The Liberal Agnostic Secular Humanist Four-Year Old

[PRmerger]

What does “generally” mean? And what authority does this “generally” have? I won’t dispute that some people think about religion that way. But obviously the very linguistic usage you’re arguing against shows that clearly religion is “generally” regarded as something to which children can belong, in spite of the obvious fact that children don’t have well-formed, sophisticated theological or philosophical beliefs. ****So I don’t think you will get very far arguing from general usage in order to debunk general usage. ****That seems self-defeating. Perhaps we can both agree that general usage is somewhat incoherent in this as in many other things, no doubt in this case largely because “religion” is so hard to define.

Edwin

The above quote is a most intelligent, succinct rebuttal to Leela’s proposition. Thanks, Edwin, for putting into words what I have failed to do! :bowdown:

 

[PRmerger]

Of course, the intention is not to say that children should be fair game in religious conflicts, but that is the effect. Who could ever be against children? What reason could a child ever give for others to be against her? Whoever is not against our children is for them, right? It’s true up until the point when their own parents give other people reason to be against them. No one could oppose children until you give them a label such as “Christian” that can be opposed. Why play into the in group/out group mentality that is so destructive by imposing it on our unwitting children?

Best,
Leela

So, are you suggesting, Leela, that rather than calling a child a 4 yr old Catholic, we ought to call her a 4 yr old living with Catholic parents? This would preserve her from possible hostilities?

This is indeed an interesting proposal and I’m eager to hear your response.

 

[PRmerger]

If you wish to include children as Catholics then it seems to me that Catholicism is less than adherence to statement of fact. It is merely having Catholic parents.

No, Leela. It’s not merely having Catholic parents that makes someone Catholic.

 

[Fone_Bone_2001]

You can use words to mean whatever you want, but if a Christian is not ''one who has personally considered and freely chosen to adopt Christian beliefs," then to someone like me or Dawkings who does not believe in the supernatural, it then doesn’t seem to mean very much to be called a Christian. It would be as meaningless as it would be to call a newborn baby an atheist since she does not believe in God since she has no considered beliefs whatsoever. Though meaningless to us, it may then be thought to be at least unobjectionable to do so, but the problem for me is that doing so perpetuates the sorts of divisions that result in so much strife in the world.

First of all, I firmly believe that our use of language should correspond to reality - we should not just ‘‘use words to mean whatever [we] want,’’ and if you believe that I have stripped any word of its useful meaning by adopting a ridiculous definition, you should be quite hard on me indeed!

As another poster said, however, I don’t deny that ‘‘one who has personally considered and freely chosen to adopt Christian beliefs’’ is, by definition, a Christian. Of course you’re right about that, Leela. But children who aren’t old enough to weigh everything that is at stake for themselves are capable of being Christian, too - if their parents have them baptized.

That’s not to say they shouldn’t think for themselves. While they cannot do so fully yet, I feel we often vastly underestimate children. A typical ‘‘Christian child’’ probably does truly believe in the Christian faith to whatever extent they are capable.

It is so sad to me that you guys want to insist on calling your children Christians. I say, let children be children rather than unwitting participants in our holy wars and legitimizing them as targets in such conflicts.

We call them Christians because they have been baptized into the community of the faithful - ‘‘Christian’’ is what they are unless they choose to reject their faith.

You say ‘‘let children be children’’ as if Christianity is incompatible with the childlike. On the contrary, Jesus tells his followers, “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matt. 19:14)

In addition, I am not involved in any - what do you call them? - ‘‘holy wars,’’ nor have I ever been.

None, of course. They do not hold any beliefs, and they should not be labelled as having a religion. Of course you should teach your children about your beliefs and values, but in doing so, you would never consider your children Democrats just because you are a Democrat. You may hope that they will grow to share your beliefs and values, but they will have to make up their own minds. Teach them how to do that. Teach them to think.

Teaching children how to think is indeed necessary, and is entirely compatible with teaching them your faith.

Furthermore, children do have religious beliefs - most often what their parents teach them.

I think this is the real reason Dawkins - and perhaps you, too - doesn’t want children to be called Christians. It’s not that he and you are incapable of understanding that a child raised to believe in Christian teachings will, at least for some time, believe in them (and thus be Christian).

In other words, it’s not that he doesn’t understand that those children actually are Christian. It’s just that he doesn’t want them to be; he doesn’t want people to be raised Christian, Muslim, whatever - because he finds those faiths to be false.

There’s nothing wrong with this; it’s not a particularly sinister motive or anything. I just wish he’d admit that that’s the real reason for what he says.

I’m all in favor of teaching them to think. But as far as your model of how children’s minds operate, I think that children are very perceptive and they tend to pick up whatever they hear their parents saying (which is why it’s important to be careful what you say around them). They will tend to pick up Democratic or religious ideas by osmosis if those are the beliefs their parents subscribe to. So in that sense they are Christian or Muslim or whatever.

