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, […]
parenting
Posted inParenting & Family
Daddy issues: Do ‘defective fathers’ lead children to reject the idea of God?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Few atheists will be celebrating their dads on Father’s Day. At least that’s the solemn judgment of Dr. Paul Vitz, psychologist and author of Faith of the Fatherless: the psychology of atheism. Published in 1999, Vitz’s book argues that absent or abusive fathers cause their children to lose trust in father figures, leading those kids […]
Posted inReproductive rights
What if the pro-life argument were not religious?
Reading Time: 6 minutes How is a pro-life law driven by Christian motivation legal when it constrains Jewish practice? One Christian ministry responded to this broadside by denying that its argument was religious! Let’s see if this claim holds up.
Posted inParenting & Family
How do we explain gun violence to our kids?
Reading Time: 3 minutes How do we strike a balance between honesty and shielding when we discuss Sunday’s mass shooting in Buffalo?
Posted inReproductive rights
How to discuss the overturning of Roe v. Wade with our kids
Reading Time: 4 minutes We’ve heard about the SCOTUS decision. Changes to abortion laws are coming. Now it’s time to discuss it with our kids. Here’s how.
Posted inMyth & Folklore
What if she comes anyway?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Her name was first spoken in hushed tones among children all over America [over] twenty years ago. Even in Sweden, folklorists reported Bloody Mary’s fame. Children of all races and classes told of the hideous demon conjured by chanting her name before a mirror in a pitch-dark room. And when she crashes through the glass, […]
Posted inParenting & Family
You don’t have to ‘be fruitful and multiply’: More Americans having just one child
Reading Time: 7 minutes For much of history, “only children” were rare. Whether due to religious traditions, lack of birth control, cultural norms, or the simple need for manual labor, women commonly gave birth to numerous children. Having multiples also offset the common childhood deaths resulting from harsh conditions of life. In 1800, American women typically had seven to […]
Posted inParenting & Family
An Easter horror story
Reading Time: 2 minutes As a little kid, I was not allowed to watch horror movies. In the early 80s, they were all the rage. Such masterpieces like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th were favorites of my older siblings. And they knew that because I was prone to nightmares, my mother didn’t want me watching […]
Posted inCulture
A gentle reminder
Reading Time: 9 minutes I can never figure out if I’m an atheist, or agnostic. It’s a silly struggle I have whenever something hits me right in the soul.
Posted inMyth & Folklore
The death of a useful monster
Reading Time: 3 minutes High in the Pennines in the north of England, in the gold-brown water of the River Tees, lives a creature named Peg Powler. She’s a mermaid, kind of, but she’s no Ariel. Peg is a river hag, with green hair and skin and a row of jagged teeth. And unlike Ariel, she lives not to make children […]