That doesn’t mean we can’t help. Here is what Dale said we could do:

A polite expression of curious interest combined with excitement for the appearance of such a reasonable and respectful book — that’s the ticket. Something like this:

Dear Mr. Windybottom,

I just came across a great new parenting book and wondered if you’d heard about it. It’s called “Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion” and is co-written by a number of prominent authors ranging from Richard Dawkins to a Unitarian minister. Early reviews are praising it as evenhanded and down-to-earth, not an angry screed. As a longtime reader of [insert mag name here], I’d love to see a review of this book in your pages. Would you happen to know if that’s in the works? I look forward to hearing from you!

Regards,
Sandy Subscriber

As for the list of mags I’m most eager to break into, here’s my top ten:

Parents Magazine: www.parents.com
Parenting Magazine (circ. over 2 million): www.parenting.com
Informed Parent – includes prominent book reviews: www.informedparent.com
Brain, Child – very good content fit: www.brainchildmag.com
Family Resource.com – prominent reviews: www.familyresources.com
Gay Parent – many gay parents are secularists: www.gayparentmag.com
Cookie Magazine: www.cookiemag.com
New Parent Magazine: www.newparent.com
Wondertime Magazine: www.wondertime.go.com
Mothering Magazine: www.mothering.com

I’d be very grateful for help in gently contacting the editors at these publications. Thanks Noell, and thanks to your readers!

Some days my seven-year-old daughter believes there is a god. Hers is a god of lost pencils and favorite foods. On other days, when said god doesn’t come through to grant a wish, she announces, “I guess I don’t believe in god anymore.”

To read more, follow the link to this week’s article in the Humanist Network News. Feel free to write a letter to the editor in response. Or come back here if you’d like to comment on my blog.

I wanted to thank everyone for the great response to the previous post about Parenting Beyond Belief. It was great to see so many links back to my posting and to the book; so many purchases, even multiple purchases, and gifts to local libraries! Awesome.

Somebody asked which of the magazines and stores are rejecting the book. I contacted Dale McGowan about this. So far he is waiting to hear the specifics from the publisher. Once he gets the information I’ll be sure to update you so all the interested activists in this readership can start writing letters.

Here is a positive review from Library Journal. This is a publication that is instrumental in getting libraries to purchase copies:

McGowan, a professor, freelance writer, and novelist, has collected essays from some of contemporary secularism’s big names, e.g., Richard Dawkins, Margaret Downey, in support of those nonreligious American parents who seek to “articulate values, celebrate rites of passage, find consolation, and make meaning” sans religion. Contributor Ed Buckner writes that secular means “not based on religion” rather than “hostile to religion.” Though a few entries do evidence anger or resentment, it is clear that all of these astute essayists have thought carefully about God’s nonexistence. Most of the 30-odd contributors recommend imbuing children with the ability to think well independently; when pressured or rejected by real and figurative institutions that tend to favor the religious (e.g., schools, scouting, holidays), parents are advised to stick to their nontheistic guns. The book considers parents as pedagogues, recalling Deborah Stipek and Kathy Seal’s Motivated Minds: Raising Children To Love Learning. Engaging and down-to-earth, this collection balances the scores of religious parenting titles shelved in the average library and is highly recommended for large public libraries and parenting collections. — Douglas C. Lord, Connecticut State Lib., Hartford

Thanks for your interest, everyone! Don’t forget to stop over to HNN for a little reading.

Several parenting magazines are declining to review the book for fear of offending religious subscribers, and a few retailers are declining to stock the book, claiming there is no market for it. It is essential that we demonstrate otherwise, so please put all promotional oars in the water as soon as possible.

I know that a huge percentage of AgnosticMom readers have blogs. Will you please promote the book on your sites? You can also send a link to the friends and family members on your email lists. Plus, if you can spare the change, how about ordering one for your local library?

Here is a link to the book, Parenting Beyond Belief. Let me know when your order your copy!

DALE MCGOWAN is a writer, editor, and critical thinking educator in Minneapolis. His satirical novel Calling Bernadette’s Bluff has been called “an undoubted triumph of satire” and “wicked funny.” He recently completed Northing at Midlife, a humorous narrative of a midlife crisis encountered on the trails of Britain. McGowan is editor of Rumors of Peace, the international newsletter of Nonviolent Peaceforce, is a board member of the Critical Thinking Club, Inc. and has taught critical thinking skills in the college classroom, the corporate boardroom, and public venues.

Dale met Becca, now an elementary educator, in 1984 when they were both members of the University of California Band in Berkeley, CA. They live near Minneapolis with their three ethical, caring kids

I read on the Parenting Beyond Belief forum that you grew up going to church. What religion were you?

We attended a UCC (United Church of Christ) dutifully every Sunday, but there wasn’t much presence of religion in our home the rest of the week. I grew up in the sort of nominally Christian home that’s so common.

Your dad died when you were thirteen years old and that event was the catalyst to a long journey of trying to discover truth about what happens after death and whether God exists. When I say long, I mean it lasted until you were about thirty three years old. Is that right? Throughout this time did you lean toward believing or not believing?

