Dude, that's whacked -- the scary kind. Your other Christianist posts just sort of seemed quaint, but this just rubs me the wrong way. I have a question that I hope you could answer here... what did you hope to accomplish with your prayer? Do demons exist in your fanciful world, and do they inhabit fast food restaurants (trans fats and excessive sodium excepted)? Do they cringe in fear when some loon climbs into the burger and exorcises (I think that's the word you might be looking for) them? Heck, here in the southeast you could probably organize some traveling ministry that would help you travel the fast food circuit and fix those wayward playgrounds right up, and probably even make a little spare change while doing it.
Maybe instead of praying, you could have done something that could *possibly* have been effective, such as telling the manager that it's nasty up there. Did that ever cross your mind? IMO, it's hard to feign courageousness when your action was in fact a no-op.
When I was in high school, I worked at a Burger King for a while, and it wasn't uncommon for, um, poop to be found in the playground area. There was little in the way of sanitation after the fact, other than to simply throw away any of the unlucky colored plastic balls that happened to be affected. No customers seemed to ever complain about its cleanliness, which somehow makes it even more disgusting to think about.
I hope you did the truly good deed in this situation and at least encouraged your daughter wash her hands when she got out. My bonus rhyme of the day: Microbes don't care about prayer.
MattHardwick
· 1 year ago
I feel that you missed the point of the prayer. There were anti-christian symbols constructed and displayed inside of the playground. He said that he took them down and prayed over the place. The cleanliness (physically) was the original cause for concern that made him go in and check things out, but when he explored the inside of the playground, Chris found symbols that directly contradict what he (correct me if I'm wrong, Chris) believes and has tried to teach his children.
It isn't a matter of "fixing those wayward playgrounds right up". I don't feel that that was the message Chris was trying to convey.
I might be wrong.
Chris F.
· 1 year ago
Maybe that's my problem. It's hard to see what's important to Dewde here. (I didn't know we were using real names!) The way I see it, he did two things: 1. He prayed. 2. He cleaned up the place. IMO, despite the possibility that he cleaned up solely because of the religious implications of the trashed burger, #2 is the good deed. I'd have been much more impressed with this act of superior parenting if he'd said that he enlisted his daughter's help in cleaning up and used that as a teaching opportunity about the benefits of good deeds. Heck, I'll go out on a limb and say that it'd be an acceptable, even nice, place to bring jesus into the conversation there in the context of good deeds and their advocacy.
I unrepentantly reject the idea that symbolism of any stripe should be bothersome to Christians. That's thin-skinned and childish, and the possibility that Dewde was primarily concerned with this aspect of the fiberglass burger is really disappointing. Surely his daughters are too young to be hindered with this emotional baggage, anyway.
Chris F.
· 1 year ago
Dammit, I wish I hadn't read this tonight, because I find it even more grating than I did when I first read your post. The saving grace, IMO, is your imploring your children to test things for themselves. Hopefully, by God's grace, they'll realize that prayer is a no-op, and your act of cleaning up the joint was the good work. It's too bad you didn't mention that in your letter to them. I think that's the real example that you set with this encounter.
I see you did correct the exorcised/exercised issue. You should ask me to proof these things!
dewde
· 1 year ago
I know! I was hasty. I'll have you proof them from now on. Maybe then I would have made my case more clearly as well.
My point wasn't that the little crosses meant anything more than the obvious. Some older kids were goofing off. I have no other evidence what-so-ever that this was sinister. I don't recall being scared. I don't recall my hairs standing up on the back of my neck. I didn't see any demon prints or ecto plasm.
I felt a bit silly and awkward. Admitting it publicly is embarrassing. Sure, a subset of my peer group is just Christian-enough to hold me in esteem for doing something like this, but those are also the people I care less about impressing or maintaining credibility with.
My point is in my letter. Whatever you do, do it boldly. Don't let the fear of the opinions of others prevent you from action.
dewde
· 1 year ago
I did also believe it was possible that a real evil presence was there. I didn't think it was probable, but I did think it was possible. Or I wouldn't have bothered praying.
You've been hoping for a post like this for months! Was it as good for you as it was for me?
Chris F.
· 1 year ago
Good in the "this is not good for me when it's already 2 a.m." kind of way?Yes, definitely!
