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?

God said cut the boy and let him bleed to death. Abraham said "ok" and went to fetch a knife.

His willingness to go through with it is seen as proof of his godliness.

if you believe god exists then clearly he is a sick fuck too, but since I don't to me it was just abraham (or whoever made up the story) who was the sick one.

Now that would just be ancient history, but people carry around this book which praises abraham for his willingness to murder a child and with the book in their hand they say that they are the experts on morals and that they get it from this book.

No amount of wriggling will get away from it being a vile and despicable story. If you enacted it now and tried to tell the court it was a test of faith you'd be rightly locked away for it.

hands up anyone who thinks Abraham's actions were good and decent.

Can i just point out that people on here are quoting the Jewsish faith not christian Its the new testement that christians belive in the first is jewish
and none of it is condeemed

I think the unicorn experiment is designed to perpetuate the blind acceptance by children of things they are told by adults or authority figures.

I've no idea how you arrive at that conclusion. The adults set up a scenario which the children are supposed to challenge. Its a thought experiment... it can't work unless the children think.

Since you are so well informed about all things biblical, you've probably already read this. Though I am not familiar with the sheet lowered from the sky filled with all kinds of animals referred to as part of Paul's epiphany, I agree with this statement, 'Even when we believe the Scriptures are "infallible" or "without error," it's terribly dangerous to think that our understanding of every biblical text is also without error. We are human. We are fallible. And we can misunderstand and misinterpret these ancient words'. I don't know what bits you may have read, Onagar.

As the author insists, the Bible is about God.

(Nothing in the Bible gives anyone permission to abuse children, btw)

Not me Onagar. Abraham's willingness to kill his own son at the command of God is rewarded by the promises of prolific reproduction, victory and control over enemies and abundant wealth. God's demand is for blind, unthinking and total obedience and when Abraham shows he is willing to do that, even to the point of killing his own son as sacrifice in proof of his obedience, God then shows 'mercy'.

I would be fascinated to know what this story tells those who have faith, apart from blind obedience will be rewarded?

It is a carefully chosen analogy, Grimma. Most children above a certain age do not believe in unicorns. The analogy between God and the unicorn is set up to steer children into thinking that one invisible thing is the same as another. It also invites a sort of groupthink phenomenon, since consideration of the invisible unicorn happens in a group. I don't see the exercise as in any way different from a teacher in a school teaching the seven times tables.

A belief in God and Christ is not the same as swallowing the Bible whole without question.

Happy4eva, the Catholic bible contains both the New Testament and the Old Testament. Same goes for other Christian denominations. Same God.

Happy4eva Jesus places his teaching firmly in the context of the Old Testament, he quotes OT scripture and he also refers to 'The Law' (Commandments received via Moses). The OT is very much part of the Christian faith surely? Are there Christians who would say otherwise, despite all the references in the Gospels of Jesus referring to his ministry in the context of the Old Testament?

fatlazymummy Sun 19-Jun-11 14:01:37
I like the term 'non religious' rather than atheist.
Camps, schools, etc should all be religion free by definition. If people want religion to be involved then they should be able to choose hose that are specified as religious. In other words 'non religious' should be the default setting. People should be free to 'opt into ' religion but not have to 'opt out' of it.

What FLM said. This would represent equal and two-way tolerance between the religious and non-religious for me.

onegar - you've been spying on me otherwise how did you know I don't follow tha Albert Rabbits cult?

The way in which we interpret the bible is important and tricky. There are certainly bits of it that I don't understand. I think with Abraham and Isaac God is showing that he can be trusted and should be obeyed even if his plans don't make sense to us. God had promised Abraham that he would have many descendents and by telling him to sacrifice Isaac some Christians believe that Abraham had to believe that God would bring Isaac back to fufil his promise to him. Abraham thought that he and his wife Sarah were unable to have children so having Isaac gave Abraham a lot of faith in God. Some people believe that Isaac was a teenager or even as old and 37 when the 'sacrifice' took place, not that that makes much difference as he was still Abraham's 'child' but he may have had more of an awareness of what was going on if he was older.

Happy4eva- Christians use both the old and new testement. Jewish people use the beginning of the Old testement (I think) but don't use the new testement.

I don't know what bits you may have read, Onagar.

I have read it all math. I spent many years studying it. The mistake you probably made was reading the bits that they suggested at sunday school.

I went to your link. I'm afraid that after waffling on for ages he just says that it doesn't apply to this day and age. Not a very helpful conclusion since we are talking about people using the book as a guide to morality and at least some claiming it is the word of god.

happy4eva, I am speaking of the old testament and you will find most Christians have a copy of the whole bible. Some will try and distance themselves from the old testament, but there is a fatal flaw in those attempts.

Christians believe Christ to be the son of the god of the old testament (or actually an aspect of him). Therefore they cannot ignore the actions of this God or the things he says. Some claim the whole OT is fictional but then try and say that the OT proves Christ was god etc. They tie themselves in knots over this, but at the end of the day they need the OT or all they have is some carpenter's son who said some things once and then got executed as a troublemaker.

