to think DH is taking his atheism a bit too far?

[glassspider]

My son will soon be three years old and happily repeats phrases such as please, thank you, excuse me, when appropriate. When somebody sneezes, he also says "bless you," the way his relatives and most people with whom he has come into contact have said to him in the past.

My husband is an atheist and dislikes any form of religion or celebration of religious belief such as saints days, church ceremonies, anything like that, which I'm fine with. But he is telling our son it is bad to say "bless you" and we always say "gesundheit" instead. Is this not going to cause a lot of unnecessary confusion and bad feeling over a little phrase which will probably be said to him quite a lot throughout his life, and won't kill him?!

I guess if you're going to be an atheist, do it properly and according to what is right for you, just as followers of religions do. I just think small terms found in religion are such a part of life and culture that it will be impossible for DS to avoid them and to try and bar them all from his life will be more bother than it's really worth! AIBU?

So you wouldn't disagree with a religious person doing the same? After all, some say they know their beliefs are the truth.........

"I disagree with the person who criticised the parents for "indoctrinating" their child with aetheism. It's teaching the child the truth - how can that ever be wrong?"

Sounds like your dh is of the anti-theist school of atheism. I think if he is saying to your ds that "bless you" is bad that's a problem, but if he is saying that he doesn't like to hear your ds saying it and giving him an alternative I don't think that's particularly wicked. In any case when your dh isn't there your ds will probably say "bless you" in any case, as most children pick up the idea of words for home and those for elsewhere pretty early (swearing in the playground probably being the best example of this).

My parents were very religious and we were told off pretty sharpish for any blaspheming, including using "for god's sake", "hell", even "damn" - really anything Christianity related. But we all swore at school in our attempts to fit in (although it was a Catholic school, so no one swore too loudly ).

dh knows when I am really cross because I start using words like "rats" and "drat" early social conditioning does have a tendency to stick IMO.

Religious people do teach their children that their religion is the truth. If your relationship with God is the centre of your life how could you not teach your child that belief is the foundation of everything?

You might go into more nuances as they grow older if doubt is an important part of your world view too, but when they are small and you take them to church, pray with them etc there aren't too many maybes involved.

NB I'm an atheist, but know some very religious people, including my sister and BIL - the former is ordained and the later just accepted for training. They are of the more of the literal school. My mother is a lay preacher, and more of the struggle with doubt persuasion, but she only talks about that when she tries to persuade me that doubt is no block to faith (missing out the understanding that I don't actually want to believe, and it's not a matter of doubt really).

Bingtata- aw bless (oops...!!)

Hey, does he also object to DS saying 'Goodbye' which comes from 'God be with you' Maybe he should be saying au revoir, certainly not adieu or adios which mean the same as goodbye

I don't think anyone sits their small child down and tells them solemnly, "What we believe is the truth and everyone else is wrong". A parent may believe it's the truth, but usually what religious parents do is bring their children to church occasionally, maybe send them to a religious-sponsored school, and try to introduce them to prayers, tell the Christmas story in the case of Christians -- i.e. aspects of religious practice and religious stories their child can take in/ sit through without too much bother for anyone, and relate to (story of baby Jesus) with no dogmatic pronouncements.

Misguided, heavy-handed zeal usually backfires. Very surprised to hear of anyone trying it. It doesn't work if you're trying to get your child to stop swearing either. The more attention you give a child who repeats curses and swearwords he's picked up, the more likely the child is to push your buttons and try it.

YANBU. Bless you is just a phrase.

I don't think that families who take their child to church every now and then are very religious. Families where their faith is really important have that at the heart of everything they do. It doesn't need to be zealous necessarily, just a fundamental part of who they are.

I wouldn't have said that my parents were zealous, but we always went to church, and we always said prayers, had lots of religious story books (mostly about parables, some about Saints) it was just how things were. Christmas and Easter were religious events first and foremost. It certainly wasn't just when it wasn't much bother (that seems very half hearted to me). As children we believed in it all implicitly. There was some dogma, I suppose, in that when we asked about how the world was made, what happened when you die etc, then we would have a religious answer (not creationism because my parents ware fairly middle of the road in their beliefs). I know plenty of families who bring their children up like this.

Oh, and their approach to swearing was very effective. It took me a long time before I could really swear properly, and I still use the silly replacement words when I am really stressed - dh says the same about the words that were considered OK in his childhood household (all of which would have been blasphemous in my home - I almost think I would have got in less trouble for swearing with "fuck" than "Jesus", not that I would dream of saying either in my parents hearing).

hmm, what a strange phobia. It smacks of Mary Whitehouse to me, or those radical Muslim nations that ban American TV in case it corrupts the young.

You can be atheist and not care less about religion, or you can be an obsessive atheist frightened that somebody saying 'bless you' (not even 'god bless you') will turn you into a raving bible-basher.

Very strange indeed.

I feel rude if i dont say bless you!

"attchooo"......

SILENCE!!!!

lol i'm not religious just grew up hearing it, i dont think of it in a religious way when some 1 says it to me, just think its something that should be said, like "thank you" when some one holds a door open for you(or yelling "ure welcome" after them if they dont say it!)

If he does not believe in any religion or their teachings, saying Bless you' should have no meaning?

OMG I was just wondering about the same thing this afternoon... we mums are a bunch of nutties, uh? ;) Anyway, I'm Spanish, so we also say "Salud" instead of "Jesus", which is what most people would say.

I know it's German, but can't you say "Gesundheit" in English as well?

Oh sorry, I didn't read it was your husband and not you who worried about such things! LOL

I think it's OK to both be an atheist and understand the huge role that religion has had in the culture of this country, not just in language but just in the way we think. We have a Judeo-Christian legal culture, for example. So much is so deeply ingrained we don't even notice it's there, so a pretty hopeless task trying to root it all out, even if it was worth doing.

