Tag: conservatives

Atheism and Morality

by jcafesin, posted in christianity, Uncategorized

An Atheist on Morality…

Einstein did not believe in God, as many [mistakenly] claim.

Albert Einstein said, “My position concerning God is that of an agnostic.” He clarified, “The word God is, for me, nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

Atheists don’t believe in God either. Not any god/s. Ever. Unlike Agnostics, open to the possibility of a ‘higher power,’ or ‘collective, sentient being,’ Einstein believed in neither. Agnostic is politically correct, less threatening than Atheist, especially during Albert’s time, born a Jew, and existing on federal and university funding.

I am an Atheist. I do not recognize the Old or New Testament, and related works illuminating the adventures of a divine being as anything more than fiction — parables by some wise, some ignorant, but guaranteed partisan male scribes with an agenda to dominate and control others.

So, when I need money, [as an Atheist] why don’t I go rob someone? Or shoplift?

When I’m attracted to my neighbor’s husband, why don’t I hit on him, get intimate if he’s into it? 

When I get pissed off at the driver on their cellphone that just cut me off, why don’t I just shoot her?

Snatch & Run, illicit affairs, even murder these days, and the odds of getting caught for these crimes are somewhat nominal if done discreetly. Fear of being busted is not the main motivation that prevents me from committing these, and ‘lesser’ crimes, like lying, cheating, and behaviors that most would agree, religious or not, are moral infractions.

If I believe I answer to no higher power, where do I get my morality?

Einstein said, “We have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem — the most important of all human problems.”

Without a priest, rabbi, or holy man telling me what to think and how to vote, and with no guidance from an omniscient god, or unbiased media outlet, I must consider my moral obligations. 

Why should I bother, and how do I know ‘right from wrong’ without a ‘divine doctrine’ to guide me?

If my parents had not gifted me life, and their parents before them…etc., I would not be here now, emersed in this experience of living. I am born owing Humanity and everything on this planet that supports our life here. We all are. All of us have a moral obligation to do our part to ensure the human race survives, and gift those to be the experience of being human.

Humans are social beings. It is mandatory we work together to survive and even thrive. We require a social structure — laws, and rules of conduct with mutually agreed-upon baselines we all must practice to partner. Breaking these rules annihilates our trust in each other, corrupting the very foundation on which relationships are built.

As an Atheist, why don’t I steal?

Do Not Steal is [generally] a mutually agreed-upon baseline. Contrary to religious rhetoric, it is not a biblical notion by some partisan scribe. Way before the written word, it proved to be a sensible rule to build trust.

I used to shoplift. My older sister showed me how when I was 7, and I stole from the local art supply store a few times until I got busted for pocketing Prismacolor pencils. The shop clerk called my mother instead of the cops. Riding home with my mom that afternoon, she explained to me that I was robbing her, my dad, and most everyone else, including myself because the store passed on the lost income from shoplifting by increasing the cost of their products. 

I created a rift with my mom, who was disappointed in me for stealing when she ‘taught me better than that.’ I created a rift with the art supply shop clerk who I saw often as a frequent customer of the store. And with my mom’s information, I understood I was serving no one shoplifting, perhaps especially myself.

Trust is the foundation of all relationships. It encourages communication, connection, and intimacy. Intimacy incentivizes reproduction. Having children ensures the human race continues to exist. (Most of us have heard the derisive term “Breeders,” referring to parents, but the absurdity of this view is lost on the idiots who use this word, as they could not utter it if they’d never been born.)

As an Atheist, why don’t I screw my neighbor’s husband?

I’ve been married for 27 years, and I have not and will never have an affair. Why? Thou shalt not commit adultery (Exodus 20:14) is not strictly biblical either. Ancient scribes adopted this notion as law from observing 200,000 years of human history.

If I have an affair with my neighbor’s husband (or wife), I am participating in creating a rift in their marriage. Even if our affair goes undiscovered, it changes the dynamic between the married couple with an intimate third now part of their once exclusive, mutually agreed-upon partnership. The rift generates a ripple effect of discord that touches the lives of many, even the adulterers, dividing households, destroying friendships, business relationships, and sometimes lead to war. 

Humans must work together to survive and thrive. War in our house or our nation is divisive and counterproductive to our continued evolution.

As an Atheist, why don’t I shoot the driver on her cell?

I fantasize about it sometimes, don’t you? Vaporizing at the idiot driver in front of you going 45 miles an hr in the fast lane while she’s texting. Seriously, I want her off the road, gone from harming anyone with her sheer arrogance in acting as if she is the One who can manage driving when statistically she is the cause of most accidents today. The cross dangling from her neck neglected to instill the value system Jesus preached: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” (Mark 12:31).

It is our moral obligation to watch out for each other. Caring for others beyond ourselves is part of what makes our social structure work. If that bitch behind the wheel on her cell hurts me, or my kids, or anyone I care about, I’m going to want to hurt her. It’s human nature to want to hurt those who have hurt us. Hurting each other, whether by thoughtlessness or intent threatens our survival and our ability to thrive.

Religion did not invent morality.

Our collective value system, the laws and rules of engagement most of us live by, religious or not, may have been written by biblical scribes, but not invented by them. The history of humanity has shown us what works and what doesn’t to preserve and encourage our evolution.

