Jury Duty, Crime, and The Good Old Days

So, I have jury duty last Friday. I didn’t get picked but the weeding out process (I am sure there is a legal name for it but alas I don’t know what it is) took forever. Okay, six hours, but you get the idea, and they wouldn’t let us break for lunch. At least I got $6 for my trouble

The case was a sensitive one, which would explain 200 of us needing to be selected to get to 12 jurors. Without going into detail, basically the charge was sexual penetration of a minor. What made it more than an average trial was apparently the perpetrator is the son of a police chief or captain in a nearby city. I didn’t know the suspect or the father, but a few people did and were eliminated.

In the middle of the process, after they had given us the minimal facts stated above, the prosecuting attorney asked individuals to raise their hands if they would have problems being fair because perhaps they or a close relative had some type of abuse or assault. This went on for some time and a number of jurors were added to “the list” to be excused. When the defense attorney finally came up, one of her first questions was how many of us wanted to get up and beat the defendant as soon as we had the charges explained to us. An older gentleman with a baseball cap telling us he was a veteran stood up and said something to this effect:

I have two grandchildren and I must say this whole country has went downhill because people do not have bibles in their right hands any more and no one is obeying the laws of the bible. I don’t know if this young man is guilty but I bet he wouldn’t even be in this mess if he was reading the bible every day like we used to!

And of course the amazing thing is you could hear sighs of agreement everywhere in the room. Now I am all for whatever we need to do to make our country better, but is reading the bible going to solve criminal issues? And did our country’s supposed banning of prayers and bible study in school start the decline of western civilization?

A few google searches later and my intuition appears to be correct. According to the American Atheists website, in the 1950’s when there was a large religious uprising in the US, one which caused God to be put in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” was reinserted on our money, the US crime rate was on a very steep increase in comparison to the 1940’s. In 1963, when prayer and religious teaching were banned from public schools, the crime rates remained relatively similar. Since 1963 the crime rates have fluctuated greatly, but this can now not be considered due to or because of people “carrying bibles in their right hands.” The key to the entire article, of course, is that many seem to remember the “Good Old Days” as being much better than they really were, and thinking that it must have been that way because religion was required, and now the country world has gone to hell in a hand basket because we don’t pray in school.

I am neither a sociologist nor an expert in criminal behavior. Yet I have a feeling that if children are taught (and enforced by example) respectfulness, compassion, and love, that whether this is taught because of a religious belief or just because it is the proper thing to do, that then your children will grow up to do the right things.

Religion and Home Schooling

 

My wife was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness in the 1980’s and ’90’s.  Her mother was very strict about it.  She would pull my wife and her siblings out of school during ANY days that celebrated any pagan or “worldly” holidays, including Halloween, Christmas, Easter, and Valentine’s day.  No costume parties, birthday parties, Christmas presents, holiday cookies, valentine’s day cards, etc., etc.  As could be expected in a school environment, she eventually got labeled as an outsider, being different or weird.  She never had any true friends outside of her family.

Because my wife didn’t want our children to go what she went through, when our children were old enough to begin school, she decided she wanted to home school our kids.  I hated the idea from the beginning, but she was passionate about it and I eventually relented.  So my eldest son and daughter were homeschooled for a couple of years, my son up until 2nd grade and my daughter up until the 1st grade.  She finally decided to let them go because the kids wanted to go.  Plus, and props to you that stumble across this and homeschool your kids, it is a lot of work.

The main thing I want to discuss is why would one want to home school?  When you do some searches there are really three main reasons I can find: Religion, Violence/drugs, and the parents belief they can teach better than the teachers.

