Poor Mason

I saw one of the saddest things I've read in a long time in a recent editorial section of The Dallas Morning News.

Mason Crumpacker is a very cute 9-year-old girl. She was the subject of a Q&A feature. Mason had attended an atheist convention, and it was this that brought her to the attention of editorial writer Tod Robberson.

Mason has been brainwashed by her parents into believing she is a "free-thinker" when it is obvious she is anything but that. At the convention, she asked Christopher Hitchens for his recommendation on what books she should read. Hitchens is a champion of the New Atheism movement, and the author of a book entitled God is Not Great. Mason says he is a brilliant man, but when asked if there was anything he had said or written that she disagreed with, she said, "I haven't read Christopher Hitchens. I'm 9." How can little Mason think that Hitchens is a brilliant man if she doesn't even know what he has written? Mommy and Daddy told her what to think - that's how.

When asked why she went to the convention, little Mason didn't say, "Because Mommy and Daddy dragged me here." She said she wanted to "boost her intellectual curiosity." But, Mason, as you say, you're only 9. You should be concerned about friends and sleepovers and Barbies and bicycles and Harry Potter and Disney films when you're not in school or doing homework.

Mason says the Bible doesn't make sense -- what proof is there that Adam and Eve existed? I wonder if she, herself, has studied the Bible as much as she has Hitchens' works? Yet she does believe in evolution. She thinks it makes sense that a group of "microscopic cells [she doesn't say what proves where the microscopic cells came from], formatted into bigger cells, which created the first fish, who slowly evolved into lizards . . ." and so on. Oh yeah, Mason, I can see how that makes much more sense than that a Creator God made the cells and fish and lizards and all the other things on the earth. When Mason finished her rote lesson in evolution, she turned to her parents and asked how she did. It's quite obvious that Mason didn't develop this mindset by her own free-thinking.

Mason says that people are entitled to their own beliefs. She says she is a Pastafarian -- that she believes there is a flying spaghetti monster. I don't know if she was trying to be clever and cute or if that's something she really believes. Mason says that children can learn right from wrong without religion because they have their parents to guide them along the way. "And if their parents were raised right, they could have an open mind, have fun and be safe." But what if the parents weren't "raised right"? What if all the children have parents like Mason's? What if the parents are wrong about what's right?

My prayer is that Mason will evolve into a true free thinker and learn the truth that will make her free indeed.

"Posing the big questions." The Dallas Morning News; October 30, 2011; p. 5P.