13 Comments »

1. Katherine:
   February 26th, 2006 @ 1:38 pm

   I think those are really great answers, keeping your own beliefs but respecting those who believe differently, it should be how we all are, whatever we believe.

   My mum and stepdad weren’t perhaps as actively humanist as I am but they let me explore religion as a child, religion being allowed in schools in the UK meant I basically accepted what I was being taught until I was about 10, but my parents let me get on with it. Of course, like Blake, I experienced situations like being told that I hadn’t been brought up properly because I didn’t say grace, but I soon sussed out what I believed and what I thought was right.

2. Laura:
   February 26th, 2006 @ 3:33 pm

   These are all wonderful answers, Noell.
   I hope that if I ever become a mom I am able to follow your example.

3. fran:
   February 26th, 2006 @ 6:55 pm

   Peer pressure….. Religion is well aware of that and they use it to their advantage when it comes to influencing your child ( the little urchin non-believer ) yeah, the little satan spawn…. The infadel who needs salvation!!! If your child refuses to go along with the fantasies he soon finds himself in a pickle . The parents of the other children will encourage their child to ” stay away ” from the infested child . What’s a kid to do? Well act it out of course ( pretend there is a pretend god ) . Sounds cruel huh ,but it’s totally true . How many folks do you think are saved each year because they simply want to fit? ( I think all of them ) I am convinced that no one actually believes the tales of the bible because logically at some point nothing makes rational sense, but we are communal people and we just want to be accepted , so if it means believing ghostly tales for that acceptance we are willing to go against our better more educated judgement to avoid the lonely pits of despair . You have to be completely comfortable in your own skin to walk the paths many of us have chosen for ourselves

4. Stephanie:
   February 26th, 2006 @ 7:57 pm

   I had a similar situation to Noell’s with my son and his cousin involving prayer. My niece was over for the afternoon and before we ate lunch she wanted to pray. I told her that was fine. We don’t pray, but she could go ahead and pray if she wanted to. I went into the other room to get something and when I came back, my son was in tears. I guess my niece told my kids that she would not be their friend if they didn’t pray with her. She told my son he was a bad person because he did not believe in Jesus.
   I explained to my niece that we do not believe in Jesus, but that doesn’t mean we’re bad people. As soon as my sister came to pick her up, I told her about the situation, and she was really embarassed. She does not personally teach her daughter to act that way, but she does take her to church where she is being taught different ideals from other people. My son and I had a wonderful conversation that evening, but it broke my heart to see my 5 year old learning these hard life lessons at such a young age.

5. hifi:
   February 27th, 2006 @ 5:06 pm

   If you are familiar with Sam Harris’ works (i.e., “The End of Faith”), you know that he sees liberal religious tolerance as co-dependence, part of the problem that enables religiosity in others. In any other area, would we not intervene if we saw people engaging in irrational behavior? I, myself, have found I have less and less patience with adult foolishness. That is one approach, which I may soon resort to.

   The other approach is the appeal to secularism. My daughter had a play date one day. Her friend’s mother stayed, so we had a chance to talk. It is generally acknowledged that we live in an area with great public schools. She qualified that with, “Well, we don’t exactly agree with the secular history that the schools teach.” (Obviously, she is going to have more problems than that: astronomy, biology, geology, physics, chemistry… that support evolutionary time). Anyway, my reply was, “You know what’s great about the public schools? It is a model for how we can all come together and work together, regardless of our individual beliefs.” It got to her and she said no more on the subject.

   And isn’t it true? As American, we all already have the model for how to get along already. Secularism applies to the “commons”, the spaces that we all share. It dilutes conflict while building on common interests.

   Just as enabling diversity is good for a strong and healthy America it is good for strong and healthy friendships and families. We each are responsible to practice religion only to the point where our actions don’t impose our beliefs on others, especially children of others.

