CHAPTER 1


Personal Reflections

Introduction

The first and most important task of Parenting Beyond Belief is to let secular families know they are not alone—that millions of other families are wrestling with the same challenges and asking the same questions. This chapter includes personal reflections by freethinking parents and children, as well as adults recalling when they were children, all grappling with familiar issues and offering hard-won advice to parents raising kids without religion.

A second task—as noted in the Preface—is to raise high the big tent of disbelief. Just as there is no one “right way” to raise children, there are many different ways to be a nonbeliever. This chapter is framed in a perfect pair of bookends to illustrate the range of approaches to secular parenting. If Penn Jillette is a bull in a china shop, Julia Sweeney is the one running around catching plates and saying Oh, jeez. Their approaches are different, but the wattage of wisdom and insight in these two essays could light up the Vegas strip. Norm Allen continues with tales of growing up in a Baptist home where his mother nonetheless encouraged her children to think hard and well—even questioning the existence of God.

Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins shares a heartfelt letter to his 10-year-old daughter Juliet about his own intellectual values. And just as readers of a certain perspective might be unnerved by the presence of ministers in these pages, so may some others find Dawkins’ approach disrespectful to religious belief. There is a good reason for this: He does not respect religious belief. Not one bit.

This raises an important question, one that makes for excellent dinner table conversation. Is it okay to disrespect someone’s beliefs? Notice that the subject is beliefs, not believers—we can presumably agree that people themselves deserve respect. But can we allow disrespect—not just disagreement, but disrespect—for opinions?

If the word “respect” is to retain any meaning whatsoever, then respect must not be granted to all opinions automatically. I might disagree with an opinion but still respect it, if I feel it was arrived at by legitimate means. I have several Libertarian friends, for example, who think all taxes are coercive and should be eliminated. I, on the other hand, think reasonable taxes are an excellent means to accomplishing good collective ends. Though I disagree strongly with my friends, I respect their opinion, since they back it up with reasoned arguments.

I also have some friends who believe their actions are dictated by the constellations. When asked their reasons for this belief, they offer anecdotes, selective observations, and special pleading. I love and respect these friends personally, but it would be silly to say I respect their beliefs in astrology, since I do not respect the reasoning behind them. I don’t often browbeat these friends about it, since their beliefs do not greatly impact the world, but I with-hold my respect for those beliefs.

Because he thinks religion does greatly and negatively impact the world, Richard Dawkins’ disrespect for religion leads him to passionate and strident denunciation of what he sees as a real and present danger. After the attacks of September 11, he wrote, “My last vestige of ‘hands off religion’ respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of September 11, 2001, followed by the ‘National Day of Prayer.’”¹ While it is perfectly acceptable for readers to disagree with such an opinion or with the way it is expressed, this impassioned and well-informed voice should no more be excluded from the conversation than those thoughtful religious nontheists at the other end of our big tent.

Secular kids themselves are well represented by Emily Rosa, who describes an upbringing that kept her “itching for the truth” and a fourth-grade science experiment that briefly catapulted her into the national spotlight. She also offers some serious advice to secular parents to relax, play, laugh, lighten up—so as not to raise a grim generation of obsessive debunkers.

Like Emily Rosa, Anne Nicol Gaylor grew up in a freethought home. Anne describes her family’s interactions with religious neighbors and friends in “I’d Rather Play Outside.” We also hear the great twentieth-century philosopher and peace advocate Bertrand Russell describe his upbringing, which—despite his deceased father’s explicit instructions to the contrary—took place under Christian guardianship. The effort to instill religion in the boy failed to take, producing instead one of the most articulate and persuasive voices of disbelief in modern times. And Dan Barker rounds out the chapter with a fascinating dual perspective: First, as an evangelical minister, Dan raised four children in a Christian home, then he lost his faith, divorced, remarried, and is now raising a daughter in a home actively devoted to freethought.

Readers may reasonably wonder why these personal essays—indeed most of essays in the book—refer almost exclusively to Christianity when speaking of “religion.” This reflects only the cultural context of the authors and of the expected readership for this book. Since most of the readers and writers will have grown up in a Christian-influenced culture, it is natural that discussions of religion are most often framed in terms of that local manifestation of religious belief. There is also a tendency to address Catholicism more often than other denominations. This stems from two facts: that Catholicism is the oldest and most visibly dogmatic of the Christian denominations and that more nonbelievers, interestingly, were formerly Catholics than anything else. Again, the context with which a writer has the most experience will naturally figure more prominently in his or her work.

Though each of these stories is unique, common threads run throughout these essays, including courage, honesty, and optimism. There are many good ways to raise children, with or without religion. These examples are not models to follow but invitations to find your own way—and assurances that you will.

Navigating Around the
Dinner Table

Julia Sweeney

I LOVED BEING CATHOLIC. Well, most of the time. I mean, I didn’t like it when people didn’t answer my questions or take my sporadic natural skepticism seriously. But other than that, I felt lucky. I mean, being Catholic was cool to me. I felt sorry for the people I met who weren’t. Which were hardly any people. Because everyone I knew was Catholic. And they belonged. Not just to parishes and schools, but to this great big club called Catholic. And there were rituals we all knew and outfits we wore—school uniforms. And the priests wore all black except when they were saying a Mass, when they wore a cape! I mean, come on, it rocked. Plus there were all the other medieval-like things associated with being Catholic. You knelt in obedience and submission, but to me this was not humiliating—it was like you lived in a castle! And incense was strewn through the Church on occasion, and that too seemed mystical and otherworldly. And then there was the fact that everybody I knew knew everybody else and where they went to school and where their parents went to school. It was a close-knit, safe feeling.

