Posted on 11/27/2007 11:53:56 AM PST by Between the Lines
Christian kids are typically sent to Sunday school for lessons on the Bible and morals. For nonbelievers, there's atheist Sunday school.
With an estimated 14 percent of Americans professing to have no religion, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies, some are choosing to send their children to classes that teach ethics without religious belief.
Bri Kneisley sent her 10-year-old son, Damian, to Camp Quest Ohio this past summer after a neighbor had shown him the Bible.
"Damian was quite certain this guy was right and was telling him this amazing truth that I had never shared," said Kneisley, who realized her son needed to learn about secularism, according to Time magazine.
Camp Quest, also dubbed "The Secular Summer Camp," is offered for children of atheists, freethinkers, humanists and other nonbelievers who hold to a "naturalistic, not supernatural world view," the camp website states.
The summer camp, offered across North America and supported by the Institute for Humanist Studies, is designed to teach rational inquiry, critical thinking, scientific method, ethics, free speech, and the separation of religion and government.
Kneisley welcomes the sense of community the camp offers her son.
"He's a child of atheist parents, and he's not the only one in the world," she said, according to Time.
Atheist and humanist programs are expected to pop up in such cities as Phoenix, Albuquerque, N.M., and Portland, Ore., and adult nonbelievers are leaning on such secular Sunday schools to help teach their kids values and how to respond to the Christian majority in the United States.
Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins argues that teaching faith to children can be dangerous, noting the possibility of extremism.
"The point about teaching children that faith is a virtue is that you're teaching them that you don't have to justify what you do, you can simply shelter behind the statement 'that's my faith and you're not to question that,'" he argued in a debate with Christian apologist John Lennox last month.
A recent study by Ellison Research, however, found that most Americans who attended church as a child say their past worship attendance has had a positive impact on them. The majority, including those who no longer currently attend religious services, said their attendance at church as a child gave them a good moral foundation and that they are glad they attended.
Yet today, nonbelievers want their children to participate in Sunday school the secular way.
"I'm a person that doesn't believe in myths," says Hana, 11, who attends the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, Calif., according to Time. "I'd rather stick to the evidence."
I think the 7th circuit has made a ruling along those lines.
“So why shouldn’t I steal?” asked the boy at athiest Sunday school.
“Because you may be punished if you are caught,” answered the athiest teacher.
“And if I am sure that I won’t be caught?”
“Then you don’t steal because you will hurt someone else.”
“And if I don’t feel bad about that?”
Suffer little children to come unto Me....Luke 18:16
On the Last Day she can share this story with Saint Peter about how she did her level best to prevent her own son from saving his soul. This is the feel-good story of the week.
She started by naming him Damian. ;)
While growing up, had a plaque with that verse hanging on my bedroom wall & always wondered why God wanted me to suffer.
Any belief for or against God, is a religion?
LOL. I wondered the same thing. I won’t tell you how old I was before I finally figured out what it meant. ;)
Me too...that's how I ended up being a Christian.
Teaching Atheism can be dangerous, as evidenced by the most murderous regimes ever to be on planet Earth. 100 million victims in the 20th century alone of governments that had Atheism as their state religion.
Only if you can convince the court that YOUR definition of religion is correct.
And how is it any different in the typical evangelical Sunday School? There you shouldn’t steal because God says it is wrong because it hurts other people. Still those who don’t care about hurting others won’t be dissuaded, so Christian Sunday School is no different. Maybe you could threaten divine punishment, but you can’t threaten people with hell for stealing because either they don’t believe in God, are going to hell by default, and don’t care that you think they’re going to hell, or they believe in God, are once-saved-always-saved, and will go to heaven regardless of whether they steal or not. Maybe you could tell them, “If you steal, God will kill your dog.” Then they might avoid stealing because they are afraid of getting caught, once again making Christian Sunday school no different than your example.
Correlation doesn't prove causality. You might as well say that teaching Russian or Chinese was the cause.