   In this vein, at my request, when my family shares the family cabin with my father, alone, he closes his eyes over the meal while we dig in. The kids are cute about it, they say he is thinking of Grandma. If other religious families our present, they retreat inside to do their thing and we straggle along afterwards.

   Again, at my request, last Christmas, the family gathering – which had always been notoriously filled with religious testimony – saw nary a religious moment; except for the family prayer which we quietly observed from the behind the assembled group. My kids, 5 and 7, understand that their relatives believe they can talk, without speaking, to an invisible person with magical powers who they are asking to be used in their favor. It is such a ridiculous notion on its face, that this is all we have ever had to tell our children about it in order for them to consider it very silly.

   Unfortunately, this Christmas, religion returned with a vengeance. If I can’t get assurances this year, I’m not sure what we will do. The kids will miss seeing their relatives, but then again, they will miss people who seem to care very little about creating an atmosphere conducive to mutual respect.

   One thing I am certain about. You cannot allow kids to come to their own decisions about these things. Religiously indoctrinated children have years of stories fed into their brains. We humans understand ourselves and our world by telling ourselves stories. We must give our children their story. It is not easy material, the reference library is the whole world. But like anything else, a child needs to be given the words, concepts and details, and opportunity to practice with them, regularly. We need to read to our children. Talk to them about science on a daily basis. Watch “The Magic School Bus”. Go on backyard nature hikes. But if you still find can’t articulate your own beliefs to your children, better start reading yourself. Or write, like many of us do, on forums like this, to work out our ideas. In our family, we dedicate at least an hour every other week to provide our children with the scientific foundations of our worldview.

6. Cassandra:
   February 27th, 2006 @ 6:06 pm

   Great topic Noell, and excellent answers. My boys are still very young so I haven’t had to handle any of these situations, but I know our time is coming, and faster than I realize it. I was able to survive our first year in school and Christmas. Easter is next…

   Hifi, excellent comment. I agree with a lot of what you say. I actually struggle with the idea of my children coming up with their own beliefs, and teaching them to believe mine. At young ages, I don’t think it really matters. But when you have 14 year olds (for example) asking to go to church with their friends – well, I’m not so sure how I feel about situations like that. Young people are so easily drawn in to things, especially when it looks like a good opportunity for “happiness” and “acceptance” and “forgivness.”
   When teenagers are starting to search for their beliefs, and themselves, I think that stepping in and steering them in the right direction may be important.

   I watched a 14 year old boy join the Mormon church. His family (xian, but not really church-goers) was dumbfounded. It all started when he stayed at a friends house one night and went to church with them the next day, just to hang out…

7. Noell:
   February 27th, 2006 @ 8:27 pm

   Hifi-

   I loved Sam Harris’ book, “End of Faith,” but I found his argument that tolerance of liberal religion encourages and gives allowance to fundamentalism. I don’t necessarily disagree, I am just not convinced. I DO agree that liberal religion is entirely nonsensical and in denial about what is in the “Good Book.”

   I agree with you that it is good to explain to our kids what religions believe in basic language (without all the religiously persuasive terms and voice inflections) because they see the absurdity of it. You don’t even have to make fun of someone’s religion to inspire some laughs. You just state the belief in basic reality-based language.

   Like you, our extended family Christmas activity had finally started to take on a more secular nature a year ago, but returned decidely religious again last year. With our family, though, there is so much silliness and joking going on, you could hardly say it was “spiritual.”

   I can see how the family would feel it is their right to conduct religiously charged holiday celebrations since the rest of the family was religious before we became non-religious. But then, there should be some regard for the family as a whole; for the others who don’t believe. They can conduct the religious aspects of their religion on their own time in their individual homes and at church.

   I’m curious to hear more opinions from others on this, both from the secular readers and from the religious readers. What do you think about asking your family to conduct a non-religous celebration during the large family events? Or do you feel we should expose our children to it as an opportunity to teach them what you believe about it?

