Tradition! (And challenging it.)

There is an old tale that has been around for decades, my father told it to me when I was still in my formidable years. I assume this was based on real people but I’m not entirely sure. It goes like this:

A woman is preparing a Christmas ham, and in preparing the ham cut the end off before placing it in the pan for cooking. A friend/husband/child asked why it was necessary to cut the end off of the ham before cooking it, and the woman admitted that she wasn’t really sure why that was done, her mother just always did it and she learned to cook ham in this way. Curious, the woman calls her mother and asks why she cut the end off the ham. Her mother paused and noted that she wasn’t really sure why it would need to be done, but she learned how to do it that way from her mother. Still curious, the woman then called her quite elderly grandmother to see if she could solve this riddle. Grandma was pretty matter of fact about it. Back in the day, her pan was smaller than the ham and it wouldn’t fit, which necessitated cutting off a bit of the end. She hadn’t cooked ham like that in years since getting a bigger pan.

This tale IS a tale of an unnecessary tradition. And if we really think about it, the word “tradition” basically just means “how we do things without considering why.” As in, “why are you doing that in that manner?” “Tradition.” If the “why” had been considered, you wouldn’t have to appeal to tradition. You could just answer with a good reason.

Now, let me say that I’m not against traditions. I’m not saying that traditions are bad. I am merely pointing out that traditions are uncritical repeating of taught behaviors. They CAN be useful as shortcuts in everyday life.

Some traditions are simple and small. Anything from making the bed in the morning to activities with the family to checking the oil when you gas up to watching football with friends, these little traditions help us keep our lives in order, connect with each other, protect our investments, and give us joy.

Holidays themselves are traditions, and celebrating the holiday is the way we reflect on a part of our history. By elevating an event to the status of a celebration, it serves as a rally point of ideas that families or communities can unite under. Independence Day in the U.S. is such an example. Shooting fireworks is a flashy way of remembering the conflict that lead to our independence from the Crown of England. And every year, lots of money is “wasted” on fireworks and lots of people get hurt screwing around with them. But one day every year, every American is at least passively reminded of our history. And given how poorly most American’s understand history, this is probably a win itself. But we also forget our disagreements for a day and unite as a country, invaluable in these days of divisiveness.

Having waxed poetically about the positive side of traditions, I think it’s time to turn around and realize the very dark side of tradition. There is a tradition in the Omo Valley of Ethiopia called “mingi.” Basically, if a child is born of unwed parents, has the top teeth come in before the bottom teeth, or injures the genitals the child is considered cursed and must be killed. If a child is “mingi”, that child is snatched by the tribal elders and drown, left to starve, suffocated by having dirt crammed in their mouth, or pushed off a cliff. This is all done to prevent evil spirits from coming to the village and bringing drought, famine, and sickness.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume all of my readers will see the insanity of this tradition. And let’s ask the questions! Why are these specific traits considered indicative of being cursed? Why not other traits? Why is it only children? Why are evil spirits credited with disadvantageous weather conditions? Does this tradition line up with modern scientific understanding of climate, weather, and disease?

It’s easy to see why mingi is a horrible tradition when you step back and ask the questions. With no logical link, certain traits are fairly arbitrarily considered indicators of a curse. The supposed curse is illogically linked to certain negative phenomenon that actually have a natural explanation and can be somewhat or entirely controlled using that knowledge. And of course, nobody in the history of the world has ever been able to demonstrate that such a thing as a curse or evil spirits exist. But we have to do that mind exercise, because this is the same as illogical, nonsensical, and even harmful traditions that exist today, in the open, in the modern world.

Modern, public Christianity has a number of significant traditions that are not only ridiculous, but harmful as well. Let’s start with the traditional family unit, which has a man as the head of the house, a wife that is subservient to her husband, and children that have no rights. Now, if a man and woman want to get married, and the woman is comfortable deferring to her husband, and their children are raised in a strict fashion, I have no particular issues. But blind adherence to this model causes conflict. For example, if the child wants to be a doctor (or architect, or whatever the parents are comfortable with), hey no problem. But if the child loves playing the violin and wishes to study the arts, and is punished for it, then the tradition has become more important than the rights of the child. The tradition has become more important than love, or empathy, or compassion, and certainly more important than having an open mind.

And I haven’t even mentioned gay couples.

This seemingly innocuous tradition of family life has bigger consequences. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is exactly what you think it is, a treaty to legally protect children. Children have the right to life, a name, their own parents to raise them. They can’t be abused. They have the right to legal counsel in proceedings. But because of the traditional family idea, the United States is the only country besides Somalia that hasn’t signed the treaty. I guess not abusing children is just taking “woke” a bit too far for the religious Americans.

The US Christian population also has traditions that (with some variation) state that only married people should have sex, pregnancies are and should only be determined by god, and a fertilized egg is a full human being. The first and third are not biblical, by the way, and the second one only partially. They just came about somewhere along the way.

Anyway, thanks to these tradition, many children and young adults are prevented from getting accurate information about the body and it’s biology. This misinformation campaign means the US has more abortions, unplanned pregnancies, and youth pregnancies than most western nations- including the ones that have free and confidential abortion for all. It’s almost like Karma.

The reason I’m an atheist is because I am curious about traditions and I ask questions. Like the woman that figured out why the end of the ham must be cut, I asked questions of traditions. One of the very first was “if we are only supposed to worship Jesus, why are we worshiping Mary as well?” Granted, that question is mostly confined to Catholicism, but questioning Catholicism was only my first step toward atheism. Two other closely related questions I had in those days was “how can we be sure Mary was a virgin?” and “Why is a miracle birth so important anyway?”

When I watched “The Fiddler on the Roof” for the first time, it spoke to me. I mean, it REALLY spoke to me. For my mother, the idea that HER religion might also have not only silly but harmful traditions probably went over her head. But for me, it made me realize that just being a tradition doesn’t make it right.

But I probed my religion carefully. After all, like a fiddler on the roof, there may be some balancing act that I didn’t wish to disturb. But I probed. And as it turns out, not only are the traditions dumb, illogical, made up, and pointless, some are very harmful. Also, there is no fiddler.

I’ve heard people say atheists are born, not made. And I used to recoil at that idea. I believed that people believe what they are taught, and if they are taught to think critically they will think critically, and if they are taught to think fundamentally they will think fundamentally. But I’ve changed my thinking on that in recent years. Atheists pop out of the most fundamental cults. Meanwhile, some non-religious educated people gravitate toward illogical religious ideas. I’m not a neuroscientist, but it’s obvious to me that there are people that question and seek the truth of everything, and there are those that find comfort in some ideas and unquestionably accept them, and some even defend them.

I was raised in a religious house, but the ideas that spoke to me were curiosity, challenging norms and traditions, and skeptical inquiry. In the overload of daily religious ideas, the small idea that filtered through, resonated, and stuck was to ask tough questions and learn the truth.

I wasn’t taught to be an atheist. I was born an atheist.

The Spartan Atheist