Majority Privilege

We came across this statement yesterday - it was part of a response from Bioware to complaints from straight male customers about male characters in the new Dragon Age game flirting with them (full response here) - and we both thought it was fantastic:

And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as “political correctness” if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They’re so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don’t see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what’s everyone’s fuss all about? That’s the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.

This paragraph is referring specifically male and heterosexual privilege, but it can be easily applied to any majority segment of the population. Majority privilege is something really difficult to see when you’re actually a part of the majority, but that only makes it more important to be aware of. In the US today the White, Male, Heterosexual and Christian demographics enjoy majority status and are very resistant to minorities that challenge their privileged status. I can already hear many of the arguments against this (we’ve both made some of them before), because those in the majority don’t like being told that they have enjoyed undeserved privilege at the expense of others, or that not everything should be catered to their preferences.

This problem naturally persists when one group’s majority status is replaced by another. The former minority had to tolerate being ignored or repressed for so long, that they see it as a matter of course to act in the same manner. Right now atheists are a minority in this country and most atheists that I have talked to have a wonderful view on human equality and a philosophy that “You should be allowed to do whatever you want to, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my ability to do whatever I want to.” If we ever become the majority, we need to be hyper-aware of how we shape society and actually implement our Humanist principles to work for equality for all instead of just making ourselves the new privileged class.

Never stop questioning in search of reason,

Valerie and Mike

Changing the Way We Eat, Part Two

Part 1 was all about how to eat, changing the way we physically ingest food. Today is a collection of tips and tricks on choosing what to eat. Starting with better ingredients makes all the difference. Again, work on changing things slowly. This list isn’t at all comprehensive, and there’s still a lot of research and debate on what, exactly, is the best to eat, but this is what Mike and I have figured out so far:

The most important step is to choose whole foods (ingredients) - fruits, vegetables, and especially grains - over processed/already prepared foods. It’s a pretty good rule of thumb that the less processed it is the better it is for you.

• Cooking your own food is one of the best ways to eat healthier, since you get to control exactly what goes into your meal. As a society, we’ve gotten out of practice using our kitchens, but cooking for yourself doesn’t have to be scary. If you don’t have any cooking experience, search around the internet for “Beginner cooking recipes” or go browse a local bookstore for kid’s cookbooks, which are obviously geared for beginners. Plus, you’ll get fun, bright colored pictures to look at!


• Mike and I are doing a lot of cooking at home including cooking in bigger batches in order to have leftovers for lunches and freezing meals and ingredients for nights when we’re feeling lazy. Even when there are leftovers in the fridge, I still sometimes forget a lunch and go buy something from the freezer more than I’d like. It’s a work in progress.

Pay attention to ingredient labels, if you don't recognize it, don't eat it. I feel like I need to take my friend The Chemistry PhD grocery shopping with me, just so I can figure out what half of the ingredients are. Many of them may not be harmful, but since I don’t have any idea, I try to stay away. You’ll be amazed what you find when you start paying attention. Amanda will talk about this more in her guest post coming next week! (So I don’t have to! n_n)

Fiber is really good for you, since it’s very filling and takes the most energy to digest. For vegetables, crunchy is better than mushy (you don't have to eat raw, but you'll get more bang for your buck if it takes a little bit of work for your stomach to digest all those tasty nutrients.)

If you don’t like vegetables - I’ve now found several friends that don’t - there are some good ways to up your vegetable intake without eating just a plate of veggies. In no particular order:

• Ripe avocado makes a good spread and mayo substitute.


• Guacamole is a great way to get a bunch of tasty veggies, and so is a good salsa (read the label or make your own!). Try to watch the amount of salt that’s included.


• Try dishes where veggies are mixed in with meat, like a stir fry.


• If you’re brave, try raw veggies dunked in a sauce or dip. It’s not the healthiest in the long run, but if it gets you eating things you wouldn’t otherwise, go for it! You can cut down on the dip once you’ve gotten used to the taste and texture of veggies.


• If all else fails, you can literally sneak vegetables in:

• Pureed raw zucchini is one of my favorite tricks; it’s tasteless but nutrient rich and makes sauces creamier. It’s great in pasta sauce (even added to a jar of pasta sauce) or a stir fry, and you can often use it in place of half of the oil when baking. You can puree a bunch (just stick chunks of washed raw zucchini, skin on, in the blender and have at it) and freeze it in cubes or small Ziploc bags. Instant nutrition! This works well with other pureed vegetables too.


