Friday, September 23, 2011

I (Too) Have Arrived (at Atheism).


A recent post on another blog and an earlier conversation with a friend got me thinking that sometimes we (myself included, I'm not pointing fingers) former-Mormon, now atheists/agnostics can be a bit dismissive of those who didn’t have to reason their way out of religion, religious culture, and/or god-belief before arriving at our atheism.  (Similarly, I have often been guilty of using language that is dismissive of former Mormons who maintain spirituality or god-belief outside of Mormonism. A post for another time.)

But, is reasoning one's way out of religion really so special? Kylie writes,


We did not come to atheism or agnosticism by some random default or lack of thought. We did not just choose to quit thinking about God or the mysteries of the world and declare, "I'm agnostic because that religion stuff just isn't for me". People who have left Mormonism and become atheist or agnostic have almost always done so through lots of study, reading, and critical logical thought...


There are some atheists (like me) who left the church without doing any studying or reading into LDS church history or the history of religion in general.  I have occasionally felt a smidge marginalized in this ex-mo community because I'm a bit late in learning church history and I don't have some story of coming to an agonizing realization that Joseph Smith was a fraud, etc...But, I also didn’t just decide one day “to quit thinking about god or the mysteries of the world” because it “just isn’t for me”.  I simply never believed in God (although I tried). When I left the church, I didn't so much reason my way out of religion and god-belief as it just never "clicked" for me in the first place. Church history was like a cows opinion.  So, I don't really fit in with the "learning-church-history-destroyed-my-faith" crowd and, although I self-proclaim that I have always been an atheist, I don't really fit in with the never-churched crowd either.

I think atheism is a natural state, a non-random default.  Just because I didn't have to rationalize myself out of faith, doesn't mean I didn't arrive at my atheism honestly.  I was born with it just like everyone else.  I may not have had to research my way out of belief in Mormon doctrine specifically, but my intellectual and emotional journey as I separated myself from the culture of Mormonism has been and continues to be as much a struggle as it is for those who had to let go of the LDS doctrines and religion first. I still struggle with things such as learned gender roles and restrictive notions about sexuality, free expression, intellectualism and individuality. (Oh oh, pick me, I'm damaged too!!!)

Those who have studied and reasoned their way out of Mormonism initially, and god-belief generally, can be quite proud about it.  And they should be. It’s a huge accomplishment, very courageous, and typically requires great sacrifices to go from being a “true-believer” to being a "truth-seeker".   But, shouldn’t those who never believed in god, because the religion we were raised with never quite seeped in, also take some pride in that?  Our critical thinking skills prevented us from believing in the first place. And, is it fair for those of us who withstood or rejected our religious upbringings to discount or minimize the atheism of those who were (fortunate enough to be) spared religious indoctrination?***  

I sort of half-relate to what Kylie wrote. I think there is something to be said for the experience of reasoning one's way out of religion.  (Because I'm culturally a Mormon through-and-through, allow me a cheesy metaphor/object lesson.)  It's a bit like the intricate process by which a chick hatches from it's shell (except that critical thinking doesn't lose usefulness like the egg tooth.)  There is value in the long struggle and I think most of us cherish that experience for the ways in which we grew.  However, as I said above, I think atheism IS the default and we're taught to believe and what to believe and how to ignore doubts.  If no one were taught to believe we wouldn't HAVE to think about the problems with faith and suppressing doubt.  I think plenty of people who have never believed think about God and religion as a means of explaining the unknown, in the quest to understand why and how the believer believes.  They come at it from a different perspective but their atheism is rarely reflective of a "lack of thought". 


