Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Raising children without God

There is definitely much value in this article for its logical approach. Lying to your kids is not the way to go because it betrays your core sense of values, no matter what they are. If you don't believe in god, it does more harm than good to tell your kids that you do, because they will sense the lie, and that will have other consequences for them.

But if you do believe in god, or some other thing, it is important also to realize that children live in a world of magic and myth. It is part of human development. They have to go through that. That is exactly why human cultures have mythology, for teaching children the rules of society and how it functions, and for explaining the way things work in a non-scientific sense. That basis is necessary for the child to have in order to go on to a rule-based sense, and later an achievement-based sense of things.

Many adults never leave the mythological stage of development, hence your religious nuts, but doing away with that stage of development all together will get people stuck. It's necessary, although unfortunate when development arrests there.