The Gray Lady comes through!
No, that’s not the Gray Lady. The Gray Lady is the employer of the nice lady in the picture, Laurie Goodstein, national religion correspondent for the New York Times and my new favorite person.
Every article ever written in the mainstream press on the subject of atheism in the U.S. includes at least one howling wincer. I’ve always assumed it was some sort of requirement to include a misrepresentation or cheap shot — some rule written into a secret journalistic code that’s buried under Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. Why else have there been exactly zero exceptions since Gilgamesh put stylus to clay?
Until now, that is.
Today’s Times includes the best mainstream article I have ever seen about atheism in America. Written by Ms. Goodstein, the piece is accurate, reasonable, positive, timely, free of cheap shots — and quotes Herb Silverman, one of freethought’s best spokespeople.
Read the article and watch Laurie on Colbert (below). Comments are mercifully closed now, but you can drop Laurie a note of thanks by going here and clicking on “Send an email to Laurie Goodstein.”
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Laurie Goodstein | ||||
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(Don’t forget to say thanks to Laurie. I’m sure she’s getting flak for failing to include a wincer.)
vegehumilitarianism
A couple of years ago, Becca and I had a college friend over for dinner. Hadn’t seen him for years. An engineer and a gentleman. We had a great time catching up, and inevitably he asked about my work.
He listened thoughtfully as I filled him in on the nonreligious parenting book I’d just released, nodding his head, occasionally making a supportive sound or saying “Wow, that’s really great stuff you’re doing.” But I could tell there was something left unsaid.
Right in the middle of the Long Minnesota Goodbye (Step 2, I think — standing in the living room with coat in hand, talking), he came out with it.
“I think what you’re doing is awesome. I’m so impressed. I’m a Christian myself. Doesn’t make sense, I can’t support it, there’s no logic behind it, it’s completely unreasonable, but there it is.”
I knew by his tone and tempo that he was uneasy divulging this, figuring I’d think less of him, or worse, try to talk him out of it. To discourage this, he’d headed straight into L.M.G. Step 3 (slip one arm into jacket, keep talking) just in case he’d have to bolt.
I assured him it was completely cool, to each his own, etc. But my inner jag-off was thinking, “No, it’s not OK. Different belief, fine. But you don’t get to just sidestep the question of whether your worldview makes any sense. Beliefs have consequences. You don’t get to hear my evidence and then say, ‘I just don’t wanna!’ ”
And that’s when I heard it — another person in my head, clearing his throat and staring accusingly at my inner jag-off with a wry smile. The jag fell silent and wet himself, ever so slightly.
The accuser was my inner vegehumilitarian.
Ever get into a discussion of religious beliefs, only to have the other person sort of glaze over and look away? Nod, grant you every point, then just…shrug and smile? Nothing drove me nutsier during my brief secular-evangelical phase than this shrugging disengagement. I mean, what’s the friggin’ point in having Kevlar arguments if the other person refuses to shoot??
Then came the day I felt myself doing exactly the same shrug.
For me, the topic is vegetarianism. I should be a vegetarian. When my dad died, my doctor told my mom that a genetic vascular defect in Dad’s head most likely caused the aneurysm, and that we kids could easily have it as well, and that to keep our blood pressure under control and for several other reasons it would be a good idea for us to consider vegetarianism.
When Mom shared this with me, I glazed over, shrugged, and took another bite of my wiener.
Years later I came across the moral dimension, most vividly in the documentary short Meet Your Meat. I was and remain horrified at such depictions of animal cruelty in our food production system. I had to glaze over and shrug especially hard to finish my tangerine beef.
I told myself for years that we need the protein, or that there’s not enough variety or interest or texture in vegetarian cuisine, despite massive evidence to the contrary. Let that phrase echo a bit: Massive evidence to the contrary…ary…ary…ary.
Please don’t think I’m being glib. I’m exposing myself as indefensibly inconsistent and hypocritical. I’m much worse than people who don’t know why they shouldn’t eat meat because I KNOW WHY. Have I examined and refuted these arguments like the good rationalist I am? No, because there is no refutation. I don’t go vegetarian for one vague and pathetic “reason.”
I don’t wanna.
I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. Why don’t I want to? Dunno. It doesn’t get patheticker than that.