When they are older and more independent-minded and coming into contact with people who have different belief systems then the child will subject the beliefs he inherits from his family to scrutiny and alter them if necessary. That’s when the critical thinking part comes in; not when they’re 3 or 4.

Exactly! Well-said, tomarin.

**Furthermore, Leela, you’re right that even if a Marxist teaches his/her children Marxist beliefs and that child believes them, we would not call that child a Marxist.

Nor would we call a child a Democrat or a Republican, or any of Dawkins’ other examples.

But all of the examples given are political, philosophical, economic, etc. philosophies.

Religion - at least (especially?) Christianity - is more than all of those. Christianity, as a religion, is not primarily a philosophy - that’s why Christian scholars often have philosophically different beliefs (Thomists, neo-Thomists, Franciscans, realist phenomenologists, etc.)

It would be silly for a five-year-old to say, ‘‘I’m a phenomenologist.’’ But it is not silly - in fact, it makes perfect sense - for a five-year-old to say, ‘‘I’m a Christian’’ - or ‘‘I’m a Muslim’’ or ‘‘I’m a Hindu’’, etc.**

 

[Leela]

Muslims believe that all children are born Muslim. Thoughts?

 

[PRmerger]

Muslims believe that all children are born Muslim. Thoughts?

That is an interesting question. I don’t know the answer to that.

I do know that Jews consider their sons part of the covenant after circumcision, at 8 days old. Likewise, Christians consider Baptism the “circumcison of Christ”, as St. Paul writes.

Also I wonder if Hindus have a “sacrament of initiation” parallel.

 

[Contarini]

Muslims believe that all children are born Muslim. Thoughts?

What kind of thoughts are you looking for? Do you want an explanation of the theology that leads them to say this, or do you expect Christians to be somehow offended by this? I’m certainly not.

In fact, by the humanitarian, pragmatic logic you appealed to earlier, we should all welcome this, since it makes violence by Muslims against our children much less likely.

Edwin

 

[Pier]

Hi All,

I just finished reading Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion” where Dawkins raised an interesting issue that I had never thought about before. Dawkins has raised my conscioussness about the common practice of labelling children as Mulsim, Jewish, Christian, or Hindu based on the religion of their parents. But children are too young to have made up their minds about their religious beliefs. Dawkins points out that there is really no such thing as a Christian child, and we should all wince upon hearing such labels as we would if we heard children being labelled according to their parent’s beliefs as liberal or conservative children, agnostic or secular humanist children, and capitalist or marxist children.

What do you think?

Best,
Leela

Christ was raised in the religion of His parents, & was presented in the temple as an infant…

No offense intended to Mr. D, but I wince when instructed when & at what I should be wincing at, & find it ironic that such advice comes from a “free thinker.” With his line of reasoning, why bother educating young children at all? It’s an illogical rationale, but now I know not to read this book, so thank you!

 

[Pier]

Christ was raised in the religion of His parents, & was presented in the temple as an infant…

No offense intended to Mr. D, but I wince when instructed when & at what I should be wincing at, & find it ironic that such advice comes from a so-called “free thinker,” a wince-inducing label at any age. That said, now I know not to read this book, so thank you!

 

[dzheremi]

Leela: What I understand of your argument is that children are essentially a blank slate with regard to any beliefs placed in them by others. I agree with that, in a way, in that no child is born hating others, or being cruel for the sake of it, or anything like that. So as far as not involving them as “targets” or whatever in religious conflicts, yeah, that’s a good thing to keep away from children if possible. However, if you take it to the extreme of never educating your children one way or another about religion (for fear of “tainting” them), then someone or some thing will do it in your absence.

A child who is allowed to make up his own mind about whether or not to play in a busy street will not have the chance to grow to the age at which they will understand the wisdom of not playing in the street. So too with religion: Withhold your child from God until he is old enough to “understand” religion to your satisfaction (how exactly is this allowing them more of a choice than “indoctrinating” them in your religion?), and he will have developed his understanding of religion in absence of you and your faith community’s guidance. With the state of religious belief being what it is in Western secular democracies, it would be absolute neglect on the part of the Christian parent to just leave the child to make his way in society, with no guidance. This is not how we are to raise our children. Children are not brought into their parents’ religion in order to be pawns in some sort of religious war as you apparently think they are, but because their parents believe that this is the best way to educate their children, and crucial to the life of a child just as love, discipline, and feeding are.

 

[survive]

IIRC, I was curious about spiritual matters at three or four. I understood these things on two basic levels: narrative and emotional/experiential impressions. Although my family tried to keep me away from such information, it seeped in, sometimes from them despite themselves. I learned the first verse to Silent Night at seven and had no idea who Yon Virgin was or why the Holy Infant was special but I felt it and I instantly made a connection between that song and the evening star I saw outside my bedroom window while playing with my Christmas Eve music box (we have a tradition of one present on Christmas Eve, the rest on Christmas Day).
Children are deeply and irresistibly inerested in religious information. From what I have experienced and seen, they will seek it, as they will scientific knowledge and development of motor skills. If they don’t learn the truth they will learn a lie or invent something.

