Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1947

Why You Shouldn’t Teach Your Children That Hell is Real

Dan Arel has written a wonderful book about raising children as an atheist parent. It goes well beyond how to deal with baptisms, extended family members, etc. Dan also discusses equality, homosexuality, race, and other ways religion manifests in our society.

The book is called Parenting Without God:

In the exclusive excerpt below, Dan explains why you shouldn’t teach children that Hell is real:

If teaching heaven is bad, teaching hell is downright mental child abuse. There is no way around this one. You are telling a child that for bad deeds done, or not worshipping the right (or any god), you are going to burn in a lake of fire for eternity. Pure torture, unimaginable pain and it is forever.

The myth of Hell needs to be destroyed faster than the myth of heaven by far. Children and countless adults fear any of their actions will result in them spending eternity in Hell. Why? It is such a childish and illogical idea. For starters, their almighty God created an evil angel, and instead of destroying him, gave him his own kingdom? And let’s not get started on the fact that if Satan is the one punishing the bad guys for their evil, doesn’t that make Satan the good guy? If Hell is for the most evil people in the world who listened to and or worshipped Satan, wouldn’t Satan be glad to have them? It simply doesn’t make sense and even Christians and other religious followers are deciding they don’t believe in Hell anymore. It seems that all the rest of their religion is true, but Hell sounds too mean, so that part is obviously just an allegory. So, just like the endless rape, murder, genocide and other atrocities of the Bible, let’s go ahead and cherry-pick Hell right out of it.

Now of course Hell gives many people a sense of justice. Hitler got the easy way out by killing himself and never answering for his crimes, yet many take comfort in the idea that he is in hell for eternity. For non-believers, that comfort does not exist, we take comfort in knowing he is not alive anymore to continue causing harm. We take comfort in learning from past mistakes and working to not repeat them. Pretending that we don’t have to worry about evil actions that seem foreign to us, because we believe someone else will handle it, is exactly what leads to such atrocities in the first place. It is always someone else’s responsibility.

…

I don’t think there will be much argument that Hell is one of the most vile or religious beliefs, so much so that it sickens me to think that people can claim to be good and god loving people who actually believe in, and are okay with, the idea that the invisible man they worship would torture their own children forever if they deny the existence of said invisible man. My very own grandparents believe I will burn in Hell and they believe that my son, their great grandchild, if he does not find a path to their God, will burn in hell. Where is the morality in that thinking?

The only morality you will find in this thinking is immorality! Anyone who believes someone will, or deserves everlasting suffering because they did not believe in the right god, or didn’t worship your god correctly, is not a moral person.

…

Now, to touch back on the child abuse aspect of Hell. This is a tricky area, because it is easy to label this abuse when you are on the outside looking in. However, if you really sit down and think about it, if you are a parent and you, with all your heart believe in Hell and believe people are sent there, wouldn’t it be child abuse to not tell your child about Hell? If you thought by keeping your mouth shut your child would burn in hellfire, it would make you a worse parent than trying to save your child’s eternity.

The reason this is important is that you will have encounters with countless parents who believe this. They will tell their child about hell, and they may discuss this with your child, or you. The incorrect action would be to attack them as abusive. I instead would suggest using a more Socratic method of questioning their beliefs and seeing if you can take them apart from the bottom up. These are the same methods we looked at when dissecting faith.

These parents have faith in Heaven and Hell and honestly believe they are doing the right thing by their child. If you wish to dig deeper into that and maybe help their child out, you will need to talk to the parents, learn what they believe, and work through how that baseless and harmful belief can be removed from their lives.

This sounds like a daunting task, and it is. It may not be a task you are up for, and even if you are you may never be successful, but I know some of you reading this right now know a child in a household that fears Hell more than anything on earth and needs someone, somehow to reach out their parents and remove this from their lives. We know their church won’t be doing it.

Parenting Without God is now available online. Check it out!

Two Americans Who Contracted Ebola Are Released from the Hospital. Guess Who’s Getting Credit for Their Recovery?

Yesterday, Dr. Kent Brantly, who caught the Ebola virus while doing mission work in Liberia, was released from the hospital with all expectations of a full recovery very soon.

And he knew exactly who to thank: His doctors. God.

“As I lay in my bed in Liberia for the following nine days, getting sicker and weaker each day, I prayed that God would help me to be faithful even in my illness,” Brantly said. “Through the care of the Samaritan’s Purse and SIM missionary team in Liberia, the use of an experimental drug, and the expertise and resources of the health care team at Emory University Hospital, God saved my life.”

His doctors cautioned that it’s unclear whether the drug or a blood transfusion Brantly got from a young Ebola survivor in Africa was helpful.

…

“Above all, I am forever thankful to God for sparing my life and am glad for any attention my sickness has attracted to the plight of West Africa in the midst of this epidemic,” he said.

