Saw an item the other day about a school teacher who had been sacked because she had admitted, when asked, that Santa Claus wasn't real. On the other hand I saw another article about a fundamentalist christian school teacher who wasn't sacked even though, in a class supposedly about evolution, he had referred the students to scripture. And someone else who had prepared a dvd for use in schools which tells children that global warming isn't happening (and ends with a gun-toting teacher chasing a cartoon Al Gore from the classroom).
Got me to wondering. What would happen if a teacher honestly answered the question, when asked "Please Miss, is God real?", with the answer "No Johnny, no more real than Santa Claus. Some children do believe in god because their parents want them to, but when they grow up they realise it was just a make-believe story about a man with a big beard who gives them presents if they are good".
Call me naive if you must, but I see a teacher's role as being the central truth-teller in a child's life. Children can't rely on their parents, who have been indoctrinated in various political, social, and religious ways, and need an independent oracle who can supply them with whatever doses of reality are absent from their upbringing. What the child does with the truth is up to them, and it may well be later knocked out of them by a local pastor, or shock jock radio hater, or the Fox tv network, but at least they have had equal opportunity to start life without a head full of rubbish.
So encourage your teacher to explain to children that creationism is a bunch of scientifically illiterate nonsense, last taken seriously in the real world 200 years ago; that global warming is real and gathering speed and that their world is going to be inconceivably worse as a result; and that religion is based on the totally imaginary concept of "god", first used to keep women and peasants in their places, and explain thunder, about four thousand years ago.
Or you could just refer them to the Watermelon Blog where these topics, among others, are often touched on.
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Foundational, is not what to think, but how to think, how to assess, critique, analyze, and choose.
It is not going to change. The thing is self-fulfilling, self-actualizing by this point. Like having a ferocious tiger by the tail, we do not know how to let go, when letting go would be the very thing to save us. Learning has nothing to do with American public schools -- as currently structured. It is all about indoctrination and assimilation up in there -- the docile’ izing and dumb’ ing down of certain aspects of America, those not fortunate enough to live in a district where public schooling is excellent or not able to afford their private choice, and even those schools are not necessarily teaching “The truth”.
Education is a 24/7/365 job, and if we don't want our children exposed to bad ideas, they shouldn't spend a single minute with their parents.
The rest of the time they are with their parents, and will be taught religion. The only way we can prevent that injustice, is by taking the kids out of the homes, long before they can develop attachments.
I know that stories in sacred works stand the test of time because they enable humans to transcend what they may think are perfectly adequate ways of being, but in fact are so flawed that primitive is too tame a word to describe their status quo. Literalists of the atheistic and theistic stripes both like to think of "God" as a white haired being, but my view and the view of most enlightened main line religious authorities is that "he or she" is so far beyond people's conception of reality that only older physicists and inspired mystics can understand how people can access what is often called a higher power in and out of A.A. and new age circles.
Great fictions are great because they capture reality better than the sterile commonplaces of rational thought, linear thinking, and self-satisfied complacency.
To tell kids your limited, circumscribed version of reality and think that you are telling them the truth about man and god, well, I think you know, should know, you'd be better off smiling and admitting no one has all the answers.
"Literalist Atheist" Author Sam Harris practices meditation, he spent 2 years in India learning from the masters--I'll bet you didn't know that--and he knows well what a transcendent experience is.
Atheists don't deny that there are altered states of mind and deep mysteries in the universe; if you want to call these god, fine; but don't ascribe a fundamentalist mindset to people who simply say there is NO reason to believe our "essence" will transcend physical existence.
Saying there is not sufficient reason to believe something exists is not equivalent to saying something does not exist..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EWwzFwUOxA
Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5965wcH2Kx0&feature=related
They neglect to tell you in that story that at 18 months of age they visited the Kavanaugh Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas. His mother said, he'd never seen any WW2 documentaries, but they conveniently left out this museum visit, where he was transfixed by the planes. Oh, they have a corsair there, and a drop tank. Funny they left that out.
Soon after he began having the nightmares. His granmother suggested he was remembering a past life, and they started finding facts to fit that narrative. They didn't tell you all the ones that don't fit, because they ignore them.
Now how many guys named James flew Corsair's in the Pacific? I'll bet there were lots and lots of them. Would it be hard to find one who got shot down? If they didn't find one, you wouldn't have heard this story. You didn't hear the one about Jamil who dreamed he was a corsair pilot did you? No, it didn't make the news.
Get a good book on the philosophy of science. There's plenty out there. I'm in the middle of a good one now--"Fooled by Randomness".
I'd agree that 20-20 is guilty of shoddy journalism in the past but disagree that they are guilty in this instance. Here is a list of things you can't explain away HONESTLY:
1. He recalled his name from his past life which was James III.
2. Recalled his old navy friend he flew with which was Jack Larson.
3. The location of where his plane was shot down, which was Iwo Jima. Verified that James Houston III was shot down in Iwo Jima. Only 1 plane was ever shot down in Iwo Jima.
4. Remembered that his plane took off from a ship.
5. Remembered the name of the ship. Natoma (Bay).
6. Recalled that his plane was hit head on and crashed.
7. Remembered he died in the crash.
8. Had frequent violent nightmares of his crash and death.
7. Has emotional scars specific to this type of death.
8. Knew peculiarities of one of the planes he flew such as that the plane frequently got flat tires.
9. Knew that it was the Japanese military that shot his plane down.
10. His parents, who are devout Christians and know their son better than anyone, know with certainty that their son had a past life.
11. His sister in the past life is certain that this child is her previous brother.
12. He was much too young and protected to have been exposed to most if not all of this information.
My three-year-old is crazy about farm tractors and can identify John Deere, Farmalls, and Minneapolis Molines on sight. My five-year-old knows more about dinosaurs than this kid knows about airplanes. So are they having past-life experiences? Or are they just being smart little kids who fixate on one interest?
These types of stories are always shaped by True Believers after the fact. Vague, meaningless acts are amplified to miracle status, and contradictory phenomena are ignored. This is just the modern version of ghost stories and children seeing fairies.
Jim Vait
Bethel, Alaska