So whenever my inner jag-off tries to kick-start a smug, self-righteous response to someone who’s sinking into glazed disengagement in the face of the three hundred excellent arguments against religious belief, I have only to call forth my inner vegehumilitarian. This does NOT mean I disengage from challenging toxic religious ideas. I obviously don’t. It simply means I start from a position of empathy for the believer — a much more effective starting point if we’re ever to make headway.
And I hope for similar mercy from all the vegetarians shaking their detoxified heads at me. Don’t stop trying to get through my glaze, but please — have mercy.
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CODA
A dose of humility for carnivorous atheists
Excellent reasons to be an atheist
Excellent reasons to be a vegetarian
Famous atheists
Famous vegetarians
Great vegetarian recipes
Great atheist recipes
Living up to humanism
I’m speaking to Edmonds UU just north of Seattle tomorrow morning. They asked that I talk about humanism, with special attention to the discomfort many humanists feel with ritual and other trappings often associated with theism. I’ll post the talk later.
91 percent of Unitarian Universalists claim humanism as one of their self-identifiers. There are essentially three types:
The last group redefines the word “religion” to mean “devotion to certain values and principles and coming together in the service of those values and principles.”
I understand the strategy there. If humans in general are too skittish to call themselves nonreligious, let’s broaden the definition of “religious” to include a less toxic, more positive expression. Gives folks a place to go.
But that also creates headaches for those of us who are trying to address the toxic form. It’s like being a cancer researcher, only to have someone redefine “cancer” to mean “courage.” At which point the redefiners turn around and point an angry finger at those working for a cure, saying, “How can you be opposed to courage?”
But again, I get it. I’m even coming to see the value in creating that space to be “religious” and nontheistic.
At one point in the talk, I say
When I first discovered the label for what I had essentially always been — secular humanist — I considered the first word to be the most important. I had renounced not just theism but all of the institutional accretions that have built up around theism these many centuries, doing untold harm to the very world and people I care so much about. But as I’ve grown in my secular humanism, I’ve begun to value the second word more strongly than the first.
It’s true. For a long time I was proudest of my secularity, my atheism. I figured out this really hard thing that most people get wrong. And it’s the biggest thing there is! Woohoo! [Ape beats chest, peels banana.]
It’s still important to me, but I think we spend too much time congratulating ourselves about it. Yes yes, little boy, you figured out the tricky thing. Good show. But NOW what?
Humanism, of course. That’s what.
Being an atheist in a theistic society is challenging, but atheism itself is easy. It’s a simple renunciation, a toggle switch. Humanism — taking care of each other and the world in the absence of divine help — takes effort.
Humanism is something I can be held to and hold others to, something I can succeed or fail at, get better at by degrees. Some days I’m a better humanist than other days, but I’m always the same kind of atheist. Though I’m still every bit an atheist, my atheism doesn’t separate me from Joseph Stalin. But it’s pretty hard to argue that Stalin was a humanist.
This isn’t meant to be another tired discursion on labels. As I said, I claim them both, as do most nontheists. But preparing this talk for tomorrow has reimmersed me in what humanism means and how important and energizing it can be.
On the About page at the elegantly-named Humanity by Starlight, blogger and high-schooler Perpetual Dissent put it this way:
I’m an atheist and I try to live up to being a humanist.
Search ye in vain for a better nutshell.
My cover is blown
I get some doozies in my inbox, but yesterday brought something genuinely new — a message from a secular humanist who is concerned that I am too, uh…too…well heck, I’ll let you figure it out:
HELLO DALE AND ASSOCIATES, 14 OF APRIL IN 2009!
AFTER READING A BUNCH IN YOUR WEBSITE [PARENTINGBEYONDBELIEF.COM], I CONCLUDED THAT YOU HAVE NOT MOVED BEYOND “RELIGION” AT ALL OR NOT FAR.
“BEYOND BELIEF” I FOUND UNTRUE…..TRUE?I FOUND SEVERAL DECLARATIONS OF HOW YOUR “REALITY” IS.
YA’LL EVEN BORROW A FEW IDEAS FROM THE WORLD OF CONVENTIONAL “CHRISTIAN RELIGIOSITY”, I BELIEVE.
ARE YOU LOCKED IN THESE IDEAS – “GOOD” AND “BAD [EVIL]” , THE IDEA THAT “DEATH” IS REAL, ETC?