(Brantly’s colleague Nancy Writebols reacted in a similar way.)

I know he’s a missionary, so that’s part of the script, but can’t we admit that the drug or the doctors helped a *little* more than Jesus? Yet, the way Brantly’s statement reads, all the medicine and care he received were part of God’s plan. (By that logic, wasn’t it also God’s will for him to contract Ebola in the first place?)

If it was really in God’s hands, I’d like to know why Brantly didn’t just pray away the Ebola while staying in Africa. And what God has against all the Africans Ebola patients He’s just allowing to wither away.

Some will say it’s impolite to bring any of this up, but giving a shout-out to God after surviving a tragedy may be the most natural, yet repugnant, thing to do. It wasn’t the grace of God that saved you. It was trained professionals, scientific breakthroughs, or just plain luck. There’s where the credit should go. There’s where all the credit should go. It’s just crazy that the things that actually saved Brantly’s life are treated as afterthoughts.

Daniel Dennett talked about this in a 2006 essay:

If you insist on keeping the myth of the effectiveness of prayer alive, you owe the rest of us a justification in the face of the evidence. Pending such a justification, I will excuse you for indulging in your tradition; I know how comforting tradition can be. But I want you to recognize that what you are doing is morally problematic at best. If you would even consider filing a malpractice suit against a doctor who made a mistake in treating you, or suing a pharmaceutical company that didn’t conduct all the proper control tests before selling you a drug that harmed you, you must acknowledge your tacit appreciation of the high standards of rational inquiry to which the medical world holds itself, and yet you continue to indulge in a practice for which there is no known rational justification at all, and take yourself to be actually making a contribution. (Try to imagine your outrage if a pharmaceutical company responded to your suit by blithely replying “But we prayed good and hard for the success of the drug! What more do you want?”)

I’m glad Brantly and Writebols are doing better. I wish others suffering from disease had the same care they received. But, despite their faith, it’s still frustrating that credit is given where it isn’t due.

(via Jerry Coyne)

The Armagayddon is Coming Soon

In a hilarious promotional video for Ireland’s LGBT Noise March for Marriage, this straight couple talks about the horrors that will befall them if gay marriage is legalized:

“The want marriage. They want families. Well, they can’t have mine!“

Hilarious. And a brilliant mockery of how some opponents of equality actually think.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Secular Student Alliance Announces Scholarships for Young Activists

For the first time ever, the Secular Student Alliance is giving away scholarships, ranging from $250 to $500, to student activists in college or grad school:

So what do we mean by ‘activism’? To us, activism is any activity that spreads secular values and normalizes secular identity. While activism can include large-scale projects like spreading the word on social issues, education issues, community building, and similar projects, it can also consist of more personal actions like opening up to your family and being visibly secular within your community and campus. Actions like these have impact, and so we want to encourage these types of activism!

All the information you need is right here. Go apply!

Also, any donations made to the SSA for the next week, up to $5,000, will go toward scholarships this year and beyond.

Amish Father Nixes Cops’ Request For a Picture of His Kidnapped Daughter, Because It Would Displease God

When two preteen sisters were abducted from the town of Oswegatchie in upstate New York recently, police quickly sprang into action. Naturally, officers asked the parents for photos of their daughters, so that the girls’ likenesses could be distributed in a bid to bring the young victims back.

The reply was unusual:

The family had none: They were Amish, a community that generally prohibits photographs partly based on the biblical injunction against likenesses.

The cops then proposed that the parents work with a police sketch artist to produce pictures of the girls.

After initially resisting, and with critical time elapsing, the girls’ father, Mose Miller, finally agreed to a compromise: He allowed a sketch artist to make an illustration of the older sister, who is 12, but not the younger one, who is 7.

The New York Times reports that the next day, the girls were returned to their family. They were thought to have been sexually assaulted by their kidnappers. Two men were arrested.

The rest of the Times story makes much of how friendly the burgeoning Amish community in New York’s northwestern St. Lawrence County is with its non-Amish neighbors.

But I just can’t let go of the fact that a father knowingly risked at least one of his daughters’ lives by refusing to help provide even a pencil sketch of her. Because of the Bible. Apparently, God would rather see an innocent child die than tolerate the making of a picture.

It shouldn’t have come as a shock, I suppose. St. Lawrence County was the site of a 2010 flap between the Amish and local authorities, in which especially pious sect members chose to endanger people’s lives, including their own, by refusing to affix reflective orange hazard triangles to the rear of their traditional horse-drawn buggies. They considered such additions un-Biblical.

Then, in 2012, a court in Canton, the county seat, fined several Amish families for declining to install smoke detectors in their homes.

They refused to pay — pointing out that that would imply they had accepted that obeying God’s laws was wrong — and how could God be wrong?