It was at Dad’s funeral that I began to feel that questions about God were important and interesting enough to pursue. Over the next twenty years I chased the answers to five questions:

1. Can I ask these questions?

2. May I ask these questions?

3. Even if I can and may, are answers possible?

4. If so, do the answers matter?

5. Am I alone in my conclusions?

For the sake of the inquiry, I had to assume the answer to the first question was yes. I gradually realized that a decent God was unlikely to care if I was honestly wrong about him, which took care of #2.

Question #3 took much longer. At last I realized that “Is there a God?” was the wrong question. “Why do people believe there is a God?” – now there’s a question I could actually pursue. If it turned out that people had good reasons for believing, I too would be justified in doing so. It was the process of learning why people believe that took most of twenty years.

I began to recognize the terribly negative effects of religious belief in my early thirties, which answered #4, and discovered (through AN Wilson) the astonishingly rich and largely concealed history of disbelief, which answered #5. At that point, in my mid-thirties, I felt I could express my disbelief with a greater confidence in its reasoned foundation.

You attended nine denominations throughout your church-going days. What were they?

The experiences varied from a few visits to several years. Let’s see if I can do it from memory: UCC, Mormon, Unitarian, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist megachurch (five years, please shoot me), Catholic, Episcopalian. I always forget one. Uh…Presbyterian!

Which played the most dominant role?

Unitarian. I attended Neighborhood UU Church in Pasadena, California for two years in high school and actually looked forward to the services. The minister (whose name I would swear was something like Reverend Lovejoy) would talk about life, actual human here-on-this-planet life! I felt challenged, inspired, and enlightened every Sunday.

Is your wife a nonbeliever and freethinker as well?

She was a mainstream Christian when we started dating and for about the first nine years of our marriage. And though I’d vigorously dissect the service on the way home from each ordeal at our Baptist megachurch, I never set out to change her views. But she’s wickedly smart (in addition to being perfect in every other way) and eventually began to question her own way out. She now calls herself a “humanist who prays ‘to whom it may concern.’”

Parenting Beyond Belief isn’t your first book. You’ve also written two novels. What drove you to switch over to nonfiction and write for secular parents?

The novels were written when I was a secular humanist professor at a Catholic college. They were satirical releases, born out of the frustration of that situation. Calling Bernadette’s Bluff was published in 2002; the sequel, Good Thunder, is finished but not yet released. I’m very happy with them, but I really think fiction is the aberration for me. My first love is narrative nonfiction, including a humorous travel narrative I wrote while living in England in 2004 (also pending release).

PBB came about because of the crying need for it, a need I discovered while editor of the Family Issues page of the Atheist Alliance WebCenter. I simply could not believe how little there was out there for parenting without religion, so I created PBB.

I realize the book hasn’t been released yet, but what kind of response is Parenting Beyond Belief getting?

It has been overwhelmingly positive – a kind of ripple-hallelujah from people who’ve been waiting for just such a thing. And word is spreading like wildfire. Googling the phrase “Parenting Beyond Belief” on January 1 gave me 49 hits. Last week it passed 12,000. I daresay we’re onto something!

Why is now the time to publish this book?

Ooh, I like that! Makes it sound like I sat on the project until just the right moment. In fact, this is when I got around to it. But I do think the timing is unbeatable, for three interrelated reasons:

(1) Publishers are ready. Ten years ago, no mainstream publisher would have touched it, but now disbelief is coming into its own. The enormous and recent success of the Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett books showed the publishing industry that nonbelievers exist in large numbers and that they read.

(2) Our numbers are increasing. In 1990, 8% of respondents to a USA Today poll identified themselves as non-religious. By 2002 that sector had grown to 14.1%. I don’t think 18 million people stopped believing during that time; for the most part, I think 18 million people started being comfortable with saying they didn’t believe. And that’s the point when we start getting comfortable sharing our disbelief with our children, as a value, not as the absence of one.

(3) Five years from now, with any luck, the book will have competition. At the moment there is essentially none, which makes this a better time!

Do you know how many non-religious families there are, and how this compares to estimates from years past?

This can only be guesssed from other statistics. The U.S. Census in 2000 counted 37.3 million households in the U.S. with school-age children. Assuming the same rough percentage of nonbelievers among parents as non-parents, these numbers yield a conservative estimate of seven million individual non-religious parents in the U.S. today, or roughly five million families.

What do you think is the number one reason for the boom in interest in leaving religious belief behind in our culture today?

The rise of fundamentalism, both Christian and Islamic. When George W. Bush was elected for the first time, I found myself in a room full of long-faced humanists bemoaning the end of the enlightenment. “Chins up!” I said. “This is the best possible news for us.” And I was right, imho. It is difficult to get people to see religion as a cultural cancer when it is moderated and under wraps. Only when religious zealotry takes the reins of power does the evidence become overwhelming.

We’ve had a chance to see the true face of religious orthodoxy in recent years, from a president who says God wanted him to invade another country to a religious electorate that seemed willing to permit him any course of action so long as he said his prayers. We can’t see priests without thinking of the hundreds who abused their authority to molest trusting children. Nineteen devout young men perpetrated mass murder on 9/11. Some people, gratifyingly, are beginning at last to connect the dots.

