mangeorge I think you’re best bet is to talk to the parents.
Let them know the kind of questions their duaghter is asking. Also let them know how you feel about the whole subject. Finally, ask them how they would like you to proceed.
I’m saying this because it would be sad if the parents decide to take her out of your life for this. And hopefully, your influence will rub off on her as she grows older and wiser and with any luck she won’t turn out to be another svt4him, and instead will be an intelligent, logical, inquisitive young mind eager for knowledge.
No, I don’t want her to be like that. But she needs to gather more information before she has to deal with her grampa’s views on spirituality. Any discussion before she’s ready would be confrontational. She knows that, which is why she understands the wait. The 16 thing is simply a goal, not an unbreakable rule. If she really wants to talk before that, we will. She knows that.
Sometimes kids don’t know what they’re asking until you tell them. Saying that if they’re old enough to ask, they’re old enough for the answer is a fallicy imo. We’re not talking about what makes the sky blue, ya know.
By the way, she was younger (by a couple of years) when I told her the magic age would be 16. These queries have been coming up since she was little. Some I answer, some I don’t.
I’m surely not going to “come up with an intellectually honest non-answer which will not threaten the foundations of her faith.” I love her way too much to do such a thing. I help her (and my other grandkids) develop a sense of morality without neccessarily relying on myth. That’s all.
Her parents and I are not involved in some great tug-of-war. I’m working on them too.
As for evolution, it does not require belief. A little critical thinking, a whack load of empirical evidence and two synapse willing to fire at roughly the same time perhaps, but not belief. I’d suggest you use the search function and “Great Debates” as a forum and go read the thousands of threads started on evolution.
Of course if your idea of an answer to difficult questions is “God did it, and God works in mysterious ways” then there is no point to this discussion at all. Enjoy your belief system.
That “impressionable girl” is being fed a load of crap from the well-meaning morons around her. Only a complete moron with no reasoning skills whatsoever could possibly believe in the Noah/ark story. Alot of cultures have fanciful stories, and nobody would respect someone who believed lightning was created by Odin tossing bolts at the Giants, so why should similiar tall tales in Genesis get a pass?
She’s already being brainwashed. So if he sees fit to counter that brainwashing by pointing out facts, I see no problem with that.
If she asks him a genuine theological question, like “why does god let bad things happen to good people”, then maybe he should indeed refer her to someone in her religion who can give whatever crock-of-shit answer religions are giving to it nowadays. But if she asks him a question about the real world and its origins, then he ought to give the correct answer. That’s how kids learn.
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There’s only one kind of truth. Something is true if it corresponds to the world as it objectively exists. Maybe she’ll eventually learn, like alot of Christians on this board who aren’t evangelical fundies, that the bible is not the totality of the religion, that it’s just a book of stories that is meant to embody the Jewish and/or Christian view of the relation between man and god. It doesn’t have to be factually true to do that any more than Jesus’ parables had to have happened to real people for them to possess a lesson.
Educated people end up knowing alot of facts, and alot of those facts contradict the make-believe myths and stories of the bible. Unless this girl turns into a high school dropout, odds are she’ll eventually realize there was no Noah, no ark, none of that.
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Again, what are these two kinds of truth? The world is either one way or the other. Something is true, or it isn’t. There is either “true” or “false”. Something isn’t “spiritually true” or “scientifically true”, it’s just true or it isn’t.
mangeorge, your situation sounds eerily similar to mine: my brother and his wife are more religious than me, and when I talk to their bright ten-year-old son, my first rule is to respect their authority as their son’s parents (Tygr, since you are not an atheist, I presume you would refrain from answering any atheist relatives’ kids’ questions about the existence of God? Don’t wanna “callously derail” their quest for the truth, do you?) Our conversations involve a lot of, “Well, Mark, a lot of people believe (A). And a lot of people believe (B).” Etc.
