to ask if anyone has or would send their child to an atheist camp?

[Ihavewelliesbuttheyrenotgreen]

I am a Christian and have attended/volunteered on lots of Christian summner camps over the years. Mumsnet has opened my eyes a bit more to atheism and the choices that people face about religion etc when bringing up kids. Would anyone send their kids on one of these atheist camps and what would be your reasons?

No I was saying that in that article, the Dr quoted seemed to think children are more likely to believe in creation than evolution. Well yes as evolution would be too complex for a child to just randomly think of. That does not mean that children are born believing in God.
I find evolution fascinating, I still don't understand everything about it.

i find the 'children born believers' article..totally conjectural.

there is a psychological basis for having a faith...but that doesn't amount to a in-born belief in a supreme being (or, any being more supreme than ones own parents.)

i for one was born rather sceptical.

I suspect it depends on the age of the child and the context they are in. A child of about 10, who is living in an agricultural setting, will no doubt have an understanding of evolution happening in the present, because they can see it happening around them. I think it is a big jump from understanding evolution happening in the present and understanding how evolution work over long periods of time. A child of about 10 in a city might not observe much about evolution in the present because they don't have much opportunity to observe many parts of the natural world.

A child who is brought up visiting zoos and museum, and who loves books about dinosaurs and the solar system can easily understand evolution before school age.

(I'll try to come back tomorrow to answer the OPs question, need to go to bed now )

Grima, I think the point Cassie is making is about children thinking about evolution independently. Books about dinosaurs might explain something about how evolution works, but the child is being told that, not working it out for themselves. It would also be difficult to understand the evolution of dinosaurs, even for an adult, because you can't directly observe them or their environment. Zoos don't really give children an opportunity to observe evolution because the animals are kept in highly modified environments. The solar system hasn't really got anything to do with evolution at all.

'What is it about the word of God, ie The Bible, that means some you follow and some you don't. Where does it say you can do that?'

Answer = Free will

Hiddenhome, I agree there seems to be little actual knowledge and plenty of assumptions/ straw men on threads about religion.

Evolution takes place over thousands of years as far as I understood. I don't think you would see much of evolution on a farm either. You see the farmer applying scientific principles and the strictures of the EU. Nowadays you wouldn't even see much of animals mating, since a lot of it is done by AI.

Yes, Milly, quite right - I was responding (in a late night befuddled sort of way) to the end of the article:

"Children's normally and naturally developing minds make them prone to believe in divine creation and intelligent design. In contrast, evolution is unnatural for human minds; relatively difficult to believe."

• my DD didn't find it in the least bit unnatural. Or ever show any sign of believing in 'divine creation' (the space books are relevant to that, not evolution)

It sounds like a very flawed study: 'why the first bird existed' .... that very question implys intention, it primes for a 'design' answer. If you asked a 6 year old 'how did the first bird come to exist', a child raised on genesis might say 'god made it'; one raised on dinosaur books would be highly likely to say 'it evolved from dinosaurs'.

Mathanxiety, biological evolution simply means a change in allele beetween generations of a species. It does not take thousands of years - it happens to every generation. It is constantly happening in agriculture, not just in the domesticated species, but within the environment that they live in and have an impact on.

A lot of understanding how evolution happens is observing how animals survive within various habitats, how species are different and how changes in those habitats have an impact on those species. All of this can be observed by anyone living in a rural area, and more so by anyone who keeps farm animals.

It would be more reassuring to hear a child raised on dinosaur books answer, "There is a lot of evidence to suggest that birds evolved from dinosaurs" than to hear a pat answer. Or to say, 'Since evolution is a continuous process there wasn't ever such a thing as a first bird'.

And of course there would be those who would say it hatched from an egg.

(How many children are raised exclusively on Genesis or dinosaurs anyway?)

Sorry, a change in allele frequency

Tis true MillyR, but hardly observable to the naked eye -- and a lot of farm environments are a far cry from natural these days, with much of the impact of animals and the impact of weather and the environment on the animals mitigated by chemical interventions (which themselves are probably having an effect).

Of course it is observable to the naked eye! Most of the basics of evolution and ecology that are taught in secondary school have been observed by my children simply by keeping a dozen chickens.

I find attempts to entice children to any doctrine, whether it be Christianity, atheism or the great Zog, slightly disturbing to say the least. The similarities between Evangelist youth groups and this camp are striking, and its motivations are the same, however much they try to pass it off as "free-thinking". Thinking influenced by atheism is no freer than thinking influenced by religion.

ByTheBeardofZeus I viewed the whole Unicorn thing as being about applying and understanding logical reasoning/philosophical debating but Dawkins little rubber-stamp on it would put me off and does edge me closer to your view. 'Tis an atheist drop in the ocean though compared to swimming in the sea of religious indoctrination which surrounds us daily.

Some aspects of basic genetics can be observed by the naked eye of the average child on the average farm but allele frequency or genetic drift, etc., would take a bit of explaining and long term observation imo. Ecology, yes observable. Or maybe I am underestimating the amount of hard science there is in dinosaur books.

HellAtWork - "'Tis an atheist drop in the ocean though compared to swimming in the sea of religious indoctrination which surrounds us daily." That doesn't make it right. True humanism should be defending the rights of children as human beings to explore spirituality independent of all those that might influence them, which is not what this camp is promoting.

I like the idea of the camps. My daughter was involved with Brownies, and I confess I had no idea that there was any Judeo-Christian component to their activities until she was given the task of writing a prayer for christmas. Her offering was "Dear God - Let's party". A nice sentiment, and yes we did discuss what a god was and whether we could see any evidence or need for a god. As she was eight years old I didn't see a need to go into the "Dark Side" of the bible, but we did talk about how the bible came to be and how the stories were collected and how various theologists in power at various times had the power to include of exclude various bits as fitted the politics of the day. I never raised my daughter to be atheist, agnostic or theist. I simply raised her to have an enquiring mind and to be suitably sceptical of any line of thinking that seemed not to be supported by logic and evidence. As Carl Sagan wrote in Cosmos, "We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers."

