So impressionable the young mind that great precautions should be undertaken to ensure that some fictions are allowed while some are allowed to take root. Making that distinction is a disjointed measure by me and certainly something I would take some advice on.
Monday night we had a booming thunderstorm. As Ruby and I were sitting in my bed reading some books I felt like Tom Cruise and Suri with all the flashing coming in our window.
"Dad, I hear some lightning."
"Actually Ruby you hear thunder, after the lightning."
So at this point I'm pondering if it's necessary to explain the logistics of lightning and sound waves and decide, she's four let's just leave it at that.
"Dad, did you know thunder is when God drops stuff on the ground?"
Humm, I puzzle this over for a moment and decide to bust this bubble of innocence.
"Ruby, that's not true, thunder is the sound that lightning makes."
"So what is lightning?" Damn, I thought this question was coming so let's see if I have any brain cells left from high school earth science.
"Lightning is when you have a buildup of positively charged areas of clouds and negatively charged areas of the clouds and all that energy has to go somewhere and WHAMMO, lightning." This feels somewhat right but she's four and it certainly sounds more plausible than God dropping something...to me. Bingo.
"Dad, do you know what makes a sunset?"
"What?"
"You mix the sun and a rainbow." Take that science.
At this point the imagination and thinking it took to come up with that is far more amazing that me trying to explain what it really is. This is what puzzles me. I am cool with her believing in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, soon to be Tooth Fairy, but when it comes to nature and God, I find it necessary to draw a distinction between scientific knowledge and religious knowledge. Funny thing is I really don't know why I want her to think the same way. I believe in God, we go to church on Sunday's, and generally try to pray and say thanks on a daily basis. Why then draw that particular line in the sand now?
Basically I think it comes down to my belief in the compatibility of science, spirituality, and religion. These are not mutually exclusive of each other, but there is a demarcation that is necessary for one to understand how the universe really works. It is a challenge to marry some religious beliefs with scientific knowledge but that doesn't mean if I believe one and not the other that everything is false about the other.
Maybe I do like to pick and choose. I have been told that makes me not a "good" whatever but that's fine with me. As the body of scientific knowledge grows and we continue to learn new things about how the world works, I want my daughters to be able to grow with it. I guess I'm afraid that it's easier to accept things because that's what God did or said, rather than to investigate ourselves and dig a little deeper.
In the words of Herbert Spencer, "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
Agreed.
2 comments:
I share a uniquely similar situation. I plan someday to fill my son in on these distinctions, but In the meantime, the innocence of a child's thought process is bliss.. Rainbows making sunsets sounds fine with me. I hope to hold off as long as I can, because for me, sometimes digging deeper has caused discontent, through many avenues. But with your logic, turntables, and a faint sense of soccer knowledge, your kids can't loose. :)
Sounds to me your on point.
Cheer man, nice post.
My first inclination was to point out that bending rays of light do account for color in both cases. But then I realized the more important thing is this: There are things we know with our intellects, and things we know with our hearts, our senses or our "sixth sense" (or call it intuition or soul-sense). None of these ways of knowing is better or righter than another. Together all these ways of knowing make our life experience much richer than it would be if we were completely intellectual and fact-based. I think it's beautiful that Ruby creatively reached inside herself and felt both examples of beauty connecting in her.
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