Post moved back to top for additional comments.
An answer to those who ask how can you be moral and teach morality without religion. Sounds like it’s pretty easy when you skip the fear and shame and other negatives used by some religions to enforce morality.
“When you have kids,” says Julie Willey, a design engineer, “you start to notice that your co-workers or friends have church groups to help teach their kids values and to be able to lean on.” So every week, Willey, who was raised Buddhist and says she has never believed in God, and her husband pack their four kids into their blue minivan and head to the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, Calif., for atheist Sunday school.
An estimated 14% of Americans profess to have no religion, and among 18-to-25-year-olds, the proportion rises to 20%, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies. The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the U.S. “It’s important for kids not to look weird,” says Peter Bishop, who leads the preteen class at the Humanist center in Palo Alto. Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it’s O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.
It’s about time. Every major city needs one of these. The fundamentalists might start burning them down though.
How do you teach the kids values? How about being good parents and examples and having good friends and doing good family activities together? I never caught my mom of dad lying and I often saw my mom return excess change or other moneys she’d received. They were fair and nice to all their friends and shared everything we had. If you’re raised a jerk you’ll be a jerk, god or no god.
What a great idea.
I wonder if these parents teach their kids about Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. That’s why I don’t believe, after I learned that the above weren’t real it wasn’t hard to conclude that my parents lied about everything.
The only problem I have for this is as follows:
“What motivating factor is it that will make these kids stay good and/or have good morals?” Without a central motivator, the morals that they learned will be thrown out the door as soon as the seem unprofitable to them or “antiquated.” For me, personally, my motivator is God! Plain and simple! The reason I do things in life is in direct response to the love I have for God and how He saved me from the pit of despair and brought me into a fulfilling life in Him! This is completely not out of fear or shame! It’s really the Catholic church which capitalizes on this and I’m not so sure anymore that Catholicism is part of Christianity anymore…
There have been groups providing for collective ethical study for decades. First to mind would be the Ethical Culture Society – holds weekend meetings like the example in the Post.
My best experience was with my parents – who were religious though they walked away from the hidebound crap that is organized religion – who would take the family for a walk every Saturday morning to our community’s Carnegie Library.
We would pick out books for the coming week. Discuss what to read and why. Our family acquired an education well ahead of “public” standards – and that included ethics and civic responsibility.
We certainly didn’t need belief in some spooky old white dude in a bedsheet – fronted by a priest – to tell us how to act.
#5: Why do you need a ‘motivator’? I’m an atheist and I think most people would say I’m more moral than a lot of religious folks they know. I do it because I was taught the right way to live. To take responsibility for myself. Teaching a child that an invisible, no-evidence-of-existence being will punish you in ways that can’t be shown ever happens is setting them up for cynicism, rebellion and worse when they figure out the truth.
If you teach them how to be moral and why properly, there is no need for a ‘motivator’ other than themselves. This, btw, is one of the tenants of conservativism — reliance on self rather than on others. Odd how they preach this yet require a god to negate that idea.
Good news on the religion front for a change. I love it. I think this will help the children of non-theists immensely.
First Sunday School, then they will have 1 hour “conferences” on Sunday after Sunday School, in order to discuss philosophies and issues related to Atheism.
What more proof do we need that Atheism is a philosophy promoting its own views, just like any other religion?
School for atheists? Hear, hear!
Atheist kids might benefit from structured learning, being guided to develop their conscience based on empathy, rather than simply obeying the rules ascribed to a deity whose confessed actions are often extremely offensive to the normal sensibilities and decency of a child.
I think another important attitude that atheist children could learn is that although their lack of unfounded belief is intellectually superior, they should never make fun of the children who depend on the company of an imaginary friend. They should be taught tolerance and sympathy for their playmates who are being raised as part of a cult, since those kids have little choice in the religious “beliefs” they inherit from their parents.
There’s so much to teach the little critters.
I honestly can’t understand #5’s argument. The only reason you can be good to others and yourself is god? I have to believe in god in order to have compassion?
I think most Atheists today are just reformed Christians and we tend to forget that we did learn morality disguised as religion, but the two are not linked and can be taught and learned seperatly.
I now realize that moral lessons I learned as a child are a product of our society and not written down in a book 2000 years ago. If morality came from that book, then prostitution would be acceptable and so would slavery. Not that I see anything wrong prostitution, but it is illegal in most of the US, but having sex for free is perfectly acceptable, which is the opposite of what the book says.
