Evangalist, Junior

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I had a meeting at Mo's school this morning to discuss some problems that he's having and one of the very interesting things to come up is that he keeps fighting with kids about god.

It seems that there are a bunch of little kids in his class who keep telling him he's going to hell for not believing in god and that they can't be his friend because he doesn't love Jesus. A couple of kids have actually "told on him" for not believing in hopes of getting him in trouble!

Mo has brought up the little evangalists before but I had no idea that the problem was so pervasive.

We don't really talk about religion at home, except in an abstract sense of "there are a lot of religions and a lot of ways to believe and everyone gets to pick their own and blahblahblah" so I'm not sure how or when Mo decided he doesn't believe in god, or why he'd feel like he needs to fight about it.

Do kids learn this at church -- that they should try to get others to believe? I know some adults who are always trying to evangalize and testify and bring people into the flock -- but kids!?

Really, what's up with this?

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@boomerang,

Ugh, that sucks.

Yeah, sozlet's had this pulled on her too.

Two girls we know (neither of them sozlet) got in a HUGE fight about this. One (A) is agnostic/ Buddhist/ Joseph Conrad pantheist, one (B) is some sort of born-again something or another. A made some reference to "Goddess" and B went absolutely apeshit. (Sozlet was recently at a sleepover with B that she asked to come home from because B was wailing, at length, about the fact that her mom wasn't there to pray for her. B was wailing for two hours before sozlet threw in the towel. I still don't know why the host parents didn't just call the mom and have her pray over the phone or something, but whatever.)

I don't know if this is new or not but there does seem to be at least some scare tactics involved in Sunday schools and the like. Too many kids seem to be terrified of the consequences of not believing, and therefore scared for their friends who don't (logical conclusion).

She seems to usually shrug it off... I know it's annoyed her sometimes though.

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@boomerang,

They probably get some of the behavior from their church and from their parents. But it's also a standard human behavior pattern to want to be around people like us and to want to make other people like us. So some of these kids behavior is probably related to that instinct as well.

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@boomerang,

My niece (nearly 18) is attended a public high school in Indiana since summer last year as an exchange student.

Nearly everyone (including teachers) told her that she nice, smart, beautiful, had a sexy accent, intelligent, ... but would go to hell since she didn't believe in creationism. (She's very active in the Evangelical [here= 'protestant'] Church of Germany.)

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@sozobe,

That's just downright creepy. Good on sozlet for removing herself from that situation.

Mo's a nothing, religiously speaking, so I don't know why he seems to feel so passionate about his position. When he asks me if I believe in God I say "Maybe. It doesn't matter what I believe. You get to pick for yourself."

This all reminds me of a conversation I had with my brother:

When he was in Iraq he would, on occassion, answer letters from students (the soldiers get a lot of letters from schools -- yeah schools!) He said that once in a while he'd come across a letter that was so obviously the parent's ideas and not the kids (Obama is an idiot/Obama is the bestest president EVER) that he wanted to write back letters to the parents instead of the kids telling the to back the hell off.

That's kind of how I feel about this situation.

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@rosborne979,

Excellent point.

Mo's teacher just keeps telling them it's nobody else's business, so kudos to her.

(But I can't help but wonder what the reaction would be if the evangalists were from some other religion than Chrisitianity.)

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@Walter Hinteler,

Does she think everyone is insane?

I would.

Thank goodness that creationism isn't a hot topic in Oregon!

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@boomerang,

Well, over the months she got used to it ... in in one ear, out of the other ... -

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@boomerang,

I experienced some of this as a kid, along with the straight-up pronouncements that I was headed to hell.

I always responded with a hearty '**** off, you oatmeal-brained idiot' or a jovial punch to their face. It worked pretty well.

Kids of hardcore evangelicals are the absolute, 100% worst.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Ha!

I'm sooooo glad that Mo hasn't resorted to the **** off/face punch -- he has enough trouble at school without that!

I pefer he develop a rational response/defense to his disbelief but I'm not going to spoon feed him answers, he needs to make that journey on his own. Me teaching him to defend his (not my) budding atheism would be just as cloying awful these kid's unquestioning embrace of their parent's beliefs.

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

Ha!

I'm sooooo glad that Mo hasn't resorted to the **** off/face punch -- he has enough trouble at school without that!