Slow learner, like me, eh? Even knowing what it means made it somewhat disturbing, since my mother put it on my bedroom wall instead of my brother's. You know how kids are, they always think one of their siblings is more favored? My mother slipped & confirmed it. Course, I gave her plenty to suffer me for, so can't say that I blame her. LOL
As you note . . . “because God says it is wrong” IS what is different. Without God there is no rational basis for altruism.
Hana, 11.
If atheists feel guilt, it is simply the result of their God given conscience speaking to them. Rejecting God does not dispose of the conscience.
At the most, an atheist can make a logical argument for protective laws based on a herd protection theory. But abiding by those laws themselves would make no logical sense, if they knew they could get away with violating them and achieve personal gain by it.
Any atheist that is ethical is either too dumb to understand their own religion, or they lack the faith of their own convictions.
On its own, conversationally? no. When it is practiced with all the trappings of a modern religion bar the diety, yes. Sunday school, synods (they use the term to define some of their gatherings), their doctrines ... they have established that type of theism at a level of organization that rivals plenty of other recognized religions. Perhaps I cannot properly define it, but I know it when I see it. Here is another take at it ... is monotheism a religion? Unarguably yes. So what about polytheism? You would have to say yes (amen?). So why wouldn't atheism (nihilism?) follow as well? Atheism, as currently practiced (another defining characteristic, no?) is a de facto religion.
You're right. Let's just flat out say it was because their belief system said it was ok, not a problem....
It sure isn't evidence against it.
"Damian was quite certain this guy was right and was telling him this amazing truth that I had never shared," said Kneisley, who realized her son needed to learn about secularism, according to Time magazine.
How many here would go berserk if the situation were reversed?
Not at all. Altruism is a predictable result when dealing with species that live in tight social groups. In these situations genes favoring altruism spread rapidly because sacrifice on the part of one person carrying an altruistic gene in order to preserve several other people (most likely related and also carrying these altruistic genes) amplifies their frequency over that of selfish genes. For example, one altruistic man may sacrifice himself to save his three children, two of whom carry the same altruistic gene. On the other hand, another man without an altruistic gene would allow his children to be killed, thus leaving one selfish gene in the population while two altruistic genes are preserved. This is the process called kin selection, and this principle has been found to have predictive power in the behavior of organisms ranging from plants to people to insects.
Kin selection probably initially favored only offspring, and was so useful that it then extended to other kin. Humans now have such an instinct for compassion that we extend altruism to even members of other species.
That is why we feel like being altruistic, why I think we ought to is another reason. I think the basis for morality is every person's feeling about how they individually should be treated. Everyone believes he or she ought to be treated well. Then rationally we know that no person is inherently more valuable than another, so by extent we should treat others as we would like to be treated. I do not want others to steal from me and I am no more special than any other human, so I should also not want others to be victims of theft. That is the rational basis.
AMEN!
I begin to think “religion” is a meaningless word.
It involves worship. Worship is defined by God as is idolatry. Just because a person believes he is not worshipping does not mean he is right.
No rational basis exists. Your claim is that we are “programmed” to be altruistic. If that were the case we would not need moral education at all or ethics classes for athiests, we just need to follow our kind and sweet natures. We are biologically programmed to do good! The Christian view is in many respects antithetical to yours. We are by nature sinful and prone to act selfishly. We struggle to meet do God’s will, to love our brothers as ourselves and we fail; we need Christ’s forgiveness for our sins because we cannot do this on our own power.
Of course, Bri has the right to raise her child as she sees fit. I just find it interesting that she seems to have been scared into action just because a neighbor showed her child a bible.
Think it through in light of a person who would rather have what he can steal from you than subscribe to your notion of morality. You have no way to rationally persuade him he shouldn't . . . rational moral restraint without God is a gamble: it is probability of being caught * harshness of punishment if caught > benefit of committing the crime. Throw in your view of a sense of guilt being biologically determined and you get: probability of being caught * harshness of punishment if caught + discomfort of guilty feelings from committing the crime > benefit of committing the crime. It is not a rational basis for morality . . . it is a calculation of cost benefit with no moral component at all.
