Why do some people find it hard to believe in God? Part 2

[notfluffyatall]

I don't think we've quite finished yet

I was trying to say on Part 1:

Sorry for the poor posting, I'm on my iphone again, I'm not good at this via iphone

Thanks for new thread NotFluffy.

I hate that whole 'well you have the choice to remove the child from religious worship in school' so what's the big deal, which is usually put forward by the sort of people who say 'well why would you want to send your child to a faith school anyway' (aaaaaaargh!).

It just shouldn't be an issue because religion has no place in schools where the intake is of a mixed community of religions, believers and non-believers. FWIW my DC's school hasn't shown much evidence of enforced worship so fortunately it hasn't been an issue for us as yet, but I'm not sure I'd remove them if they did. It would simply risk upsetting them and turn the whole thing into a big deal which could so easily be avoided.

sorry not 'religion has no place'

should be 'religious worship has no place'

Thanks for starting the new thread!

Heresiarch, there is absolutely no need to be that agnostic about the contexts of the Bible. We live in an age in which we have more information on the Bible's contexts that any other people have had at any other time in history.

We have the Dea Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi library, the Mishnah, Talmuds, the Jewish historians, we have early Christian documents like the Didache and all the other letters like those of Clement of Rome, we have martyr texts, we have a load of patristic texts which help us to know what the 'Bible' actually consisted of and how it was understood in the early years / centuries of Christianity, we have all sorts of documents from the ancient near east (like Ugaritic, Canaanite, Babylonian and Egyptian texts of all sorts), and a huge weight of Greco-Roman literature....just go and wander round the British Museum for a while if you want to start to apreciate the absolute wealth we now have of texts and artefacts that help us to understand the Bible.

You could choose to ignore all that say 'Well, this is what it means to me...', but that's somewhat anti-intellectual and, well, obtuse, really. If you'e not interested, fair enough - but the argument that the contexts of the Bible are unknowable and therefore subject to the whims of the each person is just wrong.

Absolutely. School is not the place for religious worship. Do it at home, in private, or in church, that way I can have my child completely unaffected by it for a bit longer.

For little kids I'm not even sure religious education should be a big deal. Maybe touch on it when talking about culture or geography but it really needs it's importance removed.

Notfluffyatall - I did not mean to get you all hot under the collar. :)
My partner totally agrees that they shouldn't do it in school but I guess because I did and grew up not religouse but I would like to think tolerant then it's not an issue for me personally.

The grace they say goes something like
Thank you for the food we eat
Thank you for the world so sweet
Thank you for the birds that sing
Thank you lord for everything

Partner hates it, I just think there is no harm in learning to be grateful for things and recognising its a wonderful world we live in regardless of how it came about.

In the playgroup they sing the going home song which asked the lord to keep them safe for the night. Little one is two and sings it. I'm not worried.

When my eldest was in playgroup we went on a trip to a farm/zoo in Bristol, this place is ran by evangelical Christians and all there were posters and information everywhere about how old the earth was and why humans didn't come from monkeys etc... Again didn't bother me was a lovely day out with lots for the kids to do... Her dad on the other hand was fuming. The worst bit for him was when they were doing the talk all about the different animals and they told the children that there was a cross mark on the back of the donkey to remind us of Jesus and how the donkey carried Mary. :)

I think I would rather my children come from a non religouse back ground and learn all sorts and have the freedoms to choose. If I told her what to think or limited what she learned then would I not be effectively forcing MY views on her?

Although think they may have been better off teaching me spelling in school :) sorry for mistakes

Hello again!

My bugbear with the way religion is presented in primary schools is that it's so one-sided. As HP said, 'nice stories' (or nasty ones like Noah with a positive spin). I remember seeing some infant work pinned up about what the Bible said - apparently 'Be kind to animals'. Er well not really, not sure where they'd got this sugar from, but clearly not the story (which is meant to be 'historyl' not parable) about the Gadarene swine. The presentation of religion as nice and good continues in assembly where they get a gentle wash of Creator God hymns - All Things Bright and Beautiful but never (my DD greatly enjoyed that when she came across it in an anthology!)

On grace - giving thanks is a good thing, but it should be appropriately directed. I think its rather rude to the cooks, farmers etc to give some supernatural being the credit. I worked out a secular version of the pretty grace I rememberd from my own childhood:

Give thanks for the food we eat
Give thanks for the world so sweet
Give thanks for the birds that sing
Give our thanks for all good things.

"I think I would rather my children come from a non religouse back ground and learn all sorts and have the freedoms to choose. If I told her what to think or limited what she learned then would I not be effectively forcing MY views on her?"

I agree that it's a hard judgement call to make, how much and when to expose them to religious views. I suppose I'm trying to tread the path of 'some people believe' and giving information while making it clear that nobody really knows whether that's right or not. But my DC are quite young still so it hasn't been too much of an issue so far.

I do know that the reason I feel so strongly about schools NOT imposing religious worship is because teachers are in a position of authority when it comes to giving children information, teaching them social norms etc, and IMO it's an abuse of authority to try and influence children to believe what the teachers believe when it comes to the subject of religion.

