here’s a question I got from my son.
“what happens when you die?”
while I’m not a “hardcore atheist” - (lately I’d call my self more of a reincarnated deist) It did make me wonder, what do the “hardcore atheists” tell there little kid to avoid giving them a death complex that life is meaningless because there is nothing besides this life and it can be taken away at any moment?
(and yes that is a valid point, many atheist children develop a death fascination)
so any takers?
I’d tell them, as my parents told me, that you live on in these people you have touched in life. Be it for better or worse those people remember you and your influence influences them to influence others and so on.
Life ends?
You cease to exist?
Life goes on? 
“Son, the person goes back into the same place and being as he was before he was born. Do you remember what that was like?–No? Niether does anyone else, son. This life will offer you enough problems and challenges to handle while you are here; focus on them and worry only about death when it calls for you. Do not be so busy focused on what you do not know so that you live your life neglecting that which you are able to know; such as love, goodness, friendship, work, family ( insert other good values).”
Not to tell son, but nevertheless relevant. Death is a thief. It robs us of the good which we have opportunity to achieve while we are alive. It’s a wretched, absurd, state of the world. So much of life is a struggle against time, sigh…
I don’t have children, but it’s an interesting question…what do you tell the wee ones? Do we blow smoke up their asses, ala Christianisty (or Islam, etc)? Is it worse to pretend we know, or to admit to our children that we don’t?
My take on it is to tell a child that we don’t know what happens when we die, but that it’s probably a long ways off. Children have (by clinical research) a truncated view of time anyways, so there’s a period where they can be eased into the adult understanding of mortality/impermanance/-“fill in the dogma” indue time.
My opinion is that the perverse reality of reality is harsh enough that children should be shielded from it until they have some chance of understanding it. That determination must of course be made by the parents, who hopefully will be present & up to the task.
It serves no good end to give information to immature minds that they’re clinically incapable to deal with. Allow them their childhood. The “reality” we recoginze will come in time.
Or you could just ask him what he thinks. He’s probably not yet stained by all of societies repressions, anxieties, expectations, demands…just ask him, you may be surprised.
What will a child think, L/A? The very young child has no concept of death, and indeed the very lack of being “stained” by society will ensure that he/she has no inkling of the concept. The mental health of a child will be enhanced by giving him/her some framework within which to comprehend their existance, even if it’s not religious.
But, hey- I’m not Dr. Phil; ask him if you want some horseshit answer. 
What did you think when you were very young Phaedrus?
I now realise – thank you for your help – that you so obviously have revealed here that you need some other thinker – here it is your parents – to tell you how things are, that you cannot and will not think for yourself. You who thinks your knowledge and experience is superior to a child’s. I wouldn’t have you guide my children across the street, much less on matters of life after death.
Did you believe in santa when you were a kid liquidangel?
Did you know how to read and write? or were you tought there things?
Your argument falls short in that you are denying that the knowledge you have of the outside word is solely based on the limited sources you have had… your parents and what they have allowed you to have contact with… end of story… we are all born into a box… what makes us truly free… is REALIZINNG our own predicament and that we cannot escape it…
realizing that outside this box… we know nothing… but not that there is NOTHNG outside the box…
Tell your kid how to think… so that he may realize that he’s in a box… just like the rest of us… freedome is an illusion given limitation…
I don’t fucking remember what I thought when I was really young 'angel. I was just a fucking little kid, fer chrissakes. 
But I know I had plenty of stupid ideas, and obviously I didn’t have much in the way of understanding about the world.
All kids need “some other thinker” to tell them things. That’s what childhood is. If it were otherwise we’d just boot the little fuckers out to live on their own at age 5. “Get a job, and good luck, kiddo.”
I apologise for getting your riled. That was not my intention. I was merely suggesting that just because that is the way that you learned doesn’t make it right. There are lots of problems with our society you will grant me that. There are other possibilities, other ways of learning and discovering truth. If you don’t know what happens when you die, what is wrong with telling a child that you don’t know? Can’t you open it up for discussion. Are you suggesting to me that a child doesn’t think? That’s’ absurd. In fact his thinking is pure and more likely to be in line with the truth. You, you’re a philosopher, ask some pertinent questions. Don’t hide inside your own paradigm and then curse me for suggesting you look more deeply at the question. You sit there, within your delusions and you can’t get out because you can’t think beyond your own conditioning. This is not meant to be a mud slinging match, it’s meant to make you think more radically.
I agree with that LA, and also think that whatever a child thinks about death is going to be affected by his surroundings. like other children I’ve seen that go to christian preschools beleive that they’ll get ressurrected like Jesus did. It’s appalling they fill kids heads with such blatant lies.
what next they tell kids to believe in the tooth fairy?
I think alot of the answers in here are interesting but I also think in the last few posts it’s bioled down to clawing the ground to show your idea is better.
I agree with this too a certain extant also, while we shouldn’t shield our children from the harshness of reality, you shouldn’t expose them to all of lives perverseness of reality either.
Yeah, there has to be a balance. What is the “right” or “wrong” way to do it? And according to whom? As an FYI, I was fed a steady stream of religious doctrain as a child, and I never seriously questioned any of it until my early teens. My “problem” with that was that it was presented to me as fact, not opinion, by my parents. But therein lies the rub- if you’re religious and really devout, religious dogma essentially is fact, and will be taught as such to your children. I can’t definatively prove it’s not true, nor can anyone prove it is.