I will not lie to the kid – that would be almost as bad as saying his parents are wrong, which I will never do, at least until the kid is old enough to drink, vote, and maybe rent a car. And even then, only with my back to the wall. Svt4Him, I’m still waiting for a cite on those 11-foot skeletons. (Human skeletons – I know there were dinosaurs over eleven feet long. ;)) My two cents: proclamations like yours, asserting falsehoods that you want to be true, thwart the goals of the sincerely religious.
gypsymoth3, you have a point. On the other hand, I know of no gay men who have procured (or undergone) abortions. If you are pro-life, you must conclude: we heterosexuals are evil.
I had a similar issue with my six year old son the other day. We’ve always discussed evolution, how animals are related and how they change over time. We’ve camped out at Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas and stood in dinosaur tracks in the limestone, and we’ve collected fossilized seashells here in North Texas. I’ve explained how this part of the world used to be under a shallow ocean.
He said to me the other day, “Daddy, did you know that all the world used to be under water?” I replied that no, some parts that are now land used to be under water, but there wasn’t ever a time when it was all under water. He said emphatically that he learned all about Noah and the great flood when he attended a church service with his friend recently. He was playing at a friend’s house on Sunday afternoon, and they were going to attend church, and we gave approval for him to go. It’s a Church of Christ by the way.
I really didn’t know what to say. He was emphatic that he was right, apparently because he learned it in a big impressive building, so that trumped any info he gets from his old man. My goal is to teach him to think, not to beat the facts into him, so I just let it go. When these things come up, I’ll just prompt him with questions that, when he’s able to piece things together, will allow him to figure out what’s right and not on his own.
Svt4Him, you should give up on Hovind. If you choose to believe this flood tale, just say it was a miracle. There is no way that you could ever support its happening with science. It’s just too ridiculous. If someone asks how Noah got all those species on a boat, “it was a miracle.” Where’d all the water come from? “It was a miracle.” How did the animals survive together for weeks on a single boat? “It was a miracle.” This answer will get you a lot more respect than positing ludicrous claims of 11 foot humans.
By the way, for those of you wanting a reference for the 11 foot humans, google “creation evidence museum”. This wonder of uncritical thinking skills sits just outside the entrance to Dinosaur Valley State Park.
I’m certainly no bible scholar, but the position that makes the most sense to me is that you cannot really talk about a single bible. Different parts of it must be read differently. Portions of it are intended to represent actual historical representations. But far more are myth or metaphor. And yet more is poetry. For example, do you speak of the “truth” of the Song of Solomon?
Moreover, in my experience, the overwhelming majority of christians acknowledge the need to comport their religion within the realm of modern scientific knowledge to some extent. Your daughter is certainly not too young to begin her personal critical analysis and comparison.
As someone who believes in the Torah, I want to point out that the reason myself and other Orthodox Jews do not take the Song of Solomon as a literal event is because it calls itself a song, up front. amongst us literalists, there is not a picking and choosing of what we consider to be metaphor/poetry and what we think was real; everything is assumed to be stating facts unless the section in question is prefaced by a statement that what follows is a song, parable, proverb or poem.
Check out Creation Evidence Museum cite linked. It’s very eye-opening. Here is a tidbit:
“The Creation Evidence Museum has sponsored expeditions to Papua New Guinea which have resulted in eyewitness night sightings of bioluminescent pterosaurs (see Isa.14:29 & 30:6), the most recent being in August 1994 and 1996. The nationals (and missionaries) speak of flying reptiles with wingspans up to 25’ across and those having the macabre habit of scavenging gravesites for food.”
I’ve always been pretty condescending towards those who truly believe what the bible (or the Koran, the Torah or the New Teatament for that matter) says. I’m sorry, I know that attitude isn’t polite, but that’s how I felt because it was hard to prove the fallacies of those myths, and they seemed so sincere. But now there’s so much evidence that the myths are not true, and I grow impatient. Some of this stuff is hurtful.
Somebody above mentioned dietary prohibitions being based on practical reasons. I don’t think so. From what people I’ve talked to have said, and from what I’ve read, you can’t eat pork because God said you can’t eat pork. Simple as that. Which brings us to Loaves and Fishes. Fishes with fins.
