|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 11:25 pm
|
|
|
|
With the exception of me, some European cousins, and my grandmother who's busy in Switzerland evading taxes or something, my family is religious. I don't know what horrors they'd inflict upon me if they knew I was a "non-believer".
Anyways...oneday I'm doing my work, typing something up on the computer. Everyone's out of the house except for me and my 9 year old brother. I'm typing away an essay on the Treaty of Versailles, and he walks up to me and asks me the Question, a Gretchenfrage if you will.
He comes to me with all these questions, and I answer them as best I can. Most of the time they're things with definitive answers, but sometimes they're more theological or just unknowable. Like "Does heaven exist?" and "What happens when I die?" I can't answer those for him. I've tried to explain to him all these different ideas and viewpoints as best as I could.
And, as I type on the computer, he asks me "Did Jesus really walk on water?" Normally he ends up telling our parents what I told him, just to get some back up and advice on it. If I answer that question with any answer that in any way doubts that Jesus did exist, was the son of god, and did really walk on water, then I'm in big trouble with the parents. "Big" as in being physically punished, pulled out of school and sent to some strict religious institution, and have the remained of me life controlled and censored until I turn 18 and bust my way out. So anyways, he asked me that question and I said "well, does it make sense to you that he did? does it make sense to you that a human walked on water?" I basically tried to use scientific reasoning and other devices to try to get him to think about wether or not a lot of this whole religion thing really made sense to him. His response "I dunno, I guess. They said he did though, so I guess he did."
I want to give my little brother answers and help him see things. I see that he's begining to just take things for granted and blindly following the religious "training" he's going through. I don't want this to happen to him. A couple days ago I was sitting down at the table and I jokingly said some "curse your ancestors!" joke or something. My brother thinks that means "curse Adam and Eve" or something, and I basically countered him with an evolution argument. Basically, we started "debating" about creationism and evolution, and he wants an answer from me, but I can't give him that without risking everything for me.
I'm just trying to get him to think for his damn self. Maybe it's too much to expect from a 9 year old (which it probably is actually) but I don't want him to start on the "yes I believe everything they tell me" path. I just want him to learn reason and to see that god might not exist and that religion has no factual basis (you can't prove it), and is fallacy. I want him to be aware of other beliefs and to understand....so much more than I think he can right now. whee
---
One thing about science is that if I am a scientist and have discovered that 1 + 1 = 2, anyone can go out and do what I did (or something else) and come up with the same result, and find that one plus one does indeed equal two. It can be proven. With religion if I say that "the Lord has made it that 1 + 1 = 3", there is no way that it can be proven that one and one do actually equal three instead of two. I want my brother to understand that concept as well.
---
If my brother believes in god, I don't really have a problem with that. I just don't want him sucked into any dogma. confused
So...how do I deal with his questions? sweatdrop
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 7:10 am
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 3:18 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 3:59 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 12:06 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|