Guidance for a Long Dangerous Road

[jfuite]

Dear Community,

I am an atheist with three children, ages 8 - 15, and a religious fundamentalist wife. Hitherto, I have acquiesced to an unbridled religious upbringing for the children. Not that I participated much, just that I did not attempt to regulate it. My wife has considerable intelligence, means, and motivation to bring the children into her religion. She has a sense of fairness though, and very recently after I began to question the imbalance in their upbringing, we came to an agreement that I would direct weekly "family discussions". At these family meetings I would introduce "naturalistic" ways of thinking about the world.

What I seek from the community here is tactical and strategic advice. Now, I appreciate that this will be a very long, multi-year endeavor. I need to be careful and persistent. I do not need (yet) quick inflammatory zingers against the soft-targets of religion. I think I need to slowly and persuasively develop in my children an appreciation of thinking about the world that makes the supernatural seem strange, so when I face the inevitable religious rebuttals from my wife, they will not ring true to the children. I am not attempting to influence my wife directly.

Some questions I have right now are practical. For example, what are the resources, such as books and videos, that can help me introduce rational and critical thinking to my children? What are some useful, but not controversial, foundational topics that I can lead with in the first few weeks? How can I make these discussions pedagogically engaging for the children? Too philosophical, long atheistic lectures could easily be tuned out and work against me.

Thanks in advance for any replies. If this thread attracts any conversation, then I will keep you updated on developments, and I might ask for furtherances.

[Blondin]

Hi, jfuite. Welcome to the forum. Things have been pretty quiet here for a while but I hope your request brings some suggestions from some of the more sage members who have posted here in the past.

My initial thought is that the most important principle is that nothing should be sacred or exempt from questioning. Encourage any and all lines of questioning. If something doesn't make sense it should be questioned but we should also remain open to new questions about things that do make sense, too. One resource I highly recommend is the book "Don't Believe Everything You Think" by Thomas Kida. Another would be Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things".

I think you are wise to avoid head-on challenges to specific issues. Zingers & sound-bites have the potential to end arguments while sowing resentment (winning the battle but losing the war). It's better to concentrate on understanding the scientific method, critical thinking and epistemology.

[jfuite]

Dear PMBlondin,

Thank you for replying to my entreaty. You write, "the most important principle is that nothing should be sacred or exempt from questioning". Oh, yes, quite agreed. But, as you say, to win the war and not just the battles, I need to ensure the children are poised to properly interpret and be critical of both the questions and the answers before the very important impious issues are raised. At this stage, I am trying to understand how to lead my children to that point. I appreciate your book suggestions, and will look them up.

If I were a skilled lawyer, then I would have a better sense on how to slowly, but intractably, weave a net-like argument, from the periphery towards the center of the issue. I am trying to stake the borders of the conversation right now.

[Blondin]

Another thing that occurs to me is I often find that many religious people really don't know that much about their own religion or the bible. They only remember the cherry-picked salient points that support the particular claims they choose to believe. Even if this isn't the case it's always a good idea to fact-check before accepting claims (from either side). Two great resources I've found for this are: The Skeptic's Annotated Bible (which also covers the Quran and Book of Mormon) and Religious Tolerance. I think it's important to be able to recognize straw man arguments and even more important to avoid using them yourself (intentionally or otherwise).

For lucid, articulate, well-researched essays on atheist issues you can't do much better than Greta Christina's Blog (Note: Greta is about to re-locate to freethoughtblogs). If you look down the right-hand side of Greta's website you'll find categorized links to favorite essays. In particular check under the atheist list for "Why ... is a bad argument for God" type of essays.

You should also check out Dan Barker's musings on the Freedom From Religion Foundation website. Dan has written some really great books as well.

Another resource that I've only become aware of recently is John W Loftus' Debunking Christianity. I haven't had a chance to read any of John's books yet but what I've seen so far on his website seems very promising indeed.

