Origins of My Beliefs
Learning to Not Think
All my children want their children to be proficient readers, and they don’t agree upon the specifics of how best to do that. I’ve seen my children speaking to each other online to share ideas and experiences, and recently, they asked each other the question, “Do you remember learning to read?” The answers were illuminating for me, and I began to ask myself the same question.
What was my first experience with books?
My mommy read to me. She had a book of fables written in German (her native language) from when she was a child. Mom would read the German to herself and translate to English out loud for me, showing me the pictures. I remember one story in particular called Hans Guck-In-die-Luft (looks in the sky). Hans was always day-dreaming and looking at the sky until one day he walked off a cliff.
Given her Jewish background, she also read Bible Stories to me — Noah’s Ark, Adam & Eve, Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, and how Joshua massacred the innocent people of Jericho and took the women as concubines. Just kidding about that last one. It’s not a story for children, as if killing all the people on Earth except for Noah and his family wasn’t bad enough, but then those people were bad and so deserved death by their Father’s hand. (Kidding again.) Of course, I didn’t think of it exactly that way at the time.
I didn’t think of any of it very seriously; they were just stories. It was strange though how mommy read them as if they were real. I remember being a bit confused, but I was too young to ask questions. Why did God turn Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for looking at something he told her not to. Seems a little extreme, no? Must have been sad for Lot. Well, I guess she learned her lesson. So there.
Maybe it was me who was supposed to learn the lesson, but what was the lesson? Would daddy turn me into a pillar of salt if I disobey? Somehow, I didn’t think that was the lesson. But then what was I to make of it? Did it actually happen? I really didn’t know. I didn’t think of God as mean or evil or a murderer; it was just stuff He did.
It wasn’t until first grade that I realized that language could be represented by marks on paper. When mommy read to me, it never occurred to me that she was “reading” words. Maybe I was thinking that she was just reciting stories from the pictures. Maybe I wasn’t thinking at all. Then, in first grade, the teacher put up big poster boards with pictures of Dick and Jane and their dog Spot, and there were markings underneath the pictures. I marveled at how the other kids seemed to know what each of the pictures meant, so I tried to remember each picture description as I figured they did.
At some point, the teacher put up a picture I hadn’t seen before and asked me to “read” it. I didn’t know what she meant, so I started to cry. I was so embarrassed. How could the other kids know what the pictures said? What was wrong with me?
The teacher said it was okay and pointed to the markings under the pictures as she read each word. A light went on in my head. Oh, those markings were words. So now, I could just memorize the words, and soon thereafter, I began to see how the words were comprised of letters that each had their own sound. What a revelation! That’s how the other kids did it! I was so relieved.
Soon afterwards, my mom got books from the library. My favorite was Dr. Seuss. I would glance at the pictures while mommy read the words, and then I realized I could read the words. I didn’t need mommy to read them. Wow! I loved Dr. Seuss!
I was a slow reader. The trouble was that I had to sound out each word, and sometimes mommy would have to tell me what the word was. It was strange that lots of times the same combination of letters had different sounds. I said to myself, “English is not a phonetic language.” Yeah, sure; I actually said that to myself. Dream on. My name wasn’t Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes).
Eventually, I learned to memorize enough words that I didn’t have to ask mommy that much, and sometimes my sister Isabelle, three years older, would help, but she was busy with her own stuff. Until my mid-teens, I always thought she was way smarter then I was. Then I realized she just knew more.
I don’t remember when I was introduced to The Bible. I don’t think we had one in the house. When I heard about the book, I remembered the Bible Stories my mom used to read to me, and I wondered how those were related. I also don’t remember when I realized that The Bible was a foundational document for the Jewish and Christian religions, but I remember that I was confused as to how many books were in that one book, who wrote it, when it was written, and whether people believed it was historically accurate. I learned that there were several different translations of The Bible into English, and they didn’t all follow the Aramaic origins, but they were all perfect representations of God’s message to Earthlings.
