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Critical Thinking For Everyone

For some time now, I’ve wanted to talk to you about critical thinking. I remember the bad old days when most of my thinking was emotional and reactive and I had no idea that such a thing as critical thinking even existed. It wasn’t a happy time. Over the last few years I’ve learned to think for myself and I can’t express how liberating and empowering that is.

If there is one gift you can give to a child or anyone else, it is to teach them to think for themselves. The educational system doesn’t teach this important skill. It teaches rote memorization and focuses on test taking. Therefore it’s up to you to learn it for yourself.

Unfortunately, I’m self taught and have no formal training in this realm. Which means sharing it with you is harder. So instead of putting it off even longer, I thought maybe we could explore the subject together and develop a plan for sharing with others in our lives or on the web. First, let’s define it.

Here is a quote: [Critical thinking is a] desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture. ~ Francis Bacon (1605)

Here is the short and sweet definition:

Critical Thinking: n: the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion. Read the rest of this entry »

An Alternative to the Santa Lie For Secular Parents

I know it’s Spring and no one wants to be thinking of christmas this time of year, but my friend Joe sent me a paper called Ho, Ho, Hoax: The Case against Santa Claus by Ernâni Magalhães, Visiting Assistant Professor at WVU. It makes some excellent points which really got me thinking.

Before I read this paper, I thought Dale McGowan‘s take on Santa to be the best way to handle it. In a nutshell, he says Santa is a dry run for letting kids reason their way through the fact that Santa is a myth, to then figuring out that religion is mythical, as he puts it, Santa is “the ultimate dry run for a developing inquiring mind”. It makes sense in a way. But then my friend Joe told me about his experience as a kid.

Joe really believed in Santa, the Easter Bunny, etc. Then one day a kid in the playground told him it was all a pack of lies. Joe believed him and went home crying. He was devastated. When Joe and I talked about the McGowan philosophy of Santa, I figured out that in theory it seems like a great idea, but maybe in practice it could backfire and cause a lot of unhappiness and pain for kids who don’t get to reason it out for themselves but are told by other children.

And is it necessary to lie to children about a mythical jolly old fat man? Does it increase their happiness, improve their moral fiber? Does it make them better little people, or better adults down the line? And is there an alternative to lying about Santa?

First, there are 3 alternatives, according to Ernâni:

Disbelief: The parent tells the child Santa Claus is not real
Neutrality: The parent does not inform the child one way or the other
Pretense: The parent invites the child to pretend there is a Santa Claus.(page 13)

…inviting to pretend there is a Santa Claus is morally superior to encouraging to believe. (14)

I never thought of this as an option, but it makes sense. You get all the good fun of Santa but you don’t get the lies and beliefs in those lies.

What about short term pleasure and pain? Here is what Ernâni has to say:

The extent to which the pleasure of children and adults justifies the Santa Claus lie depends on the amount of pleasure available from non-deceitful alternatives. The alternative that most closely replicates telling children there is a Santa Claus involves inviting children to pretend there is one. Although pretending something is real is fundamentally different from believing it is, as I have argued, many of the emotions evoked by an object believed to be real are also evoked by objects supposed to be fictional. Children and adults derive great pleasure from creatures of their imaginations, as witnessed by the large crowds at movie theaters. Children who are old enough to know she is fictional still derive great enjoyment from the pretense that Cinderella is a real person with real hopes. And, it is easy to replicate the gift-giving aspect of the Santa experience, which is surely a significant factor in the child’s enjoyment. (15-16)

Interesting and thought-provoking, don’t you think? This is even more important: Read the rest of this entry »

Science Can Answer Moral Questions

Sam Harris gave a talk at TED recently and it’s now available. He talked about morals and how science doesn’t have to stay silent when it comes to what is best for conscious beings. It was very interesting. Please share it around if you like what he has to say. I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments. I agree with him.

About the talk:
Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can — and should — be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.