“…treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem,” Einstein said. In other words, morality is determined by humans, not handed down from on-high by some obscure being requiring blind obedience invented by partisan men looking to control the masses.

Praying for less extreme weather [from global warming], or lunatics with AR-15s to stop mass killings, or for equitable socioeconomics won’t change anything. Even if you don’t text or scroll while driving, or participate in sexual affairs, or steal, we all have a moral obligation to ensure life continues here long after we’re dead. We owe those that follow us the complex and spectacular journey of being human that we have been gifted.

Atheist or religious, we all must recognize and actualize our moral obligations to each other and this planet for humanity to survive, and thrive.

— 

Cited Notable Facts:

Murder rates are lower in more secular nations and higher in more religious countries where belief in God is deep and widespread. (Jensen 2006; Paul 2005; Fajnzylber et al. 2002; Fox and Levin 2000)

Within U.S., the states with the highest murder rates tend to be highly religious, such as Louisiana and Alabama, but the states with the lowest murder rates tend to be among the least religious in the country, such as Vermont and Oregon. (Ellison et al. 2003; Death Penalty Information Center, 2008)

Rates of most violent crimes tend to be lower in the less religious states and higher in the most religious states. (United States Census Bureau, 2006)

The top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries, and of the eight cities within the United States that make the safest-city list, nearly all are located in the least religious regions of the country. (Mercer Survey, 2008)

Domestic terrorists of the American far right are driven by zeal for heretical distortions of Christian theology. (Paul de Armond, DOJ, 1999) Christian nationalism [is] a serious and growing threat to our democracy. (Robert P. Jones, TIME Magazine, 2022)

Marketing Religion blog post with additional cited notable facts.

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

How to End SEXISM

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

My father raised me to believe my mother was ignorant. “Your mother, (implying like most women) is irrational. Fickle. Full of love and lightness, but not really a [deep] thinker.”

All women were (are) not as… capable as men, according to my father, as the woman’s primary job— her role in society of mom, caretaker, homemaker— isn’t like a real job and doesn’t take much brain power. He actually said to me, “Isn’t it odd that women can’t walk and talk at the same time,” and stopped to tell me this in all seriousness, while we were walking.

My father thought he was inherently smarter than my mother, or any woman. He was a MAN, after all. He claimed to be well read, had to be for business in the real world, unlike silly homemakers. (My mother read the newspaper daily, news magazines, new non-fiction and fiction monthly. My father read only Popular Mechanics, and watched TV. Cop and detective shows mostly, where the main white male character was rescuing ditsy, busty women.)

My mother graduated high school at 16, and attended Florida State University two years before most of the classmates she left behind in New Jersey. My father has no degree beyond high school.

My father went through five or more businesses, several of which failed, none of which ended up in substantial wins. My mother started a pilot magnet program at Cabrillo Marine Museum for underprivileged East L.A. kids, to teach them marine science. For almost 20 yrs she touched thousands of lives, many of whom I met personally, in the store or mall, when they stopped my mom to gush that they were now oceanographers and scientist because of her program. As a woman, she made 1/3 of the men whom she worked beside, offering comparable programs.

What is SEXISM?

Sure, most of us will agree equal pay for equal work, regardless of gender is an important step in ending sexual inequality. According to Variety, the top paid actress for a single film of 2021 was Jennifer Lawrence, at $25M. Actor Daniel Craig, made $100 million. Women had only 34% of the speaking roles in major movies, according to Women and Hollywood. (Women are half of the human population, yet no actress is even close to #2, 3, 4, in equal pay or presence in film.)

In 2020, almost 60 years after the United States passed the Equal Pay Act, Pew Research says a woman earns only 84% of what a man makes.

So, why, even today, are women fighting so hard for equal pay, which most of us agree is one obvious step to ending SEXISM?

BELIEF. Both sexes still believe women are ‘less’ than men.

My father was born in 1929, when MEN WERE MEN, and everyone ‘knew their role.’ His mother, my grandmother, was a homemaker. His father, my grandfather, was a pianist for the New York Philharmonic, and the breadwinner for his family. To make it through the depression years, and the harsh realities of being a Jew through WW2, each family member had a role, a function to fulfill to assure the family unit was maintained—literally stayed alive, however modest an existence.

From caveman days through the 1940s many jobs required physical labor suited to a man’s physiology, as technology wasn’t here yet. Humans, not robotics, built our vehicles and appliances, and manufacturing was a man’s job even after the war, before it went offshore.

Fast forward to present day. Last Sunday my husband is reading me an article on the feminist #MeToo movement in the New York Times, while I cook pancakes for him and our two teens. At the end of the article he sighs heavily, his ‘this is absurd’ sigh, and says, “It gets so tiresome hearing women complain how hard they have it. It’s equally hard on men, and always has been.”

I looked at him incredulously, and said, “How many times have you been sexually assaulted on the job?”

He didn’t respond to my rhetorical question. I already knew his answer. Zero. He didn’t turn my question around. He knew an investor in my very first startup tried to rape me in my office at our Christmas party, then fired me that night for not letting him assault me. He knew my second job out of college, as an Art Director for 1928 Jewelry Company, the CEO came into the empty conference room moments after me, introduced himself, and instead of taking my outstretched hand, squeezed my breast, as if checking the firmness of an orange. I’ll never forget, he said, “Mmm, Nice!” before I pulled away, shamed as others I’d yet to meet walked in.

