I noticed this post about one of Toby’s friends thinking through why people think of a god or gods, which reminded me of a conversation Toby and I had a few weeks ago. I was driving Toby home from his soccer class, and there was a decent thunderstorm going on. Toby made a comment about how god makes the weather, which I thought would lead to an interesting discussion about why he, or other people would think that. He told me that his Sunday school teachers told him that this is how the weather came about, and we also talked about the weather forecast and how it’s possible to learn how weather works and therefore make forecasts. Also he does know the general concept of clouds and rain and how that all goes together. As with Paul’s discussion with his son, we chatted briefly about why people think that god would make things happen, and how sometimes people will investigate how things actually work in order to understand the world around us.

Then yesterday Toby saw the book on my nightstand – the recent biography of Albert Einstein. He (Toby) asked who the man on the cover was, and we had a little chat about how he was a very famous scientist and he was really good at asking how things work and what they are made of.

It’s an interesting time with Toby – in some ways he’s very strong on personifying things he can’t quite grasp (which you could argue is a simplified religious leaning) and in others, like lots of other kids his age, he is very good at asking why (which leads to a good scientific way of thinking, like why is the sky blue, or why do we not fall off the earth).

2 Responses to “explanations”

  1. Bearded Rich says:

    Just play him “The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas” by They Might Be Giants. Explains a lot.

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