Topics people can't leave alone...religion

[Mk3]

So my son (5) keeps coming home from PUBLIC school telling me that there is a god and Jesus is real etc...I'm a secular Humanist, his mother agnostic.

As a result I wrote up a little diatribe of talking points to deliver to him today. I'm now showing him Disney's Hercules and giving it the same credence as the beeble. Kind of fun actually.

I've included the diatribe below, for reference. Anyone else have any experience with this? I've found some resources, but I'm having trouble with the "not being a dick" part. The difficulty I'm having is other kids and adults proselytizing to my child, telling him Jesus is right and god is real etc (I am stuck in Louisiana right now, you know, the state that just upheld a gay marriage ban) but I concur with "when you fight fire with fire you get a shitload of flaming mess." So I'm fighting a flaming crucifix with the water pistol of reason; I'm sure it will go well in the end, but it's tough to break my kid's delusions (today I almost accidentally killed santa listing the things I don't believe in).
I guess I'm just frustrated and a motorcycle forum seems as relevant as any other place to vent/plea.




Notes to speak to Q about religion
- No religion is “right or wrong” only different
o What is right: being good to people and helping
o being responsible
o taking care of nature, people, and the rules that govern both--this is called Stewardship
o What is wrong: hurting on purpose
 Being mean because people don’t agree with you
 Being closed minded (not listening to and considering what others are saying)
 Hurting animals for fun, damaging plants for no purpose, polluting the earth for convenience

- Nobody believes exactly the same thing
o It’s great to listen to other peoples stories
 It’s okay to tell them what you think
 Nothing bad will happen to you if you don’t agree; no one who loves you will be upset with you--we will support you
 Ask questions when you’re curious; you’re great at that, and people will be happy to answer
o You can always ask to be excused, or ask someone to stop if their stories bothers you
o No one can prove or for that matter disprove there are or aren’t gods

- Religion is part of our human history
o People have used it to explain the “unexplainable”
o It has a unique history in America
 god is part of the traditions in this country, and you can practice those however you like, as long as you aren’t hurting anyone, including yourself
“god” is on our money and in our pledge because of fear of communism and opportunistic zealots traditions
You don’t have to say anything you don’t believe
• There is no need to make a ruckus with those who do believe, or believe differently, their ideas are equal to yours.
• You have nothing to prove

- Love is not a theistic concept. I love you more than anything in this world, and so does your mom. We don’t have all of the answers, no one does, but keep asking questions and we’ll do the best we can.

[Bigshankhank]

I can appreciate your frustration. Probably the best thing you can do is to educate yourself on as many religions and theologies as possible so that you can most clearly (as much as anyone can) then educate your wee one on a broad spectrum. The point is to illustrate the similarities between the "different" ones. It is also to allow your child, based on as much information as possible, to decide for themselves which path to choose.
Ironically it was my catholic high school theology classes which taught me about other religions (at least the major ones) which ultimately led me to cease believing in any of them.

[xtian]

Maybe the good approach is to not try to replace one belief in a deity with another straight belief in no deity, but just plant the seed of doubts, questioning and reflection ?
People (and kids) like easy answer and are scared of the vast unknown of the inexplicable. They'd rather just swallow a simple story than think for themselves and find no solution, while when you look around you, nothing is simple, from plants to animals and clouds, radio waves, carburetors... In a complicated world, how could the major element be as simplistic as a *god*, and why be scared when not knowing and thinking about it is the best part of the trip ?
That is at least the first step that I took from imbecile education to free thinking.
And also, you're going to hell.

[DerGolgo]

Yep, other religions got me to kick it, too.
But I guess the doubts had crept before I learned about Buddhists (protestants were just weird, not really different).
A lot of religion is about having a tribe to belong to, or belonging to a tribe and following it's dictates. The group plays religion, the kid brain is preset to tag along. The reflex to imitate is very pronounced in children.
That's why they make sure to try and recruit kids as early as possible, isn't it.
Maybe he's just mimicking the other kids, reflexively trying to fit in. Mimicry still produces sincere believers every day, though.
Dunno what to do about it, but the peer pressure is something to keep in mind, I think.

[guitargeek]

You're doing it right.

[Bo_9]

Looks like you are going the right direction.


Delving into religions of the world for research projects killed religion for me early-on.
It really helped point out that the only difference between Religion and Mythology is how many living people believe in it.

[Pattio]

This was bouncing around my FB feed this morning, and while it might not be easy reading for a five-year-old, I think it might be helpful relative to what you are working on:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/201 ... prayer.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


I consider myself fortunate to have been raised in a religious tradition (Quakerism) which is very low-key. Emphasis is placed on the expression of good through action, not just words, and there are no authority figures. There is a guiding principle that there is a part of the Divine in everything and everyone, and everyone has the ability to be spoken to by 'God'. Worship takes the form of collective meditation, which is nothing more than people sitting quietly together. For better or worse, it has left me with a personal perspective that 'religion' is an expression of what is best about us, which, as you can imagine, is somewhat at odds with the growingly popular belief among young people that it embodies the worst. I'm grateful for that.