 

[Leela]

Leela: What I understand of your argument is that children are essentially a blank slate with regard to any beliefs placed in them by others. I agree with that, in a way, in that no child is born hating others, or being cruel for the sake of it, or anything like that. So as far as not involving them as “targets” or whatever in religious conflicts, yeah, that’s a good thing to keep away from children if possible. However, if you take it to the extreme of never educating your children one way or another about religion (for fear of “tainting” them), then someone or some thing will do it in your absence.

My position is not that we should not educate children, it is that we should not label children according to their parent’s beliefs.

 

[Leela]

So, are you suggesting, Leela, that rather than calling a child a 4 yr old Catholic, we ought to call her a 4 yr old living with Catholic parents? This would preserve her from possible hostilities?

This is indeed an interesting proposal and I’m eager to hear your response.

Yes, I would prefer the term “child of Christian parents.”

 

[Leela]

What kind of thoughts are you looking for? Do you want an explanation of the theology that leads them to say this, or do you expect Christians to be somehow offended by this? I’m certainly not.

In fact, by the humanitarian, pragmatic logic you appealed to earlier, we should all welcome this, since it makes violence by Muslims against our children much less likely.

Edwin

I thought you might find the idea offensive, as I do, for Muslims to claim that our babies are Muslim. I guess I was wrong.

 

[tomarin]

I thought you might find the idea offensive, as I do, for Muslims to claim that our babies are Muslim. I guess I was wrong.

Certainly it’s a little presumptuous. But they also think Abraham, Noah and other Old Testament patriarchs were Muslim, so maybe it’s all of a piece.

 

[1holycatholic]

Yes, I would prefer the term “child of Christian parents.”

Nominalism.

 

[Contarini]

I thought you might find the idea offensive, as I do, for Muslims to claim that our babies are Muslim. I guess I was wrong.

Can you explain why you find it offensive? If your concern is really to protect children from religious violence, isn’t it a good thing that the religious group whose members are currently the most likely to commit religious violence automatically counts all children as members of their religion (and thus not legitimate targets for violence)? Your position seems a bit incoherent.

Edwin

 

[Bruno_Schulz]

**Richard Dawkins, an atheist as many, is by his followers more believed then God. Brainless, but true – so what?!

Richard spends a lot of money of his more than silly books on spreading disbelieve in God. His “truth” doesn’t get any truer by all his struggling efforts – it remains same rubbish as books about the dryness of water.

Good old Richard is right in saying “children are too young to have made up their minds about their religious beliefs” if he adds: ON THEIR OWN! - but Dawkins is totally wrong in hoping, that “there is really no such thing as a Christian child”. Real laughable as all those theses of Dawkins.

Children comprehend Christianity a lot more than a lot of adults. I did for one some 65 years ago, and I remember very well. Most Children do – depending on the teaching of their parents and if their irresponsibility doesn’t withhold God to them.

Muslims might say all Children are Muslims. Rubbish, but let them. Who would listen to the one and only religion who today spreads war over so many and kills every day so many for “religious reasons”.

Every person is firstly a Child of God, but remember; Satan was a Child of God too! He choose to be Gods enemy.
In the end it’s all very own decision and own condemnation.

Correct is, that Children at first take the religious believe of those who raise/teach them. Later the are (mostly – if not Muslim for there conversion means death-penalty) free to convert.

The absolute truth is, that every person originates in God. Therefore every single person has a spark of the existence of God. A certain knowledge of God. Atheists must therefore explicit break off with God and choose own ways. But they will never find peace in life then, for in the back of their mind they must ask themselves all the time:

WHAT IF IT’S TRUE AFTER ALL – what when I then see God?!

Would they otherwise be in all Christian forums insisting on answers? Let’s welcome them - we are always ready to give answers (most of which can be red in the Bible too). But we love to share our experience with God, faith and believe. It’s great!

**

 

[PRmerger]

Yes, I would prefer the term “child of Christian parents.”

And your preference is based on the notion that by doing so, religious violence would be quelled?

I’m really trying to have an open mind on this theory…but I just don’t see any religious fanatic’s violent behavior changing because we would say, “She’s not a Christian 4 yr old; it’s a 4 yr old child of Christian parents.”

Really, Leela?

 

[Pier]

Yes, I would prefer the term “child of Christian parents.”

That too is a label - and (especially) after a child is baptized, it would not be the whole truth…

God told man to name people, places & things, which are what labels are - otherwise (for starters), we’d have to resort to yelling, “Hey you!” to get someone’s attention. If I’m understanding Dawkins’ concern correctly, what he suggests would be more of a step backwards, as it would blur the lines of accurately conveying truth. If a child is born to French parents, (for instance), should he be allowed to wait until the age of reason or adulthood to decide if he wants to be declared a French citizen? My point being, when applying Dawkins reasoning to other instances, it just doesn’t make sense.