on borrowed memes and missed compliments
You may have seen the article in TIME Magazine about the weekly children’s program at the Humanist Community in Palo Alto, California:
On Sunday mornings, most parents who don’t believe in the Christian God, or any god at all, are probably making brunch or cheering at their kids’ soccer game, or running errands or, with luck, sleeping in. Without religion, there’s no need for church, right?
Maybe. But some nonbelievers are beginning to think they might need something for their children. “When you have kids,” says Julie Willey, a design engineer, “you start to notice that your co-workers or friends have church groups to help teach their kids values and to be able to lean on.” So every week, Willey, who was raised Buddhist and says she has never believed in God, and her husband pack their four kids into their blue minivan and head to the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, Calif., for atheist Sunday school.
All in all a positive piece about what seems to be a lovely program by a very strong and positive group of folks. Very few wincers in the article.
It’s unfortunate but predictable that the response in many fundamentalist religious blogs has been jeering and mockery. Albert Mohler (president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) called it an “awkward irony.” Others have claimed that the fact that atheists spend so much time denying God is “proof that God exists,” or found the idea otherwise worthy of contempt.
I’ve looked in vain (so far,anyway — please help me out) for a Christian blog that says what I think is obvious, and what is essentially stated in the article itself: that this represents an enormous compliment from secular humanism to Christianity. Systematic values education for children is something they’ve developed much more successfully than we have. And for good reason: they’ve had a lot more time, centuries of development and refinement. We humanists have always attended to the values education of our kids, of course, but until quite recently it has mostly taken place at the family level. When it comes to values education in the context of our worldview community, Christians have had more practice. In the past generation, such efforts as UU Religious Education, Ethical Culture, and the Humanist Community program have begun closing that gap in the humanist infrastructure.
One of the most marvelous and successful programs in the world is the Humanist Confirmation program in Norway. According to the website of the Norwegian Humanist Association, ten thousand fifteen-year-old Norwegians each spring “go through a course where they discuss life stances and world religions, ethics and human sexuality, human rights and civic duties. At the end of the course the participants receive a diploma at a ceremony including music, poetry and speeches.” They are thereby confirmed not into atheism, but into the humanist values that underlie all aspects of civil society, including religion.
HUMANIST ORDINANDS IN NORWAY,
SPRING 2007
All of these secular efforts at values education can be seen as an evolution of religious practices, opening conversations about values and ethics while working hard to avoid forcing children into a preselected worldview before they are old enough to make their own choice. And though the practices themselves often have religious roots, the values themselves are human and transcend any single expression.
Instead of mocking and jeering, I’d like to see Christians recognize and accept these adaptations as genuine compliments. Perhaps the first step is for humanists to say, clearly, that they are meant as compliments. I can’t speak for the Humanist Community, nor for the Norwegian Humanists, but I can speak for Parenting Beyond Belief. The Preface notes that
Religion has much to offer parents: an established community, a pre-defined set of values, a common lexicon and symbology, rites of passage, a means of engendering wonder, comforting answers to the big questions, and consoling explanations to ease experiences of hardship and loss.
Just as early Christians recognized the power and effectiveness of the Persian savior myths and borrowed them to energize the story of Jesus, there are currently things that Christians do much better than we do. I’m preparing a post on that very topic. We should not be shy about considering their experiments part of the Grand Human Experiment, setting aside the things that don’t work, with a firm NO THANKS, then borrowing those things that work well, and saying THANK YOU — much louder and more sincerely than we have done.
message from the future: the kids are all right
I’ve received quite a few lovely emails from secular parents thanking me for Parenting Beyond Belief. I LOVE these messages. They give me a ridiculously inflated sense of my own contribution to things. I always feel smart and handsome afterwards.
But a message today was particularly nice. It was from a secular kid, now all grown up. “My parents raised me without indoctrinating me into any faith,” she began. And they did so even though they themselves had been raised in orthodox religious homes.
My dad was willing to talk about his skepticism of religion with me in a very matter-of-fact way. I have memories of sitting at the kitchen table and having a conversation about how unlikely it was for Jesus to be the son of God and how much more likely it was that he was just a normal guy that people wanted to believe he was something more.
She went on to describe her earliest exposures to religion:
[My parents] gently encouraged me to explore different beliefs. Our family only went to church on Christmas and Easter (and that was really about keeping in touch with their cultural traditions), but it’s not so easy to ignore Christianity in the South. So, when I got a little older, they let me go to Sunday school when my friends invited me. I attended the Sunday schools of various Christian faiths like a mini-anthropologist: eager to learn, observant, and a bit detached from the whole thing.
This reminded me of a scene, not too long ago, in our own family. We were sitting in my mother-in-law’s Episcopal Easter service — high-church Episcopal, all gold iconography and slow processions with the Bible (of all things) held aloft.
I enjoy this immensely as theatre, as sociology, as a glimpse into a different expression of our shared human longings. But Connor was slouched low in the pew in clip-on tie and plastered hair, the perfect archetype of the miserable child in church.
I leaned over and whispered, “What if you had a chance to travel back to ancient Greece and watch a ritual in the temple of Zeus? What would you think about that?”
He smiled amazedly at the thought. “That would be so cool!”
“Well, just imagine you’re an anthropologist now, visiting from the future, where rituals have changed. There’s nothing quite like this anymore where you come from.”
He sat up wide-eyed and engaged the rest of the time.
