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Writer's pictureCourtney Heard

Guest Post: Thanks, Hitch

This is a guest post from Karen of the blog, My Own Mind. You can hang out with Karen in her Facebook group, Homeschool Atheist Momma. If you would like to be a guest blogger on Godlessmom.com, please click here.

For my kids, being an atheist doesn’t mean much more than hearing mythologies from around the world, cocking an eye, and saying “Okaaaaaaaay…interestiiiing…” I am proud to have raised them without the brainwashing.


Christopher Hitchens

Thanks, Hitch


The kids and I end up talking about belief systems pretty often, as it turns out. One can hardly hear the news, move through the world, and be present in the United States without being bombarded by religious messages from all sides. Happily, my kids don’t have to battle the internal religious guilt or the many levels of frustration with the believers of the world spreading their particular brand of “truth” and “love.” While living in Australia the kids had wonderful experiences with putting their atheism out there and having friends and groups be very cool about it.

Our family is a homeschooling family. One of the lessons that we do regularly is to read biographies. In the last few weeks, one of the people we read about and listened to was Christopher Hitchens. The kids both enjoyed his particular brand of hard core atheist speak. We listened to a few TEDtalks as well as a few talks on YouTube.

The Pay Off

One weekend we hosted a family of friends in our home in Brisbane. This family had recently moved quite a distance away from us and had made a six hour drive up for a nice, long visit. Let’s call these friends the Cravats.

The Cravats are a family that practice homeopathy and that have a nice, lucrative online business for homeopathic remedies for families, pets, and livestock. The family considers themselves spiritual and maintain some pretty unusual claims in their world view.

Mother Cravat told me that she actually diagnosed a young man with cancer of the uterus, all by waving a necklace over the man’s picture and putting her hands on her spell book (or whatever she calls it). She sent the man a homeopathic remedy for his uterine cancer that she simply labeled “vitamin” so as to not shock the poor man with the diagnosis. She was very proud of this one and her kids consider her a hero for her work.

In spite of our vast differences of opinion we have enjoyed one another’s company for the most part and our children have become good friends.

One particular night during the visit, while I wasn’t listening very closely to the conversation that the kids were having, I did notice the volume begin to raise and the language start to get a bit anxious. The Cravat teens were insisting that one of their claims of chakras or auras or something was absolutely true.

My son, a thirteen year old skeptic of the highest order, listened to the volume going up and listened to these unsubstantiated claims being made by his friends. In rebuttal, in his wise little old man voice, I heard him clearly say, “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

The room was silent. My son simply smiled.

Thanks, Hitch.

by Karen: I’m another atheist momma, homeschooling, traveling, spreading the good news of reason, very happy, and always ready to learn something new!


Hitch - Evidence
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