Pagans in Massachusetts

Cambridge is as secular and progressive as you think it is, maybe more so. That's its reputation: an very liberal town in poster-boy-blue-state Massachusetts. My students are living up to it, and then some.

This past week we've been discussing God: philosophizing about the design argument, the problem of evil, Pascal's wager, etc., and then reading poems by e.e. cummings, Whitman, John Donne and the like.

When I had similar discussions with my Mundelein (IL) high school students, it was clear about 80% of the class believed in God, and maybe 50% would have fundamentalist leanings. In Cambridge, only one kid per class might believe in God (and that one still accepts homosexuality). Every one else is a secular atheist/agnostic. If that one God-believing student dares to say something like "I do think God exists because my faith tells me he does", then TWENTY hands will shoot up in disagreement . . . an occurance I now call "the full force of Cambridge secularism."

From today's class:

MR. JORDAN: "O.K., secular Cambridge students, what if we're all wrong? What if heaven and hell really exists? Because if it does, this whole class will be down in hell one day, and I'll be there teaching. And we'll all look at each other and say 'Oooof. We really got this wrong.'"

BYRON: "Actually, God will probably just take the whole town of Cambridge and send it straight to Hell."

CONOR: "It's like God has America on a computer screen. He just clicks on Cambridge and drags it to hell."

MR. JORDAN: "And then he clicks on Texas and drags it up to heaven."