I probably won’t get married or have kids…

I say probably because they say never say never.

Currently at this point in my life, being almost 23, I do not want kids, and I don’t foresee myself wanting kids any time in the future. When I tell my mother and my grandmother about this they get very upset, especially my grandmother. It’s really amusing to hear my grandmother try and convince me that I must have children, just because her view of family and gender roles is a blast from the past. (She was married in the 50’s)

I do not want to have kids for several reasons, chiefly among them is the fact that I honestly do not feel the strong need to make a copy of myself. There are billions of people on this planet, I don’t need to add to the strain by further burdening it with little versions of myself. The rest of my reasons are purely selfish, and there is nothing wrong with that.

My happiness is my number one goal. Having children would take the next twenty years of my life away from me. I would no longer be living my life for me, I’d be stuck changing diapers, rushing to keep doctor’s appointments and speeding off to band practice. I don’t want that. I have one shot at life and I want to experience and travel as much of the world as I can before I die. Giving up the prime of my life to drive a minivan full of children is not conducive to my happiness. Trying to have a raise a child and travel a lot at the same time would not be healthy for the child, so rather than try to do both or give up my dreams, I’m just not going to have children.

Furthermore, raising a child costs an incredible amount of money. Food, doctor bills, clothing, toys, school supplies, a car, birthday and xmas presents, $100,000 for a college education! Ignoring college and all the other bells and whistles, raising a kid on the bare minimum from 0-18 can cost anywhere between $126,000 and $250,000! And that’s just for one kid! I’m sorry, but that’s a quarter million dollars I don’t have. I think of how much my parents spent raising me and it blows my mind. Thousands and thousands of dollars on dental work, three surgeries, two cars, trips to Europe, and an expensive private college education. Not to mention everything else. I really do appreciate it and realize how lucky I am, but I often wonder what type of life they could have had if they didn’t have me or my sister. (To be completely honest (as sick as this might sound) during the roughest part of my life, this past summer, one of things that kept me from committing suicide was the thought of how much of a waste it would be of my parent’s money to kill myself after they spent so much money raising me)

As for getting married, the chances of finding a smart, funny, intelligent, attractive atheist woman who also does not want to have kids seems incredibly small. As much as I’d love to have a life companion like this, I doubt I’ll ever find one that isn’t already taken.

But in the very unlikely chance that I do find someone, I’m not sure if I’ll marry them. You see, my attitude on marriage has changed over the past year or two. I used to really want to get married because I wanted the recognition from other people that what I have is special. I realize now that it doesn’t matter what other people think of my relationship; they’re not in that relationship. The only opinions that matter are mine and my significant other’s. I don’t need a piece of paper from the government and an expensive party with lots of people to tell me what I feel is significant. If people want to get married, fine, but it’s not necessary or a prerequisite for being a family. In fact, I’m not sure I will get married just on the principle of the thing. Why should I get married to the person I love when other people are denied the right to marry the person they love?

If I did get married, we would have to redesign the ceremony to eliminate all the patriarchal elements. For example, I wouldn’t want my soon to be father-in-law to hand off my soon to be wife over to me. She is her own person and not his property to give to me. He can walk with her down the isle if she wants, but he doesn’t have the right to “give” her to me. I’m also not going to carry my wife over the threshold of our new place together. Again, she’s not some new property I’m bringing home from the store. She can walk over it of her own volition. In fact, I think that would mean a lot more than me carrying her since it would symbolize her knowingly and freely making the commitment as an equal person.

PS, Interesting video:

Omg, my son is dating an atheist!

I came across this and was utterly disgusted. I’m not really sure what I can say on it. I feel like most parents wouldn’t do something this horrible, but damn. That must have traumatized the poor girl. What about “love thy neighbor”?

Abortion: No. Killing my child with prayer:Sure!

After reading a nice post by Sisyphus Fragment on whether parents who kill their children by withholding medical treatment for religious reasons should go to jail, I got thinking about the implications with regards to abortion.

If it is ok for parents to cite religious belief in mistreating their children, even when it leads to death, why is it wrong to have an abortion? (I’m assuming the people killing their children by withholding medical treatment are conservative and therefore against a woman’s right to be the master of her own body)

The way I see it, abortion is the lesser of two evils when compared to the religious method of killing one’s child. In an early abortion, the fetus is unable to feel pain until 8 weeks and is not self aware.

On the other hand, an already born child can feel pain fully, and is self-aware. They may not understand what is happening, or why mom and dad won’t call 9-1-1, but they can feel their body shutting down, and they can feel the pain.

So it’s not ok to abort an unwanted child (who will most likely grow up being abused and mistreated for being an unwanted economic burden on his/her parents, and then lead a life of crime) but it is ok to kill an already born child who is fully aware that you are killing them, all because you say an invisible man in the sky wants you to not give them life saving medicine?

No, you can’t kill your children

Two parents just let their 11 year old daughter die of diabetes. The judge gave them 6 months in jail and 10 years probation….. I don’t know about you, but this makes me furious. What did these parents do to help their child? They prayed. Prayed to their non existent god and the child died because instead of getting her medical treatment, they did nothing.

