Teaching Children About Religion

There's something I want to get off my chest. When I made the decision 40 years ago to not bring my children up in a religion, I should have compensated for this decision by educating them about the subject of religion. I did not do that. We never talked about it. As a consequence, my kids grew up knowing nothing about religion, which I'm sure created some confused and uncomfortable moments when their classmates would ask them: "What religion are you?" I should have prepared them for such questions.

The Mormons

I have long held a particular respect for Mormonism -- not the doctrine, which I knew little about, but things like their emphasis on family and traditional values. I admire the success and wholesomeness of many of their members. Even the prohibition against drinking wins my grudging respect.

But when you get down to the nitty-gritty of their beliefs, I'm aghast. In the October 17 issue of Newsweek (Cover article:"The Mormons"), a member of one of the church's highest governing bodies, proclaims that, "He (Joseph Smith) stands alone as a source of doctrine." Really now!

Smith, the founder of Mormonism, is the source of the most outrageous, fantastical claims you can imagine -- which I'm sure he himself believed unequivocally. Remarking once on his massive debt and dozens of lawsuits, he told his followers: "I never told you I was perfect, but there is no error in the revelations which I have taught." Humble? (At least he admitted he wasn't perfect). Arrogant? Misguided? Crazy? Take your pick.

And why is there "no error in the revelations"? Because he said so! No other reason.

No one argues that Smith was not charismatic, persuasive and determined. That he was. He was also crazy by any reasonable standard. He says Jesus and God appeared to him in 1820 (in a "pillar of light over my head") and told him not to join a church because all churches had "fallen away from Christ's true Gospel." Three years later an angel visited him at home ("an ancient prophet from the Americas") setting him off on a search for buried gold plates and telling him to bring forth a new scripture containing (get this!) "an account of Jesus during a post-resurrection visit to America as well as a history of an ancient Israelite people there."

Either Joseph Smith was right about everything he said -- or he was deeply troubled mentally. I'll put my money on the latter. Schitzophenia? Big ego issues? Control issues? I haven't a clue, but I suspect a combination. I just know that millions of Mormons swallow it whole without ever questioning its veracity. And among the believers are well-educated, successful and otherwise intelligent people, a fact I find astonishing about every religion. How can they believe this stuff? I ask myself. But alas, they do, as we well know.

I say "otherwise intelligent" because they're obviously not intelligent in this one area. To blindly believe -- without benefit of evidence -- the most bizaare fairy tales imaginable is NOT to me a sign of intelligence. It's strange that "religion" is the only arena of life in which masses of people docilely accept the claims of others without evidence. In every other area of life, they want evidence, proof. But not with religion.

Really now, can you think of anything more absurd that the idea that God would choose to reveal the Truth of the Universe by means of not one, but several, ancient texts (which incidently also condone slavery, stoning sinners, etc.)? I know, I know . . . yours (not theirs) is the right one . . .

All religions are illogical, yet share in common a certainty that they are right. (And by implication that "you are wrong" -- even if it's not PC to come right out and say it).

Most people see it as a good thing that 64% of Americans are "people of faith." A long-standing and unchallenged assumption in our society says that "religious faith" is a source for good. It's generally accepted that belief in God is a positive thing, and that not believing in God is a is a negative (i.e. bad) thing.

Most people believe that faith and morality are connected. (The evidence says they're not. I would argue that religious people on the whole are less moral, but that's another subject).

I say that these "assumptions" about religion are not correct. Like John Lennon, I can't help but "imagine" that a world without religion would be a better world, but I'm not hopeful.

I've been accused of having a passion about "religion" -- an anti-passion some call it -- and it's true. I suppose it stems in part from having been bamboozled by well-meaning people for 16 years of Catholic school. It's rooted, too, in my conviction that blind faith and certainty about something we cannot possibly know anything about can never a good thing.

But what turns me on most about the subject of religion is 1) It addresses (or shall I say, 'attempts" to address) the most basic questions in the Universe: "Is there a God? What is His nature? What does He want from us? And what happens to me and my family when we die?" And 2) IT SAYS IT KNOWS THE ANSWERS TO EACH OF THESE QUESTIONS! An amazing fact in itself.

