A Disturbing Story
My little sister is seven and in first grade (Yes there is a large age gap). The other evening I had a very disturbing conversation with her.
I forget exactly what she was saying, but I overheard her talking about hell, and even though she is seven and innocent and all that, I couldn't help but say to her "Shannon, there is no such thing as hell."
I didn't think this simple comment would create such a problem. I hadn't said anything about God, Heaven, Angels, fairies, Santa Claus, or any of that. I didn't that anything healthy could come out of the concept of a place where one might go to burn for eternity.
My little sister started crying when I told her that.
This goes back to the post I made a few weeks ago about how all children are atheists until they are converted or indoctrinated. Patrick pointed out an obvious flaw in my theory which is that Children, with their vivid imaginations and lack of real-world experience, are more predisposed to soak up any belief systems presented to them. Even I fell victim to this as a child.
But perhaps a bit of background information is necessary at this point. Though technically both Catholic, my parents are pretty atheistic, or at least apatheistic*. I was baptized only at the request of my Catholic grandmother. I was taken to church only on SOME Holidays -- every third Christmas or so. In our household, The Bible did have a place on the bookshelf, but it shared that space with the Bhagavad Gita, The Diamond Sutra (one of many Buddhist teachings), and a dozen or so books about Yoga (my parents were both Yoga teachers at the time).
The point is, in my parent's household, Yahweh is about as holy as Shiva, which is to say, not very.
And yet somehow my little sister has conceived this notion of Hell, and she was convinced that for not believing in it's existence, I would end up there. She stopped crying a little bit to explain this to me.
"If you don't believe, you will just see when you get there." she said.
Disturbing indeed.
I should further point out that my sister lives in Western Massachusetts and goes to a private, secular school. Evangelical Christianity, where hell is most stressed, must be almost non-existent amongst my sister's social networks, and even plain-vanilla Christianity is an uncommon site in the community. At her school, Bible stories are taught. But the stories that are taught have nothing to do with hell or any of the nastier aspects of Institutionalized religion, and they are taught right alongside Norse mythology.
Something is seriously gone wrong if even in such a theoretically secular community, a seven year old is condemning her older brother to hell.
Fortunately, her "faith" in this idea was not deeply held, and over the course of several days I was able to convince her that I was not, in fact, going to burn for an eternity in hell. She even said a few things which surprised me, without my prompting.
"Some people say, 'I've never seen God', and I tell them that they are silly. 'Look in front of you,' I say, 'God is not a person. God is everything. God is the world.'"
This was quite impressive for a seven year old, even my exceptionally intelligent sister (though I may be a bit biased on that count). My guess is that she picked this up from a religious moderate, most likely my Grandmother. These religious moderates are people who are brought up with a particular faith that is so ingrained in their psyche that even when faced with overwhelming evidence, they cannot bear to give it up, and so they "reshape" the faith to fit a more naturalistic world view. They fall under the category of "spiritual theists" as far as I am concerned, and in my previous posts you can read more about this.
But regardless, my little sister is now of the opinion that there is something Divine about the Universe itself, which is a belief that I am not all-too concerned about.
I know that I myself had more steadfast Christian beliefs even at the age of 11-12, and so I have hope for this next generation. I just wish people would stop talking about Hell to other people's children. Whether or not you agree with me that the religious indoctrination of children should be considered child abuse, surely attempts to convert OTHER people's susceptible and innocent children is no more noble than cigarette companies trying to get kids hooked on tobacco.
*Aptatheism is the idea that God's existence is a purely academic concern and of no serious concern. Apatheists are atheists in practice.
I forget exactly what she was saying, but I overheard her talking about hell, and even though she is seven and innocent and all that, I couldn't help but say to her "Shannon, there is no such thing as hell."
I didn't think this simple comment would create such a problem. I hadn't said anything about God, Heaven, Angels, fairies, Santa Claus, or any of that. I didn't that anything healthy could come out of the concept of a place where one might go to burn for eternity.
My little sister started crying when I told her that.
This goes back to the post I made a few weeks ago about how all children are atheists until they are converted or indoctrinated. Patrick pointed out an obvious flaw in my theory which is that Children, with their vivid imaginations and lack of real-world experience, are more predisposed to soak up any belief systems presented to them. Even I fell victim to this as a child.
But perhaps a bit of background information is necessary at this point. Though technically both Catholic, my parents are pretty atheistic, or at least apatheistic*. I was baptized only at the request of my Catholic grandmother. I was taken to church only on SOME Holidays -- every third Christmas or so. In our household, The Bible did have a place on the bookshelf, but it shared that space with the Bhagavad Gita, The Diamond Sutra (one of many Buddhist teachings), and a dozen or so books about Yoga (my parents were both Yoga teachers at the time).
The point is, in my parent's household, Yahweh is about as holy as Shiva, which is to say, not very.
And yet somehow my little sister has conceived this notion of Hell, and she was convinced that for not believing in it's existence, I would end up there. She stopped crying a little bit to explain this to me.
"If you don't believe, you will just see when you get there." she said.
Disturbing indeed.
I should further point out that my sister lives in Western Massachusetts and goes to a private, secular school. Evangelical Christianity, where hell is most stressed, must be almost non-existent amongst my sister's social networks, and even plain-vanilla Christianity is an uncommon site in the community. At her school, Bible stories are taught. But the stories that are taught have nothing to do with hell or any of the nastier aspects of Institutionalized religion, and they are taught right alongside Norse mythology.
Something is seriously gone wrong if even in such a theoretically secular community, a seven year old is condemning her older brother to hell.
Fortunately, her "faith" in this idea was not deeply held, and over the course of several days I was able to convince her that I was not, in fact, going to burn for an eternity in hell. She even said a few things which surprised me, without my prompting.
"Some people say, 'I've never seen God', and I tell them that they are silly. 'Look in front of you,' I say, 'God is not a person. God is everything. God is the world.'"
This was quite impressive for a seven year old, even my exceptionally intelligent sister (though I may be a bit biased on that count). My guess is that she picked this up from a religious moderate, most likely my Grandmother. These religious moderates are people who are brought up with a particular faith that is so ingrained in their psyche that even when faced with overwhelming evidence, they cannot bear to give it up, and so they "reshape" the faith to fit a more naturalistic world view. They fall under the category of "spiritual theists" as far as I am concerned, and in my previous posts you can read more about this.
But regardless, my little sister is now of the opinion that there is something Divine about the Universe itself, which is a belief that I am not all-too concerned about.
I know that I myself had more steadfast Christian beliefs even at the age of 11-12, and so I have hope for this next generation. I just wish people would stop talking about Hell to other people's children. Whether or not you agree with me that the religious indoctrination of children should be considered child abuse, surely attempts to convert OTHER people's susceptible and innocent children is no more noble than cigarette companies trying to get kids hooked on tobacco.
*Aptatheism is the idea that God's existence is a purely academic concern and of no serious concern. Apatheists are atheists in practice.
Labels: atheism, atheist, Children, christianity, hell, religion, youth
posted by Josh at
6:35 PM
1 Comments
