HelenM

So, I will pass the test, then, if I write "I'm right and everyone else is wrong"?

Sounds easy enough!

A lot easier than raising kids, in fact (that was a rather weak attempt to link this to the topic )

love
Helen

sullster

I would like to add my two cents on this question. I am middle aged and very non-religious but I was a teenager long ago. I am now married but no kids, so I am not qualified on the parent issue, just my own experience.

I was a lonely depressed teenage boy and a nice girl talked me into going to a fundy type church. I was converted for a while,(the nice girl vanished by the way), and even told my parents at the time. They didn't react much at all and just ignored the issue. That was typical of the WW2 generation, who my parents were members of, when handling a lot of kid problems. Just ignore it and hope it goes away.

Well, they were right. I was too inquisitive and had read way too much Nietzsche to stay converted. I am now a bit embarrassed that I went that route all those years ago, but I derive much comfort from the fact that Michael Shermer(Skeptic Magazine) did some time as a born-againer.

It is inevitable that during the confusion of late adolescence that one could be attracted to a nutty religion. In a way, it can be good to see first hand how religion operates. I know in my case, that my short time of religious delusion innoculated me in a way. I am now very immune from religious infection.

god-free-pen

Helen Wrote:

"Personally, I don’t see why telling children “Christianity is evil” is any less indoctrination than “Christianity is true”, or why telling them “God doesn’t exist” is any less indoctrination than “God is out there watching you”."

Isn't it up to the theist to prove "God
does exist?

Christianity can be easily proven to be harmful to the world (I won't use the word evil) but no one can prove "Christianity is true". I assume what you mean by the word "true" is that the tenets of Christianity, miracles, resurrection the bible etc. can be proven.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: god-free-pen ]</p>

David Bowden

One more round, before the weekend:

It made me chuckle, on reading this, to realize that we're both guilty of advocating indoctrination, at least with regard to this basic element:

"A person should only believe x if s/he has good reason to believe it, and should not hold stubbornly to x if s/he has no reasons for holding that belief. One should, conversely, be able to explain one's reasons for not believing x, especially if it's obvious that some people do take x very seriously."

The world makes sense, and it's highly virtuous to make the most sense of it that we can. That much is unquestionably true; atheism or theism is just a petty derivative issue with various practical consequences. Or so it all seems, if we can look at it with some wry detachment.

I suppose the alternative (to inculcating an automatic respect for reason tied to reality) could only be an attitude of misology leading to "logocide," surely a crime against humanity, beginning with abusing the thinking self and culminating in tearing-down all aspects culture which depend upon reason. Or, less extreme: an attitude of flippant disregard for facts and reason when they don't suit our purposes. With, unfortunately, similar results...

Perhaps our basic "pro-logic" indoctrination is what sets modern human individuals apart from the quasi-animal herds of prehistory? (And perhaps as peoples' respect for reason diminishes, logocide in bits and pieces will utterly destroy civilization as we know it?) But I digress.

*sigh* No. On the other hand, once infected with the notion (doctrine?) that one should test all doctrines, and keep only the best, a child ought to resist other indoctrination, intentional or otherwise. So if we bring our kids up right to begin with, and if they get one or two good teachers, they'll sort out the rest and be okay. We hope.

But, of course!

My wife and I are (so far) childless, actually. I've been using "my children" hypothetically, but my disclaimers have been apparently too few and too far between. Sorry; I didn't mean to mislead.

None, as far as being the parent is concerned. I've led youth groups, been an older friend to teenagers ("hanging out", etc.). I find that they're brimming over with ideas (some of them shockingly good, some almost Neanderthalically primitive) about life, God, society, etc. I've always had a Socratic temperament and enjoy casual talks about the Big Questions. After facing down a bit of the discomfort that occurs as they walk along the edge of the yawning chasm of Uncertainty, I think young people like to be made to think things through -- if they're led into it the right way, and aren't pulverized or humiliated for displaying an occassional Neanderthalism. I think young people are naturally interested in making sense of the whole world, and usually can appreciate the difficulty in doing it well. Perhaps this is cultural; a generation or two ago it might have been a rare thing to find many youth who are comfortable engaging the unknown. But I'd like to think that it's in all of us to learn to engage reality with an open, but still critical, mind.

What was the question again? Oh, my experience with early teenagers. Not nearly enough to have one suddenly dropped into my household for a year of care and feeding, and far from enough to tell a real parent exactly what to do with their kids, but enough for me to feel comfortable that what I've advocated in my posts wouldn't harm my own (as yet unborn) kids.

Oh, hush! Be glad I wasn't feeling really verbose that day. I've been known to send emails that print out to thirty pages of single-spaced, 10-point Times New Roman font.

