Autism, Religion and God

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I would say something to the effect of "If you are good to others, they may like you and be good to you, and you would like that." I would try to explain that this does not always work, but it's a good way to start. Or, since I'm talking to a child capable of some level of reasoning, I would use examples to facilitate understanding; "you liked it when Tommy let you play with his toys, wasn't that nice?" or "when Simon says mean things to you, I know you don't think that's nice, so don't say mean things to Bob."

I am an atheist with a child so this has already come up.

"Good" for the purposes of raising a child, comes in two broad categories. One category is "following rules". For those cases I don't say "be good" (too vague for an autistic child anyway). I state the rule and its purpose.

The other broad category is ethics. You don't need God to teach a child ethics. The Golden Rule of 'treat others as you would like to be treated' works just fine.

If I were unlucky enough to have given birth to a psychopath (I've seen studies that give evidence it's genetic), the Golden Rule wouldn't work. Then I would have to resort to punishment both by myself and the government ("if you do that when you are 18, you will go to jail"). I have heard that psychopaths who toe the line do so out of fear of repercussions, not out of ethics. But luckily she is an autistic person with mental retardation, not a psychopath, so a very simplified* Golden Rule works just fine.


*simplified in that I can't take it any farther than the examples Wolfram87 gave, no matter her age- but that's ok. His examples are things I have quite literally said but with different names. God never came into it.

...2A

I believe that a person should have a say when it comes to religion and that faith comes from the heart of an individual not from the fear of burning in hell after all there is salvation in faith if one choose that moral path.

I am a Christian with lots of faith, but I still am a logical man. I did heavy research into Christian apologetics, and it makes a ton of sense to me. If you're religious, great. If not and favor scientific explanations, that's fine too. But it's dumb to say that religion and science can't mix.

It's not dumb. Science is supported by tons of evidence while religion is pure and simple belief in something for which there is no evidence. You lay it out as an equivalency. It's a false equivalency...

It's not that you aren't logical or intelligent, just that you are using logic based on a set of incorrect assumptions.

I'm a Christian and I have a teenage son. He's agnostic, which makes sense to me as he's just beginning to explore the world of ethics, faith, culture and belief. While I personally would like him to share my faith I don't think faith can be forced on people, they have to make up their own minds. I think when people are forced it tends to have a lasting negative affect. So I just love him, care for him and teach him to look at the world with open eyes and make up his own mind.

It would help if people didn't put faith in a Bronze Age mythology as if it were fact.

Many people thinking something (spacially without evidence) does not automatically mean it's true

So yes they are "deluded" as you said

For the most part, I prefer to teach my students to learn to be able to think for themselves, rather than blindly believing everything that any self-proclaimed authorities say. Otherwise the only belief that needs to be taught in regards to God is that God should be solely defined as a type of an Energy-System (rather than some old man with a beard in a sky). This Energy-System manifests itself in the form of simply making you experience everything that you or your servants cause others to experience (stop being complicit to causing harm and less harm will be seen to come your way). Religion should only be defined in terms of one's Code-of-Conduct. Any belief that permits the harming of others for any reason is a net-destructive religion and should be abolished.

The human-species still has a lot of work to go before any kind of world-wide peace will ever be witnessed. All harmful false-beliefs/religions can be abolished once they are seen for being the cults that they are. They are nothing but text written on paper or papyrus or a web-site. Calling "decrees" the "laws" does not change the fact that it is only text having been written by someone (whom you have never seen or met before, with a name that you have never heard of in your life, for all you know it may be some sort of HAL9000 A.I. who is coming up with the commands, and do you REALLY want to follow some anonymous decision-maker ?). The ONLY reason people have placed such "importance" onto these texts are from Neuro-Typical Ritualistic-Behaviours, such as voting that said text has become canon or law or scripture, enshrining said text into some kind of leather-bound book, the "text" was "endorsed" from some "perceived" authority figure like a pastor/preacher/governor/president/prime-minister/etc., etc.

Even governments will fall and collapse one day when people see "Executive Orders" for being what they are. Nothing but text on paper written by some anonymous someone (and "God" help you humans if the text really did turn out to be directed and created by some kind of modern-day HAL-9000). Consider this, nobody in their right mind today would follow those OT verses that command you to kill your very own daughters for being late to return home, and IT is treated as being nothing more than text-on-paper by any "sane" and "rational" thinking individual (a relic or remnant of the past bicameral-mind). Similarly, once humanity can overcome their delusions of thinking that any myriads of modern-day texts are really as important as they are treated, even if everybody currently believes them to be some sort of law, they will eventually be abolished as more and more people start to lose faith in their governments, corporations, bankers, legal-systems, and all other myraids of various ritual-based cult-beliefs.

I think parents should leave it up to their children to form their own beliefs, so that they don't feel pressured to believe in a certain thing. I mean, sure, they're your kids, but they are still separate human beings from you; let them be themselves.

My parents didn't raise me with a religion; they let my sister and I make up our own minds. I think that was very nice of them. I strongly believe that people should create their own morals, values, etc. It's okay if they get religion from their parents, but that shouldn't be because the parents are telling them that their religion is correct/true; it should be their own choice to follow.

The problem with wanting parents to not claim religion is true is that most religious people believe it's true, even though there is no objective evidence that any part of any religion is true...

This.

There are plenty of things I believe are true, but I wouldn't tell someone they're true just because that's what I believe. I might say I believe those things to be true, but I wouldn't state it like it's fact. I would make it clear that it's just what I think, and others may disagree.

And there isn't anything different. My wife and I have raised our autistic daughter in the Lutheran faith, as my parents raised me in it (even though no one knew I was autistic at the time).