But actually, no, I haven't been hoping for this. I actually hope and pray (heh) that you'll once again see the light of rationality and reallocate that effort that would be otherwise casually wasted on prayer. I feel you might not have had the supportive group you needed in your vulnerable time as an at-risk atheist, and I blame myself for not being there for you. A single soul lost is one too many, in my book.
But honestly, your effort at parenting is fantastic in its conscientiousness and its fanaticism. I just am saddened by the elephant in the room. You do (or at least write about) all these really good deeds that simply don't demand the silliness of religious motivation. Your kids will succeed because of your effort and guidance, and you would have exerted that same effort in your pre-Christian days, IMO. And then you would have more honestly attributed the results to the significant hard work rather than divine providence.
Adrian Rodriguez
· 1 year ago
Man that's awesome. See I probably would have been more irrational and not allowed the children to play in there, but instead your idea is much better. I once did something I thought was foolish and embarrassing and that was kneel down in the middle of a sidewalk and start crying out to God. People came by and thought I was nuts, but I had an awesome experience.
human3rror
· 1 year ago
puahahaha.
"skating uphill"
Rob Jones
· 1 year ago
Cute story, we do crazy stuff for our kids.
dewde
· 1 year ago
Indeed sir.
Archiemck
· 1 year ago
Ha, I'm loving it. Wait, that's Mcdonalds...
Lisa
· 1 year ago
Thanks for posting this. Just another reason why I admire you both as people and parents.
dewde
· 1 year ago
LOL! Because we're completely out of touch with reality???
Chris F.
· 1 year ago
I'm astounded by this apparent one-sidedness in the responses here. You did one thing that was unequivocally good, and you also prayed. People here are lauding you for the latter. Is this some sort of Sokal-like prank?
dewde
· 1 year ago
We are Borg. You will be assimilated.
Wendy
· 1 year ago
I'm not really sure that you can call it one-sidedness. Each individual that reads the post has their own side and they each have the free will to decide whether or not to post it. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on "unequivocally good" and the basis for what is good outside of a God perspective. Maybe the people who would post that he did "nothing good" are what we are missing, and THEY would certainly think you are indeed on the same side as everyone else.
Chris F.
· 1 year ago
Actually, I might be convinced that Dewde did "nothing good" here, but I am reluctant to actually come out and say it. Okay, that's not really true, because he *did* clean up the burger. That's something that nobody else I know would ever think of doing (of course, nobody else would climb in there in the first place...). I just wish he'd involved his kids in the good act, since I think that would have been *the* best possible outcome of this scenario. But it's tough to criticize someone like Dewde who seems to thoughtfully consider every significant parenting opportunity.
Anyway, as for "good," it surely doesn't take a belief in God to believe that the clean burger was better than the vandalized burger. Dewde did a good deed there. Does the bible's Absolute Morality dictate that people should pray over plastic defamations of religion and then clean them up? Perhaps that's in some lost gospel, but otherwise, no. How, then, did I decide it was good? Well, that's a good question, but it can easily start with the idea that this act simply increases the enjoyment potential of all future playground users. Family X comes there, and instead of being turned off by the vandalism, Family X sees a clean playground and spend a more worry-free, enjoyable time with their kids. "Good" doesn't have to be some grand supernatural concept.
While we're on the subject, the whole concept of some absolute morality is a farce. It's trivial to come up with contrived situations where the "good" choice is far from obvious. First, people act in situations with incomplete information all the time. You might counter that with some claim like, "well, yeah, but God knew what the right answer is." Okay, supposing that some God exists with such a moral compass that all possible situations are accounted for, the fact still exists that it's impossible for you to know all of those right answers, or even to obtain unambiguous answers after some effort. Some situations are just murky. Thus, God's absolute morality might as well be nothing, since you will have to fall back to your innate sense of "good" in all but the most obvious cases. An absolute morality that you cannot possibly know is no different from any murky morality. You simply fill in the gaps with your own experience. Don't fool yourself. It's not God talking to you. It's the fact that you're a human being who cares about what happens to yourself, your family, and people who you share a community with. And those people care about you, too. You make varying degrees of tough decisions every day. Take credit for the hard work, recognize and learn from when you screw up, and keep working hard at it. It's really not hard to dissociate this from some God.
Orez
· 1 year ago
Chris,
How do you know that Dewde did good by cleaning the hamburger-shaped plastic hut? On the one hand, you're claiming that there's no way to know what's good or not, then you come out and say that cleaning up someone else's mess is good. I don't get that.
