Michael Patton has a nice article detailing 12 ways we can prepare children for times of doubt in their Christian life.
May 15, 2013
Preparing our children to deal with doubt
Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Thinking[10] Comments
Thinking to Believe 
May 15, 2013 at 5:13 pm
Hi Jason:
The 12 ways to prepare children for times of doubt was mentioned early by the writer in the Pen & Parchment Blog. The writer indicated in the 2nd way what he is basing the ways on: “Of course, this is assuming that you are continually bringing them up in the faith,….”
From my vantage point I believe that children should not be taught religion until they reach the age of maturity about the same age that they can vote consume alcohol or join the military.
There would be no doubt whatsoever in the lives of people brought up in that realm of reality. That should be the time when they can decide if they even want a religious slant.
There is a new law in one Canadian Province the Province of Quebec that bans religious teachings in Government funded Day Care Centers:
“Quebec, which has grappled with efforts to limit the place of religion in its public institutions, has decided to bring secularization to the tot-and-toddler set. Starting in June, 2010 publicly funded daycares that teach a particular faith to their young charges risk losing their government funding.
All questions touching the transmission of faith – that is, teaching religion itself – do not belong within the publicly funded daycare system,” Quebec Family Minister Yolande James said in an interview on Tuesday.
The new guidelines say religious symbols such as crucifixes and menorahs are still permitted at daycares, as long as they’re not used for religious instruction. A religious leader like an imam or rabbi would be able to visit a daycare, but may not raise religious matters.
Ms. James says Christmas trees can stay, and daycares can still pursue cultural traditions that grow out of a specific faith. But “crafts, role-playing, songs” used for religious teaching are banned, and so are religious rituals done repeatedly. In practice, that would prevent Montreal’s 30 Jewish daycares from performing Sabbath ceremonies with the children, which they do each Friday.
Salam Elmenyawi of the Muslim Council of Montreal is prepared to challenge the new policy in court on the grounds it tramples on religious rights.
“What is the problem the Quebec government wants to fix?” Mr. Elmenyawi asked. “Are we going to have to stop teaching some of the moral values, like loving your parents, which are emphasized from a religious point of view?”
Quebec says it has the right to have a say about programs in daycares subsidized by the state. Today, parents in Quebec pay only $7 a day to send a child to the public daycare system, with the government covering the rest, about $40 a day.
The Family Ministry says it found an estimated 100 subsidized daycares in the province offering some form of religious focus, representing the Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and Greek Orthodox faiths. The daycares had been receiving funding while clearly stating their religious character since Quebec’s universal daycare system was set up in 1997.
However, after media reports earlier this year about the presence of Muslim and Jewish programs in public daycares, the Liberal government intervened.
Ms. James says the inspectors will treat the daycares with respect, but failure to comply with the guidelines could lead to the suspension of funding. Parents who opt for faith-based daycare can always choose to go private, she added. “Every person, every group has the right to their religious beliefs, and to exercise them,” Ms. James said. “The line that is clearly being defined here is with respect to the subsidy.”
See full story: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/quebec-bans-religious-teaching-in-publicly-subsidized-daycares/article570607/
or
Watch National TV News Story:
http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-to-ban-religion-in-government-subsidized-daycares-1.586867
BOTTOM LINE:
I agree with this Law.
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May 15, 2013 at 8:54 pm
Leo, what you ask for it impractical, even impossible. Not to mention indecent and damaging.
“From my vantage point I believe that children should not be taught religion until they reach the age of maturity about the same age that they can vote consume alcohol or join the military.”
There is no way that I can raise my kids, have them live, eat, sleep, and experience their entire life with me and my wife, and have them not be exposed to our Christianity every single day of their lives, for as long as they live with us, which will most likely be up to the time you suggest (i.e. vote, join the military, legally consume alcohol).
To attempt to hide or block them from learning from us why we are what we are and what we believe would be a horrific tragedy to heap upon them.
Kids shouldn’t be stiff-armed by their parents in such a way.
It amounts to the following:
“Sorry, son. I know you see and hear me and your mom pray, attend church, teach others about the Bible, say grace before we eat, speak, act, and dress according to certain moral principles, and know that your mother and I identify ourselves as and call ourselves Christians, but since you’re aren’t old enough to be told what it’s all about, I have to keep you in the dark. That part of my life is off-limits to you. You’re not allowed to learn about it, and can’t participate”.