Her message went on:
I knew I didn’t believe in God in elementary school (though, it didn’t stop me from exploring various belief systems when I got older, because, why not? I was willing to check them out). The majority of my friends that are non-believers were teenagers or young adults before they felt comfortable admitting their atheism and agnosticism. In addition, childhood beliefs are so hard to shake, that some of them still feel residual guilt over abandoning their faith and a fear of God’s retribution. I am forever grateful to my parents for–well, it’s kind of negative way of putting it, but I feel like, “Thanks mom and dad, for sparing me from religion.” I am able to go to an Orthodox church today, enjoy and respect it–the cultural traditions, the icons, the hypnotic nature of the rituals and the chanting–without being resentful of it or buying into all of the mythology.
I hope your book and website makes parents feel more comfortable with their decision to raise their kids without religion. Their kids will thank them later!
And that’s what this message felt like to me, like a note from my future kids as I hope and expect they will be: happy, bright, well-adjusted, free of resentments.
That lack of resentment in the second generation is a common pattern in many struggles for social transformation. Feminists have described the same thing with a mixture of amusement and pique. They resented the patriarchy and fought like hell so their daughters didn’t have to grow up butting their own heads against it. In return, they were accused by men and women alike of being too harsh, of being “obsessed with gender,” of pushing too hard and too fast. As a result of their efforts and sacrifices, their daughters now grow up never having known a time when women couldn’t fly planes, or vote, or wear jeans, or expect (if not always achieve) equal pay for equal work and an environment free of demeaning harassment.
Today, those daughters of the revolution — and believe me, I spent fifteen years teaching them — often roll their eyes at their mothers’ generation for making “such a big deal” out of gender issues. They can afford to roll those eyes, of course, because of the dragonslaying their mothers and grandmothers did.
My correspondent isn’t rolling her eyes, of course — but if thirty years down the road my kids are living in a country where a completely secular worldview is no big deal, then hey…I’ll gladly watch them roll their eyes as Dad sits in his recliner, ranting at the ottoman about this or that battle long since won for them.
are we normal yet?
I just had a lovely interview with a reporter from the Associated Press. That’s good enough news, of course — AP serves 1,700 newspapers and 5,000 radio and television outlets in the US alone and a lot more internationally. One AP story that mentions PBB can potentially generate more exposure than everything else we’ve done to this point.
But that’s not what has me blogging. What’s most exciting to me is the topic. The article is not about Parenting Beyond Belief. It’s not even about religion. It’s about values — in this case, specifically how to help our kids de-emphasize consumerism and greed during the holidays.
She’d get some thoughts from religious folks, she said, but it occurred to her that nonreligious parents would also have thoughts about it and strategies for keeping kids from falling into the me me me loop–and she thought I’d be a good person to address it.
I just had to agree. On both points. Heh.
This kind of thing happens all the time in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. When The Guardian in London does a story that touches on values, they check in with various reps of the national clergy, but they quite frequently also get a statement from the British Humanist Association. When I lived in London in 2004, I had to see that happen in three different stories before I stopped spraying coffee all over the paper. In Norway, I’m told, when the topic is values, the papers often get a quote from the humanists instead of the clergy. (The Norwegian Humanist Association has 70,000 members in a country with the same population as Greater Houston.)
Is it possible, just possible, that humanists in the U.S. are beginning to enter the values conversation on an equal footing? Might we even be on the verge of being considered…(I’ll whisper it)…normal?
sacre bleu!
(I just love that gif.)
L’Actualité received over 100 letters and emails—far more than usual—after their November 1 cover story “Growing Up Without God,” which featured an interview with the editor/co-author of Parenting Beyond Belief, one Dale McGowan. Senior writer Louise Gendron gathered and translated a sampling of the comments for me. “Remember that angry people write in far more often than happy ones,” she said. “It is clear from the sales numbers for this issue that interest was very, very high.” The book itself topped out at #285 on Amazon Canada.
The previous post can give you an indication of the tone of the article. Here’s a sampler of reader responses:
I find this guy interesting. He helps us to feel more accepted.
Faith is god-given. Children raised without god will always lack a certain life-dimension. It makes me very sad to think of his children.
The media are very good at brainwashing us to push their way of thinking on us. The last century has shown the fruits of falling away from religion, such as atheistic communism. Happily, Europe kept its faith as a barrier against those enemies.
Atheism is very bad for Québec. It will make us disappear into the English-speaking majority.
I found this article very interesting – I am a mother, trying to explain the world reasonably to my children, and this is helpful.
I am very sad for Dr. McGowan.
Dr. McGowan as a devout nonbeliever has the same narrow faith as some fanatic priest. The big mistake is to be convinced of your own ideas and to stop thinking about them.
I am an atheist and I feel comfortable among the 360 million Buddhists in the world who are also atheists.
Very good article – my great grandparents were Catholic, and I am an atheist.
Very nice article – I am a father of two-year-old who asks why the sun sets. This is a very difficult question to answer in a way that a two-year-old will understand!
Very interesting article – it follows the same philosophy as “Spirituality without God” by Möller de la Rouvière.
I am writing from prison where I am serving time for killing someone. Say hello to Dr. McGowan from me. I don’t understand or have knowledge to sort out whether God exists, but I am open to all ways of thinking. I chose to believe in God because it works for me. My life was a fiasco, a complete mess, and religion helped me sort it out. But I keep thinking, and who knows about what I will believe tomorrow?
The title of McGowan’s book should have been “How to Fool Your Kids.”
I want my tax money devoted to ethics in schools. I will keep that money to go toward religious education.
I don’t want to spoil Dr. McGowan’s party, but I am a Catholic whose husband died two years ago, and I am still struggling to find a way to explain it to our two young children. It is not easy for people of faith to provide answers either.
I was an atheist, and though now outside of all churches, I am a believer.
Cancel my subscription!
