Mr. Toll
The very best years of my education were the last two years of high school-- the years in public education. In particular, an astronomy teacher named Mr. Toll made a significant difference for the better, on my life and on who I am as a person.
I spent my Junior and Senior years at Roseville High because my parents could no longer afford religious private schooling for all of their children. Rather than put me back into home-schooling, they allowed me, their eldest, to complete my education in the public school system. Perhaps it was financial desperation, or perhaps it was in the hopes that the church brainwashing had sufficiently set in to resist the exposure to other influences. It had set in enough that I went on from Roseville High to attend an insane cult compound named Pensacola Christian College, but two years at Roseville High were a crucial break in the program of church-run education which carefully conditions the perceptions and world-view of students to be mindless Christian soldiers.
During that break, my mind was expanded and I was exposed to better role models. (By the way, the excellent science fiction in the Roseville High School library didn't hurt either when it came to expanding my mind.)
I was shocked, at first, when Mr. Toll admitted with no shame that he was a member of CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims Of the Paranormal. Yet despite this, to me he clearly wasn't a bad person. To the contrary, when compared to members of the church, his motivations were more honest, his vision of the universe and our evolutionary place in it was more beautiful, his friendship with students was more inclusive, his hope for this life (rather than the afterlife) was more inspiring.
By demonstrating a passionate interest in finding a happy and moral place in the universe as it truly is, he served as a role model it make it seem like a viable alternative for me to give up insisting by faith that the cosmos is as we wish it to be. The seeds which Mr. Toll planted of scientific honesty, and of a humanism which I can only clumsily term "anti-misanthropy", took several years to finish bearing fruit. Nevertheless I could never quite fit in religious fundamentalism after I took his astronomy class, and through many subsequent influences and experiences eventually became a well-adjusted and happy secularist.
Comments
tlatoani on Dec. 8, 2006 11:06 PM
You should mail him a copy of this, if you haven't already told him these things.
Anonymous on Dec. 8, 2006 11:43 PM — Mr Toll
I have to say one more open minded person in the ranks of the scientific community is not a bad thing. I find the narrow minded views of most religeons bad for both them, as well as the world in general. Keep looking for the truth, if there is a God, I am pretty sure he wouldnt have a problem with that.
dbvanhorn on Dec. 9, 2006 4:12 PM
Hats off to Mr Toll!
rmeidaking on Dec. 10, 2006 5:24 PM
Congratulations!
I have to admit that my break with Christian orthodoxy came in the fifth grade, when no one could adequately answer my questions about Genesis, specifically what they meant by "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." Genesis 6:4
So there was this other, great race, and they mated with humans, and they created the even more ancient mighty race? And humans came after? Or what?
And this was before we'd even gotten to Noah, for heaven's sake. :-)
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