Please consider this thought provoking article: Philosophy With Children https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-do-philosophy-for-and-with-children
Answers In Genesis is a Conservative Christian group who argue that if there is no God with the authority to tell us what is right and wrong, there is no such thing as objective/true morality. They say:
Is this a good argument? For instance, would we say that if there is no God to “stamp” as true what criteria and standards we use to evaluate good figure skating, that we have no ground for calling a figure skating routine objectively good or poor?
Activity: Come up with a list of activities that are evaluated with criteria and standards, without talking about God. How might this relate to evaluating human behaviors as good and bad?
One big problem for apologists is the question of how there can be an all powerful, all loving God who at the same time allows horrible suffering like childhood cancer? Apologist Ray Comfort explains it this way:
Does this seem to be a good answer as to why there are children dying of cancer, or would a better answer be there is no God watching over things so of course random sufferings will pop up all over the place?
A religious apologist is someone who tries to defend their faith with logic and reason. Here is apologist Dr. Frank Turek trying to explain his kind of Christianity:
Here are some questions to think about Turek’s ideas:
(1) How do you think others may feel if you tell them Jesus is the only way?
(2) What does “infinitely just” mean?
(3) Is there another way to address bad behavior instead of punishing?
(4) Does it make sense to say “justice is served” if a murderer goes free and you are punished instead?
(5) Does it make sense to say God has to punish those who have broken the law, but also doesn’t have to punish them?
(6) How is Jesus a ransom? Who is being held hostage that a payment must be paid for? Who is holding them hostage?
BONUS QUESTION:
Does the God of the Old Testament always punish sin, or usually forgive?
A secular answer: No, God is not talking to you. Your imaginary friend wasn’t really talking to you when you were six, and your imaginary friend isn’t really talking to you now. It only seems that way. Many people never grow out of the imaginary friend stage of life.
This article is a good discussion background for why Christian Nationalism is unconstitutional and unscriptural.
For another important article on the topic, see: https://www.salon.com/2022/11/10/did-christian-nationalism-lose-in-the-midterms-sort-of–but-its-not-going-away/
New article from TIME:
See full article here: https://time.com/6128721/tell-your-family-you-are-an-atheist/
On 16 September 2022, a 22-year-old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died in hospital in Tehran, Iran, under suspicious circumstances, due to police brutality according to witnesses.
The Guidance Patrol, the morality police of Iran’s Law Enforcement Command, arrested Amini for not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards. Eyewitnesses, including women who were detained with Amini, said she was severely beaten. These assertions, in addition to leaked medical scans,led independent observers to believe Amini had had a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke.
Amini’s death resulted in a series of large-scale protests across the country which garnered international attention, including a statement from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, putting a focus on violence against women in the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Wiki)
You know, for instance, in math, you should be able to explain your thinking. So, it’s not enough to “know” 3X2=6, but you need to illustrate it, perhaps with manipulatives: you make groups of three with blocks, select two of those groups, and you get six total things.
Is it a problem that this child preacher can quote the bible but can’t explain what it means in his own words?
It’s amazing how often people can have a lot of knowledge/information about a topic without being wise about the topic. The ancient Greeks said philosophy is the love of wisdom.
Is difference between this above child and the more mild cases of religious upbringing of children we see one of degree, or of kind. Picture a child who is not vocal like this one, but holds similar or more mild conservative Christian views.
Here is a helpful analogy video on religious child grooming: inundating a child with just one kind of religion, excluding others and secularism:
BONUS: Thinking about logic and humor – have you ever noticed the connection between logical errors and humor? Picture a reductio ad absurdum: a method of proving the falsity of a premise by showing that its logical consequence is absurd or contradictory. So: “The Earth cannot be flat; otherwise, we would find people falling off the edge.” That people are not falling off the edge makes Flat Earth proponents false/wrong, seem silly, which is to say hilarious! Question: Is the video of the conservative Christian preacher child above in the first video (i) not something we should care about, (ii) horrific, (iii) hilarious, or (iv) profoundly true?