I was recently having a chat, over a spirited game of Bananagrams and some greasy chinese food, with a close friend who is endlessly curious about Mormonism and loves our little Mormon-isms. (Like "white and delightsome", "sweet spirit" and "when the prophet speaks, the thinking's been done."  I try to throw these in sometimes to see if she catches on.)  She seemed to be under the impression that most former Mormons are like me - always doubters/skeptics - who just finally have had enough of "faking it till you make it".  I was explaining that most of the ex-mo's I encounter express that they were once "true-believing Mormons" until they learned something too uncomfortable to be ignored.  Like me, she had a very difficult time trying to understand that. She's enamoured with the Book of Mormon musical and she asked if it was, "Like turn if off?" I explained that we actually call it "putting it on the shelf" (as though we are going to come back to it).  I told her that most believing Mormons really don't know nearly as much as she does about the problems with church history because the church does a phenomenal job of shielding members from those problems.  I also explained correlation and "milk before meat". I told her that we Mormon's have been well-trained in putting things on the shelf and that we are able to let things that don't make sense go because we'll understand them in the next life, when we receive all "light and knowledge." Those little un-truisms we all use sarcastically now, were pretty powerful stuff.  Recognizing the circular logic in all of that and breaking free of it is neither easy nor painless.  The church makes it easy to believe by making it SOOOO much harder to question.

I don't think any of us intend to discount the critical thinking skills of those who were raised atheists.  But, because of our struggle we can sometimes sound as if we think we are somehow better at it because of the trial-by-fire.  We fly that flag.  There isn't anything wrong with that.  But, from the perspective of someone who is in-between and didn't quite make the full journey from true-believer, the language we use can feel a bit dismissive of the un-churched and/or never-believers. I realize that on these blogs we are largely speaking amongst ourselves, but in conversations that occasionally spill over to facebook and other atheist groups we belong to, we should probably be careful about that.  I've frequently felt a bit of a sting when interacting with those who have always been atheists (and have always known and embraced it).  The tone toward the religious can be less than empathetic.  I've noted that in those forums former-believers sometimes get defensive when it is implied that religious belief is stupid or childish or irrational.  "Hey! We used to be those people!"  I think that those of us who fought the great fight are often guilty of reverse dismissal because "they were JUST raised atheistically, THEY didn't earn it".

***I don't think this was Kylie's did this in her post, nor do think she intended . She was relating an encounter with a specific agnostic whose critical thinking skills are a bit lacking and she uses this example to illustrate that not all atheists wear critical thinking caps.  But, the way she framed, combined with my earlier conversation, struck this chord with me. It stung a little.



19 comments:

  1. I think your kind of atheism is actually very common in the ex-Mo community (or at least the Outer Blogness part of it). It seems to me that there are way more people like you who say, "It just never worked for me," than there are people like me who say, "It usually worked for me, but it's not true anyway."

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  2. Well, I'm envious of people who figured it out early and never really believed the stuff. I think they must be smarter than I am, or they have some gene or something!

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  3. Kuri - You may be right. It takes a certain type of person to find their way out, and I don't understand those who say they were once truly believers. I'm skeptical of that. But, maybe that's just because that isn't how my brain worked. I think what I actually encounter are people who, after the anger wears off, from a new perspective, see that they really had doubts all along but shelved them. In the initial stages, a lot of people say they were true believers. But, I wonder if maybe that just lends street cred to justify the anger. I actually haven't come across many ex-Mormons who were sort of guilt-ridden about their doubt beginning at a very early age. I was constantly feeling defective, like there was something seriously wrong with me because I didn't have the ability for spirituality. I don't hear/read that often. I'd like to because I could really use people to talk to about it. It baffles the hell out of my therapist (of 8 years).

    Daniel - I don't care at all for attempts to quantify intelligence. I don't think it's a spectrum. Trying to compare the intelligence of two people is like trying to compare apples and steaks. People just think in vastly different ways. We have unique brain "finger prints". I am extremely (sometimes to a fault) analytical. I, no joke, make elaborate spreadsheets to try to make important life decisions that really in the end are matters of the heart and can't be analyzed like that. One can't quantify love. But, I've tried. I wish we we had a unit for it. Like intelligence, love cannot be described on a spectrum or scale because there are too many different types of love.

    That said, I am glad that I was unable to believe to begin with. (Try to quantify warm fuzzy feelings or burning in the bosom. Can't be done.) I wouldn't trade it for the experience of the heartache and disappointment when one realizes that the god and religion they believed it, loved, and centered their whole lives around isn't true. I think I was better able to cope with the guilt and anxiety of not being able to believe. I don't think I could survive the other way. I doubt that I would ever have been able to move passed the anger. I hold grudges and HATE being mislead.

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  4. A lot of this post resonates with me, but I also had issues with other parts of it.

    I agree that I often feel a disconnect with those who once believed in the church's claims, but then discovered something and then lost their testimony. I have not extensively read any church history, don't really have much animosity to what I do know about Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, etc., and I don't think that would change too much if I actually got around to reading history. (It's kinda like the Mormons who read church history and become more appreciative to discover that these people were flawed humans, not demi-gods walking among mortals.)

    For me as well, it wasn't a matter of "figuring it out early" or whatever, but of never being convinced. Really, what did it for me was realizing that others actually believed it. For the most part, I just thought that everyone was like me, going through motions and "play acting." When I realized that some people sincerely believed that stuff (and that religion is *for* people who sincerely believe), I realized that what I was doing wasn't honest and wasn't right. (I couldn't in all honesty go on a mission in that state, for example.)

    ...However, I have a problem with the idea that "we are all born atheists and that's how things should be." First of all, kids have tons of misinformed beliefs or lacks-of-beliefs. Just because someone is "born" in a particular state doesn't mean that state is preferable. We don't say that an uneducated child is "better" than an educated one...

    Really, the issue is about an examined life or an unexamined life. Whether you believe in god or not, whether you first believed and now don't or always didn't...the issue is whether or not there has ever been self-examination. For the first 16 or so years of my life, when I simply assumed that everyone was play-acting at religion (because no other possibility even crossed my mind until then), I wasn't self-critical. I hadn't examined anything. It was only when I thought for the first time that perhaps others were serious about it that there was a disconnect. And only when there was that disconnect did I have to think about why I didn't believe and why others did. Was *I* missing something?

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  5. Andrew - I think I may have found my kindred mind in you. I thought everyone must be pretending as well. But, the why of it was utterly lost on me. I, like you, now realize that some genuinely believe. I can't relate to that at all, but I respect it.

    I don't believe that I said we are all born atheists AND that's how it should be. I have no idea how things SHOULD be for others. I stand by my statement that we're born atheistic though. No child is going to arrive at the doctrines of Mormonism, or any dogma, if they aren't presented with them first, as though they are some innate, obvious, universal truths. My beef is with indoctrination, which, I think, can be distinguished from teaching by the added discouragement of questioning, curiosity, critical thought or doubt. I think it is fair to say that a critically thinking child is better than one that has been trained to accept whatever it is told. It's really HOW we educate children that is important. For example, I think it would be better for a child to have absolutely no math education than to be taught that 2+2=5 OR that 2+2=4, without some explanation of what + means and how one can determine which equation is true. Sure, a kid could memorize that 2+2=4, but them doesn't help them calculate that 456+9682=10138. Memorization of presented "facts," be they true, false, or unknowable is not helpful. An uneducated child WILL eventually figure out on it's own that 2+2=4, as they can work that out on their fingers.

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  6. I wouldn't say that parents shouldn't teach their children about their beliefs. I do have a problem with a parent saying, "This is what I believe (know) and it's true because...well, because I believe it...so it must be true and...therefore you believe it to." I'm okay with religious education so long as it follows a pattern like, "This is what I believe and I believe it because I've received a sort of peaceful feeling about it. But I don't KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is true, because there is a difference between emotional evidence and physical evidence and I've never actually seen this thing I believe in. Now, you are free to think or feel whatever you think or feel about my beliefs and if you also feel peace about it, and peace is sufficient for you to also believe it, that's good. If you don't feel peace about it or you aren't able to believe it simply based on an emotional response to it, that is also good. What is important is that your thoughts and beliefs are your own."

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  7. Amy,

    I stand by my statement that we're born atheistic though. No child is going to arrive at the doctrines of Mormonism, or any dogma, if they aren't presented with them first, as though they are some innate, obvious, universal truths.

    This is fallacious reasoning, though. The fact that no child is going to arrive at the doctrines of *Mormonism* or any *dogma* doesn't mean that they are born atheistic. Dogmas are proprietary. A generic belief in god isn't.

    Whether children are born atheistic is still an empirical question, but it's not the same empirical question as whether or not children are born *religious*. The issue is, however, that one can find data that goes either way. For example, we know that children are naturally more likely to attribute environmental events to an anthropomorphic cause, and so this kind of thinking makes them intuitive proto-theists, not atheists. We know, further, that evolution through natural selection is unintuitive to children, and it's unintuitive because it goes against childhood assumptions about purpose and causation.

    But whether children tend to be atheistic or theistic, once again, is irrelevant. Because children has tons of tendencies...and their tendencies say nothing about what they should actually believe.

    My beef is with indoctrination, which, I think, can be distinguished from teaching by the added discouragement of questioning, curiosity, critical thought or doubt.

    One major thing is that everyone indoctrinates. Because everyone has some value that they accept, no questions asked. Or, even if you value questioning, curiosity, critical thought, etc., that doesn't mean that you're going to start out with a kid at age 1 with critically thinking every decision. Sometimes, they just need to eat their vegetables or else they will have no dessert.

    I mean, take your math example. We teach kids about shapes LONG before we teach them the proofs that make triangles what they are. We have to teach WHAT (this is a triangle and it has three shapes; just trust me on it) before we teach HOW and WHY, especially because children aren't even developmentally advanced enough to understand a lot of the "hows" and "whys" (consider childhood development stages...the ability to understand abstractions comes in teenage years) So, while critical thinking is a great idea, it's kinda idealistic to expect to teach everything from the get-go with it.

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  8. Moving on to your second comment...the problem is that you're assuming a particular epistemological background that others don't accept. For example: "This is what I believe and I believe it because I've received a sort of peaceful feeling about it. But I don't KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is true, because there is a difference between emotional evidence and physical evidence and I've never actually seen this thing I believe in" assumes that the person doesn't believe that you can "know" things from "peaceful feelings."

    But this simply isn't the case for Mormonism or many other philosophies. So someone from a Mormon epistemological background is going to say, "This is what I believe, and I believe it because the Spirit testified it to me, and that's how I know, because the Spirit is a source of knowledge."

    You can't have a sincere believing Mormon saying what you want them to say, because it goes against their framework. You'd be asking them to give up their beliefs.

    Furthermore, when they believe their religion is right, then that comes with consequences. Religions aren't just some feel-good thing. It's a system that proposes consequences for the way we live our lives...and many of these consequences are claimed to be eternal. So, while Mormonism is a bit more flexible (no real "hell" and very few people go to "Outer Darkness"), for most religious people who REALLY believe their theology, it's NOT ok for their kids to not get the theology. It's not ok "that their thoughts and their beliefs are their own."

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  9. I did include the qualifier "almost" in my post... Of course not everyone who leaves and reaches agnosticism or atheism. They are as many paths out as there are people. :)

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  10. I meant" "Of course not everyone who leaves and reaches agnosticism or atheism has to study their way to it.

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  11. Sulli,

    Yeah, I saw that. I really took no offense at all to your post. It just made me think more about something I've already been thinking about for a few months. I tried really hard not to sound like I was accusing you of anything, because I really didn't mean it that way.

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  12. Andrew-

    For example, we know that children are naturally more likely to attribute environmental events to an anthropomorphic cause, and so this kind of thinking makes them intuitive proto-theists, not atheists.

    This is interesting. And, if that is the case, I agree that children may be born pre-disposed to believe in a supernatural mover (proto-theists) when they can’t immediately see a natural cause. I think what you are saying is that young children recognize that events must be caused and they tend to envision causes to be anthropomorphic. I was previously using the word atheistic in a more narrow sense, meaning that there isn’t a particular conception, common to every child in every event, of the characteristics of that sort of SOMEONE (god) that they infer to be the causer if environmental events (i.e., omnipotent, omniscient, loving, jealous, singular, etc.) beyond the ability of that someone to cause the observed event. But, as you say, “Just because someone is ‘born’ in a particular state doesn't mean that state is preferable.” Should we encourage children to continue to believe that a human-like being causes, say waves in the ocean, when we have other explanations that we can describe and defend with physical data? Then, we all end up like the ICP or Bill O’Reilly.

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  13. ...