• Make a fruit smoothie and add a carrot. Blend well and you’ll forget it’s there.

• We’ve also signed up for a CSA (Whistling Train Farm) so we’ll get a box of fresh, locally grown produce every week from June – January. If we don’t find creative ways to use up everything in the box, we’ll have wasted money. I’m really excited for the challenge. Maybe try buying a new vegetable a week and finding a way to cook with it (AllRecipes!)

Lower your meat intake, and up the vegetables and whole grains.

Try cutting your piece of meat in half and taking bigger servings of side dishes. This will leave you with leftovers for lunch too.

• Mike and I are slowly becoming part-time vegetarians by working a lot more vegetarian recipes into our collection. I’ve been really surprised by how tasty and filling some of them are! You don’t even have to like tofu (though we do).

• I made Asparagus Chicken and Pecan Pasta the other night and it was super tasty and plenty filling. If you're scratching your head on how this is vegetarian, I cut out the chicken and added snap peas (we had frozen asparagus and snap peas on hand, any veggies would work). I also cut down the cheese to 1/2 c, mostly because I wanted to be able to have more to use on other tasty dishes.


• I use allrecipes.com for almost all of my new recipes. It lets you search by what you have in the cupboard and it is popular enough that it has a really strong rating system. There are also always comments about what people changed in order to make it fit with what they had in their pantry. All of the tested recipes (which is most) have a “per serving” breakdown of Calories, Fat, Cholesterol, Sodium, Carbs, Fiber, and Protein. It's pretty easy to find tasty, healthy recipes.

Cut out fast food as much as possible. As tasty as it is in the short term, there are few things that are worse for you than the crap that comes out of fast food joints. This is a really hard one, fast food tastes good, it’s easy and available everywhere you turn. Again, take small steps.

• Plan ahead one day/week to bring lunch instead of eating out. Once you get that down, increase it to two, and so on. Eventually, you’ll get to the point that you’re hardly eating fast food at all. Then you can have a fun experience like I did a few days ago! We haven’t eaten fast food more than once or twice in a couple of months now, but I forgot to bring lunch and Burger King had been sounding really good (I have to drive past one daily, often when I’m hungry), so I decided to treat myself. It tasted pretty good, but almost immediately afterwards I felt off. It sat really heavy in my stomach and made me feel gross for the rest of the day. Fast food just isn’t worth it anymore, and this is coming from someone who was just about addicted to Chicken McNuggets only half a year ago.


• Now the only fast food we’ll treat ourselves to is Chipotle Mexican Grill. They use whole and smart ingredients (including non-factory farmed meat!) put together in the same way you would at home. If you aren’t going to cook for yourself, your health is worth the few extra dollars to make sure you’re getting good quality prepared food.

I think taking control of your eating is a really big struggle for Americans. I don’t watch TV and I still feel constantly bombarded by advertisements for products and diet fads, and by information from ‘experts’ on the ‘only’ healthy way to eat. Spoilers: it generally involves their product. No wonder we can’t keep it straight. My general rule of thumb is to get back to basic ingredients and make it myself. If I’m not making it myself, I try to pay attention to what’s in it. Eating well doesn’t have to be hard, but it does take awareness and a bit of action.

Changing your diet isn’t about racing the scale. You can lose weight and still be unhealthy about it, but if you start changing how and what you eat you will notice a difference in how you feel, and eventually you should have more energy and less weight.

Never stop questioning,

Valerie


PS. This probably would have fit well in last week’s post, but I forgot it. I’m curious if you all have any suggestions:

One of my biggest struggles is boredom snacking. Right now, for example, I’m stuffed but I have a very strong urge to go and find something to munch on … and Mike just offered me a cookie. Not fair. I know that this is a really important thing to cut back on, it goes right along with eating without distractions and paying attention to when your body says “I’m full!” but besides just not having anything in the apartment to snack on or sheer willpower, I don’t really know how to go about it. Help?

Changing the Way We Eat, Part One

I’ve been very conscious of my food intake lately, for a number of reasons: Mike and I are trying to create healthy grocery shopping, meal planning, and eating habits. Our group of friends tries to cut out the high fructose corn syrup and other unnatural/unidentifiable ingredients whenever possible. I’ve picked up a couple of really good food blogs, and I just finished reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. (A book review might be in the future, let me know if you’re interested in the comments!) I’ve never been this aware of my food, and it’s an interesting journey. We’re working toward eating tasty food while creating healthy eating habits now that will follow us through adulthood, and lead to a longer life with less painful medical problems. I need to work on exercise and getting enough sleep too, but one thing at a time.

