Teaching a Child About Atheism
I am an atheist and the father of a young daughter. I am delighted about the fact that I do not have to teach my child a thing about atheism. Nothing. The subject doesn’t even need to come up. The reason for this is that all people are born atheists. No one believes in any gods, angels, or that Jesus died for them on the when they are children. It is not until they are indoctrinated by their parents or religious leaders that they start to believe in such things. There is literal no such thing as a Christian child, or a Muslim child. Every one of them is a little atheist.
A good friend of mine, who is a Christian, expressed sadness about this fact. He said “It makes me very sad to know that your daughter will never get a chance to know god, or go to heaven.” On the contrary, my daughter will never be exposed to the doctrine that she is born evil. She will never have to endure the absurdity that no matter what she does in her life, without religion, she is a bad person, worth of punishment in and everlasting fire. She will never know what it is like to feel an unearned guilt. She will never think that things can get done in her life through prayer. Instead, she will learn that if she wants something, it is her responsibility to make it happen. She will learn that if she wants to make a difference in the lives of her friends, family and even strangers, it is her own effort that will do so.
This small child will never be taught unquestioning obedience. She will never be in the place of Isaac, about to be sacrificed, or Abraham, about to sacrifice what she loves. Instead she will learn that she must develop a hierarchy of values, and that it is the judgment of her own mind that must decide, not the whims of other people.
She will learn nothing of faith, humility, and sacrifice. Instead she will be armed with the values and virtues required for happiness in this world. Reason will replace faith. Integrity and independence will replace obedience. Pride and self-esteem will replace humility. Joy and happiness will replace sacrifice. She has nothing to gain from indoctrination with religion. She has her mind, and the world, to lose
There will come a day when she does learn of religion. I, certainly, do not intend to shelter her from opposing world views. She will learn them all in the manner that we learn today of the Roman, Greek, and Egyptian religions of the past; as mythology. And atheism will be as natural to her as the day she was born.
“…all people are born atheists.”
I’d have to respectfully disagree with that in a certain way. People are not born atheist nor theist, they have concept of neither.
For one to be an atheist, you have to have a concept of God – but reject it.
A child does not have a concept of God at all.
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You said:
“For one to be an atheist, you have to have a concept of God – but reject it.”
You do bring up some good points, but this is your faulty premise. An atheist is simply a person who does not believe in god. You don’t necessarily have to know about something to not believe in it. It is only to “positively” believe in something, that you must have knowledge of it.
If someone has no knowledge of something, they do not believe it. I understand that that is not an informed position, but that is still the position and status of children. Its like this: if i ask you “do you have any egg salad?” and you say “whats egg salad?” the answer is “no”. atthe moment you are “a-egg salad”
Still, Atheism has arisen out of a rejection of all concepts of God. There’d be no basis for it whatsoever if no one on Earth had a concept of God.
I completely agree with you, Brenton Eccles. When babies are born, they are not born atheist, and they aren’t born theists. Instead, they are simply born oblivious. They are completely unaware of the concept of God, the concept of religion, or what God even is!! And if you’re going to be an atheist, at least you have to know a good enough definition of what a god is, and people who are just recently born are even devoid that in their head!! To believe that a newborn has already decided to not believe and to be an atheist as soon as they come into the world just does not make any sense.
And I hope that the father who posted this article can still love on her daughter if it happens to be that his daughter actually does believe in something. I hope that the father knows that as much influence he can give her to refuse it and live the atheist way, she needs to learn and decide for herself if she will believe or not believe in a religion, and she needs to see religion through the eyes of both the religious and the non-religious to have a full understanding of this topic, thus giving her a better, more clear decision on whether to take it or not.
Chronologically, your statement is accurate. But, even without the existence of theism, the constituents, that which the concept, atheist, refers too would still exist. Namely, if there was no concept of “god” everyone would be atheist, although we might not call it that, and we might not have a word for it at all, still the description “a person who does not believe in a god” still applies. The definition of an “atheist” is not “someone who knows the concept of god and rejects it” but rather “a person who does not believe in god” which would necessarily include those who have never encounter that topic. There is a huge difference between linguistic necessity and conceptual necessity.
But, I hate to have to reiterate this because it feels pedantic, for a person to “does not believe in god” HAS to have a concept (remember there are many) of god on some level.
No, they don’t. Again a person who has never had contact with the concept, can not believe in it, and therefore is an atheist.
I should add that, Atheism today has really arisen out of the Philosophical standing point that we no longer need to invoke God in Philosophy (whether Natural Philosophy (Science), or any other) to explain the world, how one ought to live, etc,.
Atheism would never have arisen, had there never been theism. As each are both ‘schools of thought’ there would instead have been other dispositions within society, not related to God at all.
No, Atheism, is the default position. Obviously if one has no knowledge at all of the concept of god, one does not believe in it, thereby making that person, technically, by default an atheist, even if one has never heard the term “Atheist” or “god.”
I hope you will continue to love her, should she ever choose a different path.
I’ve been saying this since I verbed atheist. I even did a video about this at YouTube a year or so ago. Everyone is born without a belief in gods and that is what atheism is, so by default everyone is atheist. It’s ppl who want to turn atheism into a religion or belief system or [insert more generic politically correct term for same here] or whatever who feel someone has to do or say something before they can be considered an atheist.
Thank you for letting me know I’m not alone in this opinion.
I agree completely, both with your original post and your explanation of atheism being a lack of belief in gods (not a rejection of gods). I have two teenage sons and I took the same approach in teaching them about religion. When they were young, we read children’s stories from various world religions alongside greek and roman mythology, fables and fairy tales.
However, I’ve always made the distinction that some people do believe the religious stories to be true (just as people once believed greek and roman mythology). For them to get along in society, I think it’s important that they know how to be respectful of other people’s religious beliefs, even if they don’t quite understand them.
Atheism comes very naturally to kids. My son is almost a teenager now and a little bemused that his friends believe in odd stories about the origin of life and about miracles, made up by a variety of ignorant ancient bards trying hard to make sense of the world.
When he was around 5 or 6 and some teacher told him about Jesus as if it was factual, and I wondered if it would be a hitch, because I did not want to undermine the teacher’s overall authority in his mind. Fortunately, he did not a problem accepting that the teacher was mistaken there, and yet was not mistaken on other things (e.g. 1+1=2)
There’s a sense of the word “atheist” in which all children are born atheists, but there’s another sense of the word “atheist” in which no child is born an atheist. I can easily pull up half a dozen philosophical dictionaries in support of either definition.