Disbelief isn’t automatically morally superior. We don’t need to make such an arrogant claim to earn our place at the table.
All we needed was the removal of the assumption that belief granted automatic supremacy. Now that that is a harder argument to make, people can think for themselves — and more people than ever are thinking their way out of superstition.

Has there been any public criticism from the religious side or do you anticipate any?

Nothing yet, and a number of Christians who’ve read excerpts have expressed pleasant surprise. The book does not attack religion or attempt to “recruit” people away from religious parenting. It is intended to encourage and support those who have already made the decision to raise their kids without religion and simply want a little help in doing so. Our hope is to help create a world in which disbelief is accepted as a normal and acceptable choice. Reasonable readers of all perspectives should be able to accept that.

A major concern of AgnosticMom readers is dealing with social situations and people who may not want to associate with atheists and agnostics. Do you have a section that addresses this subject? If so, tell us about it.

It’s not a separate section, but a thread that runs through several chapters, popping up in discussions of church-state separation, “mixed marriage,” and the chapter of Personal Reflections.

Do you envision following this with another book or project on a related subject?

Yes indeed. Since this was the first major book on the subject, we couldn’t hope to accomplish everything in one fell swoop. We hoped to play out some threads that could be continued in other projects. I see three immediate needs: a book devoted to dealing with death and loss, another on being secular in a religious extended family, and a practical book of activities.

I am getting ready to interview him and I thought I’d see if any of you have questions you want me to ask him. If you do you’ll have to post them quickly because I hope to post the interview in the next couple of days.

Today I am going to add an additional activity to what we did last year. I’m still working it out in my brain but I think I am going to explore color with the kids as a metaphor for how all of life is made up of just a handful of basic particles. Just as all color and all its variety come from three primary colors and black and white, everything we see in the world with all its variety comes from a limited number of elements (I’m still not sure what I should break it all down to. Any suggestions?)

We’ll play with paint, beginning with red, yellow, and blue, expanding to the secondary colors, then the tertiary. We’ll add black and white for varying tone. I may use that to explain mutations and how some mutations help a creature to survive environmental pressures, allowing it to reproduce more, and some mutations make it harder to survive, preventing it from reproducing as much.

And of course, we’ll also be doing the traditional AgnosticMom stuff that I outlined in my HNN article:

Feb. 12: Introduction of Evolution through Family Book Reading
Dinner focus: The first phase of evolutionary life: shellfish, jellyfish, worms
A. Read The Tree Of Life: The Wonders Of Evolution by Ellen Jackson.
B. Dinner:
1. Very involved version: A smorgasboard of shellfish: shrimp, lobster, oysters
2. Simpler version: Shrimp dinner
3. After dinner treat: Gummi-worms (put them in cute gift bags or boxes on their
plates. The kids love that!).
C. Table decor theme: Under the sea

What are you doing today? Whether you have ever commented before or not, please leave a comment if you are celebrating Darwin Day and tell us what you are doing today! If you have a blog and have written about it there, leave us a link.

Oh, and two articles by Agnostic Mom! And there’s my secret. This book, to be released in April, will feature two of my articles from the Humanist Network News!

I’m going to give you a link to the book on Amazon, but before I do, I’ll let you in on the plan. You can preorder now if you’d like. Or, if you want to try to propel it to the top ten, you can wait until April like many of us are doing when the book is actually released.

There is also a possibility that I may join some of the contributors at the September conference for Atheist Alliance International in Washington D.C. to be on a panel.

Okay, now here is the link to Parenting Beyond Belief.

INTELLIGENT THOUGHT: SCIENCE VERSUS THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN MOVEMENT is a compilation of articles by some of our favorite scientists.

In the Editor’s Note is a copy of an email he received which should be “a stark reminder of why this book is necessary, why it belongs on your bookshelf, and why sixteen of the world’s leading scientists (and Edge contributors) dropped everything to write essays on a crash schedule so the book would be published before the end of the school year.”

The email:

Date: Mon, 8 May 2006
From: Maulik Parikh
To: John Brockman
Subject: Intelligent Design

John,

I have been teaching a new course on the frontiers of science, required for all freshmen at Columbia. These students are mostly sharp, capable, and open-minded. Still, many of them think that intelligent design should be studied in the interest of being fair and balanced. What’s troubling is that even those who accept evolution often treat it as a matter of belief, of political persuasion, as if it were akin to being for or against free trade. And if they reject intelligence design it’s often not because they can see its vacuousness as a scientific theory, but merely because the religious and conservative stripes of ID can sometimes look a little uncool. As for science, reason, evidence — what’s that?

—Maulik

These articles are sure to be worthy of your ownership when you consider the list of contributors:

Steven Pinker, the scientist with which I am most enamored (and not because of his curly hair, but because he strikes me as being one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable men on the earth today), contributed an article with the title, “Evolution and Ethics.” The summary: An evolutionary understanding of the human condition, far from being incompatible with a moral sense, can explain why we have one.

(Hmmm, that reminds me of my on-going discussion with Ron and Hifi on Morality. Looks like I’m not the only one who talks of that subject. In fact, I can think of some other scientists who do too. I still need to get back to them on that. But now that I think of it, Pinker is a proponent of Evolutionary Psychology, along with his allies Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. That’s some serious intelligence backing up that Evolutionary Psychology, isn’t it? But that’s another topic, heehee).