THE TAINT OF “RELIGION” IS SO PERVADING IN OUR WORLD THAT ITS SMELL OR IDEAS SNEAK IN ALMOST EVERYWHERE, I FIND.DO YOU REALLY TAKE PEOPLE IN YOUR SEMINAR TO A PLACE OF “AUTHENTIC FREEDOM”, I BELIEVE, THAT HAS A HUMAN BEING BE ABLE TO BELIEVE EVERYTHING AS “TRUTH” AND TEST EVERYTHING FREELY AND INDIVIDUALLY?
THEN, I BELIEVE, THAT THE “HIGH TRUTHFULNESS AND USEFULNESS” OF WHAT I CALL “HIGH TRUTHS” WILL BE PROVEN IN THE OUTCOMES OF OUR HOLDING THAT “HIGH TRUTH” AS A “FACT” IN THE FLOW OF LIFE THAT’S TRULY “LIFE-GIVING!”.
THERE ARE A LOT OF “LOW TRUTHS” THAT TEAR DOWN LIFE, BIND MINDS, DESTROY THE HUMAN COMMUNITY OF ONENESS, CREATE WAR, ETC.
THESE ARE USEFUL IN ONLY TEACHING WHAT’S NOT TO BE HELD, I BELIEVE, AS “TRUTH” FOR THE POOR RESULTS THESE “TRUTHS” PRODUCE.
ONE OF THE LOWEST TRUTHS IS THE IDEA HELD BY SOME THAT “I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG”.
IS THAT THOUGHT IN YOUR MIND, WORK AND BOOK, DALE?ARE YOU A “CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS INFILTRATOR”?
OR, HAVE YA’LL CREATED YOUR OWN “RELIGION” WE MUST NOW BELIEVE AND FROM WHICH WE MUST OPERATE IN LIFE?
OR, WHAT’S UP…….?DO YA’LL GIVE A REFUND FOR YOUR SEMINAR IF A CLIENT DOES NOT FIND IT ULTIMATELY USEFUL OR A NEW THOUGHT?
Finally, enjoy an excerpt of a recent talk by Joss Whedon:
The final passage gives Joss away as another member of my secret team infiltrating humanism with some perspective and empathy regarding religion. Put a blood pressure cuff on and check the dial as he gets to the final sentences:
The enemy of humanism is not faith. The enemy of humanism is hate, is fear, is ignorance, is the darker part of man that is in every humanist, every person in the world. That is the thing we have to fight. Faith is something we have to embrace. Faith in God is believing, absolutely, in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers.
Not that it’s a competition, but…
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…we have a winner.
In the past seven years or so, I’ve seen quite a few humanistic organizations from the inside — freethought groups, Ethical Societies, Congregations for Humanistic Judaism, UUs, etc. Met a lot of wonderful people working hard to make their groups succeed. All of the groups have different strengths, and all are struggling with One Big Problem: creating a genuine sense of community.
I’ve written before about community and the difficulty freethought groups generally have creating it. Some get closer than others, but it always seems to fall a bit short of the sense of community that churches so often create. And I don’t think it has a thing to do with God.
The question I hear more and more from freethought groups is, “How can we bring people in the door and keep them coming back?” The answer is to make our groups more humanistic — something churches, ironically, often do better than we do.
Now I’ve met an organization founded on freethought principles that seems to get humanistic community precisely right. It’s the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture (above), host of my seminar and talk last weekend, and the single most effective humanistic community I have ever seen.
So what do they have going for them? My top ten list:
10. A great space. Not every group can meet in a neo-Jacobean mansion with lions guarding the stairs, dark woodwork, high ceilings and art-glass windows—but too many groups meet in sterile, fluorescent-lit common rooms full of metal folding chairs and free of even a scrap of inspiration or warmth. Budgets are tight, but every group should do whatever it can to warm up the spaces in which they meet—curtains, wood, carpet, tablecloths, art, etc.
9. Music. When I walked into the Brooklyn Society, a member was playing showtunes on an old upright piano as people stood around chatting and laughing. Twenty minutes before the gathering began, they switched on a CD of jazz standards. Think of what music does for a dinner party, filling in gaps in conversation and casting a glow around the room. EVERY GROUP should have music playing 20 minutes before the meeting begins.
8. Food. Everybody loves to eat. All meetings should start with yummy food. Not a box of pink frosted cookies. Food, glorious food.
