it’s in the mail
I’ve heard it said that no woman would ever have a second child if she really remembered what it was like to give birth to the first one.
Without in the LEAST implying that it’s as bad as birthing a baby, lemme say the same is true of writing a book: If I remembered from one to the next how hard it was, I’d never do it again.
Raising Freethinkers consists of 106 activities, 108 common questions from nonreligious parents with extended answers, and 224 recommended books, films, and websites. And it’s the details that get ya — the permissions, the citations, the 138 footnotes and two appendices. It’s trying to remember if you forgot to remember to include something. Or if you included it twice. Or accidentally included Satan in the Acknowledgements. Or accidentally left him out.
It’s the editing and proofing. I mailed it 45 minutes ago and just found two more errors. Shit.
It’s the wondering if you said something juuuust the right way — especially in a book like this.
It was completely fabulous working with Amanda Metskas of Camp Quest, Jan Devor of First Unitarian Minneapolis, and Molleen Matsumura of Sweet Reason and NCSE. To hear all my whining, you’d think I did it all myself. In fact, most of whatever real brilliance is in the thing is theirs.
At any rate, my life just got a heck of a lot easier. I just sat down at the piano, as if I had nothing better to do, and played the first ten bars of “Because” by the Beatles — ten of the most incredible measures in all of music, incredible for reasons I would only bore a music theory class with. Then I played a computer game. Now I’m blogging.
I think that brings you up to date.
[Update: I’ve now updated Northing at Midlife and Ten Wonderfull Things and will once again spend daily time in the discussion forum. Please join me there. I have also begun a complete overhaul of the Resources page to include books and videos featured in Raising Freethinkers.]
the certainty myth
There is a criticism of atheism that never ceases to flummox and irritate me. Atheists are fools, goes the line, because you can’t be 100% certain God doesn’t exist.
Here are a few definitions of atheist that most people would agree with:
– Someone who denies the existence of God (WordNet)
– One who believes that there is no God (Webster’s New 20th Century)
– Somebody who does not believe in God or deities (Encarta Dictionary)
Nowhere is reference made to “Someone who claims to know there is no God.” There’s nothing about certainty. The atheist says, “You believe God exists, eh? Hm. Not me.” It’s quite simple. Elegantly so.
I’ve never met an atheist who was quite dense enough to claim certain knowledge of the nonexistence of God. Aside from the difficulty in proving a negative (i.e. I would also be unable to say for certain that there’s no teapot orbiting Jupiter), certainty itself is a bogus concept. The best we can do is increase or decrease our confidence in a proposition.
I don’t think God exists, and theists think he does. Why, in that equation, are atheists tagged as arrogant asserters of certainty, while theists get a pass? I don’t get it.
I saw this most recently, and depressingly, when a Google alert of mine popped an old blog entry by Dilbert creator Scott Adams into my inbox. It includes this passage:
This brings me to atheists. In order to be certain that God doesn’t exist, you have to possess a godlike mental capacity –- the ability to be 100% certain. A human can’t be 100% certain about anything. Our brains aren’t that reliable. Therefore, to be a true atheist, you have to believe you are the very thing that you argue doesn’t exist: God.
Chuckle. I guess.
Adams is an agnostic himself, and I assume and hope he’s just riffing for laughs. Surely he knows that his beliefs are identical to almost any given atheist. Surely. Well, I’m not so sure. Many people hold this incredibly daft assumption, and few apply it to theists, as if belief is the default and atheism an assertion.
And I know where the problem started.
The problem, ironically, was started by my hero, Thomas Huxley. Prior to his coining of the word “agnostic,” it was probably understood that atheists were people who simply said, “I don’t believe in God.” Huxley wasn’t somewhere in the muddy, shrugging middle, 51-49 for-or-against belief. He had a very strong conviction that God did not exist. But it wasn’t certain, and he wanted to underline this, so he created the word “agnostic” (Latin for “not knowing”) to name what should damn well be true of the entire human race. None of us knows…but surely it’s OK to say what you think the deal is.
