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Answering Your Kid's Tough Questions

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4 Things Your Kids Should Know About Atheists

Christian Mom Thoughts
December 2, 2015 By Natasha Crain -



This week I had the opportunity to be on the radio program Cross Defense with Rev. Rod Zwonitzer (KFUO-AM 850 in St. Louis). We discussed the common atheist claim that believing in God is evidentially the same as believing in Santa, why that claim offers a great opportunity to talk to your kids about the evidence for God at Christmas, whether Christians should include Santa in their Christmas celebrations, and how to keep your kids focused on Jesus this time of year. If you’re interested,you can hear the whole interview online here.

In the course of our conversation, Rod asked what I think is the biggest challenge to kids’ faith today. As I’ve written about before, I said it’s undoubtedly atheism. The percent of atheists in America is quickly rising, and those atheists are often quite vocal about their rejection of religion. Our kids are more likely to hear faith challenges from atheists than from any other group. Because of this, it’s incredibly important that we proactively help our kids understand the atheist worldview (here are 14 ways to do so).

It’s also important that we help our kids have an accurate view of atheiststhemselves.

I’ve talked to my kids (ages 7 and 5) a lot before about the fact that not everyone believes in God, but I realized a couple of weeks ago that we haven’t talked much about atheists as people. Today I’ll share some highlights from our conversation that you can use as talking points with your own kids (of any age).

Here are four things your kids should know about atheists.

1. Atheists can be just as friendly and moral, if not more so, than Christians.
I opened our conversation by asking, “Do you think atheists can be nice people and do good things even though they don’t believe in God?” My kids looked at me a little skeptically, sensing a trick question, then my daughter said, “No, they would probably be mean.”

That was a perfect opportunity to clarify the difference between belief and behavior. I explained that all people, regardless of what they believe about God, can be nice and do good things…and all people, regardless of what they believe about God, can be mean and do bad things. I emphasized that you can’t necessarily tell what someone believes by how they behave.

When you explain the difference between belief and behavior, it’s a great time to then make three crucial points:
The Bible says it’s not behavior that makes someone right with God and allows them to be with Him forever. It’s a belief in and acceptance of Jesus as your Savior (John 3:16). Even though two people’s actions may look similar, their status with God can be quite different.
That doesn’t mean that Christians should sin so that “grace may abound” (Romans 6:1). When a person accepts Jesus as their Savior, they are committing to a relationship that should transform their heart; moral behavior should flow out from belief.
The fact that people, regardless of their beliefs about God, know some things are objectively right and some things are objectively wrong, is actually evidence for God’s existence (this is called the Moral Argument). Romans 2:15 tells us that God has placed His laws on the human heart whether we choose to acknowledge the Source of those laws or not. Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise us that atheists know what is right and can choose to live moral lives according to that compass.

2. Atheists are often ex-Christians.
I next asked my kids why they think some people don’t believe in God. My son immediately responded, “Because no one has ever told them about Him! We have to tell them!” While I loved my son’s enthusiasm for sharing his faith (and encouraged him to do so), I also explained that many atheists used to be Christians; they’ve heard about Jesus and have chosen to reject Christianity.

This is important for kids to understand because atheists who are ex-Christians can be especially impactful in their challenges to believers—they can “talk the talk.” For example, atheists who are ex-Christians are often fond of showing how immoral/contradictory/crazy various tough biblical passages sound. To young people with limited Bible knowledge, it can seem like those atheists know more about the Bible than the Christians in their lives who have never brought those passages to their attention…and it can shatter their trust (just one of many reasons parents should proactively bring tough questions like these to their kids’ attention).

Kids need to know that just because someone knows something about or has experience with Christianity doesn’t mean they truly understand it or are presenting it accurately.

3. People can be atheists for good reasons.
Our conversation then turned to some of the specific reasons why people reject God. I asked my kids if they thought atheists have good reasons or bad reasons for not believing in Him. Since we talk a lot about all the good reasons for believing in God, they quickly assumed that atheists must have bad reasons for rejecting Him. Once again, I corrected them.

To use an easily understandable example, I reminded them of how much suffering we see in the world. I explained that one of the most common reasons why people don’t believe in God is that it can be hard to understand how a perfectly good and loving God could allow so many bad things to happen.

I acknowledged that I, too, often find that hard to understand.

I acknowledged that we can’t explain why every bad thing happens.

And I acknowledged that if we only looked at the evil in the world, it would be a pretty good reason to not believe a good God exists.