What a load of you know what.
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May 15, 2013 at 11:10 pm
votivesoul:
That is just the way the world is civilizing. You think your lifestyle is real cool but the truth is that teaching various brands of religion, as every culture does, as the only true way to live is child abuse when children have no will to decide for themselves. Not only does it remain unexamined but any attempt to challenge it is taken as a grievous insult.
And not just you and your values, Muslims do exactly the same thing with their kids, Jewery does exactly the same thing with their kids and Christians and so on throughout the world and so the fractured human race goes on its merry way abusing their children and wondering why the world is so messed up that it cannot live for a cause but glorifies the many ways to die for a cause honoring their heroes who just so happen to be all laid out neatly in the cemetery, row on row from the religious wars and wars about religious ideologies and intolerance, now culturally buried in the fabric of the society that isolates itself from humanity in the same way as man isolates the oceans and the seas, dividing and sub dividing the waters from the one Global Ocean, the one global humanity, as they were taught since childhood. Most people do not know that there is only One Ocean on earth, the Global Ocean connected as one but divided into many like religious sects.
The logical way to teach kids about religion would be to teach them about all world religions, give them a smorgasbord of the world’s religions and let them pick any one they choose or none if they choose. But teaching children only what you have been taught without allowing them to know what other cultures teach their children is like teaching some to eat rice instead of potatoes, fried dim sum instead of french fries, eating chicken eggs just before the chicks hatch when it just starts to grow feathers; WOW! it is a delicacy in some cultures but turns my stomach when I think about it or cultures that eat squirming caterpillars alive like marshmallow dessert is quite repulsive; that’s how religious indoctrination skews a child’s brain.
Clearly those early few months and years of life are a very sensitive time and whatever ideas are imprinted into the soft putty of the unformed mind at that stage stays there pretty much forever and yet for some reason, here in the civilized world, it’s still perfectly legal for us to indoctrinate our children with the most hateful and divisive absurdities it’s possible to imagine. And imagined them we have.
Creating in them not young, vibrant, healthy, inquiring minds but rather stunted little freakish minds that are no use to anyone but a bloodsucking preacher.
We not only allow this abuse, we actively encourage it; we throw public money at it. But in the Province of Quebec things are changing in government subsidized day care and centers are banned from religious teaching or else they can lose their funding. The Priests and Rabbis and Imams are all upset about this especially the Imams as they see their lifeline of continued religious insanity being choked off before their very eyes.
Oh well. If you can’t follow the flow of the civilized tides of change, you will end up the loser.
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May 15, 2013 at 11:47 pm
votivesoul:
I don’t mean to sound offensive so please don’t take it personally although there may be no other way to digest it.
I know that what I have said seems harsh but your drama sounds unrealistic too. The big ship is slow to turn but turn it must, because Life Forces.
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May 16, 2013 at 2:33 am
Leo, I’m not taking offense and nothing you say is being taken personally.
I don’t have too much to say, except to say that your appeal and accusation swings both ways.
I could accuse atheists who indoctrinate their children into unbelief in God is child abuse.
I could appeal to them that they not refuse to teach their child about all world religions and even allow them the freedom to pursue conversion, but will they listen?
No, atheist parents raise atheist children, imprinting their unbelief upon them just as much as a Christian does on his or her child.
So guess what? I could take your argument and say that children shouldn’t be taught about atheism until they are old enough and mature enough to make a decision about it, like say when they’re able to vote, join the military, legally consume alcohol, etc.
So what? A nice little impasse we’ve reached, isn’t it?
At the end of the day, it’s my job, not the village’s, to raise my children the way I see fit. If, when they are older, they throw off everything I’ve attempted to instill in them regarding Jesus Christ, as sad and upset as I may be, they have the freedom of will to do so.
And the same with a child raised by atheists. Two atheists will raise their child as they see fit, with little to no outside influence. Then later, if that indoctrinated son or daughter throws off the teaching learned as a child and decides to embrace faith in God, then they have the freedom to do so, no matter the sadness or distress it causes their parents.
