a brush with relevance
(Being the first in a series of reports on the 2007 convention of the Atheist Alliance International in Washington DC.)
I don’t have many genuine heroes. Carl Sagan set the bar pretty high when I was thirteen. Since then I’ve generally required a combination of intelligence, lucidity, and courage from applicants to my private Valhalla. Huxley’s there, and Voltaire. Emma Goldman. Gandhi.
I’ve been fortunate enough to meet several of the living members of my pantheon, like Dawkins and Harris, but my path had remained uncrossed with one — until yesterday morning.
Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), spoke to the convention, laying out the recent history of the fight to keep evolution education alive and undiluted in American schools. It’s a helluva fight, and the main focus of NCSE’s brilliant and tireless work.
So impressed have I been with NCSE that I donated a portion of the (sad, small) proceeds of my 2002 novel to the organization.
Imagine my delight when I heard a voice behind me at the breakfast bar wondering where the tray of food had gone—and turned to see Dr. Scott herself, momentarily free of the buzzing hoard that typically attends Spheres like Eugenie at these events. (I’ll explain the geometric reference later this week.)
I explained that another tray was on the way, then thrust out my hand. Just wanted to thank you for your work, Dr. Scott, said I.
Eugenie Scott looked at my name badge and her eyes widened. “Oh my goodness, hello Dr. McGowan!” she said. “I’m so glad to meet you!”
“You…you know who I am?” I was flabbergasted.
“Yes yes, you wrote that wonderful book a few years back!”
Holy crap. We stepped out of line to chat. I mentioned parts of her presentation that had especially impressed me, especially around the historic Dover case a couple of years ago. Instead of saying thangyavurrymush and beating a retreat like the other luminaries, she began, eyes sparkling, to give me an insider tour of the case—everything from the tactics of the creationists to the coming together of the legal team and the incredible amount of behind-the-scenes work that goes into a case of this stature. I could not have been more fascinated. After a series of exchanges with Richard and others best measured in nanoseconds, I was overwhelmed that I rated this kind of attention.
She even flatteringly assumed I was genetically literate, making a passing reference to “the transposition of the second allele in chimpanzees and humans.” Thanks in part to my BA in physical anthropology, I understood each and every one of those words. I imagine the phrase itself has meaning as well.
After more than ten minutes of this, I began to worry that I was monopolizing time that she could have spent giving wedgies to passing creationists. “Please,” I said, “I don’t want to keep you from breakfast,” a new tray of which had by now arrived. “No no, that’s fine,” she said, “too many carbs anyway”—and continued the loveliest conversation I’d had in the entire convention. We talked about our shared opinion that atheists are the world’s worst “salesmen,” about the need to build coalitions with the non-crazy majority among religious folks, and the satisfaction of fighting for truth and justice.
At last I said, “Well, it’s been such a pleasure to meet you! Keep up the brilliant work.”
“My pleasure,” she said. “So good to meet you.”
“Enjoy the rest of the convention,” I added and turned to go.
“You too, Chris.”
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Aha.
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Heh.
Dr. Chris McGowan is a paleontologist and author of the book In the Beginning: A Scientist Shows Why the Creationists are Wrong.
Dr. Dale McGowan, alas, is neither.
i’d like to buy another consonant
Went with Delaney to the “Dads ‘n’ Donuts” event at her school the other day. A fine selection. We finished eating and socializing in the gym a bit early, so we sauntered back to her kindergarten classroom. A couple of dads were already there, being toured by the hand around the classroom by their progeny. Laney grabbed my hand and we joined the conga line.
“This is where alllll of the books are,” Laney said. “And that’s the whiteboard. Here’s the globe, and the puppets…and this,” she gestured proudly, “is my desk!”
I barely heard the last two, since I was still riveted on the whiteboard — which, oh-by-the-way, had THIS on it — scroll ye down:
.
.
.
.
.
.
THIS WEEK!
I am neither making this up nor exaggerating its appearance. Much. The actual medium was dry-erase markers, not tie-dye, but that is amazingly close to the actual appearance of the glorious crux splendidior on the whiteboard in my daughter’s public school classroom.
And what a cross it was! Every color of the rainbow! I’d have burst into a chorus of Crown Him with Many Crowns if not for eleven or twelve things.
Déjà vu. I flashed back to the near-encounter with FAITH at Curriculum Night. But this one was in full view. If anyone else had me in view, they’d have surely assumed I’d suffered a small but effective stroke. I was completely frozen and trying to stay that way.
I knew that if I came to, I’d leap onto a chair and point and squeal “CROSS! CRAWWWWWWSSSSS!!” I’d have no choice: the point-and-shriek is mandated for all encounters with crosses in the by-laws of the Atheist-Vampire Accords of 1294.
A little girl entered my periphery, guiding her father by the hand. “And this,” she said, pointing to the cross, “is what we’re learning about this week!”