But then I grew up, opened my eyes, and realized I didn’t think there was any supernatural reason for doing all these things. I didn’t think there was any good evidence for a God at all, let alone one who cared who showed up at church. And I moved away from Spokane to Los Angeles, a place where Catholicism didn’t knit the community in the way that I had experienced. Even when I did go to a Catholic Church in L.A., my mind has this pesky habit of actually listening to the words being said at Mass. I would inevitably leave angry, or bemused and distant like an anthropologist, but certainly not connected. Eventually I stopped going and just got used to describing myself as an atheist. Then I got proud of saying I was an atheist. And during this time, I adopted a little girl from China.

It didn’t dawn on me right away that I wasn’t raising her with any religion. I mean religion to me meant those old ritualistic ceremonies that we went to when we visited my home town. And it was still a little fun to go—I mean, my dad or my brother would hold my daughter and she wriggled like the other 2- and 3-year-olds. But then a couple of things happened that changed everything.

The first thing was that my dad died.

Wow. Just saying that shows you I had changed. I didn’t say he “passed away,” because he didn’t pass away. He died. My daughter was 4½ at the time and very close to my father. He was the guy she made Father’s Day cards for on Father’s Day, the man who she liked to have hold her. My dad used to take naps next to my daughter on the bed and I remember seeing them in there—my father with his oxygen machine and my daughter curled up next to him—and it was all so dreamy and loving and cute. And so, it was a big deal when he died. And my daughter had questions.

When she asked “What happens after we die?” I said, “To be honest, darling—we decompose.” And she wanted to know what that meant. A bird had died in our backyard and so we watched how it disappeared a little bit every day. When I tell this story to people, they look at me horrified. Like I was forcing some horrifying truth onto a little kid too small to understand it. But actually, she got it just fine, possibly because I didn’t only say that. I said two more things. “When you die, your body decomposes,” I said. “It breaks down into all these teeny parts you can’t even see—like dirt or air even. And then those particles become part of something else.” And my daughter said, “Like what?” And I said, “Well, like a flower or air or grass or dirt or even another person.” And she said, “Well, I want to be another person!” And I said, “Yes, I understand. But even if some of your molecules became part of another person, it wouldn’t be you. Because You are You and when You are gone, there will never ever be another You in this world. You are so special and unique that this world will only ever make one of You. With You they broke the mold, so that’s it! Only You. Right here, right now.”

And she seemed to kind of get that. In fact, it made her feel special.

And then I told her a second thing: that her grandfather did live on after he died, inside of the people who were remembering him. And in the ways he influenced those people, even when they weren’t thinking of him. Like, how Grandpa just loved orange sherbet. Now, because of that, we eat orange sherbet too and we remember him when we do it. Or even things that we might not think about him while we do, like when we watch some basketball on TV. We might do that because of Grandpa who loved to watch basketball on TV. Because of him, we are different. In probably thousands or even millions of ways. And that difference is what makes him live after he dies.

And she really got that.

Only one problem: Her friends at school were asking her if her grandfather was up in heaven. And she was thrown, because to say “no” sounded bad and to say “yes” wasn’t what I had told her. One day we were walking home from the park with one of her friends, and the friend said, “Did you see your grandfather’s spirit fly up to heaven when he died?” And my daughter looked at me and said, “Did it?” And I said, “No, we don’t believe in things like that.” And my daughter parroted me, “Yeah, we don’t believe in that.” And for a second she looked confident repeating me, and then her face crinkled up and she frowned and directed her eyes downward.

Suddenly I was seized with compassion for my little girl and how she will be navigating herself in a world where she will be a little bit different. I didn’t have this burden. I was told what everyone else was told. Grandpas died and went to heaven. You would see them later when you died. Vague memories arose of my own childhood images of heaven, of a long dining table with a gold tablecloth and a feast. It was easier for me, in that way, than it will be for her.

But while I was having all these thoughts, my daughter and her friend had nonchalantly moved on to talking about their American Girl dolls. No biggy. But that moment, I think, is when all of the “what we believe” discussions began. And it made me uncomfortable. My daughter would often start conversations with me by saying, “So, we believe that …” And frankly I hated the whole word “believe” and I also hated that she was just taking what I said as absolute truth, because in the perfect world of my head, she wouldn’t be indoctrinated with anything. She would come up with her own answers, and she would never say things like, “We believe” or “We don’t believe.” But then I got more seasoned as a mother and realized that basically that’s what we do all the time as parents, no matter what we “believe.” Our job is to socialize our kids, and they have evolved to look to us for answers. Not providing those answers is wrong.

I got a little more comfortable saying things about what we “believe.” Like, we believe it is good to take the garbage out. Honestly, it seems silly now that I write it. But that’s how I got comfortable with that word. We believe in treating people nicely. We believe you shouldn’t tell people lies. We believe that you should do your homework. That kind of believe.

Finally, I would say things like, “Lots of people believe that after someone dies, they live on. But I think that is just their way of not feeling as sad as they might about whoever they loved who died. I think that when people die, they die. And we should feel really sad and also feel happy that the flower of that person ever got to live at all.” And even though many of my friends thought this was too big of a concept for a 4- or 5-year-old, after explaining it several times, I do think she got it.

