Saturday, January 26, 2008

God etc

I haven't read Mimi Smartypants in a while and was doing some catchup today and came across an entry which struck a chord with me:

Nora: Dead people live on in us, right?
Me [taken by surprise]: Oh, you mean because we remember them? Right.
Nora: But dead people don't really live, like inside you. Like a tapeworm.* That would be crazy!
Me: It sure would!
Nora: Some people believe in God, though.
Me: Yup.
Nora: And they say that the dead people go live with God.
Me: Uh-huh. That's what some people say.
Nora: Is that true?
Me: Well, no one knows for sure. People believe different things.
Nora: Do you think it's true?
Me [mental sigh]: No, I don't. It doesn't make sense to me, so I don't believe it. I think dead is dead, and then the alive people do the remembering.
[pause]
Me: But you can learn about both---the God idea and the no-God idea---and then someday you can make up your own mind. [to myself: Yeah sure, after I just SHIT ALL OVER THE GOD IDEA GOOD ONE SMARTYPANTS]
Nora: I don't think God is real. But I will think about it more when I am five.
Me: Good plan.

Because I wonder- what will I do when I have kids? I think it's important to know about religion because it's a major part of how the world works/how people think but when it comes down to it, I think organised religion is bullshit. (Which is not to say that I don't believe in God/gods/high powers etc, that is a different matter.) But is this something I should let my kids decide for themselves? I guess when in doubt I can take a leaf out of my parents' book on child rearing because whatever they did, they clearly did it right.

*We are very interested in tapeworms around here. I keep emphasizing how rare tapeworm infestation is in this country, as a kind of veiled plea for CAN WE STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS PLEASE, but Nora still brings up tapeworms a lot. I sort of explained (simplistically) how a tapeworm eats the host's food before it can be properly digested, thus resulting in severe illness and malnutrition. However, it is clear from the way that Nora giggles throughout my dire pronouncements that she thinks of a tapeworm as a sort of lovable prankster, a little friend who snatches that last cupcake before you get a chance to eat it.

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