I agree with this; I think I read too much emphasis in what you wrote before. I don't mean to say that every quality is different and that none are shared (the promise of absolutely loyal love, as you've pointed out, is certainly shared), but I do think that a "relationship with Jesus" is comparatively pheromone-free, to give one qualitative distinction.

(St Teresa of Avila's experience is a possible exception on that point... and St Mary's -if Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one being- and perhaps Mary Magdalene's as well...? Hmmm, maybe there's more to this than I thought...)

Anyway, speaking as a heterosexual male, and as one who was a Christian during adolescence, I assert that my own reaction to being in the presence of a girlfriend was quite different from my experiences in prayer or reading scripture or listening to good preaching.

I do agree that achieving a conviction of "certainty" is of great importance to young adolescence - particularly certainty of acceptance or certainty of love, which are promised by the gospel of unconditional love and forgiveness through Jesus' intervention on our behalf, etc. The gospel is a message well-suited to adolescent tendencies and desires. It fulfills fantasies, or promises to. This is powerful, intoxicating stuff.

BTW, the comparison with cult teachings/atmosphere is interesting because a case could be made (elsewhere, by somebody else) that contemporary Christianity's youth outreach exhibits cult characteristics, just in a more socially acceptable form. (unless you live in France, where a lot of evangelical groups have been ostracized as cultlike - those frogs and their silly Catholic heritage!)

There's a lot for psychologists and philosophers of religion to chew on in what you said there. I wish I could cite the reference, but I really don't have a clue who said it. Maybe Freud. Something to the effect that when we outgrow our parents' handholding and begin to take account of our own worldview (typically, early adolescence, age of accountability, Bar-Mitzvah, etc), we continue to desire the same sort of certainty about things that we had when we still trusted our parents implicitly, and the monotheistic God is a concept that lends itself very well to human parent-substitution.

William James, I think (it's hot and I don't feel like diving into my bookshelf right now), also mentions that at the core of all "faith" is this conviction that there is a benevolent, justice-wielding master of the universe, and that if we just hold on, everything will be alright (as we from our religious and subjective perspective define "alright"). Pragamatically, James thinks it makes sense to believe in God even if our reasoning would persuade us that He doesn't exist, because belief has this sort of benefit.

I agree that if you face trials and can believe in that sort of being, then your outlook on life will be quite different and less apt to despair, and I know that their faith is something of a life-bouy to people about to flounder on the seas of difficulty. I don't deny the "power of faith." I just don't believe that the object of this faith is real, and I'm not persuaded (though I used to be, shortly after my own skepticism reared its head) that it's ultimately helpful to believe in God despite the nagging of one's reason. I think it's a bad habit to get into, to repress reason in this way just to make life (or dying) easier.

But then I partially grew up in Wyoming among folks who didn't believe in tiptoeing around tough issues or sweetening their coffee. So unlike Wm. James, I've come to think that unflinching realism/rationality is at least as valuable as hopeful faith, for those who realize they can stomach it.

Another parenthetical aside: This issue of what a relationship with Jesus really is, as seen from both Christian and secular/naturalistic viewpoints, could be its own hot topic, one I'd enjoy participating in, if somebody else wanted to craft the opening post.

Yes - I certainly do not dispute the inspiring power in the notion of a completely benevolent universe-ruler who knows our personal struggles and helps us shoulder our burdens.

I would agree with all of this. Sorry again about misreading you earlier.

Good questions. I really don't know, to tell you the truth. I suppose I couldn't expect more of myself than I expect of my (imagined) children, and since I am willing to accept their conversions and even their persistent faith, I think I'd have to leave room for the possibility of my own journey down that road. I would hypothesize that the odds would be against it, though I have no way of testing myself. I can only say that, knowing what I know now, Christianity is impossible for me, even in the most liberal sense. But I didn't get all that understanding at once, and if I were to live my life over in that way, I might get it, or I might not. What a fascinating "what-if" scenario!

In my own real life, I had a Christian family, or lapsed Christians who didn't speak against the church, or black sheep who might not have been Christians but weren't set up as great examples in any case. Lacking the internet and direct confrontation with atheists, I did not take unbelief as seriously as I undoubtedly would in the childhood of this thought experiment. So who knows? Perhaps I'd go for techno-paganism and reject all familial influences?

A very slim possibility if they haven't already accepted the Biblical viewpoint as normative, I think. Psychological understanding of religion is valuable whether one believes in a religion or not; my education with regard to that began when I was still in school for the ministry, and I found it valuable as a believer.

