Having a week off to sit back and not really think sure prompts one to do some serious thinking. It is interesting how some thoughts simply spring upon you, seemingly out of nowhere. In this case, I was driving down I75 towards Georgia when I began to think about the belief in God. I recalled a conversation with an atheist who believed that babies are born agnostic and that they only come to believe in God when they are taught to. My first reaction at the time was to reply with the obvious – to agree with him, but to point out how irrelevant it was to the truth-value of God. As I thought back on this conversation, something else occurred to me; perhaps his assumption wasn’t accurate after all.
As I again pondered this atheist’s proposition, it reminded me of a conversation I had with my son not too long ago. We were talking about different animals and as he so often does, he asked a lot of “why” questions. Why does this do that? Why does that do this? Why is this the color green? In one such occasion, I responded with a common response from the religious minded – because god made them that way. I have no doubt that atheists and agnostics will recognize such a response as the proverbial “god of the gaps” mentality. Though I do not see it that way, there is no need for me to refute the accusation as I am not interested in that aspect of the debate.
What I am interested in is my son’s response. In fact, his response was quite matter of fact. He simply said, “Oh!” Of course, that may not sound like much, but as I thought back on both the exchange with the atheist and with my son, it hit me how important that response was. The reason for the significance was that my son is not one to simply accept such a statement. Any other time I referenced such a concept, it inevitably followed that my son would reply with a bevy of questions about the concept. In this case, there wasn’t even one. It was simply, “Oh!” And since then, he now regularly uses the statement as well.
Why was this concept of God different to my son than the many other instances where he had to know more? Perhaps children aren’t born agnostic, but already have a built-in anticipation to know the God of this world better. Perhaps it is only by being taught by society to believe otherwise, that children come to deny the creator. For all of the work it takes to teach a child to read, write, and behave a certain way, the easiest thing to teach my son thus far has been the concept of God. Of course, looking at how perfectly designed the world is, it only makes sense that such a concept would be so easy to accept.