When one defendant was asked how he would protect himself and his family if a night-time fire broke out, this was his response:

“I use this,” he said pointing at his nose, “or him,” and his finger pointed upwards. “I don’t need a devil on the wall to tell me if my house is burning. … If God does not wake us, well, that must be part of his plan.”

That defendant’s name was Mose Miller. By happenstance, that’s the same Mose Miller who would’ve let his seven-year-old daughter die because he didn’t want anyone to make a picture of her.

I’ve often admired people who are steadfast and consistent. In Mr. Miller’s case, I have the opposite of that emotion.

(Image via Shutterstock)

New Policy in Town of Greece (NY) May Stop Atheists from Delivering Invocations

Last month, atheist Dan Courtney delivered an invocation at the Greece (New York) Town Board meeting, making him the first atheist to do so at the focal point of this spring’s Supreme Court ruling.

Dan Courtney prepares to deliver his invocation (via David Niose)

Remember: This is the town that had overwhelmingly Christian prayers (to Jesus Christ, no less, not a generic God) for several years before two residents stepped in and challenged them.

Even after that, the board only had a few token non-Christians give invocations before going right back to all Christians all the time.

That’s what led to a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court, where a 5-4 majority ruled in favor of the town, setting the stage for government meetings everywhere to open with sectarian prayers at the speaker’s discretion.

The silver lining to the case was that atheists weren’t excluded from giving those invocations (and no city could reject them).

Well, the Town of Greece looks to be heading right back in that unconstitutional direction.

According to the Center For Inquiry, which filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain the town’s new invocation policy, it seems that officials there are going right back to limiting prayer to religious residents only:

The invocation shall be voluntarily delivered by an appointed representative of an Assemblies List for the Town of Greece. To ensure that the person (the “invocation speaker”) is selected from among a wide pool of representatives, on a rotating basis, the invocation speaker shall be selected according to the following procedure:

a) The Clerk to the Town Board (the “Clerk”) shall compile and maintain a database (the “Assemblies List”) of the assemblies with an established presence in the Town of Greece that regularly meet for the primary purpose of sharing a religious perspective (hereinafter referred to as a religious assembly).

b) The Assemblies List shall be compiled by using reasonable efforts, including research on the Internet, to identify all “churches,” “synagogues,” “congregations,” “temples,” “mosques” or other religious assemblies in the Town of Greece. All religious assemblies with an established presence in the Town of Greece are eligible to be included in the Assemblies List, and any such religious assembly can confirm its inclusion by specific written request to the Clerk.

So they’ll make a giant list of religious leaders and choose speakers from there. What happens if you’re not part of a religious group in the area? Apparently, you’re out of luck.

The new policy was proposed and adopted on Tuesday.

CFI is warning them that this is not the path on which they should be traveling:

“If this policy does, in effect, bar the nonreligious from delivering invocations, it would represent a disappointing step backward for the Town of Greece,” said Ronald A. Lindsay, president and CEO of CFI.

…

… notably absent from the Town’s list is any method for a secular individual or group to be able to deliver a solemnizing invocation. The Center for Inquiry will monitor the implementation of the Town of Greece’s policy in conjunction with local residents, in an effort to ensure that the Town of Greece does what it has promised to do: provide a non-discriminatory invocation policy, open for all residents of the town, rather than an opportunity for religious groups to proselytize.

This should be easy to test. A member of a local atheist group just has to make a request to deliver an invocation, then see how the town responds.

Isn’t it amazing how Greece officials have learned nothing over the past few years? Despite winning their Supreme Court case, they still don’t have the right to exclude atheists from being part of the invocation rotation. But they seem to be heading right back to the courthouse.

(Large portions of this article were posted earlier)

Catholic Archdiocese: Don’t Support the ALSA with the Ice Bucket Challenge Since They Do Embryonic Stem Cell Research

There are plenty of good reasons not to participate in the Ice Bucket Challenge taking over your Facebook timeline — it’s annoying, it’s repetitious, just give the ALS Association the damn money and stop making a charade out of it — but leave it to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to find a reason to complain:

The challenge itself is fine, said Dan Andriacco, spokesman for the Archdiocese.

The Archdiocese just doesn’t want fundraising to be sent to the association, which funds at least one study using embryonic stem cells, Andriacco said.

Because raising funds for ALS is like paying for abortions.

Just like distributing condoms to prevent the transmission of HIV is like promoting risky sex.

Just like businesses shouldn’t have to provide comprehensive health care for employees because some women may need birth control pills.

Mind you, the ALSA allows you to earmark where your contributions go, so it’s possible to donate money without directly funding stem cell research… but if you’re the Catholic Church, you don’t have time to investigate nuance like that.

Catholics have a nasty habit of taking something that’s overwhelmingly positive and spinning it as if it’s the harbinger of doom. You also have to question the morality of people who prefer saving embryos over people who actually suffer from ALS.