This has gone way off topic. The reason it did is that I was explaining why I (and some others) are unhappy about religion. People have said to me that we make a lot of fuss over it and that religion is harmless and nice.

So I was explaining that to some of us religion is not 'nice' at all and that's why we don't want it imposed on us.

It's not about convincing Christians that religion is bad. It's about convincing Christians that it's bad to us. Because if you know we feel that strongly about it you will naturally not want to push it onto us right?

I agree Ihavewellies religious exegesis has a lot of hurdles to overcome, ranging from practicalities such as translation (Aramaic/Greek/Hebrew etc) through to how the books of what we consider to be the Bible today were chosen from the many in circulation at the time. It wasn't until almost 400 years after the birth of Christ that the early church picked the 66 books they thought should be the Canon. Many were rejected.

Do we know what the criteria was for selecting which books should be believed as from God and why others were rejected? - the Song of Solomon always puzzles me, as does the Book of Revelation.

Ihavewelliesbuttheyrenotgreen, sorry but it comes down to this. Suppose you feel tomorrow that god wants you to tie someone up and kill him. If you are saying that you would do it because you trust god to stop it or to bring the victim back from the dead then you should probably report yourself to your local police and ask to be taken into custody.

If you are saying (I hope this is the case) that you would do no such thing then you agree with me that the incident in the book is a bad moral influence not a good one.

Never went to Sunday school. Maybe that's my problem. It's not a Catholic thing. The point the author was making was that Christians should move on (and most have moved on) from literal interpretations, should actually read the Bible, etc. Strange how you seem to have missed that.

You are really, really good at setting up straw men, putting words in people's mouths, saying what Christians believe and don't, Onagar. And there is the very obvious paranoia.

To state my poiint another way, since you seem to have missed my point earlier -- 'Even when we believe the Scriptures are "fallible" or "a load of claptrap," it's terribly dangerous to think that our understanding of every biblical text is also without error. We are human. We are fallible. And we can misunderstand and misinterpret these ancient words'

Ihavewellies, Yes the Jews use the Penteteuch (first 5 books of OT) The OT is seperated in many different parts so it is impossible to just regard it as a whole and disregard it based on a few stories we don't like. I would be interested to know what you actually studied (those of you who profess to have 'read and studied it all') If you have read and studied even part of it you would be coming up with much more convincing arguments.

The OT is the jewish book though for the jews did not belive in jesus as the son of god thats how the new (christian) tment was made..
But anyway people can look at any faith and will not understand it so it is a losing battle .

The question about the camp i dnt really understand as it is not a NO GOD camp lol it looks like a activity camp ? or have a misread it?

I would never describe religion as 'nice' Onager. Its challenging, its difficult, its tiring, it involves thinking a lot and making difficult decisions. It involves being nice to people you don't want to be nice to be, it involves accepting things about yourselves that you'd rather not and it involves taking risks. Its not all about Church fetes and choirs, I can't sing and I went to my first 'fete' last week despite attending Church for over 20 years. As CS lewis says in the Narnia books (I think the Lion, the witch and the wardrobe) Aslan (Jesus) isn't safe but he is good. Read some CS Lewis if you haven't already he doesn't waffle, I should actually read him properly.

What many people forget is that these books were written in a certain social context against a hugely different background to our society today. I agree that people who take it literally need to begin to apply it to our current age. Just as Enid Blytons books or Shakeperes ahve been adapted. Humans were created with brains to work things out for ourselves and to use the books with inteligence.

Onegar, I would be extremely surprised if you have 'read it all' and still can't understand that the new law (the new testament) came to replace the 'old law' Meaning that when Christ came to earth he made the sacrifice for humans which meant that the Jewish laws no longer had their place as he had already made that sacrice himself. We need the old testament for prophesies relating to the New testament, historical background and to learn about the Jewish tradition so we could understand where these people were coming from.

I think Onager that Abraham's situation was different to mine both in terms of his relationship with God and the culture he lived in. Death I think was viewed differently and descendents/tribes etc were more important. Also sacrifice (of animals) played in a big role in people's lives where as now we have no sacrifice (essentially for Christians because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice. Sorry if that is a bit of a cop-out answer but I think that it is not neccessarily right to make direct and literal comparisons between events in the bible and events today. It is important to consider context.. An example today of following God despite his plans seeming crazy might be taking a much lower paid job or moving far away to a new place to do God's work.

Exactly Ihavewellies, It was about sacrifice and our sacrifice was Christ so we no longer were required to perform those acts.

I still think that the Abraham/Isaac story still has something to teach us today, its just that context is important.

I think all the books do if we remember to keep it in context.
I used to find it really interesting just from a historic point of view as there are a lot of records in there that have been affirmed by other texts of the same period.