I have no problem with any approach you want to take with your own children, but it’s dangerous to be overly critical of anyone elses, provided it doesn’t constitute child abuse. It’s easy for me to say what I’d do; I don’t have kids. For my own part, I wouldn’t want to flat out lie and tell a child that there’s a God and a wonderful afterlife since I have no real idea what happens when we die. Yet at the same time children don’t have the same emotional or intellectual tools to process information the same as adults. Do you really want to explain to your three year old that in the end we simpy rot and that life is absurd?
For the record, yeah- I probably would tell my kids that Santa, the Easter Bunny & the Tooth Fairy are real. To me that’s part of kids mythology and is fun. I don’t know of a single child who was “emotionally scarred” by being “lied to” by their parents about this. Hey, when you play “got your nose” with a little kid they don’t really think you got their nose!
There’s plenty of time to dwell on the morbid realities of life. I’d prefer to allow my children (if I had any) something like the Norman Rockwell life, at least for a little while. That’s safe for me to say as I’d consider it very unlikely that I’ll ever have any!
Telling a child that when you die there is no more and you cease to exist, will be hard for them to comprehend.(plus they must also deal witht the norm of other kids who are brought up with an afterlife). Teach the child over time the value of acceptance. Then he will be able to accept the truth that there is no more. Truth can not be told without an understanding of what is going on.
good post but your quote brings an interesting problem.
Let’s look at who has kids in America, and where it points to the future of our country:
IQ>130: 4%
IQ 110 - 129: 16%
IQ< 110: 80%
A majority of the smart people who should be having kids are not and making our countries average intelligence GO DOWN. If you want our country to be one of wisdom and insightfulness than you have to have kids.
but how do you know that is the truth? (not to be “preachy”, just an agnostic question.) I mean they are human just like you, and if you raised them correctly as you state they will be questioning things. look at phaedrus he was raised in a house where they told him how it is, and he still questioned that.
That is important but it creates reliance on others for your own well being.
it’s a tight rope over a pit of alligators. while teaching them to be critical thinkers is important, it’s also important to remember that should they choose to be christian or gay or both, you need to be accepting of that.
but if you teach your child to be SELF-reliant, and still value the acceptance of others they won’t be needing the acceptance of others and will be less likely to need religion to fill “a hole” in their being.
Phaedus,
You do then see that you would be doing exactly what your parents have done. Your point of view may be more enlightened than your parents - that is not the issue here - But you would be feeding them the exact same BS. i.e. Telling them how things are without really knowing for sure. I’m sure your parents believed that they were onto the truth…You can tell them about the Easter bunny, hell, I’m having an Easter egg hunt this Easter and I’m 32! Kids know the difference between play and truth.
scythekain said:
it’s a tight rope over a pit of alligators. while teaching them to be critical thinkers is important, it’s also important to remember that should they choose to be christian or gay or both, you need to be accepting of that.
but if you teach your child to be SELF-reliant, and still value the acceptance of others they won’t be needing the acceptance of others and will be less likely to need religion to fill “a hole” in their being.
When I speak of acceptance I do not mean people or the way people are but that is a big point. When I say “acceptance” I mean much more. You must accept the way the world is. Do not doll it up or you will never see what is really there. Like if a thunderstom happens do not look to God for the answer because it is just quick and easy but instead look more indepth at why it did happen and accpt that as the truth.
It takes time to accept truths. Like in your question about death. When somebody dies it is hard to accept that they are truely gone but over time you are forced to deal with it. People like to say “well he is in a better place now” (usually refering to heaven) and that lets them skip the the step of accepting that the person is gone but instead they just went somewhere else and you will join them there. If you teach a child from a young age about acceptance then he will accept death as the end nothing more if you wish to tell him that.
I believe that one should simply tell the child that he does not know but that what he believes is that…(u fill in the rest). Then as the child grows up he will come to follow you orhe won’t. sorry i can’t spend much time but ask questions if you need to I have to go to class!!
I dunno, Liquid…who’s to say their approach was wrong? Or right? Do you have kids? I don’t, but my siblings and I turned out just fine. Was that because of or in spite of the way we were raised?
The crux of the issue is this: how can their really be a right or wrong way to handle this? You could ask Dr Phil, but then you’d just get his dogma. Developemental experts could give you some guidance based on what empiracally leads to “well adjusted adults,” but what the hell are “well adjusted adults”? In the end, we all die. Whether we sheild the child from that knowlede or tell him flat out s/he’s gonna die, the end result will be the same- they’ll eventually die.
I personally have been around enough children to appreciate that they don’t have the same emotional or intellectual faculties as I do, so I wouldn’t explain to a 4 year old Schopenhaurer’s view of death. But neither would I want to totally deceive them; I guess I’d more just try to defer the issue to I felt they were able to handle it. Yeah, that’s a judgement call, but that’s what being a parent is all about.
Yes, you’re right. Who is to say what is wrong and right when it comes to child rearing. I have experience however, that when I open questions up for discussion - I am surprised at how children are able to respond and understand. Not all understanding is intellectual. Agreed, they cannot understand Schopenhaurer’s view of death, but they can understand their heart, it’s language, it’s intentions, all the answers exist right there, their heart afterall is the same as ours and therefore they are able to understand our hearts and that is what counts. If I don’t truly understand any subject from the perspective of my own heart, then I assure you, I cannot get that message accross, no matter how intelligent I am. I might be able to get it accross in a very clever way, you may grasp what I’m saying, but as is the problem with all these sorts of things, you will never truly understand what I understand anyway. There is no way. Because in order for you to ‘see’ out of my eyes, you will have to experience my point of view.
If I may quote Nomeansno here: