to think that some non-religious parents over-react just a teensy-weensy bit when their children are exposed to religion in the most benign form?

[SueBarooeeooeeooooo]

s'ok if I am. But threads complaining about this sort of thing are a regular MN feature, and I can't help thinking that some parents seem tremendously precious about it. We're Christians and it often comes up that not everyone believes the way we do, and I talk to my children about it and they wander off and scribble on the lounge walls again.

I've seen people complaining about Christian mums and tots groups, simple 'thankyou' prayers and christian charities. I am 100% ok with you bringing your children up atheist, theist, or chocolate-worshipping. Honestly, if I whipped myself up into a panic over every mention of different beliefs or none that my children encounter, I'd never get anything done.

(Please note, this is not a church schools whinge, I'm against selection on religious grounds.)

nice grid
I would add to that "requirement for Christian daily worship in schools."

I'd be delighted if Dawkins never uttered a single word about theology or god or religion ever again.

If, in return, leading theologians offered never to utter a single word again about science.

Although because I'd define "science" as "asking questions about the entire bloody universe and formulating theories as to how it might work", this could result in a lot of ecclesiastical tongue-biting.

Send the blog over, Sue. It's a beautiful day. I'm not scared.

Oh, I definitely agree about the requirement for Christian worship. It's just a training ground for pointless religion for show. Daft.

Not all 'religious' support the idea of faith school UQD. I don't. So I would be , not on your grid -thing.

but the Bible is just full of people [and Christ] trying to explain what God is. So yes I would say much of the Bible is metaphorical.

ruty do you personally believe God is a metaphor, sorry didn't quite get that from post.

And is it a metaphor? If the origins of something are unexplained, and then God is put forward as the creator of it all, then surely you are not presenting a metaphor but an Answer.
Too literal?

Have you read any theology lately UD? Because most of it has no problem with science whatsoever.

sorry i meant God the word is a metaphor for something we cannot explain. As are all the other words to explain it. Someone [can't remember who] said we understand God like a dog understands quantum physics. that kind of sums it up for me.

or God in his/her varous guises is a metaphor...

www.centuri0n.blogspot.com/

and so you believe in god because..? sorry to sound snippy again but just don't get this leap and never have.

well I believe in the message Christ taught. I believe he was the Messiah in terms of, if every body followed his teachings, the world would be kingdom of heaven on earth. I am agnostic in the sense I sometimes feel strongly that there is a spiritual life that unites us and then sometimes I just think it is imagination. But I think God and science are inextricably interlinked rather than mutually exclusive, and find scientists who have a Faith or an open mind very interesting.

Ruty... I'm happy enough to go with the word 'God' being a metaphor. It enables me, just about, to sing All Things Bright and Beautiful

Unfortunately thats not how most people who actually believe in God see it. Christians in general believe he is a real entity who had a son in the (more or less) historical person of Jesus who was God Incarnate. (an even less explicable explanation for the things we can't explain IMO. I'm happy with 'we don't know yet')

Quite different from e.g Buddhist 'deities' which are clearly metaphors.

but Ruty that means you take it as given that the kingdom of god already exists. which is the bit i don't get.

sticks up hand

me, miss, me!! I believes in an actual entity!

Oh, and I agree with this, Ruty -

But I think God and science are inextricably interlinked rather than mutually exclusive, and find scientists who have a Faith or an open mind very interesting.

ruty - do worship and belief go hand-in-hand for you? i.e. to believe in a god is automatically to worship him? This would be a big stumbling block for me. I just don't do "worship". I think of all the things I do believe in and the people I care for and I don't "worship" any of them. Not even DW!!

My mother always says - as if it is some sort of all-conquering trump-card - "but wouldn't the world better if everyone tried to be like Jesus?" Well, maybe, but there are other role-models you can have. And you can believe in Jesus as a historical figure and think that most of what he said was quite sensible, but without thinking of him as the son of a god, or thinking of any of it as being "divinely" inspired. Because I simply don't have a personal concept of the "divine".

Sue and Ruty - i don't find it odd that Scientists can have a faith in the slightest bit odd just as I wouldn't if they smoked although they knew smoking wasn't good for you. (not analogy betw God and smoking lol but between religious and other choices!)

Faith is utterly personal.

That is one of the reasons that it shouldn't have anything to do with schools.

UQD, the hardy perennial CS Lewis had an interesting view of that. He initially thought of praise in terms of a compliment, but eventually, he thought it was a simple 'completing' of enjoying something.

I agree with you that the mere 'existence' of a God is not an automatic reason to praise. The Greeks never thought so. I see it less in terms of 'obligation', and more like, the more I understand about God and what I believe He has done, the more I enjoy Him, so it becomes natural to praise and encourage others to join you - just as you might look at your child and say 'Isn't she lovely?'

Sometimes I might look at my child and say 'Isn't she lovely?, but at other times I look at her and say "isn't she a screaming, flouncing, nasty litle brat?" As we probably all do...

You see, it doesn't work for me, as more knowledge and greater understanding of something usually leads to being more aware of its imperfections, not vice-versa.

worship isn't the same as praise!

Onebatmother, it is in the context of praising God. UQD wanted to know how I made the leap from believing in the existence of a God to then praising said Deity.

I used the child example as an analogy. UQD, I'd agree with you when it comes to praising human beings. I'll do what I very rarely do on this topic and say that in my experience () the more I've looked at it, the less imperfections and problems I've found.

I like to think I'm an open-minded scientist. I used to be religious ...it was much harder to be open-minded then because belief tends to be something of a self-reinforcing loop. But eventually a chink of doubt allowed my mind to open up to other possibilities and belief in god dropped right out!

Sue - thanks for the blog, and I have bookmarked it - but from an initial persual I can't seem to find what I am most interested in, which is what actually caused him to sit up one day and think "blimey, I'm wrong", and what he now feels about his former position.

I looked at the Statement of Faith but that doesn't really seem to do it. It's not his, for a start!!

I'm fascinated at the idea that any "hardline" atheist (and I'm far from hardline) could actually be drawn into a faith, as for me a lack of faith just seems like the logical end-point of reasoning. Going back to faith after spending years denouncing it requires you to ignore all the logical arguments you have made and weighing of evidence you have done. At least if you have always been a Christian you just have "faith" and never even went there.

It's a bit like the way a lawyer can't just try another person for a crime on the same evidence, as the point of all that evidence is to point towards one conclusion, that one person did it. A not guilty verdict on that person requires you to abandon every single scrap of evidence you may have spent years accumulating.