In part I quote:
The lack of attention to the most influential component of CRE, the “Christian” part, has put us in a spot of bother. It started when the child came home and proudly announced that God made everything. He showed his atheist father a workbook with the following activity.Interesting views of the matter!
Fill in the blanks:
G_D created the sun
G_D created the sky
G_D created the earth
Meh. I thought it was pretty harmless. Perhaps even mildly amusing. God is up there with Santa for me. It’s nice to believe if that’s what floats your boat. If your faith brings you joy, and helps you lead a better life, go for it. If you are Christian and find it offensive that I have put God on the same level as Santa, I apologise.
...
My husband was not so nonchalant.
He flipped his lid and started ranting about brainwashing and how if this is the best Christianity can come up with to teach their religion, then it’s not saying much for the religion. Sharing basic values of the Christian philosophy was ok, but teaching six year olds creationism was where he drew the line. He challenged my six year old, asking for proof of God’s existence, even recommending some questions he could ask his CRE teacher next week.
I'm glad that the husband picked up the point of it, though. What caught me was that he considered a piece of standard Christian belief to be 'creationism' which is reserved in church circles, as far as I know, for people who believe that Genesis 1 provides a direct account of the sequence of events of creation. (Of course, most people do not consider "creationism" to have anything to do with the origin of the soul...its older usage).
A well informed 6 year old could of course have asked what his father knew, and I mean really KNEW about the origin of life. The only answer could be 'diddly squat'; because that's all anyone knows. The same answer stands for what is REALLY known about evolution.
He could also have challenged the metaphysical basis of the question; which would leave most fathers gasping, they, being average blokes, with poor grasp of the philosophical field of basic questions: see Alvin Plantinga for help on that one.
Alternatively, our perceptive child could have observed that no one lives as though the personal is an epiphenomenon of matter; we all live as though the personal, or the capacity to 'will' has basic significance (basic as in philosophically basic): and yet how odd this would be if it is mere accident.
Still, we can comfort ourselves with faint amusement that an intellectual tradition which is deeply structured by Christian faith, with a frame of reference for enquiry that has its roots in the medieval church with its reorientation to modernism by Martin Luther is the one in which questions of its roots can be asked.