My husband wasn’t at my housewarming party, when a relative accompanying an invited guest tried to assault me when I found him at my work-space on my Mac. I could go on, but you get my point. And even knowing all this, my husband is “sick of hearing women whine about how hard we have it.”

Can’t blame him, really. My father-in-law talked down to my mother-in-law, probably all their lives together, but clearly in the 20 years I’d been on the scene of their married life. He was cruel and cutting with a continual barrage of snide ‘jokes,’ if he listened to her at all. My husband tells tales of his mom going ballistic on his dad every few months, probably when she’d had enough of trying to communicate with him while he verbally slammed her, or, by and large, ignored her.

To this day, most men do not BELIEVE a woman is as ‘equal’ to them as other men.

The problem is, most women BELIEVE this too. We do not feel equal. Why would we? We get paid less for the same job. Our bodies are more valued then our minds (as so many men, especially wealthy men—think Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Fox News Roger Ailes, or Pres. Clinton—can’t seem to get their brain out of their little head). Our personal rights are being stripped away state by state as our Supreme Court dictates what we can do with our own bodies. Women are rarely taken seriously by the overwhelmingly male controlled business world, nor in our home environments.

How many women reading this post did most of the cooking and serving of your last holiday meal, even with a career/job? How many of you do most of the cooking, cleaning, chauffeuring of the kids, even working full time? The fact is, according to the 50 news articles I just read, women still do 80 – 90% of all domestic chores, including kid care, regardless of her job status. Equal pay for equal work, of course, but also equal WORK must be invested by both genders to reach sexual equality.

How do we get there from here? I honestly have no idea, other than to stand up, and say, “NO! Not OK,” whenever you are a victim, or see the action of SEXISM.

Since the mastodons are all gone, and we can now buy packaged meat at Safeway, we no longer require the muscular physique of the male physiology to survive as a race. Since most women are now bringing to the table of any union equal intellectual, logistical and financial support, men are rapidly losing their position of strength, figuratively and literally (with obesity at an all time high).

Men have dominated the business world from the beginning, and this too must change. It isn’t “locker room talk.” It is degrading, and women buy into it, thinking our value really is just in our breasts and how accessible our vagina to those that show interest. At the very least, women are made to feel we must acquiesce to this humiliating behavior men dish out to be heard at all.

This BELIEF, that women are lesser than men, by both genders must end, before SEXISM is a non-issue.

Humans, all of us, ACT as we BELIEVE.

Change the BELIEF, and change the actions of SEXISM.

STOP Believing. START THINKING

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

My father is a fervent Republican. My mother was a Democrat. I once saw him put his fist through the maple cabinet an inch from my mother’s head because her vote was going to cancel his in the second Reagan election. Though he never hit her, connected anyway, he often shouted, slammed things, threw things, even at me, when he encountered resistance (reason) when espousing his conservative views.

My father doesn’t believe Global Warming is real or caused by us in any way (absolving himself of conserving resources).

My father believes all non-believers — atheists and agnostics — are dangerous fools to be converted.

My dad distrusts all Muslims.

My dad believes in trickle-down economics, though it’s been proven again and again it makes the rich richer while wiping out the middle class.

My father doesn’t believe in gun control. “If they come for me, I’ll stop them at the door.” He quotes the NRA with fervor! “Take away what kind of guns we get to own, and you chip away at the foundation of the 2nd Amendment,” he preaches.

I remind him he can’t stop a tank with an AK-47. I implore him to examine history, and context, that the right to bear arms our forefathers were talking about were pistols and shotguns that took three minutes to load and didn’t fire straight or would blow up in your face. Automatic assault weapons were neither considered, nor anticipated when the 2nd Amendment was written.

He scoffs. As his daughter, and a woman, I am clueless.

As a mother of two amazing, spectacular children, I am horrified, not only by mass shootings on school campuses, but everywhere else, every time an assault weapon is used against our own because the NRA wants to stay rich. And our government officials, Republican senators in particular, ostensibly “by the people, for the people,” are paid off by gun lobbyists to let them.

I grew up in L.A., on the Valley side of the Hollywood Hills. I went to school with writers, producers, directors’ kids, all fairly to extremely liberal. My father was the outlier in our neighborhood and among my parents’ colleagues and friends. The Great Divide between the Republicans and Democrats, fueled by Reagan pushing religion, conservatism, then ignited by Bush Jr’s Christian administration, and then concretized in lies, ignorance, and hate by Trump, didn’t exist yet. My parents lived together in relative peace, except around election times.

We have become a polarized nation and this serves no one here. On the personal level, it has divided me from my family. My siblings, like my father, are fervent Republicans. My sister, disgusted we’re raising our kids without religion, decided she’d had enough of my liberal leanings and checked out of our lives entirely, leaving our kids deeply hurt their aunt had abandoned them. My brother used to forward me emails from his Born-Again community that Obama was a Jew-hating Muslim who believed it’s okay to kill babies. Trump Made America Great — empowering men to be men again by stripping women our rights to our bodies. My brother’s ignorance is only eclipsed by his blind faith in his Christian leaders’ conservative rhetoric.