7. A call to action. Have a prominent display calling members to collective social action—a donation box, a chart tracking funds raised, a signup sheet for the next Habitat for Humanity day. Keep social action as prominent as any intellectual content. And make sure to include human-centered social action, like soup kitchens, food pantries, battered women’s shelters, etc. — not just trash pickup and book sales.
6. Ritual. (Uh oh, I lost half the audience.) Ritual doesn’t have to mean fuzzy-wuzzy woowoo. In the case of the BSEC, leader Greg Tewksbury started the gathering by yanking on a tubular wind chime that hung at the side of the lectern. He tugged it again at each dividing point in the gathering. Gives a nice sense of rhythm and structure.
5. Emotion. Freethought groups naturally like their intellectual content, but it frequently happens to the complete exclusion of emotional and inspirational elements. BSEC managed to include a constant feeling of emotional warmth without the slightest theistic feel. Since my talk was on parenting, Greg opened by asking those present to turn to the person next to them and share a time they nurtured someone or were nurtured by someone. Five minutes of discussion followed, centered not on debunking this or that but on human emotion.
4. Symbolism. Like the UU chalice, the two candles on the lectern were a clear reference to light, warmth, knowledge, and life. Adds a very nice touch.
3. Diversity. Most groups I’ve visited are 80 percent white male. They don’t want to be, but they don’t know what to do about it. It helps to live in a place like Brooklyn, which made for the most diverse crowd I’ve addressed in years. If you are elsewhere, do some outreach and networking to invite folks from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds to a meeting.
2. Multiple generations. I know, chicken and egg. But I cannot begin to tell you what a fabulous sense of community the Brooklyn Society gets from 20 kids running in and out among the legs of the adult members in the half-hour beforehand. And with kids come parents—people in their 20s-40s, another demographic missing from many freethought groups. Attract families by building community. Build community by doing what’s on this list.
Especially the next one.
1. A warm welcome. This is #1 on the list for a reason. It’s no surprise that we rational freethinking types aren’t generally good at sticking our hands out to welcome strangers into a room. I’m terrible at it. But there is no less welcoming feeling than entering a new space full of strangers without anyone saying word one to you.
This happens to me alllll the time as I travel around. I show up, walk in, and am promptly ignored. Ten minutes of awkward pamphlet reading later, someone finally walks up and asks if I’m new to the group.
Not at the Brooklyn Society. No fewer than five warm and pleasant people welcomed me in the first five minutes and chatted me up BEFORE they even knew I was the speaker.
The difference this makes is enormous. Every freethought group should find the person most comfortable with greeting fellow mammals and assign him/her to watch the door and enthusiastically usher newcomers in, show them around, introduce them to others.
And it needs to go well beyond one greeter. EVERY MEMBER of EVERY GROUP should make it a point to chat up new folks—and each other, for that matter. And not just about the latest debunky book. Ask where he’s from, what she does for a living, whether he follows the Mets or the Yankees. You know, mammal talk. (Now now…I joke because I love!)
Can’t manage everything on the list? No problem. Start with #1, then add what you can when and how you can. Before you know it, you’ll have a thriving, warm, humanistic community where people visit and then return, bringing their spouses and children and friends and neighbors. If I lived in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture would get my sorry butt out of bed every single Sunday.
And that’s saying something.
Glass houses
I’ve had several parents ask how best to deal with arrogance — especially in pre-teens, it seems — toward religious folks, especially extended family. “How do I keep my 13-year-old from sneering at other people for their beliefs when I frankly think they’re pretty darn sneerable myself?” That sort of thing.
It’s become such a common question that I included a story of mine in Raising Freethinkers–presumptuously inserting it into Jan’s otherwise excellent chapter titled “Secular Family, Religious World.” (Editorship has its privileges.)
In addition to clarifying the two different levels of respect about which I’ve blogged before — that ideas themselves have to earn respect, but people are inherently deserving of it — the best way to approach this is (if you’ll excuse the phrase) by inviting him who is without sin to cast the first stone.
I watch the odd bit of televangelism now and then. My son Connor (then 11) caught a few minutes of one program in which some outrageous thing was being foisted on a nodding throng. My boy reacted not to the idea itself, but by sneering at the people: “I just don’t understand how those stupid people can believe stupid things that make no sense!”
“Hmm, yeah.” I thought for a minute, then said, “Hey Con, could you go get me a Coke from the basement?”
“What?”
“A Coke. From the basement.”
“I…but…” he stammered. “Why?”