[choSenfroZen]

Several life times ago, I was in your boat, sort of, I was 1 of the kids, my Dad was the religious one and my Mom used to have kids history lesson to counter the mythology.
The entire Moses and slavery and building the pyramids is fiction, there were no slaves the tombs (pyramids) were build by egyptian volunteers. So, there were no plagues of locusts or wandering in the desert or probably no stone tablets. There are many such instances, for every cute story there is a contrary tale.

Blondin has covered the reading pretty well, I just finished a great book, The Faith Instinct, which is more for you to read to gain a better understanding of why people are drawn into religion.

[Penguin]

Some questions I have right now are practical. For example, what are the resources, such as books and videos, that can help me introduce rational and critical thinking to my children? What are some useful, but not controversial, foundational topics that I can lead with in the first few weeks? How can I make these discussions pedagogically engaging for the children? Too philosophical, long atheistic lectures could easily be tuned out and work against me.

Something that I think might really help... although I'm horribly biased: FIRST Robotics.

I've been the coach for an elementary school team for the past two years. It's meant as something to get kids interested in science, technology, engineering and math, but I think it's also an excellent way to introduce them to critical thinking.

They have different programs for different age ranges. Age 8-14 would be First Lego League (the program my team was in). The kids have about two to three months for the challenge: to build a robot to do missions as part of a game, and to do a research project to come up with a solution to a real-world problem related to the year's theme (this year is food; last year was the human body; the year before that was transportation).

At all age levels, the approach is the same: the kids do the work. The adult coaches are there as a resource, but it's the kids who are the ones figuring things out and applying what they learn.

My general approach whenever kids come to me asking how something works is to answer their question with a question: if they say "how do I get the robot to do _____?", I'll ask them to tell me what they think it will do, and then explain why they think that. Then I go get them to try out their idea and see if it works.

I think it's great for a bunch of reasons:

- it provides immediate real feedback. If their understanding is wrong, then the robot won't behave they way they want it to. When they're wrong, they immediately know it.

- it's a non-threatening environment. People tend to have strong feelings about topics like religion - it's difficult to get people to look at it objectively because they get their backs up right away, but when a group of kids are all focused on getting their robot to work right, this (mostly) doesn't happen. They're just focused on getting the robot to work properly.

- however, even though it presents things though a non-threatening game, it still teaches critical thinking skills that are applicable in every aspect of our lives: I think that once a kid has seen for a few months that using logic and testing evidence will help his robot to play a game well, he'll realize that the same approach will help him in other areas, too.



So... that's my number one suggestion. If your kids' school has a team, maybe they'll want to join. If they don't have a team, maybe you could start one.



Apart from that, though, I think the best piece of advice would be to challenge their thought processes in a friendly, supportive way: if they come to you with questions about how things work (e.g. "why is the sky blue?" or "why do earthquakes happen?" or "how do they know how old the dinosaurs are?"), rather than coming right out and answering them, ask them things like "how do you think someone could figure out the answer to that question?" Once they've thought about it a bit, you can show them how the thing they're asking about really was figured out.

Basically, in a non-confrontational and hopefully fun way, get them used to the idea that logic, reason and testing of evidence are good ways to figure out what's real and true by getting them to apply these principles themselves.

[Penguin]

BTW - in terms of specific resources, I'd suggest two:

- Mythbusters. The show is based entirely around the idea that beliefs should be challenged and tested. Plus, stuff blows up in it, so kids tend to like it. You can also use it as the seed for discussion with your kids: "what stuff would you want to see the Mythbusters do?" It can help get them into the mindset that claims should be investigated and supported with evidence.

- Cosmos and Nova. Neil deGrasse Tyson is re-doing Carl Sagan's series, and he also already does Nova, both on PBS. Just good, decent science... probably more intellectual than Mythbusters, but still geared toward a general audience, so while it's not certain that your kids will be into either show, there's a good possibility that they might be.