Arian Foster is a terrific running back for the Houston Texans of the National Football League (American football for you Ausländers). Last week he wrote a column for Yahoo Shine! called “Six things I’ll try to teach my daughter.”
At 23, and apparently unexpectedly, he found himself a father, and feeling clueless about how to raise his new daughter Zeniah. The article compiles six life lessons he decided to impart to her.
The first five things are somewhat conventional: how to find happiness in a tough world, the value of a dollar, the importance of loving one’s work, the importance of being kind, and what qualities to look for in a man (I presume he doesn’t think she’ll be gay). Those are bromides, but worthwhile nonetheless.
But it’s advice #6 that’s the kicker:
6. The flying spaghetti monster. There are billions of people on Earth with hundreds of religions and sects that trickle off each other. I will never tell her what to believe in. I know parents are very influential on kids’ spiritual beliefs and that can be a positive or negative thing. I can give her a basic understanding of religions when she starts showing interest and asking questions. But I will remain silent otherwise. How can I make a young mind believe this is the truth for them when they don’t yet have the capacity nor the cognitive desire to delve into something like this? If she shows interest I would advise her to fully investigate a religion and see if it fits her. And if she chooses none of the above, I’ll be fine with that as well. The values I instill in her should guide her to her decision. What’s most important, I believe, is to support her decision no matter what.
People think of football players as dim-witted but valuable pieces of meat, but Foster has far more sense than 95% of his fellow Americans. This sentence alone should be engraved on the mind of every parent:
“How can I make a young mind believe this is the truth for them when they don’t yet have the capacity nor the cognitive desire to delve into something like this?”
What a cause for hope!!!
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Whether or not this is reasonable depends on whether he’s able to instill into her a means to evaluate these religions. If he’s completely hands off her intellectual development, she’ll be a leaf in the wind to all the people who seek to influence her.
My uncle was an atheist (a nuclear physicist), but all of his kids grew up to be pretty religious. He clearly didn’t attempt to provide his kids with any sort of framework to make decisions about the world.
This doesn’t sound like your uncle. “I can give her a basic understanding of religions when she starts showing interest and asking questions.”
“I can give her a basic understanding of religions when she starts showing interest and asking questions.”
That would only leave her confused, because it seems to presume that belief in any of them is rational.
I don’t think it presumes anything of the sort. Being exposed to the absurdly large variety of mutually exclusive religious beliefs humans have “enjoyed”, and understanding that they are all equally “true” is one of the most basic reasons to be atheist.
Hmmm, no, it really isn’t. There have been many explanations for the origin of the human species, so are they all equally untrue? Of course not.
Are you smoking something? Every single religious explanation of the origin of humanity is equally untrue.
Learning about religions is one of the best ways to become an atheist. It is the opposite of being trained to believe in one true religion.
“Every single religious explanation of the origin of humanity is equally untrue.”
So you say, but you can’t come to that conclusion by studying religion. Although they disagree, one of them might be correct.
You can only conclude that all religions are wrong by studying science.
You know, Mr. Esres, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to survey the universe of human religions and conclude that there is no basis for deciding that any one of them is true. It takes only the realization that these explanations are obviously created by humans.
I agree but to be fair it doesn’t take a rocket scientist but an anthropologist may be of some use. 🙂
I am not sure how you come to that conclusion based on that one sentence. That one sentence does not seem to contain enough information to understand with any surety what he means by giving her “a basic understanding of religions.” And there sure doesn’t seem to be anything in the quoted material that suggests he plans on being “completely hands off her intellectual development.”
Which is why I started my comment with
I suppose that does answer my last sentence, but my main question was in reference to this, . . .
Your response seems to assume many details that are not evident. Maybe, maybe not, too little data to make a reasonable guess.
I made a conditional statement, which makes no assumptions. You’re merely assuming that I did. 🙂
Damn. I hate when that happens.
To Darelle: +1!
rather, to Darrelle….
C’mon, all you need to know to put your mind at ease is the title he gave this item–the FSM. He’s a celebrity athlete–he can’t be too radical or the notoriety might negatively affect the team. I’m amazed and delighted that he went as far as he did.
I agree with you about imparting the ability to evaluate/think critically about religions…but how do you know your uncle didn’t do that?
You seem to be assuming that framework => atheism. Even at the highest educational levels (i.e., with the most solid framework), this is true for a majority but not a supermajority; its more like 2/3 atheists, 1/3 religious.
There are smart, critical thinkers on both sides of the aisle. Unless you want to go the No True Scotsman route and make belief/nonbelief a criteria for deciding which people you consider to be critical thinkers.
“There are smart, critical thinkers on both sides of the aisle.”
In varying degrees…..at some point, any religious believer has abandoned critical thinking.
[quote]Even at the highest educational levels (i.e., with the most solid framework), this is true for a majority but not a supermajority; its more like 2/3 atheists, 1/3 religious.[/quote]
Where do you get these numbers from? By highest educational levels, do you mean Ph.D.? Different countries have different levels of religiosity, your numbers may be true for USA?, which is well known for its religiosity(and closeted atheists), but are certainly not true everywhere.
I suppose there might be one somewhere, but I have never heard of, much less met, a well-educated person, known for his thinking, who was not raised with any religion and yet has adopted one as an adult.
