Okay, I would really appreciate some help. Could you give me some thought provoking questions for a religiously addled, child's mind? Questions that don't point directly at the fallacy of religion, but hint at it and cause the person to draw their own conclusions. It's for clever kids, but dumbed down due to religion, so take 'er easy.
THANK YOU!
Try asking: Can God do anything? Yes. Ok
Can God make anything? Yes. Ok
Can God make a stone? Yes. Ok
Can God make a rock? Yes. Ok
Can God make a boulder? Yes. Ok
Can God make a mountain? Yes. Ok
Can God make a mountain so big that he himself couldn’t move it? Yes. Ok
If God can do anything can’t he move the mountain he just made? So him God? Hmmm
Easy ones I gave my 6 year old son.
Who is God?
What is God?
What does God look like?
What are angels?
What are demons?
Who created the angels and demons?
then follow up with:
How do you know?
How do they know?
First prove they exist, then we can try to figure out how they were created.
A simple line of questioning like this got my son to see the point.
Ask what you should do if god told you to sacrifice one of your children.
Okay, seriously. My son and I had multiple conversations and I did not convince him. I asked everytthing and nothing cracked his faith, but questioning the morality of various churches and ministers and pointing out the hypocrisy swayed his views.
He's still religious, but not hypocritical or judgmental. He doesn't preach or impose his beliefs on others. He's one of those rare liberal christians with a conscience. I'll call that a win.
Perhaps the story of noah,s ark.there is so much of it that makes no sense. How could so few people collect and take care of so many animals. How could they feed them. How could they keep them from killing each other. If evolution isn't true they had to collect every type of every species.how did they catch every type of bird on every continent. How could they build a boat that big with the same few people. How did they redistribute those animals. How did the plants of the world survive. There is so much more that's wrong with that story alone. How I handle that problem is to talk to them about evolution and answer questions with the factual truth. Time will do the rest. Either way mine decide at least they have time to decide for themselves and I hope the memories I left with them teach reason and science even if they ultimately believe in a god. That would be fine with me. Lots of people do
Get them into astronomy or take the to a natural history museum
What age is the child? This is an important consideration.
However, it is very easy to draw an analogy to Father Christmas, which is a lovely myth for young children to be fooled with - but which they eventually work out for themselves is just something which brings joy to youngsters, and then to question whether religious belief is not also perhaps a myth.
Not sure if you are familiar with the site, but atheist republic has a good list of books for skeptical children. Some of them will probably have stuff you can use in conversations.
What age?
@Donotbelieve
I have never raised children so I am probably a poor source of advice but an angle I saw in a book once was to make a tradition of putting on family plays around holidays and simply speak of the characters as characters rather than persons, to plant the seed of thought that these figures are metaphorical representations of universal human psychology; not actual beings. For instance, instead of saying God, always (not just at holidays) remember to say “the God character”, or the Santa character, or the Easter Bunny character. A consistent effort at framing such perspectives can help set assumptions that arise later in life. An education in art, symbolism, poetry, metaphor, etc. helps establish an alternative to literalism.
How about an examination of the mythical stories about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the Great Pumpkin?
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Posted by JimGSomething you can use when necessary.