Sam’s project: Project Reason
His homepage: SamHarris.org

Tell your Senator to Stop the Federal Funding of Religious Schools

Last night Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) filed a D.C. voucher amendment to the second jobs bill under consideration by the Senate. The D.C. voucher program uses taxpayer funds to pay for parents to send their children to private religious schools. The program is called the “D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program,” but a 2007 government report found that these vouchers do not give D.C. students seeking a private school education sufficient secular choices, forcing them to attend religious schools or remain in the failing public school system.

By design, voucher programs aid struggling Christian schools. A July 2009 report by Rutgers University on the D.C. voucher program concluded that the way the voucher program is structured “essentially push[es] students into Christian Association and Catholic schools, pricing out independent (non-religious) schools and Hebrew schools.”

By continuing this program, those of us who do not wish to subsidize someone else’s church will continue to be forced to do so through our federal tax dollars.

The vote will occur sometime today. Please take five minutes and email your Senators below and tell them to vote against this amendment that would re-authorize this program.

The Secular Coalition for America opposes the use of government funds for religious purposes, including vouchers for religious schools. We agree with the founders of the United States that no individual taxpayer should be required to pay for someone else’s religion. We agree with James Madison. Senator Lieberman wants us to go in a different direction.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, with your tax money, funds and enables proselytizing and religious discrimination. Recipients of the vouchers who attend religious schools are not even allowed to opt out of religious activities at their school—a direct affront to religious freedom.

It is critical that you write your Senators today and ask them to oppose Sen. Lieberman’s amendment that would re-authorize this program and spend your taxes to fund the religious education of children in D.C.

Go to Secular Coalition for America to send a letter today.

Conversation with Anne About The Meaning Of Life

The other day I wrote to Anne in response to some questions she emailed me. She replied not long after in another email. Here is an excerpt (I’ve removed the more private information): (Note: I’ve added some happy puppies playing in the snow since this topic can be rather serious, and we are having the biggest snow in WV that I’ve seen since we moved here 5 years ago)

Thank you for answering my email. I am only 21 and it seams that I am searching for myself and what it is that I can believe. I see how people lie on a daily basis to make the even more entertaining than the event really was so I find it hard to believe anything that is told to me. Giving this way of living I find it tremendously hard to base my life and way of living around things that have been written in a book (the bible) that has been translated umpteen different times before coming to english. The thought that people let their lives revolve around something that was written 2000 years ago just amazes me. As humans are we so daft to do such a thing? The more I look into religion the more I am amazed at the living situations of some people in this world.

My dad did not express any beliefs of god when I was young because he is like me a firm non-believer until there is hard core facts to show him. He wanted me to believe what I wanted and didn’t want his opinions to influence me so he felt it best not to tell me anything. My mother… well she didn’t teach me anything about god or religion until I was 12 we went to church for the first time. She stuck me in Sunday school before a service. Now my father’s mother was catholic. She went twice on Sunday and Wednesday night. I stayed the night with her several times and went to church with her I believe when I was 7. That was enough religion for me. I still remember sitting in the pew looking around saying to myself “are these people really this crazy?!?”

I went to public schools in Indiana. I went to ten different schools before 9th grade so needless to say I was not well adjusted. I never really had any foundation so to say.

I have two children and I want to be able to educate them on religion and allow them to choose their own way. I don’t see the point in trying to force them to do things my way because they need to find out who they are maybe then they won’t have the same struggles that I do.

To answer your question no I was never taught the prevailing theories of how the earth was formed through natural cosmic events. As I said we moved a lot and the curriculum was different at each school there were several things I missed out on. That is why I am so ignorant on religion because I was never taught the scientific end of the world.

I don’t feel that I “NEED” a religion. I would just like to know a little more about why I am here on this earth. I feel there is a purpose for everything because it just doesn’t seam like we exist just to exist. There is some sort of purpose behind our being. So now my job is to find the why.

Thank you so much for this information!! You are right I will have many more questions for you. I want to look over the information you have given me and I want to do some additional research. (Internet based because I now live in the middle of BFE so no museums in my area and the library has a limited amount of books. Besides the fact, I am in the middle of the Bible belt so there will be virtually no literature supporting the thought that there could be an existence not provided by god.)