As a disclaimer, I've never been overweight, but I have had incredibly unhealthy diets and experienced the gross feeling and lack of energy that come from eating that way. Someday my metabolism is going to change and I won't be able to eat whatever I want, and it's better to be prepared than blindsided. My diet (as in overall food intake, not made up program to control weight) definitely isn't perfect, but being more aware of what I'm eating is already helping.

We've created an amazingly unhealthy culture in America. We've forgotten where our food comes from, and often we can't even recognize half of the ingredients on the labels anymore. We have an entire diet industry that is counting on failure. If the diet fails, or more specifically, isn't sustainable and the dieter slips off the wagon, they're almost always going to blame themselves for failing and come back and try again; throwing more money at the problem to get it "right this time." The diet industry has exploded into one of the largest in the country since the 1950’s without a strong success rate. The diet industry is growing, but so is the obesity rate. Something isn't working.

We've stopped caring about what goes into our bodies and just started inhaling food like a country of crazed Kirbys. We sit in front of TVs or computers (or even books, in my case) and eat without tasting. We don't pay attention to our bodies, even when it's screaming at us that it's full. We get up from the table with a sickened "Uuugh, I ate too much." It's no wonder that 99% of the people who need the motorized carts at Walmart are grossly obese. No one has taught them how to eat properly. It kills me when I have to help a 300+ pound man confined to a wheelchair get a dozen donuts. For himself. For that day.

This can change, but we have to be willing to listen to someone other than the diet industry - the industry that makes money off of our failures. The industry that doles out emotional abuse to make us feel depressed when we can't follow their unsustainable guidelines (depression encourages overeating) and then waits for us to come back for more to try again because we desperately don't want to be 50, 100, 150 lbs overweight.

I’m not an expert, but I have been hyper aware of mine and others eating habits lately, and I’ve been doing a lot of reading. So, here’s what I’ve figured out:

The weight loss industry wants you to focus on exercise first, diet second. I think you're a lot more likely to fail if you try it this way. Your body just doesn't have the energy until you start feeding it right. Moving around in your day is really important, but if you exercise a bunch without changing how you eat, you're going to make your body sad. Ideally, you'll do both at once, but I know from experience that this doesn't happen often.

Instead, let’s focus on eating right. The biggest block to get over is the idea of diets. Diets. Don't. Work. So, what does? Baby steps. Small attainable and sustainable goals, one or two at a time. You can’t go cold turkey with food like you can cigarettes; you can’t resolve to stop eating, but you can resolve to stop some bad habits. If you're serious about your health, you need to be in it for the long haul, not for the instant gratification of dropping 20 lbs in two weeks. Your body will thank you. So be specific with your goals: instead of saying "I'm going to eat better!" Try "I'm going to choose water over soda once per day." Water is a really important first step (if you don't like it plain, try adding lemon or drinking tea).

Another easy first step to eating healthier is to use a smaller plate when you serve yourself. If you have a huge piece of meat, try cutting it in half and only taking half at a time. Then sit at a table without distractions. If you're eating alone and can't stand the silence, try putting on music or maybe a podcast. You'll take smaller portions, be able to focus on your food and eat slower, take in how delicious it is, and notice when you're full. You will have a more satisfying meal, and you're using portion control (shh, don't tell anyone). You are less likely to go back for seconds if you have to get up, so use the power of laziness! Learn to say "Oh man that was good, but I'm full, and I'll keep the rest for leftovers." (This is still hard for me!)

If you eat out, ask for a box at the beginning and put half of your meal away so you're not tempted to overeat. Eat the rest of it slowly and enjoy the company of whoever you’re eating with or just enjoy people watching.

Eat slow! You aren't a vacuum and it takes time for your body to process food and to let you know when you're full. This is definitely one of the things I struggle with the most, it tastes so good and I want it all now! Ultimately, I end up unsatisfied when I get to the end of the meal. I can hardly remember what it tasted like and all I'm left with is this sickeningly full feeling. When I eat slower, I enjoy myself more and I eat healthier. As an added bonus, I often end up with leftovers.

