Here’s how you teach kids when it comes to religion… you don’t!

“Spirituality, Not Religion, Makes Kids Happy, Say Psychologists” is the title of a new post by scientificblogging.com

Here’s an extract

To make children happier, we may need to encourage them to develop a strong sense of ‘personal worth’, according to Dr. Mark Holder, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia,  Visiting Assistant Professor Dr. Ben Coleman and graduate student Judi Wallace.

The relationship between spirituality and happiness remained strong, even when the authors took temperament into account. However, religious practices – including attending church, praying and meditating – had little effect on a child’s happiness.

How ‘bout that?

I wish they used more then 320 kids, and that it was international. but it’s still a sound study open for another trail to back up the finding.

Just another example that religion has a greater chance of doing harm to a child then good.

Teaching Children to believe IS abused.

Recently I overheard a parent:

“Kids have great faith! Not like teenagers. When I said uncle Bob is in heaven looking down on us, my kids accepted it. Isn’t that great?!”

No! It’s not great- it’s vomit inducing!

Richard Dawkins presents the idea that teaching children to believe in one faith as they’re growing up is child abuse. I have to agree with him.

There’s a lot of things wrong with bringing your child up with faith. To start with children ARE NOT able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality until they’re roughly eight years old. So it’s not faith, they just believe you, they know no better.

Have you ever wonder how come kids have such great imaginations? How they can be  amused with the simplest things for hours?

 

It’s simply: children don’t have the mental limitations of adults, they haven’t experienced enough of the world to know any limitations. They can make a complete and unreal story about a shoe. The key word being “unreal”.

 

There’s a documentary called Jesus Camp. I can embed it. I can’t even watch it myself, like I mentioned above… it’s vomit inducing. So here’s Bill Maher’s take on it:

Dawkins’s argument is that as a society it is wrong to believe that just because a child has Christian parents that it is a Christian child.

The way it should be is that a child is taught about all religions, and then at some age is asked to pick. Can’t be done in most religions. Not least because when a child is exposed to all religions, they will see through them, they will not be brain-washed. But also because religions have ways of settling a child into the religion; Christians have baptism, Jews have circumcision.

“But how will children accept death if there’s nothing higher to believe in?”

The same way adults do: they just accept it, it’s a fact of life. Most adults have a hard time accepting death and for children it must be worse. But that is still no excuse. No excuse for telling children lies and fairytales just so you can avoid the hard talk about death. People have told countless stories that, when they were children, they would spend sleepless nights contemplating if they were going to hell, if their friends or family were going to hell; to burn in the eternal flames.

Your telling me that isn’t child abuse?

Here’s a spin of the coin. We often say that we will miss a loved one but that they’re waiting for us… well, what about them missing us? Imagine your cat Bingo. Floating around for decades waiting to be re-united with it’s beloved owner.

It’s all fucked up!

Faith is wrong. Death is real. So we enjoy life. We love life. 

Teaching children faith IS abused.

Teaching them to love and accept others IS the only true message.

False Anti-Atheist Argument #2

“How can you be an atheist?”, “I don’t have that kind of faith.”, “Believing everything came  from nothing”.

I came across this cectic comic:

This reminded me of another false atheist argument that is gaining ground these day.

First off, saying that you “don’t have enough faith” to be an atheist but have enough to be a practicing Christian or Muslim is such a contradiction it hurts my head (and should hurt yours to).

Second, this is a non-argument and if someone uses this “reasoning” it only shows that they’re a complete idiot. I’m not being elitist, arrogant, or close-minded: I’m being realistic and honest.

Atheists do not believe that everything came from nothing. Most intelligent people know that the big bang happened and there’s lots of evidence for it. What we don’t know( is how it happen- we haven’t discovered zero hour(but we have a very good idea what happens after the big band).

If scientists haven’t discovered how something happened believers will immediately jump on this yet undiscovered fact and say “god did it”- this is known as god of the gap.

This is where an objective observer can see a potent different between religion and skepticism: Religion is rigid dogmatic belief, Skepticism is the updating of personal beliefs with new evidence…

Back to “don’t have enough faith” rubbish. To be a skeptic or an atheist you don’t need blind faith! All you have to do is look at the evidence and make a logical decision based on the evidence.

I think a definition of faith is needed (via dictionary.com):

2.
belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

To warp it up: faith has nothing to do with atheism or skepticism! Atheism/Skepticism is a way of thinking NOT a way of believing! No Faith Required…

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