Can you think of any questions that's more important than these? Or more unanswerable? I can't.

The arrogance of them to claim to have the answser is my first reaction. That gives way to am amazement over the power of religion. No scholar, scientiest or philosopher in her right mind would claim to "know" answers to these questions, yet each each religion says it "knows". And because it's "religion" and not mathematics or history . . . NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO QUESTION IT!

What is it with religion and me?

People have asked me, "What is it with religion and you". While I have some idea of why religion stirs up so much passion in me, but let me say first what it is not about. It's not about shocking people.

It makes me sound defensive, I know, but I am NOT out to shock people with my writings about God and religion. I realize that I might, but that's not my motivation. In fact, I would far prefer if what I have to say did not shock, but rather was seen as so obvious that people would say, "So why are you writing about that? Isn't it obvious?"

Anyway, some of the people in my life who love me have occasionally said that I "like to shock". Hence my defensiveness about it. Again, it's not about "shocking people" and I've thought a lot about it. Yet, I am willing to shock if I have to.

In truth, I'm highly ambivalent about the idea of criticizing -- let alone "shaking up" -- someone's Religious Faith." Yet I realize that I might, and that makes me squirm. Here we are dealing with the most important question in the Universe. Who am I to disturb the comfortableness of those who do not see it as a "question" but rather see their Faith as "the answer." Do I even have that right?

Fortunately for all of us, we have free speech in this country, so I guess I do "have the right." You of course have the right not to read it. (If the Church was in charge politically, as they were in the 16th century, they'd still be burning heretics and, of course, controlling what we read. Don't believe me? Then you'd better educate yourself. The Church changed only because they were forced to, not because they saw any reason to).

My decision to let go of Catholicism 40 years ago was an epiphany for me. It changed everything. I went from believing it was all true, to believing it was all bullshit, almost overnight.
One factor: I was angry at having been bullshitted all these years (just because some bishops in the 12th century decided that Mary was a virgin did not make it so).

Another: I could not imagine the idea of a God who gave us inquiring minds -- and then TOLD US WE HAD TO BELIEVE STUFF THAT MADE NO SENSE. Not even God can MAKE YOU believe something! True, you can pretend to believe, but would God want that? (An insecure God who wants to be "worhshipped" might!)

The idea that we "had to believe" (in the Transubstatiation for example) and if we didn't we'd be damned was not only illogical and ridiculous. It was mean-spirited!

Do we want an Evangelical Christian on the Supreme Court?

I read this morning that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is a born-again Christian. As an agnostic who has thought long and hard about it, I just don't get it!

I do not understand how a smart person can accept the "born-again" idea. If any Christian belief is a fairy tale, the born-again one, coupled with the idea of accepting Christ as the "savior" described in the Bible, surely is.

I want judges who are Philosphers, not People of Faith. I want them to be skeptical, to ask questions, to never accept something just because a sacred book, or belief system, or preacher, or even a warm feeling inside, says it's true.

To me, belief in Evangelical Christianity is no less extreme than Islam's belief in martydom. True, it's far more benign, and that's a good thing, but it's no less fantastical. Like Islam, its outrageous claim that it "knows the truth" is never challenged. Like Islam, it's believed with certainty. Both religions "know" for certain that God is on their side, and what happens to us after death.

Why is "religious belief" so radically different from other types of "belief" when it comes certainty? In every other area of life -- business, science, academics, personal relationships -- what we "believe" is a function of our experience, knowledge, asking hard questions, application of logic, what our senses tell us, etc. Only in the area of "religion" are we expected to accept as true a set of beliefs for which there's not a scintilla of evidence.

The fact that a believer finds it "comforting" or a "source of solace" counts for nothing in terms of whether it's the truth or not. The only real TRUTH about the nature of God and the Universe, and our relationship as humans to each of them, is this: WE DO NOT KNOW! It would be nice if we did, but we don't. This is not deny to "spirituality" -- which I believe is real -- but rather to question the assumption that any religion has a corner on the truth.

It must feel very peaceful, perhaps even smugly pleasant, to possess the certainty that Evangelical Christianity (and Islam) confers. I'm just not sure it's a quality I want to see in a Supreme Court justice.