“I’m thirsty. Please.”
“But…I can’t go into the basement by myself.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“I…I just can’t!”
“Oh,” I said gently. “And…does that make sense?”
I quickly admitted to several irrational quirks of my own, like my completely over-the-top aversion to dead things (unless grilled), and my steadfast belief that M&Ms melt in your mouth but not in your hands, despite constant evidence to the contrary. There are surely many more quirks and irrationalities I carry around, but being me, it’s hard to see them. Just ask Becca what they are — then cancel your appointments for the day.
Connor and I then went after the idea in question as we always do, but he was able to do so from a less self-exalted and slightly more empathetic perch — one fallible human thinking hard and well about the errors to which we are all prone, not some glowing eminence smirking at the foibles of creatures in the mud beneath his feet.
We all have irrational beliefs and fears. Jumping at shadows and seeing faces in tortillas is a direct consequence of our deepest wiring — and all the new software in the world will never completely fix that mess. It’s a good and great thing to try, to pull yourself as far up out of the muck as you can, but it’s delusional to ever think you’ve completely escaped it, or to sneer too thoroughly at those silly fools you imagine you’ve left behind.
Now before I get a dozen furious emails, let me be absolutely clear. Reasoned critique is a great thing, and I encourage my kids to go after any and all ideas on their merits. But eye-rolling arrogance toward those who support a given idea is not reasoned critique — and religious discourse is filled with examples of people on all sides who allow dismissive arrogance to cloud their judgment. Start with arrogance, saying, “I can’t believe how stupid they are to believe xyz” and you have one foot on Ray Comfort’s banana peel. Start instead with a little humility, saying, “I may be wrong about this, but…” and you have a much better chance of actually getting things right.
We all live in glass houses, no matter how thoroughly we think we’ve attended to our own rationality. And that’s not entirely bad. It can keep us humble and, as a bonus, increases our chances of thinking well.
Closer and closer to No Big Deal
I start the parenting seminar with a slide intended to help us all relax about the place of secularism in the United States.
Most freethought blogs and periodicals give the impression that aggressive, fundamentalist evangelical Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds, threatening to capsize the frail craft of secular humanism any day now.
I suppose this keeps us manning the barricades instead of scratching ourselves and reaching for the remote. But the way I see myself in the culture affects the way I parent, so I need to know what’s really going on. If my worldview is being pushed to the margins, I might be forced to strike a dukes-up posture and teach my kids to do the same.
But if it isn’t true, I need to know that as well. It would allow me to be less fearful, more open, and more relaxed — and to encourage the same in my kids.
My opening slide shows the percentage of religious identification in the U.S. as determined by the gorgeously detailed American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). ARIS has taken the pulse of American religious identity three times: in 1990, in 2001, and in 2008, these latest results released just days ago.
The data in ARIS and other polls show a clear trend toward a much healthier pluralism in the U.S. Among the fascinating data: From 1990 to 2008…
Christian identification has shown a steady decline, from 89 to 75 percent of the US — including drops in 46 states; Evangelicals make up an ever-growing percentage of the water in the hold of the Protestant ship (if you get my metaphor); Nonreligious identification has increased from 8 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008, including growth in all 50 states; Non-Christian religions have grown from 3 to 9 percent, including growth in 44 states; The percentage of Americans who claim Jewish identity is stable, even as those who call themselves “religiously Jewish” has declined by 13 percent — meaning more are (like the congregation I addressed this past weekend) nontheistic but “culturally Jewish”; The percentage of respondents who, when asked about their religious identity, say “none of your damn business,” has increased in 49 states.
I don’t wanna take over the culture — it’s too much work. But I do want to live in a country where the self-identified nonreligious have a place at the cultural table and religious disbelief is No Big Deal.
And according to our best data, we’re well on our way.
Conservatively project ARIS forward to 2024 — the year my youngest graduates from college — and the US should be about two-thirds Christian and one-third something else. That’s a much healthier mix than the 90-10 split of 1990. And if we follow European trends, it’ll go a helluva lot faster than that. A Harris poll in 2006 put theistic belief in Germany, the United Kingdom, and France at 41, 35, and 27 percent respectively.
All of which means our kids are likely to be living in a culture that’s ever so much more balanced and diverse than we did. Fancy that.
(Click here for an almost unbearably cool interactive map at USAToday. Be sure to click on alllll the tabs: “View by change” and “View by year,” as well as all of the worldviews. Now tell me that’s not fun.)