Thanks to our monkey tendencies, though, the upshot of Huxley’s clarifying coinage was greater confusion. Agnosticism was instantly assumed to mean “don’t know, don’t care,” and the myth of atheism as an assertion of absolute certainty was reinforced by contrast to the new term. Neither is accurate (as Russell will show shortly). They are really two different ways of saying the same thing: I think God is pretend. Agnosticism simply leans on the word “think,” and atheism leans on “pretend.”
Bertrand Russell himself was conflicted on this point, and referred to himself as an atheist or an agnostic depending on the audience:
I never know whether I should say “Agnostic” or whether I should say “Atheist”. It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.
None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of Homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof.
Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line.
from “Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?” in A Plea for Tolerance in the Face of New Dogmas (1947)
Unfortunately, in the essay “What is an Agnostic?”, Russell gives this unhelpful backhand, even though it is written for an entirely popular audience:
An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not.
*Sigh.*
I, like every atheist I know, am an atheist and an agnostic and a humanist and a freethinker. Each has a different emphasis; all are compatible. Questions?
One Safe Generation
I’m thrilled to announce that ONE SAFE GENERATION has now gone live at the Institute for Humanist Studies. Many thanks to Matt Cherry and the rest of the folks at IHS for providing a home for this project.
ONE SAFE GENERATION is a humanist initiative to create a more humane, ethical, and reasonable world by breaking the chain of inherited violence and fear. Our goal is to make it possible for one generation to grow up free of violence. In support of this goal of “one safe generation,” we are advancing initiatives to combat violence against children in the home, in the community, and on the fields of war. Below is the introduction to the site. Throughout the summer I will post periodic focus pieces highlighting the elements of this project.
One Safe Generation
Introduction
Our reason, our judgment, and our ethics are all severely impaired when we are afraid. Examples of individuals, groups, and nations thinking poorly and acting immorally under the influence of fear are innumerable.
Violence and other social pathologies are perpetuated from one generation to the next, as victims of violence in childhood are likely to become the perpetrators of violence in the next generation. From corporal punishment and neglect on the individual level to the forced conscription of child soldiers and the disproportionate victimization of children in war, each generation of adults has a choice to pass on traditions of violence and fear—or refuse to do so.
ONE SAFE GENERATION is a humanist initiative to create a more humane, ethical, and reasonable world by making choices to break the chain of inherited violence and fear. Our goal is to make it possible for one generation to grow up free of violence at all levels, from the family home to the urban streets to the field of war.
By recognizing that all manner of social pathologies—from violent conflict to religious fundamentalism to the suppression of free expression—are ultimately rooted in fear, humanists can focus our energies on that root cause even as we work to lessen the damage done by its various expressions.
One generation liberated from violence and fear would be more rational, more compassionate, more confident, and far less likely to perpetrate violence on its own children. By allowing a single generation to grow up safely, the tradition of inherited violence can be broken and the future remade.
ONE SAFE GENERATION will gather valid research and resources in a single, accessible location; counter the advocates of violence in public forums; advocate progressive public policies on related issues through op-eds and legislation; and encourage support for existing organizations and advocates in three areas:
1. Nonviolent parenting
2. Advocacy of progressive child social policies
3. Protecting children from the effects of war
In identifying fear itself as the enemy, Franklin Roosevelt made a statement of greater lasting import than he may have intended. In these pages, you will find resources for information and action in the service of raising a generation of children less fearful, and more hopeful, than any of their ancestors dared dream.
References:
- Bloom, Sandra. Ph.D. Neither liberty nor safety: the impact of fear on individuals, institutions, and societies, part I. Psychotherapy and Politics International, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2004)
- Gershoff, Elizabeth Thompson. ‘Corporal Punishment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors and Experiences: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review, Psychological Bulletin 128 (2002)
the essence of war
- May 13, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In humor, peace
10
The final manuscript prep for Raising Freethinkers is killing me. It literally has its hands around my throat, applying steady pressure to my windpipe, saying Who’s the tough guy now, eh, paesan? Writers…youse guys make me wanna puke. I remember this in the final days before PBB was submitted, too, that ghastly realization that it’s about to be tooooo laaaaaate to change anything.
