Atheist Camp? Organised Religion??

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I think the interesting question is why do atheists feel the need to start specifically atheist holiday camps for children?
After all, there are many 'non-religious' camps around, which advocate an interest in nature, activities etc, without any religious undertones.

Is it a backlash against 'religious' groups and 'religious' holiday camps, I wonder?

It would be interesting to hear some atheist voices in this thread (as long as they don't get shouted down ...)
 
Dawkins argues that 'No God' = Fact. The funny thing is thats an unproven statement.
 
Whatsthepoint said:
Mr Dawkins is what I would call a radical athist, there are very few, but the professor is the poster child for what imho atheism is not and shouldn't be.
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I think you will find that Dawkins is not that radical at all in fact some think he is very meek and mild..



quote:
Originally Posted by The_Prince
i wanna go to this camp, and start arguing with the teachers.
Me too me too!! The purpose of these camps is to indoctrinate children in the religion of Atheism. Hypocritical me thinks.
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It would certainly be hypocritical to accuse some one of indoctrination of children and then advocate that they should be allowed to follow the same course but only as they feel it is in a worthy cause.

But i think you will find that all humans are indoctrinated from birth , it just depends upon the randomness of ones birth circumstances that dictates the style and type of indoctrination one receives..
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barrio79 said:
I think you will find that Dawkins is not that radical at all in fact some think he is very meek and mild..



quote:
Originally Posted by The_Prince
i wanna go to this camp, and start arguing with the teachers.
Me too me too!! The purpose of these camps is to indoctrinate children in the religion of Atheism. Hypocritical me thinks.
__________________

It would certainly be hypocritical to accuse some one of indoctrination of children and then advocate that they should be allowed to follow the same course but only as they feel it is in a worthy cause.

But i think you will find that all humans are indoctrinated from birth , it just depends upon the randomness of ones birth circumstances that dictates the style and type of indoctrination one receives..
.
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Children aren't born atheist. Recent academics, and common sense, have shown that.
 
AntiKarateKid said:
Children aren't born atheist. Recent academics, and common sense, have shown that.
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All children are born innocent . It is the education or teachings or indoctrination or brain washing or other techniques that they encounter as they move through life that determines what belief system they will follow.
 
barrio79 said:
All children are born innocent . It is the education or teachings or indoctrination or brain washing or other techniques that they encounter as they move through life that determines what belief system they will follow.
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"Innocent"? Is that a belief? Like I said before, it has been shown that children and theists at default.
 
barrio79 said:
I don't know that I fully understand this post could you expand

like where it is "shown" and what does " at default " mean
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He is claiming rather too much for some, still interesting, empirical research that suggests children have a natural tendency to assign teleological (be it involving God, gods, nature spirits or whatever) explanations rather than naturalistic explanations to what they experience. These tendencies are supposed to be there there before they could have been learned - tests were done on both American (primarily religious parents) and British (primarily non-religious parents) kids and the results were much the same.

No doubt a suitable Google search will throw out some references.
 
barrio79 said:
I don't know that I fully understand this post could you expand

like where it is "shown" and what does " at default " mean
Click to expand...

There is a thread floating around somewhere here which links to an scientific article published by someone. I forget the details but you can just use search.
 
I've deleted posts which discuss individuals rather than the article.
 
An atheist summer camp is a bit weird, but it should certainly be possible. IMHO it is best to let children be children and not overwhelm them with pro-God or anti-God thinking too much. Rather, they should be allowed to make their own choice when they grow older.

Btw, it doesn't sound like the author in the original article is being very serious. Surely he doesn't expect children to actually become "pedantic, humourless, eight-year-old mini-Dawkins" :D. He's clearly just having some fun on Dawkins behalf.

To answer the original question on whether an "atheist camp" amounts to "organized religion". I don't see how you could reach that conclusion. It is organized yes. No one has ever claimed atheists can't organize themselves in associations and whatnot. Whether they are or are not "organized" has nothing to do with whether atheism can or cannot be considered a "religion". You can have religion without organization and organizations or movements without religion.
 
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ragdollcat1982 said:
Me too me too!! The purpose of these camps is to indoctrinate children in the religion of Atheism. Hypocritical me thinks.
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If you define a belief in "rational scepticism and "sessions in moral philosophy and evolutionary biology" as religion, then yes. But to do that you have to define the concept of religion so that it does not have any super-natural elements, in the form of God or afterlife. I just don't see the point of that. You essentially reduce it to "faith" and "belief". And we already have words for that, namely "faith" and "belief" :p.

If your argument is that Dawkins-like "atheism" is a religion because it is based on faith in some kind of doctrine (in this case rationalism), then we run into the problem that a lot of ideologies end up being classified as religions. Is Marxism a religion, because of its belief in dialectical materialism? Is liberalism, with its belief in personal liberties a religion? If not, why not? They are organized, they are to an extend based on some kind of fundamental belief in the course or history or the best way to organize society. And then we haven't even taken into account that these ideologies, like atheism, claim to be based on scientific research and not divine sources like real religions. IMHO watering down religion to include all these differences serves no purpose whatsoever, except to score some rhetorical points.
 
Marxism, Liberalism, capitalism and other ism created in the modern era are Ideologies. Some Athiests you talk to hate the idea of orgainised movements - thats exaclty what Dawkins is trying to do.
 
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In a completely non-religious, non-atheistic, non-blah-blah context, this camp sounds pretty crappy.

I don't think kids really want to go to summer camp to have philosophical debates. Man, fat camps seem like they'd have a better turnout, and hardly any of the kids who attend are there by choice.

Kids want to have fun in the great outdoors, go swimming and canoening, and play 'tag', 'hide and seek', and 'escape the fat camp'.
 

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