She paused for dramatic effect, then announced, with pedantic precision, “Lower-case t!”
i’d like to buy a consonant
It’s not that I’m spoiling for a fight. Like I said, I’m not about to start shooting my mouth off about church-state boundaries here in the dawning months of our entry to the Deep South unless my kids come home from school with John 3:16 tattooed to their foreheads. In permanent ink. A little temporary kiddy gospel tatt…well, where’s the harm in that.
When in Romans, I always say.
But my trigger finger flinched just a wee bit at my son’s middle school curriculum night tonight as I sat in his Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) class, listening to the teacher as she explained her fascinating grading rubric.
My eyes drifted around the room, coming to rest at last on a sign taped in the upper left corner of the blackboard: CHARACTER BUILDERS!, it said, with a bunch of tiny cartoon construction workers crawling all over the big cartoon balloon letters.
Running across the top of the board to the right of the sign were twelve more laminated signs, each with a character word in colorful cartoon balloon letters, each crawling with adorable little hardhatters from Animated Workers Local 382:
HONESTY was first, followed by LOYALTY, ACCEPTANCE, PERSEVERANCE, RESPONSIBILITY, COURAGE, GENEROSITY, RESPECT, CONFIDENCE, KINDNESS, COMPASSION…
Corner-tacked to a strip of cork above the far right end of the board was a lone piece of paper dangling lazily over the twelfth and final character word, obscuring all but the first two letters:
FA
Uh oh.
The voice at the front of the classroom had become Charlie Brown’s teacher — wah waaaah wah, wa-wa-wa-waah — when I suddenly noticed that the wafting breeze of the air conditioning vent was lifting at the corner of the paper, ever so slightly, teasing me with the hope of the third letter. One gust, slightly stronger than the rest, lifted the paper enough to reveal that letter:
I
Oh crap. I broke out in a cold sweat. This is one of the exact scenarios Stu Tanquist described in PBB, an explicit endorsement in a public school of FAITH as a necessary component of character. In choosing his battles, that was one Stu rightly chose to fight.
Dammit! I don’t wanna. I really don’t.
I took the measure of my mettle and a deep breath. By the time I exhaled, I had decided. If FAITH is listed in my son’s classroom as a “CHARACTER BUILDER!”, I have to address it. Somehow. Delicately, judiciously, I would have to address it.
Dammit.
Suddenly the parents around me rose from their seats and began filing out of the room. The wah-wah had ended, the session was over. I let them file past me, then followed the last schlumpy dad toward the door.
As I passed the dangling sheet of paper, I glanced furtively from side to side, then lifted it to see the word beneath:
FAIRNESS.
Oh. Well okay then.
this ain’t your grandpappy’s Atlanta
I spent the first Sunday morning in our new Atlanta home heaving worldly possessions from our PODS (Portable On Demand Storage, highly recommended) container to the garage in 95-degree heat. At 10 o’clock I caught the eye of a neighbor mowing his lawn. He nodded and smiled. I nodded and smiled. Not in church, eh? we said telepathically. That’s right, we each responded. Two sweaty joggers bobbed by, presumably not church-bound.
Nod.
Nod.
Standing in line at the post office last week, I counted accents. I heard 28 people speak long enough to take a reasonable guess. Several distinct New Yorkers (including one behind the counter), a Bostonian, a possible New Jerseyite, at least three Midwesterners, an English woman, an Indian couple, and two women from California. Others were hard to place but definitely un-Southern.
So how many of the 28 had even a trace of a Southern accent? Three.
Our realtor is from Indiana. Our neighbors on the left are from California. Across the street is Michigan, and next to her, upstate New York. The guy who fixed our phone cable is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
I’m beginning to see why Southerners call Atlanta the “New York of the South.” It ain’t just the skyscrapers — it’s the New Yorkers. We’re in North Fulton County, an area exploding with newbies from everywhere but here, many brought in by the Fortune 500 companies based in town.
And we’re in an area more diverse than the one we left in Minneapolis. Our immediate neighborhood includes families from Indonesia, Taiwan and Pakistan. The populations at my kids’ schools are 40% non-white.
This is goooood.
It’s not that Northern is better than Southern, non-white better than white, or non-religious better than religious. It’s sameness that’s the enemy. I REALLY don’t want my kids growing up surrounded by people who look and think and act just like they do. As a teenager, I remember barfing inwardly at the phrase “Celebrate Diversity!” — until I spent some time surrounded by conforming sameness and watched all of the grotesque pathologies that bubble out of that. I’m a white liberal nonbeliever, but I know better than to want my kids growing up in an area that’s all-white (been there), all-liberal (done that), or all non-believer (don’t even wish for it). I want a mix.
And here in the northern stretch of Atlanta, as a result of the infusion of difference in the past 20 years, my kids are going to grow up in a much more diverse and cosmopolitan place than I sometimes feared in the weeks leading up to the move, laying awake in a cold sweat, staring at a ceiling that kept turning into the Stars and Bars and imagining the new neighbors as some combination of this
…and this
Though these guys are surely around, they’re a helluva lot rarer than the worst of my sleepless Minnesota nights would have had me believe. Isn’t that usually the case? Don’t I usually find that late nights are the worst time to measure reality? So when will I finally learn to tell my insomniac fears, once and for all, to bugger off?
