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."
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.
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