I recently spoke to a class of 7 year olds about Atheism and Humanism. It was in an Educate Together school in Tralee, County Kerry. I found the prospect quite intimidating. I was worried because the audience were 7, not because of any problems with explaining my philosophical stance. I may be a strident Atheist, but if a child asks me about Santa Claus, then I’m playing the believer without pause or doubt. Of course I wanted questions, but the Santa question scared me.
I was sharing a platform with a Biblical Christian and a Moslem. It was to be an explanation of points of view and not a free for all of competitive proselytizing. I was glad of that, converting people to atheism is not something I would ever do. I of course believe the World would be a better place if magical thinking was consigned to the history books, but atheism does not provide the warm fuzzy feelings that many people require and can only achieve through religion.
Richard Dawkins is a hero of mine. I do however disagree with him about spreading the word, as it were. Mr Dawkins has a much higher regard for humanity than I and indeed many other atheists have. His zeal is an expression of his devotion to the betterment of his species. Most atheists would settle for a world where simply our beliefs are not outraged. Mr Dawkins wants to show people that our species could create a paradise, if we would but accept reason.
I think many people confuse Mr Dawkins‘ personal contentment and his enthusiasm for the rest of us, as smugness. I suppose so many of us have come to mistrust those who display any degree of certainty that we instinctively think Mr Dawkins must be on the make. It is horrible how cynical we have become, a cynicism that Mr Dawkins seems to have avoided.
None of that entered the class room thankfully. Difficult enough to explain an unfeeling and consequence free universe to children, without bringing orthodox and non orthodox atheism into the discussion. My concern was primarily how to pitch such an idea to an age group this young.
So I cheated, I made sure I was last to speak. This way I could glean some idea of who I was speaking to. One of my brighter ideas I must admit, though the fact that these 17 children were bright and well behaved and interested and open minded made the job of the speakers much easier than we had a right to expect.
My plan was to break my plan up into three parts. First define atheism and humanism, second, play a game of Chinese Whispers and finally talk about kindness, the Golden Rule and the Great Apes.
The first part went OK, but I did slip in an unworthy joke equating God with Harry Potter. In retrospect that was uncalled for, a hackneyed jibe more appropriate for the pub or a tweet. I explained that atheism describes an absence of belief in magical creatures and events. Humanism then is a philosophy of ethics based on reason and logic and science. They appeared to broadly understand these ideas.
The Chinese Whispers portion of the talk was a disaster. Seven year olds are literalists. So the concept of just passing information on as best as possible is foreign to them. It is the correct information or none at all. The game was quickly abandoned and never referred to again. I still think however that it is a good game to play when seeking to demonstrate the probable accuracy of any information passed down from the distant pass. I didn’t however panic, I did vomit in my mouth a little, but still appeared almost as if in control of the situation.
The third and most wordy portion of the talk was a tad under-prepared. I tried to sound bite too many things instead of picking one particular point and knocking it completely out. I didn’t trust the children enough, unfortunately I should have and would have delivered a more coherent and concise speech.
I began with a brief description of the Golden Rule, i.e. ‘treat others as you would have them treat you,’ a maxim as old as civilisation and explained that this was how I tried to live my life. I then explained that kindness is built into evolution and that our species could not survive without it. I then spoke about studies using the Great Apes that proved kindness and fair play are part of what define our closely related species’.
Then the questions began. The two most important were what happens when we die and do I believe in any kind of spirituality (the internal kind not the ghost kind). I was quite abrupt about death. I said we cease to exist, except possibly in the minds and hearts of our loved ones. Glib I know, but with a grain of linguistic truth.
As for spirituality I said that I did believe our species to be unique, we are unique in that we alone can tell the future. We alone know we are undoubtedly going to die (I said ultimate fate instead of die, they are children after all). It is how we deal with this unavoidable futility that I choose to call spirituality. We can embrace despair or choose to live full, kind and useful lives. This is my spirituality. There the talk ended.
I didn’t make a fool of myself and I didn’t misrepresent atheism and I almost avoided denigrating the magic thinkers. So not too shabby. I really hope I get the opportunity to speak on this subject again.