The chasm in our morality and our philosophies is so diametrically opposed at this point that the rare times I talk with my father our dialog quickly sours, then invariably turns contentious. I’ve told him time and again I won’t discuss politics with him, but he insists on little digs, like, “Do you care about your kids?” He has not spoken with our children, his grandkids, in 7 years, or acknowledged them in any way, not birthdays, no calls, ever, and virtually never inquirers about them when I call him, which I always do because he doesn’t call me.

Truth is, it’s getting harder and harder to call him. Almost two decades after my mom’s death, my father is undaunted by age or illness in his quest to spread conservative lies. He’s a true believer (as are most hard-core Republicans) because believing is easier than thinking. Being told what is right and wrong, good or bad, is simpler than considering the complexities of our behavior, and our obligations to each other and the world we inhabit.

My remaining family believes women should not have the right of choice with our own bodies.

My father and siblings believe gays should not have the legal, nor moral right to marry. They believe homosexuality is a mental illness.

My family espouses they believe in “less government,” preaching the Republican’s canonical tagline, but want to govern (restrict) women’s choice and limit our birth control resources; govern who is allowed to marry; limit healthcare to those who can afford it; allow corporations to buy politicians for corporate greed. They’d prefer to believe the GOP rhetoric that Global Warming isn’t happening and support the ‘rights’ of Big Oil to drill and frack our planet to death, instead of investing in renewable energy for our kids, and the welfare of Earth forward.

I’ve been wondering when it’s time to say goodbye to family, even before they die. I’ve been grieving my sister’s departure from our lives since her exit 15 yrs ago. The little connection I retain with my brother and father seems… over. My kids have no relationship with either. We have virtually no common ground and share little time that doesn’t quickly turn combative. So really, what’s the point of trying to stay in touch? Harsh? You bet. Ugly? Yeah. I’m profoundly saddened that we’ve come to this impasse. Hurts. A lot, knowing almost half our nation feels as my family does. And I am mystified, disgusted, and shamed by their gullibility in choosing blind faith over science, thought, and reason.

We are again on the precipice of our survival as one nation, but this time the war isn’t with rifles that blow up in our faces. Now we must recognize the enemy is ourselves — choosing ignorance over reason because it’s easier to binge-watch Netflix, peruse Instagram, or stream gameplay on Twitch than it is to think.

My daughter, a recent college grad, told me most of her friends — this new round of young voters — didn’t vote in this last election. They were ‘taking a stand,’ showing how they feel about our government, they claimed, neglecting to understand without voting they essentially voted in Trump. They were told not to vote by Republican ads targeted at them through social media, and blindly believe their feeds, not knowing, or even caring that what they are scrolling through is personally targeted at them, and designed to manipulate them to buy, try, subscribe, and believe in snake oil.

The chasm between us will continue to grow with more believers buying into the derisive rhetoric of their online feeds, their religious leaders, politicians, Google’s search results, and ‘personalized’ targeted marketing on social media platforms and apps. More families are finding themselves on opposite sides of an ideological divide that will likely tear them apart, like mine, unless we STOP believing and start thinking what is right, not only for ourselves and our family, but broader, more complex considerations that include finding and creating ways to help our neighbors, community, this country, and our planet thrive.

Abortion and Choice

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

I was 16 weeks pregnant, with my first baby, when the results of an amnio told me that the wanted child I was carrying was not healthy. I have always been pro-choice, and never considered it a moral dilemma to terminate a fetus with severe Down’s Syndrome, or other life threatening, or debilitating abnormalities. Although I was aware that my advanced age of 39 increased my risk of potential problems, I was totally unprepared for the results from this technology, and the choice I would have to make.

We received the news on a gray Thursday afternoon in late December that the baby girl inside of me had an extra X chromosome, also known as Trisomy 47XXX. While waiting for clarification from a genetic counselor on the following Monday, I spent the next three days searching for information. I sat in the old, stone library in Concord, Massachusetts, crying uncontrollably with each line I read from a Psychology Today article on XXX. “Severe learning disabilities.” “Severe emotional disabilities.” “Slow motor development.” “Shy.” “Withdrawn.” I rubbed my swollen belly, trying to feel my daughter inside of me, fear welling up and gathering momentum. My stoic husband sat next to me, silently reading along. On the way home we talked, we cried, we argued about what to do next. We decided to wait to make any decisions until we could get more information, except there was little out there, and everyone we spoke with had some kind of agenda.

The genetic counselor insisted that the information we had gathered over the weekend was outdated and biased. A few minutes later she called in a staff OB/GYN who showed us a picture of a beautiful 8-month old XXX baby, swinging in her electric swing on a whitewashed, sun-drenched porch, smiling happily for the camera. The doctor then asked us if we would be willing to participate in her study if we decided to “keep our daughter.” During the following week, we spoke with doctors from around the world with any knowledge of XXX, who gave us a positive or negative spin depending on their personal views on abortion. We spoke with a social worker that dealt with the parents of handicapped children, who was subtly but clearly for termination.

I solicited advice from my parents. My father (who never changed a diaper in his life) told me to keep her. My mother said not to. We spoke with parents of XXX children. All of the children had suffered learning disabilities, delayed motor skills, were withdrawn, and had required special education. They told us how exhausting it was, how expensive raising a handicapped child. They spoke about mortgaging their home, and going into debt to afford the special care they needed for their XXX child. They spoke of the constant heartache watching their child suffer with depression, anger, loneliness, growing up both physically and academically challenged. But all the parents claimed they loved their daughters.

