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Therapist says if you're an atheist you should lie to your kids about God.

Thermal said:
IATS offered an irrelevant comparison. I offered another in kind. Spirit of the Holidays and all.



Is this another lawn you've told the kids to stay off?
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I'll spell out my point more clearly.

There are valid concerns with telling one's children that Santa is real: It's dishonest, unskeptical, and has the potential to harm trust. The alternative is posed as a kind of trade-off: Sure those things are bad, but Santa is fun, so the benefits outweigh the costs.

My point is that you can get the best of both worlds. Tell your kids that Santa is a type of "game" that people play around Christmas, kinda like a Halloween costume. Now, nobody is being misled, and it's still fun.

Hope that helps.
 
Not this crap again.

What baffles me though is how much negligent hand-waving is done by people when it comes to lying, especially to children. No. Lying is bad. Don't do it. No real reason to.

But it's a joke when I get to read a few people acting like the torture question: they have to come up with some incredibly implausible, never-actually-happens-in-real-life scenarios such as "hey there's a ticking time bomb located somewhere which will go off in 24 hours and nuke San Francisco unless we torture a ton of dudes, pronto, to hell with the consequences". No, it's not okay to torture anybody. No, it doesn't work.

It never suddenly becomes okay to lie to people about fantasies and religions. In this case, it's often the theist-on-his-deathbed-who-implausibly-asks-the-non-believer-to-pray-for-or-with-him-or-asks-the-atheists-opinion-on-the-afterlife and then they're all like, "Hey lie like a goddamned rug! Go for it!"

Frankly, I think it's because the people who are okay with lying just simply don't have enough tact or nuance to deal with telling the truth. And no, responding to the wife's loaded question of "does my butt look fat in this dress" with a "yes, but it's the truth" doesn't know enough to separate truth from opinion and should simply remain either silent or single.
 
welshdean said:
Anyway, as I said, it's nice to see you back. But, can I please ask that we discuss something new...
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A Jewish Psychoanalyst with over 20 years experience saying atheists should lie to their children about God is new.

And when Mojo asks me for historical evidence in post 19 I gave him some.

And when people keep making wide sweeping generalizations such as all your past points have been soundly thrashed I might make it another 6 year absence. Any transient on a library computer could make a similar statement without having read one word of my threads. People should let my past posts speak for themselves without continually offering no information empty opinions about them.
 
DOC said:
A Jewish Psychoanalyst with over 20 years experience saying atheists should lie to their children about God is new.
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Atheists just aren't as comfortable being liars as theists are.

And when people keep making wide sweeping generalizations such as all your past points have been soundly thrashed I might make it another 6 year absence.
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All of your past points have been soundly thrashed.

Any transient on a library computer could make a similar statement without having read one word of my threads. People should let my past posts speak for themselves without continually offering no information empty opinions about them.
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Then you should let your past posts and all of the refutations speak for themselves, DOC. Your no information empty opinion is simply you regurgitating all of your past refuted points.

So is it only the Abrahamic gods whose existence you think needs to be lied about?
 
Hey, Norseman: The woman across the street from me has inoperable cancer. She'll die soon. Nothing theoretical about it.

She's religious and it seems to comfort her. But in that hour when doubt enters her mind, and fear with it, she may well ask for reassurance. I hope she doesn't ask me, but if she does, I'll lie like a trouper, and I hope you'll issue me a ticket to hell for it. See you there.
 
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Starting a topic on a thing then doing the whole "But awwww shucks me defending it might be off topic" thing is certainly... bold.
 
To be fair, some posts including some from DOC, were moved to AAH for being off topic.

I hope that encourages DOC to answer the questions actually asked without resorting to tired old nonsense long refuted.
 
DOC said:
The idea that you simply die and turn to dust may work for some adults, but it doesn’t help children.
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May work???! Doesn't help children?
Well, it helps them understand life and death, which appears to be what it's supposed to do, doesn't it? The idea is pretty straightforward and uncomplicated. Children should be able to grasp it. Adults who've been lied to as kids and now lie to themselves are the ones who don't seem to get it.

Belief in Heaven helps them grapple with this tremendous and incomprehensible loss.
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There's absolutely nothing incomprehensible about it. Ask (almost) any biologist! In Scandinavia, it appears to be what most parents tell their children. However, a few parents resort to the lie that 'nobody knows what happens after death' in order to avoid having to tell their children the truth.
Based on what I've heard from adults whose irreligious parents told them the truth (I wasn't so lucky myself), it's not at all traumatic to be told about death. (But remember, we're the kind of people who take our children to see young giraffes be dismembered and fed to the lions!)

The children who are told that an eternal life in Paradise awaits them after death are the ones who tend to think of the big nothing as something scary and awful. Otherwise, why would their parents tell them the Paradise lie?
 
Doc.
What do you tell the kids when someones 'Uncle Ernie' dies?
 
I Am The Scum said:
I'll spell out my point more clearly.

There are valid concerns with telling one's children that Santa is real: It's dishonest, unskeptical, and has the potential to harm trust. The alternative is posed as a kind of trade-off: Sure those things are bad, but Santa is fun, so the benefits outweigh the costs.
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I'm on the edge of my seat to see that robust evidence that *checks notes* telling your kids about Santa has the potential to harm trust, et al. Groundbreaking research, I'm sure. Otherwise, that which is asserted with out evidence...

My point is that you can get the best of both worlds. Tell your kids that Santa is a type of "game" that people play around Christmas, kinda like a Halloween costume. Now, nobody is being misled, and it's still fun.

Hope that helps.
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Yeah, got it the first time. Since the theme is what creates trust issues, to wit: I assert, with the same authority as you do, that taking Santa away from your kids has the potential to harm trust.
 
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