Will Humans Have Freewill in Heaven?

[Crossless2.0]

My daughter believed in a god (presumably the Christian flavour, from interacting with her peers and social club activities) up until a couple of years ago. I didn't tell her not to believe in it, she asked what I thought and I told her why I don't believe in gods while suggesting as well as you can to an 8 year old that she should make these decisions herself and always question others and, more importantly, herself about such things.

Last year sometime she told me that she no longer believes in gods - note the plural. She has learnt about the main religions and various different gods at school and decided that it's not for her - hence her asking me to contact school recently to excuse her from prayers and praise type songs.

She is still too young to fully understand the implications but I'm pleased that she is at least starting out from a neutral position here on in (as she was when she came into the world). If she chooses to embrace faith in some or other god when she is older that's her choice but I will advise her if she asks.


Let's see, the first offering you gave me to reconsider my actions as an atheist parent were Matthew 18:6. I picked the KJ version but they all read pretty much the same (which is unusual in itself for bible translations).

"But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea"

Could you put this in context for me, bearing in mind my description of my interactions with my daughter above please.

You are not taking her to church and putting her in an place where she can lean about the true God and how He is the only God. It's a good thing she has rejected all the false gods. God has made it the responsibility of the parents to expose them to Him. He understands how little ones can be pushed in a wrong direction. It's people like you who have pushed the ability for kids to learn about God school out of the schools, so how is it she could possibly have learned about God there, evolution is taught in school and taught in a way that there's no God of creation.

GC

Why is it that idiots like you cannot or will not understand that in this country, and under our Constitution, it is not the job of the state or its representatives (including public school teachers) to "teach" people about God (by which you mean, of course, Christ/Yahweh)?  No one pushed the ability for kids to learn from our schools.  What is not allowed is jackasses who think like you, pushing their beliefs onto our children while drawing a public salary.

I have stated here before that I am in favor of unbiased classes in comparative religion and mythology in public schools (as well as courses devoted to the study of logic and rhetoric), but you're not interested in those, are you?  Why?  Because kids might just get the idea that your brand of bullshit is no better substantiated than those other brands of bullshit you don't believe.  When you talk about freedom in our schools, you're really talking about the freedom to play with loaded dice.

And evolution?  Good luck finding a public school that does a good job of teaching that.  My high school sure as hell didn't.  In fact, my biology teacher made a point of not going through that chapter in our textbook precisely because he didn't want the headache of having to deal with moron fundie parents and their indoctrinated kids raising hell with him all term.  He was a pussy for adopting that stance, but I understand his desire to avoid unnecessary stress.  But assuming a school does make a serious effort to teach biology correctly, why on earth should there be any mention of any god?  When I took chemistry, the teacher didn't feel it necessary to talk about god's role in the behavior of gases.  In physics, we didn't get the lowdown on how there was a god behind Newton's laws.  And the funny thing is, you Christians don't clamor for such things.  Why?