Best Practices 5: Encourage religious literacy
hortly after the release of Parenting Beyond Belief, I mentioned on the PBB Discussion Forum that I think religious literacy is an important thing for our kids (and ourselves) to have. Many agreed, as did most of the contributors to the book, but I received an email from one parent who asked,
Why should I fill my kids’ heads with all that mumbo-jumbo?
Here are my four reasons that religious literacy (knowledge of religion, as opposed to belief in it) is crucial:
1. To understand the world. A huge percentage of the news includes a religious component. Add the fact that 90 percent of our fellow humans express themselves through religion and it becomes clear that ignorance of religion cuts our children off from understanding what is happening in the world around them—and why.
2. To be empowered. In the U.S. presidential election of 2004, candidate Howard Dean identified Job as his favorite book of the New Testament. That Job is actually in the Old Testament was a trivial thing to most of us, but to a huge whack of the religious electorate, Dean had revealed a forehead-smacking level of ignorance about the central narrative of their lives. For those people, Dean was instantly discounted, irrelevant. Because we want our kids’ voices heard in the many issues with a religious component, it’s important for them to have knowledge of that component.
3. To make an informed decision. I really, truly, genuinely want my kids to make up their own minds about religion, and I trust them to do so. Any nonreligious parent who boasts of a willingness to allow their kids to make their own choices but never exposes them to religion or religious ideas is being dishonest. For kids to make a truly informed judgment about it, they must have access to it.
4. To avoid the “teen epiphany.” Here’s the big one. Struggles with identity, confidence, and countless other issues are a given part of the teen years. Sometimes these struggles generate a genuine personal crisis, at which point religious peers often pose a single question: “Don’t you know about Jesus?” If your child says, “No,” the peer will come back incredulously with, “YOU don’t know JESUS? Omigosh, Jesus is The Answer!” Boom, we have an emotional hijacking. And such hijackings don’t end up in moderate Methodism. This is the moment when nonreligious teens fly all the way across the spectrum to evangelical fundamentalism.
A little knowledge about religion allows the teen to say, “Yeah, I know about Jesus”—and to know that reliable answers to personal problems are better found elsewhere.
So should you take your kids to a mainstream, bible-believing church? Hardly. They shouldn’t get to age 18 without seeing the inside of a church, or you risk creating forbidden fruit. Take them once in a while just to see what it’s all about and to see that there’s no magical land of unicorns and faeries behind those doors. But know that churchgoing generally has squat to do with religious literacy.
In his (fabulous) book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t, Stephen Prothero points out that faithfully churchgoing Americans are incredibly ignorant of even the most basic tenets of their own belief systems, not to mention others. Europeans, on the other hand, are religiously knowledgeable and rarely darken the door of a church.
Coincidence? I don’t think so. Most European countries have mandated religious education and decidedly secular populations. Unless they attend a UU or Ethical Society, U.S. kids have almost no religious education. Faith is most easily sustained in ignorance. Learning about religion leads to thinking about religion—and you know what happens then.
Mainstream churchgoing also exposes kids to a single religious perspective. That’s not literacy—in fact, it usually amounts to indoctrination.
So how do you get religiously literate kids?
1. Talk, talk, talk. All literacy begins with oral language. Toss tidbits of religious knowledge into your everyday conversations. If you drive by a mosque and your four-year-old points out the pretty gold dome, take the opportunity: “Isn’t that pretty? It’s a kind of church called a mosque. People who go there pray five times every day, and they all face a city far away when they do it.” No need to get into the Five Pillars of Islam. A few months later, you see a woman on the street wearing a hijab and connect it to previous knowledge: “Remember the mosque, the church with that gold dome? That’s what some people wear who go to that church.”
As kids mature, include more complex information—good, bad, and ugly. No discussion of Martin Luther King, Jr. is complete without noting that he was a Baptist minister, and that his religion was important to him. You can’t grasp 9/11 without understanding Islamic afterlife beliefs. And the founding of our country is reframed by noting that the majority of the founders were religious skeptics of one stripe or another. Talk about the religious components of events in the news, from the stem cell debate to global warming to terrorism to nonviolence advocacy.