At least the Archdiocese is encouraging participants to give, not to the ALS, but to the John Paul II Medical Research Institute in Iowa (where embryonic stem cells are not used), a non-profit that doesn’t even focus on ALS. Which basically defeats the purpose of the whole “Ice Bucket Challenge” in the first place.

(That Catholic group, by the way, is not listed on Charity Navigator. The ALS is and gets an excellent four-star rating from the accountability website.)

Still, it’s just another sign that the Church is completely out of touch with the rest of the world that they can’t even participate in a fun charity drive because they’re too caught up in a pseudo-moralistic stance that makes no sense to anyone else. I thought one commenter at Joe. My. God. put it well: “The ice water wouldn’t faze the cold-hearted anyway.”

The Pastafarians Are Invading. What Will Jesus Do?

In this episode of the animated webseries Hell Yeah!, Pastafarians invade Jesus’ territory and he has to pull together an army to push them back!

Lots of blasphemous silliness all around:

(via Smash5 Cartoons — subscribe!)

Ballwin (Missouri) Aldermen May Put Up “In God We Trust” Displays on City-Owned Buildings

The Ballwin Board of Aldermen in Missouri are considering putting up “In God We Trust” displays on city-owned buildings everywhere… and the Holy Infant Knights of Columbus have already pledged $750 to make that happen.

But it’s totally not religious. I don’t know where you’d even get that idea.

Asked for his view about potential legal problems if Ballwin placed the motto on its facilities, City Attorney Robert Jones said he knew of no cases in which use of the language has been successfully challenged. The courts have ruled the wording is OK because it has been used so often that it is not regarded as specifically religious or promoting any particular religion, Jones said.

See? It’s not religious because it’s been used so many times before, and it’s been used so many times before because it’s not religious. Makes perfect sense.

The Aldermen haven’t voted on this issue yet. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you, especially if you live in the area. You can find their email addresses right here. (As always, be respectful.) Feel free to leave your message to them in the comments so others have a template.

(Image via Shutterstock. Thanks to Brian for the link)

Ben Carson: Removing Bibles from Navy Hotel Rooms is the Same as Imposing Atheism on Everybody

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who’s frequently touted as a Republican presidential candidate in 2016, has an article up at National Review about “Atheist Absurdities” and it features gems like this one:

The surprise is not the hypocritical stance of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but rather the fact that an established bulwark of American strength and patriotism caved to a self-serving group of religious fanatics. The previous sentence may seem out of place if you don’t realize that atheism is actually a religion.

Just like bald is a hair color.

It is extremely hypocritical of the [Freedom From Religion Foundation] to request the removal of Bibles from [Navy] hotel rooms on the basis of their contention that the presence of Bibles indicates that the government is choosing one religion over another. If they really thought about it, they would realize that removal of religious materials imposes their religion on everyone else.

Riiiiight. By that logic, turning the television off is the same as changing the channel.

FFRF is demanding neutrality, not the imposition of their own views. No one is suggesting the Bibles be replaced with copies of The God Delusion.

This is like saying there shouldn’t be certain brands of bottled water in hotel rooms because there may be guests who prefer a different type of water or are offended by bottled water and think everybody should be drinking tap water. The logical answer to such absurdity would, of course, be that the offended individual could bring his own water or simply ignore the brand of water he does not care for.

Speaking of bad analogies…

The comparison fails — as anyone who does the slightest research would know — because the government specifically cannot endorse religion. But if Carson thinks it’s a fair analogy, let’s put a copy of the Koran in every hotel room and let him bring his own Bible or ignore the Islamic holy book. I get the feeling he’d be the first one to complain.

Like so many of his conservative colleagues, Carson also thinks FFRF does this because they’re “offended” by the Bible, when the truth is they just care about the Constitution in a way that Carson clearly doesn’t:

As a nation, we must avoid the paralysis of hypersensitivity, which prevents us from getting anything done because virtually everything offends someone. We need to distribute “big boy” pants to help the whiners learn to focus their energy in a productive way. We must also go back and read the Constitution, including the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion. It says nothing about freedom from religion…

That’s certainly not how the courts have interpreted it. Carson would know that if he stopped listening to David Barton. And it’s a semantic game anyway. The whole point is that we have freedom to believe as we want, and the government doesn’t get to impose a particular view upon the citizens. To turn that around and say it means atheists should get no say in how Christianity is foisted upon the public is dishonest and, well, what we’ve come to expect from Carson.

This guy makes Sarah Palin sound intelligent. Which means the Tea Party will love him come nomination time. How is it that a trained neurosurgeon still hasn’t figured out how to use his own brain to do some basic research before spouting off nonsense?

(via The Morning Heresy. Image via Wikipedia. An earlier version of this post accidentally referred to the hotels as hospitals.)