Originally posted by Jonathan Mac I'm afraid that only a child's parents are allowed to force their beliefs on them, regardless of what they are. That's the way things are and will always be.
I think you were wrong in your roof tale, because religious believers would not behave in such a way. Having said that, the correct response by the parent would have been to explain, as best they can, why they disagree with what you told the child. Admonishing you for exposing the child to an alternative (and in my view, correct) point of view achieves nothing. Does she think that her child will never be exposed to alternative viewpoints? Unfortunately, children are very open to ideas and will usually believe unquestioningly what their parents tell them. This is why the teaching of religion to children is an abuse, whoever does it. Many people know, consciously or otherwise, that the best way to pull their child into their religion is to impose it when they are vulnerable, because that is what was done to them. It's akin to the common statement that the bullied becomes the bully. In an ideal world, children would live in a religion-free bubble until they are old enough to make up their own minds and live with their choices.
When I have children I will raise them as atheists and will object to any attempt by others to impose religion on them, however, I will encourage free-thinking. What's the difference you may ask? I have the benefit of being able to justify my reasoning, and that all the evidence is on my side.
So one of the difficult things about raising children as an atheist is that they ask all kinds of questions which they aren't necessarily prepared to understand the answer it requires you to respond in a different way that is accessible to them, often in a way that is an impartial answer which they will then persistently pursue you to expand upon. Rather than the problem of dealing with someone who stubbornly refuses to listen to reason the exact opposite problem of someone whose extremely curious yet ill-suited to grasp complicated issues. While religious people have churches, children's picture books, Sunday schools, maddrasas, parochial schools, priests, traditions, and jesus camps to help them explain their belief system in an organized and accessible way that they have spent millenniums developing you or I find ourselves out there with no support or training whatsoever trying to explain the world. When put on the spot you sometimes will end up with a slightly inappropriate story that might not show tolerance towards explaining the difference between atheists and theists even if it is valid. I would defend the validity of it because if you look at phrases like "god will provide," "god will make a way," or whatever else the faithful wrap themselves in to accept their passiveness or when you consider the behavior of the Catholic church through periods like the holocaust. Just about every religion I can think of has a pretty controversial aspects whether it is crusades/jihads, caste systems, support of slavery, or being on the wrong side of many moral issues which are pretty clear cut these days. How do you explain those politely to a 5 year old other than trying to make up a hypothetical situation or story that is less serious?
Originally posted by D0n Never yet met an atheist that did not cite dinosaur bones or evolution as proof the Bible is wrong.
I am not really interested in debating the factual merits of the book that was written by someone writing down the campfire stories of ancient shepherds versus the body of scientific knowledge developed which refutes many of the details of those stories. If you choose to believe it word for word, I will just respectfully disagree with it.
Originally posted by Parallax There have been scientific studies that refute that.
I was careful to say that it doesn't do much rather than saying it does nothing. I know that prayer has been shown to help people with illness in a similar way as having a positive outlook helps them or that the placebo affect is real. Praying
for someone to feel better, probably not as much (although I have never seen any studies one way or the other). If anyone is interested in doing a study about that, I would also like to see them include a control group of people who don't get "prayed for" by their loved ones but receive a pleasant call or visit which reminds them that someone else is thinking about them and loving them without any religious aspect (which is what I do for friends and family if they are ill).