A decision had to be made quickly, before I felt her moving inside me. I knew if I felt her I could never give her up. At just 4 months, an insentient collection of cells inside me, she was still an abstraction, even though on ultrasound I had seen her entire body, the emerging vertebrae of her backbone, the two hemispheres of her brain, the protrusions of tiny feet and hands. “The ghost in the machine,” my husband had called her. I held my belly and begged my daughter to tell me what she wanted me to do, knowing the decision would be mine, feeling the weight of that decision ripping apart the fabric of my tightly woven self-image.

What kind of person was I that I would kill my daughter because she wasn’t perfect? Faced with the probability of a slow child, spending the rest of my life watching her struggle to fit in, feel accepted beyond our family, focusing every day on the care of a handicapped child, seemed overwhelming. The cost of raising kids without illness would require both my husband and I to work till we died. And while I’d always pictured having two children, gifting them a sibling, a confident for each other, we’d have to forego having another child to afford the continual care required for our XXX daughter.

It occurred to me that most of us go through life thinking we are generally good, honest, caring people because this view is rarely challenged, as most of our actions aren’t based on critical, pivotal, character-defining decisions. From the moment I got the amnio results, I knew my life would never be the same again. Technology had given me insight, and now forced me to make a choice.

This was undoubtedly the hardest decision my husband and I would ever have to make, but it was ours to decide, granted to us alone in a state where abortion is still legal. Only we, the parents of the pregnancy, could decide what we felt capable of providing our child. If we lived in Texas, the state could force us to give birth to an ill baby, spend everything we made on drugs, specialize schools and care, and damn us to the unbearable torture of watching her struggle daily, likely for the rest of our lives.

A week later we arrived at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Waltham, and were assaulted by protesters. They held signs that read, “Save Unborns,” and “Choose Life.” They crowded around my husband and I shouting, “Baby Killers!” and “Murderers!,” preventing us from getting into the building until a cop came out and pushed them back. They were amped on self-righteous indignation, full of religious fervor. They’d go home to their Christian conservative families feeling proud of themselves for making our passage into the clinic even more a nightmare than it already was. Most were young, more men than women, in their teens and early 20s, and likely had no children at all. They had no conception of what it took to raise healthy kids, yet alone devote their lives caring for a physically and emotionally afflicted child.

Doubting our own abilities to provide for a sick child pushed us into the decision that to this day, 20 yrs later, I still find shame in. But I honestly don’t know how the other decision would have played out. One of the mothers of an emotionally and physically disabled XXX 8 year old told me that if she had known that her daughter had the anomaly before she gave birth, she doubts she would have chosen to keep her. I guess when we make a decision with no good choices, the decision we make will never be okay. While I am grateful that the choice was ours to make, the trick is, finding a way to live with that choice.

A year later, and two on that, I was graced with two healthy children, now grown and on their own. But I think of Sierra often, who she would have been, how she would have been, and the lives we would have led with her. And I still ache for her. Through all the heartache that comes with raising a handicapped child, I know I would have loved her, passionately, wholly, felt that awe-inspiring humility, that magnificent intensity of love for her that I get to feel for my kids every day. And to this day, I still question my choice not to have her.

Boy Scouts of Faith-Based America

by jcafesin, posted in atheism, atheists, christians, dads, Family, family life, jews, K-12, Kids, Middle School, moms, parenting, parents, politics, psychology, racism, Religion, republicans

On the short ride home from his Boy Scout meeting, my 11 yr old son was quiet and sullen. I asked him what was up. Had anything happened at the meeting that he wanted to talk about? I saw him looking at me from my rear view mirror, gauging how to tell me disappointing news.

“I found out tonight that I can’t become an Eagle Scout.”

He’d never been all that enamored with Boy Scouts. He didn’t much care for camping, or the tough kid role so many of his contemporaries played out with the survival skills and competitive war games his scout leaders chose. He’d decided to ‘bridge’ from ‘Webelo’ Cub Scout to a full-fledge Boy Scout to become an Eagle Scout for the prestige sold to him by his troop leaders. “Presidents, senators, and successful icons like Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Neil Armstrong were Eagle Scouts.”

“College admissions officers recognize the award and consider it in their decisions. Eagle Scouts are eligible for many scholarships. Many employment recruiters look for “Eagle Scout” on a resume.” These are just a few of the perks on an Eagle Scout information page for the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), and one of the reasons we agreed when our son said he wanted to stay in their program.

I assumed he wanted to quit Boy Scouts, as he was the outlier in his troop, and had complained of being bullied at meetings and on camping trips more than a few times. I was down with him quitting, as I too felt Scouts wasn’t the right fit for him, but it was the context of what he’d said that stuck in my head, so I sought clarity. “What do you mean you can’t become an Eagle Scout?”

Again we made eye contact in the rear view mirror, and I got that my son wasn’t sad, but bemused, bordering on angry. “Mr. Baker told me tonight that even if I get all my merit badges, and fulfilled all the other Boy Scout requirements through middle school and high school, I’m not qualified to become an Eagle Scout.”

I felt my heart start pounding. “Why?”

