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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:
DuelingFanjo · 11/04/2011 21:26

"Bringing your child up 'as an atheist' is also foisting your beliefs onto them"

but... for those of us who just have no religion, nothing to reject, we are not raising our children as Atheists.

Snorbs · 11/04/2011 21:37

Maybe, AliGrylls, the reason is that - your friends notwithstanding - many atheists have got direct, personal experience of "in your face" Christians. I know I have.

Curiously I have never had that experience from people of other faiths (unless you count Mormonism as distinct from Christianity).

SpringchickenGoldBrass · 11/04/2011 21:37

People who believe in gods are suffering from a bit of a failure in the logic department, ALigrylls. Belief in gods is ridiculous. It's ok when it's harmless-ridiculous, pixies and crystals or woolly anglicanism or whatever, much less ok when it involves claiming unfair privileges for your superstitions and interfering in other people's lives.

RedbinD · 11/04/2011 21:38

Snorbs, Jehovahs Witnesses have a bit of history.

Roseflower · 11/04/2011 22:02

Er, Roseflower, BTSynergy did reference the source of the quotes - it was the "Psalms 9:3-6" bit that was the clue

Er... nope.

Oh dear. The quote is not from Psalms as admitted underneath

exoticfruits · 11/04/2011 22:13

Everyone has their own view

Nothing wrong in that, as long as they tell a DC that it is just their own view and that others think differently.
Not that it really matters, I'm sure DCs are intelligent to work it out for themselves.

ChocolatewithRosie · 11/04/2011 22:18

if any 'faith' is required for atheism it is faith in science or possibly evidence, not nothing, but essentially it is a non belief and therefore no 'faith' as such is required.

There are an awful lot of stories that some people believe in, superstitions, myths and legends that go back a long way. Without evidence I am not going to believe them to be true, or tell my children they are true, either. Those who believe them are showing faith that those stories have been put down over and over without being embelished in any way, if they were even true in the first place. I however am not showing 'faith' by not believing them to be true, what would I being showing faith in? It doesn't make sense.

A bit tongue tied after that actuallyGrin

Snorbs · 11/04/2011 23:31

Oh crikey, looks like I'll have to do a bit of googling. Too much scripture before bed always gives me indigestion...

Right, Psalms 9. Seems pretty clear that God will go and do some righteous take-off-and-nuke-the-site-from-orbit butt kicking of the enemies of David. Meanwhile David is all "Wow God, you're so cool and dreamy and what big smiting muscles you have!" I'd say that BTSynergy's portrayal of those passages was reasonably accurate.

Ezekial 6 is very much portrayed as the word of God himself saying "I will open a major can of Godly whoop-ass on those who worship anyone other than Me, capisce?" If anything, BTSynergy's paraphrasing of this passage actually missed a lot of the horror and violence evident in the original.

Jeremiah 18:11. Direct quote with my emphasis (and this is supposed to be God talking to Jeremiah): "Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, 'This is what the LORD says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.'" In other words, "I'm about to make things spectacularly shitty around here. Sucks to be you." God then goes on to explain what He's planning, such as "Their land will be laid waste, an object of lasting scorn...Like a wind from the east, I will scatter them before their enemies." It goes on in that vein for quite a while.

Threatening to destroy an entire city for its inhabitants exercising the very same self-will that He himself gave us seems, well, petulant to say the least. But then God does have form in that regard, doesn't He? Yet there would also be children and babies in that city who would be caught in the death and destruction (as there would've been in Sodom and Gamorrah). They wouldn't have been old enough to make an informed decision of who, or what, they were going to worship. Killing such innocents under such circumstances sounds like a pretty evil act to me. What's the moral basis for such grotesque brutality?

So Roseflower, are you going to tell me that I'm wrong too? Or is this going to be one of those "Those bits of the bible aren't supposed to be taken literally!" things?

Roseflower · 11/04/2011 23:37

Dear me.

'BTSynergy's portrayal', 'BTSynergy's paraphrasing' etc

Point proven.

Snorbs · 11/04/2011 23:40

And the point that you feel is proven is...?

Roseflower · 11/04/2011 23:41

Puh-leaseeeeeee....
That they are intreptations!

MrsCrafty · 12/04/2011 01:04

Well I am going to be really honest and say that I started going to church to get my kids into a faith school. It worked and my DS got in. I was invited to an open air mass and that worked too. It made me interested as an athiest who went to live abroad to find myself in a very religious community.

They were baptised in a multi denominational church. But I really loved the whole thing after going to mass.

So, one & a half year later of doing the RCIA, I am to be baptised at Easter. My parents left it up to me and although my Mother believed in God but never pushed it on us, my Father was totally unbelieving.

Both of my children are in the faith school now, I only found out on the 4th of April. But it's become something about me now. I went to my bible classes tonight as I have done. Lots of my friends thought I was doing it for my kids. I now know that it's about me.

The one thing I am really grateful for my parents is that they let me choose. My hubs is atheist and he tells the kids what he thinks.

exoticfruits · 12/04/2011 07:45

You can use the bible to quote and mean anything that you want! My father, in his job, used to get someone using the bible to prove a point and my father took great delight in finding an opposite quote-he managed it every time!
I don't suppose that you are the only person that has changed when they didn't expect it MrsCrafty, people must be very rigid in their thinking if they are not open to the idea that they could change in the future.

larrygrylls · 12/04/2011 08:56

Chocolate,

I have a real problem with people who know nothing about science or, more importantly, the philosophy of science who claim that it is unscientific to have faith in a god or gods.