So in the end, it all plays out pretty even.
But to think that children shouldn’t be exposed to, cultivated to believe in, and follow in the footsteps of their parents is ridiculous. A parent can’t be a parent if they don’t teach their child to BECOME…
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May 16, 2013 at 2:39 am
And with that in mind, it’s absolutely okay, even warranted, and appropriate for a parent to learn how to help a child approach doubt and overcome it.
Even a child raised by atheists may doubt their unbelief from time to time. Will the atheist parent do nothing and allow their child to fall to faith in God? Or will they intervene and try to help their child remain an unbeliever?
And that is their right as unbelieving parents to do, and no matter how much I might object to their atheism, I don’t have the right to interfere with how they parent their child.
So, don’t begrudge Christian (or Muslim, or whatever) parents who do the same for their child. No one has the right to interfere.
Beside, a(n) a/theist parent wouldn’t be a very strong a/theist if they can’t even give a decent apology for why they believe/don’t believe in God to begin with. So explaining the tenets of their faith (or tenets of no faith) to their child is quite good, natural, and helpful. It shouldn’t be censored (in either direction).
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May 16, 2013 at 7:31 am
votive:
my my you are not arguing here with sense. You must know that unbelief really means nothing by itself; it is not something one teaches or can teach a-theism is meaningless without the belief of theism. Atheism cannot be taught, atheism is only something that can be undone after you scare your children with belief in non existent boogie men.
All children are born without belief, then along comes religion and indoctrinates the forming mind about supernatural ghosts, boogie men, and invisible monsters out to get them. We would not have to unteach children unless they were first “teached” so teaching children about concepts before they can conceptualize the concept of concepts is; well, not a good concept. Bad Religion…..
In essence all children are born atheists but religion wants to immediately distort their putty minds from the natural sequence of events and dress them up in the king’s cloths and that’s great fun for the religious.
I would have no problem teaching my children about Jesus just as I learned about Jesus by reading my sunday missal as the priest droned his monotone latin ritual chants; I learned about Jesus who I could understand and ID with, I never learned about God reading the Gospels, I learned about someone with a wonderful gift of common sense who explained everything so perfectly in parables, it was amazing. To this day I revel in the revelations he opened in my mind, he was like my father, my brother and my best friend but the priest, I couldn’t understand a thing he said, even when he started speaking English it still sounded like latin so everything out of his mouth was greek to me.
There is also another thing you need to know: doubt is something Christians instill in childrens’ minds themselves because your teaching defies logic with which their brains operate in childhood, so how can they not have doubts even about their parents! after Santa, the tooth fairy, boogie men and demons, the, “so behave yourself or else” idea?
There are no such thing as tenets of no faith, there are tenets about nothing. Can you imagine opening your hand and asking the child what you are holding in your hand if you are not holding anything in your hand? And the say “nothing” and you say “no I have a coin in my hand” and they say where and you say here and they look all over your hand looking for the coin, they’ll turn your hand over and look underneath and then look at you in unbelief, that is the belief you teach at the same time the doubt you instill with it and then admonish them and other atheists for their unbelief. It’s lolable.
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May 16, 2013 at 7:40 am
I love this commentary about a new adventure film in the recent past called Golden Delusions which Christians all over the western world tried to boycott and march out against and so true is the Christian way of dealing with adversity:
Children of religious parents are often indoctrinated into faith from birth. They are baptised – and baptism is irreversible – before they can give their consent, told Bible stories from earliest childhood as if they are unquestionable truth, and taken to church each week. Why should atheism wait until kids grow up before mounting a fightback?
Atheists and those of a religious bent can live and socialise together quite happily – we’re lucky enough to live in a liberal and tolerant society. This does not mean we should pretend there are no ideological differences between us. Christianity and atheism cannot both be right. If the former is correct, atheists are doomed to hell; if the atheists are on the money, Christians are allowing an aeons-old lie to restrict their freedoms and choices in their one shot at life. The stakes are high.
Christians have a biblical duty to evangelise and spread the faith. This was once backed up with harsh punishment for heathens and apostates, but thankfully those days are over. (Except in Islamic countries) Spreading the good word remains a worthy way for the faithful to spend their time, though. If Christianity is allowed to convert the heathens, I think it only fair that the heathens are given a chance to fight their corner.