I don’t read much during periods of intense writing, preferring audiobooks to another half-hour of line scanning. But I decided the other day, weirdly and out of the blue, that I don’t know enough about India. I pulled the first volume of Durant’s Story of Civilization off the shelf and lost myself in Indian history for a bit.
I was rewarded almost immediately with a line I will never forget, one that captures the essence of war. Durant describes the Indo-Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent about 4000 years ago:
Their word for war said nothing about national honor, but simply meant ‘a desire for more cows.’
(from Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization, vol I, p. 397.)
ode to a mother-in-law
< Sadly, the very first thing that comes up
in a Google Image Search for "mother in law"
There’s a laugh line in my seminar that isn’t meant to be a laugh line. It’s entirely serious, but they always chuckle.
In the section on extended family issues, I recommend letting your kids go to church once in a while with trusted relatives — and they chuckle at the word “trusted,” just a bit. It’s a knowing chuckle, of course. There are both trustworthy and untrustworthy religious folks, and many of us have both in our extended families. The untrustworthy are the sneaky proselytizers, the ones who tell our kids in whispers that Jesus loves them, that “I’m praying for your mama and daddy,” or even drop little hints of hellfire — not as a threat, of course, but as the thing they’re working so hard to save mama and daddy from.
The trustworthy are those who preface their input to my children with “I believe” statements instead of presenting everything as…well, gospel, and respect our decision to let the kids work it out for themselves in the long run.
It is my very good fortune to have a mother-in-law in Category #2.
The daughter of a Southern Baptist minister, graduate of a Baptist college, and devout churchgoer, she nonetheless has been absolutely fabulous about respecting our choices with the kids. I am quite certain she’d rather her grandchildren were being raised in the church, but she’s never pushed the point. When our kids do attend, perhaps 3-4 times a year, it’s always with her.
Her stock has begun rising even further with me lately. A few weeks ago I heard (secondhand) that a member of her church asked if it bothered her that neither of her sons-in-law is a Christian.
“Pfft,” she said. “You listen here. Those two boys treat my girls like queens. I can’t ask for more than that.”
She’s also been known to suggest that I’m more Christian than many Christians she knows. Considering the source, that’s a compliment I’m very pleased to take.
As I talk to nonreligious parents around the country, I encourage them not to assume too much about their religious relatives. Even those who are very serious about their own faith are often more willing to bend than we sometimes think. It’s not always the case, of course. Some will do their level best to put you in hell well before you’re dead, and once you’ve seen that in action, it’s more than an assumption. But I’m convinced that we jump to that conclusion too often. And I’m glad to hold up my own mother-in-law as an example.
Happy Mother’s Day, Babs!
tickytacky
- May 05, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, Parenting
- 31
Saturday was the 89th birthday of Pete Seeger, and Saturday afternoon I found myself listening to a Seegerthon on a radio station in Waco, Texas. I was on my way to give the full secular parenting seminar in Dallas, driving from Austin, where I’d given a secular parenting talk.
During my 24 hours in Austin, I learned, and instantly adored, the unofficial slogan of the city:
Austin is weird in that college-town, blue-dot-in-a-red-state way. Nonconformity was on my mind anyway, since the parenting seminar (which I gave on Sunday in Dallas) includes a segment on the importance of helping kids resist pressures to conform and find the courage to be a dissenting voice when dissent is called for.
Ten miles out of Waco, I heard Seeger sing a song I haven’t heard in maybe 25 years — a pretty little waltz concealing a howl of protest against numbing conformity:
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of tickytacky
Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes, all the sameThere’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of tickytacky and they all look just the same.
Even in the middle of relative nowhere, the song seemed to comment on my surroundings — the thrum of tires on the road, the repeating green EXIT signs, McDonald’s and Burger King signs looming over alternating exits, little tickytacky developments scattered around the Waco fringe.
