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featured essay: March 2003 Secular Heroes by Dale McGowan "Dad?" It was my seven year old, Connor, at the dinnertable. When he starts with "Dad?" and goes no further, I know something pretty interesting is coming. "Yeah Con." "You know what? NOBODY outside of our family doesn't believe in God." Oh boy. "Wow. Really? Nobody?" "That's right. I think everybody else believes in God." How fortunate, I thought to myself, to have it presented so clearly. This is what kids do beautifully early on --- they say what they think, so you really know and can really respond. Things would be easier if everyone did that. Imagine a coworker who, instead of treating you like dirt for years, just came out and said "I think you're lazy. Is that accurate, or no?" Why, you could address it then and there. But no, soon enough we learn to beat around the bush, to hide our prejudices and perceptions lest they be challenged and corrected. Here, in my boy's honest and understandable perception, was an opportunity to (a) correct this misconception, (b) to praise his openness, and (c) to make it more likely, rather than less likely, that he'd do the same again. So I said, "What a stupid thing to say! Where did you hear such garbage?" Okay, I didn't say that. First of all, I'm not an idiot, and second, it really wasn't stupid at all. The religious profile in this country is so high, it's accepted as a default. Sometimes it seems that there's a cross around every neck and a church on every corner, a veritable conspiracy of reality denial posing as "Wisdom." If you believe, you are encouraged in a hundred ways to trumpet that belief; if you don't, you are discouraged in just as many ways. So what did I say? Well, I started by validating the observation: "Boy, it sure seems like that sometimes, doesn't it?" I shoveled in another forkful and pretended to ruminate. "Except for people like...Thomas Edison." His eyes went saucer-sized. "Really??" "Yep." It's true: Edison was an outspoken atheist in a time and place (19th and early 20th century America) that was hardly friendly to atheism. And I know that Edison is a hero for my boy, and realized that I'd never even casually mentioned his atheism. That's probably just as well in retrospect: Connor was able to develop the admiration independent of that fact, then the later knowledge that Edison was a disbeliever caused disbelief itself to rise meteorically in my boy's eyes. [Author's note: What kind of a crazy expression is 'rise meteorically'? Meteors fall, don't they?] I went on. "Oh and, uh...also Einstein." Okay, now I started to feel a little dirty. This is just too easy. But it's true: Einstein vehemently denied belief in a personal god of any kind, preferring what might be called a mild and abstract pantheism. "And Thomas Jefferson, of course." Okay okay, Jefferson was a deist, which means he believed in the concept of a beneficent deity with no personal connection to humankind. The point is that he was an articulate opponent of religious literalism, and completely renounced Christianity. I'm not going to split hairs with a seven-year old. I continued. "And Stephen Jay Gould (who he knows via dinosaurs)..." "So, all of the smartest people didn't believe in God!" Now I've got to draw the line there. It's not that simple. "Actually no. There are a lot of smart people who believe in God, but it's important to know that there are also a lot of smart people who didn't, and don't." "Well Einstein was the smartest person ever, and he didn't believe..." And off we went into a terrific discussion of intelligence and belief and a hundred other things. My main intention all along was to encourage a view beyond his surface impressions, to use his existing heroes to debunk the myth of religious unanimity, and, just as important, to keep the question open, always open. That means open in BOTH directions: telling him that all smart people are atheists is just absurd. There are good explanations for intelligent believers, of course, though none lend any credence to the religious perspective itself. But it is a powerful remedy to that myth of religious unanimity to make a habit of pointing out which of the people your kids already admire are also, incidentally, disbelievers in God. So I'll forgo the opportunity to indoctrinate them to particular outcomes, since there's no need. The process is the thing. I teach my kids to love knowledge, to value critical thinking as the best route to real understanding, and to dislike self-deception and its ability to derail us. If they embrace those values --- and so far, so good --- I'll be a happy dad. Follow-up to SCOUTING FOR ALL (October 2002) Late last year I ran an essay describing my own thoughts and struggles over the issue of participation in Scouting, an organization that prohibits membership by atheists. I invited feedback and promised to post some of the responses I received. Here's a representative sample received since then, edited for space and clarity: Family Issues visitor Cynthia Whitford writes:
Family Issues visitor Craig Walker writes:
An atheist dad in Pittsburgh writes:
Reneé from Seattle writes:
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