Background: I am a Hindu Atheist and went to a Catholic school from Kindergarten to highschool, back in India. I am now an immigrant living in the US. As a teenager, it was very traumatic for me to learn that my Cathlolic friend believed that me, my siblings and my parents were all destined to hell. I spend countless hours arguing with my friend to no avail.
Fast forward now :
As my kids are getting older, I’d like some books written by other Atheists about Abrahamic religions like Christianity, Jewism and Islam, and other religions. These books should cover things like what happens at baptism, bible studies, etc. and the major beliefs of these religions. These books need to be written by other Atheists, and if possible should contain strategies to respectfully not fall into common traps used by evangelists.
How old are your kids, and what are your goals here?
If you just want your children to have a cultural understanding of Christianity so that they can catch the religious jokes on the Simpsons, then I wouldn’t worry too much about requiring that the author has to be an atheist. If you tell them that these are just stories that some people believe, they are going to be just as likely end up a Christian as a kid reading the Brothers Grimm is going to start kissing frogs. So I’d say just find a general age appropriate religion/bible story book that’s not too preachy at let them have at it. Chances are they will come to you in disbelief that anyone could actually take this stuff seriously.
If your goal is to arm them for rhetorical battle with Christians, then you should first ask yourself if it’s worth it. As you yourself discovered, arguing over religion seldom achieves much. But if you feel you must there are dozens of atheist guides to the bible that will take the so-called word of god and tear it into tiny little pieces.
It’s a little old (1958, so pre-Vatican II) and might not be suited for younger readers, but I was assigned to read The Religions of Man by Huston Smith when I was in high school and I found it to be pretty comprehensive.
The Teaching Company has done a similar series called The Great Religions. (Of course, their works are audio lectures rather than printed books.) Each of the volumes covered a different world religion from a secular viewpoint; Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.
Karen Armstrong has written quite a few books, including interesting biographies of Muhammad and the Buddha, as well as A History of God which covers Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I feel she writes well, though I think she is not an atheist. (But what would you expect to find written differently if she were?)
I admit I do not have well defined goals. Broadly, its an understanding of how a religious person sees the world. What are some of the religious people’s rituals ? (like praying, saying grace, etc. etc.)
But most importantly - How religious people see atheists and how not to engage in religious debates with them
Thank you Smapti (btw does your name means “the end”, as in the Sanskrit word). I took a look but Huston Smith does not seems to be an atheist. For me it is very important for the author to be an atheist.
I am sympathetic. I once had a friend who was probably agnostic or sort of “no opinion” and got snared by an evangelical with arguments that he couldn’t answer (the fact that it was his future brother-in-law may have had an influence). But he clearly did participate in religious debate (and lost, because his lack of faith was grounded only in lack of thought).
This part of your goal (not arguing) does not particularly require the understanding of religions that such a book would provide. You as a parent can teach them – a polite but firm “Oh, thanks, I’m not interested in that” should be enough. Much as you did in this post:
Such a book as you envision might be useful to their general education, but I think it may be a challenge to find a book about religions written by an atheist that is completely open- and fair-minded, and has no well-poisoning going on in it. I fancy your children, like other teens, are going to question anything provided by you for them to read, and if they find any unfairness at all, it may steer them the opposite direction from that you would want, as a sort of rebellion.
Parents teach best by example. My parents’ example was not direct, in that we as children were required to go to Sunday School, and as a family we went to church for Easter, but the day-to-day of our life was completely religion-free, so by the time I started questioning the general acceptance of religion in US culture, I felt free to come to my own conclusions. Anyway, I wish you good luck in your endeavor.
There likely isn’t a teen focused resource on this. Also religious people view atheists in very different ways based on the faith - but you’d find those out by religious people’s writings.
In my discussions/arguments with Christians / Muslims, the logic presented is usually “The good book says, that’s why” or some similar logic that goes around in circles.
