Reading Time: 8 minutes I’m sometimes asked by religious friends why I make such a big deal over evolution in particular. Some have suggested that secular types beat the drum for evolution only because it’s a sharp stick in the religious eyeball. The question itself is a good one. Fortunately the answer is even better. And it’s not just […]
parenting audio
Posted inParenting & Family
My son’s Ben Shapiro phase: How critical thinking saved his life
Reading Time: 4 minutes I have been a fan of the First Amendment for my entire adult life. When I became a stripper at 18, I learned very quickly how important freedom of speech and expression was to my job and independence. As I got older, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment became even more important as I […]
Posted inEvolution
Children of the evolution
Reading Time: 10 minutes OnlySky · Children of the evolution | Dale McGowan When we lived in Minneapolis, our family used to take walks through an area called the Quaking Bog. On one fall walk, I spotted a fawn and waved the kids over. “Look, look. See the deer?” I said. “You can just barely see it against the […]
Posted inParenting & Family
The curious root of everything
Reading Time: 8 minutes Could I identify a single value at the root of my nonreligious parenting? I was curious.
Posted inParenting & Family
Secular parenting: How to deal with ‘blessings’ and ‘prayers’ from religious friends and family
Reading Time: 2 minutes “She told me she’ll pray for me again,” my teen daughter groaned, after I arrived home from a few days away, my kids in the care of my evangelical Christian mother while I escaped for the weekend. Over the years, I’ve done all the things many nonreligious parents with religious parents of their own do […]
Posted inParenting & Family
Raising curious kids
Reading Time: 8 minutes OnlySky · Raising Curious Kids | Dale McGowan There is a sentence that gets said a lot in our house. We’re watching a show and somebody asks Where else have I seen this guy? or, How do they do that special effect? Or we’re having a conversation at dinner, and somebody says If prunes are […]
Posted inScience
Curious science
Reading Time: 8 minutes OnlySky · Curious science | Dale McGowan Science is one of the first things that nonreligious parents want to share with their kids. I have multiple friends with kids whose first or middle name is Darwin or Sagan or Tesla. There are now board books introducing babies to quantum physics, relativity, and organic chemistry, I […]
Posted inParenting & Family
Of curious women and dead cats
Reading Time: 6 minutes OnlySky · Of curious women and dead cats | Dale McGowan Search not to find what lies too deeply hid Nor to know things whose knowledge is forbid. That bad advice is from John Denham, an English poet and politician in the 17th century. Bad advice, but also really common in our culture. If we […]
Posted inParenting & Family
Do atheists just need a father figure?
Reading Time: 4 minutes A Christian scholar reports that Christians are Christian because they had good father figures and atheists are atheists because they had bad ones. Let’s explore the failures in this offensive claim.
Posted inParenting & Family
From father to son: Sport as a catalyst for wisdom
Reading Time: 3 minutes In college, I read Umberto Eco’s richly complex and insightful novel, Foucault’s Pendulum. A particular line jumped out at me at the time: “What we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments when they aren’t teaching us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” This stuck with me years after reading, […]