“The new scout master said in order to achieve Eagle Scouts, or any other rank, Boy Scouts must live the Scout Oath, which means we have to believe in God.”

My husband and I introduced our son to scouting when he was 5 yrs old. Fourteen Christians and one Jew, and our kid was the only member of his Webelo troop being raised without religion. Most of our neighbors, and our kids classmates attended the local church. My husband and I are Atheists. Our kids are not privy to the benefits of participating in this tight-knit religious network. Scouting seemed like a positive way for our son to meet other boys his age in our area.

We didn’t consider the Boy Scouts an exclusively religious organization. We’d heard stories, of course, and knew of the pending lawsuit in the supreme court filed by a father for discrimination against his son who claimed to be an atheist. It motivated me to ask the women at the Cub Scout table during school registration if their troop was religious, and if so, how. Both women assured me their Den had several different faiths among its members, and their policy was to keep religion at home, not practice it in scouting.

They were true to their word during the first five years our son belonged to their Den, participating in most events from hikes, to community drives for food banks, and even popcorn sales. He earned quite a few merit badges along the way. Religion, even prayer, was never practiced or promoted in any way. He bridged from Cub Scout at the end of fifth grade, and at 11 yrs old became a full Boy Scout with the aim of eventually becoming an Eagle Scout in high school.

Picking him up from his first official Boy Scout meeting a few months back, my son informed me the troop he’d bridged to said prayers at the end of their meetings. I asked him how he felt about that. He confessed he’d already branded himself a non-believer. The scout master asked him to lead the prayer at the end of that first meeting. He’d refused, stating he wasn’t sure there was a God, and he thought praying was a waste of time because he was certain there wasn’t anyone listening. Though he’d been publicly labeled “misinformed” by the scout master at that meeting, and endured jeers and taunts from several of the boys, every Webelo he’d been with the last five years had bridged to this new troop. Our son didn’t want to look for a new non-religious troop, with a bunch of kids he didn’t know. He just wouldn’t recite what he didn’t believe, he’d told me.

That wasn’t good enough for advancement, according to his new scout master, who asked him again last Friday night to say a closing prayer. No matter how lax about religion our son’s lower division den, rank of Boy Scouts and higher stuck to the rules of the BSA, he told our son. A religious association, and faith in God is required for rank advancement. Commitment to community service, practicing Scouting’s core values of “honesty, compassion,” as well as continually exhibiting “diligence as a contributing team member,” were irrelevant. Belief in a god was more important than social service. Atheism is a sin, the scout master assured our son at the end of last Friday’s meeting.

“I could lie that I believe,” my son suggested, “If I have to…”

“Think that’s a good idea?” I asked, glad to be driving, which made it easier to keep emotional distance and sound casual.

“Maybe. I just don’t get why I have to pretend I believe in God. The Boy Scout handbook says we’re supposed to ‘respect and defend the rights of others to practice their own beliefs.’ But they’re not.”

Ah, from the mouths of babes…

He’s right, of course. Click on the ‘Litigation’ link on the official BSA website, and bring up the “Duty to God” page. Part of the Scout Oath proclaims the scout will ‘do his duty to God [and country].’ Every level of advancement requires a promise or show of faith in God. Boy Scouts are instructed to respect the beliefs of others, but this respect should only be awarded to those that believe in the Christian/Judaeo God. Turns out, prejudice, hate, racism are systemic to the Boy Scouts of America, and a large part of what they promote.

Nowhere in the BSA literature we received and perused before or after our son joined the Boy Scouts did they say they were a faith-based organization that required their members to be believers to receive equal rights and privileges as those granted to religious members. Had they disclosed this with all transparency, as do churches and other religious organizations pushing their beliefs, I doubt my husband and I would have channeled our son to participate.

We impose no religion on our kids. We discuss it often— the concept of one god verses many; various cultures and their belief systems from ancient to modern man, using everything from the Tao to biblical references. Our kids get additional religious education through their friends, and faith-based celebrations with extended family. My husband and I hope to expose our children to many possibilities, and let them discover their own spirituality.

Parents who provide religious training for their kids early on, and, it would appear, register them in Boy Scouts, are looking to validate their beliefs by indoctrinating their kids with the religion in which they were raised. And most of these parents have never stopped to consider whether the rhetoric their parents sold them is truth. They are blind believers, and turn their children into the same.

“The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) takes a strong position, excluding atheists and agnostics,” according to Wikipedia. In 2014 the BSA finally voted to allow gay kids. They still ban atheists.

Perhaps the BSA is a front for the church, and works to convert unsuspecting non-believers working to advance in their organization. Hook the kids without religiosity when they’re young, in Cub Scouts. Get them to work hard for advancement, then deny them further advancement unless they convert to Christianity. Whatever BSAs agenda, and our son now sees they clearly have one, the meeting with his troop leader last Friday night soured him to continuing in scouting. It’s a shame, really, because the Boy Scouts have so many positives to offer. Weirdly enough, they tout much of the same morality I preach to my kids, like being courteous, and honest, loving and compassionate. The only difference between us is I don’t believe a god gave us this wisdom. I give credit to humanity, over eons, watching what works to build thriving societies.

