The other day, my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, while we were talking about school, remarked, "If you can think, you don't have to learn."
I wasn't too thankful for that.
A few days before that, she, her six-year-old sister and I were at the breakfast table, when the older girl asked, "Daddy, who made all the world?" Hmmm, I said, that seems like an easy question, but it's a hard one. "The world began billions and billions of year ago," I explained. "It sort of was created all at once in what we call a Big Bang."
"It must have been a very big bang," the four-year-old said, with eyes wide open.
I was thankful for that.
"Yes," I said.
"And where did the people come from?" the older girl inquired.
"Well," I said, "that took a long time. First, there were organisms--little animals--in the sea. They turned into fish. The fish turned into animals on the land. And eventually human beings came about."
"From fish?" the little one asked.
"Kind of," I said.
The older one then noted that a first-grade classmate had said that God created the world and all the people.
"Some people believe that," I said. "Some people believe it happened without God."
"Is there really a God?" she asked.
Again, I replied, some people think so, some people think God is more of an idea, and some people think there is no God.
"Do scientists know if there is a God and if God created the world?" the six-year-old asked.
No, I answered.
"Then it's only an opinion," she said.
I was very thankful for that.
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