Sunday School For Atheists

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from Time Magazine, November 21, 2007, with a headline:“Sunday School for Atheists.”The following are excerpts:On Sunday mornings most parents who don’t believe in the Christian God, or any God at all, are probably making brunch or cheering at their kids’ soccer game, or running errands, or with luck, sleeping in.Without religion there’s no need for church, right?Maybe, maybe, but some non-believers are beginning to think they might need something for their children.When you have kids, says Judy Willie, a design engineer, you start to notice that your co-workers, or friends have church groups to help teach their kids values and to be able to lean on.So, every week Willie, who was raised Buddhist and says she has never believed in God, and her husband pack their 4 kids into their blue mini-van, and head to the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, California for atheist Sunday school.The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult non-believers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God fearing majority in the U. S.Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it’s okay not to believe in God, and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.One Sunday this fall found a dozen children up to age six, and several parents playing percussion instruments and singing empowering anthems like, “I’m Unique, and Unrepeatable,” set to the tune of “Ten Little Indians,” instead of traditional Sunday school songs like, “Jesus Loves Me.”Atheist parents appreciate this nurturing environment, that’s why Kitty, a non believer who didn’t want her last name used to protect her kids’ privacy, says she felt socially isolated and even tried taking them to church, but they are all much more comfortable having rational discussions at the Humanist Center.I’m a person that doesn’t believe in myths; I’d rather stick to the evidence.

Tom:

Dave, in your writing of the book, Cosmos Creator and Human Destiny, you’re going to have an audience for this if the Lord tarries.This is an idea, you have a design engineer, who honestly can’t recognize design, incredible design out there, and another person who would rather stick to the evidence but is avoiding the evidence that’s overwhelming.

Dave:

Tom, it is amazing!I’ve been listening, as I have mentioned, to some debates, because I have some debates coming up, Richard Dawkins, you know, he’s a likeable person.

Tom:

Tell our audience who this man is.

Dave:

Well, Richard Dawkins is one of the world’s leading, well, evolutionist, atheist; he’s really leading the charge of the new atheist, who are determined to stamp out all belief.

Tom:

Quite militant.

Dave:

Oh, very militant, because they call themselves new atheists because the old atheists were too mild mannered.Richard Dawkins says belief in God is not only wrong, it’s evil and it must be stamped out.He claims to go by evidence.I mean, he has such faith in science, it’s incredible!I was just listening to a debate this morning, and he said, Wow, it used to be a mystery what life was, but now Darwin he has explained life.Well, Darwin didn’t explain where life came from, he didn’t explain how life began, but then, anyway he doesn’t admit that.But he does say, well, we don’t actually know where the universe came from, the cosmos came from, but we’re working on that, he says.Amazing!So here we have atheists, they don’t believe in God, and part of this debate is, can you have real morals without God?“Well, you don’t have to believe in God to have morals why would that help you?”Well, if your bank made a hundred million dollar mistake in your favor, and it is absolutely fool proof, no one would ever know it was a mistake, you could never be caught.How many people would be honest enough to give that back?Now, you’re not going to get caught—

Tom:

And what would be the basis for giving it back?

Dave:

Yeah, what would be the basis?The only—

Tom:

Certainly not the survival of the fittest.

Dave:

No, the only person who would do it—see, Dawkins says:You don’t have to have God to be good.Well, now why would you?Because only if you believe, it’s appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.Only if you believe that, in fact you cannot get away with this, because you will be judged by God one day after you die. The only thing that would keep you on that path.Now these people are trying to come up with morals and values and so forth without God.But well, Tom, it’s not rational, but they would say, oh yes, but we are more rational than those people who have faith.

Tom:

Now Dave, what about raising their children?Here they are concerned that their children have morals, I guess similar to those that maybe they were aware of in their own upbringing that their parents may have had who were Christians, or believed in moral absolutes, and so on.And not just judgment, but wanted to please God by their service to others and being a blessing, and so on.You know, greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for another, just as Christ did for us.So we have all those things, but now there’s a vacuum there for these kids.If they were really trained and brought up in the beliefs, the true beliefs that atheism would lead to, of evolution, well, this would be a jungle, wouldn’t it?

Dave:

It absolutely would be if everybody behaved that way.There would be no reason to be kind, or merciful because it’s survival of the fittest.But Tom, the fact is, and this is an illustration of that fact:Romans Chapter 2 says, God has written his law in every person’s heart.These people know there is something missing, they know they ought to behave morally, ethically, or whatever it is, however they want to call it.But they were made in the image of God, and God is perfect, He is without sin, and we understand that, and I don’t care whether you are a Buddhist or a Hindu—Buddhists don’t believe in God, a Hindu, they’ve got millions of gods.It doesn’t matter, you know in your heart that there is a right and a wrong, there are laws, there is a God that you are accountable to, and this news item is just evidence of them.