What Are We to Make of Parents Who Lie to Their Children?

The creativity and imagination of a child is thrilling to witness. It is great to see how the mind works when unfettered by social convention, something only the most creative among us seem able to carry into adulthood. Nobody has to tell a child to "think outside the box;" that is the only way they know how to think.

And yet, it is difficult to imagine that lying to our children simply because we find it entertaining is ethically sound. And yes, this includes the socially acceptable Santa Claus lies. A child is supposed to be able to trust his or her parent, and we are right to object when a parent violates that trust. I suppose an argument can be made that it may be beneficial to lie in situations where doing so helps to protect one's feelings (i.e., "white lies"), but that is not what we're talking about here. Adopting the Santa charade is not about protecting the child's feelings; parents who do this usually do it because they enjoyed it as children and now enjoy providing their children with a similar experience.

Is This Christianity?

Craig James (The Religion Virus) brought us another great post last week that ought to raise some interesting questions. He reprinted a guest post on the dangers of Halloween by Kimberly Daniels that appeared in Charisma, which he described as "a serious Christian news site with a large following." I'm not familiar with Charisma, but if he's right in describing it this way, it might explain the disclaimer they added to Daniels' post. Still, they did post it, and that suggests that the views she expresses cannot be that far out of the mainstream. This leads me to ask: can this possibly be Christianity in 2011?

Empathizing With Christians

Imagine that you are driving to work one morning and pass a billboard that boasts "leeches cure headaches" or some equally absurd bit of quackery. You might initially be surprised to see such a message or even point and laugh. With some reflection, you'd probably be at least a bit irritated by the promotion of a blatant lie. Why? Perhaps you would realize that many others passing this billboard every day are morons who might actually be persuaded by the message. You know better, but they might not. And so you might find yourself worrying about the potential influence of such a message.

Atheist or Agnostic? I'm Both

Atheism and agnosticism remain poorly understood, and confusion continues even among some who call themselves atheists or agnostics. This diagram (source unknown) puts all the pieces together and illustrates that the agnostic-gnostic dimension deals with certainty while the atheist-theist dimension focuses on belief and has nothing to do with certainty.

I am an atheist in that I lack belief in god(s). This doesn't have anything to do with certainty, as atheism does not require certainty. I usually identify myself as an agnostic atheist, but that depends on how "god" or "gods" is defined. If a theist defines these terms in such an absurd way that they describe contradictory or incoherent notions, then I might be a gnostic atheist with respect to that god(s) because I'd know that an entity with logically incoherent properties does not exist because such a thing could not exist. Most of the time, however, agnostic atheism fits me better. I don't believe in gods but make no claims about whether they could exist.