Parenting Beyond Belief

Parenting Beyond Belief
Author: Dale Mcgowan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780814437414

"Gathering the perspectives of educators and psychologists, as well as wisdom from everyday parents, Parenting Beyond Belief offers insights and advice on a wide range of topics including instilling values, finding meaning and purpose, navigating holidays, coping with loss, finding community without religion, and more. The second edition of this secular parenting bestseller brings back reflections from such celebrated freethinkers as Richard Dawkins and Julia Sweeney, and adds new voices including journalist Wendy Thomas Russell, essayist Katherine Ozment, sociologist Phil Zuckerman, and many others" --

Parenting without God

Parenting without God
Author: Dan Arel
Publisher: PM Press
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2019-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1629637750

Children inevitably turn to their parents for more than just food and security; equally important are assurance, recognition, and interpretation of life. A child develops best in an environment where creativity and discovery are unimpeded by the artificial restrictions of blind faith and dogmatic belief.Parenting without God is for parents, and future parents, who lack belief in a god and are seeking guidance on raising freethinkers and social-justice-aware children in a nation where public dialogue has been controlled by the Christian Right. Dan Arel, activist and critically acclaimed author, has penned a magnificently practical guide to help parents provide their children with the intellectual tools for standing up to attempts at religious proselytism, whether by teachers, coaches, friends, or other family members. Parenting without God is also for the parent activist who is trying to make the world a better place for all children by first educating their own children about racism, sexism, and all forms of discrimination that serve as barriers to the fundamentals of human dignity and democracy. It’s for parents who wish for their children to question everything and to learn how to reach their own conclusions based on verifiable evidence and reason. Above all, Arel makes the penetrating argument that parents should lead by example—both by speaking candidly about the importance of secularism and by living an openly and unabashedly secular life. Parenting without God is written with humility, compassion, and understanding. Dan Arel’s writing conveys the unmistakable impression of a loving father dedicated to redefining the role of parenthood so that it also includes the vitally important task of nurturing every child’s latent impulse for freedom and autonomy. This second edition has been expanded with new material from the author.

Systematic Atheology

Systematic Atheology
Author: John R. Shook
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2017-12-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 135162637X

Atheology is the intellectual effort to understand atheism, defend the reasonableness of unbelief, and support nonbelievers in their encounters with religion. This book presents a historical overview of the development of atheology from ancient thought to the present day. It offers in-depth examinations of four distinctive schools of atheological thought: rationalist atheology, scientific atheology, moral atheology, and civic atheology. John R. Shook shows how a familiarity with atheology’s complex histories, forms, and strategies illuminates the contentious features of today’s atheist and secularist movements, which are just as capable of contesting each other as opposing religion. The result is a book that provides a disciplined and philosophically rigorous examination of atheism’s intellectual strategies for reasoning with theology. Systematic Atheology is an important contribution to the philosophy of religion, religious studies, secular studies, and the sociology and psychology of nonreligion.

Raising Free People

Raising Free People
Author: Akilah S. Richards
Publisher: PM Press
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2020-11-01
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1629638498

No one is immune to the byproducts of compulsory schooling and standardized testing. And while reform may be a worthy cause for some, it is not enough for countless others still trying to navigate the tyranny of what schooling has always been. Raising Free People argues that we need to build and work within systems truly designed for any human to learn, grow, socialize, and thrive, regardless of age, ability, background, or access to money. Families and conscious organizations across the world are healing generations of school wounds by pivoting into self-directed, intentional community-building, and Raising Free People shows you exactly how unschooling can help facilitate this process. Individual experiences influence our approach to parenting and education, so we need more than the rules, tools, and “bad adult” guilt trips found in so many parenting and education books. We need to reach behind our behaviors to seek and find our triggers; to examine and interrupt the ways that social issues such as colonization still wreak havoc on our ability to trust ourselves, let alone children. Raising Free People explores examples of the transition from school or homeschooling to unschooling, how single parents and people facing financial challenges unschool successfully, and the ways unschooling allows us to address generational trauma and unlearn the habits we mindlessly pass on to children. In these detailed and unabashed stories and insights, Richards examines the ways that her relationships to blackness, decolonization, and healing work all combine to form relationships and enable community-healing strategies rooted in an unschooling practice. This is how millions of families center human connection, practice clear and honest communication, and raise children who do not grow up to feel that they narrowly survived their childhoods.