I hope to train my kids to carefully examine any and all "package deal" worldviews prior to consumption, so that their normative viewpoint is always open for examination and alteration, not fixed in a canon of documents or doctrines. I would, if necessary, firmly remind them of this whether the newly fascinating package deal was the Bible, the Koran, Dianetics or Atlas Shrugged. My children need to be the managers of their own worldviews, not simply the hosts of another person's.

Ha! Shows what I (don't) know. Seriously, though, I recall seeing a film in church during my youth where an evangelical Christian family lost their son to a cult that basically rendered him zombielike. He grew out his beard, dressed in baggy peasant-like clothing, and dug in garbage cans for food, and would spend hours meticulously copying scriptures or witnessing to "loners" on campus like he himself had been before joining. Except for proselytizing he barely spoke to anyone outside the group (called "the family" or "the brethren" or something), and ignored and avoided his own relatives when they came to look for him on the streets.

They contacted this Christian rescue group whose team pulled up next to him in a van, grabbed him and stuffed him inside, then drove to what seemed like a cross between Christian youth camp and a funny farm - a "detox" facility for the prodigal mind. He recovered, but from what I remember he replaced the quiet cult-fervency with bombastic Christian fundamentalism, but at least he had a larger and better-adjusted society to share it with - and his family got him back, which was their main concern, as you indicated.

Now that I think of it, I do seem to reading that Scientologists sometimes doing the same thing in order to get back their prodigals who leave that "faith". So it's more common than I initially recalled.

Those are only a couple of anecdotes and if you say you've heard of entirely secular "rescue groups" or "deprogramming centers" then I believe you, but I still think the whole idea's weird, and I wouldn't easily go that route. But then again I've never lost a child to a cult. So much just depends on so much else. Messy reality!

Hehe. I might recommend asking Koyaanisqatsi for colorful commentary about that, but... he's retired now, darnit.

Could happen; I can imagine it, for instance if they encounter an especially persuasive evangelical classmate, or visit a friend's house where a parent feels obliged to share the gospel with them. I remember seemingly "seeing the light" due to such influences, on some issues (unrelated to religion) when I was young.

When it comes to preachers, politicians, and philosophical demigods, though, I intend to poison the well quite a bit and train my kids to be critical audience members, and to question claims or positions that are broadcast from an impressive presenter.

Youth events, like weekend youth rallies, will be interesting to deal with, if my son or daughter is ever invited to one. I've organized and attended many of those, and besides generating excitement and being a lot of social fun, the evangelism and indoctrination is laid on pretty thick. Evangelical evangelists (!) often deliver their messages to a presumed partially secular youth audience as though it were a dramatic revelation, often by contrasting it with (unfairly mischaracterized) secular or at least non-Christian ideas about mankind and God and the nature of things. This is as close to direct mass programming as it gets; some of these events are like Amway meetings in the worst possible way. I would not be thrilled if my son or daughter came home begging to go to one of those. But I remember specifically wording our fliers in such a way that they would not immediately reveal the Christian evangelical intent of such events, so I know I'd have to expect similar strategies from whichever groups are active in my area.

I wish I'd kept one of my evangelistic and youth preaching textbooks; it covered getting "excitement" into the message (gotta get 'em crazy for kerygma!) and getting "sure results" at the altar. Even as a believer I found it distasteful, though I knew its tactics were in regular use in churches and events I'd attended.

The deliberately calculating nature of modern mass evangelism chills me to the bone, now that I'm well outside the evangelical fold. I glimpse such things on TV or hear radio messages and I can't believe people still go for this. It's much like the way being a former salesperson immunizes you to the scripted pitches you get at the appliance store. You know how the game works, and it makes you sick to see the same tricks continue to get refined and used successfully to hook new people.

Sorry to end this on such a dour personal note; I've really enjoyed this interchange and I think it's a good issue for secular parents or parents-to-be to explore. I'm busy for the rest of the weekend, so I won't be responding any more until Monday-Tuesday at earliest.

-David

PS - Nope. I've switched it to a four-page essay, and pronouns are disallowed.

HelenM

Thanks for your comments, which I always find interesting and insightful

Picking up on just the one comment above, at this time - because probably neither of us have time to continue writing long posts on this topic - this comment makes a lot of sense to me. Inherent in it is that in the end it's their decision, whether we like what they decide to believe or not...

love
Helen

galiel

I think this is a very thoughtful topic, HelenM, and I thank you for raising it.

I suspect the spectrum of answers you will receive is as varied as the individuals who supply them. Just as theists are not a monolithic entity, nontheists are a diverse bunch as well (you hear us constantly complaining about how we can't ever get organized...)

I have put a great deal of thought into this question myself. My two daughters are now 15 and 12. When they were born, my mother, a Holocaust survivor, was very concerned about their sense of identity. Although she is an agnostic, she is understandably emotional about being a Jew, and we had many heated arguments about my desire to raise them as free human beings, exposed to many different thought systems and beliefs, who would ultimately make up their own minds.