Speaking of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, they are also contributors to this book on why Intelligent Design has no part on the scientific debate.

Dawkins’ article is called, “Intelligent Aliens.” Here’s the summary: Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity.

I love a scientist who is also a powerful writer. Did you notice that language?

Dennett’s contribution is called, “The Hoax of Intelligent Design and How It Was Perpetrated.” And again, the summary: Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all.

The article that Quantum Mechanical Engineer, Seth Lloyd, wrote interests me. It is called, “How Smart Is The Universe?’ and the summary is: Scientific knowledge is by definition resilient. In societies where government or religion has tried to replace it with ideologically inspired fictions, scientists and nonscientists alike have resisted. Scientific lies can fool some of the people some of the time (even to the extent of being published in reputable journals), but exactly because scientific ideas are designed to be tested, in the end scientific lies fool no one. The universe is scientific.

To see the list of the remaining contributors, along with their photos and a summary of their articles, go here and scroll down.

I’m ordering this book! Anyone else? Maybe we can discuss some of these articles once UPS pays us a visit!

In a comment on AgnosticMom, Hifi posted a link to an article from the Humanist Network News with the title, “Church of England Report: Youth No Longer Need Supernatural Props.”

While the topic of the article is worthy of our discussion (feel free to read it and then share your thoughts), I am interested in Hifi’s reaction to the article. After posting the link, he left this comment on my blog:

The entire rest of the modern world is coming around. What is wrong with America? As much as I do appreciate it, really, having to resort to an online enclave for support should tell us something.

Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine offered a theory as to why America is clinging to religion while the rest of the modern world seems to be letting it go. In his book, How We Believe, Shermer cites Andrew Greeley, a sociologist of religion at the University of Chicago.

Greeley delivered a paper to the American Sociological Association in 1997 discussing the rise of religiosity and beliefs at a time when all sides predicted the secularization of America. The paper was called, “Pie in the Sky While You’re Alive: Life After Death and Supply Side Religion.

The data from Greeley’s research led him to the following conclusion:

. . . the different levels of religious behavior that one can observe in various regions of a country like the United States and in various countries are the result of the available “supply” of religious services. In a controlled religious marketplace, they assert, religion becomes a lazy monopoly because the Established Church (or Established Churches as in Germany) need not compete for “customers.” On the other hand, when there is no legal monopoly various “firms” must compete for “customers” and hence provide more industrious personnel and more services. In such situations religious activity increases.

That’s a theory that makes sense to me!

Maybe what we need is a little Supply Side Secularism. In the past I have made fun of all the different variations of non-theists. Could be that it’s our greatest asset?

Now, if we can only find a product that compete with Life After Death . . .

What more do you expect from an administration where the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee (James Inhofe) is encouraging the public to read Michael Crighton’s novel “State of Fear” if they are interested in learning about climate science…rather than, of course, any of the many documents that are extensively peer reviewed and written for the general public for this very reason by the Internation Panel on Climate Change.

Jenn’s comment had me laughing and reminded me of a great post I read on a blog called, “Northstate Science.” Christopher O’Brien discusses how Christians complain about The Da Vinci Code “because it creates a cultural phenomenon out of inaccurate historical information.” He compares it with their own creation of a “cultural phenomenon out of inaccurate biological information,” specifically, Intelligent Design.

O”Brien’s post is a comment on an interview with Christian apologist, Mark Shea, who complains that The Da Vinci Code is a source of “pseudo-knowledge.” Hmmm. It sparked the following comment from O’Brien:

Just out of curiosity, how many millions have read Philip Johnson’s books such as Darwin on Trial, or William Dembski’s No Free Lunch? How many millions cite Jonathan Wells’ Icons of Evolution as containing factual information about evolution? Shea is concerned that millions of Christians have read The Da Vinci Code without critically thinking about it – but would he stop to consider how many Christians bother to critically think about Icons of Evolution?

Get your Climate Science from Michael Crighton. Get your Biology from Phillip Johnson. But don’t you dare get your History from Dan Brown.

This time an appearance from Strawberry Shortcake called us to a locally owned bookstore we’d never frequented. A good 30 minutes from home, Changing Hands Bookstore turned out to be the place of my dreams. With more of an eclectic style than the pristine Barnes & Noble, yet comparable in size, there was much to entertain my curious eye.

We moved to the back in search of “Strawberry Short,” as Aiden insists on calling her. We sat the kids down with the other children, then backed away to get behind the young audience.

I scanned the nearby shelves for a book to peruse while the kids listened to magical tales of fruit-filled characters. Staying in view of my children, I passed only a couple shelves and found myself facing an entire row of books by the great Joseph Campbell! I once tried unsuccessfully to find books by him at a library. And now here I was, at the Changing Hands bookstore, staring at an entire row of stumbled-upon Joseph Campbell books.

During a brief break in which “Strawberry Short” needed a sip of strawberry juice, I took my kids over to the amazing children’s section. At Barnes & Noble, I have to sift through a lot of books; books with the purpose of introducing commercial toys to children, rather than actually produce an engaging tale or impart knowledge in an attractive way (although we did find that amazing pop-up dinosaur book called Encyclopedia Prehistorica Dinosaurs at Barnes & Noble).