I am very sad for all those kids that this man’s non-beliefs will spoil things for them. This man and his bullshit are going to do a lot of harm.
Dr McGowan is too self-confident. I think his knowledge of religion dates from the Stone Age.
That was absolutely fascinating. Another book should be developed for what to tell your teenagers as they reach more advanced levels of questioning.
Your article made me fall off my chair! Think about Pascal’s wisdom when he wrote, [Pascal quotation.]
To the Editor in Chief – who let pass this terrible article?
I am a believer who found this article completely fascinating! You should now allow a believer to answer it.
Dale McGowan makes me think of Dale Carnegie. He will be a millionnaire with his ideas!
Reason justified terrible crimes in the 20th century. [Chesterton quotation. Plato quotation. Kant quotation.]
Dr. McGowan provides very satisfying answers regarding war and suffering and death. What would he answer about the origin of life, the existence of beauty, and generosity? For those he has no answers.
This is crap. I’m fed up with you using my money to bury me in shit. Cancel my subscription.
There are no wars, no hatred, no problems in the world, Dr. McGowan. Everything is just wonderful in the world, so we apparently do not need religion. Isn’t that nice.
I am a teacher in Senegal Africa. I fell off my chair, astonished at your article about children with no religion. In my classroom of 72 kids, I have Muslims and Christians, and it is out of the question to teach each one their religion without a separate teacher for each. I am astonished to find that there are people who don’t believe and are parents!
I am happy to see that I am not the only one to think like that. My daughter now has a child of her own and has decided to raise him without religion, and I am very happy about it.
I taught ethics in public school and let me tell you: It is so much easier to do without the idea of god.
L’Actualité Q&A: “Growing Up Without God”
As noted in an earlier post, I was interviewed for the cover story (“Grandir sans Dieu,” or “Growing Up Without God”) of the November 1 issue of L’Actualité, the largest French-language magazine in Canada with over one million readers. Because the interview was by phone and subsequently translated into French, I’m not in possession of an English transcript of the article itself. But I was asked to prepare a Q&A for their website based on questions by secular parents (below). It is very similar in tone and approach to the main article. Later this week I’ll post a sampling of reader responses.
A Brief Guide for Non-Religious Parents
prepared by Dale McGowan, author of
Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids without Religion
“How can I explain death to my child without heaven?” “How can I help my daughter understand why we chose not to baptize her?” Parenting without religious affiliation presents its own unique challenges. Author Dale McGowan answers questions submitted to L’Actualité by secular parents.
Q
How can we help a grieving child who has lost a relative or a pet?
A
It’s important first and foremost to validate the child’s grief—to let the child know that it’s okay to feel sad, and that the sadness shows that the one who is lost was loved very deeply. Reassure the child that the loved one feels no pain or sadness himself, that he continues to live in our memories, and that life continues all around us, even after each person dies. Thinking about the continuity of life and the nature of death can provoke deep reflection and meaningful insights. Our task as parents should not be to completely deny death’s sting but to soften it with genuine understanding while reassuring the child that we are present to help them through their grief.
Q
My child says, “Grandma died. Does it mean Mom is going to die too? What will happen to me, then?” How can I respond?
A
It is often wrongly assumed that religion makes death entirely palatable. A moment’s reflection shows that this is not true. Even religious funerals are marked by intense sadness, and even religious people dread their own death and do their best to avoid it.
Yes—everything that lives eventually dies, in part to make way for more life. Coming to terms with our mortality is a lifelong challenge, and we will always have a natural, adaptive fear of death. But children raised without supernatural beliefs will have a head start in coming to terms with mortality. It will seem more natural and acceptable to them in the long run than to a person who had to overcome an acquired belief in an afterlife.
There are many ways to improve our acceptance of death. One of the best is to imagine one’s self a century before birth, and to realize that our situation in death will be precisely the same. Asking the child if he was scared before he was born is likely to elicit laughter. “Of course not,” he’ll say—“I wasn’t anywhere!” Exactly—and the same is true when someone has died. We simply go back to being as we were. And death has indeed lost some of its sting.
Q
How do I explain that Uncle Joe believes in God and goes to church but Dad doesn’t believe and doesn’t go?
A
The acceptance and celebration of difference is a vital part of freethought parenting. Make it clear that you find such differences not only acceptable but quite lovely. How boring the world would be if we were all the same! This is also a good time to dismiss the grotesque and silly idea that one of them might be damned eternally for an opinion. Point out that if God exists, he is not at all likely to be concerned with honest differences of opinion. He is much more likely to want Dad and Uncle Joe to treat each other with kindness and generosity than to match each others’ abstract philosophies.
Q
My daughter asks, “Yasmina goes to the mosque, Kim goes to the pagoda. How do I know which God is the good one?”
A
The idea that a child must make up her mind about such a complex and abstract question is quite ridiculous—yet this is the position of many religions and many denominations. I once received a card in the mail from a friend. Pictured on the front was her three-year-old daughter Samantha holding a silver heart in her outstretched hands. “Today,” said the card, in beautiful script, “Samantha gave her heart to Jesus.” At the age of three!
Childhood is a time to explore ideas, not to declare allegiances to them. I believe the only honest and rational way to approach the question of religious identification is to keep children open and undeclared until they are old enough to decide on their own—no earlier than age twelve or thirteen. Teach children to think critically and well, then allow all ideas, religious and otherwise, to wash over them.
The most important thing for children to know is that this question can and should wait, as long as necessary, until they are old enough to decide on their own. Invite your daughter to attend services with Yasmina or Kim, or better still, with both. And let her know that she can change her mind about religious questions a hundred times if she wants. This puts to rest the idea that some divine penalty might await one opinion or another.