And the people in the houses all went to the university
And they all got put in boxes and they all came out the same,And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers, and business executives
And they’re all made out of tickytacky and they all look just the same.And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry,
And they all have pretty children and the children go to schoolAnd the children go to summer camp and then to the university
And they all get put in boxes and they all come out the same.
Gotta talk to the kids about that sometime. Work it into a conversation, the whole thing about not being a sheep, about being proud of being different, even knowing it can make things harder.
Wait. Pfft! Not a conversation! Why yak it when you can sing it?
And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes made of tickytacky and they all look just the same.There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of tickytacky and they all look just the same.
After four days in Texas, I got home tonight in time to sing it to the girls at bedtime. Instant hit. They asked what it meant, what tickytacky is, what a martini is. We sang it again.
I kissed them, turned off the light, and went into my room to blog. I could hear them singing it quietly in the dark, giggling each time they got to “tickytacky.”
Nine-thirty — time to go sing to the Boy!
middle school kabuki
- April 30, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In Atlanta, My kids
- 9
We live in a lovely subdivision of rolling hills. The parking lot of the neighborhood pool at the top of our block is the only relatively flat patch. I take the kids up once in a while so the girls can ride their bikes in a circle. Connor often comes along to take shots at the basketball hoop on the side of the lot. I drag along a beach chair, sit in the sun and watch the show.
A couple of days ago, our trip to the lot gave me the opportunity to watch a fascinating, age-old dance — the passive-aggressive kabuki play of middle schoolers exploring interpersonal ethics on the fly.
As Connor (12) dribbled the ball around the corner and entered the lot, a complication came into view. Three other middle schoolers were sitting on the curb by the basket — not under the basket, but juuuust off to the left, 5-6 feet from the drop zone. They saw Connor, paused for that telling second, then continued talking to each other. Connor also saw them, stopped dribbling for juuuust that telling second, then continued toward the hoop.
Anyone who thinks they greeted each other and proceeded to work out the emerging conflict of interest has neither met nor been a middle schooler. Neither did they come to blows. The three continued to sit, passively asserting one of the oldest and dodgiest rights in legal history (known various as squatter’s rights, “possession is nine-tenths of the law,” “I Was Here First,” or “You Can’t Make Me”) and silently daring the Boy to infringe on that right.
The Boy, on the other hand, was silently countering with the Greater Need principle, also known as “You Can Easily Slide Over, but This is the Only Hoop.” Both sides were relying on the obviousness of their respective claims.
He began shooting. The three continued talking as if basketballs were not landing inches from them. Connor did the best shooting of his life, since each successful two-pointer went straight down and could be recovered with a quick lunge before it brought things to a head (so to speak). At last one shot hit the rim and went wide left. Three heads ducked. Still no eye contact, though Connor smiled nervously as he ran for the errant ball (preparing himself for the “Heh heh, isn’t this a funny situation we’re all enjoying” defense).
Push, for some reason, never came to shove. After ten minutes and no ball-squatter contact, the girls were ready to go home, and we all did.
It’s interesting to guess what would have happened if someone had actually taken a ball to the head. Since both sides were showing a lack of common sense, outrage over the other’s failure to see what had been the “obvious” solution tends to be the only remaining option for both sides. Instead, it was middle school kabuki to the end.
ohh, to get that brain space back
Click ULTIMATE BIBLE QUIZ to test your Biblical knowledge! Forty multiple-choice questions! Fun for the whole family! My score, gawd help me:
Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses – you know it all! You are fantastic!
Please, please, please vacuum some of this stuff out of my head. I need the room. I can’t even remember my children’s names, but I know what book comes after Colossians.
the interfaith alliance
I don’t usually wax too political in this space, but there’s an activist organization I’m getting all hot and sweaty for lately. It’s The Interfaith Alliance (TIA), a coalition of 185,000 members from over 75 different religious and nonreligious perspectives founded in 1994 “to challenge the radical religious right” by protecting religious pluralism and the separation of church and state. They’ve had it with the use of religion as a tool of political manipulation and division. They think it’s bad for the church AND the state.
