The other day I got an email from an atheist couple who have two kids, one 9 and one 10. They asked me for information regarding websites or literature that might deal with “god pressure” for kids at school. This would be the 4th and 5th grade. Apparently kids at their school are proselytizing and mocking these 2 kids for not believing.

The parents don’t want their kids to feel like freaks and also want to help them counter the exasperated ‘you don’t believe in god!’ remarks. Sam, the father, admits that it can be lonely to not believe in god sometimes. I understand. I feel that way too, although not as much as before I belonged to Morgantown Atheists.

Diane, the mother, says they are open to ideas and suggestions. She says they have friends who aren’t religious but still believe in god. It’s not the same thing.

Seeing as how only about 10% of the population would go so far as to actually use the dreaded A-word, it can be isolating to be godless in a sea of believers. As I’ve mentioned, I still keep my atheism to myself when around Butch’s family. Some of them know we’re atheists but it’s never been brought up or mentioned. This means that a huge part of what I spend my time thinking about and being an activist over can’t be talked about when I spend time with others. It’s kind of lonely, in a way.

For Sam and Diane, I suggested they join a local atheist/humanist/freethinker group to get some community support. There’s nothing like simply hanging out with like-minded people to feel more connected. In my personal experience, the benefits of belonging to a local organization are numerous. I have felt much happier since joining. Just knowing there are others who think like me is a great relief, in a way.

I know, many atheists are loners and not into joining. I used to think I was like that too. Then I realized I am just picky. I don’t want to belong to a group that has wildly different values than me. But having a coffee and talking to someone who is also a godless heathen is, well, liberating and intellectually stimulating.

I have to say something now regarding children and atheism. One of my friends, I think it was Dan, recently commented ( I can’t remember if it was here on HDC or Facebook. And I think it was Dan… or Steve. I’m sorry, my friends, I am not positive. Please feel free to correct me) about a conversation he had with his 9 year old daughter. She asked her dad about god. Dan gave a good answer about what god is, and said something along the lines of that’s how a lot of people believe. His daughter asked him what he believed, if he believed in god. Dan explained he is an atheist and that no, he doesn’t. Then he asked her what she thought about god. She said the smartest, most amazing thing, which told me he’s a wonderful dad. She said, “I think I’m too young to decide.”

What that tells me is that Dan is raising his daughter, not to be an atheist, but to think for herself. I think the most important thing you can ever do for a child is to teach them critical thinking. Let them figure things out for themselves. Let them reason and make mistakes. Teach them how to think. Not what to believe.

I’m still thinking about what to tell Sam and Diane’s kids, in how to deal with other kids who are brainwashed with religion already. Do you have any suggestions, websites, or books that might help them?

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Really, give yourself a 4 minute break and watch this. You will crack up in pure horror. Even the baby jesus is mortified. But DAMN, his ring and necklace combo is sexy! It makes me HOLY! HALLELUJAH! LOL!

Poe’s Law (fundamentalism): “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing,” named after Nathan Poe who formulated it on christianforums.com in 2005. Although it originally referred to creationism, the scope later widened to religious fundamentalism.

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First, I am now a Google Waver! Find me at zeneece@googlewave.com. I started my first public wave for atheists: Atheists Unite!

Secondly, I must confess my ignorance on a certain matter that has been bouncing around my brain for some time. I have asked my genius husband Butch and he didn’t have an answer, which made me feel better.

I’ll start with an example:

I always thought aspirin was found in the bark of white willows, and then was made in the lab. But the history seems to be entirely in the laboratory, according to Wikipedia. Also there does seem to be a connection between white willow bark and eventually aspirin.

Needless to say these days, aspirin is made strictly in the lab/factory. My question is, if things are made strictly from chemicals, where do the chemicals themselves come from? And a followup question would be, wouldn’t that make everything natural, at some point? Doesn’t everything eventually lead back to nature?

Another example:

Black Gold, petroleum, crude oil. It’s considered this unnatural thing. But didn’t it come from rotting vegetation and other natural organic matter?

When does something natural become something synthetic?

Why are natural things considered superior to synthetic things nowadays? Is there some proof that it’s true? Or is it marketing/propaganda?

I’m not trying to start anything, or as the Brits would say, I’m not trying to have a go at synthetics. I really just want to understand. If the red food dye and flavoring in my drink stick mix is synthetic, where did the chemicals that make it up come from?

I would love your feedback and thoughts on this. But please, I took chemistry in high school which was over 20 years ago (egads, that made me feel old), so keep it simple.

Thanks friends!

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Apparently a growing number of medical schools are teaching acupuncture, herbology and other CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) to their students, often with the help of Uncle Sam. That’s right, your tax dollars are being spent to teach your future doctors all about pseudoscience.

The government has spent more than $22 million to help medical and nursing schools start teaching about alternative medicine — lesson plans that some critics say are biased toward unproven remedies.