But I also acknowledged that we have a much bigger picture of “clues” to consider when we search for the truth about God (e.g., the existence of our universe, the fine-tuning of the universe, the complexity of our bodies, how we know right and wrong, the Bible, historical evidence for the resurrection, etc.). I concluded that atheists don’t necessarily reject God because they haven’t thought deeply about Him. They may well have some good reasons for why they don’t believe, and those reasons can sound compelling—even to Christians.

4. People can be atheists for bad reasons.
I then flipped the topic of conversation around and asked my kids if they thought people could be atheists for bad reasons. My daughter replied, “Yes, because maybe you just want to do whatever you want and not worry about God. But that doesn’t mean He’s not there.” I loved that example. What we want to be true has absolutely no bearing on what is true. Wish-fulfillment is a bad reason for choosing a worldview.

Importantly, I made sure my kids understood that Christians can be guilty of choosing their worldview for bad reasons too. I gave the example of how many people incorrectly think that if they’re a Christian, their life will be easier somehow (something Christians were never promised).

There’s a significant reason why it’s important for kids to know that atheists don’t always have good reasons for their beliefs: Passionate atheists often engage with an air of intellectual superiority and can make kids feel that they just don’t know enough yet to reject their faith. If kids don’t understand that behind the intellectual bravado there can lie a pile of poor reasoning, they may easily start to assume the problem lies with them.



Tell me what you think! What else should kids understand about atheists?


Filed Under: Apologetics

Comments
Collin Mc. says:
December 3, 2015 at 7:08 AM


Awesome article, and great interview!
Reply
Mark McGee says:
December 3, 2015 at 9:52 AM


Hi, Natasha. Great article! Former atheist here and I agree with all of your points. It’s so important to make sure our children and grandchildren are knowledgeable about problems with believing in atheism and the amazing reason Christians have for believing in God. Thanks! Mark
Reply
Leigh Ann says:
December 3, 2015 at 9:52 AM


This was great. Thank you for approaching this topic with kindness towards those who don’t believe! They are God’s creation in need of His transformation just as we are, not our enemies.
Reply
Robbienz says:
December 3, 2015 at 12:16 PM


Hi Natasha, I am reading (listening) to Ravi Zacharias’ “The End of Reason” which is essentially a critique of new atheist Sam Harris’ book “Letter to a Christian Nation”.

This is a small book (~130 pages) and one of the best and most beautifully written books I have ever read. The language is excellent, and the arguments are ruthlessly accurate in exposing the meaningless of an atheistic worldview. Common objections that are often used to slay Christians and that have a lot of rhetorical power are clinically dealt with by Ravi as he again and again exposes Harris’ confident assertions for what they are. Over and over again Ravi turns Harris’ own arguments back on to themselves with devastating consequences.

I am a little surprised at how aggressively Ravi takes on Harris. He is not mean spirited and does not attack the man, but he is ruthless with Harris’ shallow and foolish wisdom and its consequences. The reason for the ‘tone” of the book is that Ravi sees this as such an important issue with deep consequences, and one that we cannot afford to ignore.

Personally I regard Harris as a clever guy who is completely out of his depth when it comes to philosophy and religion. His shallow thinking resonates well with my own shallow secular atheistic childhood upbringing and teenage years. The problem is, as JP Moreland has said, that “the make-up man is more important than the speech writer”, meaning that Harris’ weak arguments are more than made up for by his confidence and clever rhetoric.

Highly recommended.

Robbienz

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Two Things Terrorist Attacks Do NOT Tell Us About Religion

Christian Mom Thoughts

November 18, 2015 By Natasha Crain -




With the rest of the world, I’ve felt deeply grieved over the recent terrorist attacks. I feel a true sense of despair that there is no end in sight to events like these.

If you’ve been online much lately, you’ve probably noticed the endless articles pointing fingers of blame for the attacks in all directions. As has been the case since 9/11, many of those fingers are pointing squarely at “religion.”

For example, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science Facebook page published a post that expressed condolences and stated, “Let us continue to be an opposition to religious fundamentalism!” This was followed by a “Don’t pray for Paris” meme which has been shared over 53,000 times.

Similarly, a cartoonist from Charlie Hebdo (the French magazine whose office has been the target of two terrorist attacks) published a drawing stating, “Friends from the whole world, thank you for #prayforparis, but we don’t need more religion! Our faith goes to music! Kisses! Life! Champagne and joy!”

These negative sentiments about religion in general are hardly new in the aftermath of terrorist attacks. Ever since 9/11, atheist authors have used religious violence as a major impetus for their own war on religion (as an example that can be extracted from the title alone, consider Christopher Hitchens’ book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything). Their conclusions are generally two-fold: 1) that religion is bad and 2) that religion is (consequently) false.

