I don’t need no Education.
Last weekend, Mr. A and I were driving home from visiting my parents when M piped up from the backseat:
“Mama, I believe in GOD. I do NOT believe in EDUCATION!”
You should have seen Mr. A’s face. I think I have mentioned before the value Mr. A places on education. I think it comes before food in his list of priorities for the girls. I actually thought his head was going to spin right off his head.
“WHAT!?!?!” he practically shrieked.
Due to the confrontational tone M was using, I suspected she was trying to say something different. I suspected she was trying to show me that she didn’t have to believe what I believe.
“M, do you mean EVOLUTION?” I asked.
“Yes! I believe in GOD. I do NOT believe in EVOLUTION.” M confirmed.
“Who says you can’t believe in BOTH?” we asked, “Some people believe in both God and evolution.”
Concrete-thinking little five year old that she is, M was unconvinced that anyone could believe in both. After a little probing into whether or not this declaration was coming from my newly-interested-in-Christianity mother, it turns out that M was making her own deductions based on a previous conversation *I* had with her.
(Once several months ago M had said that she believed God made the world and I said “Some people think that, other people believe in the Big Bang and evolution.” I had left out all the relevant details and the fact that some people believe in both. I thought it was too complicated. Now I realized it is better to give her too much information, rather than letting her make her own conclusions.)
“Daddy, do YOU believe in both God and evolution?” M asked.
“Yes, I believe in BOTH.” Mr. A confirmed.
“Nana only believes in GOD.” M stated.
“Did you ASK her?” I asked, “Because Nana is a woman of science. I don’t think Nana has ever said she does not believe in evolution.”
“OK, I will ask her.” M said.
So last night, after our really hideous political conversation, I gave my mom the heads up that this question would be coming from M. Thank effing SOMEONE, my mom confirmed that she does indeed believe in evolution and would be happy to share that fact with M.
I also checked out a book on evolution from the library. Conveniently, it has a little blurb that says “IT’s TRUE!!” on the cover.
M looked at the “It’s True!” and said, “OH! Evolution MUST be true! The book says so!”
It looks like we need to have another conversation about being critical readers.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Something screwy is going on with my blog. I don’t know why it wasn’t allowing comments, but I fixed it now. I thought I had somehow really offended people!
September 8th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
How can one believe in both?
September 8th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
I believe in both! Just to weigh in.
I love this conversation–it reminds me of many such conversations that I’ve had with my boys.
On the critical reading front, Luke and I have had great fun trying to guess what various commercials are trying to get us to buy. He doesn’t see commercials all that often, but during the Olympics, I think he liked playing the commercial game more than he liked watching the sports. And he is remarkably good at figuring out marketing strategies.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:27 am
I am just giggling at the round-and-round-we-go process of parenthood you’ve captured here; just get one thing sort of sorted, and then bam, something else to deal with! It doesn’t stop, it’s only bound to get more complicated as they grow up, and yet . . . well, how crazy is it that I am dearly looking forward to that?
Nan Patience, people call it different things but the term I’ve most commonly heard used to refer to the joint belief in God and evolution is “Old Earth Creationists” — that is, they believe in the process of evolution, believe that the earth is billions of years old, etc. but also believe that what happened over the course of those years wasn’t random, that God ordained, set in motion and oversaw the whole evolutionary process. As in pretty much every other aspect of every faith/religion, here are some pretty wide variations in the degree to which people hold to this belief!
September 9th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Oh! Thanks for the explanation.
September 9th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
b/c the boy loves all things church, the girl is a self-proclaimed god-hater, dad is a non-practicing buddhist and I like my liberal church but I would never breath the fact that I think evolution and creationism is bunk (I like the music, fellowship and volunteering outlet it provides)…. anyway… the boy LOVes his bible and he used to believe EVERYTHING in it. I tried to explain that the bible is a story, a lot of it is interesting, you can even learn a lot from it but not everyone believes all of it. I gave him examples from our own family, talked about the buddhist gods, had him read a book on creationism, another book on darwinism (which he thought was amazing b/c we garden a lot) and my husband gave him his view “you born, you live, you die then you become dirt like our compost pile”. So the boy is now into creationism which is totally compatible with our church b/c the majority are doctors, scientists and professors.
Its funny how at this age the religion question comes up. We have a lot of 5-6 year kids at our house from all sorts of families and they actually talk about this stuff together.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
He he! IF the book says it, IT MUST BE TRUE!
Don’t worry. 5 year olds are very litteral.
I recently read a NYTimes article about a teacher in Florida dealing with this with his high school students. He used Mickey Mouse (from 1930s on) to describe evolution, yet points out that evolution and G-d are not mutually exclusive.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:03 am
My liberal parents had a 5 year old Alex P. Keaton. Thankfully he’s now a 13 year old Obama supporter. Hopefully this stuff with M is just a phase too, but it’s humorous to read about!
September 14th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
This made me smile.