This post has been all about changing the way we eat by changing how we eat, making small changes like: drinking water over soda, choosing smaller plates for portion control, and eating slower. Personally, I’ve gotten down drinking water and only have soda occasionally when I’m out at a friend’s or sometimes in a restaurant, but I’m still working on starting with smaller portions and I’m still struggling with eating slower. As long as I stay aware of my goals and keep working to achieve them, it’s completely okay to struggle. In Part Two I’ll share more tips about how to change the way we eat by changing what we eat.

Never stop questioning,

Valerie

From Sexual Guilt to Sex Positive

Note: This post contains information about my sexuality or sex life, if you would rather not know these things about me move along and check for another blog post on another day.

Mike and I took a trip to the three-story Lovers adult store in Tukwila the other day, and had a really great time. The salespeople were all very friendly and helpful, and there wasn’t a hint of awkwardness. They knew their stuff and were sincerely looking to help us enjoy our time shopping. It took me once around the store to relax and be able to talk to Mike about the products we were looking at, but once I did I was really comfortable and appreciated the atmosphere. It got me thinking about how nice it would be if sex wasn’t such a stressful taboo in our society, if we could always relax and talk with others with the same ease that Mike and I could in the store.

Lovers mission statement is “To provide an exciting environment to explore human sexuality and to acknowledge the freedom to do so."

Now, how is that possibly a bad thing?

We once went to a lecture by Dr. Darrell Ray where he talked pretty extensively about The Guilt Cycle, and how it plays such an important role in religion. The Church latches on to sex as a really great way to control their members (no pun intended). They find something that people are naturally programmed to do – in this case masturbating or experimenting as they mature sexually – and tell them that it’s wrong, a very serious sin. When Churchgoer masturbates or experiments with a friend or partner, they feel intense guilt that has been programmed in by the Church. They turn to the Church or prayer, to absolve them of their guilt, which the church will happily do… while reinforcing the idea of how bad this sin is. Churchgoer feels a little bit better, at least until their hormones kick in and they ‘slip up’ again and the cycle repeats. I’ve watched several Christian friends and even a few relatives anguish through this cycle. It’s incredibly powerful.

If you want to control someone, control their sexuality. Sex is one of the most powerful urges that we have, next to eating and sleeping. We become sexually viable in our young teen years, and it’s completely unnatural to abstain from sex until your early 20s. There is a reason that teenagers are so horny, it’s not a choice, its basic biology. It’s generally mentally and physically unhealthy to abstain from sex for so long, especially if you try to eliminate masturbation as well. There may be people out there who can do it, and I’m impressed. By the time I was 18, I was chomping at the bit. Depending on your definition of virgin (mine was vaginal sex) I was a virgin until I got to college, but at that point I was ready to fuck just about anybody. I’m lucky enough that I met my future husband and he didn’t take advantage of that, but let’s back up a bit to get the whole picture.

My own sexual growth and knowledge has been stunted on one side, and accelerated on the other, which has forced me to do some painful growing and balancing in the past few years. Let me explain.

I grew up in a sexually repressive Evangelical Christian church, though thankfully not as repressive as it could have been. Sex was something wonderful and awesome - a perfect gift from God - as long as it was saved for marriage and you only ever had sex with your permanent heterosexual partner. You give up a part of yourself whenever you have sex, a part that you never get back, so don’t you want to be whole for your spouse? If you’re not, all of the other partners that you have will basically be in the bedroom with you every time you have sex. (What a load of bunk.) I got the idea that you didn’t need to work at sex, your wedding night would automatically be amazing since you’d waited patiently for so long. Real life turned out to be just a bit different, but we’ll get to that.

So, from my verbal schooling about sex, I got a good education on what was happening to my body through puberty, the basics on the mechanics of sex, the ‘icky’ knowledge that gay men had sex by sticking it in the butt (I was young and it was said with such disgust), and the idea that sex was perfect when God brought the right man into your life and you ‘became one’ with him. This is the stunted half, there’s so much that I didn’t learn about the way sex really is.

The other half started silently when I was 5ish. I discovered my body and “Hee, that tickles! … Hey, that feels really good!” at nap time and at night. I had my first fantasies, and ‘played doctor’ with the neighbor girl down the street. Young-me was told that pornography was a terrible sin, degrading for women, something that should be avoided at all costs, etc. I was either never told, or could never remember, what pornography actually was. Curiosity eventually won out, and one night when I was home alone, I turned to the internet. I went to Lycos.com (remember that search engine?) and searched for “pornography”. With my heart pounding, and looking paranoid over my shoulder, I was faced with my first “You must be 18 or older to enter” screen and feeling like I was breaking the law, I pushed “ENTER”. I panicked and quickly closed the window. I sat there for a moment, heart racing, sure I was somehow going to get caught. Once I calmed down a bit, I repeated the process and I was hooked. I think I was 12.