You can't say "praying isn't good, because there's no point in prayer" and then say "cleaning up other people's messes is good, because I see some point in it." I don't think you're qualified to be the final judge on either matter when you don't think there's a real or true morality. You're just making stuff up.
Besides, there's one correlative aspect you're missing. Perhaps the old Dewde, the pre-brainwashed-Christian Dewde, would not have bothered to clean the mess. Maybe he would have thought it was funny. Perhaps it is his belief in absolute good and absolute evil that makes him able to understand what the good thing here was...
- Zero
Chris F.
· 1 year ago
Man, typing into these increasingly small comment boxes is tough! Dewde, do you know anyone who knows anything about html and css that might be able to fix something like this? No? Hmmm.
Okay... After reading Zero's message, I'm confused as to how I'm anywhere saying that there's no way to know what's good. I'm saying that there's no way to know what some God would consider good, unless such a situation is explicitly written in some God-authored book. I can state that his cleaning up the mess was good, because I also stated my definition of "good." The act was good in my definition, because it heightened the enjoyment of others and lessened their pain. When *you* say something else is "good," I suspect you're making some value judgment based on your best guess. You surely don't know the mind of God, right? So how can you possibly suggest that you have this absolute morality available to you? Instead, you might do what you *think* God would advocate in your situation, based on your reading of the bible or personal revelation or whatever other source of religious opinion you might have. This seems a good approach, but it still involves a decision on your part. My issue with that is that the outcome of your decision -- your action -- is not really any different than the action taken by the person who simply tries to maximize happiness and minimize suffering in their environment. And because life is complicated, it isn't any more obvious what the "right" and "good" answer is. I reject any assertion that any two identical actions can vary in their level of "goodness" simply because one was religiously motivated and the other was not. Please let me know if you're really arguing from that perspective.
I'm not necessarily saying that there's no point in prayer. I suspect many people derive great personal enjoyment out of it, presence of mind, or just some quiet time to consider their thoughts. I'm not really bothered by that at all. I do think that it's being way too generous to claim that one's prayer helps *others*, though. Intercessory prayer has repeatedly been shown to have no measurable effect on the people being prayed for. Look, I defined good as something that has a murky but measurable outcome. Of course there are situations that are way more complex and difficult to measure. I'm not being the judge here: this could well be the opinion of Family X themselves. I'm claiming that it's likely that Family X had a ever-so-slightly better time at the playground because of Dewde's act. If you disagree with that last sentence, then you're surely just disagreeing for the sake of disagreement. Sure, it's possible that some family just *loves* vandalized playgrounds, but let's play the percentages here. If they had a better time than they otherwise would have had, then that's good.
I agree with your point that Dewde and probably many other Christians do perform good deeds because of some heightened religious sense. I don't know if Dewde would have cleaned up that space in his pre-Christian days, but he seemed like a nice guy then, so he very well might have. You seem to be implying that Christians are just more generous people. I dunno. They might be. I'm not sure how easy that is to really measure, though, since despite the occasional claim that Christians are X percent more likely to give to charities and give Y percent more money, much of that is both self-reported and is funneled through and distributed by churches, so it's just really hard to get real and unbiased numbers. I suspect the real differences are not as stark as some people report. Still, even if Christians give more money and time, it doesn't change the issue of what is "good." I'm happy to acknowledge that many Christians and Christian charities do a lot of "good" things.
I have a question. You seem to think that this sense of absolute morality, truth, and goodness is available to the religious and not to the non-religious. Can you think of any situation at all where you would define a "good" act as something different from the "good" of the person who simply seeks to minimize suffering? I'd be interested to hear this. And please try to make it as straightforward as possible, since it's certainly possible to argue nuances in complicated situations where there's no choice that's a clear winner. (If I do A, then this person is miserable now for a short time, but this other person is *way* happier a year from now, but if I do B, then both people are sort of happy all the time...) Despite our possibly different motivations, the thought process is likely to be the same, and we are likely to come to the same conclusions much of the time. And the cases where we disagree are likely to be because of subtle issues that could reasonably have been argued either way from *either* a religious or secular perspective. And again, I'm asserting that no action can be better than an identical action simply because the actor was religious. That's begging the question. So, I'm quite interested in your, or anyone's, opinions here.
snowcone
· 1 year ago
prayer is always a good idea no matter what the situation :)
johntindale
· 1 year ago
I gotta admit- you're really going for it, aren't you.