My ability or inability to talk someone out of robbing me is irrelevant to whether my concept of morality is rational. A person who steals is making the baseless claim by his actions that he is inherently more valuable than others. If I present you with two E. coli, can you say which is better and more deserving of life? Which house mouse has more inherent value? In the same way, there is no rational basis for claiming one person is "better" than another--it's a meaningless claim. So the thief would be acting irrationally.
Wrong. The premise of God allows a rational argument to be made for morality. The athiest has no premise that meets the same need. Further, the individual you talk to about God can be touched by God himself; the key premise is provable in his own experience, God willing. It is a relationship with God, not a set of rules, or a moral code, that is the key to life. Nonetheless, the premise of God allows the argument for morality to be made where no premise outside of God serves the purpose and is consonant with each individuals experience and reason. Doing harm to others often feels very good. Think of punching someone you are angry at, or exacting vengeance on someone that has done you wrong, or getting a young woman drunk and tricking her somehow into sex when she hopes for something more. Your argument from feeling sympathy for others fails, in my opinion.
Nonsense. Human beings are animals, true, but we are animals with a brain that can reason, and that makes all the difference. Civilization is the result, and was only possible because we have developed, through thousands of years of trial and error, an ethical system that allows people to live together without killing each other all the time.
If atheists feel guilt, it is simply the result of their God given conscience speaking to them. Rejecting God does not dispose of the conscience.
Guilt is an empathic response from seeing the suffering of others at our own hand. Some species of ape have been seen to demonstrate empathy too, so perhaps they are God's children too? Believing in God doesn't change the evolutionary origins of empathy or guilt.
At the most, an atheist can make a logical argument for protective laws based on a herd protection theory. But abiding by those laws themselves would make no logical sense, if they knew they could get away with violating them and achieve personal gain by it.
And what difference does believing in God make? David Vitter, Duke Cunningham, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Richard Roberts, and on and on ad nauseum... All staunch Christians, by all accounts, and yet they too tried to "get away with it."
While there will always be people who can break laws with impunity, a society can only tolerate so many of them before law and order breaks down and almost everyone suffers. That is patently obvious from even a cursory study of history. Unless you can guarantee to be one of the few who is not affected by a lawless society, then it makes no sense at all to ignore the laws of your society.
Any atheist that is ethical is either too dumb to understand their own religion, or they lack the faith of their own convictions.
Atheists understand their beliefs just fine, but it's obvious that few Christians around here understand the first thing about what atheism entails.
Someone has the opportunity to kill you tomorrow, steal all you own, and get away with it. Forgetting conscience, there is no logical reason for them not to do it if you and they are only an animals. Animals kill members of their own species all the time for far less.
Its called survival of the fittest.
That is the problem. You view any premise and any argument from it leading to a moral view as acceptable, as "true," because it only has to apply once and tentatively, to you. You don't need it to be strong enough to logically hold together for anyone else under testing and it doesn't have to be rooted in any reality provable to anyone else. That isn't reason. It's preference. The premise of God is an external reality, testable by the simple act of prayer and reading his word.
But which one? In case you haven't noticed there are a bunch of different varieties for the choosing.
“Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins argues that teaching faith to
children can be dangerous, noting the possibility of extremism.”
Too bad the writer didn’t carry-through.
And mention that Dawkins is trying to wake up America to the real
threat: religious Jews.
I guess Dawkins’ “prayer” is that Americans that wouldn’t listen to
Herr Schickelgruber (aka one A. Hitler) might listen to him.
Dawkins: Jews Control US Policy
Arutz 7 ^ | October 8, ‘07 | staff
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1908313/posts
Professor Richard Dawkins, a senior British evolutionary scientist and
outspoken atheist, drew fire on Monday for saying that
Jews “more or less monopolize American foreign policy.”
Religious Jews are a small group, Dawkins said, but are
“fantastically successful” in lobbying the US government. Dawkins,
who is currently in the US in an attempt to promote atheism and fight
religious influence, expressed hope that atheists would be similarly
successful in determining government policy.