8. fran:
   February 28th, 2006 @ 5:03 pm

   When I was a kid in the 50s if you asked a question that no one understood many people used a silly answer to explain it. For example , when it thundered and you asked what caused it it wasn’t explained as the clashing of atmospheric pressures, but rather it was god rolling wheel barrows around in the heavens .In the information age the answers are so readilly available and at our fingertips and that to a lot of older adults is pretty unnerving . Pretend God isn’t Mr. Know-it-all any longer . Logical , practical , scientific explanations are taking his place. Leaving him with less and less to do and more and more vulnerable to scrutiny. If you notice when christians are asked for explanations for this or that they are much more often on the defensive . Subjective responses to the justification of a supreme being are less and less because they are beginning to realize the ignorance of all of the claims. That is frieghtning to preacher-priestly guy.So he now is Mr. defense “minister so and so ” who feels the need to justify sticking up for the ever dwindling concepts of the ghosts and spirits of the gods who linger in space aimlessly waiting to whoosh down and perform a miracle now and then for some hopeless, helpless soul in dire need of a hookup.

9. Ed Darrell:
   March 4th, 2006 @ 4:19 am

   I am a strong devotee of education. Education isn’t the answer to all questions — for some the answer is “42″ — but it’s the answer to many.

   In particular, I’ve been interested, a student of, and a participant in the discussions about the “secular” history schools teach, and especially the claptrap that most who have difficulty with it propose to replace it with. So I have a couple of observations.

   Education is like a vaccine. It immunizes people against stupid ideas. Do you worry about your kid getting bad history in public schools? My worry is that my kids will get an idiot teacher who thinks the “secular history” is wrong, and the teacher will bring in the appalling books of David Barton. So, how to protect a kid against it?

   This is what worked for me: I loved the stories about Ben Franklin. As a child I got to see “Ben and Me,” that silly and wonderful animated Disney feature about the mouse who claimed to be the brains behind some of Franklin’s better stuff. It’s also available in book form (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_and_Me). Fortunately, my siblings and parents had enough stuff on Franklin around the house, in encyclopedias, books, and their own stories, that I could confirm the truthful parts of the story, which only made me admire Franklin more.

   And I held on to that. I collected Franklin stories and books. Sometime early on I read his “Autobiography,” and after that I always had a good deal more about Franklin than my teachers (it’s not difficult to know more than most school teachers on a topic, really — they need to be a mile wide, so we are of necessity an inch deep on most things).

   From Franklin, I branched out into Jefferson and other founders (it wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I discovered Madison).

   In short, I had a lot of the facts. When people began to blather on about “our Christian heritage,” I knew when they started to stray from the facts. It made it necessary to remain skeptical about the stuff I heard, not just easy.

   Now, your kids may not find Franklin so compelling as I did as a kid, though with his many shenanigans, his penchant for nudity and the ladies, his powerful drive to play practical jokes, and his science stuff, it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t love him. There are other, wonderful stories in history that provide both models for how to act to build our communities, and a mythos for how to live in the world. A smart fourth-grade kid should read Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, about America’s first published expert, on sailing and math.

   And science. Every kid is a natural scientist. Get the kid books, and microscopes, and magnifying lenses. Tell the story of Charles Darwin, who, employed to find the natural facts that proved Genesis an accurate story, found a different story; tell how Darwin wrestled with whether to tell the facts, how he had to get out of the agreement to publish contrary to the facts, and what a fine human being he was. Tell the story of Abraham Lincoln, who ran for Congress in 1846 as an atheist, and won. Tell the story of Stephen Girard, who as an atheist found refuge in America from persecution in officially-Catholic France, who became the richest man in the world, and who personally saved the United States by financing the War of 1812 from his personal funds, when the United States had run out of money. (Tell the story of excess in the French Revolution, too — give kids the facts.) Get books about Edison’s inventions, and study his methods for making teams and sparking creativity among his workers and colleagues.

