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Out of the Mouths of Atheist Babes

I’ve kept the clipping for 27 years. It’s priceless. It sums up the whole professional-atheist mindset in a single, impolite word.

The article first appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 1988 and was reprinted widely, including in my local paper. I was surprised it appeared at all, because it contained a vulgarism (fair warning to my readers). How did it get past the editors? I guess they thought the piece was so telling that it was worth running, even if it generated a few letters of complaint.

I excerpt here the key parts of the feature story, which originally was titled “Buffalo Grove Father, Son Share a Nonbelief” but which appeared in the San Diego newspaper under the more endearing title “Young Atheist-in-Training Is His Father’s Pride and Joy.”

. . . . .

Like many little children, Ricky Sherman, 6, has learned to parrot the religious shibboleths of his elders with darling eagerness.

“God is make-believe,” he chirps when the TV cameras are on or when reporters come upon him and his famous father, Robert I. Sherman, the tireless atheist of Buffalo Grove [Illinois].

Dad beams when he hears this. And young Ricky beams when his dad beams. Sometimes he gets a tiny milk chocolate baseball as a reward for performing well.

And now this father-son act has moved onto the big stage. Sherman the elder recently filed suit in federal court against Wheeling Township Elementary District 21, charging that Sherman the younger is required to say the words “under God” when his first-grade class recites the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag each morning. . . .

And in the middle of this adult fracas is an agreeable, wide-eyed child with blond hair and laughing eyes. . . . The only difference between Ricky and the other pupils in his class is that, each morning during the pledge, he drops his hand from his heart and closes his mouth while all the other kids say the “under God” phrase. . . .

Ricky, something of a star in his own right, was 3 when his father thrust himself into the national spotlight by protesting religious imagery on the city seal in Zion. Sherman has since become the godless gadfly of suburbia, fighting creches and crosses at board meetings thither and yon, waving his flag and making a litigious pest of himself.

He has yet to win a court case, but he has temporarily won the battle for Ricky’s mind from his wife, Celeste, a Catholic who converted to Judaism 10 years ago in order to please Sherman’s parents. . . . She is a God-believer, and she carts the boy off to her sister’s house for Christmas celebrations and to her in-laws for Passover, even as her husband takes the boy to meetings of the Northern Illinois chapter of American Atheists. . . .

After school earlier this week, Robert and Ricky Sherman sat for a chat in the family living room.

“Ricky, do you want anything for Christmas?” Sherman asked.

“I don’t know,” Ricky said, rocking distractedly on a wicker chair.

“Or don’t you care because you’re not a Christian?”

“I don’t know,” Ricky said.

“Do we celebrate Christmas?” said Sherman, continuing the catechism.

“No,” Ricky decided.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because we’re what?”

Ricky looked thoughtful. “Smart?” he tried.

His father was pleased with the answer, but not totally satisfied.

“Because we’re what?” he persisted. “It starts with an ‘A.’”

Ricky brightened. “Assholes?”

But this was not exactly the answer dad had in mind.

“Ricky has always known God is make-believe,” he tried again. “Right, Rick?”

“Right!” said the skeptical sprout.

“Is Cubby real or make-believe?” Sherman asked, referring to the stuffed lion that is his boy’s most cherished plaything.

“Make-believe,” said Ricky.

“What else is make-believe?”

“Santa Claus,” Ricky said. “Jesus. The Easter Bunny. The Cookie Monster.”

His father was deeply satisfied. “Yes,” he said.

And Ricky, the littlest atheist, scored another chocolate baseball.

. . . . .

Today Ricky is 33 and goes by “Richard.” His father is 62. The elder Sherman runs a non-profit called Rob Sherman Advocacy, which “is fighting injustice one victory at a time.” Sherman doesn’t seem to derive much of an income from the group, so he has had his hands in several other ventures: a travel agency, a delivery service, and concert promotion. He runs a “builder assist center” at Dupage County Airport, where he reps for Zenith kit airplanes.

In 1998 Sherman was convicted of domestic violence for battering his then-16-year-old son. A local newspaper said, “The same reporters he’d once urged to cover his civil rights battles showed up at his trial, and the resulting pile of press clippings reduced his public image from gadfly to criminal.” Sherman had a weekly radio show, but it folded when he lost all of his advertisers, and his travel agency business took a dive.

He went to jail twice for refusing to finish his court-ordered domestic violence counseling. He kept insisting that his conviction was unjust and that he merely had been administering appropriate corporal punishment to his recalcitrant son who, in the ten years following the interview, had become considerably less malleable.

All along, Sherman insisted that his arrest and conviction were politically motivated. They were payback for his having been a public nuisance at so many city council meetings and in so many courtrooms. At the trial, the judge told Sherman: “You exhibit all of the signs of a classic abuser except for one. The classic abuser feels remorse afterward.”

But not Robert Sherman, because being a public atheist means never having to say you’re sorry.

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