Q
My child wants to know what people do in church and why they go. How should I answer this?
A
“Let’s go and find out!” is a very good answer. Take him to a nearby service, or better yet, to services in several different denominations. Shielding a child from exposure to religion can give the impression that you are afraid of it, giving religion the tantalizing aura of forbidden fruit.
Why people go is a far more complex question. Churchgoers often say they go to be close to God or to worship. But I think the most telling answers come from those who no longer attend church when they are asked what they miss. “God” is rarely the answer. Human fellowship is most often cited, as well as the opportunity for quiet reflection and introspection. These are the answers I give my kids when they ask why people attend—then I ask if there are ways we can achieve those same things without going to church.
Q
My daughter (10) said she wants to become a nun, then cried, “I know you won’t let me!” I don’t want this, but how can I discourage her without making her even more determined?
A
The very first problem here is your daughter’s belief that you won’t “let” her. Make it clear that the choice is entirely hers—even if the idea makes you ill. It will indeed be her choice, of course, once she is old enough, and any perceived opposition on your part can make it appear romantic and rebellious, at which point we’ve created forbidden fruit once again.
Your daughter’s desire to take vows is most likely based on a limited understanding of what such a choice entails. There have been anecdotal reports of an increased interest in becoming a nun among girls who have read the children’s book series or seen the movie Madeline. I’m sure The Sound of Music had the same effect in its day!
Such an obsession will most likely pass in time. But if it does continue, contact your local religious convent for a very detailed description of the actual routine and requirements of the life of a nun—which of course has little in common with Mlle. Clavell or Sister Maria. (For an adult-level insight, see Karen Armstrong’s memoirs Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Life In And Out of the Convent and The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness.) Sit your daughter down and walk her through it, just as you would with any profession. The odds are—much to the chagrin of contemporary religious communities—that the negatives will far outweigh any positives. In the (extremely) unlikely event that she maintains her desire throughout her teens, the decision must be hers. The most important thing now is that you let her know that you trust her to make her own decisions in the long run—and mean it.
Q
My son (7) has asked if there will be “an end of times,” and wonders what will happen then. How can I talk to him about such a thing?
A
The answer is “yes,” the world will end—but the best approach to such a topic varies by age. We know that the world will not go on forever, but a child needs to know that it will be here as long as we need it, and well beyond. (No need to add the admitted complications of global warming or errant asteroids!)
Establishing the timescale is crucial. A twelve-year-old might do well enough with “five billion years,” but younger children need to know that the Earth’s end is so far away that they need not worry about it. This is not something that will happen in our lifetime, or in the lifetimes of our grandchildren, or our great-great-great grandchildren. Tell them the sun is in the middle of its life, and that it will continue to warm the Earth and make life possible for as many years in the future as it has in the past.
This has a decided advantage over the idea of the Second Coming and Judgment Day, which many churches excitedly promise will occur within our lifetimes. How terrifying such a prospect must be to the young mind!
Once its remoteness is well enough established, the details of our planet’s actual demise—imagining so permanent a thing as the Earth coming to an end!—can be a source of genuine fascination and wonder for many children.
Q
“All my friends were baptized, why not me?”
A
Whenever a child declares that “all my friends” do something, the first task is to affirm the impression—“It sometimes seems like everyone else, doesn’t it?”—but gently challenge the assumption, which is almost never true. Not everyone else has a pony, not everyone else goes to church, and not everyone else gets baptized.
The second task is to discuss what baptism means, and whether it is appropriate. I see baptism as a mark of ownership placed on the individual by the denomination, the first level of exclusive declaration of a specific belief system—something I believe children should never be required to do. To avoid an intolerant response to friends at school, it is important to add that many good people believe differently.
Invite the child to express his own opinion. I tell my kids it’s okay to change their minds back and forth about religion a hundred times if they want, an invitation that puts them at ease. Baptism, confirmation, and the rest of the doctrinal rituals gradually withdraw whatever permission there is to change one’s mind. Ask your child if he is ready to stop thinking for himself about religion. If you’ve done a good job of instilling the spirit of restless, unbounded questioning, the very idea will repel him, and baptism will lose its appeal.
Q
My son was not baptized but wants to participate in First Communion with his peers. How should I respond?
A
Despite the fact that the Catholic Church calls the eighth year the “age of reason,” a seven- or eight-year-old child is much too young to make a reasoned commitment to a specific religion. A case can be made that this ritual is simply an attempt by the Church to claim ownership of the individual.
Explain to the child that First Communion is a statement of what you believe about the sacrament itself. Ask if he thinks the communion wafer and wine turn into the actual body and blood of Jesus in his mouth. When he says no (as he generally will, with a look of shocked disgust), gently gain his agreement that it would be dishonest to go through the ritual—then compliment him for valuing honesty.
If the ritual is still attractive to him, why not design a brief ritual of your own that celebrates his demonstrated commitment to honesty? Make it a party, with a brief ceremony, food, music, and friends and family in attendance.
Q
Should a secular family participate in the Santa Claus myth?
A
I think there is no harm and even a potential benefit. Our culture has constructed this silly temporary myth in parallel to our silly permanent one. Both involve a magical being who knows our thoughts, rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior. The process of thinking one’s own way out of Santa belief can serve as an important “trial run” for thinking one’s way out of religious belief.
Have fun with the fantasy when the child is young. Then, when the child’s skeptical questions begin to emerge (“How does Santa go to all those houses in one night?”), answer in a way that encourages continued thought and allows for mixed opinion (“Some people say…”). And when at last the child looks you in the eye and asks point-blank if Santa is real, answer honestly and praise her for figuring it out!