At this particular store, my walk toward the children’s area revealed a plethora of desirable books. The one that really got me excited, though, was another educational, beautifully illustrated pop-up book. Galileo’s Universe, by J. Patrick Lewis and Tom Curry, begins with an introduction of how the world had embraced Aristotle and Ptolemy’s geocentric (earth-centered) cosmos for centuries.

Aristotle and Galileo shared a common wonder with everyday observations, but differed, both in their responses to their curiosities, as well as in their results.

Falling grapes. Floating Leaves. Flying Cannonballs. Swinging lamps. Aristotle had seen these things, too, but his explanation of their “essence,” or nature, did not satisfy Galileo.

And so the man of Pisa probed, measured, and tested . . . . Where Aristotle had asked why things moved, Galileo asked how.

Galileo’s Universe will reach a wide-range of ages. All children love pop-up books. Aiden, who is two, loves the book only for the experience of observation as he swings the pendulum back and forth or opens various windows.

Five-year-old Trinity loves the book for the same reason, but with her I am able to introduce the man, Galileo, with a brief explanation of the mathematical or scientific discovery of the particular pop-up she is manipulating. When she turns the dial to see various heavenly bodies on Galileo’s makeshift telescope, or opens up the fold-out comparison between Aristotle and Galileo’s model of the universe, I can explain how science altered what we know about our place in it.

Blake, who is eight-years-old, can actually read and understand the book himself. Besides the beautiful art, which I always look for in children’s books, the author used two different writing techniques to convey the information about Galileo and his life.

The body of text is in poetic form. It first illuminates the fascinations that preoccupied the mind of Galileo, the child:

The movement of a boat or toy,
The angle of a shaft of light
Provided endless hours of joy
And kept him dreaming half the night.

If everything preoccupied
His mind, then what would he become-
A child captivated by
The swinging of a pendulum?

Next we learn how Galileo chose his field of study, invented the hydrostatic scale for measuring weights and metals, and then stood upon the Leaning Tower of Pisa to test the common, ancient assumption that balls of different weight would fall at different rates of speed. There is a great pop-up to illustrate the simultaneous landings of a ball of wood and a ball of lead.

Blake couldn’t believe the actual results explained in the book. He tested it with a number of objects and laughed in amazement to see it in person.

At the end of the book, we observe The Church’s reaction to Galileo’s heliocentric universe and how they banned him to house arrest for the remainder of his life:

When Galileo’s sixty-nine years
Were folded in his chair,
He faced the angry Holy Men,
Who thundered on, “Beware!
The Earth is fixed, it does not move-
So you must testify!”
They sentenced him to silence
And they took away his sky.

There is a second mode of story-telling, which further adds to the book’s versatility. Many of the pages have a pull out insert which give, in prose form, more details to Galileo’s life, studies, and inventions. At the end of the book is a time line for his life.

Am I happy with my purchase of Galileo’s Universe?

You know you got a good book when the kids spend the entire ride home fighting over who gets to hold it. You know it’s good when your son wants to conduct his own experiment based on the story. It’s definitely a prized possession, as I can barely keep my hands around it long enough to write up its review. Yes, I am thrilled with my purchase.

I have found one book that I like. It simplifies the concepts well as an introduction to Evolution. And I stress that it is an introduction. It does not explain mechanisms of Natural Selection, nor does it go into a detailed order of the development of the species. It is a very general story of the evolution of life, with words that inspire awe at the process.

The book is The Tree Of Life: The Wonders Of Evolution by Ellen Jackson. The great thing about this book is that Jackson uses very simple language and concepts to explain an exceptionally intricate concept. It is a great introduction to young minds who are learning about life’s origins for the first time.

For example, the book begins in the early days of the earth, before there is any life. It describes, how an new “almost alive” tiny thing came to be. Then the almost alive thing began to divide in two, reproducing itself again and again using gas and water.

“Did the new thing always copy itself exactly right? The answer may surprise you. Almost always it did copy itself exactly. But once in a great while, not very often, a copy would be different from the others.”

The book then goes on to explain how a good difference (mutation), perhaps making it faster, will allow it to live longer and copy itself more. Eventually we come to learn what the first of the animals are: shellfish, jellyfish, and worms. From here on out, the book gives a very general and simple description of the order of succeeding life: fish, plants, reptiles, birds, mammals and humans.

In the introduction of the book Jackson describes her disappointment with current children’s books on Evolution, which inspired her to write this one:

“Those books that attempted to explain evolution did so in a way that, though scientifically accurate, conveyed none of the wonder and excitement of this concept. The Tree of Life is my attempt to help young children to understand the beauty and power of this great idea.”

Some of you readers support Science, and appreciate the Theory of Evolution, but are also religious, or at least believe in God. You will be happy with this book. While it does not mention a Creator, it inspires a sufficient amount of wonder, that you could naturally interject your beliefs that a god or intelligent being directed the process, helping the “almost alive things” to make the jump to organized life.

My only regret with this book is the illustrations. They’re decent, but the colors are only purple and white. I can imagine much more beautiful imagery, details and colors that would reach further to draw the child into the magic of the story.