There is no god that’ll save us from hate, prejudice, nationalism, and exclusionary religious sects like the BSA who lure kids in, like the Pied Piper, under the guise of community involvement, then change the rules mid-play. Regardless of our differences, religiously, culturally, politically, PEOPLE, me and you, must use our collective wisdom to unite as one race—the Human race—for our continued existence.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

(An Atheists View of Religion)

Religion is one of the few remaining barriers to humanity’s advancement at this time. Perhaps it had a purpose once, when we were all closer to apes in mental development, but we’re not anymore. We are living the Reign of Man. We’re effectively Gods here now.

Relying on mysticism to define our world is dangerous at best. It blinds us from the reality at hand—that there is nothing to save us from ourselves but ourselves. We are all individually responsible for our world and everyone and everything on it. Where in the past the world was large, and to survive people banded together, today our world is so very small. And we have the power to destroy it.

Structured belief systems divide us instead of unite us. Religions preach commonality only with their followers. They promote the differences to set theirs apart from the myriad of others. We can no longer maintain divided clusters running around thinking their way is the only truth, or the only way. We are a global world now. Integrating. Blended. We must not only understand, but act on the fact that we are intricately connected with each other and everything else here.

Cultural assimilation isn’t a bad thing. Interracial marriage is an absolute necessity for our survival, and doesn’t have to rob us of our traditions. Ethnicity— a rich representation of our history—can and should be passed on, just without the divisive labels of the past. You can celebrate Christmas without calling yourself Christian. You don’t have to be Jewish to eat bagels and lox. Derisive ideologies must be eliminated. Not all Catholics are against abortion. Jews don’t have a corner on being neurotic, nor Muslims on being fanatics.

At this time in humanity’s development, it is imperative we become thinkers, innovators, not continue to be followers of a mythological narrative most adopted from their parents without much consideration or independent spiritual investigation. Indoctrinating our young with religion leaves them little chance to think outside the box we’ve guided them to join us in. While we all must acknowledge we stand on the shoulders of giants, and never lose site of history, assimilation is integral for our evolution. Without coming together as one race, and very soon at that, we will most likely divide and conquer each other. War with a bang, or disease with a whisper, if we don’t work together to face the issues of this planet, the human race will not survive the fallout of our factioning.

Promoting or proselytizing religion at this point in our history hinders our development, and just may hasten our imminent demise. Sending your kids to religious school, or raising them with a religious identity may seem innocuous, even righteous, but propagating ideological foundations that fundamentally promotes division must be discarded if we hope to continue humanity’s evolution forward.

Marketing and Religion

by jcafesin, posted in atheism, atheists, blog, business, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, growth hacking, lean startup, marketing, psychology, Religion, republicans, Silicon Valley, Small Business Marketing, startups

Do you believe in God?

Why?

Likely because your mother taught you to—marketing to you throughout your formative years the benefits of belief:

  • Community
  • Solace
  • Salvation

Your beliefs were marketed to you through holiday celebrations, and maybe Sunday school and prayer. Even if mom, and/or your dad, didn’t directly push their beliefs onto you, they likely sold your religion to you via example: crossing themselves when hopeful; saying (and believing) “thank god,” instead of giving the credit to the person or people who brought about whatever they were thankful for.

Religion is a PRODUCT. Always has been—a way for the few in power to control the masses. Christians, Jews, Muslims, all major religions have become successful, thriving businesses through MARKETING…

Read more:
https://lnkd.in/d8ZKxE77

United We Live. Divided We Die.

by jcafesin, posted in Covid, covid19, Uncategorized, vaccinated, vaccinations, vaccines

I’m lying on the nurse’s exam table, legs spread in stirrups while she takes a vaginal sample for a pap smear. I’m there for an annual checkup, new to the area, and her practice. As I describe some minor chest pains, she asks me if I’ve gotten the Covid vaccine.

I say, yes, of course, five months back, soon after it was available for my age range. I’d unmasked in her small office when entering because she was not wearing one, nor her two assistants, and I’d just assumed anyone working in a women’s health clinic, especially a medical facility servicing an upscale suburb of Seattle, was vaccinated.

I’m naked and unmasked on her table while she tells me with certainty that my chest pains are likely caused by the vaccine. She then goes on a rant, telling me I would not believe what she sees daily—how her vaccinated patients are getting sick, women are becoming sterile, or losing their babies, and that the vaccine is killing more people than it’s helping.

I don’t believe that, I say. What possible reason would the govt have for killing its citizens?

She has no answer for this. She just keeps on about how hard it is to report side-effects to the CDC, how the paperwork is “this thick,” the distance between her thumb and forefinger as wide as she can spread them, indicating how difficult it seemingly is for medical professionals to report complications from the vaccine.

My skin is crawling as she rants. She tells me that she had Covid two weeks ago, and not only were the symptoms “not bad, like a minor cold,” but she is, “chock-full of antibodies now.” She assures me that there has not been enough research on the Covid vaccines, and regardless of any mandates, she will not get it.

She now has her fingers inside of me, checking for lumps or abnormalities, so I don’t feel in any position to argue with her. I ask her how she thinks we can shut down Covid without vaccinations. She says, “We can’t. People will die. The strong will survive, and that’s the way it is.”

