(August 29, 2011 at 3:24 am)100Facts Wrote: Thoughts?
12 year old kids don't need to read Paine to be an atheist. They just need to be taught critical thinking skills. I often joke about how even though my parents were Christians, they raised me atheist. My father the scientist taught me to question everything and require evidence for something before you believe in it. Then instead of bombarding me with Jesus and God at home, they merely took me and sister to church every Sunday. So I simply applied the principles my dad taught me to Christianity, and by the time I was twelve I figured out it was garbage.
My Christian parents now have only atheist children
The point is that they don't need to read or be fed the information against religion. They just need to be taught to think critically and question everything and they will come to their own conclusions. Our goal should not be to turn people into atheists, but to give them the skills that could lead them to become one.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
