s insulting to the intelligence of anyone who hears it, and it reduces a belief structure to a psychological malady. But then I remember that atheists do that to Christians all the time, calling their religion a mental […]
Posted inGeneral, Parenting & Family, Religion, Secularism
Am I Raising My Kids to Be Atheists?
Reading Time: 7 minutes We’ve had a fun intramural spat here on The Heathen Channel at Patheos over whether or not you should deliberately raise your kids to be atheists. If you’d like to catch up on that discussion you can read here, here, here, here, and again here. I could spend lots of time interacting point-by-point with what […]
Posted inGeneral, Parenting & Family, Secularism
Please Don’t Hold Me at Arm’s Length
Reading Time: 5 minutes Dear (family member), I’d like to talk to you for a minute about this…thing…that’s come between us. Because we are family, our conversations remain warm and our mutual love is authentic. For that I am grateful. But amidst the warmth there remains an uncomfortable tension—an emotional distance—that wasn’t there before. Things between us were pretty […]