Additional tax money has been spent to recruit and train young doctors to do research in this field, launching some into careers as alternative medicine providers.

Doctors need to know about popular remedies so they can discuss them nonjudgmentally and give competent advice, the government says, and many universities and medical groups agree.

“Patients are using these things” whether doctors think they should or should not, and safety is a big concern, said Dr. Victor Sierpina, an acupuncturist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston who heads a group of academics who favor such training.

But to critics, it’s like teaching Harry Potter medicine. Students are being asked to close their eyes to science principles that guide the rest of their training in order to keep an open mind about pseudoscience, they say.

“I’m concerned about the teaching of illogical thinking to medical students” and lending credence to biologically implausible theories like distance healing and energy fields, said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired physician who runs Quackwatch, a Web site on medical scams.

Personally, if I were using some herbal remedy or other treatment that had no scientific evidence behind it, I would want my doctor to let me know it’s not tested and not proven effective. I want science-based medicine. I want my doctor to be informed about pseudoscience but he shouldn’t be using my tax dollars to study it in school as if it were real medicine. That’s a waste of money and incredibly misleading to students who might then add acupuncture or other nonsense into their future practice.

I just listened to James Randi on The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe talking about the same thing, only in a more insidious way. If you listen to the episode, James Randi’s interview starts at 34:21 on episode 222 from October 21, 2009. Mr. Randi had colon cancer and has found during his treatment that the NIH tacitly promotes acupuncture. This is partly paid by taxpayers. The NIH has 520 acupuncture studies listed on its website. James has a man looking at those studies. He has looked at about 220 or so and EIGHT (8) of them are positive.

So if you went there, you might think all 550 studies listed were positive, but almost all are negative. The 8 that are positive were not double blind studies, so they are invalid.

I tried to find the same list that Randi talked about but didn’t have much luck. What I did find was the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) which is part of the National Institute of Health (NIH).  This site is very pro-CAM. Unfortunately while it legitimizes CAM and mainstreams it, I am not sure how the actual research has been done. The spotlights of the studies are vague and lack detail of actual study methods and results.

Are they trying to justify their $22 million dollar investment? Have many of the people in charge of NCCAM been given their jobs because they already believe in CAM? I’m pretty sure a lot of them are CAM proponents and were before they started the research project with the government. Needless to say, I don’t have all the answers. If you have any hard evidence about NCCAM or the studies in question, please comment or email me.

Also, if CAM is mainstreamed, doesn’t it just then become Medicine? No, not if there’s still no science behind it. But if you take an herb and find out that there is something in it that has medicinal value, research and study it for efficacy and safety and all that good stuff, then you can standardize it and make it safe and consistent to take. Plain old herbal supplements from the health food store don’t offer any of that.

Give me science based medicine any day over pseudoscience, thank you very much.

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I wanted to share some great lolcats with you on my favorite holiday, while warning you of some issues that may have passed below your radar for this All Hallow’s Eve.

Don’t buy candy for today! Halloween is Lucifer’s holy day and the candy in the store has been cursed and filled with demons according to Charisma Magazine. Kimberly Daniels wantonly tells us about the horrors of this most satanic day of the year.

I know, it’s probably too late for you. You already bought your Halloween candy weeks ago. My suggestion is to eat all of the candy in one sitting while praising Lucifer as you unwrap each blasphemous piece of chocolaty evilness. If you can’t light a bonfire to dance around naked in your front yard, light a candle and roast marshmallows over it. That will suffice.

Don’t give the candy to those little kids that come begging at your door! It will fill their innocent little souls with demons! You really must eat the candy for yourself and imbibe the demons to help save our future from demonic possession. Daniels says it all in her diatribe. But I give you solutions. That’s just the kind of blasphemous, godless heathen that I am.

On another note, why not find a Judgement House to scare you onto the straight and narrow? Having trouble with your kids? This is the solution for you. Drag your kids to JH to experience a dramatic walk-through of the “truth” of people’s choices and their horrific consequences. It’s good stuff for terrifying kids with the “love” of god into their hearts.

Another version is Hell House which shows all kinds of sin and torments of the damned in hell. It might help with those uppity kids you can’t manage, and again, it will show the boundless “love” of god in all his heinous “glory”.

And last but not least, the catholic church in Africa is being destroyed by witchcraft! Experts in Kenya say witchcraft is real and is destroying the church. Scholars are upset that the church continues to dismiss the dark arts as mere superstition, thereby unwittingly helping the devil advance his reign! Oh noes!

Unfortunately, on a serious note, in the name of witchcraft, many innocent children, albinos and people are killed, mutilated and tortured in the name of witchcraft in Africa.

So have a happy unholy day today! Happy Halloween!

This is for my Hunny Bunny on our 13th wedding anniversary today. Luvz U!

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