Maybe the Creationists are Right

I love science.  Total geeky love it.  I took a college chemistry course for fun.  Fun I tell you.  I needed to spend some time around grownups so it was some random college course, knitting or cooking and I chose chemistry.  See total science geek.  Love it.

So why am I a starving artist instead of being in some high paid STEM field?  That is too psychologically complicated for a blog post.  I predict it would take a few good years of therapy to even figure it out.  Anyway, back to the blog.

last night, as I was cooking and my son was busy with his math homework, we were watching
Why people laugh at Creationists http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyd6om8IC4M on  you tube.  We like to watch these videos because, in all honesty, we love sarcastic humor.  (Now you may have the idea that I am raising a mean sarcastic little bugger and I wouldn't blame you for having that idea but it is wrong.  Mathew is know for being kind and sweet and there will be a future post all about that. ) 

I like sharing these videos with him for a few reasons.  First he gets to hear both sides of the argument.  Yes one side is ridiculed but they do a good job of actually presenting that side before they rip into it.  Second he gets introduced to rational thinking and learns to identify some basic forms of rhetoric.  I am not quiet ready to fully teach him about rhetoric but to live as a successful adult in this world, he is going to have to learn it.  I have a feeling my little politician will love it as much as his nonconformist mother hates it.  Yep rhetoric and statistics are the two things I know he will not full learn in school that I am really dreading having to teach.  But it has to be done.

Anyway, back to the blog.  So we are watching Ken Ham giving his usually yada yada and Mathew argues back at him, "There is no God evolution is true." 

Normally I would tell him to leave it and finish his math but this crossed that old indoctrination line, so in I waded.

"Mathew, you don't have to be an atheist to believe in evolution."

He looked at me like I was crazy, "I am an atheist and evolution is true."

"But what about all your gods?"  I thought about Santa Clause and realized that this year the jolly fat man would not be visiting our house.  Mathew was leaving the age of belief and headed into a whole new world view. "Mathew you can believe in God and still understand evolution." 

I remembered a discussion we had a few weeks ago about evolution.  He had said that the gods had to do it because how else did the DNA knew what traits the animal would need.  It took a good long time, lots of examples and diagrams as we tried to sort out random mutation from natural selection.  It seems like a simple concept but there is a lot of causation to get pointed round the right way.  I was not sure he had it all sorted and supposed we would have further discussions about it.  "Lots of people believe in God and evolution."  I was pleading I think.  Not really ready for him to leave all the magic behind.

He looked at me.  His mouth drawn in a tight line his eyes a little sad for his apparently stupid mom, "Mom, really, if God doesn't do evolution what is he doing up there?"  and with that it was clear, my son has decided that he has no need for that particular hypothesis (God).

So maybe the creationist are right.  Not about the reality of how the amazing diversity of life came to be here.  About that they are defiantly definitively wrong.  What they are right about is the threat that an understanding of evolution can be to faith.  If your faith is stitched loosely to the mundane, to the animal caporal being that is us, understanding evolution could tear those threads.  However, those who's faith reaches much deeper into the sublime, creative ethereal parts of our nature need not rankle at the idea of evolution. 

When Kermit Croaked

Dealing With Death in an Atheistic Home

 

 Every school day starts out the same way in our house.  I go into my son's room, turn on the lights and count the toads, one, two, three.  I don't know about other people's firebelly toads, but ours, Skin'O, King Edward, and Kermit should all be named Houdini.  So every morning, if it is going to be a good morning I count, one, two, three toads.

 

Last year I walked into my son's room.  I flipped on the lights and I counted one, two....one, two. Oh no one, bloody two.  I looked around my son's room.  Legos and blocks as far as the eye could see.  Upturned trains and...when exactly did he wear all those cloths?  His room was a big mess!  Some nights he can't sleep so he gets up and, I guess he would say he builds but I say he destroys his room. 

 

I woke him up carefully so he popped right up and shouted, "What's wrong!"

 

"Nothing, it just looks like Kermit escaped last night.  Watch where you step and go make yourself cereal so I can find Kermit."

 

"Oh no mom he is the baby!  King Edward gets out all the time but she is fine (don't ask).  She knows what she is doing.  Oh Kermit"  my son sobbed.

 

"I'll find him, Go get your breakfast."