I will be reading this book to my children on the first day of Darwin Day, February twelfth. I will then use our dinner meals and a special treat over the following six days to review the order in which species developed. For example, since the first animals to develop were shellfish, worms, and jellyfish, we will have shellfish for dinner. The kids will get wrapped surprises with gummi-worms inside. I will share the specifics of the entire week with you in my next post.

If you are interested in the book, click on the title at the top of this post. As of yesterday, the book is listed at Amazon for a reduced price. There is a limited supply currently in stock, but they will stock up again.

I received my first correction! After reading, America In Decline, Skysinger clarified for me that we do not have a cure for polio, just a vaccination. Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? I’m sure I’ve got many more corrections coming in my blogging future, so I am glad the first one came in such a nice manner; a warm-up. Thanks for your input, Skysinger!

Mary said:

I enjoy reading your blog because, regardless of my religious leanings (I’m still trying to figure that out), I most definitely believe in science as the basis of humanity.

Because my children are not yet in school, I understand that I am now free to remain “blissfully ignorant” of the extent to which religion is impeding true learning in our public schools. But at least I know where in the world (here! and your new column!) to go for an opinion I can respect.

Mary, I’ve wondered if you were even agnostic and what motivates you continue to read my blog! Now I know. I am glad that I don’t offend (at least too much?) my thoughtful and reasonable religious readers. I harp on religion, mainly when it infringes on my life as a secularist. And sometimes I tease and make playful jabs, but I am not trying to convince anyone to leave their religion. I just hope they will understand the plight of the secularists.

As for religion impeding learning in public schools: maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt you will find your California schools as affected as in places like Kansas and Dover. Regardless, the lack of a basic understanding of science is a national dilemna with national consequences to come if we don’t turn it around. I’m glad you and I have a common respect for science.

Speaking of science and American culture, Ron made an interesting observation at his local Barnes&Noble:

I was at Barnes and Noble today – and they moved the Science section, they also reduced it in size. They moved it over near blank journals – where no other literature exists – somewhere west of the bargain books!
There is ONE shelving unit of science books (not including the specific section on physics)! That is 33% the amount of space they give to ‘religious fiction’ (possible oxymoron) – and roughly 20% of the space ‘devoted’ (literally?) to religious books. At Barnes and Noble! The religion shelves are all centrally located in the store, as well – with a good 6 or so signs leading you to them.

It’s unnerving to enter a huge ’secular’ bookstore and see that the history, and science sections barely add up to the amount of space allotted for religious books.

I am so glad you brought this to our attention. Tami and I were there last night, and realized that ours has an extremely small science section as well. I doubt it reflects Barnes&Noble’s values, rather the demands of the customers. Nobody’s buying science-related books! We have a long way to go. Do you all feel our country is taking giant leaps backwards? (Oooh, wait until you see what I have to blog about next! Look for a future post regarding women. We’re going backwards, people).

Well, I have a few more comments to respond to tomorrow. Thanks for being patient with this unusual weekend format. We’ll be back on track next week lots of hot topics.

Silence filled the space that my loss for words left. I stared at Blake for a minute. What other heroes have I introduced to him? Rosa Parks died not long ago, and we discussed her. Black again. I searched my brain files for any other heroes I must have introduced to him.

A-ha! Benjamin Franklin! We have a video about Benjamin Franklin learning how to harness electricity. In the movie, Franklin had to battle a religious fundamentalist who was trying to impede his research. It took much perseverance and faith in himself to finally prevail. Blake loved that video.

“Well, they’re not all black, honey. Benjamin Franklin was a hero, and he wasn’t black.” It was a step in the right direction, but clearly I had failed to provide my son with more than three or four examples of excellent human beings.

Growing up, the hero of my childhood was Nephi from the Book of Mormon. Nephi was a perfect person, with the exception of one tiny flaw. Nephi’s one sin was that he sometimes felt anger toward his wicked brothers who were trying to kill him. No wonder I have overwhelming and unrealistic expectations for myself: the biggest childhood hero of my life was AT LEAST as perfect as Jesus.

When I had kids, and especially when I left my church and all of its out-of-this-world heroes, I vowed I would expose my children to the world’s many great real heroes. I am now facing the reality that I haven’t done so well.

Yesterday, as I analyzed, and over-analyzed, the situation, I realized what is missing. I realized one of the reasons we, as agnostic parents, are feeling such a great need for a guiding source. We are missing a system for imparting our values to our children, that religious families normally get from their church.

The Mormon Church is the master of systems for teaching children. This is why the community is so tight, their familes are so strong, and such a large percentage of them actually make it to marriage in pure and complete innocence!

Let me show you how structured the Mormon community is in regard to teaching their young:

• Weekly church and Sunday School lessons
• Weekly Monday night Family Home Evenings (lessons)
• Daily family prayer and scripture reading
• Monthly visits from Home Teachers (each family is assigned two men who come to the home to give a lesson.)
• Weekly activities for teens, monthly activities for the children
• Monthly children’s magazine with lessons, stories, and learning activities
• Multiple free handbooks for family lesson plans on various moral and doctrinal topics

It was SO EASY to be a Mormon parent. The church put material directly into our hands. Agnostic and athiest parents have to conceive our own system for providing “lessons” to our children. Even more difficult, we have to do our own research to find the material. No one is giving us free handbooks with activities to demonstrate our values, arranged in formats that appeal to children of all ages.

