Brain-food via Mimi Smartypants. YES I HAVE BEEN AWAKE SINCE 0725 OW

[idoru]

An article i think many of you might find interesting -- Raising Children With Secular Values in a Religious WorldA good chunk of this resonated with me, as i was raised not going to church. And yet! i have morals and values! i wouldn't necessarily call myself an atheist, and the 'committed secularist' title has a strange ring to it. i have

Comments

[ta_rando]

It's kind of strange--wherever I go, I find myself fighting for the underdog. At Biola I'm generally pretty displeased by the religious fervor and lack of thought, but here I am disagreeing with the article. I'm not really sure what I believe at the moment, but I think this article is pretty wrongheaded

[idoru]

i'm definitely not 100% behind her view, or at least her TONE -- she did seem a bit, well, sanctimonious. i don't think a child's reaction to "Do you believe in God" should be all EW NO THAT'S DUMB. Always with the openness to different opinions. i have firm respect and admiration for those with deep faith, for those unafraid to stand behind their faith and argue for it. However, as someone raised with secular morals -- though i was never in any way told there ISN'T a G/god -- i like the idea of raising my children the same way.

[jinii_chan]

*laughs* Yes, her tone was a bit strong. But I don't find that any more offensive than when I come across people trying to convert me to whatever religion they believe. Maybe that's what I find as an absolute "no-no." Religion/faith/whatever is a personal thing, and trying to force someone to believe something--anything, be it that there is a God/god or that there isn't--appears to me like an invasion of privacy (probably why I would let my kid decide for him-/herself), and furthermore, an insult to his/her intelligence, as if s/he couldn't figure out for him-/herself what s/he believes.

[jazzfish]

Science vs religion: as a 'scientist' [one who believes in science?] I'd have to disagree with your characterisation of science as like religion: in particular of it being like "an arrangement of beliefs, whether it conforms to an organized body or not." Science is a working model; it gets revised over time. Bits of it get thrown out when they're shown not to work. It doesn't happen as fast as it ought, maybe, but it /does/ happen. Beliefs change.

And please, please don't raise a child on science fiction and fantasy novels. Man cannot live by pulp alone.

Uh huh. If you believe that all F/SF is "pulp," then we really have nothing to say to each other. [Ursula Le Guin. Orson Scott Card's _Ender's Game_ and _Speaker for the Dead_. _1984_. _Frankenstein_.]

[idoru]

Oh, come on. You know as well as i do it can be a fight to find GOOD scifi and fantasy. i'm loath to say i read either genre, though lots of the authors i read TECHNICALLY fall into those categories. If asked, i find hard scifi boring, and plain fantasy trite. [Woo. D&D-style quests, dragons, and romantic tension? NEVER READ THAT BEFORE, NOPE.]

[jazzfish]

Sure, but that's true of any genre. 90% of everything is crap.

You could do a lot worse than pointing your kids overwhelmingly towards F/SF. It tends to provoke thought about the underlying assumptions of how the world-of-book works. Having to rethink your world view every time you open a new book gives you some mental flexibility.

*insert only-vaguely-related rant about how Comic Books Can Be Literature, Dammit*

[These days I also find bog-standard fantasy rather trite. Luckily, enough publishers agree that I can find something worth reading: Neil Gaiman, Gene Wolfe, Charles de Lint. And George Martin is just plain fantasy with uber-exceptional plot and characters.]

[idoru]

Merely pointing out that i recoil at the listed "Sci-Fi/Fantasy" genres as a knee-jerk reaction at this point. Obviously i read a lot of them -- Gaiman, Gibson, Martin, Card, McKinley, etc -- but i still find myself itchy-allergic to the label.

[ta_rando]

As a person skeptical about both science and religion (each to varying degrees), I would certainly agree with your statement about science: it's a changing, working model. However, I don't think this means science is growing "more perfect". As it eliminates untruths or problems, it picks up more along the way. It certainly adapts itself with time to incorporate new knowledge and trends of thinking. However, there are certain tenets it will always revolve around (at least since the advent of what we would consider modern, systematized science

[fuzzyamy]

It is not a constantly building knowledge-base, but a shifting, constructed paradigm.

Actually, I think it's both. Well, not a singular paradigm, but a series of paradigms. Multiple paradigms can coexist within science, and the constantly building knowledge base assists in the shifts.

We find a cure for an old disease, a new one pops up.

That doesn't negate that we still are constantly accumulating data to support current and new theories. New diseases emerge: this is a fact of life. We didn't discover HIV until the 1980s because it didn't cause death and human disease until the 1980s. This wasn't a flaw in our shifting perspective, this was viral evolution in action.

We think we've uncovered everything...

No scientist actually thinks that. If we did, we wouldn't be in the business.