I was insatiable for a while, learning and looking at everything I could get my hands on. I found a site full of erotic stories that captured my imagination, AOL chatrooms where I pretended to be twice my age and quickly got frustrated with guys who couldn’t figure out descriptive writing and that ‘I give you an orgasm’ wasn’t exciting (which I still find hilarious). I also had a 30-something guy tell me he was newly married but he loved me and his wife said that it was okay if it was just on the internet. Right. That scared the pants off me, I told him I was 13 and then blocked him, and that killed cybering for me. I learned pretty early on what I liked, what got a rise out of me, and what didn’t do anything. I was increasing my sexual knowledge by leaps and bounds, but I didn’t have anything practical to temper it against, and I wouldn’t dream of talking to anyone about it. This is the accelerated half, and the silence of it all has made my sex life unnecessarily difficult.

As I became sexually active, I found that I had no idea if the things that I read about in porn were the way it actually worked and I also quickly realized that I couldn’t vocalize the things that I wanted, including saying no when things were moving too fast. I had good boundaries in mind, but enforcing them was nearly impossible for me. If I had stumbled into a less amazing guy than my future husband when I first got to college, this could have ended very badly for me. As it was, I got off with only days of stress, guilt, and frustration at myself afterwards. Yeah, there’s still something wrong with that picture.

As our relationship grew, we struggled pretty mightily creating a happy and healthy sex life. Some of it was the fact that being on the pill killed my libido, but I think a lot of it came from my lack of ability to communicate. Some people might be lucky enough to get it right the first time, but from everything that I have heard, read, and experienced: it’s all about communication and practice. If you’re missing the communication, the practice isn’t going to help much either.

So many couples are incredibly self-conscious talking about sex, even though they are actively engaging in it. Why is talking about it more embarrassing than doing it? I still have a problem talking openly about the specifics of sex with my own husband. I get embarrassed and shy and it’s damn frustrating. The unrealistic expectations from the church, mixed with feelings of guilt from my Christian peers and teachers, self-imposed guilt from my parents teachings (Don’t make our mistakes!), and silence through my sexual development have been huge hurdles that I’ve had to face in coming to terms with my sexuality and in working with my husband to create a healthy sex life. I read blogs about parents raising their children in sex-positive environments and I’m jealous. But I can only take what I’ve learned and move on.

I am sex positive, working hard to become vocal about it, and I think the world would be happier if everyone else was too.

Never stop questioning,

Valerie

*****Edit*****

Here's a little bit on the sex positive movement to help clarify things:

"The sex-positive movement does not in general make moral or ethical distinctions between heterosexual or homosexual sex, or masturbation, regarding these choices as matters of personal preference. Some sex-positive positions include acceptance of BDSM and polyamory as well as asexuality, transsexuality, transgenderism, and other forms of gender transgression in general. Most elements of the sex-positive movement advocate comprehensive and accurate sex education as part of its campaign."

"Sex-positivity allows for and in fact celebrates sexual diversity, differing desires and relationships structures, and individual choices based on consent."

Being raised sex-positive would mean that all forms of consenting sex and gender combinations would be viewed as normal and healthy, and would include a well-rounded education about the dangers and benefits of sex, physically and emotionally. I definitely don't advocate all teens running around sleeping with each other, I agree with you that most aren't emotionally ready yet, but we can better prepare our children for how to safely have positive sexual experiences when they're ready.

The King and I

Mike and I are working to get this blog back on its feet, but in the mean time, go check out Project: The King and I.

Bruce is leading an already-pretty-diverse group of people through the entire Bible in a year, and I'm having a blast reading and commenting along. The year and blog comments have started out strong, with a good mix of theists and non-theists weighing in.

I always said I was going to read through the Bible in a year when I was a Christian (I did make it through most of the Old Testament once), but now I'm finally following through. I'm interested to find all of those hidden stories and tidbits that no one wants to remember are in there.

Never stop questioning,

Valerie

This is (one of the reasons) Why I Won't Be Quiet.

This article from the Washington Examiner showed up on my Facebook news feed the other day. I'm not sure why it was posted, or why I went to read it. But I did, and it angered me enough to leave a comment.

