Tonight I had to break the news to my son that I don't necessarily believe in God (actually I don't know if there is a God or not, I'm what you might call an undecided voter). My son is currently 6 years old, he attends scripture at school and believes what people tell him without question. He believes in God and those things associated with it. He hasn't started the process of breaking down his belief structure and deciding if he still believes. I was not much older than he is now when I began that process but it probably wasn't until I was nearly a teenager that I properly began to question religion so I'm not expecting him to change his mind any time soon, if at all.
It was really hard telling Bubba that I didn't believe what he believes. I found myself wanting to tell him to believe what I believe but I know, perhaps by having gone through the process, that simply telling someone what to believe doesn't make them believe it, they have to come to it on their own.
I don't want my son to be one of those people who judges people by what they believe. I want him to be open minded and accepting of the differences between people. I want him to be proud of his beliefs but not to think that they are the only beliefs or that the beliefs of other people are worth less than his. I want him to be able to say, "We can agree to disagree."
I have been Christian and Athiest and Agnostic. I know the struggle of finding a place I feel comfortable to rest my beliefs. I have read extensively on most major religions and their subsets. I cannot, in true conscience, say I fully understand how people can believe in any of the diety-based religions or the nature religions. It doesn't mean that I object to them believing in them. Each to their own, as they say.
If my son decides that he will remain Christian, after careful consideration of all the options, then so be it. It is faith without that questioning that I object to. The blind faith of the uneducated and the zealots. It is with those people I will argue, not because I think they will change their opinion but because it winds them up. I am their devil because I can site scripture and yet have no faith.
I have had heated arguements, especially in my middle teenage years, with many a scripture teacher over the finer points of the bible. If I had to lable myself I would have to say I'm an evolutionist. This belief has usually been the source of many of my arguments. I remember taking a book on evolution in to a scripture teacher because he believed in the literal reading of the bible, that God made all the animals and plants, and that the world was created in 6 days. It blew my mind that an educated adult could completely disregard all scientific evidence to the contrary.
These days, I am a little more accepting, if not understanding. I still think people should believe what I do but I accept that no everyone will. In fact, most people don't believe what I believe. Most of the world believe in some sort of religion. Maybe you could say I believe in the religion of science.
Some people think that if you believe in science and not some diety-driven religion that you lack spirituality. I say that being spiritual and being religious are not the same thing. I've known some very religious people who don't appear to have a spiritual bone in their body. Alternatively, I've known some very spiritual people who won't have a bar of religion.
The thing I like about science is that is has the ability to change its mind. If a theory is proven wrong, it is proven wrong. Science is often critical of itself and challenges itself. What religion does that? I also like that science says, "I don't know but I'd like to find out." Science doesn't claim to have all the answers. Science sets out to answer those mysteries that are as yet unexplained, it doesn't lay the blame or the praise for the mystery on something even more mysterious.
The thing I like best is that science doesn't even say it knows how the world began. It has a theory but it's just that, a theory, it might be wrong. I like the idea of the Big Bang Theory but really, it's a bit like believing in God and I'll tell you why: my first question to a scripture teacher was, "if God made everything, who made God?" I have the same question about the Big Bang Theory: where did the stuff which created the Big Bang come from? The only solice I have that science is where my heart lies is in the answers I got to each question. From my scripture teacher, on being confronted by this question from a 7 year old, I got, "He just is." From science, being constantly confronted by this question, I get, "No-one knows."
I want my son to have the same curiosity that I have. I want him to question things and not accept things blindly. I want him to be open to all the possibilities and not closed minded. Most of all, I want him to know that no matter what his choice of belief, I will always love him ... unless it's scientology.
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