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Original poster

children can make their own mind up about religion when they grow up...

814 replies

AliGrylls · 07/04/2011 12:05

Okay I have just read this on another thread but this is a statement I hear quite a lot and want to ask the question.

If all you teach your child is atheism how will they make their mind up about religion when they grow up because they have no religion other than atheism?

They will know nothing other than what you have taught them so they have nothing to make their mind up about - they will be atheist, by default. If people genuinely want their children to make their own mind up they have to provide them with a reasonable alternative (ie, Judaism / Christianity / Islam).

I don't actually know any adults who have been brought up atheist who have thought all of a sudden "I believe in God, I am going to go to Church".

OP posts:
TheCoalitionNeedsYou · 08/04/2011 10:10

LarryGrylls - I haven't denied that influence of Christianity on western thought.

Morality is an emergent property of complex societies because it allows them to function more efficiently.

A society made up entirely of purely selfish actors will be less succesfull than one that allows the co-operative uses of shared resources.

I should have said 'some' not 'much' Greek moral philosophy is broadly Atheistic - Aristotle certainly didn't see God or gods as an issue in morality.

Prunnhilda · 08/04/2011 10:10

Roseflower, not if the social group you choose/are part of demands that you think about these things in a logical fashion. Smile

Bit circular but there it is.

Roseflower · 08/04/2011 10:10

No, a commandment is a quite possibly arbitrary rule to live by because otherwise God will (metaphorically) twat you with his big stick.

Quite a naive and simplistic view if you really think that.

TheCoalitionNeedsYou · 08/04/2011 10:12

Roseflower - "However if you only follow rules/morals because "You get ostracised (or imprisoned or worse)" then really it's just the same as only doing it out of fear of punsihment."

Isn't this the same as many faiths and fear of hell or similar?

larrygrylls · 08/04/2011 10:12

TheCoalition,

As I said before, what is good for society is not good for the individual (Games' theory). Why should any individual behave morally, if he can get away with doing otherwise?

Roseflower · 08/04/2011 10:13

Thats my point TCNU!

TheCoalitionNeedsYou · 08/04/2011 10:14

Roseflower - I wasn't aiming "NO SCRIPTURE" at you in particular, I just think it's a good rule for these kind of discussions to prevent them being derailed into the minutiae of specific faiths and, really, specific individuals beliefs.

UnquietDad · 08/04/2011 10:15

I've come back and this has gone a lot further. Apologies for repeating myself, but it is necessary when a point is missed - I would encourage my children to look at the evidence for what they believe. If they decide they believe in "god" I'd like them, as I would anyone, to show me evidence for this "god", and indeed why it should be believed in rather than any other (e.g. Greek, Egyptian) which most people these days are happy to accept as myth.

This is not "indoctrination" - it is encouraging critical thinking. Big difference.

Science offers evidence without necessarily offering certainty. Faith offers certainty without evidence. I know which I prefer.

TheCoalitionNeedsYou · 08/04/2011 10:15

Roseflower - "Thats my point TCNU!" Well, um, GOOD then ;)

TheCoalitionNeedsYou · 08/04/2011 10:17

LarryGrylls - Because society creates structures (morality, law) to make it better for the individual to cooperate. This is basically what society IS.

Bonsoir · 08/04/2011 10:17

"Why should any individual behave morally, if he can get away with doing otherwise?"

Because if you continually exploit others, by virtue of the fact that you are able to do so, the chances are you will end up sad and lonely and that people will be very relieved when you die! Is that how most of us want others to feel about us?

onagar · 08/04/2011 10:18

larrygrylls, I think you missed the point of the list. I was making it for Rosewater to demonstrate what I mean by atheism.
You do not believe in the white rabbit? does that mean you DO belong to the religion of "non rabbit believers"? of course you don't. Not believing in something is not a religion itself. I expect that you sensibly thought "there's no reason whatsoever to even consider that the talking white rabbit is real"

Also you are on shaky ground deciding which ones are reasonable and which not? :) At one time people would have believed in Odin and some may still do so. Some of the unlikely sounding ones on the list are true.