"Thank you for the food we eat
Thank you for the world so sweet
Thank you for the birds that sing
Thank you lord for everything"

Thank the cook for the food, maybe the farmer too but he is being payed for it. As for 'everything' NO, just no, there is no one or thing who requires thanking. Why is it ok for schools to tell kids there is?

And giving children the 'freedom to choose' religion is for me as relevant as giving them the freedom to choose the worship of unicorns or fairies.

I strongly feel that religious worship in schools goes so against my own principles, I have written to the local council, my MP and the Scottish Government and got nowhere. I'm a member of The National Secular Society who campaigns for an end to worship in schools.

I must say I think my daughters school is good at doing justice to all the religions. She really enjoyed it when they celebrated diwali in nursery and that week they learned all about India as well she loved dressing up in a sari and when she came home she said that when she grew up she wanted to be an Indian lady. :)

Hmm...I'm not sure that it's possible to educate children without some kind of underlying philosophy (like it's impossible to write history / biography etc without interpreting / evaluating the events / people).

Humanism works as an educational philosophy, but it is a belief system that needs to be understood and defended just like any other belief system. To be honest, my dc are in a church school, but that is 100% my choice and the belief system in which I want them to do their learning.

btw I would also consider it an abuse of authority if a teacher were to tell a young child from a religious family that what their families believed in was a load of old nonsense.

Notfluffyatall -

"And giving children the 'freedom to choose' religion is for me as relevant as giving them the freedom to choose the worship of unicorns or fairies."

I must admit I am very strict about this... My children MUST believe in fairies. :)

They have fairy doors in their bedrooms and I open them when they are sleeping and tell them in the morning that the dream fairy came to give them nice dreams.

"Hmm...I'm not sure that it's possible to educate children without some kind of underlying philosophy"

I'd agree that it might at times be a difficult balance to strike - educating about religions as opposed to active indoctrination - but a good start would be to eradicate worship in schools and make it clear to teachers that religious belief or lack of religious belief is a personal choice for the child and their family, which should not be violated.

"They have fairy doors in their bedrooms and I open them when they are sleeping and tell them in the morning that the dream fairy came to give them nice dreams."

Will you still be telling them that when they're 15?

Checking in

Wow - another thread!

Not been so active as been quite poorly, but I am reading through and finding it all interesting, so thanks all.

Holo, have we met? You seem familiar somehow? :)

I've seen an awful lot of Biblical context being used to support all sorts of positions. Just as I've seen a huge amount of interpretation of Biblical passages to support pretty much any position you care to name.

Hermeneutics and apologetics fall down because the base document they're rooted on is vague and contradictory mythology. No matter how much context and putting yourself in the position of a bronze-age Jew you do, you cannot escape the reality that the Bible is a poorly written and contradictory collection stories. You can create whatever ideas you want and find at least some Biblical passages to support your view. Creating lofty academic arguments about why this passage really means that is intellectual masturbation of the most pointless kind.

As someone on the earlier thread said, once you reach the point where you realise that the Bible is too shaky a foundation to base anything concrete on, how do you piece together enough of a solid reason to believe the important passages about Jesus?

madhairday

Are you better? Good to see you

"Creating lofty academic arguments about why this passage really means that is intellectual masturbation of the most pointless kind."

Yes. I can see why people might find it fascinating, but the stark reality is that no amount of biblical analysis is ever going to prove the existence of god. So interesting and possibly thought-provoking historical documents maybe, but that's it.

btw has anyone seen this site Platitude for the Day which is a spoof of Radio 4 Today Programme's 'Thought for the Day'. It does make me larf. (You have to scroll down to get to the earlier 'thoughts').

Notfluffyatall - will probably still do it until they tell me to shut up and get out of their room :)

Got to go and do cleaning now... Surely if there was a god he wouldn't have made dirt! Although if I was amish I would be greatfully cleaning all day long and thanking the lord for it.... But would not have Internet [shivers]

I really should remember to read the Platitude some mornings when TOTD has been particularly irritating. (it doesn't always - there was a Buddhist chap not so long ago who said something forgettable but not irritating).

Does bug me that the only qualification for presenting your 'thought' is that you have some religious affiliation. No secular philosophers who are paid to do nothing but think! There's one bloke I've heard a couple of times talking about astronomy - that's fine but he only gets to do it because he's also a Rev of some description. Why not some other astronomer?

I think vicars and priests have so much time on their hands thse days that they're crying out for something to fill their time. I'm pretty sure the 5 elderly, and half a dozen social climbers of the congregation don't keep them that busy

Don't you think too that they seem to manage to find a man of the cloth for far too many occasions. Disasters, accidents, abortion news, euthanasia news, shit they even got their noses into the news when the HPV vax was on topic.

DON'T GIVE THEM AIRTIME! They have nothing of newsworthy value to offer on any of these topics.

Grimma - I'm surprised actually, I had an idea they did wheel in the odd humanist in response to criticism that it was only ever religious 'thinkers' who got air time. But on the Humanist Society website it says there was only ever one non-religious one by Dawkins in 2002 and nothing since.

Actually - worse than TFTD is the way that Chris Evans keeps wheeling in rabbis and vicars for 'hilarious' and 'thought-provoking' chats. Is it because they work for free or something