A Conversation with My Mother

    This morning, while I was over at Atheist Exposed reading about Shirley's conversations with her coworkers about her coming out as an atheist, I realized that the out of all the posts that I read on atheist blogs, I enjoy the accounts of religious discussions the most of all. In that spirit, I'd like to tell you about a phone conversation I had with my mother on Wednesday.

    She called me in the middle of the week to discuss my plans for the weekend and also about my plans for moving out to California next week. We talked about that a little bit and then she began talking about how she might start to read the Harry Potter books. While I definitely haven't read them, I told her that people of all ages seem to enjoy them and if that's what she wants to do, then she should. Her tone of voice then drastically changed to a much more soft, I guess comforting tone, and she said "have you read the book The Five People You Meet in Heaven?". I thought to myself "oh shit, not again". I've talked to her about my atheism before, and without attacking her beliefs directly, just told her that I can't believe in something that doesn't have evidence for it. I didn't feel the need to crush her religiousness. In fact, in many respects I don't want to. She's not a fundamentalist, my parents don't go to church and throw their money away, and they voted Democrat in the last election. They aren't part of the Christian Right mob. In addition, my mom lost her mother when she was in her early 20s and from what she's told me, it means a lot for her to be able to see her mom in heaven again. Even if it would be better for her in the long run, it would hurt me too much to effectively "kill" her mother in her mind all over again. But on the other side of the argument, I can't support religion when it has really put mankind's future in jeopardy. Back to Wednesday. I hoped to simply dismiss this conversation by simply saying "oh no, I think that'd be a bit too much for me", hoping she'd understand and we could just move on to something else. But I think she wanted to talk about it, so she continued:

Mom: What do you mean, too much?
Me: Just too religious. Would you read a book called The Five People You Meet on the River of Styx?
Mom: *slight laughter* So you're a complete atheist?
Me: Well yeah mom, I don't know how I could only partly one.
Mom: Well I think, someday, when you get older perhaps, you'll change your mind.
Me: No no, I really don't think so. When I lose someone that I love very closely, it's going to hurt like hell, but I really don't think I could ever fall back to religion again.
Mom: It's not just loss that could prompt it, sometimes we just need to believe in something greater than ourselves.

    Now I kind of lost it here. That saying is probably the thing that makes me the most mad when I hear Christians talk, as if atheists are purely egotistical, self-centered maniacs. What's more egotistical than believing that the creator of the entire universe cares about your petty, personal problems, loves you, and wants to talk to you personally. I guess I was a little too rattled to say this, so I just started talking steam of consciousness like.

Me: Oh my god, I hate when people say that. Atheists are such more likely to care about other human beings and their happiness in life because we realize that we only have one life, and we want everyone to be able to enjoy that life. Christians often say that you can't be moral if you don't believe in God. But I think if you do what's "right" because you want to receive eternal pleasures and avoid eternal punishment, you are being bribed and are not truly being a good person. Tom (as I'll call him, a young, extremely spoiled cousin of mine) gets video games if he listens to his mom and takes his daily shower. Do we think that he's a "good boy" because of this, or do we realize that he's only doing what his mother says because he's acting in his own self-interest. It's the same with religion.

Mom: *again a little laughter* (I knew she would like my reference to my cousin). Well yeah, but people do what's right because they know that it's right, not because of religious reasons I think.

Me: (satisfied with this answer, I tried to give her an "out" in the conversation so it could end, or the best "out" I could muster, which wasn't very good) I'm glad you realize that. I guess if you don't let religion affect your life too much and don't get too crazy with it, it doesn't hurt you much.

    She then started talking about some other religious thing, and clearly it wasn't too memorable. She then started talking about what God "wanted", and how "He felt". Now, it might be due to a lack of maturity on my part, maybe it's just I have so much despise for religion built up in me, or maybe it's because I'm discussing it with family and not simply with friends, but I wasn't able to let this simply go without saying something.

Me: Please mom, don't talk to me about that kind of stuff. It's so strange for me when I don't even believe a god exists for someone to tell me that they know he exists, how he feels about things, which mortals he's slept with, who his son, etc. Furthermore, (she used a lot of references to "He") I don't see why god would be masculine. What purpose does it serve him to be a male? Are there female gods that he needs to attract? (some laughter here) If not, wouldn't he be completely confused about his anatomy which apparently serves no purpose? Gender seems to only play a role in reproduction, so unless he reproduces, I don't think it makes sense for him to be a male. Except for that fact that he was created by a male-dominant society.

     Anyway, she then seemed to be a little desperate and was grabbing at stuff, saying things like "well we know a lot about him when he lived here on the earth". I was dumbfounded, and made some sort of comment about how there's just as much proof for that as there is for unicorns.

    Now during this whole conversation, I noticed that my voice was kind of shaky. I felt that I was torn between attacking something that I hate and protecting my mother. I wanted to explain why I was an atheist, and make her understand that I had good reasons to be one. But after every comment I was afraid that I would make her very sad, and I really didn't want to do that. So I was incredibly happy to end the conversation with her saying "well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree". I said "yep" and we changed the subject. The rest of the conversation went on normal as always, with really no indication that we had just had a deep argument. I was happy that it ended seemingly well, but later that night I felt bad for losing my cool. I'm pretty good at discussing religion with people that I'm not especially close to, but when I'm talking to someone whose feelings I care about and I'm worried about hurting them, I'm clearly not as good. I hope that, if I do have to talk to her about it again, I act with a little bit better composure.

Is Socialism Superior to Capitalism?

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy
                                                               Albert Einstein (1949)

    Today I wanted to talk about some issues that I have been thinking about over the past week. While not having a very direct relation to religion or atheism, I thought it would be best to introduce it here rather than another blog or forum because I would like to get your views about it. Most of you being atheists, I feel that I can safely say that your beliefs and arguments will be more based in reason than those of another audience.

