One of the many disturbing scenes has early-teen (and younger) children praying to a cardboard cut-out George Bush for him to rid their country of the “evil” of abortion. Another has a young child in complete meltdown, as he tries to deal with the fact of not being able to feel the presence of god around him. Of course, there is no-one around to tell him that it’s okay to let go of your imaginary friends – only a significant amount of peer-pressure reminding him that his life will continue to be empty and meaningless until he gets his Jesus-groove back.

These children are being abused. They can’t help but trust what their parents and charismatic preachers tell them, because they don’t yet have the knowledge and acumen to discern truth from lies. And by the time they are old enough to possess those tools, most of their minds will have been putrefied to the extent that shaking these dogma will no longer be possible. Then, they become parents themselves, and pass the virus along. In the meanwhile, large numbers of the voting population take very important decisions on the grounds of spurious arguments and poor evidence. An army is being created, and that army fights for conservatism and prejudice.

But seeing as the current generation of parents were victims of the same process, it’s difficult to know who – if anyone – to blame. It’s difficult to find anyone who is actually intentionally misleading these children. The parties involve are sincere in their belief that they are spreading truth and righteousness, and we are left with being able to blame only the system, rather than any actual agent involved in reinforcing that system. This powerlessness makes me angry, as a system is less easy to fight than individuals. So what can we do, to try and secure a better future? First, we can present an attractive alternative to religious world-views, by demonstrating that atheists can be happy, moral people, who are capable of as much wonder at the world that surrounds them. In fact, we can probably be more so, in that we have more agency in the actions we take, seeing as they aren’t filtered through the intermediary of the spirit-world. Second, when we get the chance to allay the sorts of troubles and confusions experienced by the child mentioned above, we can embrace our responsibility to remind them that their confusions are generated by falsehoods, and that it really is okay for her to not suffer the same delusions as the god-botherers around her do.

In the meanwhile, my future is looking pretty damn fine. After starting on such a perplexing and traumatic note, it’s ended in the best way possible. An old friend has become a partner, after our wedding in November, and we’ll make sure to protect each other as best we can from assorted threats to reason and happiness. Some true friends have been discovered, and some baggage cast aside. It’s not that surprising how much fun was had along the way – more so that it was so effortless, in that genuine trust and understanding of others feels very different to what I thought it did. And once you know that feeling, the liberation is indescribable.

On reflection, I suspect that the mistake I’d always made was in imagining that human interaction was often a zero-sum game. It sometimes is, to be sure, but far less often than I once believed. Any principles worth holding dear are presumably only valuable because of the utility they generate for you (I’m excluding fundamentalist epistemologies here) and others (assuming we should factor others in at this fundamental level). My primary utility function rested in first doing no harm, which I interpreted as being as irreproachable as possible. This meant that while people may or may not have enjoyed interacting with me, they could at least not accuse me of deceiving them. But it’s not surprising that interaction often ends up being a zero-sum game with this outlook, as my primary engagement with others was largely inward-looking, as a result of the fear of betraying the demands of that utility-function. And being inward-looking, it’s likewise unsurprising that I was often more concerned with my own utility than with that of others – even though I’ve always argued for a contractarian account of morality, whereby what satisfies others may well satisfy me in the end also. A sizeable contradiction was staring at me all along, and it’s unfortunately taken me quite long to spot it.

Avoiding this contradiction was partly a factor of complacence and partly a factor of the support system I embraced, which involved people like-minded enough that the irrationality of my position never had to be exposed. But in being forced to observe the destructive nature of the selfishness that exists at the thin end of this mindedness, I was lucky enough to start being able to observe the alternatives – which, at the end of a very long story for another day – led me to the preacherman mentioned above. There is still much to figure out, but more importantly, there is much that can’t be figured out – and that’s quite alright.

More on this another day – a cocktail, followed by some molecular gastronomy, awaits.