I can teach my kids better than teachers in the public schools

In some schools and situations this may be true.  I live in one of the poorest cities in the US, which means low property values, not as much property taxes collected (although we do have one of the highest property taxes percentage wise, because of the low property values), thus good teachers are often going to go elsewhere for more money.  I live in a border city next to Mexico, so a large percentage of the incoming kindergarten students do not even speak English, which increases the teaching burden even more.  Yet so far, all of the teachers my two kids have had the past three years have been very good at both teaching and communicating what my wife and I must do to help our children progress.  In three years, my son had one C on his first report card upon making the transition from home-school to public school, and after that has had nothing but A’s and B’s.  My daughter has never had lower than a B at this point.  My wife, an ardent home school proponent 5 years ago, now thinks it was a big mistake to hold our kids back the first three years at home.

If someone lives in an area where the student to teacher ratio is low, the school district they are in is not up to par, and they have a stay at home parent that has the ability and desire to teach their kids, I can see some benefit.  But I have a feeling those scenarios are a low percentage of the actual home schoolers.

Too Much Violence and Drugs in Schools

Once again, there are probably schools in some areas of the country where this is factual.  Overall the vast majority of schools are safe.  Are there issues with peer pressure, drugs and violence?  Yes.  They were there 25 years ago when I was in school.  In my opinion you can coddle a child too much, and when they get older they are going to be naive to the real world.  Because guess what, there are drugs and violence out there too.  If they are not prepared to say “No” to peer pressure and the like at 12-17 years of age, what do you think is going to happen when they go to college or get a job after high school?

Religion

My wife’s reasons were the feared prejudice our kids may receive as part of their religion, as JW’s beliefs are not even the normal Christian beliefs, so they would not fit in.  There is some validity there, but whether our kids went to a public school or not they are/were eventually going to get treated differently anyway if they go this route spiritually.  Is it better or worse to receive these discrimination when younger so you get used to them or when you are older and ill-prepared to go into the real world?  I do not have the answer, but I can say my wife made what I think is a great decision and was not nearly as demanding on our kids as her mother was to her.  She does not pull out the kids on Christmas parties or Valentine’s day.  She uses me as the scapegoat but I know that she actually feels she was left out of a lot because of the way she was raised.

The other religious based reason is probably the most common reason many families home school.  They want their kids exposed to the biblical teachings rather than what US schools teach.  Don’t want those teachers bringing up the fact we evolved from apes and the earth is billions of years old now do we?  But more important than that is kids interacting with other kids from different backgrounds and religions and realizing that what their parents have taught them may not be 100% true.  An ambitious child may just start reading a little and learning some things on their own.

If the top two reasons were the REAL reasons some parents home schooled then I would understand more.  These are the top three reasons people say they home school, yet 91% of the people home schooled are religious, and more than twice as many home schooler classify themselves as evangelical Christians compared to the general population.  72% of home schoolers polled cited “to provide religious or moral instruction” as an important reason for it as well.  This tells me that the main reason is really religion.

Many of the JW’s my wife knows home school and the congregation encourages it.  I cannot speak for other religions, but going to sites like this one you can tell they like the idea of home schooling also.  The answer to why the encouraged home schooling is obvious.  JW’s, for example, are forbidden to even read apostate material and many of their articles hint that continuing education is overrated.  People who get educated tend to start to question things, dont you know? 

Since home schooling has only recently started this big boom, it is difficult to find any long term repercussions at this point.  As far as the education part of it goes, they are probably getting just as good an education.  The websites promoting home schooling will of course point out that kids that are home schooled get higher scores on the national tests.  This is true but you have to account for the fact that all of the kids home schooled both want to be educated and have parents that want them to be educated.  A lot of scores on national tests are from kids that could not be home schooled even if they wanted to as they are in single parent homes or double working parents, who basically use school as a baby sitter.  If you compared home schooled kids to kids that have parents actively involved in their public education I bet the public school kids are equal if not better than the home schooled ones.  Not to mention I believe they will be better prepared for the real world once they have to go into it.

