Wife Swap: Atheist and Christian
Last night, I watched an episode of the USA version of Wife Swap only because they swapped the wife of a pastor with the wife of an Atheist who runs an Internet Radio program from home.
According to his website and Wikipedia entry, Reginald Finley (aka InfidelGuy) felt the ABC misrepresented his family. The show portrayed the father as a workaholic working 70+ hours per week and rarely spending time with his family; the mother as spending all day playing The Sims 2; the eldest son doing all the housework; the other children staying in daycare.
The program only really portrayed the negative aspects of the Stonerock family as being too God obsessed (particularly the pastor-father) and the niece who lived with the family as not having enough interaction with girls, particularly of her own age.
Besides all the arguing, there are lots of interesting things that happen. For example, the atheist wife (Amber) gets the Christian children some evolution-based home schooling and forces the pastor to pay $10 for a kid’s party every time he prays God - something he openly rebels, comparing his actions to that of Daniel. Amber complains that he isn’t following rules but really, he’s paying the $10. However, he draws the line at wearing a shirt that says “Ban God”.
The show does portray the week where the pastor’s wife (Kelly) takes control as a truly joyous time, particular when the son is allowed to relax and not do chores and when he actually spends time with his father. She also takes over the radio program for a week which leads to a loss of subscribers and… subsequently Reginald breaks down and cries, stating that he feels he’s been criticized too harshly by Kelly. Yet, you can see the son is losing his childhood with chores and a lack of fatherly love!
You can actually download MP3s of her program
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and a debate between the pastor and Reginald
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. I think she does a really good job and Reginald gets pwned a bit by showing his frustration and lack of strong points.
Apparently this episode has created a lot of Net debate. Looking at another blog: here. I can’t help but think what is wrong with these Atheists:
Mr. Finley came off as stressed, a bit sensitive, but a committed and informed Atheist. What was remarkable about the Finleys is that their family problems appeared so, well, mainstream. Reginald Finley was presented as a man who labors at his computer 60-80 hours a week to keep the Infidelguy.com web site on line. He may well be a “workaholic,” but there is certainly nothing unusual or downright un-American here.
With lack of relationships like that, what chances will the family not split up?
Additional links:
- BitTorrent link to downloadthe episode
- ABC Biographies of both families
- Reginald’s blog post about the episode
