I am a long time sceptic, having gone to a school that was so culturally diverse in its pupils that we were taught about virtually every modern religion and some extinct. Seeing so many differing beliefs very quickly convinced me that no single one could be correct and the others not. This brings the logical conclusion that therefore none are correct, are man made and not worthy of my worship. Having recently listened to Christopher Hitchens' "Gods is not great" it revealed to me the fact that I'm not alone in my complete lack of belief. In fact he is the reason I'm here. I'm reconsidering my position as a silent philosopher among the faithful, and thinking about become a wolf among the flock. I've always felt I should temper my views to avoid upsetting my friends, work colleagues and family. But now my 5 year old son is in school, a Church of England school, it has come to the fore. I'm in a situation where I feel like I can't tell my own son that I know, not believe, KNOW that everything his teachers tell him about god et al is an absolute crock, for fear of upsetting them. I fear I'm left in the position of hoping my son can see through the fairytales and half truths to attain the rationality that I have. I'm here to try and get some advice on how to guide my kids into a world of science and consciousness rather than a world of myths and unconsciousness.
I'm not completely disheartened in my "crusade", excuse the pun. My boy is already showing the sceptism and boredom I would hope for. There is a local "new church", a joke I know, that runs a "sports academy" on Thursdays at the suspiciously low price of 1 pound. Seriously, 1 pound. This obviously screamed at me "recruitment racket", but I capitulated to my wife's assertions that it would be low key, and our boy went to play "sport". You drop your kid off with these churchy folk and return an hour later. You walk in to find the kids sat in rows with a guy at a podium talking about being a team player and a good winner/loser... interspersed with gods teaches this and that, but very low key. Almost subliminally in fact, which in hindsight is quick scary. But, knowing the distractability of our boy we knew that most stuff would go straight over his head. Then, out of the blue he is called up to the front. He is given a prize for being well behaved and listening to the helpers. We are gobsmacked. Our son is one of the most scatter brained kids going, but we wouldn't change him. We find it highly dubious that he would win this prize, and put it down to him being the "new kid", especially as it has the effect of making them desperate to return... good job guys. After a couple of weeks my wife recommended the "sports academy" to a friend with a son the same age as our boy. This evening I'm tasked with collecting our son, and am the first parent on the scene. This time instead of the lighthearted undercurrent of god I'm greeted with full on hardcore bible pounding. I get that feeling in my stomach I always get when I have the misfortune of having to go into a church, and I'm disagreeing with everything in my head. It gets worse and worse, and my blood begins to boil. Then my wife's friend arrives. She looks dumbfounded. I feel awful, but I don't want to apologise in case I offend her. We get our kids out of there, and on the way to the car park she says, "I didn't know it world be like that!"
I said, "It isn't normally that bad"
She then tentatively asks, "are you religious?"
"No, you?", I reply.
"Definitely not"
Suffice to say neither of our kids returned to that place. The silver lining was my son telling me after that fiasco that it was "boring". Praise the lord!
The other recent "near miss" was on Ash Wednesday when the vicar visiting the school was burning crosses and using this ash to draw crossed on the children's foreheads. At the beginning the kids were given the option of being branded or go back to their classes. My boy opted to head back to class, again stating to us later that it was boring. You can probably imagine how hard it was not to praise him for being bored. Good lad
So now, like I said, I'm thinking of taking an active stance rather than avoiding confrontations. No longer the silent philosopher.
Anyway, sorry for the long post.
Mat
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
