Dale McGowan’s Followers (54)

Dale McGowan

Website

http://dalemcgowan.com/

Twitter

MemingOfLife

Genre

Parenting, Family, Relationships

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DALE McGOWAN, Ph.D., is a committed atheist, a devoted husband and father, and a recognized expert on raising caring, ethical children without religion. He is the author of Parenting Beyond Belief, a collection of essays by and for loving, thoughtful nonreligious parents hailed by Newsweek as “a compelling read,” and Raising Freethinkers, the first comprehensive resource addressing the unique challenges secular parents face. He teaches workshops to nonreligious parents throughout the United States and Canada and was named a Harvard Humanist of the Year. Dale also founded the nonprofit Foundation Beyond Belief, a charitable organization dedicated to encouraging and demonstrating acts of humanist generosity.

At age 28, Dale married his true lo DALE McGOWAN, Ph.D., is a committed atheist, a devoted husband and father, and a recognized expert on raising caring, ethical children without religion. He is the author of Parenting Beyond Belief, a collection of essays by and for loving, thoughtful nonreligious parents hailed by Newsweek as “a compelling read,” and Raising Freethinkers, the first comprehensive resource addressing the unique challenges secular parents face. He teaches workshops to nonreligious parents throughout the United States and Canada and was named a Harvard Humanist of the Year. Dale also founded the nonprofit Foundation Beyond Belief, a charitable organization dedicated to encouraging and demonstrating acts of humanist generosity.

At age 28, Dale married his true love, Becca, a Southern Baptist. They had a traditional religious wedding in a beautiful, historic Lutheran church in San Francisco, with two ministers—a Methodist friend of the family and the bride’s Baptist uncle—plus an Episcopal organist. “No one would have guessed there was an atheist in the room,” Dale reflects, “much less that he was the one in tux and tails.” Twenty-three years and three kids later, their marriage is, happily, still going strong. Yet, as Dale knew from the experiences of others, including close friends, many mixed-belief marriages are marked by frequent conflict and pain, and some end in divorce, caused directly by the couple’s differences in worldview. Why do some secular/religious marriages succeed and others fail? Dale’s fascination with that question and search for answers culminated in the book, In Faith and In Doubt: How Religious Believers and Nonbelievers Can Create Strong Marriages and Loving Families.

Before finding his calling as a writer, Dale McGowan enjoyed a 15-year career as a professor of music and conductor. He holds degrees in physical anthropology and music theory from the University of California, as well as a doctorate in music composition and theory from the University of Minnesota. In addition to his books on secular parenting and mixed-belief families, he is the author of Atheism for Dummies, Voices of Unbelief, and two works of satirical fiction, Calling Bernadette's Bluff and Good Thunder. He makes his home near Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife Becca, a second grade teacher, and their three kids.
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Dale McGowan's Blog

Dale McGowan isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.

100 Short Boy Names

Are you a cute short guy who wants to find the perfect name for your newly-adopted pet? Or maybe you’re just looking for a unique pet name that will catch their attention? If your answer is yes, then we have something in common. Too often, names are given to pets without knowing what personality they might have or what kind of noise they might make. It’s all too familiar how George the tortoise wa

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Dale McGowan’s books

Average rating: 4.11 · 3,741 ratings · 462 reviews · 15 distinct works • Similar authors

	Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion 4.07 avg rating — 1,799 ratings — published 2007 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief by Dale McGowan, Molleen Matsumura, Amanda Metskas 4.19 avg rating — 1,350 ratings — published 2009 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Atheism for Dummies 4.18 avg rating — 277 ratings — published 2013 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	In Faith and In Doubt: How Religious Believers and Nonbelievers Can Create Strong Marriages and Loving Families 4.15 avg rating — 170 ratings — published 2014 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light (2nd Ed.) by Valerie Tarico, Dale McGowan (Foreword) 4.40 avg rating — 108 ratings — published 2010 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Growing Up Godless: A Parent's Guide to Raising Kids without Religion by Deborah Mitchell, Dale McGowan (Foreword) 3.32 avg rating — 62 ratings — published 2014 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Calling Bernadette's Bluff: A Novel 3.68 avg rating — 37 ratings — published 2002 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Voices of Unbelief: Documents from Atheists and Agnostics 4.14 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2012	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Good Thunder 4.17 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2010 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Everyday Humanism by Dale McGowan (2014-11-25) by Dale McGowan, Andrew Copson, Unknown Author 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Dale McGowan…

Quotes by Dale McGowan (?)

“Spirituality is about being awake. It’s the attempt to transcend the mundane, sleepwalking experience of life we all fall into, to tap into the wonder of being a conscious and grateful thing in the midst of an astonishing universe. It doesn’t require religion. Religion can, in fact, and often does, blunt our awareness by substituting false (and dare I say inferior) wonders for real ones. It’s a fine joke on ourselves that most of what we call spirituality is actually about putting ourselves to sleep.”
― Dale McGowan

tags: freethinking, religion, spirituality

6 likes

“Spread your arms out to your sides, like a plane. Your wingspan is a timeline. Your left fingertip represents the time of the first single-celled life on earth. And your right fingertip is right this minute. Between the two is 3.7 billion years of time, the history of life on earth.

From your left fingertip, all the way up your arm, past your left shoulder, across your chest, and past your right shoulder, life on earth is nothing but bacteria. By the time you reach your right wrist, the most impressive form of life on earth, the king of beasts, is the worm. In the middle of your right palm you finally get your dinosaurs, and they're extinct by your last finger joint.

Run your eyes along that history again so far. All that history, all that life, and still no appearance by the Main Attraction, the species for whom everything is supposedly made - humankind.

So when do humans finally show up at the party? Well it's more than fashionably late. Homo sapiens fits in one fingernail clipping.”
― Dale McGowan, Atheism for Dummies

5 likes

“That churchgoers do the lion's share of the charitable work in our communities is simply untrue. They get credit for it because they do a better job of tying the good works they do to their creed. But according to a 1998 study, 82% of volunteerism by churchgoers falls under the rubric of "church maintenance" activities -- volunteerism entirely within, and for the benefit of, the church building and immediate church community. As a result of this siphoning of volunteer energy into the care and feeding of churches themselves, most of the volunteering that happens out in the larger community -- from AIDS hospices to food shelves to international aid workers to those feeding the hungry and housing the homeless and caring for the elderly -- comes from the category of "unchurched" volunteers.”
― Dale McGowan, Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion

tags: charity, volunteerism

5 likes

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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The Seasonal Read...: Winter Challenge 2011: Completed Tasks -DO NOT DELETE ANY POSTS IN THIS TOPIC	2866	792	Feb 29, 2012 09:03PM
Goodreads Librari...: [closed] Clean up XVI	757	735	Jul 16, 2023 12:15AM

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