Brian’s Perspective - Old Blog

Now before you keep reading, I want to warn you that I am not talking about babies, breastfeeding, or any other part of parenthood. This just happens to be a recent article I read that illustrates the point I would like to make. So whether or not you breastfeed your baby, I don’t really care. My topic is much more insidious than that.

Breastfed Babies Aren’t Smarter

Oct. 3, 2006 — Do breastfed babies become brainier kids? Some studies say yes, but new research shows no direct link between breastfeeding and intelligence later in life.

When my wife and I had our first son, the breastfeeding people came out in droves. They told us all sorts of things: they will be healthier, smarter, etc. When we were unable to breastfeed, because of my wife’s terrible ordeal with preeclampsia, she was devastated. I was devastated. We were all devastated. And our home-schooling, breastfeeding, conservative-voting, “Christian Friends”, were standing in line, ready to condemn us for not doing it the right way. As the study sighted above shows, there is no link between IQ and breastfeeding. I wonder if people will take that information and quit judging people dogmatically.

Since when did your way become the right way for me, too? Islamic fascism must be in style because so many people are wearing it these days. I have mentioned how much partisan dogmatism is in the news these days (See The Reason I Hate Politics). The radical “I am right and you are wrong” mentality of many “Christian” and other religious people has created a well deserved back lash.

I listened to the following article on NPR, Monday (10/2/2006):

NPR : Keeping Religion Out of Public Policy

In his new book, Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris advocates keeping religion out of public policy. He calls religion the biggest obstacle to a rational public discourse.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to hear this series, please go and do it now, because I think he is right. For many of us, there is nothing rational about what we do. Although Harris mistakenly thinks that faith and reason are incompatible, for many of us faith and reason are incompatible. We believe what we believe because someone told us what to believe. We let our broken theologies and half-baked ideas about God determine what we do in the name of God. Christians in Indonesia take up arms and have a war. Same thing in Africa. Christians murder abortion doctors. There is even a Christian group going to protest at the funerals of the slain Amish girls in Pennsylvania–all because we think we are right and everyone else is 100% wrong.

No wonder the world hates Jesus. It thinks Jesus hates gays and teaches his followers to bear arms and kill those opposed to us. They think Jesus told his followers to quit thinking and become mindless zombies to your local pastor or minister. They think Jesus wants the church to exercise political power to coerce people into submitting to him. I would hate that Jesus, too.

I can tell you why the world hates Jesus. We are the reason the world hates Jesus.