   Don’t ignore the women. Tell the stories of the women who worked for suffrage, for health care, for children. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abigail Adams, Clara Barton, Emily Dickinson, Marie Curie . . .

   Tell the story of the “progressives,” who brought change to America especially, often having to work against an entrenched, “Christian” establishment — to get safe work and fair work hours, to get laws against child abuse and spousal abuse, to get safe and clean water and food, etc., etc., etc.

   Make sure your kids know the stories of religious persecution, too — not as an “in your face” rebuttal to those who blindly sing the praises of religion, but because it’s important for kids to know that bias and bigotry are not new, are almost always detrimental to individuals and society, and that they can be overcome with wit, hard work, and dedication. Tell the stories of the Mormon persecution, how Missouri put a bounty on Mormons. Tell the story of the Trail of Tears. Tell the story of the Japanese internment in World War II. Talk about lynching, about the many incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan. Tell the story of Gutson Borglum, who was chased away from carving the Stone Mountain, Georgia, monument to the Confederacy, and ended up carving Mount Rushmore instead.

   Read Richard Feynman’s books to your kid, sex and all, when they’re in sixth or seventh grade. Start with Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, and go on from there. (If you ever find that old NOVA program dedicated to Feynman, his drumming and other eccentricities, done shortly after his death, please get me a copy!) Read about Watson and Crick — get their books.

   Get Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and read it for yourself, if not for your kids. Get The Sand County Almanac and bask in the sheer goodness of good land stewardship. Tell your kids about John Muir, about how Moran’s paintings helped get Yellowstone as the world’s first National Park.

   Feed your kids the facts. As Fox Mulder used to claim, the truth is out there — and it’s not found in brain-numbing dumbing down of history, philosophy and science.

   A kid who loves the truth and seeks it, will be unlikely to go off with his Baptist friends to a weekend campover and come back baptized as born again, especially when he knows that the Southern Baptist Convention only repudiated slavery and its inherent racism in the last decade or so. If your kids know the stories about the origins of the Seventh-Day Adventists, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, they will be pariahs to the missionaries from those churches.

   You should understand that I’m a believer myself. But, as a kid in one of our Sunday school classes once noted on a poster, Jesus came to take away our sins, not our minds. The high moral ground, especially for unchurched and disbelieving skeptics, is in knowing more and better than those who try to persuade you to the contrary.

   Ultimately, of course, we shouldn’t shield our kids from religion. That’s the error so many fundamentalists make, but from the opposite side. They shelter their kids from evolution, astronomy and real history, and then are shocked when their kids call from college to say they won’t be in church on Sunday, because they just took classes in biology, physics and history, and they know better than they were taught.

   This is way, way too long. I hope I’ve not obscured the point. Knowledge is power, and it is immunization against stupid things, stupid actions and stupid ideas. Innoculate your kids today, and often.

   Give the kids the facts. Be scrupulously honest. Find the joy of getting things accurate, and pass it along.

10. Kaynoch:
    March 14th, 2006 @ 6:22 pm

    I’m an agnostic mom of two (2 years, 6 months), I will be back with questions as we haven’t even got there yet!

11. Hifi:
    March 15th, 2006 @ 6:59 pm

    This news item just came out today about parents suing the school and state of Texas for the “moment of prayer. It brought me back to this topic of “What’s a Parent to Do” because there is more to it than leading and coaching and educating our kids.

    We can also stand up and take individual responsibility for changing the system. When I was growing up in the sixties, the Pledge of Allegiance, among other conformist religious activities and indignities of the time, irked me no end. Throughout high school, I stood silent and defiant (if you can be defiant while also feeling guilty.)

    Now that I am a parent, I look back and am appalled that there was no one then who ever stood up for me. When my kids (19 months apart, like Kaynoch) started school, I could not believe that in the 40 years since I had been in elementary school that the Pledge was still intact and going stronger than ever. This hadn’t already been dealt with by someone? Well, one thing I’ve done as a parent is to make sure my kids have someone who will stand for them and have taken this issue head on.