Q
“Why are there religious wars? I thought religion was all about love.”
A
First, praise the child for such a thoughtful question. Your answer should note that religious teachings include messages of love and of hate, peace and war, tolerance and bigotry. When two religions each believe that God has promised them the same piece of land, for example, the dark side quickly shows itself. War is not only inevitable but often unending, because to compromise is to show a “lack of faith in God’s promise.”
Explain that people have done great and noble things in the name of religious faith, as well as monstrous and evil things, by choosing among the conflicting ideas in their scriptures. The most troubling feature of most religions is the failure to acknowledge and control those life-destroying messages that exist alongside the life-affirming ones.
Q
“Why does Fatouma have to wear a hijab? And why is Auntie Daisie so angry about it?”
A
A very complex topic! Explain that Fatouma belongs to a culture with different ideas about a woman’s body and how to show it to others. Note that many people think the hijab teaches women to feel ashamed or “owned” by their husbands, while others (including many Islamic women) consider it a proud display of cultural identity and a sign of personal control. Don’t hesitate to offer your own opinion as well.
Auntie Daisie may be angry if she is a conservative Christian who dislikes the public display of another religion or culture, or she may be a feminist who feels the women are being oppressed. Have your daughter ask Auntie Daisie for her reasons, then invite your daughter to talk to Fatouma to see how she feels about wearing it. Children are wonderfully uninhibited about discussing such things—an openness we quickly and sadly lose as we grow older.
Q
“Was Jesus a real person?”
A
Recent work by some biblical scholars (including the Canadian Earl Doherty) has cast some doubt on the existence of Jesus even as a historical personage. This research is fascinating and may be of interest to children in their teens. For younger kids, it is sufficient to say that most people think that Jesus was a real person, but we really can’t be sure. You might add that if he did exist—aside from a little cruelty to pigs and figs—he seems to have been a very decent man and an insightful teacher who would be appalled at much of what has been done in his name.
PBB book event
- October 30, 2007
- By Dale McGowan
- In Atlanta, Parenting, PBB
0
Planning to be on the third planet from the sun this Sunday? Join me at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta for a talk on parenting without religion and the book Parenting Beyond Belief. Presentation followed by Q&A and book signing. Admission is free!
Sunday, November 4, 2:00-3:30 pm
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta
1911 Cliff Valley Way N.E., Atlanta GA
404-634-5134
Directions
meet you @ the forum
Recent snapshot of secular parents milling about the PBB Secular Parenting Discussion Forum
Had a nice interview yesterday with a religion news wire service for an upcoming syndicated article on secular parenting — but I think I made it all sound too easy. I described ways we buffer our kids from this and that, how we expose them to this and that, and how the interactions our family has had with religious folks generally involve fewer pitchforks and torches than we often fear.
“So if there are so few problems,” the reporter asked, quite sensibly, “what’s the need for the book?”
D’oh!
I do that sometimes. In an effort to take the temperature down a notch, I undersell the very real challenges. I explained that the biggest problem is at the larger level — community and society — which continues to demonize and marginalize nonbelievers and to consider them, among other things, unworthy to hold office or to have a voice in important ethical issues. But it’s also the case that Becca and I have gotten better at anticipating problems and raising our kids in ways that minimize the turbulence at the everyday level by applying many of the ideas in the book. Grappling with the issues has made us better secular parents, which makes things go better on that everyday level — which can lead to improvements on the larger scale.
Because of PBB, I’m becoming something of a Dear Abby of secular parenting. Every week I get emails asking for advice on this or that. How to help the second grader who is being religiously bullied at school. How to deal with a twelve-year-old boy who’s developing an unmoderated arrogance toward all things religious. How/whether to keep Grandma from evangelizing the kids. Whether/how to celebrate Christmas. Whether to go through with the baptism the relatives want. How to get a five-year-old started on understanding evolution. How a mom can talk to her daughter about death when she’s not all that keen on it herself.
In the beginning I’d type out my thoughts, but in recent months I’ve started referring parents to appropriate threads in the Parenting Beyond Belief Forum. Over 200 secular parents are registered and trading ideas on that board, which now has more than 200 topics and 1200 posts.
Last week I got an email asking how best to handle religious relatives who insist on saying grace when they come to your house. This is one I answered on the Forum a while back. An excerpt of that Forum thread:
HappyDad from California wrote:
Here’s a situation I figure must be common. We have a lot of family in town, all churchgoers except for us, and we get together a lot for family events. When a meal is at our house, we start to tuck in without saying grace, and somebody (usually my sister, knowing exactly what she’s doing) says, in a wounded voice, “Aren’t we going to thank Jesus for this lovely meal?”
After an awkward few seconds, SHE will invite someone to do it. “Rachel, why don’t you lead us in prayer, honey.” She’s not trying to be disrespectful or embarrass me, by the way…she just honestly can’t pick up her fork until somebody checks in with jehovah.
Yes, I know it’s my house and I have the right to keep religion away from my table. I know that. But first of all, seriously, I always forget until the moment it happens, and then I’m thrown. And secondly, I’m asking how, precisely, I can do this. It isn’t always my sister; sometimes somebody else beats her to it, so I can’t just pull her aside and make the issue go away. And I really don’t want to insult their intentions, which I promise are good. But I don’t want superstition in my house, and I don’t like having to sit and pretend to pray in front of my kids.
They’re alllll coming over again early next week. Gimme some tips here, guys and gals! Thanks!
I replied:
Public prayer galls me for at least two reasons: it’s coercive, and one person speaks for everyone, assuming a uniformity that is never really accurate. It is also too often manipulative (“And may the Lord bless and protect those among us who have been making unwise choices lately” [all eyes go to cousin Billy]).