You completely fail to understand. Feelings have nothing to do with it. I'll try to break it down.
The premise of God allows a rational argument to be made for morality.
I hardly think so. I used to think so, but changed my mind.
There are two possibilities:
I used to think 1 was the case. I found the Bible really supports 2. Consider homicide. We can give an exception for the case of self-defense, which seems reasonable (I would include execution of certain criminals under this category). But what about killing someone who has done no wrong to you or others? If we're arguing based upon God's unchanging character, God holds human life sacred and would abhor that as murder. But God ordered the Hebrews to invade Canaan and wipe out the Canaanites to the last child. They killed men, women, children, and babies. God would not order anyone to do anything that is evil, according to Christianity, so when God ordered the Hebrews to commit infanticide it must have been a good act, as blessed as feeding an orphan. This is completely at odds with the idea that morality comes from God's unchanging nature.
The other option is that what is good is what God considers good at that time. This removes much of the moral significance from sins against others because it strips from them their unchanging inherent rights--what right to life? Infanticide is no longer a sin against the person you kill and against God, it's just a sin against God because at that time it's his whim to consider infanticide wrong. Good and evil become just a checklist. The nature of God is unknowable, and possibly would be quite a surprise to his followers.
This situation is even worse than the situation of an atheist or agnostic, because at least the atheist or agnostic is free to accept as valid what they think is proper treatment of themselves. If it is wrong to murder only at some times and good and blessed to do so at others, then you cannot validly claim that there is a certain constant way that others should treat you. Humans become essentially worthless.
These two competing views of morality are in unspoken conflict in most forms of Christianity.
Why should the thief care whether the victim is better, worse, or the same as him in an athiestic framework? He wants what the other person has and so he considers stealing "rational." When you feel the call to morality, you feel the call to God. Nothing less.
Why do I care if he cares? Do you think it less wrong to punch a granny because a person doesn't care and thinks it's reasonable?
When you feel the call to morality, you feel the call to God. Nothing less.
So if God changes his idea of morality (Infanticide is bad/Kill those Canaanite babies!) periodically, does he have to flash our moral BIOS so we know what to feel?
I do not want others to hurt me.
I am not more valuable than any other Homo sapiens.
Therefore rationally I should treat others just as well as I treat myself.
____________________
It doesn’t hold together. What does your desire not to be hurt have to do with the value of other people? And what does your desire not to be hurt, and your view that people are equally valuable (who sets that standard? God?) has nothing to do with how you treat them. Why shouldn’t you steal from someone equally valuable to you if it doesn’t hurt you? If you are just as good as they are, why shouldn’t you have the nice things they have?
Your argument regarding murder is also weak. It breaks down in the word murder. God does not command us not to kill. He commands us not to murder.
Heh...that really makes this story smack of something from The Onion, eh?
Since when have supporters of Christianity been labeled as "apologists"? WTF.
You are trying to make a rational argument for altruism without God and now you claim not to care if you can make an argument to the thief regarding why he should not steal. You don’t care how he feels. Some athiest Sunday school teacher you would make!
God does not change. He has changed the duties of men to him many times; from one rule in the Garden of Eden, to many rules before Christ, to a few simple rules again.
(Infanticide is bad/Kill those Canaanite babies!)'
Is infanticide ever a just act? If your answer is no, then what of the doctor in the emergency room that sacrifices the child the mother carries to save the mother's life? Since God is perfectly just, perfect justice here applied. Do you know that God didn't take those chidren immediately into Heaven?
periodically, does he have to flash our moral BIOS so we know what to feel?
Absolutely, it is called the Holy Spirit, an aspect of God.
John 16:7-14 But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. {8} When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: {9} in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; {10} in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; {11} and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. {12} "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. {13} But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. {14} He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.
John 14
Jesus Comforts His Disciples
1"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4You know the way to the place where I am going."
Jesus the Way to the Father
5Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" 6Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."
8Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us."
9Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 10Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
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