The Antichristian Phenomenon

Atheists and other non-theists/non-Christians across the blogosphere are struggling with a difficult question: what do you tell a child about God and religion? And now, a particular and even more difficult question: what do you tell a young child dealing with death?

Friendly Atheist pointed to this dilemma, with his post on the subject (you can see my response to his post and to the general question below), and a link to an article in which a writer talks about a friend who brings up the question of children and death. He writes:

My colleague Margaret Watson warnend me against filling Zoe’s young head with Godless thoughts. Margaret’s dad died when she was nine, and her faith was a great comfort for her, because she could believe that he was waiting for her in heaven. “And, being Catholic,” she said, “It meant that there was still someone I could call Father.” I can’t argue with that. You’d have to be a brutally militant atheist to tell an orphaned child that we die and that’s it.

So what do you tell a child about God and death? Do you treat it like Santa, and risk turning them into a theist? Do you let them figure it out on their own? Do you answer with brutal honesty?

I’d like to offer my own answers, as well as invite the other writers here to answer them, in this post.

Blue Linchpin: I think telling a child a lie to make them feel better will do nothing but cause more grief later on. It’s better for a child to learn to deal with death and grief early, instead of lying and delaying the inevitable. It will only result in the child losing trust in their parents and adults, and having to deal with the loss anyways. I don’t think refusing to lie to a child and cause more pain later on is horrible and militant atheism. What’s the best solution? Honesty, I think. “I don’t know” is probably the best answer, and letting the child know that this is how life works but that their parent WILL continue to live on in certain ways: if I were a parent trying to explain this, I would tell them that the dead parent has become a part of everything within the world, from the air to the trees to the ground, and that they continue to live on in this way, and be with us, even if we can’t see them. This would probably instill respect for the world and all things while comforting them and allowing them to deal with death realistically. Neither is it a lie: naturally our bodies recycle and become a part of the world, though unfortunately this is slowed thanks to pointless burial traditions.

Db0: A child does not need to be told fairy tales to pacify it and it’s doubtful that having the fairytale of heaven will do much to help this going. If the concept of heaven was enough to avoid sadness, you wouldn’t see all the people in religious funerals crying their soul out, but rather, they would be celebrating their brothers and sisters going to “a better place”. There’s also the fact that the child might grow even more sad if they think their loved ones might go to Hell instead. Just imagine if the child later on in life learned of a “mortal sin” which is certain to take you to hell and that their loved one used to do?

Personally I would take an Epicurean view on this subject. You can expain easily that all humans eventually cease to live, one way or another. But that should not necessarily be a matter of sadness. As long as one’s life has been good, then they have already been rewarded by the mere act of living. And if their life has not been good, then at least this unpleasant existence has ceased for them.

We, the ones that remain, can always keep them alive in our memory and remember and enjoy the good times we used to have. Being sad about the good time we may have had in the future is nothing more than self-punishment.

Waldheri

It’s a hard question of course, and one that I think has been an ally to feel-good superstition for as long as human history. One answered in countless ways to ease the grief of family and friends. I don’t see any reason to infatuate in the modern religious notions associated with death, or even any good reason to ease the grief of death. Death <b>is</b> the end, and should not be downplayed to something less bad, or imagined as only a part of existence. People say death is a part of life. It isn’t, it is the end of it, it’s opposite. Some superstitions, including Christianity’s, make death almost something to look forward to – the perfection of heaven as opposed to this flawed physical world. Not a very good thing at all, something that can even make people blow themselves up given enough false promises. No, death is bad and we should all realise it. Even if life isn’t always rewarding, it trumps the emptiness of death. Existence here and now is all we have, and we should make the best of it. Only because of our actions in human life we have a chance that the idea of us will be immortal. When person X dies and a child asks “Where has X gone?” I can only answer “Away. X does not exist outside of us anymore. X only exists in our memory of X. Even though we will never make new memories of X again, X will remain a part of us.” It is the best thing we can offer as a comfort for the loss of somebody.