My Life Has Taken Over + Meme

Readers of my blog have probably noticed I haven’t been around much.  Things have gotten extremely busy for me and I have not had the time to my previously normal twice weekly postings.  I do check in and read my favorites, but I just haven’t been able to write lately.  As any blogger knows, it can be time consuming, and writing articles about atheism, creationism, evolution, and religion can take some work.  I tend to be at least a little meticulous about making sure I at least appear to know what I am discussing, and finding the time to research to write a good post has been unavailable lately due to an increased workload and having two school kids in extracurricular activities (and a hyperactive 18 month old) have left me exhausted.

Evanescent tagged me with the latest meme going around, and even though I am late to this particular party I will give mine.  Hopefully this will light a little fire under my butt to be sure I at least get back up to weekly posts. 

When I started my blog I had no intentions of discussing atheism, religion, and my wife’s beliefs.  It just kind of ended up that way as you can see below:

1.  At first I tried to be cute and all of my titles were lyrics from songs, mostly heavy metal but I mixed in a Beatles tune.  My first post on religion and atheism was really my 5th or 6th overall and it was titled The Orders Came From High Above They Say.  Reading it now, it really is a very simple post, but keep in mind I had not read any blogs concerning atheism at this point–I didn’t even know that world existed.  I was just writing random thoughts.  The key to this post and why it was important was I used wordpress’ tags.  After I published that post I did a few searches with my own tags and found blogs like de-conversion (then agnosticatheism), The Friendly Athiest, and Evanescent.  Suddenly I realized that there were many others that were writing about atheism.

2.  After a few weeks of reading dozens of atheism blogs and posting a few of my own, I made the post That’s How I Got Where I Am.  Here I went into how I became an atheist in my youth because I actually read the bible trying to understand it’s mysteries.  Rereading this post you can see I have a few ideas that will come up in later posts.  This particular article made it into the 3rd The Humanist Symposium.  This was my first atheism post to start receiving a good number of hits and I realized I had an audience.

3.  My blog had now “evolved” into an actual atheism blog.  While I enjoy reading a lot of the more militant atheism blogs as the debates are entertaining, I knew my style of writing wouldn’t be a good fit for that type of blog.  I decided to write a lot about my relationship with my Jehovah’s Witness wife and how we cope with our differences in belief.  I feel as if there are a lot of blog writers out there that have better biblical and science knowledge than myself, and I knew I would write better about what I know.  A few posts into this decision to write about myself and my wife and I wrote A Blood Problem.  This post gets a number of hits every week, I am assuming from someone wondering why JW’s don’t accept blood transfusions.  Hopefully that article has been at least a little helpful.

4.  Now I was fully enveloped in the atheism blogosphere.  I actually was becoming quite addicted, reading and commenting on other blogs and writing my own.  I started paying attention to politicians views on religion, and researched more on religion and history since I had been in college over 20 years ago.  On July 1 a murder-suicide happened in my city, and it was pretty big news as the perpetrator was a prominant dentist in town.  On July 3, my local newspaper ran an article claiming the perpetrator was a “good Christian.”  I read this article at lunch and then wrote Dentist Found Slain With Wife Was a Good Christian, which was also the headline in the paper.  No other article that I have written to this point gets as many hits as this one.  The day I wrote it and the day after my hits spiked 1000%.  I still get 35-30 google searches weekly on this article and local individuals that knew the parties involved have commented as recently as last week.  While the comments have now spiraled into a different topic, I think the original concept of why I wrote it, that labeling people based upon their supposed religious beliefs instead of their actions, stands up very well.

5.  I haven’t written a post in a few weeks, but my last real post, My Awakening, pretty much sums up where I am at this point.  I have 3 posts halfway written that I will get out there soon, including my post on Julian, for those in suspense. 

An interesting sidenote that I hope I will continue to discuss over the next year or so.  I think my wife is gradually realizing the faults of Jehovah’s Witnesses and religion in general.  I cannot say for sure, because she has a hard time talking about it, but I can tell you that she has went to only one meeting (sermon) since July, and previously she would go weekly plus go to at least one bible study a week.  My children have only went when they have stayed the night over at their cousins, which has been maybe twice.  I do not know for certain if she will stay this route.  I am not trying to influence her as I want the decision to be hers.  But I can tell something clicked in her a couple of months ago, and I am hoping we have another free thinker on our hands eventually.