We have a family tradition that solves this problem and has become a special daily moment in and of itself.
As we sit down for dinner (every day, not just when there are guests), we join hands around the table and enjoy about a half minute of silence together. We’ve asked the kids to take that time to go inside themselves and think about whatever they wish — something about the day just passed, a hope for the next day, good thoughts for someone who is sick, or nothing at all. And yes, they’re welcome to pray if they’d like to.
But here’s the key: it’s a personal, private moment. We don’t follow it with “You know what I was thinking about? I was thinking about homeless children.” Otherwise it turns into a spitting contest to see who was thinking the most lofty thought. Kids will try this at first. Just nod and change the subject. Eventually they figure out that it really is a private moment, which changes the nature of it.
It’s become a daily watershed for us — a moment that marks the transition from hectic day to quiet evening. I love it.
When we have guests, we tell them (before anyone can launch into prayer) that we begin our evening meal with a moment of silent reflection, during which they may pray, meditate, or simply sit quietly as they wish.
And if you have to pull out the big guns, tell them you just respect the teachings of Jesus too much to disregard Matthew 6:5-6:
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the streetcorner to be seen by men….when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father in secret….”
That’s a red-letter passage, straight from the big guy. Tends to end the debate.
Several other parents replied as well with tips and thoughts. And that’s the beauty of it, of course. I don’t mind the emails one bit — I love them, really, they make me feel oh so terribly significant — but why not also drop in on the PBB Forum and tap 200 heads instead of one? Yes, now! Up the big marble stairs, turn right, through the blood sacrifice room, third door on the left.
_____________________________
[Also, psst: Don’t forget to check on the ten wonderfull things page once in a while. And keep sending your suggestions for wonder-full links for secular parents to dale {AT} parentingbeyondbelief DOT com.]
the Quéstion of Québec
Il est faux de penser que la religion rend la mort plus acceptable. À preuve, les rites funéraires sont marqués par des moments d’intense tristesse. Et la plupart des croyants ont peur de la mort et font leur possible pour retarder sa venue! Demandez-lui si elle avait peur avant de venir au monde. Elle risque de répondre en riant : «Bien sûr que non, je n’étais pas là!» Expliquez-lui que c’est la même chose pour la personne qui décède. Elle n’est simplement plus là. Il existe plusieurs façons d’apprivoiser la mort. C’en est une.
Accepter sa propre finalité est le défi d’une vie, et ça restera toujours une peur qu’on maîtrise sans jamais la faire disparaître totalement.
M. Dale McGowan, auteur de Parenting Beyond Belief
No no, come back! I haven’t really become sophisticated — except in the pages of the Montréal-based public affairs magazine L’actualité, which carries an interview avec moi as its November cover story.
I was interviewed last month by Louise Gendron, a senior reporter for what is the largest French-language magazine in Canada with over one million readers. A website Q&A (in French) supplements the print interview.
So why the sudden interest among the Québécois about parents non-croyants? It’s a fascinating story. Québec has historically been the most religious of the Canadian provinces. Over 83 percent of the population is Catholic — hardly surprising, since the French permitted only Catholics to settle what was New France back in the day.
But now Québec is considered the least religious province by a considerable margin — and without losing a single Catholic.
Non-religious Catholics, you say? Oui! French Canadians are eager to maintain their unique identity in the midst of the English Protestant neighborhood — and “French” goes with “Catholic” in Canada even more than it does with “fries” in the U.S. Yet educated Catholics — I’ve discussed this elsewhere — are the most likely of all religious identities to leave religious faith entirely. There is, by all accounts, a very short step from educated Catholic to religious nonbeliever.
In recent years, a very large percentage of Catholic Québécois have essentially become “cultural Catholics” — continuing to embrace the identity and traditions of the Church despite having utterly lost their belief. The most striking evidence is a referendum, five years ago, to transition the provincial school system from Catholic to secular. The referendum passed easily, and a five-year transition began in 2003. This year is the last year of that transition — and to the shock and surprise of many, the entire process has taken place with very little uproar.
Until now.
____________________________
“In recent years, a very large percentage of Catholic Québécois
have essentially become “cultural Catholics” — continuing
to embrace the identity and traditions of the Church
despite having utterly lost their belief. “
____________________________
My interview was going to be a good-sized piece, but two weeks ago (in the words of Louise Gendron), “all hell broke loose” in Québec as orthodox Catholic family organizations launched a coordinated media campaign attacking the secularization of the schools. At which point L’actualité decided to make the interview the cover story and enlarge the website Q&A.
Most “cultural Catholic” parents in Québec support the transition but wonder how to explain death, teach morality, encourage wonder — in short, how to raise ethical, caring kids — without religion.
Perhaps you can understand my sudden, intense interest in Québec, and why there is talk — very early talk — of a possible French edition of Parenting Beyond Belief, to be published in (vous avez deviné correctement!) Québec!
our man in washington: aai 2007
(Being the second in a series of reports on the 2007 convention of the Atheist Alliance International in Washington DC.)
The AAI Convention was such a surreal mix of the ridiculous and the truly sublime that all I can muster is breathless telegraphy in the style of Guinness. The book, not the beer. (And damn Hemant Mehta to HELL for posting his (much more entertaining) breathless telegraphy before I got around to posting mine. He’s young and childless.)
Sam Harris telling a room full of atheists not only to stop calling themselves atheists, but to entirely abandon the concept. Long, good story.
