PS. Relevence of that to religion

[jack]

A large and difficult example is religion. When I was 5, I don't remember it very well, but I was atheist[1] because my parents were, but could mouth a lot of platitudes about God that I learnt at school. But that never really affected my daily life in any way except for odd musings about God floating around in space, dodging the moon :)

FWIW, firstly, I don't mind any of that, and don't think it had any particular effect on me, good or bad, now I've a chance to decide for myself.

And secondly, observe that teaching some superficial religion to me never made any difference to me. If someone had got across the idea that God was a person I was talking to and asking for things, well, it might have made a difference to me, but the main impression I had was that it was like Father Christmas, a ritual you went through when you were supposed to, and a set of words you said on demand, and never *thought* about.

But I wonder, could you do any different? Probably the default way to raise a child wrt beliefs is that the parents, school, and TV agree and tell the child what they believe, and later on explain what some other people think, and not forbid it if the child is interested, and hope they come back. This seems to work more or less.

But sooner or later, there'll be a conflict. It could be soon if the parents disagree about something important. And it's impossible to bring a child up as a blank slate. Even if you could decide which beliefs are positive and which negative, it's not automatically right to teach only the negative ones.

And yet, can you teach a "wait and see" approach? It seems likely the best you can manage if you teach both is *two* different fairy stories neither of which are truly believed.

[1] Do you use "atheist" for someone who doesn't believe in God, however you define that, or only for someone who have thought about it and made a positive decision to reject it? I have kinship with the latter, but have always used the word for the former, to the consternation of some who assume the other way round, since only decisive atheists are vocal about it.

Comments

[nameandnature]

There are some people who use weak and strong atheism to distinguish the two positions you mention. An agnostic was originally someone who said it was formally impossible to prove one way or the other, but these days tends to be used for the "don't know" position, regardless of whether that person thinks that proof is theoretically possible.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a useful distinction -- if I say "strong atheist" most people get the idea. Though I try to avoid all these terms because I've never found any that at least half of people don't disagree about, for instance wikipedia defines a difference between "belief of lack" and "lack of belief" which is something I would say, but cannot assign a coherant meaning to :)