Just a bit of history: I have two children, both grown and one is atheist and one is secular (don’t do religion, don’t know and doesn’t what to explore it) and my children have children. My children were raised secular and critical thinkers with total honesty and free will to explore the religious experience. My grandsons are 6, 4 and 1yrs. As they are growing up they are somewhat familiar to the idea of god and what church is because their great grandmother goes to church and they live in a small community of mostly believers. They are exposed to it some.
That being said, I am always honest and explain any questions they have about myths, gods, religious holidays even the “do you believe in Santa”. We’ve had several discussions about the myth of gods and I use the movie culture to help me with this as they obviously realize Thor from the Marvel comic movies is not real and when we discuss god I use that as an example along with unicorns, dragons and fairies. They get it. They’re okay with it and even the Santa question when I answered with, “I believe it’s fun to believe in Santa and while you’re little it’s okay to choose that.” They both said, “I choose to believe in Santa until I’m older.” Which was good because they are understanding that they are making a conscience choice to suspend reality and choose fantasy for the befits of gifts. This concept is very advanced for their ages.
We’ve also discussed evidence of things like gods, magic and ghosts. Again, they said they choose to believe magic a while longer but when discussing ghosts they both clearly knew that was just movie storytelling. Gods are not far behind.
Today, coming home we passed a playground at very large fancy church that the youngest asked to go to. The oldest said, “That’s a church playground and we do go to church.” The youngest said, “What’s church?” The oldest replied, “It’s a place where they teach about gods (yep, plural), angels, demons and stuff. We don’t go there.” Youngest, “Why not?” Oldest, “Cause they just teach stories from an old book, not real stuff like science and nature. That right, Mimi?” Me, “That’s right.”
I always encourage them to examine, investigate and reason something that they don’t understand or seems too good to be true. They are becoming awesome little critical thinkers.
Anything you do for your young freethinkers that you care about?
MzLee
I wanted to stop the car and hug him so hard.
Thanks for sharing. I like your explanation of children choosing to participate in fantasy and still enjoy it, but not substituting it for reality or facts. While I don’t know where that proverbial line is exactly, I am sure one does exist where allowances for age appropriate fantasy should be made, but of course there is a point where facts, logic and reality must prevail. Even adults can enjoy, as you put it, “suspending reality” for the sake of entertainment and perhaps escaping the mundane of everyday life; look at how many adults can get interested in Harry Potter, for example.
While I have no children, I think a general guide would be to teach them how to think, not always what to think. And if children are introduced to science early enough in home as well as at school, they will likely have no problem accepting logic and actually find the sciences fun.
No kids in my life at the moment, but my general rule is never teach a kid something as true if they will question it when they are an adult.
JThey get it. They're okay with it and even the Santa question when I answered with, "I believe it's fun to believe in Santa and while you're little it's okay to choose that." They both said, "I choose to believe in Santa until I'm older." Which was good because they are understanding that they are making a conscience choice to suspend reality and choose fantasy for the befits of gifts. This concept is very advanced for their ages.I like what you are writing here, but seems to me the "Santa" question touches on the spirit within the heart of the giver a la Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus
I’ve been reading my 5 year old grandson Richard Dawkins’ “The Magic of Reality”. A lot of it is over his head but I got the illustrated version and he likes to look at the pictures while I read it to him. He asks lots of questions and I love to answer them. He calls it his science book and asks, “Pop pop, can we weed the signs books?” As a good Pop pop, I always do.