    Children are naturally curious about who/what caused “that”?  Should we let them ascribe every observable event without an immediately observable cause to some human-like, supernatural being?  Or, should we encourage them to seek out natural causes before, or in addition to, supernatural causes?  Should we go so far as to describe for them a supernatural Causer, tell them the Causer has a given set of characteristics and tell them that the Causer loves, or is in anyway interested in or aware of them?  Should we tell them that the Causer(s) created or caused them?  I’m not sure in which direction, if any, we SHOULD push proto-theists.  Obviously, that is the debate right?  If I made the rules, I would say it’s wrong to force-feed one’s own specific notions on a child who hasn’t formed specific notions of their own and teach them to accept your notions without question.  I would also say it’s wrong to tell a child that they must form their own notions based on any particular type of knowledge – either to insist that they refuse to accept anything without tangible evidence, or to tell them they should accept notions based solely on emotional evidence or instinct.  Obviously some people can accept notions as truth based on emotional evidence and/or can attribute events to their own notions of miracles, magic or divine intervention.  That works for them.  Fine.  But, it didn’t work for me.  The insistence that I SHOULD be able to accept notions as truth based on emotions or other’s testimonies (because they said so), or that I SHOULD accept that divine intervention was ongoing in my life, caused me a huge amount of guilt because, try as I might, I COULDN’T accept notions as truth without a different type of evidence.  Should, should, should, should, should.  Call me crazy, but I don’t think we should be should-ing all over our children.  Let them be.

    We know, further, that evolution through natural selection is unintuitive to children, and it's unintuitive because it goes against childhood assumptions about purpose and causation.

    Mutation may be random (only it’s not actually as random as we previously assumed) but selection most definitely is not. Traits are positively selected because they provide the individual with some survival advantage (or purpose). If evolution is unintuitive then it's because an awareness of DNA and the semi-random nature of DNA mutation is unintuitive, not because natural selection is without causation.

    We have to teach WHAT (this is a triangle and it has three shapes; just trust me on it).

    The concept of a triangle is intuitive. A child will see a triangle and that it has three sides. Brains recognize shapes. Telling them “this is a triangle and these are it’s sides” is just a vocabulary lesson. That’s just defining the meaning we give to the word we’ve chosen to call a polygon with three sides. Similarly, describing for a child the (presumed, imagined or revealed) nature of an unseen Causer is merely a vocabulary lesson in what we might call "God". But, an unseen cause doesn't have to be God (or any specific conception of "God"), and we do not have to teach children that it is merely because they might be predisposed to assign events to an unseen anthropomorphic cause. If we are trying to tell a child what just caused an earthquake, we could tell them about God and that he's angry and is punishing humans by shaking us around, but we could also lay the groundwork for an understanding of plate tectonics in simple terms and using pictures. They might not fully understand it, but at least in that case, we aren't teaching them up to immediately stick "God" into every gap in their intuitive understanding.

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  14. ...

    ...the ability to understand abstractions comes in teenage years.

    I will have to look into that research. I would love to know how that was determined. Unfortunately, I am far from being informed about childhood development. But, I’m pretty sure I understood abstractions much earlier than that. In fact, I understood that this God concept I was hearing so much about was an abstraction i.e., nobody was able to show me concrete or physical evidence. Abstraction was a concept I understood at least as early as age 7 (even if I didn't know the word abstract). That was my whole fucking problem. I understood that the god concept was abstract and my brain will not accept abstractions as truths.

    Moving on to your second comment...the problem is that you're assuming a particular epistemological background that others don't accept. For example: "This is what I believe and I believe it because I've received a sort of peaceful feeling about it. But I don't KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is true, because there is a difference between emotional evidence and physical evidence and I've never actually seen this thing I believe in" assumes that the person doesn't believe that you can "know" things from "peaceful feelings."

    Yes, if you take that part of my method out of it’s full context, then you are correct. However, the rest of that paragraph describes the notion of teaching children to recognize that there is a difference between spiritual/emotional/existential knowledge and axiomatic/demonstrable knowledge and then letting THEM decide if emotional ways of “knowing” are reliable and how much credence they are able to give them.

    Finally, in response to your vegetables example, I don’t think you have to START by telling a child that they have to eat vegetables because you said so (or bribe them with dessert). Sure, ultimately that is what it’s going to come down to with a child, because it’s a parent’s responsibility to make sure a child is well-nourished whether the child values nourishment or not. But, I think it is worthwhile to first explain that there are certain nutrients (and fiber!) that are in vegetables that are not in, say dessert, and that their bodies need those nutrients in order to be healthy, perform optimally, and grow and develop properly. Maybe they won’t fully understand that or care, but I think it’s worth explaining (repeatedly) so that they can hopefully learn, however gradually, to make healthy choices and what the healthy choices are and why those choices are healthier than others.