That’s all for now, and I will try to get back to my own posting and commenting.  I won’t forward this meme as the blogs I read most have already been tagged.

My Awakening

I have been an atheist for 100% of my adult life.  I am not sure how to count my youth and teen years.  I went to church fairly regularly and bible school in the summers from ages 6-10 or so.  And then, my parents got busy with life and raising four kids, and my mom quit going on Sundays.  I got a rejuvenation of sorts between the ages or 13-15, only to eventually do some research and decide the bible just had too many inconsistancies, and then it was over.  I made up my mind that God doesn’t exist and moved on.

For the past 25 years or so, I have just lived my life, not really caring if others want to believe in God, Buddha, Allah, or whomever.  Yet I did continue to have a passive interest in ancient history, and even took elective classes in college in the subject.  And while I never advertised my beliefs, if someone wanted to have a good discussion I was always up for it.  Along the way I am sure I lost a couple of promising relationships because of my beliefs, and then ironically, as regular readers know, I married possibly the most religious person I ever even dated.  Even after marrying a devout theist, I still continued to live and let live–what’s the harm in using a book to teach children morals?  Sure any child doing a little research can find problems with the Noah story as they do with the Santa story, but we tell them Noah did exist and the world did have a massive flood even though evidence shows different. 

Then along comes the internet, and now you can research and find opinions of thousands of people about religion, atheism, and the bible.  As some know, when I started this blog, it was just a blog about life in general, a diary of sorts.  And then I did a post about my atheistic beliefs and did tag search and found hundreds of other bloggers with similar beliefs as mine.  And gradually my belief system is changing.  Not my belief (or non-belief if you prefer) in god, but in how religions should be perceived.

I now pay attention to religion, where before I didn’t really care.  I find myself thinking about religion more than I ever have in my life.  I read articles about it.  I eavesdrop when I hear people discussing church.  I marvel at the new million dollar churches in my neighborhood.  I wonder what our local and national government is going to do to pander to the religious right.  And this is someone who has on more than one occasion punched the Republican ticket in the booth!

So, what is the next step?  To be honest, I am not sure.  One thing is for certain, the more blogs that are out there discussing these things, then the more likely someone googling Noah’s Ark will come across one of us.  And then they get to reading.  Sure, if they are a indoctrined devout theist, nothing will probably change.  But we can show the doubting holiday worshippers and agnostics that there are thousands of people out there just like them.  And maybe 30 years from now I can look back at this blog and say I was in at the beginning.  Or my kids can use this at the insanity hearings before they put me away.

Are You Lonely?

This is an advertisement in my local paper today.  I am tempted just to post this and nothing else, but I will comment.

I know it’s just an ad, and six months ago I would never have even looked at it.  But I read it, and the first thing that popped into my mind was loneliness is not a disease.  After a little deeper thought, I started to wonder, who is this church’s target and why?  This is one of the largest churches in town, yet they have to proscelytize this way? 

” …showing up in teenagers, singles, widows, just about anyone whose lives it can slowly destroy”

This just seems to target, for a lack of better words, the weak.  A person who may be more susceptable to believing in a mythical being.  If a person is indoctrinated early like my wife, it becomes very difficult for them not to believe, so the churches already have them.   Who else to target?  I know!  A widow or a single person feeling alone!  Yeah, write an ad, get on it! 

I guess I have just turned into a cynic.

And I know HeIsSailing posted another of this same churches ads on one of his articles on de-conversion that basically used an attractive woman to get new members but in my brief search over there I couldn’t find it.  If anyone knows the post please link it back.

Death and Religion

What happens when we die?  This is one of the main reasons religions exists.  We all want there to be something else when we are gone.  When we lose a loved one, we hope we will one day get to see them again.  I lost both of my parents a little over two years ago.  When that happened I hoped and hoped there was a way that we would be together once again.  I started wishing the religions were true.  But no matter how much wishing, in my mind when we pass on we are gone.  You have to remember one for the life they had here, and what they pass on to their next generation.