The "Opinion Article" is basically just a summary of the longer article linked from another newspaper, but check out this part:

The Paine Foundation is part of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, a tiny nonprofit (annual income: $14,000) seeking to purge religion from private life.

I've spent a lot of time in the past year investigating and interacting with nontheist groups. Everyone that I've met has been friendly and accepting, and while they may not agree with religion, they'll fight harder for everyone's right to practice it than anyone else I know. Not one group that I've seen is fighting to purge religion from private life. We tend to be the strongest supporters of "Do what you want as long as it doesn't interfere with someone else's ability to do what they want." David's statement is a hateful stereotype based entirely in ignorance, and I was compelled to tell him so.

My comment:

Okay, you generally did a good job summarizing The Morning Call article, but you got one thing very, very wrong. The Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia has no interest in "seeking to purge religion from private life." Their mission statement is on every page of their website and impossible to miss. But, since you obviously did, let me quote it here for you: "The Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia (FSGP) was founded in 1993 by Margaret Downey. Today, FSGP's community outreach efforts have changed the hearts and minds of many citizens who never met or talked to an atheist. FSGP sponsors activities, events and speakers to educate the public about the nontheist life stance. FSGP's efforts to keep religion out of government and government out of religion ensure Constitutional protection for theist and nontheist citizens alike."

Did you notice that last part? It's important. Please think before you go spouting off hateful stereotypes.

When Mike and I first dove into the world of non-theism, I was torn between being excited about all of these new ideas and wanting to just be quiet about it and not upset anyone. We could just keep pretending to be Christian, after all we'd already been doing it for a while and a 'bad' Christian is better than an atheist. Our families wouldn't have to know or be upset. It was difficult to make the decision to tell our families, knowing that it would drive an uncomfortable wedge between us and them that would likely never completely go away. We chose to go ahead for two reasons:

1. We wanted to be true to ourselves, and we love our families enough that we didn't want to spend the rest of our lives lying to them.

2. There is a lot of hate for atheists in this country. Statements like the one above are common. Senators can call atheists "anti-American" and presidents can say that we shouldn't be citizens. News stations and newspapers can twist a message of hope and acceptance from atheists for atheists into one of hate (here, here, and here). There are so many more examples out there, but I won't take all of your time. All of these things are talking about me, my husband, and many of my close friends, who are all some of the most accepting, tolerant, and moral people I know. How would you feel? Would you stay silent in the face of such undeserved criticism? I won't.

Never stop questioning,

Valerie

What Do We Do With Crazy Ideas? The Anti-Vax Movement

The Anti-Vax movement.

It's one of those crazy, unfounded, ideas that makes me very angry, even more than normal, because I was taken in by it for a while. I heard it in passing, and the idea of "Oh yeah, we really do pump our kids full of so much stuff so early" stuck. Over time it evolved to "Huh, maybe there's some credibility to this, so many injections so young can't be healthy for them. I don't have kids yet, but I'll look carefully into which vaccines I'll allow." It might have progressed further, but Mike brought it up at one point, I voiced my opinion, and he (nicely) ridiculed me out of it. Since then I've done my research, and I'm much more hesitant to accept an idea just because it sounds plausible.

Here's Penn and Teller's take on it (NSFW language):



The Anti-Vax movement brings up a difficult question for which I can see two answers:

1. We combat the crazy idea early, with the outcome of debunking it or giving it credibility where it would otherwise have none.

2. We ignore the crazy idea, and allow it to fall off the radar unnoticed or, in the case of the Anti-Vax movement, gain a large foothold.

Which do you think works better? Is there a third option that I've missed?

Never stop questioning,

Valerie

Housekeeping Note

I received an e-mail this evening, threatening violence against us for being atheists, being part of the "facsist homo agenda" and not giving Christians enough respect. I'm not too concerned about this one but I am going to take greater care to guard our anonymity. So the privacy settings of our profiles are updated and I've removed comments that had our pictures next to them. In all but one case it was easy to put them back in with the Without A Clutch logo, and that conversation was way off topic anyway. Hopefully we won't have anymore problems.



In search of reason,

Mike

Why does God only reveal himself to some people?

It's been a while since I chimed in, and I have a lot of post ideas simmering, but in the mean time, here's an article that I found absolutely fascinating.

Why does god reveal himself to some people and not to others?

The article discusses free will, informed consent, hide and seek, heaven, and asks all kinds of interesting questions.