That didn’t mean, of course, that other people, like my mother, weren’t also telling her what they believed about my dad’s death. When we visited my mother, she and my daughter would make cookies and I would hear my mother going on and on about how Grandpa was in heaven and we were going to see him again and he was there with Mike, my brother who passed away. And later, when my daughter asked about this discrepancy, I just said, “We believe different things.” And amazingly, Mulan got that just fine—even though it sort of made me mad. Because what story is going to seem better? The one where someone decomposes, or the one where he’s at a big dinner table in the sky with other people who died? Decomposition does not stand a chance against the dinner table. But for me and Mulan, those discrepancies or different stories didn’t become as traumatic as I thought they would.

A few months after this, Mulan started kindergarten at our local public school. And as part of her day at school, she said the “Pledge of Allegiance.” She proudly repeated it to me, and the “under God” part made me flinch. “You don’t have to say ‘under God’ you know,” I said—and her eyes widened with fear. “What do you mean?” I said, “You can just keep your mouth closed during that part. I don’t believe in God. These people in the government allowed that to get stuck in there much later. I wouldn’t say it if I were you.”

A few days later she came home and said, “I have to say it. Because it’s nice, it’s being nice to say it. You have to be nice and so you say it.” I don’t think I have ever heard a more heartbreaking sentence from my child. I am probably more sensitive to this, for many more reasons than religion. I have tried to stop doing things automatically because they are “nice” for years and years because I find myself drowning in doing a million things for people because it’s “nice.” On the other hand, it’s expedient to pressure children to conform. It makes sense. It encourages community and all the behaviors that we are trying to instill in them. I understood her dilemma.

Fortunately a friend of mine suggested a solution. “How about telling her to say, ‘under laws’ instead of ‘under God?”’ Brilliant! I told my daughter the idea. She looked at me like I was from Mars. It was her first, truly, “I’ve-got-an-insane-mother” look. But now when she comes home from school, as the year has worn on, she’ll tell me. Today I said, “under God.” Another day she will report that she said, “under laws.” And I figure she will find her own rhythm.

Recently I was in Spokane with Mulan on Memorial Day. The whole family was making their way up to Holy Cross Cemetery, where many members of our family are buried. Even though this is a Catholic cemetery, and icons litter the lawns, I love it there. I am all for burial in a plot with your family. I find it extremely comforting. I have picnicked there on days when it wasn’t Memorial Day. In fact, everyone in our family does this. It’s a destination for us. And I love it.

Well, we were heading towards the cemetery and my daughter was in an ornery, crappy, poopy mood. She didn’t want to go. My mother, who was driving, made the mistake of saying, “God wants us to go.” She was mostly trying to be funny. But my daughter yelled out, “I don’t believe in God! I only believe in things that you have evidence for and there is NO EVIDENCE FOR GOD!” The way she said it was petulant and snotty. I was so angry with her. But in that instant, even though I had to reprimand her for her “tone” and demeanor and even though she started a tantrumy cry and begged for a cheese stick and began kicking her legs and I wanted to throttle her for it—in spite of all of this, I knew instantly that ultimately she would be okay. She had spirit and gumption and she could say something that was unpopular (at least in that car at that moment.) And more than not believing in God, that seemed like the best influence I could ever have on her.

Thinking My Way to Adulthood

Norm R. Allen, Jr.

CHILDREN ARE NATURALLY curious about religion, and I was no different. I was reared by Baptist parents in a place and time where theism was the norm. People who went to church were held in high regard by the community, while those who did not were frowned upon. Such is still the case throughout much of the world.

But I had an advantage over many children of religious parents: In our home there were no taboos. We were encouraged to always ask questions and to demand logical answers to those questions. If the answers to the questions seemed illogical, we were taught to be skeptical.

The issue of religion was no different. We were allowed—even encouraged—to question the supposed existence of God.

One day I asked my mother how we could be sure that we were worshipping the One True God. She said that we could never be sure and that we could only continue to ask questions and try to grow in knowledge and wisdom. I then asked her what would happen if I decided to change religions one day. She said that that would be fine and that she would still love me. Then I asked her what would happen if I decided not to believe in God at all. She said that as long as I came by my decision honestly, that would be fine, too.

What profound gifts my mother gave me in those simple assurances: an invitation to think for myself, coupled with the promise of unconditional love.

And the gifts kept coming. My parents never tried to choose my heroes and heroines for me. I would pick them myself, and regardless of whether my parents approved, they would buy me literature so that I could learn more about them. They trusted me to learn about them on my own.

Despite growing up in a Baptist home, I was obviously raised differently from children in fundamentalist families. Fundamentalists are taught to value those who agree with them more highly than those who differ from them, which leads to bigotry. Moreover, they value unquestioning obedience to God more highly than openness to new ideas. They value what they believe to be revealed Truth over the difficult search for many truths.

I was also fortunate in the particular Baptist Sunday school I attended during my teen years. My Sunday school teacher was like a philosophy of religion teacher, posing difficult questions and allowing us to do the same. We were even permitted to question the existence of God. All religionists are not closed-minded, just as all freethinkers are not open-minded on all issues. What is of the utmost importance is exposing children to critical thinking as opposed to mindless indoctrination.

Most children are not as fortunate in their early encounters with the church. Most are essentially brainwashed into religion almost as soon as they begin to speak. Many of them are taught to believe everything they learn about God. Questioning the existence of God is deemed not only inappropriate but downright sinful, even blasphemous. By the time many children reach adolescence, the religious conditioning is complete, and in many cases, irreversible.