    I have more or less documented my progress (not inconsiderable for a lone individual) in the following posts on the Bright’s Pledge forum
    - Petition to the Board with media attention
    - Code of education modified
    - Taking it directly to the teachers

    I think my point here can be summed up with a comment made by another poster on the Brights’ forum in defense of my efforts in answer to a niggling critic. “hifi is one of the few people here actually doing something, not just talking. To actually achieve something there are two obstacles that need to be overcome 1) public opinion and 2) public opinion sensitive school boards, state legislatures, Congress, and courts. Any effort towards making progress is better than nothing and cheap talk is nothing. If parents around the country started doing what hifi is doing that would have a real impact.”

    I would add that you do not need children in school to do this local work. Everyone’s property taxes pay for schools and everyone can provide input and criticism to public officials within their districts.

    For those who have children, certainly, raising strongly secular kids is an equally important parallel effort. I am heartened that discussions here are sprouting concrete efforts, beyond the talk, toward that end. But, please, let’s not stop there.

12. Katie:
    April 9th, 2006 @ 10:00 am

    My Boyfriend and I have been talking a lot about marriage, kids and our future together. He’s a wonderfull man and I love him deeply. However, He is a theist and I am agnostic. We have never found it difficult to be together as a couple even though we have many differences. We both are science minded people and evolution in his mind is truth. We also agree on most social issues. But, for him god is a much stronger presence in his life than it ever will be for me.How can we raise children together without completly confusing them? Please, any suggested reading or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

13. Dave Burton:
    February 28th, 2007 @ 4:12 pm

    To Ed Darrell,

    Interesting message, but I have a few quibbles.

    First, there actually was never a “bounty on Mormons” in Missouri nor anywhere else. That old myth apparently has no historical basis, though there were several nasty little wars pitting Mormans against non-Mormans, in Missouri and elsewhere, in the early 1800s.

    Also, I think your comments regarding slavery are a bit unfair to Christians. It is worth noting that the abolitionist movement, both in the USA and in England, was led and energized by Christians, and that slavery persisted far longer in non-Christian parts of the world than in the Christian-dominated West. Also, your mention of the Southern Baptist Convention’s vote in 1995 to apologize for slavery makes it sound as if the SBC was pro-slavery until then, but nothing could be further from the truth. Despite the denomination’s pro-slavery roots (in 1845), the Southern Baptists have long condemned racism as grave sin.

    Indeed, all American moralist movements, including the Abolitionist movement, the Temperance movement, and today’s Pro-Life movement, have been lend and dominated by Christians.

    Last, you’re note quite right about Abe Lincoln. He did not run for Congress as an atheist, but, rather, he was accused of being one, by his opponent, an evangelist named Peter Cartwright. The accusation might well have been true, but that’s nevertheless quite a different thing from “running as” an atheist.

    The difference is not mainly in what it means w/r/t Lincoln’s own faith, but in what it says about his constituents’ faith. In fact, during that campaign, Lincoln, himself, said that he would not support a candidate whom he knew to be atheist.

    As President, Abe Lincoln frequently attended a Presbyterian Church, but never joined. Like Ben Franklin, Lincoln apparently came to his Christian Faith late in life. In fact, by some accounts, he first accepted Christ in 1862, while in office. (If true, then Lincoln was probably the only American President to become a Christian while in office, with the possible exception of Ike, who was baptized while in office, but who is generally thought to have already been a believer before his election.)

    Beginning in 1863 (presumably subsequent to his conversion), Lincoln penned some of the most eloquent words of Christian conviction seen from any American President since Washington, notably including Lincoln’s famous October 3rd, 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation. Although some argue that Lincoln was not truly a believer even then, it is very hard to reconcile such a view with his public words.

    But I agree with you that “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” was a fun read.

    -Dave Burton
    dave at burtonsys dot com but please no spam

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