Atheist and the nativity

erichamster

Soubrette wrote: »

This is one of the questions I asked myself, what does spiritual mean? As I said, if there was a genuine god I would expect his followers to benefit from their input of worship. To measure happiness, you would have to ask people. I noted the study but did not find it convincing.



I cannot speak for them but only that they feel as if they have a direct connection to god - one of them even had a speaking in tongues experience where he felt god was working through him. Again there is little point quizzing me on it because a) I did not exerience it and b) I believe that he was misinterpreting the experience he had.



More than one person has had religious experiences - in my view religion was a useful survival tool in the past and of evolutionary benefit - I believe that there was an experiment devised where stimulating a portion of the brain gave a feeling of being in the presence of an all powerful presence but it did not work on Dawkins. If you are religious you may equally argue that god has made a part of the brain receptive to his message. My question was why did this not work with Dawkins? Would a god really only give the ability to believe to some people - that doesn't sound benign or all powerful.

Many adults also are adamant in their belief of FC - I see none of them carted off anywhere.

I cannot argue that these things point to the truth of religion - because I do not find them convincing myself. However it mildly irritates me when atheists say there is no proof of god when what they actually mean is that there is no scientific proof of god.

They say that (myself included) because what kind of proof is not scientific? A proof that is not scientific proves nothing, surely?

I suspect you don't want to upset your religious friends nor view them as illogical or even disingenuous and so you don't want to point out or even think that their views are completely unfounded, ridiculous, infantile and even dangerous. I can understand this, it is not something that troubles me as I don't know any properly devout religious people.

jackyann

Haven't read the whole of this thread, but a lot of people seem to take a very sensible approach.
We do not believe, and one of the things that popped into my head when my little one, age 3, was asking about Jesus as they did the traditional Nativity play, was "some people believe this baby came to make the world a better place". When his cousin was born, he said "has baby X come to make the world a better place" and I felt we had hit on a very deep truth. I said "yes, I think she has" and 30 years later, she still does!

Cat501

Good discussion here - far too intelligent for me!:D

Off to watch the late lamented George Carlin, who says it all for me as regards religion:D

erichamster

Person_one wrote: »

"George Bush says he speaks to god every day, and christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd."

That's great! :rotfl:

erichamster

Cat501 wrote: »

Good discussion here - far too intelligent for me!:D

Off to watch the late lamented George Carlin, who says it all for me as regards religion:D

Ah, get involved, I love a good discuission about religion! Love George Carlin, Rufus! Can't wait til we get the Bill and Ted version of the future, Be excellent to eachother!

Loucien

PoorCharleyBear wrote: »

We are both atheists and only ever mention religion to our small child when required (eg 'what does pray mean mummy?')


She has just started school and came home yesterday telling me about 'Mary, Joseph and their specialist (sic) baby, Jesus'.

I was a bit taken aback as she is purposefully at a non faith school and there are a few other religions in her class.
I did not make a lot of it, just said ' that is a nice story that people tell at Christmas'...but am now not sure if I should ask the school what they are telling the kids.

At the moment she believes in Father Christmas, so when the time comes I guess I will say 'they are all made up stories'.
Have any other atheists got any better solutions? I just do not want her believing in fire and brimstone as we were bombarded with as kids.

I found putting it into a contest with other mythology and folklore (Zeus, Odin, fairies, Santa, etc...) helped. Since these are things that some people believe - or used to believe - in.

I explained that the nativity an old folk story. That the holiday season amalgamation of several festivals.

I did also say that different people believe in different things and that unless they were saying 'bad things' (i.e. bigoted things) to leave the person be.

Person_one

erichamster wrote: »

That's great! :rotfl:

Can't take credit, hence the quote marks, its from the 'Atheist Quote Daily' site, can't remember who said it though.

patchwork_cat

Soubrette wrote: »

I love this idea - at one point in her life my daughter was puzzled by the tooth fairy, there was evidence for it - money left under pillows and the confirmation that this happened to more than one child, how could she prove or disprove the existence of the tooth fairy. It led to a very interesting week of discussion and also brought in things like occams razor.

You introduced occams razor to a child with deciduous teeth! Admittedly we came across similar issues with Father Christmas in the shops. You don't see it so much these days, but when my son was little every supermarket had a father christmas wandering around giving out sweets that did lead to some interesting questions.

MandM90

liney wrote: »

In my opinion, the fact that you are an athiest does not give you the right to influence your child's feelings. They are not taught that this is 'factual information' but that this is what this particular religious group believes. Your child may decide they would like to worship at a later date, and who are you to tell them no?

Just out of interest, when you child asks you about death what will you tell them? Young children find the idea distressing enough and will often gravitate towards there being a 'heaven' for comfort.

Just because an idea is comforting doesn't mean there is any truth in it. We were 100% honest with DD when both of her pets died and she takes a very matter of fact attitude to death. Perhaps if we lived in a society where we weren't scared to talk about it/face it and recognised it as a necessary and integral part of life we wouldn't have so much need for fairy stories!

ETA: In reply to the OP; we just say 'some people believe X,Y and Z'. Someone (young earth creationist) once asked how I could possibly tell my child that evolution is true and that "God" didn't create the world. I don't think many people with a formal scientific education would feel in any way comfortable presenting that as an equal but different alternative, and in any case I feel in some ways me telling her 'some people believe X but there is no empirical evidence for it' is far less conceited than 'God/Jesus/whatever exists and that's the end of that'.

Person_one

I actually think its quite cruel what we put children though with Father Christmas. Its so engrained though its probably going nowhere in the foreseeable future.