Parents who decide to send their children to church at an early age should find a church that values critical thinking. It might be a Unitarian Universalist congregation. In rare cases it might even be a Catholic church—the Jesuits have been renowned for their willingness to explore ideas.

Parents should also be aware of the teachings of any house of worship their children might attend. Some churches are homophobic and sexist. Some are opposed to interracial marriages. Some teach that only members of their religion will make it to heaven and that everyone else will go to Hell. Parents must understand that no religious text is perfect and that religious teachings can cause their children—and society—immeasurable harm.

Just as it is important to sharpen the critical thinking skills of children, it is also important that they not be victimized by inhumane teachings. Even though I grew up in a relatively relaxed environment, I was constantly fearful of going to Hell. This is a tremendous—and totally unnecessary—psychological burden for children to have to bear. I strongly feel this is tantamount to child abuse, and no loving parent should encourage his or her children to embrace such an unconscionable belief.

People who have the courage to doubt the existence of God are also likely to engage in critical thinking in other areas of life. I was a child of the 1960s. There were competing schools of thought on many issues. Among Black intellectuals, some were advocates of integration and passive resistance. Others were advocating self-defense, violent revolution, and separatism. There were highly intelligent people on both sides of the debate. It was not simply a matter of trying to determine which side had the smartest people, but of trying to decide which side was closest to the truth. This is when I began to greatly sharpen my critical thinking skills.

As I grew older, I learned that much of the teaching of history is politically motivated. Furthermore, the roles of Blacks, women, and other groups were routinely ignored or downplayed. I discovered that what you learn outside the classroom is often more important than what you learn inside it. If we do not have the chief hand in our own education, we are apt to fail miserably in life. This is one of the most important lessons in critical thinking that we must impart to children.

Throughout much of my life I have enjoyed solitude and have not depended upon peer support for my beliefs and ideals. But such is not the case with most children. They need reinforcement and support. It is extremely difficult for them to be alone in their beliefs. When most of the children around them belong to a religion other than theirs, they are likely to feel alienated. They are likely to ask their parents why their beliefs differ from those of the majority.

In these cases, it is best to try to give children the opportunity to be around other children who share their beliefs. This does not mean that they should embrace a form of tribalism. It simply means that they probably need a sense of shared community. With the growth of the Internet, it has become easier than ever to find like-minded people and groups for the good of one’s children, so this valuable source should not go neglected.

There will certainly be painful experiences in the lives of all children. These experiences will provide great opportunities for the development of critical thinking skills. The most painful experience of my childhood occurred when my dog died. My mother told me that our beloved pet was in Heaven. That was somewhat comforting, but it did not agree with what I had learned in church. Our Sunday school teachers always taught us that only human beings could make it to Heaven or Hell. Though I could not put it into words at the time, I understood that Heaven was a concept rooted in wishful thinking and the desire for immortality. This was a major step on my personal journey toward freethought.

It is only natural for parents to want to protect their children from ugly truths. But children are stronger than many adults believe. Rather than shield them with popular and deeply cherished illusions, parents should help their children to answer the difficult questions they will invariably have.

Critical thinking could make children more willing to stand up for their rights and the rights of others. Indeed, some of the most important movements in history began because people questioned authority. Abolitionists asked why slavery had to be considered as part of the natural order. The leaders of the civil rights movement asked why segregation had to be the order of the day. (Incidentally, many children participated in that movement.) Women and gays demanded their rights, as did many other groups. Where there is no critical thinking, there is no progress. If the children are our future, then critical thinking must be their guide.

Finally, positive thinking should accompany critical thinking. Critical thinking should be used to increase our level of happiness. Most of us would prefer that our children be happy critical thinkers rather than ingenious nihilists. Teach them to be positive and to enjoy life. Then when they become adults, let them lead the way.

Growing Up Godless:
How I Survived Amateur
Secular Parenting

Emily Rosa

IN 1987, I WAS BORN a seven-pound godless heathen, content with enjoying and exploring the world around me. My mother was delighted with my natural state.

Mom determined that, as much as possible, I would grow up without the intrusion of religion—or atheism. She, and later my stepfather, believed that when I reached a certain level of maturity and experience, I could decide such matters for myself.

Mom set out early to teach me the things she values: honesty, fairness, freedom, the fun of exploration and looking for evidence, and the notion that hard work pays off.

Things progressed well through my wee toddler years when Mom had control over things. She allowed me the time and the opportunity for exhaustive study of my environment. So when I became determined to break into neighbors’ cars with an old key, she followed after me down the street as I tried the locks to my heart’s content. Once she stood by as I asked every shopper in the grocery store whether they had a penis or vagina.

The first intrusions of religion came in preschool. My mother won’t lie, so when the Santa Claus myth came up, she told me right off that he was makebelieve, and that she could be his helper (wink, wink) if I wanted. One year I really wanted to enjoy the fantasy, so I ordered my mom, “Don’t tell me about Santa being make-believe.” I still knew the score and didn’t have the let-down that my friends did later.

The truly hardest time was learning about death. I had seen the animated movie Land Before Time, in which the beloved mother dinosaur dies, though her spirit occasionally appears to give advice to her son. The thought of losing my own mom was devastating, and I even started to contemplate my own death. Teachers at preschool noticed my depression. They kindly advised my mom to comfort me with hope of an afterlife. She couldn’t honestly do that, yet felt at a loss for how to comfort me, except to be with me as much as possible during that difficult time. Since then, death has probably been more on my mind than it has with most kids, and it may account for my abiding interest in forensic sciences and my appreciation for how precious life is.

