Oh, and I regard your use of 'pagan' as somewhat pejorative as all those beliefs are as valid as Christianity.
I'll be sure to tell my pagan friends you disapprove. You will note that "pagan" is in the url, too.
Oh, I have self-identifying 'pagan' friends as well. I always think it odd that anyone wants to be identified by something that was originally intended dismissively and which lumps them all together.
Oh, and I regard your use of 'pagan' as somewhat pejorative as all those beliefs are as valid as Christianity.
I'll be sure to tell my pagan friends you disapprove. You will note that "pagan" is in the url, too.
Oh, I have self-identifying 'pagan' friends as well. I always think it odd that anyone wants to be identified by something that was originally intended dismissively and which lumps them all together.
I'm aware of its origins, and I have a smaller number of friends who prefer "heathen". I'm happy to go with what those believers/practitioners prefer. Mostly, including the authors of that website apparently, it's "pagan". Words evolve over time.
I do not follow either the internal logic of this paragraph nor its bearing on the point at issue. You appear to be free-associating in lieu of argument.
I accept your assessment of this and I’m afraid I do not claim to be able to be precise in logical steps. I do realise, after reading posts of those who are good at it, here and on other forums, that it is an unfortunate lack.
First you said that evolved behaviours allowed the species to survive and now you're saying the species survived because of other factors despite evolution. (What other factors are you thinking of anyway?)
Our species evolved because of many factors over a couple of billion years, I would not claim to know a precise list. However, genes, random mutations in DNA, and throughout the line of life that lede to the various types of humans, the luck that meant that throughout each stage the animals in question happened to have adaptations enabling them to survive whatever circumstances were current.
You appear to imply that we are here despite the fact that our ancestors had more children than their contemporaries. We are here because our ancestors had more children than their contemporaries.
Whatever the steps along the way were caused by, the fact still remains that because of all the factors, here we are alive at this moment.
So now you are saying that there is a much broader understanding of ethical obligations nowadays that the behaviours that you said had arisen from evolution. What is the cause of that broader understanding then?-;
Again, there cannot be just one cause. The acquisition of knowledge, travel by people, education, an innate curiosity,knowledge built up and continued or discarded, an understanding or interpretation of history that enables more people to see where things went wrong……
You say that it is not Christian ethical ideals. But if not Christianity what?
… … but most certainly not just Christianity, or ‘Christian ethics, unless you can show more clearly why you think so.
More precisely the individuals' genes enable reproduction. But they
enable the reproduction of the individual, and the species only incidentally.
Hmmmm, there’s a flaw there somewhere, I’m sure, but I can’t pin it downjust now
Genghis Khan's genes have spread through most people in Asia, but that wasn't because Genghis was doing anything to help the species survive.
Maybe that was one of the times when species survival was ‘in spite of’, but since there were already by that time more than enough people, it didn’t make a difference.
When our ancestors among homo habilis had genes that evolved into modern humans, the rest of homo habilis did not survive.
I expect one day that evolutionary biologists will work out a great deal more about the whys and wherefores of that, but how extremely lucky we are that homo sapiens did survive
Thank you very much for your posts. I wish I was in a stronger position to use the formal logic of discussion, but I’m afraid it’s a bit late for that and it is quite frustrating at times not to be able to make notes as I go along. I just hope you are not sitting there shaking your head!
I invented a Christian sect for my novel. They worship through bell-ringer. I called them 'Clangers'.
As the Dragonlets (who are very definitely being raised as Christians) will tell you, Clangers communicate through whistles.
[tangent] What kind of bells are they ringing? [/tangent]
On a more serious note:
As catholic values and practice form a large part of life Chez Dragon we are raising our children as Christians. This includes teaching them both about our beliefs, and what we do, especially as Anglo-Catholicism is heavily liturgical. Within the last year we have gained enough of a critical mass of children at church to have a Sunday school (meets during the readings and the eucharistic prayer), which helps with biblical engagement, but we have also quite deliberately sent Dragonlet 1 to the local Catholic school, (albeit it was a minor miracle he got a place as it's over-subscribed), where they have a strong RE curriculum.
Wasn't it Soren Kierkegaard who said, "Christianity is not for children" ? Sorry I can't cite a reference from his writings.
It does present painful dilemmas for children who are taught to always obey their grownup relatives and honorable persons and ignore the feelings of guilt or shame that can occur. Aside from this, the torture and murder of Jesus and our celebration of it is baffling for children taught to accept it as a good thing.
But this is an abuse of Christianity, not the proper use of it. A parent who teaches children "to always obey their grownup relatives" etc. and "ignore the feelings of guilt or shame that can occur" is not far removed from child abuse. That kind of thing is at least laying a groundwork for child abuse, and is arguably crossing the line itself, as it does moral and emotional violence to a child who has "guilt and shame" over some adult-mandated thing and is nevertheless expected to accept it. Have any Christian parents ever taught this? I'm sure some have. But that does not in itself render such teaching Christianity, especially in view of what Jesus says about those who cause little children to stumble.
The cross thing is difficult, and should be difficult, because it is at the heart of the human dilemma--that the worst thing in the world became the best for us, and why and how. No adult has fully plumbed those depths, so anybody who expects children to be unbaffled needs to think again. And any parent who presents the cross as a simple unalloyed good with nothing difficult about it had better be certifiably simple-minded, because that's lousy, lousy parenting. IMHO the problem does not lie with Christianity.
I have no idea what my parents believed. To the best of my knowledge they only went to church for weddings and chistenings. However they did encourage me to go to Sunday school even though we never discussed what went on. We never ever discused religion or politics
As catholic values and practice form a large part of life Chez Dragon we are raisingour children as Christians.
May I ask: what is in your opinion the difference between raising your children 'as Christians' and raising them as caring, sensible, law-abiding, etc people, which includes an important knowledge and understanding about religious beliefs and about their history? I wonder how you think they willlllll be better* than other people, or others with different religious beliefs.