It is interesting to me that many of the Christian denominations have different theories of what happens when we die.  All of them use the same scriptures to come up with their conclusions, yet it is hard to find any uniformity.  Many believe in heaven and hell, but then they disagree on what determines which path you are on.  Is it works, faith, combination?  Can a murderer repent and then get his way into heaven?  Does a baby who isn’t baptised go to heaven?  Hell?  Limbo?  Do they grow up after they get there? 

I often wondered why God would make the scriptures so vague that you don’t know for sure what you need to do to get into heaven.  There is always that nagging doubt even with devout Christians.  Am I doing enough?  Do I need to witness more?  Study more?  What about that item I took from my mom when I was a kid?  Is that forgiven?  Am I going to hell anyway for that?  Lots of guilt and pressure there that I would rather not subject my children to.

I am by no means an expert in any religion, but I have attended a wider range of churches than most, I would think.  Here is a brief rundown of some basic beliefs about life after death of the more popular churches: 

Catholics–Heaven, hell, and purgatory.  Purgatory has some pagan roots, but don’t let that stand in the way of letting them tell you it’s from the Bible.  Don’t forget it is a mortal sin to not baptize your baby since they have the original sin, lest they end up in limbo.

Many of the protestant churches are similar but a brief rundown on those I am familiar with:

Lutheran–I know from attending a Lutheran church in my youth that they believe in heaven and hell.  I don’t recall a constant reminder of hell that I remember later after I switched to a Baptist church.  They believe when you die a believer’s soul goes to heaven and eventually will be reunited with your body after the rapture.  Lutherans also baptize babies (I was baptized), but I don’t recall limbo or purgatory. 

Baptists–I attended a Baptist church with my best friend in my teen years.  I recall a high pressure, you’re saved or damned type of attitude while I was there.  I cannot say if all Baptist churches are this way, but reading a lot about them now convinces me it is much the same across the US.  A lot of scare tactics and talking about fire and brimstone and everlasting punishment. 

Methodists–I also attended both a Methodist and Church of the Nazarene church as a youth.  I only attended a short time, probably six months, and I didn’t get near as involved with them as I did the other churches I attended.  Neither of these really preached a heaven and hell.  It was more of a “When you die you will be judged.”  I remember thinking it was pretty vague.  I don’t know if they are still that way today.

I have never attended any of the evangelical New Life type churches that seem much more popular today than in my youth, but perhaps I just don’t remember them.  Most of them seem to follow the evangelical protestant protocol, if you are saved you go to heaven, if not you are tormented in hell.  None of the churches I went to as a kid ever had a Christian rock band touring through, but that is another topic.

There are a number of other Christian spinoffs that go many ways, and according to religious tolerence there are currently more than 1,200 offshoots of Christianity, but the most popular and the ones I know a little about are these:

Mormon–I know very little of the Mormon church.  I have never attended and never been close enough friends with a devout Mormon to get any input.  From what I understand there are two levels of heaven, one for married couples married in a Mormon church, with the potential to become gods or goddesses.  Individuals can make this upper level of heaven also but I am unsure of the specifics.  There is also what I guess you would call an intermediate version of heaven, reserved for people that have lived good lives.  And the third Telestial Kingdom for the wicked.  Maybe I’ll get to hang out in the middle level.  Or maybe not.

7th Day Adventists–I had a friend awhile back who was an adventist, so I know a little about them.  They believe that when you die you are unconscious until Jesus returns and resurrects them and escalates them to heaven.  Then there will be a 1000 year reign for Satan here on earth.  After that all of the people in heaven will get to come back to earth, but only after all of the sinners are resurrected and sent with Satan into a fiery pit of sorts.  There is no eternal torment, just burned to a crisp I guess.  I always thought it would suck to be resurrected after 1000 years only to be burned back up.  Just keep me in the ground.