When my first science fair loomed in the fourth grade, I chose to do a boring color separation experiment with M&Ms but lost interest when I realized I couldn’t eat the candy. My attention wandered to a videotape showing nurses claiming to heal people by waving their hands over them. These nurses were practicing “Therapeutic Touch” (TT), which they explained was an ancient religious practice called “laying on of hands,” but with a lot of extra Eastern mystical ideas. Among these was the idea that a “human energy field,” or HEF, exists around every person, and that TT practitioners touch and manipulate it with their hands. The HEF felt spongy, they said, like warm Jello, and even “tactile as taffy.”

Given these religious aspects, some adults might not have questioned TT any further. But with my upbringing, I was itching for the truth. Could those nurses really feel something invisible with their hands?

I asked mom if I could test TT for the science fair, and she replied, “Sure, if you can figure out a way to test it.” With a little thought, I had my testable hypothesis: If these nurses can feel a real HEF, then they should be able to feel it when they aren’t looking.

The cardboard display boards used at the fair gave me the idea of how I could shield the nurses’ vision. The nurses would put their hands through holes in the cardboard; I randomly put my hand near one of theirs and asked them which of their hands felt my HEF.

I tested some very nice TT practitioners who couldn’t detect the presence of an HEF any better than guessing (with 48 percent correct answers). Everyone who entered the science fair got a blue ribbon, but I also got my answer.

My experiment was repeated for the TV program, Scientific American Frontiers, and the combined results (only 44 percent right) were statistically significant and published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association). It became a sort of Emperor’s New Clothes event that the media jumped on. James Randi gave me his “Skeptic of the Year Award,” and Skeptic magazine, recognizing the potential of kid experimenters, launched Jr. Skeptic. I also had a great time at the Ig Nobel Awards³ as a presenter that year.

TT practitioners came up with silly explanations for why they didn’t pass my test—the air conditioning blew away my HEF, for example—and continue the practice religiously. But to date, none has ever refuted my experiment with another one.

My hometown didn’t take much note of my experiment, so I could go back to being a regular kid. Kids mostly just want to play with their friends, and religion isn’t that big a deal—though it is, unfortunately, to parents. I could ask a friend, “Do you think God really exists?” and only get a shrug in return. But I soon learned that if I asked that within a parent’s earshot, I could be banished from their home, and even be labeled a weirdo. I can remember some neighborhood boys throwing rocks at me and calling me “satanic.” (I asked mom why they called me “Titanic.”)

Circumstances made me learn ways to appear an acceptable playmate. If asked what church I attended, I would answer truthfully, “Well, my mom and stepdad don’t go to church, and my dad and stepmom are Catholic. I haven’t decided yet.” This put me in the damned-yet-savable category. While that made me a target for conversion, I thought it an acceptable trade-off for having someone to play with.

Having parents who take on creationism or the Pledge of Allegiance also put a strain on my social life. Though my folks would ask my approval before acting, I couldn’t always predict what I was in for. Some kids reflected their parents’ attitudes and shunned me. Fortunately for me, I had a few really good friends who would still sit with me at lunchtime.

My parents put their foot down when it came to “youth group.” I’d been invited by friends to attend this gathering of teens for Christian rock, food, and Bible lessons. My parents relented when they learned it was also a place for me to meet atheist teenagers who had been sent there by their parents to be brought back into the fold.

Atheist philosophy was easier to sort out than the value of being an atheist. I found many atheists—well, unpleasant. While I have met some remarkable atheists who are actively involved in making the world more civilized, I am frequently disappointed by atheists who gather only to indulge in rude jokes and angry religion-bashing. Give me the company of happy-go-lucky religionists any day.

My best advice to secular parents is to try not to raise grim, cynical, god-obsessed atheist children. Along with the usual secular values (such as appropriate tolerance/intolerance, morality, critical thinking, appreciation for reason and science), don’t forget to impart social graces, playfulness, and humor. Those go far in our short existences.

And as for my parents’ naïve plan to keep me from religion until I became an adult—frankly, it didn’t work. I suggest instead that children be given lots of information about all sorts of religious concepts. Satisfy their natural curiosity. Trust them to sort out the real from the unreal.

I’d Rather Play Outside

Anne Nicol Gaylor

I GREW UP IN A freethought home, so it was very easy for me not to indoctrinate our children in anything approaching a religion. My own family’s attitude toward religion was “laissez-faire,” and it was natural for me to carry on. Religion was something other people did. I think a large number of people attend church for purely social reasons, and if families find their society elsewhere, the raison d’etre for churchgoing just doesn’t exist.

When our children were little, a neighbor who was into Christianity once asked to take our oldest child to Sunday School. It was a Congregationalist church, not a nightmare-inducing sect, so I readily agreed.

When they returned, I asked the neighbor how Andy had liked it. A bit ruefully, with a smile, he replied, “He said he’d rather play outside.”

My husband’s family was religious, and when they visited in Madison or when our children visited them, we were very careful to allow the children, without comment, to accompany their grandparents to church. A couple of times I dropped the children off at a church service or function. Their reaction was somewhat like our own: Other things seemed more useful and interesting.

Until recently, public schools in Wisconsin, for the most part, were neutral in matters of religion, so freethinking children did not have the problems in school that so many report today. Wisconsin had a State Supreme Court decision in 1890 against bible reading in the public schools, the result of a suit brought by Catholic parents in Edgerton. The legal precedent this decision set served several generations of Wisconsin students very well.