Teaching Resistance

Teaching Resistance
Author: John Mink
Publisher: PM Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1629637726

Teaching Resistance is a collection of the voices of activist educators from around the world who engage inside and outside the classroom from pre-kindergarten to university and emphasize teaching radical practice from the field. Written in accessible language, this book is for anyone who wants to explore new ways to subvert educational systems and institutions, collectively transform educational spaces, and empower students and other teachers to fight for genuine change. Topics include community self-defense, Black Lives Matter and critical race theory, intersections between punk/DIY subculture and teaching, ESL, anarchist education, Palestinian resistance, trauma, working-class education, prison teaching, the resurgence of (and resistance to) the Far Right, special education, antifascist pedagogies, and more. Edited by social studies teacher, author, and punk musician John Mink, the book features expanded entries from the monthly column in the politically insurgent punk magazine Maximum Rocknroll, plus new works and extensive interviews with subversive educators. Contributing teachers include Michelle Cruz Gonzales, Dwayne Dixon, Martín Sorrondeguy, Alice Bag, Miriam Klein Stahl, Ron Scapp, Kadijah Means, Mimi Nguyen, Murad Tamini, Yvette Felarca, Jessica Mills, and others, all of whom are unified against oppression and readily use their classrooms to fight for human liberation, social justice, systemic change, and true equality. Royalties will be donated to Teachers 4 Social Justice: t4sj.org

Godless

Godless
Author: Chaz Bufe
Publisher: PM Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2019-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1629636673

Godless is a compilation of wide-ranging texts, both hilarious and horrifying, on atheism, belief, and religion. The selections in the book appeared in various formats from the late nineteenth century through the early twenty-first, and their authors were often active in the anarchist, Marxist, or radical leftist movements of their day. Derived from printed pamphlets, periodicals, and newspaper pieces that were mass-produced and widely distributed, these texts serve as freethinking propaganda in a media war against morbid authoritarian doctrines. With both a sophisticated analysis of inconsistencies in deistic beliefs and a biting satirical edge, Godless gives ammunition to those fighting fundamentalist bigotry—and more than a few reasons to abandon Christianity. Readers previously familiar with the authors’ political polemics will be rewarded in contemplating another side of their remarkable literary output. Contributors include Emma Goldman, Ambrose Bierce, Chaz Bufe, E. Haldeman-Julius, Earl Lee, G. Richard Bozarth, Johann Most, Joseph McCabe, Matilda Gage, Pamela Sutter, S.C. Hitchcock, and Sébastien Faure.

Resilient Gods

Resilient Gods
Author: Reginald W. Bibby
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2017-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 077489007X

Are Canadians becoming less religious? After playing a central role in our lives for nearly a century, religion did seem to be losing its salience in Canada. Many observers saw this trend as inevitable, reflecting secularization patterns seen elsewhere in the Western world. But there is more to the story. Reginald Bibby’s Resilient Gods takes an in-depth look at the religious landscape in Canada today. Pulling together extensive data, he finds that a solid core of some 30 percent continue to embrace religion, while a similar proportion is rejecting it. The remaining 40 percent are somewhere in the middle. The picture that emerges is not one of religious decline but rather of religious polarization, with the numbers of “pro-religious,” “no religious,” and “low religious” in flux. Such proclivities are influenced by social and cultural factors, one being increased immigration, which is ensuring the viability of a pro-religious core. The gods are here to stay, Bibby argues, but so what? Using the most current information available, including unique national survey data, he explores the implications of pro-religious, no-religious, and low-religious choices for personal and social well-being, spirituality, and attitudes towards death. The questions he asks are compelling and the answers thought-provoking whether one embraces the gods or not.

Everybody Is Wrong About God

Everybody Is Wrong About God
Author: James A. Lindsay
Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2015-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1634310381

A call to action to address people's psychological and social motives for a belief in God, rather than debate the existence of God With every argument for theism long since discredited, the result is that atheism has become little more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. Thus, engaging in interminable debate with religious believers about the existence of God has become exactly the wrong way for nonbelievers to try to deal with misguided—and often dangerous—belief in a higher power. The key, author James Lindsay argues, is to stop that particular conversation. He demonstrates that whenever people say they believe in "God," they are really telling us that they have certain psychological and social needs that they do not know how to meet. Lindsay then provides more productive avenues of discussion and action. Once nonbelievers understand this simple point, and drop the very label of atheist, will they be able to change the way we all think about, talk about, and act upon the troublesome notion called "God."