Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Religion and HG

lol! That's twice in one day you've had me laughing, JonLaw

(Thanks ColinsMum)

Wren, my feeling is that it's okay if she doesn't pass her quizzes. If religious education is in part a journey of discovering the philosophies that work best for a person (and also an area where the right answer is based on the individual), then "failing" a quiz created by people with one set of ideas out of many is really not failing in the traditional sense. It just means that she has different ideas. The nuns might not like it, but that's too bad for them.

What's important is that your daughter knows that if she asks questions that may not be easy to answer, she won't get yelled at or made to feel bad (I certainly don't get the impression from you that you would make her feel bad for asking tough questions!). This may be the most important part of an honest religious education.

LOL!

Religion in its own context as a body of knowledge is an attempt to explain the world. As such, most do a good job of dealing with the intra and interpersonal to a great degree. But each starts to break down when the human relationship with the natural world is examined.

The need by some people to control others and the use of religion in that role is a separate issue.

As for the OP, HG will clearly see the contradictions both in the knowledge base and in peoples' implementation of that knowledge. In my own experience, they may also receive hostility from many of adherents when questions with difficult answers are asked.

You know, when I was in confirmation class, they had us debate the existence of god (no censorship allowed). They randomly divided us up into "atheists" and "believers" and sent us off to go and ponder our sides of the argument before the debate.

The atheist group won, hands down. The priests and the nuns never took sides and were completely okay with everything that was said. I still have a lot of respect for them because of that.

My roommate in college ended up becoming a Catholic priest. However, he ended up running off with the church secretary and was kicked out.

I've considered becoming a Catholic priest. I would first become a Lutheran minister and then convert. Since I was converting into the church, I could keep my wife. Ergo, I would become a married Catholic priest with children.

The key to becoming a married Catholic priest is to make sure that you weren't baptized as a Catholic.

I do not expect DD to accept without question. But I explain it to her in a context that she does understand and why it is done that way.

But it is a Catholic church. The priest is reasonable but you know how some of these women are that run the school part. She is just waiting for DD to "fail" because we are combining 2 years into 1, which she totally opposes. So it is political, religious and ridiculous in one joyous ball.

Ren

We have had similar issues at our house. DH is an atheist, I am Catholic and we agreed that we would raise our daughters Catholic. Our thoughts were (and still are) that it is important for them to have knowledge of what a religion is all about and then when they are adults they can make the decision whether or not they believe what they have been taught.

We too have had to deal with the woman at church who doesn't like children who question things - even if they are just asking for clarification and not trying to challenge anyone.

Our decision was partly based on the fact that we live in a society where the majority of people have some sort of religious aspect to their lives (be it Sunday school or Koran classes or what ever) and we didn't want them to have no frame of reference when dealing with others who were going through their first communion or other milestones in their religious lives.

DD8.5 has already pretty clearly decided that she does not believe and thinks that there are too many contradictions in the teachings. She also makes the argument (pretty convincingly I might add) that if all of these ancient civilizations had gods they believed in and were wrong what makes us right? Why are we so egotistical to think that we know so much more than they did? She also has questions like if God created everything, who created God - because things can't just appear, they have to come from something? along with many other questions based on some scientific theories and laws she knows.

We have some very interesting discussions around this. She has made the decision that she will go to Sunday school, learn what they ask her to and go through the milestones that go with the religion so that she can gather "enough data and evidence" to make a knowledgeable decision about whether or not she believes in God. I have told her that she does not yet have enough information to make a final decision about her beliefs because she has only just started to learn about it. (I used the pretty bad analogy of our rule that they can't say they don't like a food without trying it 3 times before making a decision.)

I think it is interesting to see things through her eyes, and I am impressed that she can clearly express her thoughts about this.

She also has some friends who are much more religious than us, and she understands that there are different beliefs and she just goes along with what they do, in terms of saying grace at meals and prayers before bed, when she goes to their house.

So, I do not have any suggestions, but I just wanted to let you know that we too have gone through a similar thing and continue to go through it.

The day of my Catholic Confirmation (17 years old) was also the day I realized I was an atheist. Unfortunately, my parents were not open to that position. I would have felt so much relief if I could have said "Mom, Dad... I've decided. I don't believe." Instead I continued to play along for a while, avoiding the pending dispute.

Recently my Mom said that raising my children without religion is abusive. My oldest is 2.5 years so this isn't much of an issue yet, but I don't plan to hide religion or faith from my children. I'll teach them about God concepts, and point out that some family members believe, and that others don't. The choice is ultimately up to them. I wont, however, expose them to strangers claiming to speak the truth with certainty while they are still young and impressionable.

I was raised in a Catholic family, and went to catechism several times, but never went any further because my mom, as a divorcee, was not welcome in church. This left me the opportunity to study religion independently, and my mom invited me to try out other faiths, so I often accompanied friends to their churches, to see what it was all about. And while I was still a believer, I couldn't find any sect that matched my beliefs, because things the different churches said about the nature of God did not correlate to the information I'd acquired by reading the Bible independently.

Then, eventually, someone gave me a book which contained some well-known (but not widely expressed) information that contradicted some of the foundational assumptions of Christianity, and that was pretty much the end of my faith. I was about 21 at the time. Later I met my future wife, who was involved with one of those churches that puts the fun in fundamentalism, and she kept getting in trouble with them because she kept on questioning things, someone would give her a book to shut her up, which she'd read, and find it contained nothing that addressed her question. So, she brought some of those questions to me, I had answers, even if they were of the, "We're not really sure, but this is our best guess" variety, and she finally felt satisfied. So, there went her beliefs.

Now, we're on the opposite end of this conversation, because we're raising our little girl in an atheist family, and we're dealing with the difficulty of teaching her tolerance for the beliefs of others. Since my wife and I were originally believers, we have a respect for that perspective that she doesn't have.

What's interesting is that she's guilty of the same process that drives religion, which is to accept ideas as an article of faith, without really understanding them. She doesn't understand why she doesn't believe in God... she's accepting it as an article of faith, because her parents said so.

Mind you, this is the same kid who refused to believe us at first when we told her of dinosaurs and planets, because we've done a great job of teaching her skepticism via the method of amusing ourselves by answering randomly selected questions with nonsense.

And in today's metaphysical lesson, we discuss some of the problems inherent in the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.