I have a collective crush on these people.
The president of TIA is Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy, Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, Louisiana and host of the program State of Belief on Air America Radio.
Gaddy is a Baptist who remembers that church-state separation was woven into the founding of his denomination and remembers why. He is awesome. He is a force of nature. (And I’m not only saying that because he declared himself “so impressed” with my “important work” when he interviewed me on December 22. Goodness, I’ve forgotten about that completely.)
It was TIA that pointed out last week, in a way both brilliant and hard to refute, that “if a potential employer asked you questions about your religious beliefs in a job interview, it wouldn’t only be offensive, it would be illegal.” Yet one interviewer after another in the presidential campaign asks questions about personal religious convictions. And what is a campaign if not an extended job interview?
Asking how a candidate thinks religion and government should intersect — well, that’s a terrific question, and one that’s rarely asked. Instead, we get a litany of questions that violate the Constitutional guarantee that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” (Article VI, section 3), in spirit if nothing else.
This week had TIA drawing attention to an effort by Focus on the Family to put the “National Day of Prayer” (seven days away) squarely in the hands of evangelicals:
The National Day of Prayer Task Force requires volunteer coordinators to sign a pledge stating: “I commit that NDP activities I serve with will be conducted solely by Christians while those with differing beliefs are welcome to attend.” The coordinators must also sign a statement of faith that includes the following language: “I believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God.” This clearly aligns a government-sponsored event with a particular Christian denomination, in violation of the basic provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
And so it always goes. When religion and politics mix, “religion” will inevitably become a single narrow expression of religion. In the case of the U.S., that’s evangelical Protestantism.
Anyway, I could go on all day about the great work of The Interfaith Alliance, but I’ll let you chase links on your own if you wish.
The questions about religion that TIA thinks candidates should answer
The campaign for a more inclusive Nat’l Day of Prayer (if we must have one at all, *sigh*), led by a Jewish group of First Amendment defenders called…wait for it…Jews on First! Oh, how I love it!
integrity
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It’s confirmed: the statistic over which I was so amazed — that 39.6 percent of prominent scientists lost a parent when they were kids — is twaddle. Thanks to blogreader Ryan (who sent the full text of the article I had quoted), I am spared the fate of including a bogus stat in a sidebar in my forthcoming book.
I want to write further about my error (which was silly and avoidable, not a minor slip), but I want to quote a letter from TH Huxley in doing so. Whenever I turn to that letter, though, I am so deeply moved that I have to quote half the letter, just in case someone hasn’t read this remarkable thing. Sometime next week I’ll write about the stat error.
Huxley and his wife had experienced the most unimaginable loss — the death of their four-year-old son Noel. First, a diary entry from the day after Noel’s death, followed by Huxley’s letter a few days later:
September 20, 1860
Diary of Thomas Huxley
And the same child, our Noel, our first-born, after being for nearly four years our delight and our joy, was carried off by scarlet fever in forty-eight hours. This day week he and I had a great romp together. On Friday his restless head, with its bright blue eyes and tangled golden hair, tossed all day upon his pillow. On Saturday night the fifteenth, I carried him here into my study, and laid his cold still body here where I write. Here too on Sunday night came his mother and I to that holy leave-taking.
My boy is gone, but in a higher and better sense than was in my mind when I wrote four years ago what stands above – I feel that my fancy has been fulfilled. I say heartily and without bitterness–Amen, so let it be.
The Queen’s Canon Rev. Charles Kingsley wrote a letter of condolence to Huxley, gently suggesting that he reconsider his agnosticism and accept the consolations of faith in his time of loss. Huxley’s equally gentle response to Kingsley is the most moving testament to intellectual integrity I have ever read. An excerpt:
September 23, 1860
My dear Kingsley –I cannot sufficiently thank you, both on my wife’s account and my own, for your long and frank letter, and for all the hearty sympathy which it exhibits–and Mrs. Kingsley will, I hope, believe that we are no less sensible of her kind thought of us. To myself your letter was especially valuable, as it touched upon what I thought even more than upon what I said in my letter to you.
