Giving kids permission to gamble with Pascal
One of my favorite interview questions is this: What is the one things you hope to give your kids by raising them without religion? The answer is freedom from fear.
No, not all fears, ya tyke — but several of the most parasitic and life-destroying. Scratch the smiling surface of a good many people with strong religious convictions and you’ll find stark raving terror. Many (not all, dammit, never all) are convinced that only the grace of God, moment to moment, protects us all from catastrophe.
A relative of mine clipped out a prayer and taped it to his/her fridge. It begins: O Lord, please give me the strength to face another day… Even though said fridge is in a comfortable upper middle class home in the suburbs, it keeps my relative bowed and feeling somehow spared, like an abused wife. Husband or wife, I mean. Life, it says, is unbearable. Only God spares us from its horrors, and the horrors beyond.
My kids will have their share of fears, but I’d like to help them see life as an amazing privilege, not as a source of terror from which we must be saved.
When a believer tells me that he simply can’t bear the thought of a world without God, or that without God we would all crack open each others’ heads and feast on the goo inside — I get a glimpse of his terror, his absolute distrust of himself and of the rest of humanity. This person genuinely believes that we’re all felons-in-waiting, just itching for the Cop to look away for one second so we can stick a shank in the ribs of the next guy.
This is my cue to inch away from this person, and by all means to stop challenging his beliefs, since I’m the next guy. Yikes.
But this post isn’t about all the reasons that idea is silly — they are countless, and several essays in PBB (Mercer and Koepsell among them) go into it just fine. This post is about why that’s sad — and why I’m so eager to help my kids avoid those particular shackles.
Imagine you’re sitting in class, struggling with a single true/false question on the paper in front of you. The teacher stands behind you with a loaded gun. Picture Snape, if you wish. True or false? he asks. Mark your answer carefully. Oh, and one more thing. Choose ‘true’ and there’s no penalty, even if you’re wrong. But if you choose ‘false’ and you’re wrong — I’ll shoot you in the head. Concentrate, now…
It’s Pascal’s Wager — one of the more cynical things ever uttered by a smart person. Once that gun is cocked, getting it right is no longer the issue, is it? Instead of thinking about the question, you’re focused rather tightly on not getting shot.
The one message I try to instill in my kids above all others is not that God is pretend, but that even if God exists, it is silly to think that the most important thing to him would be your belief in his existence. Honestly, can you imagine anything more petty, more outrageously egotistical — more human? So I tell my kids this: If there is a God, he’s not gonna care if you guess wrong about him.
I had to discover that one on my own, and it took many, many years. Too many. Once I did discover that simple and obvious fact, the freedom from fear allowed me to actually think. At which point I had a chance to get it right.
Which gets me to the real point of the post. I value the freedom to think for myself above just about anything else (other than the love of a good woman and about six other things, shut up). I get (as my Baptist/Episcopal mother-in-law would say) pissed to the tits when someone tries to force me to accept the prefiltered product of their own thinking. As I edited PBB, I kept this cardinal value in the forefront of my mind. I had one central goal for content editing: that every statement in the book should be reasonable. I didn’t say I would agree with every statement in the book — I don’t, by the way — but unless I’ve missed something, I am prepared to defend the reasonableness of every jot and tittle that made it in.
Not every j&t made it in, you see. I worked with several of the contributors to revise or remove statements I considered to be unreasonable or insufficiently grounded. And all of the writers, with one exception (oh DROP it WILL you PLEASE), were extraordinarily generous and willing to collaborate to that end.
Some of the essays are harsher than I’d choose to be. I think some are too forgiving of certain religious ideas. Some give way too much credit to atheists as a group. Others I just flat disagree with. But if I had edited those elements out, there goes your chance to think for yourself. If you read something with which you disagree, be sure to be glad for the chance to do so.
We’re used to being fed a single predigested POV. If that’s what you were expecting in this book, there’s just one thing I can say: You’re welcome.
So…who’s your Russ?
Let me introducing you to Russ:
Russ is a theology prof and a dear friend of mine who represents for me all that is good and noble in the faithful. He is a force for good in the world, a kind, gentle and admirable man. If all believers were like Russ, I’d be thrilled. They’re not, of course, but neither is he unique. And whenever I find myself ready to make a categorical statement about the faithful, Russ’s face pops up before me — and he usually looks plenty hurt, because he himself rarely deserves what I’m serving up.