*better is a hopelessly inadequate word herebut I can't think of one that fits exactly.
@Lamb Chopped, as so often you have understood what I was trying to say. I don't remember anyone ever saying to me, "Be nice to everyone and never get angry". Even in the 60s people weren't that simplistic. But that is the message I absorbed as a child, which has caused problems since. From what you've said, you've done far better at rasing your children than I would have done!
Growing up, I often felt like an outsider who hadn’t a clue how to fit in, and I found it comforting to attribute that to being a Christian (there were plenty of verses to back this up). When I went to university I gradually realized I was just using Christianity as an excuse to be generally timid, and that a lot of the differences mainly resulted from having unusually elderly parents.
When my daughter was fairly young I explained the difference between passive, aggressive and assertive. Now in her 20s, she says this is one of the most useful things I ever told her.
I invented a Christian sect for my novel. They worship through bell-ringer. I called them 'Clangers'.
As the Dragonlets (who are very definitely being raised as Christians) will tell you, Clangers communicate through whistles.
[tangent] What kind of bells are they ringing? [/tangent]
On a more serious note:
As catholic values and practice form a large part of life Chez Dragon we are raising our children as Christians. This includes teaching them both about our beliefs, and what we do, especially as Anglo-Catholicism is heavily liturgical. Within the last year we have gained enough of a critical mass of children at church to have a Sunday school (meets during the readings and the eucharistic prayer), which helps with biblical engagement, but we have also quite deliberately sent Dragonlet 1 to the local Catholic school, (albeit it was a minor miracle he got a place as it's over-subscribed), where they have a strong RE curriculum.
They use handbells. And yes, the reference to the TV show was intentional.
Is the RE at the school multi-faith or is it just in the RC tradition?
May I ask: what is in your opinion the difference between raising your children 'as Christians' and raising them as caring, sensible, law-abiding, etc people, which includes an important knowledge and understanding about religious beliefs and about their history? I wonder how you think they willlllll be better* than other people, or others with different religious beliefs.
It's a good question (and you asked another good question upthread, which I'll answer when I have more leisure). Leaving aside the Resurrection and the Life, which is clearly the point for a committed Christian but will cut no ice with anyone outside that ... I would say what I'm hoping for is a moral imagination adequate to reality.
I think the interesting thing about the 'caring, sensible, law-abiding' troika is that of course these things are often in tension or nakedly contradictory. We can all think of societies where to be law-abiding is not to be caring; of situations where caring is not sensible; and so forth. If we live in particularly privileged positions in particularly privileged societies, these tensions will be muted and we don't have to worry about them too much. Philip Pullman once said that all the rules one needed for life were to be found in the novels of Jane Austen; and for inhabitants of hermetically-sealed Austen-like milieux, that is perhaps true.
I haven't been so lucky. As a thoroughly secular/atheistic/not-bothered fifteen-year-old, I thought I had everything figured out and couldn't see why people made such a big deal about ethics and morality. By the time I was twenty-five, that belief had been blown to smithereens by a number of people who entered my life: a Holocaust survivor who was also a nasty piece of work; people from families characterised chiefly by incest and rape. After that I worked in a school with a large number of refugees from war-torn nations, many of whom clearly had unimaginable stories living behind their eyes.
Common sense was always inadequate to these realities: nothing in my background or education had prepared me for this. And the secular response - broadly, to treat these things as curable disorders - always seemed remarkably thin, ineffective, and shallow in its understanding of human beings. I spent I guess a solid fifteen years orbiting around in secular philosophical and psychological approaches to these things and never found anything that didn't suffer from these flaws. Buddhism seemed more promising, because of its focus on suffering, and I spent ten years there. And then God intervened.
And since then I've found better answers, or at least descriptions, in Christian writings than I found anywhere else. St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales, and Brother Lawrence all seem to have a better understanding - or at least, an understanding that speaks to me more directly - of suffering and redemption than anything I've encountered before. Their views are sometimes alarming or extreme or wildly counterintuitive. But that's because they understand the human condition as alarming and extreme and wildly counterintuitive, and that's certainly been my experience thus far.
There was a time, decades ago now, when I would have thought the important thing was simply to be caring and sensible and law-abiding. But I can't put those blinders on again now, and this necessarily affects how I raise my child. The answers for him, in the end and many years down the road, might not be Christian answers. My say in that is limited. But they at any rate won't be *easy*. They will be informed by a scope of possibility that extends beyond the confines of Middle Britain and its vague moral consensus to a love that passeth all understanding and the unimaginable torment of the Cross. And that, I think, is a start.
I'm not sure about "curable disorders" as characterizing secular approaches. Well, it's correct to an extent. I worked as a psychotherapist, where there is an attempt to help people. However, "cure" is outside city limits. Freud had his standard reply, that you might change neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness, which is quite funny also, but a bit pessimistic.
Then I started to find religion boring really. But that is a personal thing, I don't mind if someone worships Ahura Mazda or whatever. What else is there?
Common sense was always inadequate to these realities: nothing in my background or education had prepared me for this. And the secular response - broadly, to treat these things as curable disorders - always seemed remarkably thin, ineffective, and shallow in its understanding of human beings.
Thank you very much for a most interesting post. As far as I know, I have never come across a secular, or atheist response which thinks that these things] are 'curable disorders' and would be interested to hearmore on this idea - and on this interesting phrase:
Well, sure, I overstated - though CBT and pharmacological interventions have sometimes made promises close to 'cure'.
Cavilling over this, though, seems to be missing or perhaps strengthening my point. I want myself and my child to have a wider view of life and suffering than the possibility of attenuating the latter and a hollow laugh. This is not, on my view, really a full human life.
@quetzalcoatl Wel, if you really took so uninterested a view of a Parsi client's beliefs, I would consider this precisely a failure of imagination. Maybe not at a therapeutic level; but at the level of human empathy.
@SusanDoris The God intervention was chronicled at length back in Septeber in a thread entitled 'Why Christians Always Left Me Cold'. I seem to recall you contributed to it fairly heavily.