Roseflower · 08/04/2011 10:20

TCNU

The point is people are claming both the relgious/ non-relgious do good out of fear of punishment. It is the same motivation.

Not my view, but the crux of the opinions is; fear is the sole motivation.

Roseflower · 08/04/2011 10:22

I dont understand why you were making a list for me? I never claimed atheisim was a 'religion'?

UnquietDad · 08/04/2011 10:22

I don't try to do good out of fear of punishment. I try to do it because it helps society as a whole to try and be a good person, and I want to treat people the way I'd like to be treated myself.

onagar · 08/04/2011 10:24

Actually I find that being nice to people often encourages them to be nice back. The opposite is also frequently true.

Not always obviously :o, but if you could take the religions away to some island we could see who managed best.

LaWeasel · 08/04/2011 10:27

From someone who said it a lot better than me:

"if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world."

Learning to be good, to help others because it's the right thing to do is way more important than learning to do it because of you are afraid of the consequences if you don't.

Roseflower · 08/04/2011 10:30

IMO. Its quite ludicrous to for anyone to assume anyone does nice stuff soley or indeed out of any small motivation out of fear of punishment.

MIFLAW · 08/04/2011 10:31

Atheism v agnosticism is a false dichotomy. It is a grid system; on the vertical axis, your "gnosticism" (faith; acceptance of something unprovable as a fact) and on the horizontal axis is your "theism" (belief in a God.) So it is equally possible to be an agnostic atheist (one who awaits proof but who, in the mean time, does not believe) or an agnostic theist (like, I would suggest, Thomas in the Bible.)

I happen to be the former, which I think is what most people mean when they say they are agnostic. My partner, however, is a gnostic atheist (she has faith in the fact that there is no god.) Personally I think that that's an intellectually weak position, but each to there own.

Prunnhilda · 08/04/2011 10:37

I think a lot of people do a lot of things a lot of the time out of fear of social punishment. ie being thought ill of by their peers/family/superiors, and eventually being ousted from the group.

Snorbs · 08/04/2011 10:37

Roseflower, are you therefore saying that a Christian follows the Bible's commandments because they are simply choosing to Do The Right Thing, and the fact that God may punish them if they transgress them is irrelevant?

If so, you are effectively arguing there is effectively no link between religion and morality. Which I personally agree with but would seem to be at odds with your previous position.

DuelingFanjo · 08/04/2011 10:38

'good' means what?

Roseflower · 08/04/2011 10:38

What exactly is my previous position?

prettybird · 08/04/2011 10:38

I believe in the Celestial Teapot and will encourage ds to do the same Hmm

This topic has been done to death so often that I think, for the first time, I will use the Biscuit

BTW: in response to the OP, ds (10) is exposed to other religions. He sees them and is taught about them at school. He even wants to read the bible so he knows what stories (his word) are in it.

He also, like me, chooses to behave well because he has been taught - and will continue to be taught - that it is the right thing to do. If you want others to be nice to you (and sometimes even if you know they are not going to be) it is still the right thing to do.

MIFLAW · 08/04/2011 10:39

I'm with Unquiet Dad. I'd go even further - the Egyptian and graeco-Roman systems have a lot more to recommend them in that at least you can SEE your Gods - you know they exist, only the question of whether or not they are gods remains.

It is much harder to ground a belief in a single god. This is because, if you examine polytheistic systems, you will see that only the big, mysterious stuff gets its own god - so you have a god of war but not a god of roast chicken or a god of pissing and shitting; you have a god of death or the afterlife (mystery, unknown) but not a god of if-I-stick-this-knife-in-your-heart-you-will-fall-over. So a monotheistic god is at once necessarily invisible (unless you claim that God is everywhere, in which case God is in my piss, which does not seem a characteristic designed to endear me to God or put mye in awe of him) and his raison d'etre is continually shrinking as we find ways to remove the mystery from more and more things to our own intellectual satisfaction.