My convictions, positive and negative, on all the matters of which you speak, are of long and slow growth and are firmly rooted. But the great blow which fell upon me seemed to stir them to their foundation, and had I lived a couple of centuries earlier I could have fancied a devil scoffing at me and them–and asking me what profit it was to have stripped myself of the hopes and consolations of the mass of mankind? To which my only reply was and is—Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie….
I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it.
Pray understand that I have no a priori objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about a priori difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing anything else, and I will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force, or the indestructibility of matter. Whoso clearly appreciates all that is implied in the falling of a stone can have no difficulty about any doctrine simply on account of its marvellousness. But the longer I live, the more obvious it is to me that the most sacred act of a man’s life is to say and to feel, “I believe such and such to be true.”
All the greatest rewards and all the heaviest penalties of existence cling about that act. The universe is one and the same throughout; and if the condition of my success in unravelling some little difficulty of anatomy or physiology is that I shall rigorously refuse to put faith in that which does not rest on sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great mysteries of existence will be laid open to me on other terms. It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions. I dare not if I would.
Measured by this standard, what becomes of the doctrine of immortality?
You rest in your strong conviction of your personal existence, and in the instinct of the persistence of that existence which is so strong in you as in most men.
To me this is as nothing. That my personality is the surest thing I know–may be true. But the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verbal subtleties.
I cannot conceive of my personality as a thing apart from the phenomena of my life. When I try to form such a conception I discover that, as Coleridge would have said, I only hypostatise a word, and it alters nothing if, with Fichte, I suppose the universe to be nothing but a manifestation of my personality. I am neither more nor less eternal than I was before.
Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could speculate without end on both sides, and find analogies for all his dreams. Nor does it help me to tell me that the aspirations of mankind–that my own highest aspirations even–lead me towards the doctrine of immortality. I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.
Science has taught to me the opposite lesson. She warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile.
My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.
Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.
As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, “If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that was best and noblest in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What! because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge.
_________________________________ Sit down before fact as a little child,
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing.
I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind
since I have resolved at all risks to do this._________________________________
If at this moment I am not a worn-out, debauched, useless carcass of a man, if it has been or will be my fate to advance the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim on the love of those about me, if in the supreme moment when I looked down into my boy’s grave my sorrow was full of submission and without bitterness, it is because these agencies have worked upon me, and not because I have ever cared whether my poor personality shall remain distinct for ever from the All from whence it came and whither it goes.
And thus, my dear Kingsley, you will understand what my position is. I may be quite wrong, and in that case I know I shall have to pay the penalty for being wrong. But I can only say with Luther, “Gott helfe mir, Ich kann nichts anders.” [“God help me, I cannot do otherwise.”]
I know right well that 99 out of 100 of my fellows would call me atheist, infidel, and all the other usual hard names. As our laws stand, if the lowest thief steals my coat, my evidence (my opinions being known) would not be received against him.
But I cannot help it. One thing people shall not call me with justice and that is—a liar. As you say of yourself, I too feel that I lack courage; but if ever the occasion arises when I am bound to speak, I will not shame my boy.
I have spoken more openly and distinctly to you than I ever have to any human being except my wife.
If you can show me that I err in premises or conclusion, I am ready to give up these as I would any other theories. But at any rate you will do me the justice to believe that I have not reached my conclusions without the care befitting the momentous nature of the problems involved.
I don’t profess to understand the logic of yourself, Maurice, and the rest of your school, but I have always said I would swear by your truthfulness and sincerity, and that good must come of your efforts. The more plain this was to me, however, the more obvious the necessity to let you see where the men of science are driving, and it has often been in my mind to write to you before.
If I have spoken too plainly anywhere, or too abruptly, pardon me, and do the like to me.
My wife thanks you very much for your volume of sermons. Ever yours very faithfully,TH Huxley
[The complete text is available here.]