I actually have been developing a system of timing. I’ve been using holidays as a sort of schedule to trigger ideas.

Some examples of holiday-triggered values:

• New Year- goals, ambition, ability to change and improve
• Civil Rights Day- courage, accepting others, forgiveness
• Easter- nature, spiritual rebirth
• Independence Day- patriotism, democracy, liberty and freedom
• 9/11- awareness and gratitude of our local firefighters and police officers and their families, community

I think the holidays, regular reading time, play groups, and other day-to-day experiences provide an adequate scheduling system to cover all the important things we want to share with our children. The difficulty is coming up with the tools for sharing the ideas, such as activities and books. That is the part that requires so much research when you don’t have a handbook given to you from church.

Civil Rights Day was so easy, because the school recommended books. The other holidays will require much more research. And since many of those other holidays also demand planning for giant feasts, extra shopping, and other activities, that just doesn’t leave as much time for educational research, does it?

I am going to continue what I started this month, which is to share my ideas and resources for educational and values-sharing activities and books for our children. They will mostly happen around the holidays, but I will add some other topics in here and there. I hope some of you will share your ideas as well.

My Brother Martin: A Sister Remembers Growing Up With the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I chose this book because Blake’s teacher read it to his class, and Blake really enjoyed it. He liked it enough to tell me all about it after school. The author is King’s sister, and she shares stories of family life, childhood pranks, friends, being ostracized, and eventually the inspiration that led to King’s leadership in the Civil Rights Movement.

This book is written for Grades 2-4. I plan to use it with my kindergartner also, by focusing on the pictures, and telling her some of the stories in my own words.

The Story of Ruby Bridges
This is a story about a six-year-old black girl who was was allowed, by way of a court decision, to go to a white school. The local community rebelled, pulled their kids out of school (all of them), and harassed Ruby to the point that federal marshals escorted her everyday to protect her safety, because the local police would not.

Everyday Ruby walked past the angry, screaming parents of Frantz Elementary School, attended alone with no friends to play with, and prayed, before and after passing the mobs, that God would forgive them.

I read this to my kids last year, when Trinity was still in Pre-K, and Blake was in first grade. Because the idea of mobs, prejudice, and segregation are foreign to them, it required and inspired a lot of good discussion and explanation.

My children loved the story about Ruby. It appealed to them because her heroic act occured around their same age. They relate to her. We have, at times, referred back to Ruby, throughout the year when topics of courage, teasing, or prejudice came up.

Trinity liked it so much, she said she wanted to be like Ruby, and she asked if she could keep the book in her own room because it is “so special.”

I recommend reading Ruby’s story, along with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s because, in addition to Ruby being a child-hero, she is, more specifically, a heroine. I think it is important that both boys and girls be exposed to female heroes, in addition to the many typical male ones.

As an additional act of respect, we will also be lighting a candle at dinner in honor and recognition of Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you have other ideas or books to recommend, please post a comment.

We began with dinner at Jack in the Box. I know, that’s nothing special. I considered a nicer restaurant, but the numerous possibilities of chaos and havoc that three kids bring to my imagination, prompted me toward the fast food arena. I’ll save sit-down restaurant outings for when Israel is with us.

Somehow I convinced my children to forego the Kids Meals with accompanying toy, and share a salad with me. Don’t let me fool you. They usually want a Kids Meal. But thankfully they have figured out that the foods Mom and Dad get are much more interesting than the plain kids’ foods. Trinity, especially, will often leave her boring meal to share mine. So once in a while, the enticement of flavor-variety overcomes their desire for a cheap toy.

We left our pleasant dining experience and moved on to a family favorite: Barnes and Noble. After hunting down a Michael Shermer book for myself, we advanced to the children’s area. Aiden spent most of the time pushing every button on every book containing musical sound effects. Blake found a huge volume of The Chronicles of Narnia. It contained every book, unabridged for a total of 767 pages.

Trinity, who usually picks pretty girly books that have a piece of jewelry attached, broke out of her pattern last night. I am so proud. She found an amazing pop-up dinosaur book. The paper-art is incredible. The intricacy of the cut-outs are amazing. Each page has a huge dinosaur in the middle, plus smaller pop-ups in the four corners, which you open individually. They have little corner tabs that hold the smaller pop-ups shut so they don’t open until you are ready.

All children love pop-up books, but I think it was the art that interested Trinity. She said she wished they also had a butterfly or a flower book. Since she is an artist, herself, Trinity and I decided to see if we can make our own pop-up book. That will be our next project. We will try to make a flower or butterfly pop-up book using cardstock. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Blake and I also came up with a project idea. I am going to help him make a book called, “Blake’s Book of Book Reviews.” Blake loves reading. Maybe he’s too ambitious. He starts lots of books (the bigger the better), but only finishes a few of them. He moves back-and-forth between 4-7 books at a time. To motivate him to actually complete more books, his teacher told us that if Blake would write up a review of a completed book, she would laminate it for him. So Blake and I decided to make a book out of it. We are going to put his current school picture on the cover, and include all his book reviews. I want to make a special shelf showcasing all his completed books. If he likes this project, we will start a new cover with his most current school picture for every year. Imagine growing up with a book full of your own reviews! Can you see the pride and perception of self it would foster? Think of the writing skills he will develop!

