Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Religion and HG

We're hipsters here. We read The Fabric of the Cosmos years ago, before it was popular.

Unless you have certain types of experiences.

Then it's more like being hit by a sledgehammer rather than "taking it on faith".

But...a dentist would take an X-ray and do other inspections (including looking at the person's face to see signs of pain). An ER doctor would do the same for fear that he was encountering an addict seeking narcotics.

As scientists, we all have to prove what we claim or no one will believe it (and rightly so).

I think that this lesson is very important for all kids (not just gifted kids): don't believe stuff just because someone said it's true. Make them prove it.

A good friend of mine used to write questions for the A levels. One of his questions was, "It's 1590 and you're an officer in Queen Elizabeth's army. A messenger comes running up and tells you that the queen said 'You have to cross the channel and go invade France!'

Assess the situation. What should you do?"

The correct answer was that you don't invade France without a written order containing the queen's seal and signature. The lesson was not to believe everything people tell you.

LOL.

Exactly.

There is that old story about Newton. His students come in and see this model of the solar system and asked who built it. He says "no one". "How can that be? Someone had to build this." And then Newton says "you can't believe this just came to be, yet you can believe something so much more complex just poofed and came together on its own, with so many laws that fit together" etc. etc.

But we are not here to debate our faiths. It was about helping our growing children make sense of religion within their knowledge of real world science.

Clarification: I was not trying to open a debate about religion.

I was trying to answer the question about making sense of religion in the context of scientific knowledge. I was trying very hard to stick to ideas about education and not get into a debate.

Science (and history and other subjects) require that you prove stuff, so if you're trying to make sense of religion in the context of science, you have to include the idea of proving stuff.

I'm a little late to the discussion since I haven't touched the computer all weekend. I too don't mean to offend but want to offer our experience. My husband does not practice any religion. I also am culturally Catholic. Our local Catholic Church is much more conservative than the one from my childhood. I am not completely accord with their teachings but find comfort in the rituals and space to contemplate my own actions.

I have tried to have DD9 do the Catholic rituals for cultural reasons. I have tried answering her questions and explaining the things to her that I do and don't agree with. The very act of questioning is not welcomed in our local church. She started pointing out that my "pick and choose" attitude is hypocritical and does not jibe with what they say in church. At this point, she cannot accept my abstractions. She is very concrete minded about religion right now -- no symbolism, either things did or didn't happen the way that they say. Recently, she said that, if true, the stories in Bible were the creepiest things that she had ever heard, particularly various miracles. I am finding that her questions are only getting more and more difficult. I am questioning my decision to raise her in a church that espouses some views that I do not accept completely myself.

Then Val, she would never pass her quizzes at church...

I remember the time we played with the Ouija board in Sunday School.

It was a Lutheran church.

I'm not quite sure the Sunday School teacher was on the ball, so to speak.

(I hope I'm matching up Wren's response to the right remark?)

I think Val meant - and I certainly mean - that you can't, or at the very least shouldn't, brush the fact that religion is not offering proof under the carpet. Religion is different from other subjects she encounters, in that everywhere else, she is expected to use her intelligence, spot contradictions, ask searching questions, analyse, and think; in her religious classes, she is required not to do those things, or she will as you say fail her test. She needs to understand that these are different domains - when people give her the message that she is supposed to keep quiet about these contradictions, they don't mean to imply that she should mistrust her intellect in general, only that she is to leave it at the door of her religion classes. You don't want to end up with her feeling vaguely uneasy about the consequences of questioning adults, and concluding that she is supposed to keep quiet about it if her piano teacher or her history teacher tell her things that seem to be contradictory.

Alternatively, you could just encourage her to use her intellect everywhere, and see what happens, but she might indeed fail her test, or refuse to take it.