Another way that I consider myself fortunate is that I was raised in a family of very literate people who kept, and used, a lot of reference texts. Wonder what something is? Look it up. These days every household is fortunate to have the internet as a research window into anything and everything. What I am getting at relates to the concept of Studying All Religions. In the interest of giving Q 'something' rather than 'nothing' with which to contrast the religious ideas that are all around us in society, I highly recommend study. Wonder what something is? Look it up. Someone told you something? Research it.

Lastly I have to say that I hold bible literacy in high regard. Whether you consider it nonsense, mind-control myths, or the Unquestionable Word, it is simply the bedrock of English Literature and informs a staggering amount of our use of language and the stories and metaphors that our society uses. It's worth knowing, not because of 'Religion', but as a cultural reference point.

Best of luck with your education challenge. You're going to need it.

[Sisyphus]

I have a five y.o. as well. This topic hasn't been breached yet beyond the Jehova's Witness folks coming by. We likened it to people trying to sell you something you're not really interested in. Being anti-consumerist little people as my kids are, it was easy to make that jump.
The other edge of the sword is they will be challenged at some point to deal with a level of disappointment or difficulty heretofore unknown to them. I think the best way to prepare them is to give them the tools with which they can deal with it without believing in magic, basically. As young as they are they're already acquainted with the circle of life (via farming) and our role in the universe and the grand scale of things, as well as my own personal belief that it's okay to say you DON'T know. We're just people. We don't know everything, nobody does, and we do the best we can for as long as we can. It's that simple.
FWIW I almost married a Quaker. Probably the only Christian sect that I could ever respect, having been raised Irish Catholic.

[Pattio]

FWIW I almost married a Quaker. Probably the only Christian sect that I could ever respect, having been raised Irish Catholic.

Yknow, that's something I've heard a lot in my life: "I'm not down with religion, but I'm OK with Quakers". The other one I've heard a lot is "if I were losing my hair I hope I would handle it as well as you".

[Sisyphus]

I think if I ever returned to religion I'd go Quaker, but don't quote me on that.

[Mk3]

I have a five y.o. as well. This topic hasn't been breached yet beyond the Jehova's Witness folks coming by. We likened it to people trying to sell you something you're not really interested in. Being anti-consumerist little people as my kids are, it was easy to make that jump.

That's funny, when he was 2 1/2 some travelling jeebus peddlers came to the door (two little old ladies) and one of them got a smidge pushy when I was slowly but politely closing the door. With a firm and slightly raised voice she said "We just want to know if you've found Jesus in your house" I pointed to the corner and said "he's right over there" then in a volume and assertion equal to hers my boy lets loose with "Jesus is in time out!" I had pointed to the time out corner. With a straight face I stared right into the old peddler and said "you heard the boy" and closed the door....and lost my shit laughing.

[motorpsycho67]

'religion' is an expression of what is best about us....

Strange use of the word best

[Pattio]

'religion' is an expression of what is best about us....

Strange use of the word best

Whoa dude.

Fwiw I am strange.

[MoraleHazard]

Listen here mister, as long as you're living under my roof you are NOT going to church.

Speaking as a practicing Catholic, your list is fine. If you impress what you and your wife believe and why you believe it without being a dick you're doing okay.

Just be prepared, as I'm sure you are, that when your child is 15 they may not believe what you believe. In my opinion, I would support any honest effort to discern the truth. If someone honestly believes Buddhism to be true, so be it. If one believes atheism to be true, so be it.

[Sisyphus]

I met a Christian Scientist this weekend. Totally can't understand that. She's very nice, seems otherwise rational. It just came up in conversation, and I kind of switched subjects as quickly as possible so as to avoid saying something off color. Still scratching my head on that one.

[Rench]

There's this huge monolithic rock that sticks out of the Southern Rockies called the Tooth of Time. By huge I mean like 1500 feet above the surrounding landscape as I recall. Visible for miles. But when the weather is right, the clouds roll in, it's completely invisible. If you hadn't seen it, you'd have no idea it's there. But that's just the east face. From the north you could probably still see it, but it looks totally different. Hell, I've stood on top of the thing, but I couldnt tell because the perspective was so different.

It became my take on religion. There is a truth out there. A single, unified, indisputable truth, and everyone looks for it in their own way, but it always looks a little different depending on where and even when you're looking for it. And everyone is right, because from where and when they are, they can only describe what they see.

So yeah, that's my hippie way to accept all of it.

-Rench

[mtne]

When I was a kid a few of the local families whose kids I played with invited me to church. They were rightfully concerned about the single mom with obviously wayward latchkey child. Mom was the small town drunk and the kid was the only longhair hippykid in a redneck town. So I went. Told her I was going. She said cool, let me know what you think...........

So that lasted three or five weeks one summer when I was about 7 and I stopped going. She made note of it and asked why........

