The Acorn and the Oak

Michael Ruse notes and rather generously comments on Leo Behe’s public debut as an atheist .  Young Master Behe seems like an engagingly quirky homeschooler, though I don’t think that his views on religion actually yet rise to the level of being interesting.  Indeed, I suspect that much of the attention he receives derives from the fact that he is his father’s son.

Like Ruse, I don’t think that the apostasy of Behe fils should be regarded as a paternal or parental  failure.  It is, rather, evidence (for those who need it) that homeschooling needn’t be a form of brainwashing.

At the same time, I wish for Leo Behe’s sake, and for the sake of the intellectual odyssey upon which he has embarked, that he wasn’t receiving so much attention.  It stokes the vanity from which we—sinners, all—are not free.  And it may lock him into the jejune positions to which his youthful rebellion has led him.  Stated another way, it may prevent him from honestly seeking the truth, as opposed to industriously seeking to “refute” what he doesn’t now believe.