I don't know how many people are aware of this, but there is a strong phenomenon in the Jewish community of "ba'al tshuvah", those who become "born again" as orthodox, mainly fundamentalist Jews. This is particularly true in Israel, where I grew up, because of the strong orthodox influence there. I know many old friends and neighbors who went through this process, not too dissimilar to joining a cult in their fervor and extremism (usually far more fervent and extreme than those who actually grew up orthodox, and in fact there is quite an overlap between young Jews who join cults and those who become ba'al tshuvah at some point in their lives).

In addition, my sister has always been mystical and now attends a (very liberal and tolerant) Christian church.

My wife and I discussed this as well. Her parents are very theistic, and her father went through a "ba'al tshuvah" phase which is thankfully over.

So this is all more than a hypothetical for me.

Ultimately, I have (ironically) "faith" that reason prevails, and that, given a free and open choice and an diverse education including an understanding of critical thinking, children will rarely choose faith over reason. In fact, it seems evident to me that all chidren are born atheists, and that it takes quite an effort of indoctrination and restriction to turn them into blind believers.

Both my daughter have made, each in their own time and own way, a decision that the god-myth does not resonate with them. They experience, as Ingersoll described it, the wonderful freedom and exhiliration of being an independently thinking human.

If, however, either of them came home one day and announced that they were a Christian, or orthodox Jew, or Muslim, or Wiccan, or whatever, I would respect and continue to love them regardless, just as I respect and love my mostly theistic friends and family. In fact, it is quite possible that they may marry or partner with a theist and decide to join his or her church "for the sake of the children". While I would disagree with their choice, I believe in free choice and self-determination more strongly than I believe in any thing else, and I would not make their life any more challenging or difficult or conflict-ridden than I anticipate it would already be.

For me, atheism naturally equates to tolerance, inclusiveness and a believe in self-determination. How could I treat my own children with less understanding or care than I would treat anyone else?

(Note: I hope this long personal message is not out of keeping with the spirit of this forum. I am frankly not accustomed to the kind of emotional sharing that is so evident on many of these forums, being far more comfortable in the intellectual arena. I am genuinely attempting to adjust my habits to more appropriately communicate in this community. Please bear with me if, from time to time, I go overboard as I probably have in this message )

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

CX

Either of my children becoming Xian is hardly the "worst" thing I can imagine. I work very hard to let my son, and will do so with my baby on the way (due in Feburary yea!), think for himself. My role as a parent is only to give him the tools necessary to think critically. If he told me one day he became a Xian I would simply ask what led him to that conclusion and encourage him to keep thinking and seeking. I really wouldn't care overmuch as long as he was being intellectually honest with himself and continued questioning. My parents are devout Xians as are my siblings and it doesn't especially bother me. As long as he didn't start espousing bigoted points of view or other negative doctrines occasionally embraced by certain Xian denominations I would consider it his decision to make.

CX

That single statement would probably alleviate the majority of conflict between child and parent. My son is only 5 (today as a matter of fact) and already I can see how different he is from both his mother and myself. I hope I remember that when he's a teenager and I'm a square, middle-aged, old fart.

HelenM

Thanks for your comments, galiel. I appreciated what you shared.

I'd say there is freedom to share personally or not to, on these forums. There is a lot of chat and personal sharing; that is true. But I expect some people never share personally. I do find it helps sometimes to know the background of another person. And knowing that they come from another culture/another first language (when applicable) reminds me to give them the benefit of the doubt if something they say seems strange in my own language, say.

Since you shared a lot about yourself and family...

My maternal grandparents left Darmstadt in the early 30s (as young adults whose families knew each other, not as a couple yet) because of the situation there for Jews.

My father is not Jewish and I was not raised in a religion; it was my own choice as a young adult [away at college, fwiw] to become a conservative Christian...

My own children are 7 and 9. At present they attend church with me; which I've shared here before. My husband is an atheist and he's ok with that. (And, no, I did not strongly coerce him into being ok about it )

I hope I can be ok with letting my children make their own choices, as they grow up.

I think my goal is that they grow up able to make informed decisions, as far as it lies in my power to help them do that.

love
Helen

K

HelenM:

I will not interfere with my childrens' quests for the truth. I will try to guide them to think critically as they search.

My three year old son has been asking about church (there are some pretty impressive looking ones that we drive by all the time). I've told him to pick one that he'd like to check out so I can take him. I would like to take him to several different ones representing many of the various faiths. I have to admit though, I'm personally a little uncomfortable going to places of worship where I'm unfamiliar with the customs. I would like to blend in while I'm there.