I said that they were a bunch of hypocrites. I had already seen many of the people I saw on sunday, drunk at the bar on saturday, or being abusive to their wives or kids, or generally being shitty people to the poor white trash. Might just have been small town stuff but,

If you've raised your kid to think for themselves and trust them to do so, they'll likely be just fine over the course of time.

[absent_carlo]

It sounds like you are doing great MK3. One other idea would be to find some material that shows the transition of paganism to christianity...that would kind of help embed that these are human constructs that have evolved over time.

[Mk3]

So a quick update. I found a few more kid level books on the subject, and given the near-void of kids books targeted to his age on the topic, I'm now writing some. I have enough talent to pass muster on kid's doodles, and the content doesn't need to be verbose, just potent.

[Guder]

When I was young (7 to midteens) I fought hard to hold on to the baptist seeds planted in the regular church attendance of our pre-divorce nuclear family. I didn't know it as baptist, though, just 'truth', and spent a lot of time inside my own head and the bible trying to figure out truth, and trying to figure out that little fringe that was in conflict with the truth.

Turns out that 'little fringe' was was the edges of the little box I thought was 'everything' so far as truth and reality was concerned. The conflict was the distorted image of my interpretion other people's reality, along with fundamental physics, from the lens of half baked fairy tales. I was using a set of axioms and dutifully bending observations to fit them.

Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for that little box, I have an innate need for explanation. I dug deeper and deeper trying to find the bedrock of what I 'knew' to be simple 'truth' and the harder I pushed the faster it crumbled. Still deeply wishing it were true, I mentally wandered away with the cognitive dissonance that my belief system was too flawed to be accurate, but that it was still the only possibility. In other words, the religion was faulty, but that was the fault of man. Somewhere it was still really all true...we had just messed up the details.

A decade or so later, after having kids and reigniting the NEED for a fundamental understanding of my place in the universe...I revisited the dusty bits of broken thought and somewhere felt the pull to another religion. I had been rolling around what I 'knew' to be innately true, trying to reconcile it with the facts from my known religious history. I guess I had it down to a series of axioms perhaps, and somewhere realized it fit exactly some prechristian fables. I'm not sure how I struck upon it, but protoeuropean heathenry made perfect sense to me. It was such a brilliant fit that I knew I had been 'called' to it, by it, from it.

Long story short, after the honeymoon period of finally finding a spiritual home again and the comfort that brought...I subjected my new home to the same questions as the old. It also could not stand up to real scrutiny as being anything other than comforting stories on human nature and explanations to ease the mind of pre-scientific intelligent people. My new story and my old had one thing in common...both easily made sense as a construct of human beings in their own time and place. On the other hand it was impossible for both to be true, and for either to be true required huge leaps of special pleading, special hidden laws of fundamental physics or a changing of reality from their time to ours, and an inexplicable switch from the formative days when the god(s) were readily available to interact with the special world of man which they created and favored to a sudden and complete departure.

Having two points of reference I realized that it was me who had the need to believe, which I am sure is innate in most of us ('sure' as in believe is most likely true due to my own experience and observation of others, subject to peer reviewed evidence in either direction). There are great evolutionary advantages to cohesive groups subverting their will to a charismatic leader or ideal. I routinely use this element of human nature in training sessions with observable results.

Of course both religions "rang true" when I tested them against what I knew to be "naturally true". Each is created from humans, creating answers to the same questions I was asking. It's the same concept as the psychic cold read.

SOOOOOOOOO....sorry for the long story, your situation brought some memories back and I used the moment for my own introspection.

Might be useful to you in this? Sounds like you and your son are pragmatic people (not too huge a jump from your writing), so make an honest survey of history of religion from the formation of the earth from the accretion disk until today. Maybe he will turn out to believe that all those religions, each fitting a time and place of the people who believe them, is just evidence that the one true God of the one true sect of the one true schism of the one true branch of the Abrahamic codes is a brilliant God who wanted to give your own son a challenging personal task to win the Truth Lottery by happening to wander in to the right building on the right day, as well as rejecting all the false evidence of failed and successful evolutionary lines spanning billions of years... or he will see the series of little boxes for what they are.

I recommend Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. There are long and short audio book versions available. The abridged version is simple enough that you and your son could listen together to the four half-hour session. The full version has lots of long words . It's a fantastic treatment in rational thinking. He is a true intellectual gentleman, and this book is gracious in its thorough and respectful consideration of ideas, but clear in the light it casts on disproved claims.

I'm recommending that you approach it as a study in human nature, in history, in rational thought. There are many many great books on why we believe weird things, and how to sift fact from fiction. The foundations of science were mostly discovered by religious people earnestly searching for the truth. And it was acceptance of the facts, no matter what we wanted to believe, subject to revision by repeatable evidence, that set us free.

I struggled a long time with real consequences to my development and emotional well-being working on the religion puzzle from within its own framework. Looking at the framework itself from the outside was a much more comfortable place for understanding. The last stages of that struggle happened on this very board a few years ago.

[Bo_9]

Sorry to resurrect this, but it seems the proper place for the following -

[media]http://youtu.be/ZZ_BtZ-5O60[/media]