All Comments
Maybe instead of praying, you could have done something that could *possibly* have been effective, such as telling the manager that it's nasty up there. Did that ever cross your mind? IMO, it's hard to feign courageousness when your action was in fact a no-op.
When I was in high school, I worked at a Burger King for a while, and it wasn't uncommon for, um, poop to be found in the playground area. There was little in the way of sanitation after the fact, other than to simply throw away any of the unlucky colored plastic balls that happened to be affected. No customers seemed to ever complain about its cleanliness, which somehow makes it even more disgusting to think about.
I hope you did the truly good deed in this situation and at least encouraged your daughter wash her hands when she got out. My bonus rhyme of the day: Microbes don't care about prayer.
It isn't a matter of "fixing those wayward playgrounds right up". I don't feel that that was the message Chris was trying to convey.
I might be wrong.
I unrepentantly reject the idea that symbolism of any stripe should be bothersome to Christians. That's thin-skinned and childish, and the possibility that Dewde was primarily concerned with this aspect of the fiberglass burger is really disappointing. Surely his daughters are too young to be hindered with this emotional baggage, anyway.
I see you did correct the exorcised/exercised issue. You should ask me to proof these things!
My point wasn't that the little crosses meant anything more than the obvious. Some older kids were goofing off. I have no other evidence what-so-ever that this was sinister. I don't recall being scared. I don't recall my hairs standing up on the back of my neck. I didn't see any demon prints or ecto plasm.
I felt a bit silly and awkward. Admitting it publicly is embarrassing. Sure, a subset of my peer group is just Christian-enough to hold me in esteem for doing something like this, but those are also the people I care less about impressing or maintaining credibility with.
My point is in my letter. Whatever you do, do it boldly. Don't let the fear of the opinions of others prevent you from action.
You've been hoping for a post like this for months! Was it as good for you as it was for me?
But actually, no, I haven't been hoping for this. I actually hope and pray (heh) that you'll once again see the light of rationality and reallocate that effort that would be otherwise casually wasted on prayer. I feel you might not have had the supportive group you needed in your vulnerable time as an at-risk atheist, and I blame myself for not being there for you. A single soul lost is one too many, in my book.
But honestly, your effort at parenting is fantastic in its conscientiousness and its fanaticism. I just am saddened by the elephant in the room. You do (or at least write about) all these really good deeds that simply don't demand the silliness of religious motivation. Your kids will succeed because of your effort and guidance, and you would have exerted that same effort in your pre-Christian days, IMO. And then you would have more honestly attributed the results to the significant hard work rather than divine providence.
"skating uphill"
Anyway, as for "good," it surely doesn't take a belief in God to believe that the clean burger was better than the vandalized burger. Dewde did a good deed there. Does the bible's Absolute Morality dictate that people should pray over plastic defamations of religion and then clean them up? Perhaps that's in some lost gospel, but otherwise, no. How, then, did I decide it was good? Well, that's a good question, but it can easily start with the idea that this act simply increases the enjoyment potential of all future playground users. Family X comes there, and instead of being turned off by the vandalism, Family X sees a clean playground and spend a more worry-free, enjoyable time with their kids. "Good" doesn't have to be some grand supernatural concept.
While we're on the subject, the whole concept of some absolute morality is a farce. It's trivial to come up with contrived situations where the "good" choice is far from obvious. First, people act in situations with incomplete information all the time. You might counter that with some claim like, "well, yeah, but God knew what the right answer is." Okay, supposing that some God exists with such a moral compass that all possible situations are accounted for, the fact still exists that it's impossible for you to know all of those right answers, or even to obtain unambiguous answers after some effort. Some situations are just murky. Thus, God's absolute morality might as well be nothing, since you will have to fall back to your innate sense of "good" in all but the most obvious cases. An absolute morality that you cannot possibly know is no different from any murky morality. You simply fill in the gaps with your own experience. Don't fool yourself. It's not God talking to you. It's the fact that you're a human being who cares about what happens to yourself, your family, and people who you share a community with. And those people care about you, too. You make varying degrees of tough decisions every day. Take credit for the hard work, recognize and learn from when you screw up, and keep working hard at it. It's really not hard to dissociate this from some God.
