Camp leader Neil Polzin talks about Greek philosopher Socrates at Camp Quest, a gathering for the children of atheists in the Sierra foothills.
Posted on 07/14/2009 11:07:59 AM PDT by SmithL
NEVADA CITY – At Camp Quest, campers may not believe in God, but they do have faith in their community.
On Sunday evening, 49 children from across the western United States arrived at the camp nestled in the hills outside Nevada City. It is one of five summer camps in the country for the children of atheists and other nonbelievers.
In a campground in Malakoff Diggins State Historical Park, the campers have many of the traditional summer experiences. They practice archery in the meadow, participate in team competitions and gather around the campfire at night to sing.
Their activities, however, have a decidedly secular twist.
Campers play games that encourage critical thinking such as one called Evolution and another where they are asked to prove something invisible doesn't exist.
Before meals, they learn about freethinking heroes such as Margaret Sanger and Isaac Asimov. Many of their camps songs promote rational thought such as their version of this children's classic:
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
You're a ball of gas that's very far
32 light years in the sky
10 parsecs which is really high...
Here, it's all about celebrating their belief in not believing.
"It's important for them to have a place to learn how to investigate the world and to not accept what they hear," said camp director Chris Lindstrom of Los Altos. "Plus the kids enjoy meeting other kids from similar families."
It makes them feel a part of a larger community.
Atheism has been a subject of several recent best-sellers, including Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and Christopher Hitchens' "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
...Before meals, they learn about freethinking heroes such as Margaret SangerAnd after lunch, they get to work on their Eugenics merit badges.
Learning about Socrates and Sanger at summer camp.
Man, it really sucks to be a kid anymore...
If any need medical care they must go to the nearest atheist medical facility.
No doubt unintended irony, given that the object of this camp is to indoctrinate the children into atheism.
I wonder if he shared the fact with the youth that Aristotle was not an Atheist?
Oops! I thought it was a picture of Aristotle, but I guess it was Socrates. As you know, Socrates never wrote anything, and everything we know about him we got from Plato. Plato was definitely NOT an Atheist. Socrates asked many questions, but gave few answers. God only knows what Socrates believed.
Teaching them to be good hard core leftists.
However, parents who raise their children to be atheists will pay a steep price one day.
“Socrates, dust...wind....Dude.”
49 bored children at camp. I see an eventual visit by the local constabulary to this camp to quel the fireworks and general mayhem.
Ack......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_Muddah,_Hello_Fadduh
“It’s important for them to have a place to learn how to investigate the world and to not accept what they hear,”
I see this backfiring on the parents later in life! >:-)
Son says to parents, “I don’t believe what you told me anymore Dad...there is too a God!”
And more important to modern science, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Charles Boyle, et. al. were devout Christians.
What gets me about Atheists is that they fail to see that their views are based upon faith, not fact. As one pointed out, they accuse religious organizations of indoctrination while their Atheist camps are nothing but indoctrination. They believe that they are objective, but there is nothing more subjective than the view that one is objective. They are skeptical about everything except their own skepticism. They claim to be moral and ethical people, but give no basis for being moral or ethical. The article said that Atheists have faith in the community, not God. If that is not a description of moral relativism, I don’t know what is. So if I lived in a Nazi community, killing Jews would be moral and ethical. The last place I would put my faith would be in a community of sinful human beings. Putting one’s faith in a community really is a matter of blind faith.
look up in the sky junior....see all that you can see, imagine all that you can imagine, ....it just happens to be there??? no one created it all???I don’t have that much faith....it mis far easier to understand God than it is to deny Him.!!
I thank God for my scientific knowledge of the universe.
If pure abject materialism is all that the atheists believe in, how can they trust their own thoughts? If everything is a random outcome, then the atheist mind is nothing but one big accident. Therefore, why have a camp? Why bother? You can’t trust your own thoughts as they are nothing but scrambled electrical impulses across neurons.
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