2. Read myths of many traditions. Myths make terrific bedtime stories. Start with creation myths from around the world, then move into the many rich mythic traditions—Greek, Roman, Norse, Hopi, Inuit, Zulu, Indian, and more. And don’t forget the Judeo-Christian stories. Placing them side by side with other traditions removes the pedestal and underlines what they have in common.
3. Attend church on occasion with trusted relatives. Keeping kids entirely separated from the experience of church can make them think something magical happens there. If your children are invited by friends, say yes—and go along. The conversations afterward can be some of the most productive in your entire religious education plan.
4. Movies. One of the most effective and enjoyable ways to expose your kids to religious ideas is through movies. For the youngest, this might include Prince of Egypt, Little Buddha, Kirikou and the Sorceress, and Fiddler on the Roof. By middle school it’s Jason and the Argonauts, Gandhi, Bruce Almighty, and Kundun. High schoolers can see and enjoy Seven Years in Tibet, Romero, Schindler’s List, Jesus Camp, Dogma, and Inherit the Wind. This list alone touches eight different religious systems (seven more than they’ll get in a mainstream Sunday School) and both the positive and negative influences of religion in history (one more than you get in Sunday School).
Special gem: Don’t forget Jesus Christ Superstar, a subversive and thought-provoking retelling of the last days of Christ. There are no miracles; the story ends with the crucifixion, not the resurrection; and Judas is the hero, urging Jesus not to forget about the poor as the ministry becomes a personality cult.
Best Practices 4: Teach engaged coexistence
strology survived Copernicus.
That’s my simple response whenever someone suggests to me that science will eventually put religion out of business.
By all rights, astrology should have been forced out of business in 1543. Among other things, astrology is founded on the necessary condition of an Earth-centered universe. Medieval treatises on astrology include sentences like “As the orb of the World is center’d in the celestial spheres, so then is it reasonable to conclude that…” So long as the other planets orbited Earth and the constellations of the Zodiac were arrayed in reference to an Earthly center, the idea that constellations determined our personalities and controlled our destinies had at least a snowball’s chance of respectability.
But after the publication of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus in 1543 — followed by two centuries of theological arm-wrestling — Earth was decisively removed from cosmic center court. At this point, astrology, shorn of its most essential assumption, should have followed geocentrism into obscurity. The fact that it did not — that it has endured several centuries goofily unaware that new knowledge has rendered it null and void — is enough to make it ridiculous.
Yet the Harris poll shows Americans’ belief in astrology going up, not down (25% in 2005, 29% in 2007, 31% in 2008).
If astrology’s coffin needed any more nails, Hubble provided them in 1924 when he first discovered the true size of the universe and distance between stars — at which point the “constellations of the Zodiac” and all other apparent celestial patterns were seen to be associated only incidentally from our accidental vantage point. In fact, they are separated by millions of light years from each other not only in two dimensions but in the third as well. One star that appears to be snuggling another is often millions of light years behind it, just as the moon, which often appears to be right next to my thumb is actually, amazingly, not.
Yet the thing shows no signs of vanishing any time soon.
So when even so bright a light as Richard Dawkins says that the discovery of a Grand Unified Theory would “deal an overdue death blow to religion and other juvenile superstitions,” I say, with the utmost respect and admiration, pfft.
The confident demise of religion has been predicted at least since Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Several scientific commentators during the 20th century predicted the demise of religion in 25, 50, or 100 years. I think they’ve all failed to realize that precious few religious believers are assiduously poring over facts to be sure their worldview still holds water. They stick with it because it is such a dynamite cure for what ails them (adjective meant in all possible ways).
Add to that the fact that a large part of humanity will always lack access to knowledge and security, not to mention the simple awareness of any Grand Unified Theory we might discover, and I feel confident that religion will continue, forever, to plug the hole. Religion will always be with us.
I do think religion will gradually become less influential in the developed world and (on the whole) less fanatical and intolerant, thanks in part to increased access to knowledge and security. Despite the loud evangelicals, that’s already well underway. But new religious movements pop up at an estimated rate of two or three per day in developing countries. In the developed world, the thing continues to (ironically) evolve to keep pace with both our ever- and our never-changing itches.
For the record, I’d prefer this not be the case. Since it is the case, I do what I can to hasten the evolution of religious expression and practice toward the less fanatical and intolerant. It’s a process that is already going full steam in Europe, by the way (at least as far as Euro-Judeo-Christianity goes. For more on Euro-Islam, see Sam Harris).