 

The morning was a mad blend of helping my son get ready, cleaning his room and hunting for the wayward toad.  By the time I got him safely on the buss he was on emotional thin ice and I was frazzled.  Luckily that was a work at home day so I devoted the entire morning and much of the afternoon to toad search and rescue although by noon it was clear I was looking for a body.  I found it, poor thing and wrapped it in a plastic bag.

I picked my son up from afterschool.  He was waiting at the front door and I could see from his face that the school day was a total loss.  The first thing he said when he saw me was what we all know he was going to say, "Did you find Kermit?"

"I found him,"  I said as I guided him out the door.  His face fell because he knew from my voice it was not good.  He was able to hold it together until he got into the car.  "I'm sorry baby."  He was inconsolable and my heart broke.

We got in the house and he said very calm and firm, "I want to see the body."

"OK."  I took him upstairs and got the plastic bag from the back porch.

"You put him in a grocery bag Mom."  It was an accusation not a question.

"Just to keep him until we can bury him"  I carefully unwrapped the bag and let him see the little dead toad.  He began sobbing again.  It was terrible to see him in such distress.  We had lost pets before and though it had always been sad he always seemed to take it in his stride.  Kermit's death was overwhelming him.

"He was just a baby.  He didn't know any better.  He never go to do anything.  (Never mind Kermit was doomed to a life of sitting in his cage eating worms and crickets.  Doing anything was never on his life path)."  My son stared at the little body sobbing his eyes out.  He was in full on messy cry with soaking wet cheeks and snot gleaming down his chin.

I folded up the bag.  Set the toad aside and hugged my son.  Then I began reaching for straws.  "It is ok honey.  Kermit will be reborn and get a new life."

My son pushed off me, stopped sobbing and looked me dead in the eyes, "Are you saying he will come back to life as something else?"

"No not exactly.  Some people think the soul will be reborn into another body and..."

My ten year old stared me into silence.  He raised one eyebrow and gave me that assessing look that will one day make his employees quake with fear.  "Mommy Kermit is dead."  He dissolved into tears again.

It was heart braking so I reached for the only other straw I could think of, "He is in a better place now...."

"Mom please,"  he cut me off with no small amount of disgust in his voice, "are you talking about Heaven?"

"Well I.."

"Kermit is dead!" 

Out of straws I did the only thing I could do.  I held my son and let him sob.  I used my shirt to wipe tears and snot from his face so his sensitive skin would not be hurt.  Eventually the flood was over.  I was able to change my shirt and we eased into an evening of quiet punctuated with bouts of sobbing.  He could not bear to go into his room because there was one too few toads in the cage.  Over and over in the quiet moments I wondered if somehow raising him without a belief in the after life had somehow robbed him of an essential tool for dealing with grief.

After supper my father and my son went out to burry Kermit.  I don't know why but that is the way we do things in our house.  My mom and I prepare the lost pet's body and at twilight my father and son go out to burry them.  It is tradition and like all good traditions I don't know where it came from.  It just feels right to us.

When they came back in my son was changed. His step was lighter and for the first time that day he was smiling.  "Are you ok?"  I asked.

"Of course."  He gave me the stop asking questions mom look.  I ignored it.

"Feeling better about Kermit?"  Yep I poke at wounds.  I can't help it.  It is a compulsion to find out how healed they are. 

"His atoms are back in the Earth now."

"And that makes it feel better?"

"It's the circle of life mom.  Can we get another toad?"

"No I think two is plenty."

We went on with our night and our life.  I realized that my little guy had really good tools for dealing with grief.  He could be sad and sob.  He was not afraid to feel the pain and when it was done he could let it go.  It was the permanence of matter that filled him with a since of oneness and completeness.  He had devised a simple and elegant comprehension of what it is to live and die.

Several months later and another typical morning.  One...one...oh bloody no just one.  That morning went just the way the other morning did, messy room and all.  That time I spent all day cleaning the room and I never found the missing toad.  I was in a panic.  What would happen without a body to burry.  Could his grades handle another day of lost homework?  I hopped in the car and speed off to the pet store. 

We now have a new toad cage that the little buggers can't get out of and one of our toads is an imposter. 

I am Raising a Child Not an Atheist

          What is the difference between raising a child and indoctrinating one?  I ask myself that question all the time, thank you Richard Dawkins. 

