Concerning Cats

Mother Nature is not a cruel mistress, she is simply indifferent when it comes to our cares and concerns, not wavering nor waning, just acting from a position that defies our search for providence. Just ask our cat.

Monday, Kitty went into labor for the second time in 6 months. Run the math and you’ll see that two pregnancies 3 months apart means that she did not take a break in between. Her first litter was a failure with 6 dead kittens yet she was undeterred and rebounded with hormonal vengeance going into heat 3 days later and mating soon afterwards. I had hopes for survival in the second pregnancy since we could often feel her kittens rolling and kicking inside of her abdomen like a sausage skin stuffed with wriggling maggots. Yes, we thought, this time there shall be life.

Monday morning I arose at 6:50am, entered the living room and saw signs of distress. Incontinence: feces on the carpet, vaginal fluids on the linoleum, a brooding smell permeating the air and an upset looking cat sitting in the corner.

The next two days were filled with frustration: Kitty managed to give birth to two dead kittens while her health plummeted. As for the smell, if a stranger was to walk through our door they would ask where we were hiding the 2 month old corpse, it was that bad. Kitty’s whole backside was covered in a mess of matted hair, blood, placental chunks, and puss.

As Sabrina and I lay in bed Wednesday night we decided a call to the vet was in order; Kitty needed help. We had waited as long as possible, giving her ample opportunity to give birth naturally but it just wasn’t going to happen. She was going to die very soon if the remaining dead kittens and infection were not dealt with. So this morning Sabrina took Kitty to the Vet. After an initial test for feline AIDs came back negative a C-Section and battery of tests including getting her spayed were ordered. Kitty will be spending the night at the Vet, and the cost won’t be cheap, but I think it is worth it. Having a cat is as close as I want to get to having a real child so it seems prudent to take care of her.

Thought: Conservatives and Unwed Mothers

Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter is pregnant. This is ironic when contrasted with her abstinence only view of sex education, or as I like to think of it, a 'one-way-street' view of the vaginal cannal.

Now imagine if one of Obama's daugters, a young black teenager, was pregnant. Would conservatives let that slide? Imagine if the hypothetical father had written all kinds of idiocy on his myspace page just like Britol Palin's sex buddy did, would it go unnnoticed?

The republicans are demanding that this pregnancy is off-limits to criticism yet would any sane person deny that they would have an absolute field day if it was Obama's daughter who was pregnant instead?

On the other hand when your view of sex education is to enforce ignorance you shouldn't be surprised when these kinds of things happen.

Religion, Fear and Parenting

I have been reading and thinking a lot about parenting recently, with only 2 months to go until we will be parents ourselves! I found an article on spanking that brought some interesting thoughts to mind. In the article it says that spanking is a form of punishment, not discipline, that teaches children that they are bad, rather then teaching them that certain actions are bad. I believe that this is very similar to the way religion operates. Christianity teaches people that they are bad and sinful, and without God to lead them, they would act upon these desires. Just like spanking, it uses fear to convince people, usually at a very young age, to follow God and remain Christians. This fear of punishment keeps many people in the religion even after they have grown into mature and rational adults.
I find it interesting that Christians often claim that without God people would have no reason to "be good". Having been raised most of my childhood without believing in a God, and never once being told that by sinning I would be punished by God or sent to hell, I can say from personal experience that this does not cause a person to become bad. Instead being told and learning through experience the difference in results from good and bad actions, we were able to rationally make good decisions in adulthood. We quickly learned that good choices made us and others happy as well, and the end result was five successful, happy, well liked adults. In fact I think my parents choice to use love, and not fear, in parenting is what made us (my siblings and me) good people as adults.
Another interesting fear tactic used by Christianity, is that of the Devil; an evil demon trying to coerce us into making bad choices in life. Having not been introduced to this idea until recently, I can easily look at it as an absurd concept, no different then any other mythical creature used to scare children into not acting bad. Having worked with young children all my life, I can tell you that though they are young, they are still people, and quite capable of understanding when they make poor choices and their actions lead to negative results. It is ridiculous, and I imagine quite confusing, to tell them that it was some invisible demon who caused them to act in such ways, when it is quite obvious ( a simple cause and effect relationship) that their actions caused the bad result. By learning this relationship at a young age, that poor choices yield poor results and visa versa, by adulthood it is almost second nature to act good and resist making poor choices in life.
As parenthood approaches, I am quite confident in my husband and my choice to raise our child in an Atheist household. Our child will be taught to question his/her surroundings, and explore cause and effect in both their own choices and others. Our child will not be sheltered from religion, but instead will be taught about a variety of religions and encouraged to explore and question such beliefs. And I think most importantly, our child will be constantly loved and nurtured throughout their lives.