As catholic values and practice form a large part of life Chez Dragon we are raisingour children as Christians.
May I ask: what is in your opinion the difference between raising your children 'as Christians' and raising them as caring, sensible, law-abiding, etc people, which includes an important knowledge and understanding about religious beliefs and about their history? I wonder how you think they willlllll be better* than other people, or others with different religious beliefs.
*better is a hopelessly inadequate word herebut I can't think of one that fits exactly.
I've got a toddler, so right now teaching him about Christianity is teaching him that God and Jesus love him and love everybody else too, and that he's part of a loving community.
I certainly don't want him to be better than other people. Christianity is the best tool I have to teach him these things. We also are teaching him how to play the guitar - not because it's the best instrument, but because it's the one his dad plays. Little one doesn't have to be a musician, but he will grow up with music in his life and with the basic skills to play on his own and with others.
As catholic values and practice form a large part of life Chez Dragon we are raisingour children as Christians.
May I ask: what is in your opinion the difference between raising your children 'as Christians' and raising them as caring, sensible, law-abiding, etc people, which includes an important knowledge and understanding about religious beliefs and about their history? I wonder how you think they willlllll be better* than other people, or others with different religious beliefs.
*better is a hopelessly inadequate word herebut I can't think of one that fits exactly.
I've got a toddler, so right now teaching him about Christianity is teaching him that God and Jesus love him and love everybody else too, and that he's part of a loving community.
Thank you for your response to that post of mine and I have been thinking and re-thinking a response since reading it yesterday. Please understand that my post here is written only with a genuine intrest in the reply. The main point is: how will you explain to your son that of all the things he will learn about in his life, the only thing for which there is a total lack of verifiable evidence is God … and along with that goes the idea of a still-existing spirit of Jesus. Those are the only things which require total faith. I could expand on that but really that's the central point! And since this topic is about teaching, I think it is in order.
I certainly don't want him to be better than other people. Christianity is the best tool I have to teach him these things. We also are teaching him how to play the guitar - not because it's the best instrument, but because it's the one his dad plays. Little one doesn't have to be a musician, but he will grow up with music in his life and with the basic skills to play on his own and with others.
I see raising them as Christians as involving teaching them values, some of which are universal, from a Christian perspective, using the Bible as a basis for this rather than say the Koran. Some of this may mean that my justification for why we believe certain things or act in certain ways differs slightly from other people's, as it's couched in terms of God's love for the world and Christ's sacrifice, but it's not about him being automatically superior.
RE at Dragonlet 1's school does include some learning about other faiths but is primarily RC-focused, including both beliefs and practice. It's the only faith school in our area, all the CofE ones are too far away, although there is a private Islamic primary school just up the road. It's not as total a religious immersion as many Islamic children around here will experience, as they go to Koran classes in the evenings most nights to be drilled in reading and understanding it.
I don't think that there is a total lack of evidence for the existance of God's place in our lives, and certainly not for the presence of Jesus on Earth. Having faith in such ideas is something that other people may disagree with, but we wouldn't be true to ourselves as parents if we didn't make it clear that is what we believe.
As catholic values and practice form a large part of life Chez Dragon we are raisingour children as Christians.
May I ask: what is in your opinion the difference between raising your children 'as Christians' and raising them as caring, sensible, law-abiding, etc people, which includes an important knowledge and understanding about religious beliefs and about their history? I wonder how you think they willlllll be better* than other people, or others with different religious beliefs.
*better is a hopelessly inadequate word herebut I can't think of one that fits exactly.
I've got a toddler, so right now teaching him about Christianity is teaching him that God and Jesus love him and love everybody else too, and that he's part of a loving community.
Thank you for your response to that post of mine and I have been thinking and re-thinking a response since reading it yesterday. Please understand that my post here is written only with a genuine intrest in the reply. The main point is: how will you explain to your son that of all the things he will learn about in his life, the only thing for which there is a total lack of verifiable evidence is God … and along with that goes the idea of a still-existing spirit of Jesus. Those are the only things which require total faith. I could expand on that but really that's the central point! And since this topic is about teaching, I think it is in order.
I appreciate that your interest is genuine, thank you! I lurk a lot more than I post
The thing is... I do believe that there is verifiable evidence that there is a God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, and they love us all. Christianity is a good way for me to question and develop that belief, as it is not total faith - far from it! But for me, my smidge of faith is very real and very important, and makes my life much better.
And if the toddler grows up and chooses to reject Christianity or religion completely, that's his choice. I'm getting used to him yelling "No!" at me.
I see raising them as Christians as involving teaching them values, some of which are universal, from a Christian perspective, using the Bible as a basis for this rather than say the Koran. Some of this may mean that my justification for why we believe certain things or act in certain ways differs slightly from other people's, as it's couched in terms of God's love for the world and Christ's sacrifice, but it's not about him being automatically superior.
Please ignore this if you'd rather, but I would be most interested to know what is the core, fundamental reason for your belief that there is a God?
As catholic values and practice form a large part of life Chez Dragon we are raisingour children as Christians.
May I ask: what is in your opinion the difference between raising your children 'as Christians' and raising them as caring, sensible, law-abiding, etc people, which includes an important knowledge and understanding about religious beliefs and about their history? I wonder how you think they willlllll be better* than other people, or others with different religious beliefs.
*better is a hopelessly inadequate word herebut I can't think of one that fits exactly.
I've got a toddler, so right now teaching him about Christianity is teaching him that God and Jesus love him and love everybody else too, and that he's part of a loving community.
Thank you for your response to that post of mine and I have been thinking and re-thinking a response since reading it yesterday. Please understand that my post here is written only with a genuine intrest in the reply. The main point is: how will you explain to your son that of all the things he will learn about in his life, the only thing for which there is a total lack of verifiable evidence is God … and along with that goes the idea of a still-existing spirit of Jesus. Those are the only things which require total faith. I could expand on that but really that's the central point! And since this topic is about teaching, I think it is in order.