Jehovah’s Witnesses–Obviously I know a little about this one.  If you are a sinner or non-believer when you die, you just die.  No hell.  Nothing.  Hey we agree on something.  If you are righteous, (the JW’s don’t specifically rule out that other religions are not righteous, they definitely imply that they are not in their literature and in their meetings) you will be resurrected when Jesus comes back and enjoy a 1000 year paradise on earth.  This includes all of those that have been dead for hundreds of years.  I guess you get your old body back somehow.  Hey, he is the creator, so surely he can get your body back.

If anyone knows more about the religions above or wants to discuss another branch please comment.  Keep in mind I haven’t attended a protestant church in over 18 years so I am sure I have errors. 

A 10 Year Old’s Wisdom

First a little background on this story:  My wife as previously stated is a Jehovah’s Witness, although not as dedicated as she once was.  She is an old fashioned disciplinarian with our kids.  By that I mean if our kids step out of line, they will get punished via a spanking (not as much any more, but used to be), grounding, items taken away, or a combination of all–with no chance of getting said items back until the date specified when punished.  Our kids know this and are the best behaved children of ANYONE I know.  And I know a lot of people with kids.

My oldest children are a son, 10, and a daughter, 9.  My son has a friend who lives up the street who is the same age, and he has an older brother who is 12.  Both of these boys are good kids.  Over the past year both my son and daughter go over their house and they frequently are at ours as well.  My wife and the boys mom get along good, although not in a best friend let’s go shopping type of way.  They attend an evangelical church.  A fairly popular one that even a few of my co-workers go to.   

The 12 year old has another friend that sometimes goes over to their house at the same time my kids do, and apparently he often teases my daughter.  From what my son says, he puts on a good show when the other boys mom is around but starts in when she isn’t there.  Reminds me of Eddie Haskell actually (the link is for all you under 25 individuals that have no idea who Eddie Haskell is).  My son and the eldest friend have apparently asked him to stop but to no avail, and who knows how hard they really tried.  And they did not tell the boys mom.  

We have attempted to solve this by not allowing my daughter to go over if we know or think the third friend is going to be there.  While truthfully I am not 100% happy with this solution-as I don’t mind a confrontation, it does at least eliminate the possibility of causing some parents to have some bitterness towards each other or each other’s children.  Although for my wife and I it is too late I suppose.  So my son went over yesterday and the boys mom asked why my daughter didn’t come, and being the honest boy that he is he told her the story above, sans the Eddie Haskell reference. 

This brings me to the reason I decided to write about this.  Her response to my son was something along these lines (keep in mind I am paraphrasing a 10 year old):  He (the third boy) is in the Catholic Church so he isn’t as disciplined or basically as spiritual as our kids and hers.  My son’s response was what does the church matter?  When my mom disciplines us it has nothing to do with the church.  Of course that’s what he said he told her, I don’t know if he was that blunt about it.

First and foremost:  That’s My Boy!

This situation brings up many different topics-including if we or my wife should confront the mother of the third child, but of course,   I will focus on the religious part.  I think the most important thing is exactly what my son said.  When it comes to raising and disciplining your children, religion doesn’t matter!  What matters is the parents.  Luckily I have a job where my wife can stay home with the kids.  I have excellent children, and I attribute a large part of that to her and the fact she can spend time with them.  Of course I say this now but reserve the right to retract it in their teen years.  My wife will credit her religion for the way she has raised the kids.  But I know her and it wouldn’t matter if she was in another religion or not in one altogether.  She instills them with her morals, which have nothing to do with a belief in a supreme being, and she never pressures them in the religion the way my nieces and nephews are.  We know a good number of Jehovah’s Witnesses too and our kids are much better behaved than them also.

So, as has been brought up in other blogs lately, including but not limited to here and here, why do many still attribute morals (or a lack thereof), to religion?  And while I found the remark about the third boy being Catholic being part of his problem humorous, I don’t really believe that to be the case.  Everyone gets taught the difference between good and bad at an early age no matter what religion you are in.  It is then up to the parents to reinforce these beliefs.  And if no one is reinforcing, you get incidents like this.