From my experience, in the less religious scandinavian countries, religion is almost unheard of in academic circles.
It’s definitely the right parental attitude.
You don’t have to be dim-witted to be a pro sports person, but a high IQ doesn’t help much so it’s random. We had one intelligent footballer in the UK and he’s now a TV pundit (Gary Lineker).
Of course, his daughter may investigate religions with an open mind and decide that Christian fundamentalism is perfect for her. God forbid.
According to the article, he is also “philosopher, artist, poet”. 🙂 but also “fashion enthusiast” 🙁
now lets hope, like many other of his fellow sports stars, he finds his way into the political arena…. we (america) can use folks like him and her…. no superstitions AND knows the value of a dollar, 2 major issues Washington DC can use to learn…
He’s been doing a lot of acting, but who knows.
Well, he is Arian & while the original Arius was religious, he denied the divinity of Jesus.
This gives a whole new meaning to the Arian Heresy…
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-arian-heresy.htm#didyouknowout
I applaud his statements about allowing his daughter to think for herself but the part called “Men and her worth” I found to be shortsighted. It would have been better if he had talked about men as friends, family, colleagues because these men are going to profoundly affect her and in more ways influence her self worth more than a lover will (literally in some respects when it comes to the workplace).
But then I’m probably a bad one for advising young girls. Recently when very upset with work and a lot of testosterone I had to deal with, I advised all girls to self lobotomize if they wanted to fit into society because then they won’t have to buck the system by making intelligent contributions. 🙂 This is why I’ll never be a mentor (though mine did frankly say that I’d have to work harder than everyone).
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What does sub mean???
It means look beneath for what I said. 🙂 I actually thought that might be what it meant when I first saw it. It actually means “subscribe” or more accurately that you either forgot to select the “notify” boxes so you’ll be notified of responses via email or you just want to receive those notifications without saying anything for now.
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From experience:
When my youngest daughter was old enough to be baptized, I read the text of the ritual and realized that I had to reaffirm my faith, which had dwindled away to nothing. So I quit the church, survived a fight with my parents.
When this daughter was in a Texas high school, she assailed me for not teaching her anything about god, jezus and the rest, she said: “How do I know how to be good?”, or words of similar meaning. I tried to explain that thinking people can look into themselves and make the right decisions in life.
So time goes by and we met one day, now she is around mid-forties, and she said out the blue: “I am so happy you never got me into this church/christan nonsense”. So you see, the reward for a secular upbringing comes late.
I have 5 sons, now aged from 62 to 48. When they were younger, like 6,7 and 8-ish three of them asked if they could go to Sunday School because of some peer pressure from their school chums. There’s nothing like Sunday School to lay the foundations of atheism in my view, like being told, as I was, that if you don’t close your eyes while praying, your prayers will hit the ceiling and fall back into your lap. Fortunately none of the three survived more than a few weeks in SS. Mission accomplished !
He was a philosophy major in college, which is a bit harder than the degrees these guys sometimes receive. He is also a vegan (who eats meat occasionally,huh?), a member of the Green Party who voted for Ron Paul in the last election. This guy is certainly his own man.
The problem is, the NFL is an organization that promotes christianity (including paid chaplains on all teams). They will promote anything a player or organization does that is christian, but will not promote Arian’s pasta based belief system, but hopefully others can see his example and reject the mob.
Trying to wrap my brain around that one.
It does sound bizarre, but I know several people who voted fro Ron Paul because the didn’t like mittens or Obama. They had no idea what his views were and didn’t care.
Then Why. Vote. At ALL.
Do you really have to ask that question with todays “its all about me” attitude” ? Most people today could care less about facts and care more about who tells them the things they want to hear, whether they are true or not means nothing… If they yell it 3 times its got to be true…besides it was on Fox “news” ya know… Thus all the hateful all caps, big writting, chain e-mails that drive the factually challenged crowd.
Most heartening!
Foster is an interesting guy – not your average MFL player for sure. He is of African American and Hispanic descent, majored in philosophy at the University of Tennessee, is a poet, and (mostly) a vegan. And I bet he’s a terrific dad! We’re happy to have him on our Houston Texans team. I hope he stays permanently and raises his family here.
Did we not ALL originate in Africa? Does that not make us folks in the USA, white, black, yellow, pink or blue, all African Americans? I also know my black friends from the West Indies resent being called African Americans just because of their skin color. All too often political correctness goes too far, I look forward to the day the color of a persons skin means nothing, however the label “African American” does exactly the opposite, its used solely based on ones skin color…. I contest he is an “American”, and an American with good morals and clear thinking, a hard thing to find in America these days.
My dad had the same philosophy about raising my sister and me. I truly respect him for it.
It’s basically the approach we took as parents. It worked fine with our two kids.
Beautiful. Keep it coming. NBA, MLB, NHL…more brave and rational role models.
As a Vikings fan I could use a good team to root for this season. Go Texans!
Hey, they’re tied for second place in their division and only one game out of first.
You guys lost a great agnostic player when Kluwe left, famous for “THE LETTER” (anyone wanting to read a good letter about the NFL/gay marriage/1st Amendment should Google “Chris Kluwe letter”. Btw NSFW. And they say prose is dead…
There truly is a Ceiling Cat — Tim Tebow is unemployed.