Russ complicates my life in a good way. I’m convinced he’s got it factually wrong, and that he, like most moderate believers, does too little to acknowledge the genuine harm that religion does, but he is a deeply good guy. As a result of knowing Russ, and dozens like him, I avoid generalizations. I cannot oppose an idea just because it is Christian. I’m forced to actually look at it and think about it, to assess it on its merits, because it may be just as good as Russ. I still make critiques — boy howdy, do I — but they are smarter, more accurate, and more on-target because of Russ. I paint just as vividly, but with a narrower brush. That’s a very good thing.
Russes work both ways — all ways. A Russ is someone you know and love who is on the opposite side of any line of difference. The Cheneys got themselves a Russ when their daughter came out as a lesbian. Those Christians who might be angry at the inclusion of a PBB review in their favorite parenting magazine would be opposing something without thinking, just because it is associated with disbelief. I’d guess they don’t have a Russ on that issue, someone they know who would make it tougher to hate and fear nonbelievers indiscriminately. They need to know a good, decent atheist. Fortunately there are millions of them. Of us, I mean.
And they probably already do know some, of course — but the irony is that the very same hatred and fear that can be cured by knowing each other keeps us from revealing ourselves. And on spins the wheel. Once you know a “gay Russ,” why, it’s a hell of a lot harder to hate and fear gays. Same with a black Russ or an Iraqi Russ. Slurs and stereotypes start sticking in the throat. This is why it’s so important for members of marginalized groups to be out.
One of the purposes of the book is to normalize disbelief so that, in the future, everyone will have an atheist Russ in their lives. At which point a book on secular parenting might get about the same reception as one on vegetarian parenting. Parenting Beyond Beef, perhaps.
I’m the humanist/atheist Russ in the lives of many Christians I know. I complicate things for them. My face floats before them and they put away the broad brush. So, nonbelievers: Do you have a Russ? And believers, how about you? I’m available. We won’t always agree, but who needs that? If we can just keep each other’s humanity in sight, we’ll do fine.
Too hot the buzz?
After working for months to generate excitement about the book, the buzz is now beginning to freak me out. Just a bit. Expectations are so high across the board, it’s slightly terrifying. What will the other monkeys say when they discover it’s nothing but word scrambles and sudoku?
I give a portion of my book profits to various good and noble causes. For Calling Bernadette’s Bluff it was the National Center for Science Education and Doctors Without Borders. I’ve decided a portion of PBB profits will go to the most amazing organization I’ve ever been involved with: Nonviolent Peaceforce, an NGO that trains unarmed civilian peacekeeping teams and sends them to conflict zones around the world — currently Sri Lanka and Mindanao (Philippines), soon Colombia and Uganda. They work with local groups to build and sustain nonviolent strategies for conflict resolution. I’m their US communications coordinator at the moment, just an interim position, and I don’t want to tell them until I leave in May, so please don’t put it on the Internet or anything…
Just heard from the book’s publicist at Amacom that they’re having a very tough time getting parenting magazines to review the book. One editor after another claims s/he’s really really interested in the idea him or herself, but too concerned that a review would anger Christian subscribers into cancelling their subscriptions.
I couldn’t help thinking of a time, not too long ago, when periodicals would reject stories by or about African Americans for fear of angering white readers. I can just hear the editors at the time saying, “I think it’s a fine idea myself, but…” Saying such a thing today would be considered outrageous, but it’s still fine and dandy to accept or even promote bigotry against nonbelievers.
One invited contributor — thankfully only one — declined the offer to participate for the same reason. She is an agnostic, but also a prominent author of books for children, and said she simply couldn’t risk the potential backlash from religious parents. “I don’t need the controversy,” she said. He or she.
Now: It seems important to note that they’d surely be hearing from only a small minority of their religious readers. Most religious folks are just as sane and tolerant as you and I. I say this with confidence, having known countless Christians who are among the finest people I am likely to meet. And I use just one of them to shame myself whenever I pull out the broad brush. But that’s fodder for another post.