This need not be a bad thing for the Church. Having seen, chatted to, and even socialised with several evangelists, I believe faith is stronger for being challenged. If believers don’t hear contradictory views, they have little reason to truly consider what they hold dear. This mature faith is all the better for this challenge: socialised Christianity often falters under a life crisis – the death of a relative, say, or the breakup of a marriage.
Christian groups need to decide what they really care about. Does a religion’s worth come from “bums on seats” – the size of a congregation – or from the number of people who accept it “in their hearts”? Whether you’re a believer or not, any religion that says the former is worth no-one’s time.
So, why not stop protesting against anti-religious material? Instead of campaigning against a children’s adventure film that has actively attempted to mollify Christian groups, let families go and see it: if the film echoes any of the book’s promise, it should be an epic adventure. If that leads some children to read opinions which differ to your own, why worry?
There’s no need to stop there. Christianity has almost everything going its way – culture and art for the last two millennia have been subject to its influence. It is in the home, it permeates society, and it recruits young. You can try to keep the flock faithful by silencing critics – or, failing that, petitioning the faithful to boycott their works. Alternatively, you can hone your own arguments, rally your evangelists, and spread the good word: and let your rivals do the same.
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June 5, 2013 at 7:12 am
Thanks for tipping off the article Jason.
Little Leo
This is a Christian website and I visit this site habitually to read the engaging dialogue and thought provoking articles that Jason brings to the table. If Christian boycotted and ran all the time then this site would not be up. Plus, the manner of which you address issues and how you are addressed by Jason and others shows a stark contrast. It would seem to me that the patience and kindness shown to you should tell you something. Especially when I read you get so far off topic on nearly every post and the way you try to talk down to the christians that visit this site.
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June 5, 2013 at 10:01 am
cs
You might love a site where everyone is in a consensus but I don’t understand your comment about engaging dialogue and thought provoking articles if you cannot take any comments contrary to your dogmatic supernatural ideas.
You might feel comfortable in your ticky tacky mind but ignorance is not bliss and if all you ever do in your life is “believe” myths that can never do one single thing for you or your life or anyone else on the planet then why bother commenting at all.
You seem to think that thought provoking is a connection of like minded individuals all fused by one common theme, belief in supernatural ghosts and in that regard you all feed off one another.
Your mindless focus is anything but engaging dialogue; how can it be such when you love to complain about the truth of knowledge and the perfect interpretation of scripture.
What you say about me is nothing less than your ancestors said about Jesus. Read the bible and listen to the 8 fold indictment about your kind of engaging dialogue, the outside white washed tombs of dead men’s bones. The only thought provoking ideas on this site are those of myself and a few others who challenge your single minded vehicle as you race around the track as a pack of like minds but as soon as another driver comes into the pack you all would rather swarm him and try to force him out of the race rather than have dialogue about reality instead of miracles, myths and supernatural dogma
That’s the biggest problem with all religions: it doesn’t matter if you are Catholics who set themselves apart from Christians, Muslims who would convert everybody on earth and kill those who don’t or Jews who being the Chosen People since they discovered fire don’t give a hoot about anyone else because if you are not bearing the scars of circumcision you don’t count anyway. You all think you have the right god, the absolute messengers the pure religion and you complain when people offer alternative talking points.
WHAT IS AN AXIOM?
A self-evident and necessary truth, or a proposition whose truth is so evident at first sight that no reasoning or demonstration can make it plainer
Now you can come up with many excuses why God is not self evident: testing us, to see who really loves him, prove us through suffering; but, in offering excuses, you deny reality, reason, logic, knowledge.
Religion is Pregnant with assumptions:
1st.If there was a God it would be self evident,
2nd.Religions would not have to proselytize; and,
3rd.There would not be a fractured human race, each faction promoting their God Brand and Messenger and making extravagant claims of miracles, Why would anyone presume to think that a Creator needs to be defended by the Creature? Ego created Religion, Church, Prophet and God, nothing more or less! The audacity of the religious perpetuate hoax, myth & magic as true creations.
Gee CS, I hope I didn’t stray too far off topic for you to grasp what I am trying to tell you.
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