Parenthetically, I also think it's fine to be an atheist and be very grateful that other people's belief in God has produced so much of beauty. Living in Ireland made me very anti-religious, but an awful lot of my favourite music is to the glory of God.

It just seems a bit ignorant to me to be making a fuss about saying bless you. It's not really any different to saying Gesundheit (without the power of God making giving you health, there would be no point in saying it, I guess. Except I do say bless you - if nothing else it's a get well soon).

BTW I don't know if it's been said before, but at least in Spain, they used to say "Jesus" because people thought that everytime you sneezed, it was your soul trying to get out of your body... that was the way to get it back into its place.

Ummm... if your DH is really an atheist how can he say anything is "bad"? Surely for a truely hardcore atheist there is no bad or good, merely well adapted to circumstances or badly adapted to circumstances?

In which case, since many religious groups breed faster doesn't that make them "better" in a genetic / Dawkins sense anyway?

One of the reasons that I started investigating christianity (from an agnostic / atheist background) was the dawning realisation about what my fairly hardcore Darwinist beliefs about reproductive success and ambition to become mitochondrial eve meant. I concluded to be true to my beliefs i should be having a baby every 9 months to a different father every time, and getting them adopted by a range of different families, thus ensuring they survived and used up other people's resources allowing me to continue to breed! Oh and I should have been an egg donor too for the same reasons. In a modern society with a welfare state and adoptive parents queueing up to get newborns, our desire to love and raise our babies ourselves is just an outdated hormonal "appendix" which should be overcome by our logical reasoning, right?

Havent read whole thread but how can you avoid all religious words, celebrations etc ?

We live in the year 2010, as in 2010 years since Jesus was born, and arent the days of the week named after the planets but also the planetry gods? Thor for Thursday etc

Don't mean to sound ignorant but what's the difference between aetheist and agnostic? one means you believe in certain things but dont belong to any particular religion, and the other means you dont believe in anything at all, right?

Anyway telling your child not to say something is one thing, but telling them it's bad to say it is a whole other belief, it kind of judges those who do say it.

Agnostic is someone who believes that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not or is sceptical about it- it's kind of like being an absteiner in the debate.

eg The agnostic, dyslexic insomniac who lay awake all night wondering if there really is a Dog.

Atheist means non- believer- i.e. believes that God doesnt exist.

No, atheists don't "believe" there is no god. They just don't believe that there are god(s).

It is also perfectly possible to think that things are bad without having to have religion. I don't know any atheists in RL who could e said to have "Darwinist beliefs". they might think that evolution explains many things, but that doesn't mean an abdication of ethical thinking.

Um, sorry, I dont see the difference between

"Believing there is no God" and "Not believing there is a God." Am I being thick or isn't that just putting the negative in a different place in the sentence?

Like

I don't drink alcohol

I drink no alcohol

Same difference

(I do btw)

nooka wrote:

"It is also perfectly possible to think that things are bad without having to have religion. I don't know any atheists in RL who could e said to have "Darwinist beliefs". they might think that evolution explains many things, but that doesn't mean an abdication of ethical thinking."

It is possible for atheists to make moral statements, but it is difficult to make those moral statements applicable to third parties. If the highest authority you have is human opinion, then how can your moral judgement overrule a contrary moral judgement of someone else?

MichaelaS's point about the logical conclusions of a scientific approach to ethics is entirely justified. Some atheists, e.g. Sam Harris, have recognised that without an external authority to human opinion there is no possibility of shared morality. To overcome this without invoking a concept analagous to God they posit science as the higher moral authority. Unfortunately this means that you end up with a principle of the survival of the gene as the highest moral good, consequently you end up in an extremist pro-life position (no contraception, no abortion and enforced reproduction to ensure maximum gene replication, etc.).

So to have an ethical system which is stronger than mere human opinion and doesn't lead to an extremist pro-life position you need a higher authority. While this is suggestive of some higher intelligence interested in human action, which sounds suspiciously like God, it is not of its self a validation of any particular ethical system (religious or otherwise). It could be that this God exists but we have yet to work out what her will for our actions is.

baggedandtagged

would you say that one of your beliefs is that there is no unicorn in stubbornhubby's garage.

that's the differece. becasue of course it is not one of your beliefs (it had never even occured to you).

and now that i have mentioned my unicorn, of course you don't believe in it.

but that's the point - you don't believe in it. it would be wrong to say that, now, you have a 'belief'

But baggedandtagged does agree with the statement "there are no unicorns in stubbornhubby's garage". And that is a belief statement.

Just because it was an unexamined belief prior to your question about unicorns does not make it an invalid statement once you ask about the existence of unicorns.

And most people who don't believe there is a God are fully aware of the question "is there a God", of which two valid responses are "I believe God exists" and "I do not believe that God exists".

So I am not sure I fully understand your example. I don't think it demonstrates that "I don't believe that there is a god" is a different form of statement to "I believe that there is a god".

I think you are using 'belief' interchangably with opinion or view.
Indeed a lot of the time in common speech the words probably are interchangable.

But I think when people talk about atheism being a Belief, with a captiatl B, and it being somehow on a par with a religious Belief then I think the term is misused.

I think in this context a 'Belief' is a self-conscious positive thing, it's a faith, its soemthing you hold to be true in the face of the evidence against it, or despite there being no actual evidence.

So I actually do have a Belief about my unicorn (I do have one, he's invisible, but he is there). I don't think your belief in her non-existence is the same thing. Your view is that there is no unicorn, it's just soemthing i have invented for the benefit of making an argument on mumsnet. You don't believe me. That's not a Belief. it's disbelief.

NB I have actually got a unicorn.