Religion and the Workplace

I know I am not the first to bring this up and I will be far from the last, but it is amazing to me how much religion permeates my job.  In one of my early posts when this blog wasn’t even really a full blown atheism/religion blog, and I wasn’t even getting near the number of daily hits that I get now, a small discussion developed about religion and work and the possibility of discrimination.  I don’t believe I am or can be discriminated against in the traditional ways that have oppressed many people in the past.  The last thing a white male in the US can scream about is that.  But there are some issues with religion. 

But consider this.  I have been living more in hotels the past month (thus my lack of new posts) than at home.  When I go to one of our remote offices they usually set me up in an office, usually a cubicle of sorts.  The one I had to go to in Amarillo, Texas had a poster above my workstation similar to this:

Now, my choices are to just do my work and just deal with the fact that I write a blog that is predominantly about my religious non-beliefs or to take the poster down and cause me problems in an office where everyone generally likes me.  So I chose to be a hypocrite and just grin and bear it.  What choice do I really have?  What good could come of me making a stink about it?  One of the best workers there often talks of church and her grandkids singing in the choir.  Obviously there is a good chance we know who hung the poster up.

I guess I didn’t realize it but Amarillo must be on the edge of the Bible belt.  One day we go to lunch and at the restaurant waiting area where normally you see Apartment finders or a singles scene paper there is a guide to the Christian businesses in the area.  I assume this is to encourage people or other businesses to do work together.  Yet, whenever I see things like this now I tend to think what happens to the other people?  What if an non-believer, not necessarily an atheist, but say a Muslim or Jewish person opens a business in the area?  Are they allowed to put out a Jewish flyer?  Obviously even if they did I doubt it would help in this particular city.  If you are a business owner and not a Christian best to pretend methinks.  And if it is this way there I couldn’t imagine how it is in the meat of the Bible belt.

These problems of religion in my workplace is hardly a thing that makes my job unbearable.  In actuality I work for a great company with a great owner and a lot of good people to work beside.  But I have to admit it can get uncomfortable when you get surrounded by people you know have vast differences in beliefs than myself.  Eventually the topic of religion and “What church do you attend?” comes up.  Do you spout off some Hitchens or just go with the flow.  So far I have been going with the flow, but I am starting to think I am not doing the right thing…

I am not a monkey!

This is one of my wife’s biggest arguments.  She will often tell me that she isn’t a decendant of a monkey, but I can be if I want to.

The Watchtower Society has printed a number of articles in their Watchtower pamphlet, as well as a book on Creation vs Evolution.  A summary of their beliefs are here.  A couple of excerpts:

Would you be happy to go through life with no purpose other than to eat, sleep, and reproduce? The thought repels even dedicated evolutionists. “Modern man, this enlightened skeptic and agnostic,” writes evolutionist T. Dobzhansky, “cannot refrain from at least secretly wondering about the old questions: Does my life have some meaning and purpose over and above keeping myself alive and continuing the chain of living? Does the universe in which I live have some meaning?”

And then they go on to quote some scientists:

Evolutionist Michael C. Corballis observes that “there is a striking discontinuity between humans and the other primates . . . ‘Our brain is three times as large as we would expect for a primate of our build.‘” And neurologist Richard M. Restak explains: “The [human] brain is the only organ in the known universe that seeks to understand itself.”

And that’s just a brief summation, but you get the idea.

This is a very common debate tactic when going arguing against Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I am sure many other Christian religions.  The “Many scientists have doubts about evolution,” “The gap between apes and man,” etc.  Talk origins does an excellent job of breaking down each of these arguments and many others, and I am paraphrasing from there.

The main argument is that as high as 5% (some articles claim higher) of scientists do not believe in evolution.  That number is already pretty low, yet goes down to a whopping 0.15% when you only poll scientists in the relevant earth and life sciences.  And this is in the US, where there is a higher percentage of creationists.