Let me know what you think!

Never stop questioning,

Valerie

Comrades in Blogs

Without A Clutch has joined up The Out Campaign Blogroll, and the The Atheist Blogroll. Both can be found along the sidebar.

We're also proudly showing our support for Foundation Beyond Belief:

A unique charity whose humanist and atheist members support ten outstanding secular organizations per quarter. Choose your donation level, and distribute among the featured causes as you wish.

The Foundation features ten charitable organizations per quarter in the following cause areas:
* Health
* Education
* Poverty
* Environment
* Child Welfare
* Human Rights
* Animal Protection
* Peace
* The "Big Bang" Fund (small charity, big impact)
* Foundation Beyond Belief

We've also set up the sidebar to link to more resources on various topics that relate to our blog.

We hope you find something fun and useful!

Never stop questioning in search of reason,

Val and Mike

A Morning Walk

You've heard that a walk a day can be good for your health, so you decide to try it out one morning before you really start your day. You've got two choices for where to start your walk, Door #1 or Door #2.

Door #1: You open your door to the fresh air of a summer morning. The birds are happily chirping away. You look up and down your street, taking stock of the green lawns, hearty trees, and diversity of flowers before walking down to the local creek. It's flowing briskly, and there are little pools with minnows and crayfish, you can splash around and even drink from it without worrying about rash or infection. You come back from your walk refreshed, with energy to meet the rest of your day.

Door #2: You open your door and are met by the fresh scent of smog. It's eerily quiet. Visibility is low, but you can see enough to crunch through the dehydrated grass, over the plastic bags blowing around, and out to the street. You walk down to the creek - barely a trickle and choked with beer cans, soda bottles, and who knows what else, with no living thing in sight. You'd never think of drinking from it. You're wheezing by the time you get home, and you're definitely not feeling any more refreshed.

I don't know anyone who wouldn't pick Door #1. Even if you deny human-caused climate change and believe that environmentalists are all a bunch of overzealous nut-jobs standing in the way of progress and modern living, you still want to live in a clean environment. You expect the water coming out of your tap to actually be clean, not just look clean; you want your food to be free of harmful chemicals; you prefer if there isn't trash along the road; when you vacation by lakes, rivers, and oceans, you should be able to swim in them without sharing the swimming hole with sludge and dead fish; and so on.

With the way our society has grown up, these things don't just happen on their own. People carelessly toss junk out the windows of their cars, out of sight, out of mind. Companies dump poison and pollutants into our water supply (check out this article about BP using a loophole to dump nearly 50 times the mercury limit per year into Lake Michigan. As a Michigan girl living in Indiana, it made me sick to my stomach, and angry. This was in 2007, but I'm not holding my breath that anything has changed.). Companies sheer off entire mountain tops, destroying environments that keep us healthy and releasing toxic runoff into our water supply. The list goes on, and you'll probably hear more about it from me later.

We have to be proactive to keep our communities clean, the same way you have to actively pick up the clothes from your bedroom floor. It's not easy to change old habits, and I'm still having a terrible time remembering to pick up my clothes. But Mike reminds me, I remember more often, and I'm doing better. We don't have to make these changes on our own, and we don't have to make a ton of big ones all at once, but we do need to be more proactive in the way we live. Think about things you throw out. Do you really need that styrofoam cup, or could you bring a mug? Where does that plastic water bottle go? (Hint: A lot of them end up in ocean gyres) There are small changes we can make that will make our communities, wherever we may move, a lot better places to live.

I have heard the idea from theists that 'This is not our home, we are not of this world, we are merely temporary residents, our true home is in heaven.' When I get down and think about it, I'm personally a little disturbed by this way of thinking, but it's not an inherently bad idea. However, I have heard it used to justify, '... so why should I care what happens to the planet?' If you're thinking along those lines, think about this instead: If a god created this world specifically for us, lovingly designed it to support our life, which was made in his image, then he has given us a great gift. One we should love, cherish, and protect, not ignore simply because heaven is waiting.

For non-theists: This is the only life and world that we have. We don't have the time or luxury of waiting for it to get better on it's own. We should all be striving to leave this world better than we came into it, to protect it for future generations so that they can move forward, instead of working backwards to fix our mistakes.

This isn't a topic we can choose to ignore, just because it's uncomfortable and we don't like change.