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  15. Amy,

    I think what you are saying is that young children recognize that events must be caused and they tend to envision causes to be anthropomorphic.

    right. And I am certainly aware that this tendency alone doesn't equate to theist, but if one had to go one way or another, I think one could make the argument both ways. It's not a clean-cut, "Kids don't believe in god until they are told to!" Kids can independently come up with these things...which gets me to the next thing...

    I was previously using the word atheistic in a more narrow sense, meaning that there isn’t a particular conception, common to every child in every event, of the characteristics of that sort of SOMEONE (god) that they infer to be the causer if environmental events (i.e., omnipotent, omniscient, loving, jealous, singular, etc.) beyond the ability of that someone to cause the observed event.

    This is a really strange "narrow sense." Even for theists, there isn't "a particular conception, common to every person in every event..." Theists aren't a hive mind. They can have *different* conceptions (which is why the word God is so slippery...it means very different things to very different people. Sometimes it doesn't even mean the things you put to it: omnipotent, omniscient, loving, jealous, singular, etc., Does that mean non-Judeo-Christians are not theists? In fact, these terms describe a very PARTICULAR sort of god, of which there are far many other versions of gods AND goddesses AND ungendered, incorporeal divine "forces," etc., So it would seem quite narrow indeed to define atheist with respect to ONE particular god type.)

    Should we encourage children to continue to believe that a human-like being causes, say waves in the ocean, when we have other explanations that we can describe and defend with physical data? Then, we all end up like the ICP or Bill O’Reilly.

    This is a non-sequitur. Not all theists are like the ICP or Bill O'Reilly. In fact, given these two (surprisingly different) samples, I can comfortably say that MOST theists are nothing like them.

    Come up with physical data regarding human purpose and meaning. Regarding squishy subjectives that precisely are founded upon subjective experiences. Theism isn't just a "God done it" for nature (even if that's been a big part of God's pay grade in the past.)

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  16. Should we let them ascribe every observable event without an immediately observable cause to some human-like, supernatural being? Or, should we encourage them to seek out natural causes before, or in addition to, supernatural causes?

    I'll just point out right here that all of a sudden, you have changed the tune of your argument. First it was, "Children are born atheistic. They won't be theistic unless they are indoctrinated." Now it's: "Why let children do what [science suggests] they will naturally do? Why not teach them otherwise." In either case, natural or supernatural, we are indoctrinating. I don't think your distinction between indoctrination and education is well-formed, because it begs the question of what we know and how we can know things. Religious people, when they tell children about God, aren't thinking, "I'm going to teach you something without giving you any evidence." For them, the natural world is part of the evidentiary case for God.

    I’m not sure in which direction, if any, we SHOULD push proto-theists. Obviously, that is the debate right?

    I think the answer is simple. Every parent is going to push their children in the way they find prudent...which is going to be impacted by what THEY, the parents, believe. And this continues as you go "bigger" -- communities, societies, etc., Even in uncertainty, people are going to teach what they believe.

    The insistence that I SHOULD be able to accept notions as truth based on emotions or other’s testimonies (because they said so), or that I SHOULD accept that divine intervention was ongoing in my life, caused me a huge amount of guilt because, try as I might, I COULDN’T accept notions as truth without a different type of evidence.

    As I mentioned, I think people are "biased" toward their own experiences, and so they assume more than they should based on their own experience. So, when people say "You should be able to base truth on emotional experiences," it's because they are basing it on their own experiences. How are they to know that you or I are different? ESPECIALLY when they are, for example, your parents. Or your community. I'm not a parent, but I imagine that if I were, I wouldn't *start* by assuming that my child will be fundamentally different than me in a basic way as how s/he "knows" stuff. That being said, regarding "should."

    Call me crazy, but I don’t think we should be should-ing all over our children. Let them be.

    "I don't think we should be "should-ing" all over our children. Let them decide whether they "should" not hurt others or not."