I pefer he develop a rational response/defense to his disbelief but I'm not going to spoon feed him answers, he needs to make that journey on his own. Me teaching him to defend his (not my) budding atheism would be just as cloying awful these kid's unquestioning embrace of their parent's beliefs.

The problem with rational responses in this case lies in the highly irrational nature of the accusers. There is no rational response to such a specious allegation, made by those who are too young to even understand the basic logical arguments against their position. It is simply an argument of absolutes, a method of social segmentation and control.

I understand that some do not agree with direct confrontation, and that's cool, but the alternative is to let these little shits grow up without ever having been challenged on their ideas. I'm not comfortable with that position. But, I hope it works out well for your youngun.

Is Mo aware of the concept of Agnosticism? I would caution that Atheists can be just as bad, if not worse, then the irrationally religious.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

**** you/ facepunch isn't exactly challenging their ideas though, is it?

It easily slides into a "they're worse than us" narrative.

I ran into this sometimes when I was a kid too, I pretty much just ignored button-pushing and responded honestly to honest inquiries. ("Aren't you scared of hell?" "No -- I don't believe it exists, so something that doesn't exist isn't scary." Etc.)

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

**** you/ facepunch isn't exactly challenging their ideas though, is it?

It easily slides into a "they're worse than us" narrative.

You're already in that narrative. They have already damned you to hell - the worst thing possible, by any estimation. A declaration that because you don't believe the same things they do, you will suffer for all eternity.

Direct intervention lets them know that I don't accept their narrative, in a way which logical argumentation never could.

Quote:

I ran into this sometimes when I was a kid too, I pretty much just ignored button-pushing and responded honestly to honest inquiries. ("Aren't you scared of hell?" "No -- I don't believe it exists, so something that doesn't exist isn't scary." Etc.)

Whatever works for you. But at least the people I confronted knew perfectly well never to say **** like that to me again - and they didn't. This was my ultimate goal. I really don't care what they believe in and I'm not interested in attempting to change their minds through logic, at all.

Cycloptichorn

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You might try something like, "This is America, and people can believe anything they want here. That's the law. You ARE American, aren't you?" <said disbelievingly>

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@Walter Hinteler,

Oh!

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Good for Mo for standing up for what he believes in. You might tell him about William Bradford, who was thrown out of Massachusetts Colony for free-thinking, so he went and founded Rhode Island for people, no matter what their belief. Or Peter Zenger who pretty much founded the idea of a free press in the US. Tell him about Thomas Jefferson, who thought Jesus was a pretty snazzy teacher of morality, but wasn't supernatural--Jefferson made his own bible up by clipping out all the miracles and magical bits--and Thos. is regarded as a founding father of the country (though the Texas Board of Education just downgraded him because he favored strict separation of church and state--idiot Texans).

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@boomerang,

I like your response on that. I would find it hard, but I've done it, re my niece.

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@sozobe,

Once in a while I envy you...

at aligned times in our lives, I was responding positively to the Miracle of Fatima and you were saying, no, I don't believe it exists, so something that doesn't exist isn't scary.

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

Do kids learn this at church -- that they should try to get others to believe? I know some adults who are always trying to evangalize and testify and bring people into the flock -- but kids!?

Really, what's up with this?

I'm a skeptic and an atheist. But for this case, I think its just puerile, mean spiritedness that some kids hold over others they think are different. And get a group of like minded bullies together and they now have a commonality they can exploit when picking on others. A superiority complex that I believe their parents wouldn't correct even if they knew the behavior existed.

I doubt it's a condoned and organized effort from the church/community/parents but the opportunism by some jerkish kids who will not learn the proper lessons of empathy and caring which are allegedly the tenements of Christian moral values. And if they learn these traits it won't be during this stage of their life.

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@tsarstepan,

tsarstepan wrote:

I doubt it's a condoned and organized effort from the church/community/parents but the opportunism by some jerkish kids who will not learn the proper lessons of empathy and caring which are allegedly the tenements of Christian moral values. And if they learn these traits it won't be during this stage of their life.

have you seen Jesus Camp?

and Boomer, if you've not seen it you should, gives you an inside look at kids and religion

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Evangalist, Junior

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