When religion is introduced in the classroom, students who are different from the majority are singled out for criticism or ostracism. They are made to feel like outsiders in their own school.

Whether a family is freethought or of a religious bent, it serves us all well to protect Thomas Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and state. Introducing religion into the public schools tears down that wall; it builds walls between children.

To keep church and state forever separate is a goal worth fighting for; it was crucial to the founding and perpetuation of our government. Maintaining that wall is essential for the happiness and well-being of public schoolchildren who may hold minority views.

---

First appeared in Lead Us Not Into Penn Station,© 1983 by Anne Nicol Gaylor. Used with permission of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

---

My Father’s House

Dan Barker

When I was a child I thought of childish things:
Eternal life in paradise with angel wings,
A father up in heaven who would hover over me,
And tell me what to think, tell me what to be;
But now that I have grown,
It’s time to use my own good mind.

I’m outa here! Let me outa here!
I found my own place—
I’ve left my father’s house behind.

A normal Dad is really glad to realize
His little child has now become, before his eyes,
An independent person who can stand on steady feet,
An equal human being with character complete.
But God is not that way—
He orders me to stay his child.

For God so loved the world he gave his only son—
A sacrifice to pay the price for everyone—
And if you believe that this deserves a Fatherhood Award,
You can move in with the guy, and he will be your Lord.
But listen to this song:
Forever is a long, long time!

lyrics from My Father’s House © 2004 by Dan Barker

My mother-in-law, Anne Gaylor (founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation), claims that you can’t raise children. Children raise themselves. We parents are simply facilitators. If we are the natural parents, we bequeath some of our genetics, for better or worse. We give them a home, an environment in which to feel safe and grow, access to education, resources, healthcare, love, and friendship. Then we let nature take its course. It’s not as though, if we failed to do some critical task, the kids would never grow up, never find a way through life. Anne’s four children grew up just fine; I married one of them.

I’m not an expert on child raising. I don’t think anyone really is. My only claim to credibility is that I do have five children. Having children of your own does make you a kind of expert, though that is probably because much of our learning comes through our mistakes. Kids should not be forced into a straitjacket of parental expectations. I think parents who obsess about how to raise their children may actually do more harm than good. This is the children’s world too, and they are finding their way just like we did. Thinking back on how I was raised, I am surprised to remember that I never once thought of myself as “the son of my parents.” Yes, of course, I had a Mom and a Dad, and they were great parents, good examples, and I was proud of them and love them dearly, but I never considered it was my “purpose” in life to be an extension of their lives. I never saw myself as “little Norman Barker,” put on this earth to make him look good. What child has ever thought that way? (The dedication to my book Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist is “To Norman Barker, my only father.” If we do need a father figure, it may as well be a real person. My dad is someone who has truly earned my respect.)

I think most freethinking parents have similar feelings. We don’t want to force our kids into any mold, unless reason and kindness are molds—well, no, reason and kindness are open-ended, not constricting. What we truly want is the satisfaction of seeing our children become mature, self-reliant human beings, at any age, thinking for themselves, free and happy. Parents who want anything else are obsessed with control and not free and happy themselves.

My first four children were the product of a Christian marriage, from the time when I was a minister. They are all great human beings—generous, thoughtful, caring. The three girls are now raising children of their own and doing a wonderful job. My son is still single, a chef and a guitar player. Even though we took them to church as children and tried to instill “Christian” values, they ended up thinking for themselves. In this case, the religion didn’t seem to do too much damage. My Christian wife and I divorced, mainly for religious reasons,⁴ and this clearly had an impact on the four kids, as all divorces do. However, I think we were lucky. My former wife and I decided that we would never place the children in a position where they were forced to choose between parents. My love and support for the kids has always been unconditional, and they know it. I repeatedly told them that they are free to think their own thoughts. They don’t have to agree with me. They don’t have to be atheists or agnostics in order to earn my respect. Consequently, at least two of them now have views that I would call “freethinking,” and the other two, although perhaps nominally religious, are quite liberal and open in their beliefs, which also counts as “freethinking” where the rubber meets the road in their daily lives. I don’t think any of them goes to church, not regularly, although one was attending a Unitarian fellowship for a while. To my former wife’s credit—she later remarried a Baptist minister and remains a conservative believer—her love for the kids has not been tempered by the fact that we all don’t agree.

I married Annie Laurie Gaylor in 1987. She is a third-generation freethinker and editor of Freethought Today. She and I are now co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Our daughter Sabrina, a fourth-generation freethinker, is currently in high school. She has been raised with a complete lack of religion. She went to a friend’s bat-mitzvah some years ago, but beyond that has never been to a church or worship service other than the occasional Unitarian fellowship where Annie Laurie or I have spoken or performed. Most Unitarians are freethinkers, and our “service” was nonreligious.

When Sabrina was little, she had a vivid imagination, like most children. (She still does!) We all had a lot of fun pretending, playing games with imaginary creatures and friends. That is a healthy part of learning and growing. Rather than tell Sabrina that the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus were lies, we told her that we were pretending they were real, just like characters in a book or cartoon. She never had to go through the process of unlearning Santa or the Easter Bunny. We figured that this would allow her to have the fun of childhood imagination, not deprived of anything that her friends might have, yet not having to deal with the thought that her parents had deceived her. She “got it” from the very beginning.