I appreciate that your interest is genuine, thank you! I lurk a lot more than I post
The thing is... I do believe that there is verifiable evidence that there is a God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, and they love us all.
Is it possible to expand on this a bit?
Christianity is a good way for me to question and develop that belief, as it is not total faith - far from it! But for me, my smidge of faith is very real and very important, and makes my life much better.
I like the way you put that - and respect your view.
And if the toddler grows up and chooses to reject Christianity or religion completely, that's his choice. I'm getting used to him yelling "No!" at me.
If a person grows up and decides against a faith belief, I don't think that would count as total rejection. By that time they would have a wide knowledge and, one hopes, understanding of history and how civilisations and their religious beliefs have developed.
Making it clear what we believe - does that include the doubt? The terrible feeling that the whole thing is just a way of avoiding fear of death, of insignificance, of oblivion?
As catholic values and practice form a large part of life Chez Dragon we are raisingour children as Christians.
May I ask: what is in your opinion the difference between raising your children 'as Christians' and raising them as caring, sensible, law-abiding, etc people, which includes an important knowledge and understanding about religious beliefs and about their history? I wonder how you think they willlllll be better* than other people, or others with different religious beliefs.
*better is a hopelessly inadequate word herebut I can't think of one that fits exactly.
I've got a toddler, so right now teaching him about Christianity is teaching him that God and Jesus love him and love everybody else too, and that he's part of a loving community.
Thank you for your response to that post of mine and I have been thinking and re-thinking a response since reading it yesterday. Please understand that my post here is written only with a genuine intrest in the reply. The main point is: how will you explain to your son that of all the things he will learn about in his life, the only thing for which there is a total lack of verifiable evidence is God … and along with that goes the idea of a still-existing spirit of Jesus. Those are the only things which require total faith. I could expand on that but really that's the central point! And since this topic is about teaching, I think it is in order.
I appreciate that your interest is genuine, thank you! I lurk a lot more than I post
The thing is... I do believe that there is verifiable evidence that there is a God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, and they love us all. .
Making it clear what we believe - does that include the doubt? The terrible feeling that the whole thing is just a way of avoiding fear of death, of insignificance, of oblivion?
I think that it's age-dependent. Telling a five year old "Jesus love you but he might not even exist" would be bewildering. At that age you might admit that sometimes it's hard even for mummy and daddy to do what Jesus wants, then as they grow older expand on that until they are old enough to grok faith-with-doubt.
Making it clear what we believe - does that include the doubt? The terrible feeling that the whole thing is just a way of avoiding fear of death, of insignificance, of oblivion?
I think that it's age-dependent. Telling a five year old "Jesus love you but he might not even exist" would be bewildering.
Just to bring in the mention of God and Jesus At that age is to start down a path leading to conflict with information about reality. And, yes, that is not well expressed, but I'll leave it brief.
you might admit that sometimes it's hard even for mummy and daddy to do what Jesus wants
And how does a parent in today's world of information and communication explain how they know what this Jesus wants - in the present tense - when the person lived such a long time ago?
then as they grow older expand on that until they are old enough to grok faith-with-doubt.
Perhaps it would be better to talk with the doubt implied right from the start!
And how does a parent in today's world of information and communication explain how they know what this Jesus wants - in the present tense - when the person lived such a long time ago?
Perhaps it would be better to talk with the doubt implied right from the start!
Have you ever read Piaget? Little kids don't even understand that containers with different shapes hold the same amount of liquid. And they cannot, until a certain developmental state is reached. This is universal. We know a hell of a lot about what kids are capable of understanding. And little kids can't do scientific doubt. They just can't. I highly suggest you read Piaget, or somebody who understands Piaget, before making impossible demands like this.
Perhaps it would be better to talk with the doubt implied right from the start!
Have you ever read Piaget? Little kids don't even understand that containers with different shapes hold the same amount of liquid. And they cannot, until a certain developmental state is reached. This is universal. We know a hell of a lot about what kids are capable of understanding. And little kids can't do scientific doubt. They just can't. I highly suggest you read Piaget, or somebody who understands Piaget, before making impossible demands like this.
I read and learnt a great deal about and from Piaget when I was at Teacher Training College. One of the things I have learnt since is that children are picking up all sorts of information, directely and peripherally, which adults often wonder, when it is reproduced in whatever form the child is capable of at each age, how the child could know such-and-such. Whatever the child sees and hears is being absorbed, arranged and re-arranged in his/her brain from birth onwards… unless someone can show me where I am quite mistaken in that.
And yes I know the book you referred to, but surely it should not be taken as the final, unchallengeable word
Perhaps it would be better to talk with the doubt implied right from the start!
Have you ever read Piaget? Little kids don't even understand that containers with different shapes hold the same amount of liquid. And they cannot, until a certain developmental state is reached. This is universal. We know a hell of a lot about what kids are capable of understanding. And little kids can't do scientific doubt. They just can't. I highly suggest you read Piaget, or somebody who understands Piaget, before making impossible demands like this.
I read and learnt a great deal about and from Piaget when I was at Teacher Training College. One of the things I have learnt since is that children are picking up all sorts of information, directely and peripherally, which adults often wonder, when it is reproduced in whatever form the child is capable of at each age, how the child could know such-and-such. Whatever the child sees and hears is being absorbed, arranged and re-arranged in his/her brain from birth onwards… unless someone can show me where I am quite mistaken in that.
And yes I know the book you referred to, but surely it should not be taken as the final, unchallengeable word
Surely we should at least consider that we are unlikely to know better than experts in a field. Children are always taking things on board, it is true, but not necessarily in the way we intend. If they are not ready to learn what we are trying to teach them, they will learn something else. And that something may not be true.
Surely we should at least consider that we are unlikely to know better than experts in a field. Children are always taking things on board, it is true, but not necessarily in the way we intend. If they are not ready to learn what we are trying to teach them, they will learn something else. And that something may not be true.