But back to our date night. We ended our evening with dessert in the bookstore. You can’t pass up Starbucks when it’s right there in the building with you. Aiden calls our excursions to the coffee shop, “getting a coffee shot.” They always get non-coffee Creme Frappuccino’s. I got my Chai Tea. Even though I don’t actually get the kids coffee, I often wonder if I am raising them to be future coffee junkies. If the highlight of their life is getting a “coffee shot,” AKA, foo-foo drinks at the local expresso bar, I do wonder if they will be addicts by the time they are 16!

One of my favorite holiday traditions is our Pre-Christmas evening with our best friends, Tami and Larry Keim. (Yes, you know Larry. And if you read my comments, you’ve heard from Tami, also). On this night, we get the kids down to bed right as Tami and Larry arrive at our home. We break open champaigne or Egg Nog, have some dessert, and exchange PRESENTS!

Tami is one of those more-thoughtful-than-average present-givers. I know this because, not only do I receive gifts from her, I have also gone gift-shopping with her. She will go from store to store to find just the right item, in just the right style. My awesome husband, Israel, is one of other best gift-givers I’ve known. He crawls to the end of the world for the most supreme presents for my birthdays, Christmas, and all those other days that bind us with the social requirement of gift-shopping.

But I digress . . . big-time. On this Christmas-For-The-Adults evening, we also exchange stories. We’re a story-sharing group, and are known for spending 5 hours at a restaurant (yes, we tip our servers well). Somehow, this evening, like most evenings, we got to the subject of evolution, and how it is so foreign to some people, that they can’t imagine any of their acquaintances actually accept it!

I told them of my dear sister-in-law, who says she has the WEIRDEST brother-in-law. When I asked her what made him so weird, she told me he actually believes in evolution! He read a book, and “automatically believes everything, just because it’s in a book.”

Then there is one of my husband’s aunts, who told me how she’s having to endure this awful geology class, wasting her time learning things that are just not true; for example, that some rocks are billions of years old. In her mind, if they say it is more than 6 or 7,ooo years old, they are wrong.

I love these two ladies. But I can’t believe people I am close with still think this way. Larry had his own contribution to the evolution-rejecting phenonemon. He told us about an article he read in a blog, where the writer describes a similar experience, and then shares a fascinating story of evolution and “Mother Acanthostega” (as opposed to Mother Eve). This is my first time hearing a description of the ancestor that links humans (and all mammals) to our ancestors of the sea.

Right after Christmas, Larry sent me a link to the blog with this article, so I got to read it for myself. What I love about the writer, darksyde, and his way of teaching, is his story-telling style. It’s almost like reading Dean Koontz, except that the names are harder to follow. So it takes a little more concentration. I have criticized science educators for failing to teach. They don’t know how to reach the masses: the majority of us who are not science-oriented. They need to learn from scientists like Carl Sagan, or like this blogger, darksyde.

So I encourage you to go check out this blog. It is my late holiday gift to you, which I am re-gifting from Larry.

Kareena and I bonded when we met outside my family’s pop-up trailor. We would become long-term pen pals. After we sealed our friendship the day we met, Kareena decided to introduce me to her family. We approached her trailor, parked behind mine, and she invited me in.

The first words her mother spoke to me came as an interrogation, “Are you a Christian?”

Even though I was, in fact, a Christian, and would remain one for more than twenty years, I often thought back to that day and the question that disturbed me. I had become aware that a common religion is a pre-requisite in some social circles.

This fact became more concerning when my first child, now part of our agnostic family, started school and began to make friends. I had just joined The MOMS Club and was making new friends of my own. I worried about the inevitable moment when I would have to confess to another mother, that we were not Christians.

Eventually the time came, as conversations became more personal. To my surprise, it hasn’t yet been a problem. Perhaps the integrity I have already displayed is enough to take the stigma away? Or maybe I am just with the right kind of people. The more tolerant type.

My confidence flourished as I got to know two Christian moms a year ago. One of these moms claimed to be a true, believing Christian, but excused herself from being an example of righteous living. She was “weak in the flesh”.

I remember my shock the day these two friends told me about an evening a year earlier. They were drunk, and decided to get revenge on a friend who upset them. They drove to her house (yes, I believe they drove drunk) and egged it.

These ladies are moms. In their 30’s and 40’s.

That day I decided I was not ashamed of my disbelief of religion. I stopped worrying about others judging my morality. Since then I have had the confidence to say, with a smile, that I am not a Christian. I am an agnostic humanist.

Last week I finished “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris. What a fascinating and very different book. Harris outlines the unique position the world is in currently. For thousands of years, people have tortured others in the name of religion. But never has there been a time when fanatic religious people had access to weapons of mass destruction.

Harris warns that this is an era when suicide bombers, who want to “destroy the infidels” off the face of the earth, could actually accomplish their mission. He claims that tolerance of moderate religious faith gives credence to fundamentalists, who will go to extreme measure to accomplish their goals. What if those goals are to annihilate all others of a different faith?

This book gave me more reasons to stand up for myself and my beliefs.

Am I a Christian? No I am not. I am an agnostic humanist.