Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU for not wanting my MIL to discuss Jesus and heaven with my 5 year old?

999 replies

Spearshake · 04/08/2015 13:29

I was just having breakfast with my 5 year old son and he asked me, 'do only people who love Jesus go to heaven?; I asked him who told you that.
Unfortunately, my tone must have been a bit sharp (hey, first thing in the morning) so he said, 'I don't know'

(I know it's his grandma though (my MIL) because she has been staying with us for the last week and we haven't been in contact with anyone else who is likely to make such comments) Unless he has been on the evangelical channels again

The problem is that I am an atheist, so I have a tough time with such discussions. He asked me what God is the other day, and I asked him to wait until his father gets home and he can answer (he was brought up more religiously than me)

Any ideas from fellow mumsnetters of a similar religious (or non-) bent on how to deal with such ideas would be most welcome.

Thank you!

OP posts:
fourtothedozen · 05/08/2015 20:38

Twunk- sounds idyllic.

LemonCream · 05/08/2015 20:39

Somebody's going to pop up in a minute and explain what caused the big bang, right?

I doubt it, because no one knows. Scientists and atheists will say "Don't know" when asked.

Unlike the Christian who claims they DO know....God dunnit....but are completely unable to to provide even the merest whisper of evidence.

keepitsimple0 · 05/08/2015 20:42

This hasn't especially been intentional but as we are both atheist parents it simply doesn't feature on our radar.

we are in the same boat. my kids understanding of god is that other people think that there is some guy in the sky. But I don't feel like I have anything to hide. When asked, I tell them about these things to the best of my ability. They ask who jesus was (I live in the theocracy known as England, so they get this in state schools) and I tell them.

but other than a few questions here and there, god doesn't really rear his head in our house, and I would object to other adults talking to my kids about god. But as I said above, I don't think hell is something I want people talking to my kids about. Hell is pretty scary.

LemonCream · 05/08/2015 20:42

Dora

I know someone else has raised this with you....but do you understand what an Argument from Ignorance is?

From WIKI

Argument from ignorance (Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance stands for "lack of evidence to the contrary"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to prove the proposition satisfactorily to be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four,

true
false
unknown between true or false
being unknowable (among the first three).[1]
In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used in an attempt to shift the burden of proof.

It's just that everything you say is based on this very common fallacy, and it's not a very intelligent way to discuss anything.

keepitsimple0 · 05/08/2015 20:46

Somebody's going to pop up in a minute and explain what caused the big bang, right?

there are many questions about the big bang that are unanswered, for example the precise physics behind it, how it started etc. But i think the scientific consensus on the answer to your question is a big "dunno", which is perfectly fine. there are some things that we don't know yet.

noblegiraffe · 05/08/2015 20:47

We don't need a God of the Gaps.

Twunk · 05/08/2015 20:49

Not knowing something doesn't mean "god did it" is the alternative. Though I appreciate this thread has made that point many times already. It's fine not to know. Not knowing leaves questions to answer which is exciting and interesting. I don't actually personally have the levels of knowledge of each individual scientist but I understand that their respective efforts have lead to great discoveries and inventions. Humans are in many ways pretty amazing as a species - the way we cooperate to achieve so much. Who needs a god?

DoraGora · 05/08/2015 20:49

Pesky little buggers, these Christians, always poking around in the unknowable. Somebody ought to sort this God business out once and for all.

noblegiraffe · 05/08/2015 20:53

The God of the Old Testament lived up a mountain. He has retreated further and further back out of reach as science has left him fewer places to hide.

StitchingMoss · 05/08/2015 20:54

It pretty much has been sorted out once and for all, Dora, there's just a bit of catch up going on.

LemonCream · 05/08/2015 20:55

Pesky little buggers, these Christians, always poking around in the unknowable

A) Who says it's unknowable and b) if it is, why are Christians pretending to know the unknowable?

TTWK · 05/08/2015 21:09

This thread just makes me realise that you cannot reason with religious people, because if you could, there wouldn't be any.

And Tarashill, your grasp of probability and applying it retrospectively to show that our existence can't be an accident is not up to 11+ standards. A shocking lack of understanding in a grown adult.

DoraGora · 05/08/2015 21:27

I wouldn't have said that reasoning was the problem. I'd put it down to atheists having no answers to the questions that I most need answers to, coupled with an unpleasant debating style and topped off with having nothing of interest to say to me.

ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba · 05/08/2015 21:28

TTWK

you can not reason with religious people

reason, facts, logic are not everything. not all there is.
you can't expect all of life's questions to be explained

you don't know why for some people the same disease is curable for others it's not. doctors can't assure you 100 percent what the outcome of any given surgery will be.
there's always an element of the unknown - logic and cause & effect just don't always work

again, it all comes down to faith, trust, believing - whatever we want to call it - that some people accept the existence of God as the truth.

if I said I had 10 children, would you believe me?
or would you ask for proof?
so what if I can prove it?
I can show you all the evidence - from scans to birth certificates to DNA test results, whatever you want, that they are mine, photos and school reports, admission forms with our address on etc etc.
Would you believe me then?
or would you still think I could fake papers, photoshop pictures, pay people off to lie to you?
after all it could be a conspiracy...I might be in witness protection or hiding a criminal organisation or whatever and every piece of evidence is fake, backed up by lies upon lies created to fool you.
what would convince you that I'm telling the truth?
I think nothing.
At the end you would have to choose to either believe me or not.

and if I couldn't show you any proof would you automatically assume I'm lying?
as I said it all comes down to what you want to believe, whether you can trust and have faith

BertrandRussell · 05/08/2015 21:32

"I wouldn't have said that reasoning was the problem. I'd put it down to atheists having no answers to the questions that I most need answers to, coupled with an unpleasant debating style and topped off with having nothing of interest to say to me."

Gosh. What sort of questions do you want want answers to?

AlanPacino · 05/08/2015 21:41

at the end you would have to choose

But you're not claiming that I will have eternal life if I believe you have 4 children so it's inconsequential. Also, jesus was happy to perform miracles first hand to people to prove his claim to deity, but not now. If I said I could fly when would you believe me?

SmillasSenseOfSnow · 05/08/2015 21:41

I think with the arrival of Zing we've turned the level of delusion up a notch. Unless she's just insisted on not reading the thread so she doesn't realise how utterly stupid her arguments sound in the context.

AlanPacino · 05/08/2015 21:42

at the end you would have to choose

But you're not claiming that I will have eternal life if I believe you have 4 children so it's inconsequential. Also, jesus was happy to perform miracles first hand to people to prove his claim to deity, but not now. If I said I could fly when would you believe me?

SmillasSenseOfSnow · 05/08/2015 21:44

And what if you are a Christian Scientist bringing up your child in the belief that all medicine is wrong and refusing them a doctor?

I'll point out that apparently Christian Science doesn't actively prohibit medical treatment, though the children of Christian Scientists are of course at their mercy.

Apparently when one of our two kittens got run over my father refused to take it to the vet, instead praying for it in the garage until it died.

I also never got my MMR jabs. Surprisingly enough, I have had both rubella and mumps. I had a measles jab with everyone else in Year 2 so that might have prevented me completing the set.

LemonCream · 05/08/2015 21:45

if I said I had 10 children, would you believe me?

Yes.

If you said "I know who created the universe and it was my god"...not so much. For that I'd want evidence.

Mehitabel6 · 05/08/2015 21:49

However there are no secular state schools in UK and so it will come up. It will be far less interesting if they have already come across it -so MIL answering questions is quite a useful way into discussions.

Mehitabel6 · 05/08/2015 21:51

Why should I believe that you had 10 children? Confused
I don't know you, I am never going to meet you so you can say whatever you like.

LemonCream · 05/08/2015 21:51

I'll point out that apparently Christian Science doesn't actively prohibit medical treatment

I read that and thought you might be mistaken, so Googled...and you're right. No actual prohibition but just the belief that prayer alone is best. Is that right?

Even more shocking then if they could actually have gotten help but didn't.

Sorry to hear about your faith-addled childhood, but very glad you swam to the surface all by yourself Smile

SmillasSenseOfSnow · 05/08/2015 22:01

No actual prohibition but just the belief that prayer alone is best. Is that right?

I think it's more that they don't believe in illness, so why would they think that medical treatment would do anything for anyone? So any Christian Scientist that sought medical treatment would be being somewhat sensible but not quite following what their beliefs are supposed to be about.

However an awful lot of the 'customers' of Christian Science Practitioners seem to not quite be Christian Scientists themselves in the same way, so they might well be choosing to receive medical treatment as well. I don't think there's generally any belief that one 'interferes' with the other in the sense I think is implied in your wording.

But yes, it's all bollocks.

keepitsimple0 · 05/08/2015 22:05

I'd put it down to atheists having no answers to the questions that I most need answers to

we can give you answers, but does it matter if they are correct and truthful statements about the world? Because for many things the best and honest answer is I/we don't know. if the truth matters, then sometimes that's the best answer.

coupled with an unpleasant debating style

I'll be the first to admit that some people have used unpleasant words. If I had to explain it, it partly comes from frustration (which I don't think is a good defence). In your case, there were a few pages where it appeared you were having a debate with yourself (concerning whether science can prove the non-existence of god), since no one was taking the position you seemed to claim was being taken.

you don't know why for some people the same disease is curable for others it's not.

if I said I don't, do you?