Also, Ron wrote a letter to the Humanist News Network, praising them for giving a column to AgnosticMom. He copied it in a comment here. What a huge compliment. He made some points that I want to focus the rest of this post on:

Ron said:

“The easily cited presumption by the religious culture is that we do not thrive because we lack the moral fortitude to be strong, joyful, loving families. Humanism in all its forms must not be invalidated as a fringe group of rebelious students, or codgers with too much time on their hands and bad experiences with the church.”

This comment interests me for two reasons. First, I have heard and read comments in the newspaper and on the radio, such as, “You never see any athiest charitable groups!”

Clearly we have an image problem. And we lack visibility. There are, in fact, athiest/agnostic, humanist, and other secular groups, doing charitable work. Charitable work is one of the foundations of the humanist philosophy, since we cannot wait for a god we don’t believe exists to solve the world’s problems. We have to do it ourselves.

But we are a minority. People don’t know of our organizations. Also, Americans are still scared of athiests. So our tiny groups don’t get the news coverage of, say, the Salvation Army.

I will admit, there is also some in-fighting. Secularists are individualists. We fear being locked into a box where we won’t agree with every stand an organization takes. The result: either we stay isolated, or in rare instances, we make a new organization. This fact comes to light with the various names and groups representing secularits: “Brights,” “freethinkers,” “the godless,” and “existentialists” are just a few to add to the typical list. And then there is the spectrum of athiesm and agnostism: strong athiest, weak athiest, positive athiest, athiest-agnostic, etc. Why do we care about these minute details? We are all secularists and we are dealing with the same issues.

In the past, this spectrum of secularist groups allowed the concern of defining themselves override the idea of banding together to unite in purpose. Only recently, in light of the growing power of the religious right, are these groups beginning to set aside their differences, start pooling resources, and work together.

It is time that people get to know us for the good we want to accomplish: strong families, strong democracy, strong ethics, and the freedom to exercise a moral choice based on our own beliefs, not to be compelled by someone else’s.

The other reason I am interested in Ron’s comment: he mentioned how religious folks dismiss us as people with bad experiences in the church. AgnosticMom has received a few comments from religious readers, apologizing for bad experiences they thought I had. Maybe they have made an assumption. Or maybe I have portayed myself with some inaccuracy. As Ron implied, not all of us are here because of bad experiences with religious life, myself included. I am in here because I wanted truth.

A few people have referred to the “oppressive religion”of my past or “strict childhood.” I am sorry I gave the wrong impression. I say this, both to clear up any misunderstanding about myself, and also to give the Mormon church a little slack. I was a happy Mormon. I loved being a member of the church. I loved my religion enough to make the choice to serve a mission for a year and a half when I was twenty-one. I accepted, and sought after, responsibilities within the church. I held a number of leadership positions in my congregations.

Over time, contradictions and issues I didn’t agree with, accumulated to a degree that I had to face the existence of my serious doubts. Confident that God would answer my prayers and bring me back to complete faith in his church, I set out to get some answers. The more scripture I studied, the more inconstinencies I discovered. Six months later, I felt sure the LDS church was not true. Still, I could not walk away. I hope this demonstrates how much I loved being a Mormon. It wasn’t until another six months later that I was ready to leave. It is only in retrospect that I have since become aware of what I now regard as the silly little insanities of Mormonism, which I sometimes refer to in my posts.

I know that some Mormons who leave say they felt oppressed, or that they couldn’t live up to the standards. I implied this when I referred to my childhood hero, Nephi, in the post, “What’s Missing Is A System.” I was mostly joking when I made the comment, “No wonder I have overwhelming and unrealistic expectations of myself.” Nephi didn’t really cause me anxiety. I expect my perfectionism is related to some degree, but I give most of the responsibility to my genes. And I am not complaining about my over-achieving tendencies. I never had feelings of inadequacy as a Mormon.

Some concerned religious readers lamented that I wrote off all religion as a result of my Mormon experience. This was not the case. After questioning the Mormon church, I naturally sought after Christianity in general. In my studies, I found the Bible to be just as problematic than the Book of Mormon. I learned about the history of the various and evolving manuscripts that became the Gospels. I also noticed the changing personality of God from the Old Testament to the New, to modern times, including the very American Jesus so popular right now.

Religious readers: I appreciate that you come to my blog. I appreciate that you are not afraid of us agnostics here. I appreciate your willingness to understand us. That is what we want. I appreciate your concern for my family and me. I don’t want to persuade you that your religion is wrong. I just want you to understand where I am coming from. My agnostic readers are here to support each other, to make a place for their families, and to help each other to leave a positive mark on the world.

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.

“Then what DO you believe?”

At the time I was still trying to figure it out. Agnosticism is all about what we CAN’T or DON’T know. Agnosticism on it’s own is empty.

Through my studies of science, I grew fascinated with the nature of the human mind and our enormous capabilities. I began to consider how in a very short amount of time, humans figured out how to fly across the world, how to communicate with anyone in real time, how to cure all kinds of diseases.

The tsunami that affected so many millions of people last year? We knew about it here, on the opposite side of the world, within minutes of its occurance. Nations were able to gather resources and get them to the countries in need within days. We still have improvements to make (and we WILL make them), but imagine this same tsunami occuring only 100 years ago. How long would it be before anyone who could help would even hear about it? How much longer before we could get that help to the people? How much less help would we have to give?

Becoming agnostic, and reexaming my beliefs gave me greater hope in the amazing capabilities of human beings. I came to believe that we have the potential to solve the world’s greatest problems. Searching the internet for other secularists, I found a name for my faith in humankind: Humanism. Specifically, Secular Humanism.

Here is a definition from wikipedia:

Secular humanism is that branch of philosophy that advocates the use of reason, compassion, scientific inquiry, ethics, justice and a presumption of equality within a worldview centered upon human beings. The term was originally coined in the 20th century to make a clear distinction from “Christian humanism”. A perhaps less confrontational synonym is scientific humanism, which the biologist Edward O. Wilson termed “the only world-view compatible with science’s growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature”.

Its basic tenets may be simplified as:

* Humans have value and can solve human problems;
* Science, free speech, rational thought, democracy, and freedom in the arts go together;
* There is no proof for anything supernatural.

Below are some organizations that work toward the humanist ideals listed above. Their mission is to educate on humanism, and also work to affect public policy. The last one has links to local chapters who meet regularly. Maybe you have one in the area you live!

The Institute for Humanist Studies

The Continuum of Humanist Education

Council for Secular Humanism

American Humanist Association

Maybe I’m naive. Maybe I have too much faith in the human race. Or maybe some people just don’t have enough of it.