Agree. Dragon 1 sometimes gets a bit confused about things he's been told (not just church related). And has far too great an interest in the Trinity for my theological explanation abilities.
The main point is: how will you explain to your son that of all the things he will learn about in his life, the only thing for which there is a total lack of verifiable evidence is God
I find this a curious sort of question in relation to children. My mercifully-brief exposure to Ed Psych concerned much later stages of education; but my experience with my own five-year-old is that moral education is much more about the cultivation of affective dispositions than demonstration of verifiable ethical systems.
In fact, I don't really have much choice in the matter. Leaving aside the question of whether there really is any such thing as a truly grounded ethical system .... to @mousethief's point, my son might be taking in a lot, but he's a long way from the age of reason: after a lengthy picture-book exposition of the circulatory system, he confronted me with the question, 'But who is oxygen?' What I'm hoping grounds what must seem to him the endless series of arbitrary demands we make of him is less a process of inference, but affect and emotion.
And what affective dispositions are we trying to cultivate? Empathy, and empathic imagination as I described before; love, and gentleness; a sense of his own dignity and moral purpose that looks beyond currently existing social conventions to a higher order of affairs. And I suspect the reason few but a hardcore Neitzchean would argue with these ideals is that they're (Judeo-)Christian ideals that still profoundly inform at least some aspects of our culture.
As for the ways in which these dispositions are elicited and guided ... well, I'm quite happy to go back to those roots. Prayer as a way of working through desire and discerning our own impulses; Christ as an incarnation of all those ideals; and knowledge of him and of God through probing the heart. All of these seem at least as useful as the confused bric-a-brac of Freudian and Jungian theory, self-esteem anxieties, faintly understood political ideologies and crusted-over faith beliefs that served as the framework of my own '80s secular youth.
With regard to future years ... well, my strong intuition is that emotional grounding is fundamental to the right exercise of reason. Or, as St. Bonaventure might have said, the flower of intellect must be rooted in faith. He will question, and he will doubt, and I would not trust his good sense if he did not. But if he cannot at some point simply love, be compassionate, and be strong in his defence and expression of those imperatives without first grounding his actions in some verifiable system .... well, that I would consider a failure on our part. And a source of unhappiness for him.
Some quite small children are surprisingly interested in ethical systems.
It is possible to have a discussion with a child in which, although you have more knowledge and experience, your views can be challenged and modified. Mine were, frequently. In many respects I was a very lucky parent.
Why should children not be taught to be Christians? ...
Because Colin Smith was taken to Sunday School a time or two (the horror!) and didn't like it. And Colin Smith is more intelligent and wiser than the rest of us, and is thus an appropriate arbiter of How Parents Should Raise Their Children, although (if I recall aright) he does not have any of his own.
...And as for specifically Christian virtues, are those not the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and love (in the specifically Christian variants--tge ones that look like stupidity to non-Christians?
Yes, but the Colin Smiths of this world arrogate to themselves the right to dictate on these matters to the rest of us. Bless their hearts.
Some quite small children are surprisingly interested in ethical systems.
It is possible to have a discussion with a child in which, although you have more knowledge and experience, your views can be challenged and modified. Mine were, frequently. In many respects I was a very lucky parent.
Oh, yes. I wasn't saying systems have no role to play. To some extent they're even unavoidable, given the persistence with which children ask 'why?'; I've often found myself improvising explanations and finding it surprisingly difficult to keep everything consistent. And at times my five-year-old has probed at that.
But then again, I just now gave him a lengthy explanation of who Gandhi was - occasioned by the need to demonstrate that boys do not always have to be fighting - which was clearly wasted because (a) it was too complicated; and (b) afterwards it became clear he thought (or hoped) I was talking about 'candy'.
I think what I was pushing at was really the word verifiable. I'm not sure ethical acts or systems ever really meet that criterion, and in fact I'm not sure they value of ethical systems is that they're ethical and they're systems. They're maybe just more a useful way of unpacking and discussing what we should do and how we should behave than something that allows a strong chain of inferences.
The main point is: how will you explain to your son that of all the things he will learn about in his life, the only thing for which there is a total lack of verifiable evidence is God
I find this a curious sort of question in relation to children.
Thank you for a longish post to spend a wet, dismal morning thinking about! As your child has heard about God and Jesus during his life so far, he is bound to ask questions, simple at first, more searching later on, about them. That is the time when answers need to be ready. From the way you express yourself, I think it is very unlikely that such questions will not even occur to him, I think they are inevitable.
My mercifully-brief exposure to Ed Psych concerned much later stages of education; but my experience with my own five-year-old is that moral education is much more about the cultivation of affective dispositions than demonstration of verifiable ethical systems.
Yes, I should have been clearer.
In fact, I don't really have much choice in the matter. Leaving aside the question of whether there really is any such thing as a truly grounded ethical system .... to @mousethief's point, my son might be taking in a lot, but he's a long way from the age of reason: after a lengthy picture-book exposition of the circulatory system, he confronted me with the question, 'But who is oxygen?' What I'm hoping grounds what must seem to him the endless series of arbitrary demands we make of him is less a process of inference, but affect and emotion.
And what affective dispositions are we trying to cultivate? Empathy, and empathic imagination as I described before; love, and gentleness; a sense of his own dignity and moral purpose that looks beyond currently existing social conventions to a higher order of affairs. And I suspect the reason few but a hardcore Neitzchean would argue with these ideals is that they're (Judeo-)Christian ideals that still profoundly inform at least some aspects of our culture.
No argument there, and it is important for every child to learn as much as possible about other cultures and their histories, and how they overlap.
As for the ways in which these dispositions are elicited and guided ... well, I'm quite happy to go back to those roots. Prayer as a way of working through desire and discerning our own impulses; Christ as an incarnation of all those ideals; and knowledge of him and of God through probing the heart.