By clicking on the lights one at a time, I guess. All that to say: now that I’ve seen Atlanta with the lights on, I like it.
choosing your battles
I’m all Southern now. For proof, see last post, in which God and football are mentioned in the same breath.
Somebody emailed me to ask why exactly I’m not girding for battle over the inclusion of God as one of the four team values for my son’s public football league. Let’s suppose for a moment it was a serious question. When it comes to religious incursions into public life, how do you decide when to fight and when to let it be?
Since I edited Parenting Beyond Belief, I’ve heard stories of church-state violations that would make your fries curl: public school marquees with Bible verses, a public kindergarten teacher showing the bible-based Veggie Tales and reading from In God We Trust — Stories of Faith in American History, even a values assessment in a public high school that gave kids a lower values score if they didn’t attend church or believe in a “higher power.”
Like the aforementioned curly fries, some of these are small issues, some are medium — and some are SuperSize. To sort them out, it’s a good idea to think about why church-state separation exists. It does not exist to “avoid offending atheists.” Ed Buckner put it this way in Parenting Beyond Belief:
Many people do oppose separation of religion and public education, of course, but most do so because they lack good understanding of the principle and its purpose. The most common misunderstanding is that separation is designed to protect religious minorities, especially atheists, from being offended. Offending people without good reason isn’t ever a good idea, but that isn’t the point of separation. Separation is necessary to protect everyone’s religious liberty.
THAT is what separation is for. If I tell you I’m in favor of putting God back in schools, half of my relatives would cheer — until I announce that it’s Chac-Xib-Chac, the Mayan god of blood sacrifice, who will be worshipped, and the Mayan creation story that’ll be taught as true.
Suddenly I’m no fun at all.
Likewise, if I said our prayers would be specifically Catholic — that we would pray to Mother Mary and invoke the name of Benedict XVI each morning, for example — there’d be Protestants laying bricks in the principal’s office.
Nobody understood this better than Southern Baptists at their founding. They were a tiny minority then, you see, and didn’t want some majority vision of God forced on their kids. Here’s Dr. Ed again:
The Southern Baptist Conference understood the point so well that it included separation of church and state as one of its founding principles. The Southern Baptists adopted, in their “Baptist Faith and Message,” these words: “The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work….The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind. The state has no right to impose taxes for the support of any form of religion.” Only by consistently denying agents of government, including public school teachers, the right to make decisions about religion is our religious liberty secure.
But now that they’ve made it into the mainstream, why, they can’t quite remember what all the separationist fuss was about.
If I heard that a teacher at my kids’ school was advocating atheism — saying specifically that God does not exist, for example, and telling the kids they should believe the same — I’d be the very first parent demanding his or her head. Secular schools are not the same as “atheistic” schools. They are neutral on religious questions — and that, you careful readers of the Constitution will know, is the American Way.
Anyway, back to my boy’s football thing. Stu Tanquist (whose essay title I stole for this entry) offered a list of considerations in Parenting Beyond Belief:
When considering whether or not to challenge religious intrusion in our lives, there are many factors to consider:
• Is your child concerned about the consequences?
• Could your child be negatively impacted by the challenge? Might he or she be ostracized at school by teachers or students?
• If successful, how significant would the change be? Would it positively benefit other families and children?
• Could you and your family be negatively impacted?
• What are your chances of success?
• How much time and resources are required?
• Do you risk damaging existing relationships?
• Is this likely to be a short-term or long-term fix?
• Is legal action necessary?
• Are there other parents or organizations that could assist you?
• Are you bored? Do you really need the spice this will add to your life?
• Would it feel rewarding both to you and your child if you succeeded?
This list isn’t designed to spit out the “right” answer; it simply raises the right issues. “Damage to existing relationships” is unfortunate, but in some cases might be outweighed by “positive benefit [to] other families and children.” Read his chapter and you’ll see how Stu geared his own responses, sitch by sitch, as his daughter encountered religious incursions in her public education.
The most important point Stu makes is the importance of considering the child’s wishes. Pushing a point your child doesn’t want pushed might do far more damage to your parent-child relationship than the issue is worth.
In the end, the football thing was a no-brainer. Compared to the likely consequences — especially for the new kid — it just doesn’t matter enough. God is just being presented as a value — inappropriately so, yes, but the effect is mild. My boy isn’t being forced to pledge individual belief in God, as he was (repeatedly) in Scouts. And he’s less impressionable now, better able to think for himself, so I’m not concerned about him being unduly influenced by an admired figure like his coach.
There are certainly cases in which I would stand up — and have. This just isn’t one of them. I’d be interested to hear what you think about Stu’s list — if there’s anything you’d add or subtract, for example — and whether you’ve come up against separation issues and how you handled them.