When My Children Chose Atheism — Why I'm Okay With That
But here's the thing: some of the most genuinely kind, compassionate, and virtuous people I have ever known were people who questioned — or outright rejected — the existence of God. And that tells me something important. Virtue isn't owned by religion. It belongs to humanity.
The Nicest People I've Ever Known
I've sat across from people who said "I don't believe in any of that" — and watched them give their last dollar to a stranger, show up for someone in crisis at 2am, and forgive others in ways that most churchgoers struggle to do. If virtue is the fruit, then the tree doesn't have to be labeled "Christian" or "Muslim" or "Bahá'í" to bear it.
What matters is intention. What matters is whether you are choosing — consciously, daily — to act with kindness, honesty, courage, and love. And that brings me to something that changed how I think about prayer entirely.
The Intention Experiment
Lynne McTaggart's groundbreaking book, The Intention Experiment, explores decades of scientific research into one remarkable question: Can our thoughts change the world?
The answer, drawn from peer-reviewed studies at some of the world's top universities, is: possibly yes. Focused, loving intention directed toward another person — what some might call prayer, and others might call mindful thought — has been shown in controlled experiments to affect living systems in measurable ways. Plants. Bacteria. Water. Human beings.
You don't have to bow your head and close your eyes to pray. You just have to mean it.
The Shape of a Song: Masaru Emoto and Water Crystal Healing
This idea doesn't stop with human thought. Masaru Emoto's work, beautifully documented in Water Crystal Healing: Music and Images to Restore Your Well-Being, showed that water exposed to loving words, beautiful music, and positive intention formed stunning, symmetrical crystal structures — while water exposed to harsh words or chaotic noise formed broken, disorganized shapes.
We are made mostly of water. And song — pure, intentional, beautiful sound — shapes even the tiniest of elements. When families sing together, when we play music with love, when we hum a lullaby or share a hymn or chant a mantra — something real is happening at a level science is only beginning to understand.
This is why music is woven throughout our virtue learning here at Instilling Values. It isn't decoration. It's formation.
Dr. Hawkins and the Higher Power
Dr. David Hawkins — whose Map of Consciousness has deeply influenced the way we think about spiritual growth — saw real merit in non-traditional forms of worship. He understood that what matters isn't the label on your practice, but the level of consciousness from which you operate. Love calibrates high. Fear calibrates low. Dogma, when used to divide, calibrates low. Genuine humility and compassion — in any tradition, or in no tradition at all — calibrate high.
Alcoholics Anonymous understood this too. The program doesn't require belief in God — only in a power greater than yourself. That power might be a community. It might be nature. It might be love itself. The point is surrender to something beyond ego, and the willingness to grow.
Virtues Belong to Everyone
This is why I believe so deeply in teaching the basic virtues — not as religious commandments, but as universal human qualities that every person, of every belief system or none at all, can cultivate and practice.
Kindness doesn't require a creed. Honesty doesn't require a church. Courage, compassion, humility, patience — these are not the property of the faithful. They are the inheritance of anyone willing to do the inner work.
My children may not pray the way I do. But when I watch them choose patience over anger, honesty over convenience, and generosity over selfishness — I see virtue alive and well. And maybe that's the whole point.
Whatever name you give the source, love is love. And love, as it turns out, may be the most powerful force in the universe — measurable in water crystals, in healed relationships, in children who grow up choosing goodness not because they were told to, but because they decided to.
That's enough for me.
Want to explore the science of intention further? Start with The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart and Water Crystal Healing by Masaru Emoto. And if you'd like to explore the 52 virtues with your own family — regardless of faith — you're in the right place.