Now I know that some people think The Bible is more than a bunch of fictional stories, many of which have moral implications, and perhaps it is more than that. Maybe the God of the Old Testament is there as a role model — a hero, a leader. After all, it claims people were created in His image, so maybe the character is meant to be a role model. But God is described as a genocidal maniac who feels free to murder his own children, sometimes just to win a bet, as in the case of Job. OK, maybe he wasn’t meant to be a role model, though people still idolize Him — literally.
The New Testament then softens God’s demeanor by recreating him as Jesus, a peace-loving man-God. I like Him much more — as a fictional character of course. In The Bible, one of God’s commandments is “thou shalt have no other gods before me,” so Jews really couldn’t devise another god; they had to make the “new” god part of the old one. I know; it’s confusing. Sorry.
Growing up, I was taught that atheists were bad people — heathens. If you didn’t believe in this heavenly dictator with magical powers, you had to be some sort of evil. Judge not? Screw that. You can judge atheists. Even as a Christian. That’s allowed.
I’m a non-theist. I’m also a non-UFOist and a non-philatelist. I don’t care how much a piece of paper with glue on the back is worth, even if I like some of the art work. I like science fiction, including the concepts of extra-terrestrials in UFOs, but I know they’re not real. But what if there are actual aliens who’ve visited Earth? I don’t care. The potential is so ridiculously remote, it’s a waste of my time to consider it. What if God is real, the lack of evidence be damned. I don’t care — for the same reason.
I’ve spent most of my life avoiding (and being concerned about) being regarded as a no-good heathen because I’m a non-theist/atheist. I’ve pretended that people’s belief in a god, whether the Hebrew version or Zeus or something else, was worthy of rational discussion. But belief, even mine, isn’t rational. I’ve allowed that a belief like Athena springing from the head of Zeus or someone’s god emanating from the womb of a virgin raped by an angel (or however that story goes) is acceptable as someone’s reality. The Greek version of gods we now call myths, but presumably wise folks like Aristotle gave them credence. Would Aristotle have condemned or demeaned me for atheism?
I don’t demean people for their god beliefs. We all have beliefs that run our lives, whatever their origin. Personally, I was indoctrinated with a God belief as a child, innocently, by good people who were similarly exposed to such beliefs and encouraged, even forced, to profess them as real. I don’t condemn those beliefs, only the people who foster them in order to control other people.
We’re all indoctrinated in one way or another as children and even as adults. We have reasons to believe, sometimes fiercely, in one thing or another, and we forget that beliefs are not necessarily rational. Sometimes they’re even dangerous.
Hero worship can be dangerous; it’s how cults begin. The heroes of The Bible are not Noah and Joshua and Moses; the protagonist — the hero — of that book is God, the one, the only, the entity that moves all, solves all for his own sake. It doesn’t have to be real. Humans are hero worshippers. Why should treatment of God be different?
My concern is that it makes people vulnerable to other heroes who claim god-like powers, who lie to us profusely and incessantly, and think the masses will believe their lies as they believe that Zeus throws lightning bolts or that there’s an invisible dictator in the sky with magical powers and can do no wrong, a god often described as merciful but kills people to meet His prime objective — being worshipped.
Such beliefs can be innocent, if not deep seated and simply accepted without much thought, but they can also make good folks vulnerable when faith, acceptance of concepts without evidence, is normalized — even applauded, and when those who question blind faith are condemned.
Unscrupulous candidates for high office in any country will target people who will believe their lies, as the good Christians in early-thirties Germany were duped by Hitler. These prey were not protected by their religion, but weakened by their beliefs and the resultant bigotry — deep seated, unquestioned, ignored, and festering, promoting faith in the liar, the manipulator, the great orator.
Is it any wonder people today are open to lies among their so-called leaders who guide them to fascism and authoritarianism? Hero worship is rampant. We’ve been trained to not think — head in the clouds.
I guess we can all learn a lesson from Hans.