When Sabrina was about 3 or 4, I reminded her that we were just pretending and wanted to confirm that she truly grasped the concept of imagination. I guess I was a little worried that she might think we were expecting her to actually believe the stories, but she didn’t. She was quite clear and sensible. “I know it’s just pretend, Dad. But it’s fun.”

So I asked her, “How do you know the difference between what is pretend and what is real?”

“It’s easy,” she said immediately. “Things that are pretend can do things that you can’t do.”

Wow. She pretty much summed up naturalistic philosophy in those few words. “Things that you can’t do” was her way of saying “things that can’t be done.” We never explicitly taught her this world view. We had not been taking her to “Atheist Sunday School” in order to indoctrinate her as a materialist. We were not making her memorize “agnostic scriptures” or sing “naturalistic hymns.” She was simply a normal child in an environment that allows for individual thinking, and left on her own was quite capable of making natural distinctions. Imagination is an amazing thing. It can be a fount of creativity, or, if taken seriously, a source of immense confusion. Just think what the world would be like if the Apostle Paul or Muhammad or Joseph Smith had been cautioned not to take his imagination literally.

Of course, over the years, Sabrina has heard Annie Laurie and me talking about freethought and state/church separation. She has come to some of the meetings of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and listened to many of the speeches. So perhaps this amounts to a kind of “freethought education,” though it is all voluntary.

I should be careful when I say that Sabrina is being raised as a “fourthgeneration freethinker.” That is technically not correct. She is a freethinker, and we are a freethinking family, but a person’s identity is not tied to his or her family. Sabrina knows that she is free to choose otherwise. She knows that she has the liberty to become a Buddhist, Catholic, Mormon, or Pentecostal. She also knows that if she made such a decision, we would be disappointed and that we would be equally free to argue with her about it. However, we all agree that her choices are not mandated by her parents’ disappointment. In any event, there seems to be little danger that someone like Sabrina, having grown up in a freethinking environment, would be attracted to dogmatism.

In his book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins denounces those who identify children by the religion of their parents. There is no such thing as a Christian child or a Muslim child or an atheist child, he insists. We should call them children from a Christian or Muslim or atheist family. To call someone a “Catholic child” is to claim that the views of parents can be forced into the minds of children. Children might indeed grow up to adopt the views of their parents, as so often happens with religious indoctrination—and we have to wonder how truly “free” such a choice is—but the children, as children, are not free to responsibly choose their own lifetime religious identity.

Steven Pinker’s great book The Blank Slate shows that we come prepackaged with a basic “human nature” that is not as malleable as many religious, political, and philosophical systems imagine. We are who we are, biological organisms in a natural environment, and we get into deep trouble if we try to deny it.

I think the greatest problem with religious systems such as Christianity is their pessimistic view of human nature. If you teach a generation of children that they are sinful creatures by nature, that left on their own they are morally corrupt, deserving of eternal torment in Hell, that they are not to be trusted to think their own (selfish, evil) thoughts, all of this can become—has become—a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whole segments of the population grow up with a negative self-image, thinking they really are rotten, in need of a savior or father figure. They are told they are “bad,” so they act like it. Their religion exaggerates and demonizes normal human feelings, turning them into cosmic struggles with evil, creating devils to be fought instead of problems to be solved.

At the 2005 World Religions Conference, I was asked to represent atheism, sitting on the stage with a Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Sikh, Hindu, and Native American spiritualist. (I accepted the invitation only after making it clear that atheism is not a religion, and they agreed to include it as a “world philosophy.”) The theme of the conference was “salvation,” and each of us was asked to summarize our respective positions on that topic. After pointing out that “sin” is a religious concept, hence “salvation” is merely a religious solution to a religious problem—would we respect a doctor who ran around cutting people with a knife in order to sell them a bandage?—I ended with these words: “If salvation is the cure, then atheism is the prevention.” Many in the audience laughed at that comment, some who should not have been laughing. They got the point: Much of religious education is an endeavor to solve a nonproblem. It is a confusing waste of time.

It is better to tell children that they are okay the way they are. Most secular parents are optimistic about human nature. We do not make our children feel bad for being—well, children. We do our best to affirm the positive potential of our children, and of ourselves. Religious or not, the best parents are the ones who prepare their children for this world first.

Passing Down the Joy of Not
Collecting Stamps

Penn Jillette

SAINT IGNATIUS LOYOLA, the founder of the Jesuit Order, once said “give me the child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” Some web pages say that might really be a Francis Xavier quotation, others say it was “some Jesuit” who said it, and all the careful web pages credit it to “some guy.”

Little kids have to trust adults or they die. Trust has to be built in. So while you’re teaching them to eat, stay out of traffic, and not drink too much of what’s underneath the sink, you can abuse that trust and burn in the evil idea that faith is good. It’ll often stick with them longer than not drinking bleach. It seems if someone snuck the idea of faith into you at an early age, you’re more likely to do it to your own kids.

If your childhood trust was not abused with faith or if somehow you kicked it in your travels down the road, your work is done. You don’t have to worry too much about your kids. You don’t ever have to teach Atheism. You don’t have to teach an absence of guilt for things they didn’t do. As Atheist parents, you just have one more reason to keep your kids away from priests. Tell your kids the truth as you see it and let the marketplace of ideas work as they grow up. I don’t know who said, “Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby,” maybe it was Francis Xavier, or more likely The Amazing James Randi, but some guy or gal said it, and it’s a more important idea than any Jesuit ever came up with. You have to work hard to get kids to believe nonsense. If you’re not desperately selling lies, the work is a lot easier.