When it comes to parenting, I’m raising kids for what I call “engaged coexistence” with other world views. It rejects both the “Everbuddy’s gwine tuh hail ceptin’ me an my dawg” attitude of the fundamentalists and the “I hold all religions in deep respect as multiple manifestations of the True” of the New Age.
The trick is to sort out the word respect.
Respect for individuals and respect for their ideas are quite different and must be separated.
People are inherently deserving of respect as human beings, and no one can be faulted for shutting you out if you declare disrespect for their very personhood. Ideas are another matter. I feel too much respect for the word “respect” to grant it automatically to all ideas.
Even if I disagree with it, I can respect an opinion if it is founded on something meaningful, like rational argument or careful, repeatable observation. The other person may have interpreted the information differently, but I can still respect the way she’s going about it. Suppose on the other hand that someone says Elvis and JFK are working at a laundromat in Fargo and offers a dream or tea leaves or a palm reading as evidence. It would render the word “respect” meaningless to say I respect that opinion. I both disagree with it and withhold my respect for it. And that’s okay. No need to degrade the other person. I know all sorts of lovely, respectable people who hold a silly belief or two—including myself, no doubt—and wouldn’t think of judging them, or me, less worthy of respect as human beings.
Ideas are another thing entirely. It’s not only wrong to grant respect to all ideas, it can be downright dangerous. So I teach my kids to work toward a better, saner world by challenging all ideas AND inviting the same challenge of their own, explicitly, out loud, no matter what worldview they adopt.
That’s engaged coexistence. We recognize that we’re going to be sharing this apartment for the long haul and work together to keep each other’s feet off the furniture.
[CORRECTION: This post initially claimed that the New York Times has an astrology column. It has no such thing. I regret the error.]
A non-issue
I simply can’t stand us. Really I can’t. We crack me up.
I’ve written before about the endless obsession of the freethought community with labels: atheist vs. humanist, atheist vs. agnostic, humanist vs. secular humanist, nonreligious vs. nonbeliever vs. Bright.
I don’t mind someone saying why they choose one over another, or why they switch back and forth in different situations. What I’ve had enough of is people insisting, loudly and self-righteously and endlessly, that one or more of the labels is an affront to all things good and mustn’t be used, period.
It’s not that I don’t find the discussions interesting, even revealing. They are. And I do have my own carefully-considered preferences. But in flinching and thrusting and parrying every time someone attempts to denote something, we run the serious risk of gazing so intently at the labels in our Laputian navels that we never get to substance.
The latest entry in this silly and counterproductive grumblefest came after Barack Obama chose, in the first twenty minutes of his presidency, to acknowledge the existence of nonbelievers — to say, in no uncertain terms, that this is our country too.
Most of us fell over in (what else?) disbelief. But how did some members of our fine community respond? By whining, in blogs and comment threads across the country, because he used the word “nonbelievers.”
“I DO have beliefs, thank you very much,” said more than one of these into-gift-horse’s-mouth-lookers, unable to bear the fact that “belief” is easily understood in this context as “religious belief.”
I get similar umbrage from Unitarian Universalists (UUs) on occasion — a few, not most — about the subtitle of Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion. “We are a religious organization,” sniffed one UU minister in turning down my offer of a seminar. That’s right — she went for the emphatic trifecta, bolding, italicizing, AND underlining the word.
I can stand knowing that various groups and individuals understand the word “religion” in various ways. I have my preference and even my arguments for why I prefer it. But I am comfortable living in a world where “religion” means different things to different people. I now always use “theistic religion” to make myself understood to UU audiences. Non-UUs understand my meaning without it.
I digress.
Much of the protest over “nonbeliever” is that it defines us in terms of religious believers. I care about this no more than the fact that “nonsmoker” defines me in terms of smokers and “non-idiot” defines me in terms of idiots. You don’t find many non sequiturs up in arms about being defined in terms of the hated sequitur, nor are the nondescript or noncommital often irate about comparisons to the descript and commital.
Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. seemed not to find their advocacy of nonviolence diminished by the lexical negation of violence. Nor does Nonviolent Peaceforce, the nonpartisan, nonprofit, non-governmental organization for which I work. For each and all of these terms, the prefix is a non-issue.
So why do we continue to waste our pique on such terms as “nonbeliever” and “nonreligious”? I find them both useful and economical. Pile on your polysyllables and modifiers as you wish. I have things to do.