It’s a curious issue for those who, like myself, have no time for metaphysics. While I’d like to feel the force of ritual, and mark certain occasions in symbolically important ways, the orthodox ways of doing so usually involve nonsensical god-blathering. So after 18 or so years of studiously avoiding god’s people, and having been fortunate enough to not have anyone close die in that time, the extent of my engagement in ritual has been the 3 weddings that I’ve attended during that time (leaving aside the opening day of the Premiership season). This can, I fear, lead to a sort of desensitisation with regard to ritual, and a concomitant inability to feel it’s force. So there is a conflict between two costs associated with religion, where one can either participate in (and by participating, perhaps reinforce) religious ceremony, or one can try to find secular ways of doing the same thing, and thereby run the risk of diluting the experience, given that we aren’t that well trained in observing these events in a secular fashion.

Some occasions deserve to be marked in forceful ways. Someone’s death, for example – assuming they were important to you when alive – should be accompanied by a significant goodbye. But because saying such goodbye’s are mostly associated with religious ceremony, the question is whether we’d be able to feel that we’d said the goodbye properly, in the absence of such ceremonies.

I’m partly wondering about such things because of an imminent ritualistic occasion in my life – my own wedding. The man who is hosting the event was amused when we outlined the ceremonial part, which, in our description, involved my partner and my vows, along with an address by a friend of ours. The friend has no religious inclinations, as far as I am aware – and if he did, he’d certainly not be interested in exploring them in the context of our wedding. But the host’s issue was with our estimate that the ceremonial part would be over in 10-15 minutes, which he feared would leave people feeling like they hadn’t had full value out of the experience. And he’s right, I think, although time is the wrong criterion to use when measuring symbolic import. These occasions do need to be “weighty” to satisfy the punters, and I want the occasion to be weighty too, because, well, it is.

The above is partly why my vows have been written and rewritten a number of times now. But they are getting there. And as I was reminded yesterday (by the bride-to-be), I have a tough act to follow – myself, at my own wedding party in 1999, at which she was present…

Some of the suggestions for integrating CDD (Christian Domestic Discipline) into your marriage include:

Reassure her of your love. Though you might bring her pain during punishment, you would never do her any lasting harm.
If she is afraid of spanking or completely set against it, begin with alternative punishments.
Suggest you begin CDD in a limited capacity (for example, agree to use only your hand with a ten swat limit) until she is more comfortable with the relationship.
Assure her you’re not a sadist, and though you might be turned on by seeing her behind or by her submission to you, you will never gain pleasure from causing her pain.

But don’t for a second imagine that CDD is akin to abuse. On the contrary, one of the listed benefits of CDD is

Protection of the wife spiritually – From the accusations of the enemy and other spiritual attacks. Not being under the protected “covering” of her husband, places her outside of God’s will, and would put her in a place where the enemy has a right to attack her. If anyone, man or woman, stands OUTSIDE of the castle walls of submission to God’s order they are more open to the enemy’s attack.

If you are unfortunate enough to have chosen a heathen spouse, as I have, you’re probably out of luck. Sure, the law won’t come down on you for some mild spanking activity – but don’t expect it to result in correction. And some god-fearing women may also be unsure as to the virtues of spanking. You should carefully and patiently try to help them realise that:

If she has NOT been trained by the painful chastising, she may forfeit some peaceable fruit that could have been hers. She may spend decades trapped in bad attitudes and sinful habits that might have been corrected. She may destroy relationships, even hurt or wreck her marriage, all for the protection of her disobedient heart. DD is not a guarantee of things working out, and at times you may need to walk in FAITH in God’s wisdom. But NOT using DD may cause some habits to go on uncorrected that may be hurtful later.

Disturbingly, the authors are most likely sincere, and truly believe that believers – who lack the mental facilities required for living their lives without the guidance of ancient mythology – will reliably be able to separate CDD from spousal abuse. Furthermore, there are no doubt plenty of loving and attentive wives who are quite happy being infantilised in this fashion. Somehow, though, they manage to justify CDD while arresting the slippery slope towards behaviour like

executing stubborn kids: “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son … Then shall his father and his mother … bring him out unto the elders of his city … And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.” — Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (AV)

killing kids for mocking prophets: “Some small boys came out of the city and jeered at [the prophet Elisha], saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And … he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.”
– II Kings 2:23-24 (RSV)

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong – god does exist, and Larson described him perfectly…