Well, I’ll come in here with two points onwhich I’ll be interested to read your response. It is easy, i.e. a straightforward procedure, to teach prayers and praying, especially when a child is small, but they too will need an explanation of some sort later. Where and to whom/what are these, structured?, thoughts directed? You then mention ‘knowledge of him and of god’. I wonder what knowledge is that? The assumption that there was a person, Jesus, a charismatic preacher probably, is accepted by most I think, but In my understanding the idea that Jesus still "is" in some way, and that God is more than a humanly created idea, I (and many others of course) do not accept as reality.
All of these seem at least as useful as the confused bric-a-brac of Freudian and Jungian theory, self-esteem anxieties, faintly understood political ideologies and crusted-over faith beliefs that served as the framework of my own '80s secular youth.
Yes –the study of philosophers and their work is a gap in my life, but I think it is safe to assume that they should always be seen with the updated ideas and available knowledge to hand, so that their work is admired and respected but not taken as unalterable.
With regard to future years ... well, my strong intuition is that emotional grounding is fundamental to the right exercise of reason. Or, as St. Bonaventure might have said, the flower of intellect must be rooted in faith.
As his time was in the 13th century, and he was probably wise then, it is rather hard, especially as he is the patron saint of bowel disorders, difficult to take seriously now!:D
He will question, and he will doubt, and I would not trust his good sense if he did not. But if he cannot at some point simply love, be compassionate, and be strong in his defence and expression of those imperatives without first grounding his actions in some verifiable system .... well, that I would consider a failure on our part. And a source of unhappiness for him.
One final point here: in my opinion it helps greatly to know that there is a physical and chemical cause for the emotions,, very beneficial emotions. Of love and compassion and that, whether they are fully understood scientifically or not yet, do not need a religious belief to exist.
Well, I’ll come in here with two points on which I’ll be interested to read your response. It is easy, i.e. a straightforward procedure, to teach prayers and praying, especially when a child is small, but they too will need an explanation of some sort later. Where and to whom/what are these, structured?, thoughts directed? You then mention ‘knowledge of him and of god’. I wonder what knowledge is that? The assumption that there was a person, Jesus, a charismatic preacher probably, is accepted by most I think, but In my understanding the idea that Jesus still "is" in some way, and that God is more than a humanly created idea, I (and many others of course) do not accept as reality.
And I am untroubled that you do not accept that. For the vast majority of my life I did not either. For those with eyes to see ... and of course, that is not everyone.
As his time was in the 13th century, and he was probably wise then, it is rather hard, especially as he is the patron saint of bowel disorders, difficult to take seriously now!
And here is another point on which we disagree. Every age considers itself the wisest, and is shocked by the failures of other epochs in this regard. But this is short-sighted; there are people in every age who see things with penetration. Plato, Confucius, St. Bonaventura, Rousseau ... they are not to be discarded because they are old.
As for the bowel-disorder thing; well, yes, that would certainly amuse my five-year-old. Well done.
.... Of love and compassion and that, whether they are fully understood scientifically or not yet, do not need a religious belief to exist.
No, of course not. But neither is understanding of them, or sensitivity to them, or knowing how best to respond to them, simply an automatic thing. And I'm not sure that analysis of their chemical correlates really helps in that regard. The language of Christianity and of Christian thinkers is not just more divine here but also, I think, rather more human.
Why should children not be taught to be Christians? ...
Because Colin Smith was taken to Sunday School a time or two (the horror!) and didn't like it. And Colin Smith is more intelligent and wiser than the rest of us, and is thus an appropriate arbiter of How Parents Should Raise Their Children, although (if I recall aright) he does not have any of his own.
...And as for specifically Christian virtues, are those not the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and love (in the specifically Christian variants--tge ones that look like stupidity to non-Christians?
Yes, but the Colin Smiths of this world arrogate to themselves the right to dictate on these matters to the rest of us. Bless their hearts.
I have almost no recollection of Sunday School so can't say if I liked it or not. I was only sent there because my younger brother had arrived and my parents needed a few hours break. I'm pretty sure my preferences had nothing to do with my ceasing to attend and everything to do with my father's atheism and my mother's lack of interest in any form of belief.
I am not wiser or more intelligent than the rest of you, but you are correct that I have no children. Any authority I have on child-raising comes from having had parents.
What I am, is someone who places a very high value on individual liberties which in this instance means protecting young people from the excessive influence of others so that they may grow up to be people who instinctively question and challenge received wisdom and ideas. The last thing I want to do is raise non-believers/atheists who are only atheists and non-believers because they have never experienced any other world-view.
Indeed. And it's eminently teachable. Only those who are afraid their child will end up with views, values, and beliefs they disagree with or think less valid could possibly disagree with pluralism.
Comments
True. But there are a huge number of beliefs that do involve a creator god or several creator gods working together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_creation_myths
Oh, and I regard your use of 'pagan' as somewhat pejorative as all those beliefs are as valid as Christianity.
I'll be sure to tell my pagan friends you disapprove. You will note that "pagan" is in the url, too.
Oh, I have self-identifying 'pagan' friends as well. I always think it odd that anyone wants to be identified by something that was originally intended dismissively and which lumps them all together.
I'm aware of its origins, and I have a smaller number of friends who prefer "heathen". I'm happy to go with what those believers/practitioners prefer. Mostly, including the authors of that website apparently, it's "pagan". Words evolve over time.
You mean like "Christian" or "Methodist?"
and Shakers.
But pagans is often used for everyone who isn't in one of the big global religions and covers a huge range of beliefs.
I invented a Christian sect for my novel. They worship through bell-ringer. I called them 'Clangers'.
Comedy then.
Thank you very much for your posts. I wish I was in a stronger position to use the formal logic of discussion, but I’m afraid it’s a bit late for that and it is quite frustrating at times not to be able to make notes as I go along. I just hope you are not sitting there shaking your head!
Corrected quoting code. BroJames Purgatory Host.
