Have we had a thread about the Richard Dawkins atheist summer camps for kids yet?

[policywonk]

here

Though #1: Dawkins is a loon.

Thought #2 (following very closely on the heels of Thought #1): DS1 (6) - who is alone (in his class of 30) in having been taught about the Big Bang rather than the creation story - might well get a lot out of something like this. At the moment, he's beginning to suspect that his father and I are cult leaders.

Oh YES to anti-consumerist/marketing camp.

Might be tough to publicise.

Camp Bullshit --
"Where straplines are seen for the worthless crap they are"

We can quibble for ever over whether the "god(s)" various people have worshipped throughout various centuries are manifestations of the same thing or, in fact, consecutive replacements (each taking their turn in the Celestial Chair like the Speaker of the House of Commons). It doesn't really matter to me as I think they are all imaginary!

It's a fair question to ask me "what proof would it take?" I think it's misleading to demand proof, which is why I don't tend to do so. Just a little evidence is all I want, really. But it may be the case that those who believe in god see everything around (and everyone who believes) as evidence anyway, and those of us who don't are never going to accept that as evidence.

It's interesting that Dawkins only goes as far as it is possible to go philosophically, i.e. to say it is "vastly improbable" on the current evidence that there is a god. I wonder if this will be the tone of the Summer Camps?

Clearly there are many ideas which science (by and large) takes seriously now which would have been laughed out of court by scientists in earlier decades: global warming, cloning, the complexity of DNA, etc. But these things were not revealed to us in a blinding flash of light: they were gradually accepted by the scientific world through a gradual drip-feed of evidence and very slow peer-review and criticism in learned publications and at conferences.

at guv, and at merrylegs

I'm just teaching DS1 that adverts are flat-out lies. More insidious forms of marketing are much more difficult to counteract, though.

TFM - that's great. My OP and subsequent posts just state the truth of my son's situation. It's not an exaggeration. Nobody else in his class has heard of the Big Bang, and most of them appear to think that the creation story is the literal truth. (They are only Year 1, mind.) His teachers are doing nothing to counterract this perception. It's making me cross.

lentil, that's interesting about the YHA summer camps - will look into it. (Am reluctant to do the Scouts - God and Queen stuff makes me itch.)

It's quite odd that you have so many fundamentalist leaning Christians where you live. Is there a history of that sort of thing round there?

Just to chime in on the proof thing. I don't require proof as in a court. Just some evidence to make it reasonable to think there might possibly be something to it. Something to distinguish it from pointing at a random object and claiming that created the universe.

I run a woodcraft folk group, and take them to camp (I like to think it's not unbearably twee ). It's not officially atheist, it's areligious, some people who attend do have a religion, just about (you get raving atheists, but also Quakers, and lots of Steiner people round here, who do believe in supernatural stuff).

I think it's a very nice alternative to the religion-based youth movements, having grown up with guides, also having attended lots of evangelical Christian children's camps in my childhood, I find woodcraft folk very pleasant in not pushing any religion at children, and making it completely normal to be an atheist. not that I think my children are old enough yet to make up their minds about religion/atheism etc but woodcraft folk provides an antidote to the religious views encouraged at school.

PW: Your post is a bit weird, how do you know what a class of 6 year olds think about the origins of humankind?! Do you query them on playdates? Or does your DS go to a school run by Plymouth Brethren? I take Sunday school classes occasionally and DD goes to a CEVA school but I've never heard a six year old mention creationism. I doubt that most 6 year olds are even asking such questions. And where would they pick up creationist ideas?

Basically, it's an overwhelmingly white, working class area. Very few parents at the school were educated beyond A level (and probably a majority weren't educated beyond GCSE/O level). It's the sort of area where people do what their parents did. People round here go to church as a matter of course - I'm regarded as a bit odd for not doing it. They're not fundamentalists (the local church is rather high-Church Anglican - lots of robes and incense).