Many believers seem pick and choose the bits that fit with their belief in a benevolent cosmic Jiminy Cricket sitting on their shoulder telling them how to live their life, but they push aside the incredibly nasty, self-centered egotistical deity who creates beings only to mandate perpetual worship from them and then punish them forever in diabolical ways if they don't comply. If we non believers don't avow a belief in their god and ask for more information or express disbleief then we're accused of being narrow-minded bullies. It's not my job to disprove the existence of a god, it's theirs to come up with evidence of the existence of their god. They often play the faith wildcard, saying that they have faith hence they're the final arbiter of the truth of the existence of their god, but to me if they play the faith wildcard they've just dropped out of the game.

Why does it matter? I think Dawkins summed the position well when he wrote: "The Enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America. I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organized ignorance. We even have to go out on the attack ourselves, for the sake of reason and sanity. Of course, excellent organizations already exist for raising funds and deploying them in service of reason, science and enlightenment values. But the money that these organizations can raise is dwarfed by the huge resources of religious foundations such as the Templeton Foundation, not to mention the tithe-bloated, tax-exempt churches." Richard Dawkins, quoted from the press release, ?The Cydonia Group Declares War On Religion? (December 15, 2006)

But what is your opinion based on? Genetic drift is monitored by farmers and they act on it to maintain diversity. Genetic drift is more observable in domestic species because the population size is smaller and so genetic drift happens much more rapidly. It is a major problem in keeping livestock. You don't need a long period of time to study it unless you are looking at a very large wild population.

Many changes in allele frequency are immediately observable between one generation and the next. Prior to neo-darwinian evolution, what was known about evolution had to be explained without reference to gene theory - it was based on observation of organisms in their habitats. Yet very little of what was previously known about evolution has been falsified by gene theory.

That is the beauty and appeal of Science - that it is an understanding of the natural world that we see every day, and a lot of teaching Science is getting children to use language accurately so that they can see more clearly the underlying principles. To get back on to the subject of the camp, the purpose of what they're doing is to get children to think about what they observe in nature, describe it accurately and then use those underlying principles to make models and predictions.

That then allows those children not to tell you that birds evolved from dinosaurs, or that birds perhaps evolved from dinosaurs, but to understand the actually theory of evolution which will allow them to explain why birds evolved at all. Children need to understand the process of evolution, because it is that process that some of them will need to work with in later life (and probably not on a farm); being able to repeat a fact that dinosaurs used to exist or that birds may have evolved from them is pretty meaningless. It is then comparable to fundamentalist religion - it is nothing more than a statement parroted from a book. What matters is that people understand the process and can observe that process happening so that they can understand and appreciate the world they live in.

My last post was to Mathanxiety.

I love science and have no issue with evolution and agree completely with the idea of a science camp that would enable the children to do what you advocate in your post, and ask lots of questions about the process to boot. I just think the average child would get very bored watching it all in action on a farm.

I also think the average child who goes to a religious run school or belongs to a family that believes in God would find him or herself quite conflicted by Camp Quest. I get the strong impression that science/evolution per se is not what Camp Quest is all about. A child would be left in a position of having to choose between the false antithesis of 'Religion' in the form of invisible unicorns on the one hand and 'Science' on the other. As has been mentioned upthread, there is not necessarily a contradiction inherent in belief in God and acceptance of scientific truths.

I wonder as a Catholic, why the smug invisible unicorn challenge is included in the camps. Science is for all, not just for atheists or secularists. Some of the other items on the prospective, including 'pseudoscience, astronomy, logical fallacies and much more!' make me wonder about the intellectual freedom of such a camp.

My DCs have enjoyed and benefited greatly from camps they attended in the US for G & T students that were truly secular (in the American sense of being non-denominational, which I consider a good working definition of the term) without the element of sneering, or imposition of a particular philosophy that seems to go along with this particular one. FWIW, the US site of Camp Quest is far more 'in your face' about promoting atheism than the UK page seems to be. Much more of a soft focus for the UK, whereas the US is unapologetically hard-edged. I would not send my own DCs either to the US or to the UK camps. It wouldn't be fair to them to place them in a position where they would feel uncomfortable. Sad to see the world of science co-opted in the service of 'the assertion of a universal negative' (Chesterton's phrase)

DD1 did Chess one year and Biology the next. DD2 did a Harry Potter-based creative writing and drama camp for her first year and The Oregon Trail the next. She wanted to do Robotics but that one filled up within minutes of registration opening.

I don't know if I would send my DS to this camp or not. I had a giggle at the link to the one in my state, where it had "Beekeeping" and "Over-Population" in the same activity list. :o I'm a Christian, but I believe in a secular society. I teach my DS that I believe in Jesus, etc, and that's my right. I would never dream of taking away someone's right to tell their children that they don't believe in the supernatural. Most camps here are just plain summer camps, AFAIK. You know, archery, swimming, trying to sneak over to the boys' side of the camp when the counselors are sleeping, etc.

I think the Unicorn Hunt bit is a bit smuggerific, though.

And (just to poke the bear :o) the more I learn about science, the more I believe in God, actually.

The point I was making about evolution was in pre school children, as that article was talking about children born understanding evolution.
And yes young children can understand evolution up to a point, my two children do, but it does need to be taught to be fully understood at a young age.

notredwellies i totally agree with your point at 21.57 I think it was