[tangent] What kind of bells are they ringing? [/tangent]
On a more serious note:
As catholic values and practice form a large part of life Chez Dragon we are raising our children as Christians. This includes teaching them both about our beliefs, and what we do, especially as Anglo-Catholicism is heavily liturgical. Within the last year we have gained enough of a critical mass of children at church to have a Sunday school (meets during the readings and the eucharistic prayer), which helps with biblical engagement, but we have also quite deliberately sent Dragonlet 1 to the local Catholic school, (albeit it was a minor miracle he got a place as it's over-subscribed), where they have a strong RE curriculum.
It does present painful dilemmas for children who are taught to always obey their grownup relatives and honorable persons and ignore the feelings of guilt or shame that can occur. Aside from this, the torture and murder of Jesus and our celebration of it is baffling for children taught to accept it as a good thing.
The cross thing is difficult, and should be difficult, because it is at the heart of the human dilemma--that the worst thing in the world became the best for us, and why and how. No adult has fully plumbed those depths, so anybody who expects children to be unbaffled needs to think again. And any parent who presents the cross as a simple unalloyed good with nothing difficult about it had better be certifiably simple-minded, because that's lousy, lousy parenting. IMHO the problem does not lie with Christianity.
*better is a hopelessly inadequate word herebut I can't think of one that fits exactly.
When my daughter was fairly young I explained the difference between passive, aggressive and assertive. Now in her 20s, she says this is one of the most useful things I ever told her.
They use handbells. And yes, the reference to the TV show was intentional.
Is the RE at the school multi-faith or is it just in the RC tradition?
It's a good question (and you asked another good question upthread, which I'll answer when I have more leisure). Leaving aside the Resurrection and the Life, which is clearly the point for a committed Christian but will cut no ice with anyone outside that ... I would say what I'm hoping for is a moral imagination adequate to reality.
I think the interesting thing about the 'caring, sensible, law-abiding' troika is that of course these things are often in tension or nakedly contradictory. We can all think of societies where to be law-abiding is not to be caring; of situations where caring is not sensible; and so forth. If we live in particularly privileged positions in particularly privileged societies, these tensions will be muted and we don't have to worry about them too much. Philip Pullman once said that all the rules one needed for life were to be found in the novels of Jane Austen; and for inhabitants of hermetically-sealed Austen-like milieux, that is perhaps true.
I haven't been so lucky. As a thoroughly secular/atheistic/not-bothered fifteen-year-old, I thought I had everything figured out and couldn't see why people made such a big deal about ethics and morality. By the time I was twenty-five, that belief had been blown to smithereens by a number of people who entered my life: a Holocaust survivor who was also a nasty piece of work; people from families characterised chiefly by incest and rape. After that I worked in a school with a large number of refugees from war-torn nations, many of whom clearly had unimaginable stories living behind their eyes.
Common sense was always inadequate to these realities: nothing in my background or education had prepared me for this. And the secular response - broadly, to treat these things as curable disorders - always seemed remarkably thin, ineffective, and shallow in its understanding of human beings. I spent I guess a solid fifteen years orbiting around in secular philosophical and psychological approaches to these things and never found anything that didn't suffer from these flaws. Buddhism seemed more promising, because of its focus on suffering, and I spent ten years there. And then God intervened.
And since then I've found better answers, or at least descriptions, in Christian writings than I found anywhere else. St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales, and Brother Lawrence all seem to have a better understanding - or at least, an understanding that speaks to me more directly - of suffering and redemption than anything I've encountered before. Their views are sometimes alarming or extreme or wildly counterintuitive. But that's because they understand the human condition as alarming and extreme and wildly counterintuitive, and that's certainly been my experience thus far.
There was a time, decades ago now, when I would have thought the important thing was simply to be caring and sensible and law-abiding. But I can't put those blinders on again now, and this necessarily affects how I raise my child. The answers for him, in the end and many years down the road, might not be Christian answers. My say in that is limited. But they at any rate won't be *easy*. They will be informed by a scope of possibility that extends beyond the confines of Middle Britain and its vague moral consensus to a love that passeth all understanding and the unimaginable torment of the Cross. And that, I think, is a start.
Then I started to find religion boring really. But that is a personal thing, I don't mind if someone worships Ahura Mazda or whatever. What else is there?
Cavilling over this, though, seems to be missing or perhaps strengthening my point. I want myself and my child to have a wider view of life and suffering than the possibility of attenuating the latter and a hollow laugh. This is not, on my view, really a full human life.
@quetzalcoatl Wel, if you really took so uninterested a view of a Parsi client's beliefs, I would consider this precisely a failure of imagination. Maybe not at a therapeutic level; but at the level of human empathy.
@SusanDoris The God intervention was chronicled at length back in Septeber in a thread entitled 'Why Christians Always Left Me Cold'. I seem to recall you contributed to it fairly heavily.
?
I've got a toddler, so right now teaching him about Christianity is teaching him that God and Jesus love him and love everybody else too, and that he's part of a loving community.
I certainly don't want him to be better than other people. Christianity is the best tool I have to teach him these things. We also are teaching him how to play the guitar - not because it's the best instrument, but because it's the one his dad plays. Little one doesn't have to be a musician, but he will grow up with music in his life and with the basic skills to play on his own and with others.
RE at Dragonlet 1's school does include some learning about other faiths but is primarily RC-focused, including both beliefs and practice. It's the only faith school in our area, all the CofE ones are too far away, although there is a private Islamic primary school just up the road. It's not as total a religious immersion as many Islamic children around here will experience, as they go to Koran classes in the evenings most nights to be drilled in reading and understanding it.
I don't think that there is a total lack of evidence for the existance of God's place in our lives, and certainly not for the presence of Jesus on Earth. Having faith in such ideas is something that other people may disagree with, but we wouldn't be true to ourselves as parents if we didn't make it clear that is what we believe.
It'll be learning to play the organ chez Dragon!
I appreciate that your interest is genuine, thank you! I lurk a lot more than I post
The thing is... I do believe that there is verifiable evidence that there is a God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, and they love us all. Christianity is a good way for me to question and develop that belief, as it is not total faith - far from it! But for me, my smidge of faith is very real and very important, and makes my life much better.
