The following is an excerpt from the author of Parenting Beyond Belief:
"In the Preface to this book, I said that I had ’set religion aside.’ Actually, that’s a bit like saying someone who rides a bike to work has set traffic aside. I’m still in it, still surrounded by it, and I always will be. Religion, for better or worse, is likely to be a permanent part of the human world. Our job as secular parents is not to work toward a religion-free world, but to help our kids learn to happily and peacefully co-exist with religion.
Co-existence does not mean silent acceptance of all consequences of religious belief. To the contrary: Silence and inaction in the face of dangerous immorality is itself immoral. We have to engage religious people and institutions in just the way we wish to be engaged ourselves, as co-participants in the world. We should reasonably but loudly protest the intolerance, ignorance, and fear that is born of religion while at the same time reasonably and loudly applauding religious people and institutions whenever charity, tolerance, empathy. honesty, and any of our other shared values are in evidence. An important part of this is recognizing that not all expressions of religion and not all religious people are alike. Be sure to help kids recognize that the loudest, most ignorant, and most intolerant religious adherents–whether raving radical Muslim clerics or raving radical Christian televangelists–do not represent all believers, nor even the majority. Though institutional religion itself is an unfortunate thing, the majority of individual believers are decent and throughtful epeople with whom we have more in common with than not. Saying that to yourself once in a while, and to your kids, can move the dialogue further forward that just about anything else.
The vision we should encourage in our children is not a world free of religion but one in which no idea or action is granted immunity from discussion and critique–including, of course, our own."This is the view that I am leaning toward as I "relax" more into my atheism. Although a lot of atheists are of the opinion that we should eradicate religion from the face of the planet, I really don’t see it happening...especially not in my lifetime.
I believe that my position as an atheist is a strong one because of the evidence for our reality...I don’t see any evidence for a god...science seems to suggest a natural explanation for everything in our world.
A lot of atheists try to pin believers together under the "faith" umbrella: painting all believers just the same and just as bad as the next one because of the fact that they have a little faith...in this instance a belief without evidence.
But why can’t we give our fellow man the benefit of the doubt?
The REASON that the term FAITH even exists in sermons is because people of all beliefs DOUBT. But believers are constantly bombarded with personal experiences of "evidence." There are people who are constantly telling them their god exists, they have a personal relationship with this god (yes, WE know it’s in their minds but THEY don’t :)), many of them can give you first-hand accounts of WHY they believe in a god based on personal experiences.
It’s sort of like the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy doesn’t exist, but if you are a child who receives money under your pillow and your parents tell you the tooth fairy did it then who are you to question? You have evidence that a tooth was exchanged for money and you have the authority of your loving parents telling you what happened. Believers have constant reinforcement for their beliefs in a god.
Believers are our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, neighbors, friends, co-workers. They are our fellow man. We have to buy goods from them and sell goods to them, exchange favors with them. We have to co-exist with them.
Challenge them? Hell yes. But with the attitude that we shouldn’t have to exist with their beliefs? Hell no. It takes all kinds in this world. I’m hoping that eventually the we-will-kill-you-because-of-our-religious-belief types will be among the few and far between...but I’m not betting we’ll ever get rid of religion.
Perhaps this view might be unpopular with you right now, but I’m hoping you’ll change your mind.
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