My kids are really young, they’re still babies, they can’t even talk yet, but what the hell, we’re still a little bit careful what we say. When someone sneezes we say, “That’s funny,” because it is. We don’t have any friends who are into any kind of faith-based hooey, so our kids will just think that “damn it” follows “god” like “Hubbard” (or something) follows “mother.” That’s cool. That’s easy.

I know this is unfashionable in the Atheist community, but truth just needs to be stated, it doesn’t have to be hyped. (This is the point where you check again who wrote this chapter. Remember what Bob Dobbs said, “I don’t practice what I preach because I’m not the kind of person I’m preaching to.”)

There is no god, and that’s the simple truth. If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing was passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it out again. Without hype, Lot’s salt-heap ho would never be thought of again. Without science, the Earth still goes around the sun and someday someone will find a way to prove that again. Science is so important because it’s a way to truth, but the truth doesn’t depend on it. Reality exists outside of humans, religion does not. The bad guys have to try to get the kids early to keep their jive alive. We good guys should try to get the truth out there, but the stakes just aren’t as high for us. Most anyone who is serious about science will lose some faith. Maybe not all their faith, but they’ll lose a hunk of it before getting that Nobel Prize. No matter how bad the polls on Americans look, the people that do science for a living aren’t being fooled. The polls on belief in evolution make the USA look bad, but maybe Turkey is the only Western country with worse pollsters than the USA, ever think of that?

Evolution is the truth. And with truth comes a lack of panic. I don’t lose sleep over creation myths being taught in public schools. Who trusts anything from government schools? “Better to be uneducated than educated by your government.” (That quotation is mine.) The bad guys always have to fight for their ideas to be taught. They must cheat. Government force, propaganda, and hype are the tools you desperately need when you’re wrong. Truth abides.

Dr. Richard Dawkins had a christian education, but he kicked that way before taking his seat in the Darwin BarcaLounger at Oxford. The bad guys got the Dawk until he was 7. So what? That race has been run, they fought the truth, and the truth won. I went to Sunday school and the reality of the creationist myth stayed as true for me as the certainty that the Greenfield High School football team was going to win the Turkey Day game because we had P…E…P…PEP! PEP! PEP! Jesus christ, doesn’t anyone but Paul Simon and me remember it was all crap we learned in high school anyway and all the kids always knew it?

Evolution was true before Darwin. Evolution was true in the sixteenth century when Loyola did or didn’t start that quotation. Evolution has been true as long as there has been life on earth, and it always will be true. If you pick your side carefully, you don’t have to fight as hard.

All this assumes you’re an out-of-the-closet Atheist parent. Truth doesn’t live in the closet. You have to make it clear to everyone including your kids that there is no god. If you’re not doing that every chance you get, then the other side will win. They’ll win only in the short term; we only get to live in the short term. You don’t have to fight, but you have to do your part, you have to tell the truth. You have to be honest. You don’t have to force schools to say there’s no god, but you have to say it. You have to say it all the time. No one can relax in a closet.

Those of us who are out of the closet Atheist parents have all that extra time on Sunday mornings to love our kids. We can use that time to hold them, laugh, and dance around together. Tell your kids there’s no god and be done with it. Jesus christ, your kids aren’t stupid.

Chapter One Endnotes

1. “Religion’s Misguided Missiles,” The Guardian, September 15, 2001.

2. John Paul II at this writing.

3. The Ig Nobel Awards are a parody of the Nobel Prize. Sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research, a humorous parody of a scientific journal, the Ig Nobels recognize weird, funny, or otherwise odd scientific (or pseudoscientific) “achievements.”

4. Editor’s note: See Dan’s book Losing Faith in Faith to learn more about his “deconversion.”

Additional Resources

Many books have included heartfelt personal reflections by those who have found their way out of religious faith and into naturalism. Many of these include stories of childhood and parenthood; all are fascinating reading. Most are intended for adult readers.

• Sweeney, Julia. My Beautiful Loss of Faith Story. Coming May 2008, Henry Holt & Co. Following on the heels of her stage show Letting Go of God, this is Julia’s memoir of her slow transition out of Catholicism into naturalism. Sure to be another thoughtful, hilarious, and moving description of struggles and joys we all experience as nonbelievers.

• Willson, Jane Wynne. Parenting Without God: Reflections of a Humanist Mother. Educational Heretics Press, 1998. A marvelous set of personal reflections and remembrances, intelligent and articulate in the inimitable British fashion, recalling Willson’s experience as a mother raising children without religion. A world of wisdom in a scant 76 pages.

• Barker, Dan. Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist. Freedom From Religion Foundation, 1992. In Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis described his transition from atheist to Christian. Losing Faith in Faith is a thoughtful counterpoint to Lewis’ classic, following Dan’s personal journey from missionary, touring evangelist, and Christian songwriter to atheist and freethought activist.

• Allen, Norm Jr., ed. African American Humanism: An Anthology. Prometheus, 1991. A powerful collection of essays by twenty-one African and African American humanists, including Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. DuBois, with biographical sketches. An important attempt to put to rest the myth that all African Americans are Christians.

• VIDEO: The God Who Wasn’t There. Beyond Belief Media, 2005. Former fundamentalist Brian Flemming takes viewers through his years in a strict Christian school where hell was promised to those who doubted. But he doubted anyway, first terrified and then intrigued by his growing realization that, though the wheel of religion keeps spinning, there’s no hamster.