But terrorist attacks and other religious violence don’t tell us those two things at all.

In a world where such violence is increasingly becoming an issue, and where atheists are increasingly using that issue to challenge any notion of God, it’s important that our kids understand how to think critically about such claims. Note that this isn’t even about Islam specifically; it’s simply about what a person can or cannot conclude about religion based on the existence of religiously motivated violence.

Here’s what your kids should understand about the two erroneous conclusions that religion is bad and religion is false.



1. That religion is bad.

I’ll be honest with you: I find it very difficult to understand why otherwise intelligent people make the seemingly obvious logical error of proclaiming that “religion” is a bad thing based on the morally grievous actions of any particular “religious” people. In fact, if you’re unaware that this is a common claim by atheists—that violence attributable to religious people shows religion is a bad thing in general—you might wonder why I even need to explain it here. But, rest assured, this is an argument many atheists put forth and one that your kids are sure to eventually encounter.

We can establish why such an argument holds no logical weight with three basic points:


First, the word religion simply means “the belief in and worship of God or gods; a system of religious beliefs and practices.” Depending on your criteria for grouping belief systems, there are several hundred to several thousandreligious groups in the world. The beliefs of these groups are extremely wide ranging. It’s logically impossible to make an evaluation of how moral “religion” is in general when religion is simply a collective term for thousands of different beliefs. Most evaluative statements using the bucket term “religion,” therefore, are meaningless.


Second, even if we focus on one specific religion for the sake of argument, it doesn’t logically follow that we can make moral judgments about that religion based on the actions of specific individuals who claim to hold that worldview. Those individuals may or may not have been acting in accordance with the “instructions” of their religion. The appropriate question for moral evaluation is, What are the instructions of that religion?


Third, once you drill down to the actual instructions of a given religion, you have to have some kind of basis for moral evaluation. In other words, when we ask the question, “Is (this) religion morally good?” we have to have a definition of morality. Interestingly, it’s usually atheists who question the morality of religion…yet atheists have no objective basis for defining morality! With no moral authority (such as God), everyone’s opinion on morality is of equal value. If there’s no objective basis for morality, it’s meaningless to say religion is morally bad (except in one’s personal opinion). You can evaluate evidence as to whether or not a given religion is true, but you can’t claim that it’s objectivelyimmoral.



2. That religion is false.

Stating that religion is a morally bad thing (see the first point) is often just the first step in the broader argument that the history of religious violence demonstrates God-based religion is false…that God doesn’t exist because He wouldn’t permit such evil in His name. Once again, we can show how this doesn’t logically follow by looking at three basic points:


First, this really isn’t as much a question about faith-based violence as it is about the broader “problem of evil”—why is there any evil or suffering permitted in the world? Even if no one committed violence in the name of God, this difficult question would still have to be answered, so it’s important to identify it as the real issue to address.


Second, the stated “problem of evil” truly is difficult, but it’s not without answers. As it’s traditionally stated, the problem is this: If God is all good, He would eliminate evil; if God is all powerful, He could eliminate evil; but evil still exists, so how can the existence of evil be reconciled with the existence of God? While it remains a tough question, it’s one that theologians and philosophers have answered in varying ways for centuries. To casually dismiss God’s existence due to the problem of evil—without having investigated some of those thoughtful answers—is, frankly, naïve. I’ve written a whole blog post explaining one such answer here. (For more on this and related topics, see my chapters on the problem of evil, the killing of the Canaanites, the history of Christian violence, and the questions of biblical slavery, rape, and human sacrifice in my upcoming book.)


Third, as in the last bullet of point one, an atheist has no objective basis for labeling something evil. If some things are objectively wrong and not just a matter of opinion, that’s actually evidence for the existence of God—a moral law giver. For more on the “moral argument” for God’s existence, see this blog post.



Get the Conversation Going

If your kids are old enough for this discussion, ask them if they think terrorist attacks and other religiously-motivated violence show that religion is a bad thing. They’ll probably say no, but probe further on why not. Help them learn to think critically by leading them through the bullets here as talking points (What do we mean when we say “religion”? How do we know if people are really acting according to their religion? How do we define “bad”?). Then ask them if they think terrorist attacks and other religiously-motivated violence show religions aren’t true (i.e., that there is no God). Use the same method of walking them through the key questions raised by the bullet points.



What indictments of “religion” in general have you seen stemming from the attacks?

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