She finally finishes her exam and moves back so I can get up. The room is maybe 10 x 12 ft, so we are face-to-face, unmasked, but she continues. She tells me that the vaccine misinformation is like the “fake election results.” There is no stopping Covid, which is why her clinic is “vaccine-free,” and she laughs, in my face, at this announcement. She just had Covid and is not vaccinated. Nor is the young assistant who took my blood sample. Nor is the front desk woman who checked me in. And the Moderna vaccine I had in March is losing effectiveness. The Delta variant is rampant. And ‘break-through’ Covid cases among vaccinated adults is becoming more common.

I put my mask on before we leave the small exam room. I can’t wait to get out of there.

It has been over a month since this encounter. I’ve been debating whether to share my story about this event with my neighbors through the app NextDoor, but I do not want to start a flame war online, or hurt this nurse’s practice. Besides the rant, she was professional and did her job efficiently. I am also afraid of some conservative nut job coming to my home and hurting my family because we believe in getting the Covid vaccine—for ourselves, our kids, our community, and our world. We’ve done the research and the data shows us with enough people vaccinated, humanity can shut this virus down, and stop it from prematurely killing more people.

Vaccination hesitancy is valid, real, and needs to be constantly addressed with scientific proof to thwart the fake news pushed out by conservatives groups looking to get Trump reelected in 2024. In fact, we do not know a lot about the long-term effects of the vaccine we’ve created, however, we are watching our family, friends and neighbors die, suffocate to death in droves every day for the last year and a half. This is also science fact, and we must shut this reality down now.

We’ve been administering vaccines since the mid 1960s. I remember getting the sugar cube with the polio vaccine. The only long term side effect of that vaccine was to eliminate polio globally. Measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccines were introduced in the early to mid 1960s, and my mom got us vaccinated immediately after the pediatrician’s recommendation. There were no “anti-vaccination” people back then. We were all just so grateful for the opportunity to wipe out horribly debilitating, and often deadly diseases.

The anti-vaccination ‘movement’ began with a discredited study from one arrogant, [proven] corrupt doctor, Andrew Wakefield. He was disbarred from practicing medicine and struck off the UK medical registry after publishing his 1998 paper falsely claiming a link between the MMR vaccines and autism. Full of contempt for being fired, he moved to the U.S. where he megaphoned his [proven] false findings across media, garnering followers who then repeated the fake findings in Wakefield’s corrupt ‘study,’ collecting more advocates to proselytize his lies.

Polio to flu vaccines have proven to prevent these illnesses with no long term side effects for over 70 years. We’ve been testing RNA vaccines on animals and humans for decades. Moderna and Pfizer are mRNA vaccines. They’d both been tested on tens of thousands of people well before released to the public. Now, billions across the globe are proving the side effects of a Covid19 vaccine are minimal, mild at best for most of us, and don’t last long. Unfortunately, we are also finding the safeguards afforded the fully-vaccinated against getting Covid aren’t lasting too long either.

So, if you’re still afraid there are long term side effects from the vaccine, and since it doesn’t even last, why bother getting vaccinated?

If 70% of the U.S. Population got vaccinated as soon as it was available for them to do so, we could have shut this virus down by now. Yet, our Republican representatives have used this pandemic to increase our nation’s political divide in hopes of securing reelection. They don’t seem to care that pushing ‘No Mask’ mandates are killing people. Using Facebook, Instagram, Google and YouTube, they go after ignorant religious conservatives—devout Christians, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, because these people are prone to blind belief if the message is delivered by a preacher, or powerful speaker.

An anti-vaxxer marks the nurse at the women’s health clinic as a likely Republican. She has clearly bought into the political crap served to her mobile, her computers, her TV daily, from Recommendation algorithms that track her every move, analyze her posts, texts…etc., and pushes online content she’ll respond to. She has clearly not researched the science behind these vaccines, and without facts, she likely doesn’t realize these ads are scamming her to ignite her ire. Hitler ignited Germany’s ire, and then was elected their Chancellor. And while this nurse survived Covid, if she had it at all, its mutations, like the Delta variant, don’t care who you are or what you believe in to infect, and quite possibly kill you, or someone you love.*

United and vaccinated we beat this virus. Divided we spread Covid19, and die.

—

*Over 630,000 deaths from Covid19 are documented in the U.S. as of 8/24/21. The real figure of Covid deaths in the U.S. is estimated to be closer to a million or more—deaths that went unreported as Covid19 related.

This is the SCIENCE, the FACTS about how and why the TARGETED mRNA vaccines work to kill Covid without hurting any other part of your body:

A POLITICAL JOKE

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

A woman in a hot air balloon realizes she is lost. She
lowers her altitude and spots a man fishing from a
boat below.

She shouts to him, ‘Excuse me, can you help me? I
promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I
don’t know where I am.’

The man consults his portable GPS and replies, ‘You’re
in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a
ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are
at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100
degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

She rolls her eyes and says, ‘You must be a
Democrat!’

‘I am,’ replies the man. ‘How did you know?’

‘Well,’ answers the balloonist, ‘everything you tell
me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to
do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly,
you’re not much help to me.’

The man smiles and responds, ‘You must be a Republican.’

‘I am,’ replies the balloonist. ‘How did you know?’

‘Well,’ says the man, ‘You don’t know where you are or
where you’re going. You’ve risen to where you are, due
to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise
that you have no idea how to keep, and now you expect
me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same
position you were in before we met, but, somehow,
now it’s my fault.