    What I've been wondering recently is whether capitalism is truly the best economic system in terms of supplying the goods that we need to live and be happy and in providing a stable future for humanity. To many of you, as it did to me a short while ago, this idea probably seems blasphemous and ridiculous. Throughout middle and high school education in America, we are constantly told that capitalism is the best system and that it is the only economic system compatible with freedom. I even felt guilty when I began to doubt capitalism, as if I had done something wrong. The feeling was similar to how I remember feeling when I first started to doubt the existence of god. But I've been thinking recently, is it really such a surprise that in a society like ours where the wealthy effectively rule the country that our society would also value the system that serves as the source of their power?

    I should note that I am by no means an economics professor. In addition to that, I've only been thinking about this for a short while, and because of this I intend for this post to be more of a call for opinions rather than a statement of which is best. Because I honestly don't think I've thought about it enough to make statements like that yet.

    My education is, however, in physics and math. My first doubt of capitalism resulted from an idea of thinking that we employ a lot in physics to test solutions. We often test the viability of a solution to a problem by "taking limits". For example, if I'm calculating an electric field and I get an answer I can test my answer by taking certain limits on it to see if it is consistent with what I know to be true. If I know that the electric field must go to zero when the observation point is far away from the source, I can evaluate my answer in that limit and see if it exhibits the correct behavior. If it does, then perhaps I have the correct solution. If it doesn't, I better try something else. It is an argument of this sort which stimulated my first doubts in capitalism.

    Let us flash forward to the (potentially) not-so-distant future. I think it is easily arguable that robots and machines will do a great deal of our physical labor. In fact, I would expect robots to do all jobs that didn't require human creativity (art, science, engineering, writing, etc). The robots themselves could even be built by other robots. Machines will fly our planes, till our land, clean our floors, prepare our food, serve in the military, etc. Because of this there would be massive unemployment I believe, probably over 90%. How would a capitalist economy manage this? Would it allow 90% of the population to starve? Shouldn't technology like robotics make life easier for all rather than deprive many of jobs while enhancing the profits of a few? I am not sure that I can see how any economic system besides socialism could provide for a future like this. So if capitalism fails in this limit, perhaps it is not the correct solution. To be fair, it could be true that different economic systems are better suited for different stages of human development. I have not had much time to put much thought into this.

    Now, like I said, this isn't supposed to be an argument for socialism per se, simply an asking of a question. I haven't even defined socialism. I'm not really interested in posting arguments for socialism or against capitalism because they tend to be long and complicated if you want to be complete, but I would like to clarify one thing so that any discussion will be more fruitful. The collapse of the Soviet Union is not a blow to the promise of socialism. Socialism entails control of society's resources by the people and in order for this to happen, it must also be able to democratically elect its government and the citizens must have personal freedom. The USSR was not socialist and although it doesn't really matter for this argument, neither was it communist (as envisioned by Marx). North Korea then, is also neither of these. The wealth of North Korea is not for its people, but for Kim Jong-il and his military. From what I've learned thus far we've never had a true socialist nation on earth to use as an example.

    So please, discuss! I'd like to hear your thoughts. Here's another resource if you'd like it.

Country Song Suggests that Atheists are Bad Parents/Druggies/Murderers

    Driving home from the last leg of my summer vacation, scanning through the radio stations, I heard a country song that I had never heard before. The song is called The Little Girl by John Michael Montgomery. It turns out that it was released in 2000 and was a #1 country hit but I'm not a big fan of country music so I guess it flew under my radar. Anyhow, here are the lyrics.

Her parents never took the young girl to church...
Never spoke of His name...
Never read her His word...
Two non-believers walking lost in this world...
Took their baby with them, what a sad little girl...

Her daddy drank all day and mommy did drugs...
Never wanted to play or give kisses and hugs...
She'd watch the tv and sit there on the couch...
While her mom fell asleep and her daddy went out...

And the drinking and the fighting...
Just got worse every night...
Behind their couch she'd be hiding...
Oh what a sad little life...

And like it always does, the bad just got worse...
With every slap and every curse...
Until her daddy in a drunk rage one night...
Used a gun on her mom and then took his life...

And some people from the city took the girl far away...
To a new mom and a new dad, kisses and hugs everyday...

Her first day of Sunday School...
Her teacher walked in...
And a small little girl starred at a picture of Him...
She said I know that man up there on that cross...
I don’t know His name but I know he got off...
Cause he was there in my old house...
And held me close to his side...
As I hid there behind our couch...
The night that my parents died.

    Now if Montgomery wants to tell a story about how Jesus rides in on his unicorn and takes care of a young girl who has bad parents that's perfectly fine with me. But he specified that these parents were nonbelievers and didn't go to church and so suggests that their behavior is a result of them not believing in magical beings. Montgomery would have never been able to say two blacks, two Jews, or two muslims. This of course is because you can't make hateful remarks about a minority unless they are such a small group that you really don't have to worry about reprisals. It's unacceptable to bash someone's religious views in this country unless you are bashing the views of an atheist.


    These views are dangerous because if christians truly believe that nonbelievers make bad parents, do drugs, and murder then it's rational to restrict them from parenting if possible. This could include not allowing atheists to adopt children, similar to what they are doing to homosexuals now. If they are druggies and murderers than naturally they should be made outcasts of society.

    But apparently despite the intolerant message, the song is still popular. I am going to write my local country radio station and express concern that it is intolerant of other's views and that I, as a listener of their station, would not like it to be played. Hell, I'd even be up for a compromise and they could play the song, but then also play a sequel in which the new christian parents stone their adopted child because God told them to.