(Please note: there are a number of modern Christian households, in my experience those attending congregational churches as part of the UCC, that do not preach through fear, but instead teach people to be good by following in the path of Jesus.) * I think that Jesus or any other "good person" in our history would be a sufficient mentor for this purpose.


The article Spanking Undermines Discipline: (http://www.connectionparenting.com/parenting_articles/spanking.html )

Our future depends on it

In the wake of Sarah Palins nomination to the GOP ticket I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of our country’s mindset. Let me explain, hopefully it’ll all connect together in the end.

Over the past decade America has seen a steady decline in the number of science PhDs we are graduating. This shift in our educational priorities is mirrored by a sharp rise in science PhDs graduating in Asia, especially in China. I see the results of this every day at my office desk; Americans are producing less and less scientific research while the rest of the world is producing more. The effects of this are both immediate and long-standing. In the immediate future America loses its position of scientific prowess; the best research occurs elsewhere, university prowess shifts to the east (and west) and thus the world’s best and brightest seek better places. The economic impact from losing the industrial innovation this research produces is clear, but continues into other spheres as well.

A 2006 NSF study found that just 23% of Americans could explain what it means to engage in a scientific study. John Miller of Michigan State University has been tracking science literacy in America for the past 20 years and recently published a study which states that a basic level of science literacy in this country is at 28% and falling each year. Most Americans are completely confused about the very basic principals of empirical evidence, composing a hypothesis, and proposing a theory. This bothers me greatly because this process of thinking is essential to the process of composing coherent beliefs about the world we live in. If you don’t understand what constitutes evidence, and why, then you are not equipped to engage a world that is increasingly dependent upon scientific progress.

In philosophy we call this type of thinking ‘reason’. Reason, it appears, is fighting a losing battle against the forces of credulity, fear, and superstition. This is where Sarah Palin ties in.

Sarah Palin, the woman whom the republicans believe is fit to rule the most powerful country on earth believes the earth is 6,000 years old. To be clear, this is no minor mistake. Current scientific estimates, corroborated by mutually agreeing standards of measurement peg the earth’s age at 4-5 billion years old. The magnitude of Palin’s disconnect reality is comparable to stating the distance between New York and San Francisco is 200 feet. This is no minor mistake.

As a country, as a world, we can no longer afford to elect officials with minds that belong in the Dark Ages; we simply cannot afford it. Religious belief, if it must exist, has to be a private affair. Our world is one of nuclear weapons, fanatical religion, and environmental disasters. We cannot damn our tumultuous future even further by placing it into the hands of someone who believes that hurricanes are an angry god’s punishment. We need leaders who are able to engage the world as it really is, not as they wish it to be. Faith, in a world of very real crisis, is an anchor that will pull our collective future to the depths of misery. History bears the scars of leaders who governed their people from a position of wanting reality to be a certain way rather than looking at the evidence and making prudent decisions. I dearly hope the citizens of this country will question our leaders with skeptical rigor. We can’t afford not to.

Tuesday Thought

Consider the following Old Testament claims believed by fundamentalists Christians, Jews, and Muslims:

• Woman was created from a rib torn from man's side.
• Within the animal kingdom there was no animal death before Eve ate the apple.
• People lived up to 1,000 years of age.
• There was no rain before Noah's Ark and the flood.
• Noah fitted hundreds of millions of species from every corner of the globe on a boat, and then redistributed them after a global flood.

Think about these points for a moment and then ponder that if people can believe ideas as outlandish as these then how can they possibly discount the ideas in any other religion old or new?

To believe that no animals died (or therefore ate anything) originally, or that humans lived for 1,000 years is to exhibit a disconnect with reality so great that if the belief was not shared amongst millions we would surely call such believers mentally disabled. Ironically, if enough people believe an insane idea we call their conviction religion, whereas if the group of believers is small enough we lock them up.

On a political and social level this serves as a reminder that secular society must be defended, continually, from those who would gleefully pull us back into the dark ages of fear and oppression.