Barbara Bradley Hagerty did a segment on Camp Inquiry for NPR today. Long story short: camp for kids from families that skeptics/atheists. Toward the end of the segment Hagerty challenged the kids by asking them about death.
But what about the afterlife? Are these kids comfortable with the idea that when people die, that’s it?
“It’s a scary thought, not existing. But it’s not anything I can stop, so I’m going to use what time I have to do everything I can and would like to do,” Lee says.
The group falls silent as 15-year-old Jared Nauman, one of the quieter but more confirmed atheists in the group, speaks for the first time.
“I’m terrified of not existing,” Nauman says, his voice shaking. “I’m kind of stuck there. I don’t know what else to think.”
A long pause ensues, broken by Grothe.
“Yeah, but here you all are, skeptical of the afterlife, but you’re not sitting in a room obsessed with it. You’re at Camp Inquiry, having fun,” he says.
His words hang in the air for five long seconds.
“Until now!” someone says, and they begin to laugh.
After a few more moments, the campers stop pondering the meaning of life and death, and move onto the next important task at hand: hurling water balloons with as much force as Newton’s laws of motion allow.
For in the end, these campers are not just budding philosophers. They’re also kids.
WHAT THE FUCK? Who the hell challenges the religious/non-religious beliefs of young people by asking them about death? This excerpt does not make it clear that it was Hagerty who interjected herself into the story by asking that question.
Religious bigotry at its worst. I know I’ve never heard any NPR stories about religious camps where kids were in any way challenged about their beliefs. When the camp philosophy is at all dicey, the reporters talk to the adults, not the kids. When it comes to respect, atheists don’t get any at all.
Except from Tild and Bishop Spong.
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Glenn Greenwald has more on anthrax, but I’m not having any trouble believing Ivins did it. I’m just having trouble with any reporting that doesn’t mention ABC News’ refusal to give up the four liars who told Brian Ross that Saddam did it.
That question is never going away, and good progressives should bring it up any time they can.
The widow of one of the five anthrax victims speaks up, and she sounds quite convinced it was Ivins, and just as convinced that the feds had no business employing a psycho WMD expert.
On the Hamdan front, Scott Horton weighs in. Since he wrote that post, Hamdan’s been sentenced to what essentially amounts to time served. A big slap in the face to the Bushboy prosecutor who’d asked for 30 years.
In other legal news, Ed Brayton asks about Karen Fletcher who was forced to plead guilty to child porn for her fiction writing.
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Lord Faris’s new ad bashing Franken doesn’t much impress me.
Rob Fitzgerald, btw, is the same Fitzgerald who used to drop in at Drinking Liberally every now and then. Given the latest ads in this campaign, my current inclination is to vote for Rob in the September primary.
Eric Black writes about Franken and Coleman on the war.
And Coleman’s staff has been editing his Wikipedia page, trying to purge words like “liberal” and facts involving people named Karl Rove.
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Drug busts:
Any questions? Me, I’m guessing the Indiana cops are white. Why? Because there are no pictures. The CNN story on Miami has LOTS of pictures, so you can pretty much guess what color those folks are but don’t let that fool you: they were busted for trafficking in hillbilly heroin.
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Meteor Blades lets slip a stat I’ve been trying to find for years:
Only 37% of the country’s unemployed received benefits in 2007, down from 55% in 1958 and 44% in 2001, according to the Labor Department. The others have exhausted their benefits, haven’t applied or don’t qualify.
NPR just mentioned this story, but not this set of facts. Their focus? On employers, of course?
Are their any news outlets that don’t cover for Wall Street’s sorry ass?
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