MOST NOT UNDISAPPOINTING MOMENT
Richard Dawkins using most of his speech to debunk the many ways in which he is misrepresented. I’m sure the temptation to clear the air is strong, but (a) he was speaking to the crowd least likely to need convincing, and (b) I want to hear his ideas. This week’s ideas. Perhaps that is just too outrageously what-have-you-done-for-me-lately of me. Yes, now that I think of it, it is. I’m just glad I didn’t type it out loud, then.
BEST DIRECT CONTACT WITH GREATNESS
A nice, long chat with Dr. Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education — see Monday’s post.
BEST MEDIATED CONTACT WITH GREATNESS
Shaking hands with Matthew Chapman, great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, and thereby squeezing Darwin’s own DNA.
MOST IMPRESSIVE ACT OF SELF-CONTROL
Resisting the urge to incorporate Darwin’s DNA eucharistically into my own flesh by licking Chapman’s hand-sweat off my palm. As far as you know.
TOP NIGHTMARE OF CONVENTION
Inadequate facilities. 500 registered, 600 turned away, main ballroom holds only 300. Long story, and, of course, no one’s fault.
MOST INSANELY ARTICULATE NATIVE SPEAKER OF ENGLISH
Sam Harris
MOST INSANELY ARTICULATE SPEAKER OF ENGLISH AS A THIRD LANGUAGE
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
PEOPLE I WANTED TO THROTTLE
Wouldn’t you like to know.
PEOPLE I ACTUALLY THROTTLED
Let’s give the statute of limitations some time to work its magic. Then we’ll talk.
MARVELOUS NEW FRIEND AT CONVENTION
Nica Lalli, author of Nothing: Something to Believe In.
MARVELOUS OLD FRIEND AT CONVENTION
Tanqueray and tonic.
PROOF THAT I AM TOO STUPID TO BLOG
I didn’t bring a camera.
PROOF THAT I AM TOO STUPID TO LIVE
Despite the presence, for probably the only time ever, of eleven of the contributors to Parenting Beyond Belief within an area the size of a baseball diamond, I acquired precisely ZERO author signatures in copies of the book. I just don’t think that way. Until afterward.
MOST PLEASANT SURPRISE
Positive media coverage at the national level (click on video screen to right of article.)
PROFUNDITY
(All quotes were transcribed on the fly onto the backs of business cards and napkins
and are therefore unimpeachably accurate.)
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
[Speaking out against dangerous ignorance] is not my living, it’s my life. I’ve no right to betray it. This [religious claim to immunity from challenge] has got to stop. I’m not sure we have very much time.
*
There is only one cure for poverty, and that is the liberation of women. It always works.
*
I don’t wish for God, no. Not remotely. I don’t want to live under an unalterable dictatorship of any kind.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Let [Muslims] proselytize what they believe and I will proselytize what I believe, and let’s see where we end up. That’s so much better than the powerlessness of being a women within that system.
MATTHEW CHAPMAN
For a feminist to still believe in God is like a freed slave continuing to live on a plantation.
*
I think we should advocate for a presidential debate based solely on the subject of science. It’s become essential.
SAM HARRIS
To begin, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge just how strange it is that a meeting like this is even necessary. The year is 2007, and we have all taken time out of our busy lives, and many of us have traveled considerable distance, so that we can strategize about how best to live in a world in which most people believe in an imaginary God.
*
It just so happens that religion has more than its fair share of bad ideas. And it remains the only system of thought, where the process of maintaining bad ideas in perpetual immunity from criticism is considered a sacred act. This is the act of faith. And I remain convinced that religious faith is one of the most perverse misuses of intelligence we have ever devised.
(Read Harris’ entire speech here.)
HILARITY
MATTHEW CHAPMAN
[on the kind of movie script Hollywood is perpetually in search of:] Horny teen confronts demons, and finally, through faith and violence, returns to being a decent, Christian virgin.
*
I deeply resent standing in security lanes at the airport. I advocate a fast-track lane at airport security for atheists. Whoever heard of an atheist suicide bomber? They should set up a plinth at the start of the line with a wide variety of religious texts. Anyone willing to desecrate the whole lot of them gets breezed right through. “Right this way, my dear atheist! No need to take your shoes off.”
*
If an old lady who opposed contraception while working in the slums of Calcutta can become a saint, I figure I ought to be considered just for doing nothing.
the guilty pleasure that is
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
I tried, while in prep school, to imagine existence in Heaven, which is described as engagement in focused and eternal praise of the Creator. Only slightly less appealing to me are the flames of hell. And both are eternal, with no hope of respite, ever. Now life in North Korea is something close to hell on Earth. According to their constitution, Kim Il-sung, who is dead, is the eternal president. So it is a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. And the people live without much hope of self-expression or joy. But they have one advanatage over the Christian scheme: at least they get to f**king die!
*
[on Mother Teresa] This charlatan, this fraud, this shriveled old bat, as far from the true badge of ‘motherhood’ as it is possible to get…
RICHARD DAWKINS
[Regarding the caption of a photo from The Guardian of three children in a Nativity play] They are referred to as “Mandeep, a Sikh child; Aakifah, a Muslim child; and Sarah, a Christian child” — and no one bats an eye. Just imagine if the caption had read “Mandeep, a Monetarist; Aakifah, a Keynesian; and Sarah, a Marxist.” Ridiculous! Yet not one bit less ridiculous than the other.
(For even more details on the AAI convention, including the full text of all speeches, travel back in time and attend.)
Words fail me
Love is too weak a word for what I feel – I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you.
WOODY ALLEN in Annie Hall
I was born in the Sixties. My first two kids were born in the Nineties. But try to name the decade my youngest was born in, the one we’re in at the moment, and you’re left muttering clunkers like “the first decade of the twenty-first century,” or sounding like Grandpa Simpson by referring to the “aughts.” It’s called a lexical gap, a concept for which a given language lacks a concise label. German is said to lack a precise word for a person’s “chest,” while English speakers are left speechless when it comes to Fahrvergnügen.
