A week or two ago when my wife was out of town, my daughter (yes, that one) said something at dinner that caught me off guard. “I don’t believe our church is true.” She’s eight. That in and of itself didn’t catch me totally off guard because a month or so before she asked while we were doing scripture reading, “what if our church isn’t true and God is mad at us for going to the wrong church.” At that time I told her that I knew that if she prayed God would lead her in the way He saw fit. As I mention on my Mormon Scholars Testify testimony, I feel like I’ve been lead by God in my life and have had a number of spiritual experiences.

Back to the conversation where she declared her disbelief. It was what she said next that caught me off guard. “I have never had an answer to a prayer; I have never had a prompting; the Holy Ghost doesn’t comfort me when I’m scared, I have to comfort myself. And you know all those miracles in the Bible, I don’t believe them. Sand turning into lice; I don’t believe it; frogs, no; that guy and his hair no.” I was a little back on my heals at this point but like a lot of folks around the bloggernacle, I’m not too attached to Old Testament miracles, so I asked if she believed that Jesus performed miracles. “No” she said. “Healing a blind guy, no. Oh, I can believe that story about feeding all those people, you know, you just break a piece of bread up into a whole bunch of tiny pieces.” I explained that that wasn’t how it worked and she looked skeptical.

Now I was really back on my heals. So I asked if she believed that God created the earth, she said, “Jesus created the earth, daddy, but that was all the power God gave Him; He didn’t give Him any power to do any miracles.” Okay, at this point I was utterly stumped. She’s eight, where did she get all this?

I told her that I believed in miracles and started to tell her about some healings I had witness. “They were at the hospital” she cut me off. “That’s what they do at the hospital, heal people!”

Then her younger sister who’s five started to declare her various disbeliefs as a way to keep up, I think. Then daughter number one declared her beliefs. “I believe in God and I believe that Jesus came to earth.” I asked her why and she said, “I just feels right.” Then she added, “I don’t believe the big bang theory.” Earlier she told us of how she battled some kid in her class who considers himself a Buddhist for arguing against creationism. “I believe we came from monkeys,” the kid said. “Oh yeah,” my daughter responded, “where did the monkeys come from?” He was stumped. After all, he’s only eight.

So my daughter likes deism. Any thoughts? And did I mention that she’s eight?