Richard Dawkins called Religious Indoctrination of Children as “Child Abuse”. I’d like my children to understand that the opinion of the indoctrinated children cannot be changed with reason or discussion. And I’d like my kids to understand what the indoctrination of the religious kids is like, so they may stay safely away from those discussions.
“I do not wish to discuss this further”. Might work on some that respect the beliefs (and non-beliefs) of others. For a certain type of religionist though, those that view you as an ignorant child that is in immediate danger, it means nothing. Let us say that you see a child playing in the middle of a busy street and you call out, “You need to get tout of there now!”. If that child ignores you or says “No”, do you respect that child’s wishes and walk away, or do you grab the child and get it to safety immediately? Some religionists (rightly or wrongly) see an immediate danger that you do not, and they have been taught to respond to that danger.
I can see where a book on how such situations might need the perspective from someone on the outside, someone who has had such encounters and knows what they entail.
I knew the word came from an Indian language, but not its meaning. I picked it 23 years ago because of a recurring segment on the Daily Show where Jon Stewart would answer fan mail from an angry 7-year-old named “Smapdi”, and since that name was already taken on AOL I swapped the D for a T.
This requires the question: who are “religious people”?
I grew up going to church and Sunday School every Sunday. Today … well, I haven’t been to church in years. It gets in the way of Sunday golf and attendance at the local horse racing track. I don’t consider myself religious, although I consider myself Christian, living up to the Golden Rule and all. Does that make me religious?
Locally, there are a number of Fundamentalists and Pentacostalists who are convinced that our immortal souls are doomed to hell, unless we embrace Jesus Christ as our personal saviour (and give the local Fundamental/Pentacolist church a lot of money every Sunday and perhaps at Wednesday Bible study). Given my background and attendance at Sunday services, I could probably describe Christianity to your kids impartially, while those churches would not. Seriously, Christianity isn’t terribly hard. Like I said, Sundays are for golf and horse racing, not church.
Yes, that is a good question (although I honestly don’t know how central it is to this thread). There do exist people who do not believe in God (i.e. atheists) but who are active, participating members in a church (or synagogue, or…). And there exist people who believe all the major tenets of Christianity (or Judaism, or…) but who do not attend religious services.
But one thing that should be understood (and I don’t want to assume that the OP doesn’t understand it, but if he doesn’t, he should): There is a wide variety of beliefs and practices even just within Christianity (and, of course, much more so when you broaden it to include other religions). One mistake I often see people (both religious and nonreligious) make is to overgeneralize about religion, and to assume that all religion and all religious people are like the ones from their own personal experience.
To take just one example from the OP—“what happens at baptism”—some Christian denominations practice infant baptism, while others wait until a person is old enough to choose baptism for themselves. Some baptize by sprinkling, others by immersion. Some believe that something actually spiritually happens to a person upon baptism; others believe that it’s purely symbolic. And some believe that these differences matter a great deal and it’s important to get them right, while others have a more live-and-let-live appraoch. (And, while I don’t know of any, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are Christian groups who don’t “do” baptism at all.)
I’ve been tempted to recommend The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, though in many ways it’s not the kind of book the OP is asking for here. I think everyone should at least read the title of the book, if not the book itself, and realzie that there are in fact varieties of religious experience: there’s not just one “right” way. (And this is not the same thing as there being different religions or different denominations: the varieties that James discusses could be experienced by different people who profess and practice the same religion.)
With respect to Christianity, I might suggest some of Bart Ehrman’s books. (He also has quite a few lectures on YouTube.) Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and faculty member at the University of North Carolina. Oddly, he is a self-professed agnostic atheist, so his work is (relatively) well-balanced. I find his publications to very helpful in understanding how many of the Christian denominations, sects, whatever, got from THERE (historically) to HERE (present-day).
One of the topics he often addresses that I find most helpful is, “How did Jesus become God?”
Then I withdraw my previous recommendation. The author, Luke Johnson, is a Christian.
Bart Ehrman is a respected theologian and an atheist who has written a number of good books. But I wouldn’t recommend him to somebody seeking a basic introduction to Christianity.