From: kgatling@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Keith E Gatling)
Subject: Re: Teaching Superstition     was God's Family Values
Organization: Manlius Pebble Hill School; Dewitt, NY
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 92 01:45:02 EDT

In the interest of brevity, (HA!  From ME?) I'm going to skip all the
attributions and go right to the meat of the matter here, running the risk
of getting wrong things that were said by others.

Okay, point #1 (of points in no particular order); aren't we teaching our
kids that we can't be trusted when we tell them that Santa is real?

     I don't think so.  I think we tend to worry about this far too much.
     I remember as a kid that my sister had a crush on Mickey Mouse.  Yes,
     the cartoon character.  No one ever told her that he was real, and
     yet she still had a crush on him.  And similarly, when you go to
     Disneyland or Walt Disney World with your kids and see one of the
     costumed employees, do you say, in the interest of accuracy and not
     wanting to lie to your kids, "Look, there's a person in a Mickey
     Mouse costume," or do you just say, "Look, there's Mickey Mouse"?

     As far as Santa goes specifically, because Cheryl and I are both
     concerned about how the Santa/gift giving aspect of Christmas has
     overshadowed the religious significance (boy, do I wish we'd swithc
     to the Japanese way and give presents on January 1 to celebrate the
     new year, so you wouldn't have to worry about commericializing
     anyone's religion and wouldn't have to worry about the protocol
     involved in giving Jewish friends Christmas presents), we will most
     likely explain that Santa is a folk legend based on the original
     Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra, who helped poor people by giving
     gifts of money.  We'll also probably explain that nowadays he's a lot
     like Cinderella, and many people play at giving and receiving gifts
     from Santa (we'll also tell the kid not to "ruin" it for the cousins
     who might actually believe it).

Point #2...the issue of succeptibility to cults.

     From my reading on the subject (and this was long ago and subject
     to much error), it seems not so much that the kids had no religious
     background at all as it was that they had only a nominal one.  They
     went to church or synagogue enough to know the holidays and the big
     names, but at age 19 they had all the religious understanding of a
     nine year old.  They had a childISH (as opposed to childLIKE) faith
     that wouldn't do them any good as adults when that childish
     understanding didn't mesh with what they understood as adults.  THIS
     is perhaps the best reason for what I'll call "continuing education"
     in whatever religious tradition you belong to.

     My wife and I are Lutherans and Cheryl is also a nurse (believe me,
     this has bearing on the subject).  At a certain age, all the kids
     start going to confirmation classes.  For about 99.44% of the kids
     and parents this means that after the two or three years of
     confirmation training is over, they WILL be confirmed.  After all,
     that's why you took the classes, and what do you mean you don't
     believe this stuff!  We look at it a little differently...Cheryl
     being a nurse looks at confirmation class as being a bit like the
     concept of "informed consent" at the hospital for having surgery or
     receiving certain medications.  You can't very well make a good
     decision if you don't know what's involved and what the consequences
     are.  As a result, our kid will go to confirmation class not with the
     expectation that she or he WILL be confirmed when it's over, but so
     that the kid can decide for herself whether or not she believes all
     this and wants to continue on as her parents.  We want her to be able
     to fully understand what she is deciding to either follow or
     abandon.

Point #3...things that can't be independently verified in reality.

     Do you know anything about theoretical physics?  I've read two very
     good books over the last 10 years, I think both by Paul Davies...hold
     on a minute and let me check to see if I still own them.  Yup...one
     is called "God and the New Physics" and the other is called "Other
     Worlds."  Among the concepts discussed is that theoretically it is
     possible that there are indeed parallel universes or other
     dimensions, or whatever you want to call it that cannot be verified
     by conventional "reality" by the average walking around person.  And
     if you consider this stuff carefully, you could see that God as
     someone who inhabits a different reality than us (sort of like a six
     dimensional being looking at us mere three dimensional ones), might
     not be such a far fetched idea...in fact that may be the case, but up
     until recently the language available to describe it has been sorely
     lacking.

     Now mind you...neither of these two books are religion books, nor are
     they written by someone with a creationist ax to grind (I hate those
     books because they seem written backwards from their conclusion to
     prove their point), so by mentioning them I am decidedly NOT setting
     you up.

Point #4...healthy skepticism.

     Believe me...I'm a skeptic and I hope my kids are.  Now this doesn't
     mean that I don't believe anything.  But does mean that I'll check
     things out a bit if they sound fishy.  There was a point in my life
     where I took Hebrew and did a lot of reading on religion
     (specifically Christianity and Judaism) in order to (pardon the
     reference) separate the wheat from the chaff, and try to resolve some
     apparent contradictions that I had seen).  I did NOT swallow
     everything I was told hook, line, and sinker...nor did Cheryl.  We
     both did our own research and decided after much questioning that a
     belief in God made sense.  Your mileage may vary, and this could be a
     result of the sources you use for your research...it's just as easy
     to find books biased AGAINST belief in God and telling why it's a
     dumb idea as it is to find those that are biased TOWARD such a
     belief.

     But as I said, Cheryl and I are both healthy skeptics, and we hope
     that our kids will be too...but contrary to what some fundamentalists
     may tell you, a healthy skepticism is NOT incompatible with a belief
     in God.

Well, I said I was going to be brief, and I have extremely overrun my
estimate, so I suppose I should call it a day here.


--
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* Keith E Gatling                                  kgatling@mailbox.syr.edu *
*          Opinions?  I've got plenty of them.  Just ask my wife!           *
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Newsgroups: misc.kids