Thank You For Reading

atheist blog

Dear Friends, It is time to end this blogging journey I have been taking with you. I sincerely thank you for your time and friendship and good will. I have had the honor of meeting several people who read my blog and we've become friends and that's just so...cool.

Karen

 You are invited to my new blog
Carin' Loathin'

at carinloathin.blogspot.com

 

Forever College Student

atheist blog

My daughter is in college right now at a local community college and my son will be starting in January. I took a class this summer and I will take another class this January at the same time as John. SO I've been on campus this fall for a number of reasons. I LOVE being on a college campus. Can I please be a Forever College Student?

First of all because the vibe is so fresh and exciting and fun and second because the people are so interesting! And Third because I love to learn things. These three people in the pic are just a few of the really amazing people I met and talked to the other day when I was helping at the brand new Freethinker's Club on campus. You should  meet the two guys who started the club, Kyle and Evan: WOW. These two young men are so amazing. I love seeing their desire to do things coupled with their can do attitudes coupled (tripled?) with their actual actions to make things happen. Very admirable.

Kyle

Liz and John and I have talked about it and they are both interested in the Freethinker's Club and they don't mind if I participate. On one hand I feel as though I might be nosing my way into the club when I should leave it to the younger kids, on the other hand I have met some really nice people, a few of which are older and who I would like to see again as friends, and on the third hand I have some stuff to offer the group. I'm excited about it; it's a far cry from the ridiculous sorority I joined back in the '80s.  LOL

I was also considering participating in another club that I interacted with on campus, though the kids aren't interested in that one at all...am I nuts? Am I reliving my youth? Are you jealous?  :)

My husband is happy for me to have the interest and I'm frickin' delighted that I have the ability to follow my bliss in this way. The Freethinkers Club is very new and I'm excited to see what the new members want to do with it. Will it be more social, social activism, informational, service, educational, political? We'll see.

Patheos

atheist blog

What a waste of time.
I was looking at some Patheos posts tonight and I can see that just about anybody can post just about anything. People are posting opinion pieces that read more like uninformed rants than researched and educated articles. I'm glad I don't generally waste my time there.

Even though I had flipped around and skimmed several posts, it wasn't until I got to a piece on homeschooling that I decided to say something here about it. The author of the article is Bert Nobody simply repeating the usual nonsense about socialization, how badly-prepared parents are to teach their children, and, my favorite, how parents already have five years of brainwash time for their kids and now those kids need their parents to lose control of their minds and send them to school, damn it. I'm going to give the author the benefit of the doubt that he is specifically referring to politics and religion, but I think I'm being generous there.

But still, what a crock. The author has no connection to homeschool (from what I can tell) and generally seems to focus his interests on politics, religion, and computer programming. Why should we read anything that he writes about homeschooling? 
For the same reason why you wouldn't read anything I write about Linux or C++.


Another post I skimmed at Patheos was about Josh Duggar. 
Maybe Patheos is a wonderful resource for sharing ideas and exploring current events. But from my few minutes on the site I doubt I'll be back much because it looks more like those newspapers at the grocery store check out lane.

Maybe you know of some good writers on Patheos...?

I'm Writing a Book

atheist parenting
I can't decide if this is a ridiculous idea or not, but I've decided to write a book for atheist parents. Does that sound crazy? Are there just too many books like that? Do I have anything at all to say? 

I don't know.
I know that the cool thing to do is to work on it and mention it just as it's about to be published...I'm not that cool.
There is nothing like writing to make you quite certain that you, actually, shouldn't be writing. Sorry for the crude metaphor but it's like hanging your ass out of the window and hoping that someone would pay to see it up close. Writing is such a vulnerable thing. Even writing a blog like this makes me feel quite vulnerable at times; now consider an entire book!

Do I have anything fresh to say? Yes, I thiiiiink I do.
Is my writing readable? I don't know, I hope so.
Would there be a market for a book on atheist parenting?
I think so. When I started parenting as an atheist almost twenty years ago I would have paid real dollars for a book like this. There are more books available now. But there are also more people coming out of the closet and looking for some guidance, community, wisdom...

I have to admit that I've been reading some atheist parenting books over the last month and I'm not very impressed with some of them; while I'm super impressed with others... 

So I started this project; I've been working on a book for a week or so and I'm fairly happy with it but I could use some input. What could I write about? What are subjects or topics or questions that interest you? What questions do you still have? What kind of information did you look for? Also, if I posted some questions or polls on this blog, would you answer them to help me out?

YES, I'm looking for ideas for more content.  :)

But even more, would you read a book by me? Would you recommend it to people? Am I too scattered to take seriously? Do I even need to be all that serious? I don't know...
I would truly LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear from you.

Please comment below OR send your comments to me at:
karen.thesecularparent (at) gmail.com

Mike McHargue

atheist blog

Today on Facebook my friend asked her atheist friends to give her some thoughts on Mike McHargue, this guy who is claiming to be an atheist-now-believer-in-Jesus based on a moment on the beach with an indescribable light, a moment that he considers mystical, a connection with god.
Here's the video my friend posted.

I'd never heard of the guy, but I had some time so I watched a couple of interviews with him and some of his brief media videos. He seems to have a nice little wave of notoriety going on. Seems he has been podcasting for some time on a show called Ask Science Mike. On iTunes I see over 80 podcasts.

I don't know how Mike claims to be an atheist when he's clearly been podcasting as a Christian for over a year... But I admit that I don't know the guy. Maybe he's just building up his audience in anticipation of release of his book Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science. Wouldn't it be great if that sold millions? 

Call me a skeptic (OK, you're a skeptic) but this whole thing sounds like a giant set up, a performance designed to capture a very specific audience. Mike McHargue clearly states in a second clip on his youtube channel that he has written this book for people who are in that gray area, in that area where science and social media has begun to get to you, to make sense, to inspire doubt. This book was written for those people who are beginning to see the light...this book is for you. So he says.

This entire campaign seems to me like a carefully orchestrated piece of propaganda designed to snare those people who are struggling with belief. It is a campaign designed to use the word science to comfort those who can no longer ignore science's validity. And I find that loathsome, disgusting, and incredibly manipulative.

Feeling a sense of the sublime, on the beach and whatever his vague claims are, are human feelings. I feel the sublime in many places. Those places, in no way, are a god to me. Pure nature is breathtakingly huge and beautiful and terrible and beyond our current comprehension. STILL, not a god. I promise you, a moment of awe would never make an atheist suddenly become a believer in any supernatural story and no freethinker would ever go back to the bonds of mythology that ensnare religious minds. I despise it when believers claim to be atheists in order to prove that atheism can be overcome by faith.

I do doubt Mike McHargue. I think that he is marketing to a huge group of people today: the people who are watching religious claims receding in the light of knowledge and the people who are openly or secretly doubting what they have been taught to believe...

Just a few cents in a few moments of thought.