One of the fundamental tenets of the philosophy of science is that "science can only ever disprove, it can never prove".

I think that a lot of those who claim to be scientific have a very limited understanding of what science is and is not. A lot of people who believe in the "science" of atheism are actually blindly following Dawkins, so it is more a belief in the man rather than his theories.

Snorbs · 12/04/2011 09:03

Oh, I see. So it's fine when you post a link to a page that provides a fairly stretched "interpretation" of the spare the rod thing, but when BTSynergy posts some brief (and accurate) paraphrasing of some quite long passages from the Bible, he/she has transgressed a hitherto unmentioned rule for acceptable quoting. I get it.

No, wait, no I don't.

Seems to me that you're being more than a touch hypocritical. Nevertheless, I am impressed with your enthusiasm to keep banging away at the largely irrelevant point about how BTSynergy didn't match up with your standards for attribution while completely ignoring the content. Why? Why pick at that tangential point but ignore what was actually said? Is style really so much more important than content to you?

Nevertheless, bravo! Well done you for adding so much to the discussion! Hmm

exoticfruits · 12/04/2011 09:22

Science has nothing to do with faith. Some eminent scientists have a faith-some don't.

Snorbs · 12/04/2011 09:35

Nearly all the atheists I know - myself included - decided on atheism long before coming across Dawkins. I saw myself as an atheist quite some time before Dawkins had even written The Blind Watchmaker and at a time when nobody outside of evolutionary biology had ever heard of the chap.

But isn't it odd the way that some (many?) of the religious have fixated on Richard Dawkins as some sort of central figure in atheism and that there's some kind of a cult of personality around him? Why the desire to identify one person as some kind of leader?

He's not and, apart from the small gang of fans you see on his website much the same as you'd see on any minor celeb's website, there's no cult of personality around him. He's Just Another Atheist, albeit one who has written some books and got some publicity. He's not some kind of atheistic pope who we all blindly follow. You don't get kicked out of atheist church and shunned by your friends and family if you stand up and say you think Dawkins is a twat.

The one thing I would say that Dawkins and/or Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Fry, Penn & Teller or any of a number of relatively recent and vocal atheists have wittingly or unwittingly encouraged is to not apologise about being an atheist.

ChickensHaveNoEyebrows · 12/04/2011 09:42

I was raised in a household where religion was considered for the weak. I now consider myself a Christian. I rarely go to church, however I take part in a weekly house group. If my DC want to come with me to church at Christmas or Easter, they do, but if they don't want to they don't. I genuinely believe that faith is a personal choice and must be arrived at through personal choice. I have no desire to force/coerce anyone in to sharing my beliefs. Most Christians are the same, ime, but the forceful ones make a better headline.

BonnetwithPosie · 12/04/2011 10:13

My lack of faith has nothing to do with Dawkins, I did not believe before I was aware of him.

Snorbs is quite right in what she says about him.

As far as "I have a real problem with people who know nothing about science or, more importantly, the philosophy of science who claim that it is unscientific to have faith in a god or gods" does this mean that you should have a masters in theology before you can believe in god then? Ah no- that only requires 'faith', but believing what a scientist can prove (or disprove) takes a deep study of all the evidence personally?

Well sorry, but that's just nonsense.

I don't know why I ever get myself involved in these discussions, I'm not clever enough in putting my words on paper and anyway it's like banging my head on a brick wall. Once people have 'faith' there's no objectivity ime.

SpringchickenGoldBrass · 12/04/2011 10:22

The main reason a lot of the superstitious insist that Richard Dawkins is atheists' Glorious Leader is that they can;t or won't think for themselves, they have to have a shaman-figure to tell them what to do, so they can't accept the possibility that other people don't need a Glorious Leader in human form any more than they need an imaginary friend.

BonnetwithPosie · 12/04/2011 10:33

Exactly SGB, and the reason some atheists get arsey is that it is so very tiring arguing with the faith-ridden.

DuelingFanjo · 12/04/2011 10:50

never heard of DAwkins until about 10 years ago but then I am reluctant to describe myself as an atheist these days as people out there do seem to have a very strange view of what one is.

larrygrylls · 12/04/2011 11:07

Bonnet,

Well, exactly!

You don't need to have a degree in theology to believe in God as faith is a belief that cannot be backed by science, as it goes beyond the knowable. On the other hand, accepting a scientific proof without understanding (at least the basics of) the science is also just an item of faith, it is not scientific.

By the way, I personally do not have faith. Wish I did but I don't. On the other hand, I am a scientist (well, that was what I studied) and I am aware of what science does or does not claim for itself.

BonnetwithPosie · 12/04/2011 11:10

larry, isn't that what I said "if any 'faith' is required for atheism it is faith in science"

exoticfruits · 12/04/2011 11:14

I genuinely believe that faith is a personal choice and must be arrived at through personal choice.

Exactly-my only point. We have all these posts and the one thing you can be absolutely sure of is that your DCs will think the same -no one arrives at faith or lack of it 'because mother says so'!