    ^Shoulds are one of the MOST important parts of education, because shoulds often define our interaction with a community and the non-negotiables about that interaction. Yes, the shoulds can be harmful and shortsighted (you "should" be straight), but to expect a family or community not to teach them is idealistic. And even you have a should. "We "should" let children be." That opposes another person's should: "We should not let children be."

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  17. RE: mutation and natural selection

    Be careful! You're confusing definitions of "purpose" and "causation." You should very well be aware that the "purpose" and "causation" in natural selection is VERY different than the "purpose" and "causation" in design...which is what is intuitive to a child. There's a very different meaning to "The temperature dropping caused the rain to freeze" (no consciousness within) and "I caused the door to close" (because I intended and meant to push it closed.)

    The concept of a triangle is intuitive.

    Yet, the concept that the interior angles of a triangle = 180 degrees is not intuitive. Neither is the fact that an exterior angle's measure is the same as the two interior angles it is *not* adjacent to.

    ...actually, I'll just point out that "intuition" is a completely subjective concept anyway. I've commented back on my site about the problem with subjectivity.

    I would love to know how that was determined. Unfortunately, I am far from being informed about childhood development.

    You can get a glimpse by looking up Piaget's theory of cognitive development. There are numerous criticisms of his particular leveling of brain development (whether they are cultural vs. universal...whether some individual skip around...the fact that some people may develop slowly or quickly), but underlying it has been discovered some neurological bases for many of the things he wrote about.

    the rest of that paragraph describes the notion of teaching children to recognize that there is a difference between spiritual/emotional/existential knowledge and axiomatic/demonstrable knowledge and then letting THEM decide if emotional ways of “knowing” are reliable and how much credence they are able to give them.

    question begging. You're still asserting a difference that some people quite simply might not agree with. There's a difference, for example, between someone who accepts that emotional ways of "knowing" ARE reliable, but different from demonstrable knowledge, and someone who accepts that emotional ways of "knowing" are reliable BECAUSE they are demonstrable knowledge. (And at this point, maybe you're just too different to be able to see eye to eye with such a person...but still.)

    Re: vegetables,

    You don't have to start by telling them thus. But it wouldn't be unreasonable to start thus. It's not unreasonable for the parent to make decisions in the best interest of the child and make them absolute law. It's not unreasonable for the parent to decide not to explain every single aspect of his/her parenting philosophy to the child.

    The parent *might* decide to explain nutrients, etc., but it's NOT unreasonable for the parent not to. (And think: there are going to be many times when it's just not feasible to tell the child, either because s/he's too young, or because the parents' reasoning is too complex, etc., Life would go infinitely slower if parents explained everything all the time...especially when the bottom line is that the kid MUST eat the vegetables [or whatever the case may be], no matter what.)

    And you know what? Parents who set an absolute law at first can come back LATER and explain. And the kid WON'T be worse for wear.

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  18. Andrew,

    You brought SHOULD into this, not me, a fact I pointed out very early on. You accused me of making assumptions I wasn't making. You assumed that I wasn't FULLY aware that I was being idealistic. Perhaps YOU missed it when I said "I’m not sure in which direction, if any, we SHOULD push proto-theists...If I made the rules..." Nowhere in there do I assume that my personal utopia is possible or that every person on Earth can in reality, comply with my fantasy rules, nor do I presume that they should, in reality. You first posed, or at least mentioned, the question of whether children should remain atheistic/proto-theistic (if they actually are born in that state at all,). And all I tried to express is: "Fuck-all if I know what's right, but my opinion is that children shouldn't be indoctrinated toward theism or toward atheism... We should tell them whatever we want about what we believe or know or think we know AND why we believe or think we know these things. Then, when they do what kids naturally do - ask a gazillion questions - we should encourage them and acknowledge that our data, or evidence, either physical or spiritual, might be incorrect or incomplete." That's my intentionally idealistic opinion. No assumptions about reality. Clear? I don't know why are spending pages and pages arguing about it.

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  19. This is it!? This perfectly reasonable back and forth discourse is what you were ashamed of enough to erase? Get a grip my beloved cousin. This is good stuff on both sides. I can't for the life of me figure out what it is you don't like about it. I ate it all up. Front rubs all around!

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