For instance, one mother in DS1's class was overheard having a conversation with her son about evolution. He asked her what it was, and she told him - very crossly - that it's a load of nonsense and he should ignore anyone who tells him otherwise. Now, to be frank, this woman is just thick (IMO). She's the sort who would always follow the herd - if she lived in a community of Dawkinites, she'd follow that unthinkingly too. I'm afraid there are rather a lot of people like that around here. The pressure to do what everyone else does is very strong.

It's a very homogenous community - more so that anywhere else I've lived - and it's hard to step out of line.

Not everyone around here is unthinking about their faith - but I think quite a lot of them are.

(Sorry for going into this at such length but I'm trying to work it out for myself.)

MW - see my post below!

DS1 is at a community school, but it's very influenced by the local church.

Basically, as far as I can make out, his class had a lesson about the creation story a couple of terms ago. The lesson was taken by the TA, who is not the sharpest tool in the box, and this compounded the problem.)

The children came away from this lesson with the message 'God created the world in six days.' NOT 'Christians/monotheists believe that...'

I know this because DS1 came home rather upset, saying 'I'm the only one who believes in Science in my class.' He'd put his hand up and asked about the Big Bang, and had pretty much been told not to ask difficult questions. Some of the other children laughed at him and thought he was making stuff up. I got cross and asked around among the parents that I know in the class, and everyone I spoke to agreed that their child had come home with a similar message.

Basically, the TA taught a rubbish lesson. But I should stress that almost all the staff at DS1's school are active Christians, so I am concerned that they're not seeing anti-atheist bias as clearly as they should. They certainly failed to see this issue until I pointed it out to them. They still, AFAIK, have not taught any non-faith creation theories.

Sorry for casting aspersions on the Woodcrafters, fennel. I should look into it.

UQD, do you accept the point that the scientific procedure of making observations, forming a hypothesis, seeking to confirm or disconfirm it by gathering more observations, refining the hypothesis accordingly, is a procedure for understanding empirical matters, yes?

It is not, for example, how we reach mathematical truth, or logical truth. So there is at least one form of truth-seeking that it non-scientific (not anti-scientific).

And of course there is non-scientific reasoning, philosophical reasoning, that stands behind science -- e.g., most simply, we ask ourselves all the standard sorts of questions about 'what is it for empirical objects to exist, to be known, to be meaningfully spoken of?

Science is one sort of intellectual enterprise, geared to empirical questions. Even accepting that there is only a material world -- nothing supernatural, etc.
Otherwise there would be no such thing as philosophy, which is an entirely respectable ally of science.

As well as reflecting on the Big Questions that stand behind science, philosophy reflects on matters of value -- it asks whether there are objective moral values, for example, and many practitioners reach the conclusion that there are objective moral values. And it helps us to refine what those values are.

So it can't be asserted without argument that in order to be fully reasonable, religion has to be established on the basis of evidence and scientific procedure. I think we can argue about religious values in a way similar to that in which we argue about, say, moral ones. And we can refine our (flawed)concept of god, just as Locke, Berkeley, Hume et al refined their flawed concepts of the external physical world. In other words we can reason about religious questions -- as very many philosophers do without the least temptation to rubbish it. And we can entertain the idea that through reason we can evolve the religious ideas that some of us have, that we can come to believe with good reason, and that we can refine our beliefs in pursuit of truth.

But but... Are you implying that that are getting creationist ideas from church? The Church of England isn't a creationist church. The only churches that preach six-day creationism (in my experience) are perhaps some pentecostal (Assemblies of God would) branches and maybe some Baptist churches (no offence to any Baptists but some are more hardcore than others ).

If a church of England church was preaching six-day creationism there would be uproar! (well, ridicule and chortling at least) I find it very hard to believe that a church of England parish is promoting 6d creationism.

It has its twee moments, admittedly, bits that make me cringe, but you can gloss over those. I am a convert, having intended 3 years ago to send dd1 and have nothing particularly to do with it, DP and I are running it now.

They are currently debating changing the name from woodcraft folk to something less twee. but have to weigh that against brand recognition.

