(September 23, 2015 at 4:08 am)robvalue Wrote: Hiya, nice to meet you
Sorry you had to go through the deconversion stage, I imagine it must be horrible. But congratulations on fighting your way through to atheism
Sneaky indoctrination is always a problem. My advice would be to concentrate on teaching your child critical thinking skills. No need to preach at him "there is no God" like some theists seem to think atheists do. If you teach him how to think logically, he will likely recognise any sort of indoctrination for the nonsense it is. And if he comes to you with questions about religion, I recommend using a series of questions in return to help him come to his own conclusions (the Socratic method). It's more effective to enable someone to realise for themselves why something is nonsense, rather than just telling them it's nonsense.
However, children are vulnerable when very young, before the age of reason. If people start trying to program him in this window, then you're more than justified in telling them to back off.
I agree completely.
Indoctrination is Indoctrination.
Programming a kid to be Atheist is not much better than programming him to be a Theist.
Teaching our kids to be a carbon copy of ourselves isn't good parenting.
Enabling them to become the best version of themselves, is.
Learning how to ask the right questions in life, in ANY situation, is a highly valuable skill, indeed.
