
Letter One: The Trouble with Experience | Mary Eberstadt | From The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism | Ignatius Insight

Dear Sirs (again),
First, let's talk about something You Atheist guys all like to talk about (judging by those latest books especially!), which is sex and the role that it plays in separating the benighted believers from the enlightened rest of us.
As I get it, our Atheist position on sex boils down to this: the believers with their tard regulations are all wrong about it, while we Brights have been — I'm reaching here for the words that You guys might use — so groovy and hip by throwing out the Christian rule book on all that stuff. Or to put it another way: thanks to Atheism and Secularism, more generally, words and phrases like "privacy", "consenting adults", and "behind closed doors" are in; and ones like "monogamy", "self-restraint", and "staying together for the kids" are out. If there's anything we Brights are all on the same page about — and again, I've read all those pages of Yours pretty carefully! — it would seem to be this; am I right?
Now, as a fresh convert myself, who is in a more or less delirious state at all times just thinking about what my new Atheism will mean for my personal life now that I've been freed from all those commandments, I'm certainly not here to argue with You about the appeal of doing what comes Naturally. At the same time, though, I have to warn You about something. A lot of what the new Atheism says about sex strikes me as strategically dangerous to us — the kind of talk that runs the risk of turning off some of the very believers, especially the younger believers, who might otherwise be tempted to switch over to our side.
Let's start with that generational difference between You new Atheists and some of the rest of us. Did Your parents ever leave home for the weekend when any of You were kids, putting You in the care of teenage siblings? Do You still remember the two-day nonstop party, and the expressions on Your parents' faces Sunday night when they saw the overflowing ashtrays and empty kegs and someone else's clothes in the laundry and throw-up in the fish tank? Well, You should know that's pretty much what it was like for those of us who went through life after You baby boomers did, a decade or so after what might be called the godless generation swept through first.
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Well, You should know that's pretty much what it was like for those of us who went through life after You baby boomers did, a decade or so after what might be called the godless generation swept through first.
I've often thought it is much like walking through a field after a herd of cows has gone through. You have to watch where you walk.
Posted by: LJ | Monday, March 15, 2010 at 05:21 AM
I am fortunate indeed that my parents were not quite in the Boomer Generation. In fact, I guess I'm a Boomer tail ender.
The havoc wrought by this group is incredible. A near-absolute loss of a moral compass, and a slash-and-burn policy to so many other things (They had the zoos, the schools that educated, the intact families, the single living wage, the social security,the fairly predictable society... and are doing their level best to make sure younger generations do not have these things).
Try as have, my kids are suffering from these effects far more than I want them to.
Posted by: JP | Monday, March 15, 2010 at 03:56 PM
Yes, we can blame it all on the boomers. such bad, bad people who somehow arose out of a vacuum...oh, wait. That doesn't sound right. Nothing originates out of a vacuum, right? Were they born that way? I don't think so. The mark of Cain on one generation? Nope.
Let's forget the boomers...let's talk about that older (European) gen who gave us WW2...No "free love", just free violence.
And how about the one before that...greed, sex and booze: the"roaring twenties" people who led us dancing into depression and global war.
I guess it's so much easier to make everything so very simple...Just like Exodus, one bad generation needs to be cleansed. This way we don't have to think too much.
I know! Let's blame it all on Vatican2.:)
BTW..O'Rourke thinks Ms. Eberstadt is a new C.S Lewis? Talk about hyperbole.
Posted by: Brian J. Schuettler | Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 10:53 AM