Wow. I haven’t had much time for blog-reading lately, and today gifted myself a few minutes to read. Over at Hands Full of Rocks, Hedra describes the difference between love and adoration — specifically where our children are concerned. I would certainly argue that the distinction applies to all relationships.

Here’s a smidge:

Love, in my opinin, is better than adoration. Love is an equal-to-equal proposition. It has the opportunity for respect instead of worship. One can’t negotiate with the being one worships – they always have the upper hand, always have the power position, always must win, simply because they are more worthy than we.

Love puts us eye to eye with our kids. It says ‘I’m worthy, and you are worthy, so let’s work on getting us both what we each need.’ Love lets us embrace the rotten miserable awful parts of our child’s behavior and character, instead of rejecting them. When we embrace the things we dislike about our child, then we can work with those issues as whole parts of our whole child, rather than trying to cut off, squash, or negate the things we wish they didn’t have as aspects of personality or skill. The same is true of ourselves – I’m better at working on an issue in myself if I embrace it first, recognize it as ‘of me’.

Very true — I can certainly work on my own issues more if I accept them first.

While love is more messy, it’s also much more powerful and real. From the receiving end, I can tell that Maya, at least, craves the love, even as much as she enjoys the adoration. As Gavin continues to come into his own personhood, I hope I remember to frequently step back from adoring him so that I can SEE him.

Read the whole thing. Hedra’s description of watching her son morph from destructo to deconstructionist before her eyes is a powerful example of what we can see if we stop assuming we know who people are.

from Indexed:

To me, it’s almost painfully appropriate that this ran on Groundhog Day. In my striving to become who I want to be, it feels like I live the same challenges over and over…and over…and over.

Nothing profound to say about these; just need a spot to hold on to them for future thought and musing.

These, on religion and morality:

• Religion and Morality (I Drew This)
• Religion and Morality: The Home Front (Secular Right – Reality and Reason)

A bonus link on Evolutionary Psychology:

• Intelligent have ‘better sperm’

I’m hoping to gain access to full text of the journal article that last one considers; this week’s topic in Contemporary Issues in Psych is Bio/Evo Psych.

Via the Humanist Symposium, I found one of the clearest and most concise descriptions of natural human morality that I’ve ever read. Here’s a bit:

Our concept that there is such a thing as right and wrong is hardwired into us by our evolution. We have a sort of universal “moral grammar”, but not a universal “moral language”. For instance: The notion it is wrong to harm an innocent person is universal, but specific notions of who is innocent and who is not innocent are far from being universal.

Read the rest here. As a non-theist who frequently hears from family that it’s “impossible” to find morality without God, this makes so much sense to me.

Rather than coming up with a title on my own, I’ll steal the title of the post I’m linking. Via Carnival of the Godless, I came across Holy Smoke at A Load of Bright. He compares quitting religion (as I did through December, then formally announced as of the first of 2007) to quitting smoking (which I did almost instantly in January 2004, even before I knew I was pregnant). It’s a striking comparison to me — one that resonates with me.

A sampling:

One question that is often asked of atheists is, “how are you going to replace religion? People need religion. If you take it away, what are you going to put in its place?” Many atheists answer this question on face value, normally with an outline of secular humanism. This is correct in a sense, but the question is actually heavily loaded. It assumes that people need religion. Do they really?

I used to think I needed cigarettes like I needed food. At times, when I was broke in university, I would scrape pennies from the floor of my car and the backs of couches to buy cigarettes while my cupboards were bare. “I need a cigarette”, I’d tell my bemused housemates, “I need one”. When you smoke, you are imbibing poison into your body. If there is one thing that, by definition, your body never needs, it is poison. I didn’t need a cigarette. I needed food. If you don’t eat, you die. If you don’t smoke, not only do you not die, you live longer! It’s easy for me to say that now, but at the time I was convinced that it was an essential.

Just as we are all born atheists, we are all born non-smokers. Do people really need religion, or do they just not know any better? Obviously, not all people need religion – the existence of happy atheists proves that. So why would some people need it and not others?

Over time, I’ve found myself filled with nearly zero angst about my walking away from religion in general, Christianity in particular. When I first even contemplated (not out loud, even — just in my head) the idea that God might just not be, the emptiness wasn’t unlike the craving for a cigarette — a loss that, had I not fed an addiction, I wouldn’t have ever recognized.

These days, when I consider religion, it’s largely in relation to how I’m raising my daughter, and how I can coach her to think critically about everything she encounters, even “truths” that I might tell her. Someday, she might be atheist/agnostic. She might be Christian. She might be Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, or a New Age flake. Whichever she becomes, my wish is that she will have spent time genuinely considering *why* she believes what she does.

Via Kate:
Boy, do I wish we had more role models who did feel like this:

“It’s completely understandable as a teenager to fret about your body,” she says. “It’s scary because you don’t know how it’s going to wind up. But I’m not a teenager any more; my body’s chosen its shape. I’d rather be strong than skinny for most roles.” (Anne Hathaway)

Read Kate’s thoughts on women and our need to continually be small.

I’ve touched on this subject before, and now that I’ve formally declared as agnostic, if not outright atheist, it’s something I feel even more strongly about.

One does not need to have a religion in order to behave in a moral, ethical manner.

Here’s a little reading on the subject, since I’m lacking time for a comprehensive post at the moment:

Living in America, this discussion usually plays out in terms of Judeo-Christian beliefs. The most common criticism about atheists is that without belief in God, we have no ethics or morals. A recent letter to the editor said, “No system of ethics … can stand alone. To make [ethics] understandable to a child, it must be clothed in religious terms, such as having an omniscient, omnipotent father in Heaven.” I completely disagree.

When a child hits another and the second child cries, the first one doesn’t need to have read the Bible or gone to Sunday school to know his action was wrong. Nor does he need to fear eternal damnation to discourage him from doing it again.

I try to teach my children right from wrong with a simple principle that most Christians will recognize. “How would you like it if Johnny took all the toy trucks and wouldn’t share them with you?” It’s not as eloquent as “do unto others,” but the message is the same and it gets the point across.

hat tip: Friendly Atheist