Last month my 11 year old son and I were boarding a flight home.  As we stepped into the cabin, the stewardess gasped and blurted out, "Oh my he is yours!" 
         
I smiled and said, "Thank you."  My son giggled.  We are used to this because my little boy is my mini me.  He looks like me, moves like me and thinks like me.  By think like me I do not mean that he believes all the same things I do.  I mean his is neurologically weird in the same weird way that I am.  He is so much like me I would not have to flex a muscle to indoctrinate him.  So why don't I do just that?
         
When I first held him and looked into those black baby eyes, I saw that his personality was there as fully formed as the perfect little nails and the end of his long baby fingers.  I realized that every thing I thought about parenting was wrong.  He was not a blank slate.  It was not my job to mold this little creature into some idea of the perfect person.  It was my job to get that little body and that little personality to adulthood with as little damage as possible.  Parenting suddenly got a lot harder.
         
The world is full of dangers, sharp knives can be locked up but sharp tongues are much harder to sequester.  There are many personality brushing experiences that all children must face, disappointment, loss, shame and so many other things that make up the gantlet run that is growing up. Just like it is possible to overprotect a child's body it is also possible to overprotect their personality.  However, there is a line. In the same way that I would never give my growing son a cigarette because it will harm his body, I will not indoctrinate him because it will harm his personality.
         
"Wait, wait!  are you saying that indoctrination is as bad as letting children smoke?"  you may be thinking.  Yes it is.  Children are not growing up in the same world we did.  No child ever grows up in their parent's world.  Time and culture move on and it should move on.  When they are grown our children will have to face problems we can't even imagine.  Indoctrinating them ties them to the chains of our believes and limits their ability to grow.  How can they fully develop their own unique personality if we hobble them with things they MUST think.  Indoctrination is violent in that it does not leave room for inquiry and dissention.

Kids are natural mimics.  It is hard wired into the neurology.  It is one of the ways we apes learn.  This can make it hard to know where learning ends and indoctrination begins.  For example, my son's new found contempt for Christianity, is it something he has come to on his own or has he learned it by mimicking me?  Sorry Christians but when you start in with  "god hates gays", insisteing the world is only 6,000 years old, or start whining that there is a war on Christmas's I can't help rolling my eyes.  So how to sort it out?

Inquiry and permission to decent are my tools of choice.  First I acknowledge that I agree with him but assert that he is free to not agree with me.  We have been doing this for years so this step elicits the eye roll and the exasperated "I know mom" that only a pre teen can deliver.  Then on to inquiry a proses he actually likes.  I start out asking him what he knows.  This is not the inquiry I am talking about.  This just gives me a base line and an opportunity to clear up any facts he may have misapprehended.  He hates this but luckily he very really misapprehends things these days.  You know we are in this phase if you hear me saying, "well actually..."  I only correct hard facts, dates, points of history, miss quotes and adding missing context.  This is not about changing his mind.  It is about broadening his base so that the real inquiry can begin.  We love a full on "why is the sky blue"  session.  This is where we follow his questions and his inquiry. 

In the case of Christianity he had observed the Christian fixation on the bible.  He first noticed them in the dollar store.  Then he noticed the book is everywhere.   We are a reading house.  We all have kindles and we share a house account so our kindles are FULL of books.  There is a kitchen cabinet devoted to cookbooks and they are all ratty and dirty for heavy use.  We love books.  Lots of books.  All kinds of books.  The Christian obsession with just one book seemed so stupid to him that he began to pay attention.  From there he heard about the debate with Bill Nye and the Christian denial of evolution.  He decided they must be trying to be stupid.  If there is one thing my son finds contemptible it is willful stupid.  So we talked about the bible.  He learned about how it was written and the basics about what is in it.  We went through and I summarized what was in the books.  He was NOT impressed.

We tried to watch some the creationist videos on YouTube because I knew I could not present even a vaguely unbiased  opinion so I let Ken Ham do the talking.  My 11 year old was sputtering over the bad logic. Sorry Christianity but truly you bring it on yourself.

I like history and religious history is a big part of it.  We have learned about the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans, the Norse, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam and his favorite so far the Zoroastrians.    He has found much in all of these religions and has incorporated many of their myths and traditions into his own pantheistic belief system.  Yes my son has his own belief system that includes many Gods and spiritual beings because I am raising a child not an atheist.