How many wives has Rush had? And he is held as an example of religious moral authority?
This is just more proof that Atheism is nothing more than another religion.
I find it nauseating that ANY children should be indoctrinated into a religion of any type.
Personally, I am a Christian with fairly fundamental beliefs, however, I have always taught my children to question, understand, discover and follow that which they personally believe in.
What right have I to take away their innate right to freedom of choice (I believe this to be God given) and strap them into my personal beliefs? While I hope that my children will see the light, so to speak, and follow in my beliefs, I find it repugnant to force my beliefs on them.
I think that they will be moral and honest just by the example my wife and I give them in our every day life, and that though we belief this is in Gods honour, we shouldn’t force the issue, especially as we went into the religion by our own feelings, not because our parents made us. Our parents (the childrens grand-parents) were neither agnostic or Christian, so really, we are only doing as we were taught anyway.
It is one of the great fallacies that morality is tied to religion. It is because of this fallacy that religious people regard atheists as immoral. It is because of this fallacy ethics and morality is not taught in public schools.
Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics is older than the bible and teached “Virtue Ethics” without any ties to religion. It is compatible with every religion out there (it is the basis for New Testament ethics), and with no ties with God it is also acceptable to secularists
>> An estimated 14% of Americans profess to have no religion,
Don’t be confused — “having no religion” is far different than being an atheist.
Religion is organized spiritual expression (my definition but a common one) so you can believe in god but be totally non-religious. In fact many people are just that.
It’s a smaller group but there are atheists who join religious communities — Unitarians have a lot of them. My own church allows it.
In my circles — which included many non-Americans — true atheists are few and far between.
Lots of people LIVE as if there is no God but very few, for example, would die with their last words being, “My life and death have no cosmic meaning, whatsoever.”
If I have to start going to Sunday school now, I have to find something else to not believe in!
The kids will be awfully confused when the instructor opens up the book and all the pages are blank.
Well now if this Sunday School is to educate a child in the proper response to be used when others pressure him with their superstitions, then it is a good thing. Children should be protected from religion, the same way we try to protect our children from pedophiles. They both share the common conception that being to indoctrinate them while young and they will have a slave for life.
For you atheist, you need to read your bible more. Old dudes in sheets, cummon now. The bible that is the word of god says we will make man in our image. They didn’t make an old man, they made a virile young unclothed man who fell from grace for putting on clothing. In the heavens, god and his cohorts aren’t the way the church had them painted in the renaissance period. That was just the way the rulers wanted the people to see them, as creatures much like themselves, nasty old white bearded assholes. Heaven is in reality, from reading the bible a cool place with young dudes running around with stiffs poking all the sweeties. At least isn’t that what Mohamed got from his interpretation with the 72 virgins crap.
It’s a circular argument, no different than Alice in Wonderland:
In that direction,” the Cat said, ” lives a Hatter and in that direction lives a March Hare. . . . They’re both mad.”
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Alice didn’t think that proved it at all.
I actually affirm this.
Atheists often like to point out that they are morally as good — if not better — than Christians.
If so, where are the atheist orphanages, food pantries or free schools for the poor in the third world? I’m sure some exist, but I’ve never encountered one and I travel in non-profit circles.
Christian churches — every single one of them I’ve been in — supports this kind of stuff, all the time. (without much credit, I might add.) I’ve never been in a city that didn’t have a number religious charitable efforts, representing significant personal sacrifice by religious people.
Unfortunately the sociological highlight of atheism remains social Darwinism which let to the largest bloodletting and suffering in human history, far worse than anything, any religious community has ever done. (My own foreparents (and some of their children!) were slaughtered and starved to death for daring to be Christian in atheistic Russia.)
What is the philosophical root in Atheism for kindness, altruism and charity? It seems like this atheistic Sunday School is a good start towards developing that.
#12 – uteck
I think most Atheists today are just reformed Christians and we tend to forget that we did learn morality disguised as religion, but the two are not linked and can be taught and learned seperatly.