How do you know that Dewde did good by cleaning the hamburger-shaped plastic hut? On the one hand, you're claiming that there's no way to know what's good or not, then you come out and say that cleaning up someone else's mess is good. I don't get that.
You can't say "praying isn't good, because there's no point in prayer" and then say "cleaning up other people's messes is good, because I see some point in it." I don't think you're qualified to be the final judge on either matter when you don't think there's a real or true morality. You're just making stuff up.
Besides, there's one correlative aspect you're missing. Perhaps the old Dewde, the pre-brainwashed-Christian Dewde, would not have bothered to clean the mess. Maybe he would have thought it was funny. Perhaps it is his belief in absolute good and absolute evil that makes him able to understand what the good thing here was...
- Zero
Okay... After reading Zero's message, I'm confused as to how I'm anywhere saying that there's no way to know what's good. I'm saying that there's no way to know what some God would consider good, unless such a situation is explicitly written in some God-authored book. I can state that his cleaning up the mess was good, because I also stated my definition of "good." The act was good in my definition, because it heightened the enjoyment of others and lessened their pain. When *you* say something else is "good," I suspect you're making some value judgment based on your best guess. You surely don't know the mind of God, right? So how can you possibly suggest that you have this absolute morality available to you? Instead, you might do what you *think* God would advocate in your situation, based on your reading of the bible or personal revelation or whatever other source of religious opinion you might have. This seems a good approach, but it still involves a decision on your part. My issue with that is that the outcome of your decision -- your action -- is not really any different than the action taken by the person who simply tries to maximize happiness and minimize suffering in their environment. And because life is complicated, it isn't any more obvious what the "right" and "good" answer is. I reject any assertion that any two identical actions can vary in their level of "goodness" simply because one was religiously motivated and the other was not. Please let me know if you're really arguing from that perspective.
I'm not necessarily saying that there's no point in prayer. I suspect many people derive great personal enjoyment out of it, presence of mind, or just some quiet time to consider their thoughts. I'm not really bothered by that at all. I do think that it's being way too generous to claim that one's prayer helps *others*, though. Intercessory prayer has repeatedly been shown to have no measurable effect on the people being prayed for. Look, I defined good as something that has a murky but measurable outcome. Of course there are situations that are way more complex and difficult to measure. I'm not being the judge here: this could well be the opinion of Family X themselves. I'm claiming that it's likely that Family X had a ever-so-slightly better time at the playground because of Dewde's act. If you disagree with that last sentence, then you're surely just disagreeing for the sake of disagreement. Sure, it's possible that some family just *loves* vandalized playgrounds, but let's play the percentages here. If they had a better time than they otherwise would have had, then that's good.
I agree with your point that Dewde and probably many other Christians do perform good deeds because of some heightened religious sense. I don't know if Dewde would have cleaned up that space in his pre-Christian days, but he seemed like a nice guy then, so he very well might have. You seem to be implying that Christians are just more generous people. I dunno. They might be. I'm not sure how easy that is to really measure, though, since despite the occasional claim that Christians are X percent more likely to give to charities and give Y percent more money, much of that is both self-reported and is funneled through and distributed by churches, so it's just really hard to get real and unbiased numbers. I suspect the real differences are not as stark as some people report. Still, even if Christians give more money and time, it doesn't change the issue of what is "good." I'm happy to acknowledge that many Christians and Christian charities do a lot of "good" things.
I have a question. You seem to think that this sense of absolute morality, truth, and goodness is available to the religious and not to the non-religious. Can you think of any situation at all where you would define a "good" act as something different from the "good" of the person who simply seeks to minimize suffering? I'd be interested to hear this. And please try to make it as straightforward as possible, since it's certainly possible to argue nuances in complicated situations where there's no choice that's a clear winner. (If I do A, then this person is miserable now for a short time, but this other person is *way* happier a year from now, but if I do B, then both people are sort of happy all the time...) Despite our possibly different motivations, the thought process is likely to be the same, and we are likely to come to the same conclusions much of the time. And the cases where we disagree are likely to be because of subtle issues that could reasonably have been argued either way from *either* a religious or secular perspective. And again, I'm asserting that no action can be better than an identical action simply because the actor was religious. That's begging the question. So, I'm quite interested in your, or anyone's, opinions here.