Parents should not be allowed to withhold life saving medical treatment from their children. I don’t care what your religion is, the child is below the age of making rational judgments, and therefore should not be put to death because of the parent’s beliefs. “Oh, but they’re good people!” No! They are not! They murdered their daughter in the name of cave man myths!

This girl had her entire life before her, she had so much potential, but all that will never be realized because her parents made the decision to let her die rather than go to a hospital where doctors could have saved her life. And the girl had no choice in this….

Faith healing

An old college acquaintance of mine recently announced that a friend of hers had been cured of cancer for the fifth time. While I wholeheartedly agree that this is wonderful and amazing news, I disagree that it was her friend’s faith in Jesus that cured her.

Now I do not have all the facts about the event, but this is what I can gather from my friend’s facebook note:

• The woman in question has had cancer four times in the past
• The cancer she just recovered from was somehow different from her previous cancers
• The doctors and the woman in question disagreed on how to treat the cancer
• The woman decided to try praying for a cure
• Four hours after being declared “healed” by fellow religious members, the doctors reported her cancer had stopped growing

The note does not mention what type of cancer she had, what her previous cancers had been, whether the cancer was malignant or benign, and what time the tests were done that told the doctors the cancer had stopped growing.

Firstly, the note only mentions that the cancer stopped growing. While this is great, it is not the same thing as “healed”. “Healed” would be if the cancer was gone entirely. Secondly, it would be nice to know what time the tests were conducted, and how long it took for the results to come back. If, for example, the tests were done at 10 am, she was declared “healed” at 12, and the results came back at 4 pm, the cancer had stopped growing at least 2 hours before the “healing” took place.

Thirdly, did the woman in question attribute her four previous recoveries to faith healing? If so, why does she keep getting cancer? One would assume it only takes god once to get the job done. Also, is it possible that her previous experiences with cancer left her body better prepared to fight a new cancer?

I would also like to know how this fifth cancer was different. Was it weaker than her previous four cancers or stronger? Is this rare cancer usually fatal or does it have a history of getting better on its own?

Most importantly, can the doctors explain why she got better? (The note makes no mention of this) Let’s assume that the doctors can’t explain why the cancer stopped growing. The fact that it can’t be explained in no way supports the claim that supernatural powers are at work. The unexplained is just that, unexplained. To claim that because you can’t explain something, supernatural powers are at work is actually a contradiction. You are saying “I can’t explain something, therefore I can explain it.”

When you label and event supernatural simply because it has no explanation that is obvious to you, you’ll inevitably misinterpret evidence, make invalid causal connections, and eliminate whole realms of alternative explanations before it is even clear what explanations might be appropriate.

It is important to note that similar claims of faith healing have been made by adherents of a variety of different mutually exclusive religions throughout history. The fact that the patient’s cancer stopped growing is no more evidence that Jesus healed her than an ancient Egyptian’s claim that Ra healed him.

When judging the effectiveness of something, it is important to record the “misses” as much as the “hits.” Well meaning people often make the mistake of only paying attention to the data that supports their preconceived notions.

According to the National Cancer Institute, it is estimated that 1,479,350 men and women (766,130 men and 713,220 women) will be diagnosed with and 562,340 men and women will die of cancer of all sites in 2009.

According to the Barna Group, which has been measuring the size of the evangelical public since 1994, 38% of the US population describes themselves as “evangelical christians”.

For the sake of the argument, if we overlay the 38% over the 1,479,350 we come out with 562,153. That is roughly the number of evangelical christians who will get cancer.  Of that 562,153, around 213,689 will die. That’s approximately a 40% failure rate.

In 2006 the Templeton Foundation, a religious organization that aims to affirm faith through science, published the report of a decade long experiment aimed at studying the effectiveness of prayer when it comes to healing the sick. Unfortunately for the Templeton Foundation, the study found that prayers had no effect. In fact, just the opposite:

“patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.”

One last thing to consider. The note my friend published did not mention the age of the woman in question. I’m assuming she is around the same age of my friend, and thus over 18. “Faith healing” can have a very dark side, especially if the person undergoing the “healing” is of an age where they cannot make rational adult decisions about their health.

“Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty” (CHILD) is a children’s advocacy group that monitors the religious based medical neglect and abuse of children in the United States.

For the years 1975-1995, CHILD documented 172 instances of children in the U.S. dying from treatable illnesses after their parents rejected standard medical care and relied solely on religion. CHILD’s president, Rita Swan, says the actual number is far higher.

The courts have consistently ruled that parents do not have a constitutional right to harm children. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects religious freedom, but does not confer a right to abuse or neglect children. The leading case is Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944), in which the U. S. Supreme Court ruled, “The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or child to communicable disease, or the latter to ill health or death. . . . Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion when they can make that choice for themselves.”

Nevertheless, state and federal governments have created many religious exemptions allowing parents to withhold some medical care from children, almost entirely because of Christian Science lobbying.