Ah I have seen your last post. So you have a TA who taught a lesson on creationism? That is rather different - I assume you complained etc and there was a suitable outcome?

UQD - The thing is with religion, you have to kind of approach it as two separate issues I think. There's the 'teaching' issue - ie some Christians believe the world was created by God in seven days; some Hindus believe Ra sneezed and the world was created etc....

And then there is the Faith issue.

The faith issue is about having a relationship with or belief in your God.

Christianity and Islam are similar in this respect in that they are both evangelical religions. Their followers are encouraged to go out and spread the word and convert people also.

But you can't prove any of it!

You have to experience it.

Christians would call it the Holy Spirit.

In the ubiquitous wedding bible verse 1 Cornithians 13 which talks about 'if I speak in the tongue of men and angels but have not love I am as a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal', the love it means isn't human love but God. So it's basically saying I can do the most amazing things but if I don't have God at the centre of my life it is meaningless. It says 'love is patient and kind'. It means God is patient and kind.

And then the killer at the end. 'There is faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is Love'.

ie the ultimate goal is God but you need faith, and importantly hope, to get there.

You can't have Faith without Hope and you can't prove Hope.

Those evangelicals who say 'ooh look at the pretty flowers and the mountain ranges and the vast oceans - surely there must be a God to have made all that. There's your proof.' are deluded. That ain't any proof to a sceptic. To agree, you need to have a conversion experience. Then you will have a testimony to share and then you will have your own personal 'proof'.

I see. That does sound bad - poor ds.

I think what is happening (and Dawkins talks about this) is that though the majority of UK adults don't have a religion, there's still an expectation for small children that Christianity is the norm. My children are actively evangelised in school (a community school, not a church one, but the local evangelical vicar goes in), by neighbours from the local church, and by an evangelical after school club which recruits very actively. (also by my parents but I won't blame society for them).

So my children are being taught a lot of Christian teaching, as fact, despite us being atheists and the school being not a church school. And I think this is normal, the atheist and agnostic adults tend to keep quiet, and the evangelicals promote their beliefs actively to children. that's why Dawkinds sees a need to argue back. And I do agree really.

Our community school invites anyone from the local community to come and give assemblies or talk to the children, but it's only the evangelical christians who do it. I have vaguely considered to offer to do a humanist assembly, to just explain a humanist or atheist view, but am reluctant because I think it might cause a storm.

That's all very well, but I still require something to distinguish "god" objectively from "something I have just made up". At the moment I can't see anything.

Mathematical truth and logical truth don't work in that way. They don't start with the answer they want and work backwards to make the facts fit it.

And surely moral philosophy makes no presumptions or pre-suppositions.

Theology, on the other hand, does - it presupposes the existence of (a particular flavour of) god.

If we assert that the thing we call "god" is outside rational analysis then surely it loses all meaning? It just becomes "god", and is no longer helpful and cannot tell us anything.

I didn't say the idea of god was outside rational analysis and I didn't say we started with a belief in god and then worked backwards.

I also didn't metion theology.

Merrylegs - you have summarised the exact problem I have. I know the difference between the teaching of religion one one hand and "faith" on the other.

But objectively, as someone who is not a fish swimming in the ocean of religion but rather standing on the land looking down at it, there is no apparent difference between this "faith" and "believing stuff that doesn't exist". We have no way of telling the difference between someone who has "experienced a relationship with god", someone who is basically bullshitting, and someone who is experiencing a hallucination, a delusion or a mild misapprehension.

Also, mathematical and logical truth often start with the answer. It is how to get there that is the puzzle! For example, Newton didn't invent gravity. It was already there. But how does it work? He came up with his universal formula ( F=Gm/n or whatever it was). He knew the destination, he had to find the journey.

I have to tell you all that the soggy liberal intolerance Lupus talks about can backfire. DS2 was confirmed last year by the Bishop. I've tried getting to the bottom of his faith (no scoffing), and I think it consists mainly of a love of singing in his choir.