"Design your own god" homework

[AChickenCalledKorma]

DD2 is in year 8 and has been asked to design a god/goddess for RS homework. We are an active Christian family and she doesn't want to do it because the Bible says she shouldn't.

I'm interested whether other Christian, Jewish or Muslim parents (or any other faith that has a problem with idols) have had a similar issue arise and how you handled it. Part of me thinks she should just treat the homework as an interesting art project. It's not as if the teacher is asking them to worship what they invent (hopefully!!!). But the other part of me thinks that she has a point and it's good that she's made the connection between what she reads in the Bible and what she's being asked to do.

Allegedly, her older friend refused to do a similar homework and got a detention for it.

Julie8008

Absolutely.

Atheist is the default position. We are all born atheist,
Labelling as atheist is in the same position as labelling as a "non football supporter"

Saying that you are atheist in a faith school isn't disrespecting the ethos of the school. It's fine.

Being rude to staff/other children/visitors on the other hand probably is disrespecting the ethos.

Julie8080 I don’t agree with your definition - surely being a theist refers to a belief in the philosophical concept of God and then any religious-specific beliefs about that come from a religion you choose to label yourself with.
How are there no non-faith schools in UK? Are you referring to have the act of broadly-Christian worship? In Scotland this boils down to 6 assemblies per year which can be from different faiths or be about values or spirituality. I don’t think that’s enough to call the whole school “religious”.

Hohomcfo, its very straight forward, though I accept often misunderstood, check out a dictionary.
Deism is the belief in a god who created the world but has since buggered off.
Theism is the belief in a god who is active in the world.
Atheism is the absence of belief in a god.
Religion defines what particular god is believed in and what 'rules' & practices should be adhered to.
Gnosticism is a claim to know something to be true
Agnosticism is the claim to not know if something is true.

So a catholic could be an agnostic theist. i.e. believing but not knowing that the god their religion defines is real. Or they could be a gnostic theist, stating they know 100% that their god exists.

A catholic would also claim to be atheistic about Zeus, i.e. not believing he exists, but likely to go further and say they know he doesn't exist, so to also be gnostic about their disbelief in Zeus.

An atheist, as the 'label' is commonly used, is generally lumped into disbelieving in all gods, from Zeus to Jesus/Jehovah/Yahweh and all in-between. But an atheist is usually not 100% sure about their disbelief in gods and would be an agnostic atheist. Often atheists uncertainty in their disbelief in gods is around the same level as their uncertainty of disbelief in unicorns, faeries, alien abductions, creationism, etc

Some, who knows what percentage, claim to know their is no gods, they would be gnostic atheists, or even anti-theists. There are very few deist religions. But there are religions that aren't theist ie that dont believe in a god. I have even read about some christian religions that dont believe in a god, and I know of a group of practicing catholic priests that dont believe in a god (kept anonymous for obvious reasons).

My yr 8 dd had this homework a couple of weeks ago, and made a statue of Dave Grohl Oh wow, big fan. Could you tell it was him?

We are all born atheist I think it's the opposite.

We are all born atheist I think it's the opposite.
If babies are all born with a belief in god, which god do they believe in and is it just coincidental that most children with religious parents grow up to believe in the same god that their parents teach them to believe in?

How are there no non-faith schools in UK?
Legally and technically they have to have acts of broadly-Christian worship but 'secular' schools fudge this. However there are no schools that are non-faith because there is no mechanism to select atheist children (atheism does not have a system of beliefs) so you would have to discriminate against children of religious parents, which would be illegal.

If babies are all born with a belief in god, which god do they believe in There's only one source. Spiritual beings not a religion.

There's only one source

What does that mean?

There's only one source. Spiritual beings not a religion So there is a whole pantheon of spiritual beings that babies are born knowing? And do they consciously choose to believe in the same one(s) their parents teach them to believe in? When do they start thinking their 'spiritual being' of choice is the only one in existence and everyone who believes in a different one is wrong?

PMd you flavia as I feel like I've told a lot of people in rl and also his teachers all know.

What does that mean? It's a describing word. I could also use soul or god.
Julie8008 The baby like us all is the spiritual being, housed inside these bodies. We lose the knowing of it as we get older, some don't but most do, then we may come to the knowing again along our journey in life.

Vitalogy But what is it describing? Soul and god mean two very different things. 'Source' is not a word I have heard religions use much.

So your saying the human baby is possessed by a spiritual being when it is born and as it gets older it develops amnesia. Who controls the body, is it us or the spiritual being? Can you find the spiritual being by dissecting the body? Is the spiritual being dead, or does it get its memory back and leave us when we die?

Interesting thought, which religion is it, I have never herd that idea before? Where did you learn about it and why do you think that?

Julie8008 To me the soul/source/god means the same thing.
I wouldn't describe it as possessed, I think of that as being evil and the soul/source/god is the opposite to that.
I'm not religious at all, I don't follow a religion.
That's a good way of describing it as amnesia.
The body functions like a computer but needs the soul/source/god to be alive. When we die we go back to the source, then reincarnate.

With our limited senses there would be nothing to see by dissecting the body. The soul/source/god is in everyone and everything in the universe, there is no actual matter.
I have listened to and read about many spiritual speakers/philosophers and what they talk about made complete sense to me, it just clicked so to speak, I got it.

Julie thanks for the lesson but I have a postgrad in Theology, I’m good thanks!
So you think a non-faith school means a school for atheists, rather than a secular school?

here is no actual matter.

So how does it stay in the body? If it has no mass it wouldn’t be constrained by gravity or the physical world and would fly off?

headinhands If you have a read about atoms it'll help with this answer. What we think of as the material world/universe is energy and vibrations, not actual solid matter.

energy and vibrations, not actual solid matter.

So if we can detect/observe everything else that is ‘energy and vibrations’ such as a chair/dog/sandwich/tree why can’t we detect this thing inside us?

So you think a non-faith school means a school for atheists, rather than a secular school?

A faith school is specifically for children of parents of a named religion/faith. So I would conclude a non-faith school would be for children of parents without a religion/faith, aka atheists.

I would expect a secular school to be for children with parents of any religion as well as none (plenty of them around). But as I said there doesn't seem to be any legal way to have an atheist school in the UK.

The things that feel solid to us are a certain vibration and energy, the "other" is "it" (soul/source/god). I know it's a melon twist
There's a book called The holographic Universe which makes things clearer.

Which atheism though?

If you're a catholic who is atheist about Zeus will you meet the definition of atheism?

If you're a catholic who is atheist about Zeus will you meet the definition of atheism?
In this situation it is being atheist towards all gods, sorry thought that was obvious.

The "other" is "it" (soul/source/god).

But there are things that aren’t ‘sold’ that we can detect like wind, gas, electricity.** So why can’t we detect ‘it’?

Mainstream science uses certain tools or methods that can't measure it.
I thought this was interesting:
www.psychologytoday.com/blog/biocentrism/201112/does-the-soul-exist-evidence-says-yes

Mainstream science as in science? What is the alternative to science?

What is the alternative to science? To find the answers to the questions we've been discussing, spirituality.