And if the toddler grows up and chooses to reject Christianity or religion completely, that's his choice. I'm getting used to him yelling "No!" at me.
Please share it. I could use it for one.
I think that it's age-dependent. Telling a five year old "Jesus love you but he might not even exist" would be bewildering. At that age you might admit that sometimes it's hard even for mummy and daddy to do what Jesus wants, then as they grow older expand on that until they are old enough to grok faith-with-doubt.
Piaget lives!
There's a book. You may have heard of it.
Have you ever read Piaget? Little kids don't even understand that containers with different shapes hold the same amount of liquid. And they cannot, until a certain developmental state is reached. This is universal. We know a hell of a lot about what kids are capable of understanding. And little kids can't do scientific doubt. They just can't. I highly suggest you read Piaget, or somebody who understands Piaget, before making impossible demands like this.
And yes I know the book you referred to, but surely it should not be taken as the final, unchallengeable word
Surely we should at least consider that we are unlikely to know better than experts in a field. Children are always taking things on board, it is true, but not necessarily in the way we intend. If they are not ready to learn what we are trying to teach them, they will learn something else. And that something may not be true.
Agree. Dragon 1 sometimes gets a bit confused about things he's been told (not just church related). And has far too great an interest in the Trinity for my theological explanation abilities.
I find this a curious sort of question in relation to children. My mercifully-brief exposure to Ed Psych concerned much later stages of education; but my experience with my own five-year-old is that moral education is much more about the cultivation of affective dispositions than demonstration of verifiable ethical systems.
In fact, I don't really have much choice in the matter. Leaving aside the question of whether there really is any such thing as a truly grounded ethical system .... to @mousethief's point, my son might be taking in a lot, but he's a long way from the age of reason: after a lengthy picture-book exposition of the circulatory system, he confronted me with the question, 'But who is oxygen?' What I'm hoping grounds what must seem to him the endless series of arbitrary demands we make of him is less a process of inference, but affect and emotion.
And what affective dispositions are we trying to cultivate? Empathy, and empathic imagination as I described before; love, and gentleness; a sense of his own dignity and moral purpose that looks beyond currently existing social conventions to a higher order of affairs. And I suspect the reason few but a hardcore Neitzchean would argue with these ideals is that they're (Judeo-)Christian ideals that still profoundly inform at least some aspects of our culture.
As for the ways in which these dispositions are elicited and guided ... well, I'm quite happy to go back to those roots. Prayer as a way of working through desire and discerning our own impulses; Christ as an incarnation of all those ideals; and knowledge of him and of God through probing the heart. All of these seem at least as useful as the confused bric-a-brac of Freudian and Jungian theory, self-esteem anxieties, faintly understood political ideologies and crusted-over faith beliefs that served as the framework of my own '80s secular youth.
With regard to future years ... well, my strong intuition is that emotional grounding is fundamental to the right exercise of reason. Or, as St. Bonaventure might have said, the flower of intellect must be rooted in faith. He will question, and he will doubt, and I would not trust his good sense if he did not. But if he cannot at some point simply love, be compassionate, and be strong in his defence and expression of those imperatives without first grounding his actions in some verifiable system .... well, that I would consider a failure on our part. And a source of unhappiness for him.
It is possible to have a discussion with a child in which, although you have more knowledge and experience, your views can be challenged and modified. Mine were, frequently. In many respects I was a very lucky parent.
Yes, but the Colin Smiths of this world arrogate to themselves the right to dictate on these matters to the rest of us. Bless their hearts.
Oh, yes. I wasn't saying systems have no role to play. To some extent they're even unavoidable, given the persistence with which children ask 'why?'; I've often found myself improvising explanations and finding it surprisingly difficult to keep everything consistent. And at times my five-year-old has probed at that.
But then again, I just now gave him a lengthy explanation of who Gandhi was - occasioned by the need to demonstrate that boys do not always have to be fighting - which was clearly wasted because (a) it was too complicated; and (b) afterwards it became clear he thought (or hoped) I was talking about 'candy'.
I think what I was pushing at was really the word verifiable. I'm not sure ethical acts or systems ever really meet that criterion, and in fact I'm not sure they value of ethical systems is that they're ethical and they're systems. They're maybe just more a useful way of unpacking and discussing what we should do and how we should behave than something that allows a strong chain of inferences.
And I am untroubled that you do not accept that. For the vast majority of my life I did not either. For those with eyes to see ... and of course, that is not everyone.
And here is another point on which we disagree. Every age considers itself the wisest, and is shocked by the failures of other epochs in this regard. But this is short-sighted; there are people in every age who see things with penetration. Plato, Confucius, St. Bonaventura, Rousseau ... they are not to be discarded because they are old.
As for the bowel-disorder thing; well, yes, that would certainly amuse my five-year-old. Well done.
No, of course not. But neither is understanding of them, or sensitivity to them, or knowing how best to respond to them, simply an automatic thing. And I'm not sure that analysis of their chemical correlates really helps in that regard. The language of Christianity and of Christian thinkers is not just more divine here but also, I think, rather more human.
I have almost no recollection of Sunday School so can't say if I liked it or not. I was only sent there because my younger brother had arrived and my parents needed a few hours break. I'm pretty sure my preferences had nothing to do with my ceasing to attend and everything to do with my father's atheism and my mother's lack of interest in any form of belief.
I am not wiser or more intelligent than the rest of you, but you are correct that I have no children. Any authority I have on child-raising comes from having had parents.
What I am, is someone who places a very high value on individual liberties which in this instance means protecting young people from the excessive influence of others so that they may grow up to be people who instinctively question and challenge received wisdom and ideas. The last thing I want to do is raise non-believers/atheists who are only atheists and non-believers because they have never experienced any other world-view.
Thank you, that was an interesting conversation.
Indeed. And it's eminently teachable. Only those who are afraid their child will end up with views, values, and beliefs they disagree with or think less valid could possibly disagree with pluralism.