Never stop questioning,

Valerie

A New View on Comfort

One of the fascinating things about embracing atheism for me was the realization that there are other completely different world views out there than the one I grew up with. I'd like to share one of these new views that I now take great comfort in.

A disclaimer: I speak from Christianity because it's what I know. If anyone has insight on other religions, please feel free to share it!

On of the major reasons that many turn to religion is the comfort it offers. It gives you the belief that everything happens for a reason, that the suffering of this life is insignificant in the grand scheme of eternal paradise, and that you will see all of your loved ones again; these can all be comforting things. When there is uncertainty in your life, religion is ready with open arms, caring words, and answers.

I frequently hear disbelief from religious people who are presented with the idea that atheism can offer any comfort. It is depressing for them to consider the idea that everything is just random and that death is the cold, hard end.

When I first realized my atheism, I agreed with this analysis. There were now so many holes in my understanding of the world where my belief in the divine used to sit. I am still filling many of these holes with new understandings, and constantly revising them; it's an interesting journey.

Back on point however, the idea of my purpose and what happens when I die were one of the first things that I addressed ... mainly because the idea of hell still had me terrified, but I'll discuss the afterlife in another post. As I have turned the idea over in my head, I realized that atheism does offer comfort in the face of suffering and uncertainty. Among other things, it offers the idea that our suffering isn't a mystifying punishment or attempt to teach us a lesson. It's simply cause and effect, and we can make reasonable, reality-based decisions about how to deal with it.

Learning to Clutch... The Definitions

Since the topics we’re going to be writing about are often misunderstood or unclear, I thought it would be good to explain the lexicon we’re using. After all, you can’t hold a constructive conversation if people aren't using the same definitions.

I want to start by dispelling common misconceptions about “Agnostic” and “Atheist.”

An Atheist by definition is simply someone that doesn’t hold a belief in a god or gods. Theists propose god concepts, and those that aren’t convinced by any of them are Atheists.

An Agnostic by definition is someone who simply claims that they lack knowledge or certainty about a topic. You can claim to be Gnostic or Agnostic about any topic, we’re just most familiar with it in regards to religion.

This means that rather than a continuum from Christianity/Islam/etc. to Deism, to Agnosticism to Atheism we have two axis overlapping.

No Drama Commenting Policy

Alright so,

We know the things that we're posting here will be controversial and they will push buttons that most people don't like pushed. We know that conversations can very quickly degenerate at the smallest perceived slight from either side. So we're stepping in early and creating a comment policy.

In general, Mike and I always choose our words very carefully in order to be as inoffensive as possible while still getting our point across. Our goal is to create dialog about ideas that are not often discussed, not to offend. I'm not saying it won't happen, but it's not the point. We love debate and different points of view, but we're also very firm believers in the value of online civility and respectful conversation.

With that in mind, we reserve the right to delete comments if they strike us as:

• rude
• judgmental
• ranty
• attacking
• trolling
• off topic

This doesn't mean, of course, that you can't disagree with us or other commenters - that would defeat the purpose - you just need to do so constructively and with respect.

If you are immediately offended by something here, don't comment right away. Step back, think about what's actually being said, and come back to it. We promise to do the same with our responses.

Please make your own arguments for or against the topic rather than issuing a list of quotations. We're interested in talking to the reader, not in responding to their ability to copy and paste. However we reserve the right to respond in kind if you choose not to take the time to write your own opinions. If you do quote someone that isn't a household name, please provide more than their name for identification.

Hopefully this will help create a constructive and generally friendly atmosphere where everyone feels like they are being heard and not attacked.

Never stop questioning,

Valerie

PS. Inspired by Offbeat Mama. Thanks Offbeat Mama!

Without A Clutch

"That grinding sound is your paradigm shifting without a clutch."

This quote explains our recent predicament pretty clearly. Less than a year ago and only a few months into our marriage, we both woke up and realized/admitted to ourselves that not only were we no longer actively religious, we didn't really believe in the supernatural anymore. We both come from Christianity, and our stories are decently similar, perhaps we'll share them at a later time. The realization and acceptance that we are atheist has been by far the most crazy, world-shifting, thing we've ever done, and we're still reeling from it.

This blog is an attempt to explore the worlds of atheism and secular humanism, figure out where we fit in, and understand how to view the world without religion guiding us. The posts will be random, whatever strikes our fancy as worth exploring, and debate is always welcome.

Thanks for reading along, and we hope you'll add your voice to the discussion.

Never stop questioning,

Valerie