Quite the contrary uteck. Unless you believe in the literal word of the bible and stone homosexuals to death, stone those who disrepect their parents, stone those who covet another man’s wife, stone those who work on the sabbath, stone those who wear garments of mixed linen and wool, etc., etc., etc., you have learned your morals elsewhere. You have then applied your learned morals to the bible in order to determine the parts which you feel should be ignored. You are probably right that these parts should be ignored. You are probably wrong in thinking that the entire thing should not be ignored.
Greg,
Here are some charities I support:
Plan Canada
UNICEF
Amnesty International
Doctors Without Borders
I also support the Mustard Seed Ministry locally even though I’m not a Christian. I tend to base my support on the efficacy of the charity and the amount of administrative overhead.
As for philosophical support, take a look at Nicholas Rescher and his writings on Pragmatic Idealism. Interestingly, he has gotten a lot of interest from Theologians.
Now that I’ve said that I’ll go back to eating the flesh on my dead enemies and driving Western society into anarchy through “social Darwinism”.
/qb
#22
Give me a break with all that crap… do you honestly believe that shit started with the Christians?
Secular Humanism, Atheism, Non-theism, or whatever the fuck non-believers call it is a religion all the same. The theology is clear – God doesn’t exist and all people who believe is a deity are stupid.
I personally would have a lot more respect for a lot of the non-believers (some I do hold high regard) who troll this site if some of that piss and vinegar hatred hatred was spread across all religions instead of just Christians. Then I would know that your disdain for religion (aside from your own) is real and not just some dogma spouting useful idiocy.
motivator, schmotivator…
God ain’t nothing but Dog spelled backwards!
#25 – blah x 3,
I am opposed to religion as a whole. I regularly state that my primary opposition is to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion (deliberately singular, as always) because of the problems it has caused. I also oppose other religions, though do not claim to know most eastern religions well enough to have a strong opinion.
I sort of like one aspect of Jainism. Its followers will not even kill an insect. They walk around sweeping the ground before them to avoid inadvertently killing someone crawling around. This type of mentality is unlikely to start a war.
However, I still oppose all irrational beliefs, even when less damaging than the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion. I am consistent though, and not just anti-Christian.
I do find it amusing though that when I criticize all religion, it is the Christians that have the greatest tendency to immediately fire back by quoting scripture at me. As if, even if a good passage or two exists in the bible, it somehow provides some evidence that god is real. How’d that go again? I must’ve missed something.
I have mixed feelings on this. Kids with neglegent or incompetent parents would otherwise have to learn their morality “on the street” or from the news/entertainment industy, or figure it out for themselves.
The draw back is that this smacks of courses in “public morality” and “good citizen courses”, and makes me a bit nervous. Uhm “1984” anyone? It’s not a “religion” by the legal definition that requires following a god, so the Supreme Court will rule it does not violate the Bill of Rights prohibition against establishing a state religion.
Dave, you equate “conservative” and “religious”. Not equal. Take a look at the leftest activists in South America; nuns and priests. There’s also (or was) a sizable contingent of religious peace activists, and they were hewing to the leftest line, not any religious line.
And you others; No, atheism is not a religion. Not by it’s self. Marxism and it’s derivitives, and Budhism, are godless religions and so are atheist philosophies, true, but not all atheists are marxists, Budhists, etc.
Of course, many people who absolutly require a structured faith are totally unable to accept that some people don’t need religion. That includes the devout lefties, such as the Marxists.
>>We certainly didn’t need belief in some
>>spooky old white dude in a bedsheet – fronted
>>by a priest
Not all religions view God as a spooky old white dude in a bedsheet, and not all require intercession by a “priest”. You should get out more, and not get all your religious training from the Atheists’ Manifesto.
>>You are probably wrong in thinking that
>>the entire thing should not be ignored.
Tsk, Scottie. I was just about to agree with you that the godless Sunday school was a good idea, then you had to go and say that. Tsk tsk tsk.
Although there are many things in the Bible that I blow off (stone this, stone that, stone the other thing), and reject the Fundies’ mantra of hatred and xenophobia, there certainly are lessons to be learned from the Bible. Why do you think they call it “The Bible”? Just as there are things to be learned from the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Kama Sutra, and a number of other historical texts. Take what you need, and leave the rest. Don’t be so exclusionary. You’re following in the footsteps of the Fundies.
Scott…
Good try, but I don’t recall quoting you any scripture. 😉
Geez, isn’t one of the main benefits of being an Atheist the fact that you get Sundays back?