When I first heard Alvy Singer struggling to express his feelings for Annie Hall, I thought it was just for laughs. But I’ve begun to struggle in recent years with precisely the same lexical gap — so much so that I’ve almost entirely stopped telling my wife and children that I love them.
Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
The problem is the overuse of what was once, I suspect, a more sparingly-used, and therefore more powerful, word. The fact that Paul McCartney’s only response to the problem of “silly love songs” was to sing the phrase “I love you” fifteen times in three minutes seems to prove my point.
As a result of using “love” to express our feelings about everything from self-indulgence (“I love sleeping in on Sunday”) to food (“I love Taco Bell’s new Pizzaburgerrito”), I find the word “love” now entirely inadequate to describe the feeling engendered in me by my wife and kids. I don’t love them. I luuurve them.
No no, come back. I’m not going to wax rhapsodic. I’m zeroing in on a practical, lexical problem, that’s all.
Mawwiage
Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togevah today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam wifin a dweam. And wuv, twu wuv, wiw fowwow you, fowevah.
IMPRESSIVE CLERGYMAN from The Princess Bride
Whenever I think of the reasons I luuurve my wife, I recall an event I attended two years ago — a debate between an atheist and a theist. I described the scene in PBB (pp. 96-7):
When the discussion turned to morality, [the theist] said something I will never forget. “We need divine commandments to distinguish between right and wrong,” he said. “If not for the seventh commandment…” He pointed to his wife in the front row. “…there would be nothing keeping me from walking out the door every night and cheating on my wife!”
His wife, to my shock, nodded in agreement. The room full of evangelical teens nodded, wide-eyed at the thin scriptural thread that keeps us from falling into the abyss.
I sat dumbfounded. Nothing keeps him from cheating on his wife but the seventh commandment? Really?
Not love?
How about respect? I thought. And the promise you made when you married her? And the fact that doing to her what you wouldn’t want done to you is wrong in every moral system on Earth? Or the possibility that you simply find your marriage satisfying and don’t need to fling yourself at your secretary? Are respect and love and integrity and fulfillment really so inadequate that you need to have it specifically prohibited in stone?
I first dated Becca because of conditional things. Non-transcendent things. Had she not been so unbearably attractive to me, had she not had the most appealing personality of anyone I knew, had she not been so funny and smart and levelheaded, I wouldn’t have flipped over her like I did. It may sound off to say it this way, but she fulfilled the conditions for the relationship I wanted, and I, thank Vishnu, did the same for her. I asked her to marry me in large part because of these not inconsiderable things.
But then, the moment I asked her to marry me, something considerably more transcendent began to happen between us. She said yes — and I was instantly struck dumb by the power of it. This splendid person was willing to commit herself to me for the remainder of her one and only life.
Holy (though I try to keep this blog free of both these words) shit.
No, I am not waxing, dammit, I am making a point. We were moving into the unconditional, you see. She had moved from being one of the many attractive, magnetic, funny, smart people I knew to The One Such Person Who Committed to Me. See the difference? And then, once she actually took three small packets of my DNA and used them to knit children — well, at that point, it became hard to look at her without bursting into song. I’m still not over it. What was a strong but technically conditional love moved decisively into unconditional luuurve.
So yes, there are things beyond the seventh commandment that keep me from cheating on my wife. Like the hilarity I feel at the thought of finding any other woman with any amount of those conditionals more attractive.
As for the children…
You’re an atheist? So then…you think your children are…just a bunch of…processes?
JEHOVAH’S WITNESS at my door last year
Last week a radio interviewer asked about my kids, with mild facetiousness: “So how about your own kids? Good kids, ya love ’em and everything?” In addition to the pure silliness of answering such a question, I fell head-first into that lexical gap once again — and the resulting three seconds of dead air probably did me no favors with the audience. I finally sputtered something about them being amazing kids, terrific kids, but it fell short, as it always does, of my real feelings.
I don’t make up for this lexical gap with the kids by telling them I luuurve them. Instead, almost every single day, I tell them, “I do not love you.” And they smile and say, “Oh yes you do!” — and all is understood.
They know in a thousand ways that I am transported by being their dad. They’ve become accustomed, for example, to the sudden realization that Dad is staring again. They’ll get that prickly feeling and turn to see me lost in a contemplative gawk. They’re very good about it, usually returning a smile rather than a roll of the eyes, which I think is very nice of them.
Recognizing that the love of our children is rooted in part in biology — that I am, in part, adaptively fond of them — does not in the least diminish the way I’m transported by contemplating the fact of them, and of our special connection, and of their uniqueness, of the generational passing of the torch.
But it’s interesting to note that, unlike my relationship with Becca, this meditative gawking began on day one. The order of things is reversed. My marriage started in the conditional and added the unconditional. I loved her from the beginning, but only slowly came to be so completely slain by her.
Kids, on the other hand, begin in the unconditional and add the conditional. From the moment they emerged from my wife — seriously, reflect on that for a moment — they were unconditionally wonderful to me. They were half me and half she. They were our connection to the future. Etc.
Gradually we formed additional bonds based on their actual attributes. They are smart as whips, wickedly funny, generous and kind and fun to be around. But that’s all frosting on an unconditional cake. Marriage, on the other hand — if it goes well — starts with frosting and gradually slips the cake underneath.
So yes, my kids are “processes,” whatever that means, and so is my wife. But they are also the main reasons I wake up grateful and filled with meaning and purpose every single day.
(Wax off.)