And here is my new reply: Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t Give Up!

To the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, don’t give up! Fight the good fight!

I just read an article by Staks Rosch in the Philadelphia Examiner about the FSGP and their Tree of Knowledge. It’s an evergreen tree decorated with book covers (how shocking, how impudent!) from books representing knowledge, education, science, philosophy, morality, diversity and curiosity. (I am so offended! What? No Twilight?! No Dan Brown?!) Here is a complete list of the books represented.

Staks makes some points that I really like: “[The Tree of Knowledge] is not an attack on religion, but rather an expression of an alternative set of values (i.e. knowledge and reason).”

How horrific! Now I understand why the good christians of the area are so up in arms, vandalizing the tree and organizing call campaigns to get it removed. And why the county is bending to the will of one religion on government property. It’s just so hateful to have a tree decorated with thoughtful, intelligent books. What? Oh? It’s not threatening at all? EXACTLY! WTF!

Staks also says, “Many Christians have claimed that the inclusion of humanist values next to the Jesus Crèche is an attempt to “steal” Christmas. It seems that many Christians are of the opinion that Christians own the winter season. They do not.”

Later he says, “Atheists aren’t trying to “steal” Christmas any more than Christians stole Saturnalia… oh wait, never mind.” Again, I agree completely.

This kind of thing makes me so angry. Religious organizations bully their way into having their cake and eating it too. Politicians and the masses alike bend to that will for what reason? Why do they get to own most holidays? My sister in law is offended when I say happy holidays instead of merry christmas. It’s the classic bully at the pulpit who then cries and runs for the government to protect him when someone brings up that he’s breaking the law or that he’s being a bully.

christians and muslims don’t want to play fair. They want to win. Which is why I am an activist atheist. I don’t want to be forced to pray to a man in the sky that doesn’t exist. I am moral and ethical on my own without being forced into the barbaric false ethics of an iron aged society of goat herders from the Middle East.

I suppose here in Morgantown, if such inequities are occurring, we’ll put up an atheist/humanist display soon too. At this time, I am not aware of any. But I haven’t checked every government building lawn for crèches either.

Keep an eye out in your town. If you see religious displays on government property, take action, form a group. You can then turn it into a community of like-minded people like we’ve got here in our sleepy little town. It’s the most wonderful feeling to hang out with a bunch of freethinkers. But don’t just take things lying down. Don’t let the religious people bully us into giving up our freedoms and our constitutional rights just because we are too apathetic to make a stand for those rights.

EDIT: The Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia has helpful hints for setting up your own Tree of Knowledge.

Advice For Freethinking Kids?

The other day I got an email from an atheist couple who have two kids, one 9 and one 10. They asked me for information regarding websites or literature that might deal with “god pressure” for kids at school. This would be the 4th and 5th grade. Apparently kids at their school are proselytizing and mocking these 2 kids for not believing.

The parents don’t want their kids to feel like freaks and also want to help them counter the exasperated ‘you don’t believe in god!’ remarks. Sam, the father, admits that it can be lonely to not believe in god sometimes. I understand. I feel that way too, although not as much as before I belonged to Morgantown Atheists.

Diane, the mother, says they are open to ideas and suggestions. She says they have friends who aren’t religious but still believe in god. It’s not the same thing.

Seeing as how only about 10% of the population would go so far as to actually use the dreaded A-word, it can be isolating to be godless in a sea of believers. As I’ve mentioned, I still keep my atheism to myself when around Butch’s family. Some of them know we’re atheists but it’s never been brought up or mentioned. This means that a huge part of what I spend my time thinking about and being an activist over can’t be talked about when I spend time with others. It’s kind of lonely, in a way. Read the rest of this entry »

Critical Thinking For Everyone

An Alternative to the Santa Lie For Secular Parents

Science Can Answer Moral Questions

Tell your Senator to Stop the Federal Funding of Religious Schools

Conversation with Anne About The Meaning Of Life

Don’t Give Up!

Advice For Freethinking Kids?

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