Family Affairs

Professor Richard Dawkins, the prominent atheist is to write a book aimed at children in which he will warn them against believing in fairy tales as well as God.

I am sure that there are a lot of people who will be appalled by his approach – “what? No Harry Potter? No magical mystical stuff? Fairies? Elves? Wicked witches? Call that a childhood?” I’m not sure children need to be “warned” against such things but nevertheless, I am quite relieved. I have always been really crap at make believe and things that you can’t actually see and now I can pretend to my children that my lack of imagination was entirely intentional. Obviously, I blame my parents….or more specifically my father. My mother was great, she read me Roald Dahl books endlessly and would even sing sometimes. On the rare occasion my father was on bedtime duty, he would wave his cigarette around my bedroom, making pretty patterns in the dark and then leave me to inhale noxious fumes to sleep.

I wasn’t brought up believing in magic and my parents didn’t encourage me to believe that following my dream meant that I as a princess would one day marry a prince and live happily ever after. Which. Again. I am cross about because one of my classmates actually really really did marry a true life prince and had a truly fairy tale wedding, which was splashed across the front of Hello Magazine and then produced two gorgeous heirs to the throne and then lived….oh, no, she didn’t, she got divorced a couple of years ago – but she has since married a gorgeous much younger man, so I’m sure that she is deliriously happy and will continue to be, till ever after.

I have to say that I agree with Professor Dawkins’ argument that children shouldn’t be indoctrinated from a young age about religion, or morality or the cosmos or wizards, either at home or at school. I try to give my children a broad cross section of religious thoughts – mainly because I’m a little confused myself. I also agree with his appeal to children to think for themselves and to look at the evidence “always look at the evidence”. I am a realist. I tend to look at things practically.

Which is why I nearly fell on the floor with shock the other day during a conversation with my teenage son. We were discussing “Evolution or Creation” and I so didn’t expect him to say “well, Creation, obviously”. Without trying to look horrified I asked him if he was aware that Creation meant that you believed that Adam and Eve were created by God. “Well, if everything else was created why wouldn’t they be made at the same time?” was his reply.

Each to their own is what I say generally, but it is slightly concerning when your own flesh and blood chooses such an alternative approach to life. I spent a week thinking about his response and wondering where and how he had come to that conclusion. Wondering about how strongly he felt about it. Wondering if I was gong to have to go to counselling to cope with the prospect of my son becoming a vicar. I couldn’t resist. I just had to pursue the discussion. At the next opportunity I asked him about his ideas. Did that mean he didn’t believe in dinosaurs? Monkeys? Darwin?

“Mum. I’m not saying I believe in God. It’s just that we as human beings are so intricately made that we can’t have simply evolved from a single celled amoeba. It’s not possible”. “Well, if not God, then who?” I prompted. “Aliens” he said firmly.

Great. So now I’m living with a Scientologist. Therefore, I will definitely need counselling (unless of course he can arrange for me to meet John Travolta, in which case all is forgiven….yup. I know it’s hard to believe, but I really am this shallow).