On the gap theory, it took MILLIONS OF YEARS for men to fully evolve from apes.  Creationists have been arguing the absence of fossils for decades, yet each year more and more fossils are found, with a gradual increase in brain size leading up to humans.

So a brief answer to my wife and other creationists:  No, you are not a monkey.  You are however a couple of chromosomes away from being one.  And that’s ok, it doesn’t make us apes.  It makes us the evolutionary descendants of apes.

To me, the Theory of Evolution came easily and at a young age.  I couldn’t understand why there was even a big debate about it.  The evidence is pretty cut and dry.  Yet, here we are 25 years after I knew evolution is what happened, and there are very big debates about it on TV, the internet, and in our daily lives.  Intelligent people try and use a book written by men more than 2000 years ago trying to understand the meaning of life and force it to fit their need of a God and afterlife.  For a reality check on this see this old post by pharyngula, one of the best I have read.

Lastly, think about this.  The airplane was invented just over 100 years ago by the Wright brothers.  60+ years after that we managed to get to the moon.  Another 40 years later we have crawlers on Mars and probes leaving our solar system.  Where will be in another 100 years?  How about 2000 years?  It’s not going to happen in my lifetime but eventually we will have enough knowledge to finally rid ourselves of the tales written long ago.

And the people wandering the earth then will be saying “I didn’t evolve from a human!”

Behind Enemy Lines

I have been on the road the past few days so no new posts lately, but here is what has been going on. 

My wife and her family went to the Southwest Jehovah’s Witness convention this past week.  Normally they go to Arizona, but this year they went to New Mexico.  Since my company has offices there that I needed to go to anyway, I travelled with them this year, although obviously I didn’t go to the convention itself.

From talking to my wife about this one and previous conventions, it reminds me of my previous work where I was in sales where I was a rep, trainer, manager, and owner over a period of 15 years.  From what I understand they do their baptisms at the conventions but also discuss the members commitment to the Society.  Mostly by adhering to the JW rules and continuing to get new members.  Sounds like a lot of motivational speaking to me.

The hotel we stayed at probably consisted of 80% Jehovah’s Witnesses for the days we were there.  One thing I noticed:  A large percentage of Jehovah’s Witnesses are not like my wife’s family.  I am sure they are similar in their basic beliefs about their religion, but my wife’s family, especially her mother and older sister and her husband, are, for a lack of a better word, die hard Witnesses.  They frown upon anything ”worldly.”  They home school their kids and have no intention of sending them to college.   They do not participate in any holidays.  Their kids are fully indoctrined and often criticize my kids (their cousins) about them doing bad things (i.e. birthdays, 4th of July).  In talking with some of the other Witnesses, while a few are fully immersed like my in-laws, I get the impression many are very similar to the majority of members of the other Christian religions:  Get through life during the week and worship on Sunday.

My main point is what many people already know.  Had my mother in law been visited by a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, she would have been as devout with them as she is with The Truth and I would have a blog about being married to a Mormon right now.  Had she come across a proselytizing Pentacostal I would be discussing the idiocy of speaking in tongues rather than the issues of blood transfusions.  I think people want to believe and will become part of any belief system that is around them.  I have seen some argue that the desire for such beliefs is the reason there must be a supreme being, but that is another topic for another day. 

To once again give my wife credit.  She has raised our children with her spiritual beliefs, yet she allows me to expose them to the real world–and this is very much against what her family and congregation would recommend.  She not only encourages them to get good grades, she is actually indoctrinating them that they WILL go to college and get degrees.  My kids have friends that come over regularly that are not Witnesses.  While at times I want to be more aggressive in not allowing my children to get as involved with the Witnesses as they are, they are being fully exposed to both sides and will be able to make educated decisions, rather than just follow along because everyone they know has the same beliefs.

So, while the situation isn’t what I would consider ideal, at least my kids will see both sides and get evidence from me about what the real Truth is.