"More seriously, I think it boils down to you seeming to me to want to live with a true-false view of the world where's I want to live with the two-dimensional (true-false, lie-not lie) interpretation There is simply no way to make those two fit together neatly."

Well I think it boils down to a choice. Here's an illustrated example.


(A) There was a man called Jesus whose mother was a virgin and whose father was God in heaven. Jesus worked miracles such as walking on water, changing water to wine and bringing Lazarus back from the dead. He was killed by the Romans but came back to life and he did this to save us all from sin. Now I think that all this is true, so much so that I'm signing you up to my religion so that you can also accept these stories and follow Jesus like me, which involves saying prayers to Jesus and singing hymns.

(B) There are stories in a book about a man called Jesus, but he may not have existed, as the Romans never mentioned him, and in any case the book was written by people who wanted to start a new religion based around Jesus. One story is that his mother didn't have sex with a man, but was miraculously made pregnant by God. This has never been known to happen either before or since, and, as you probably know from science lessons, human babies are always produced from an egg and a sperm. Other stories tell of Jesus working what we'd call magic today in order to solve problems he came across, such as changing water to wine for a wedding and bringing his friend back from the dead. In the end he was killed by the Romans, but a couple of days later, so the story goes, his tomb was empty, and shortly after he appeared to his followers, back to life. For some reason, we're told that he did this to get forgiveness for our sins, yet the world didn't seem to become a better place. Now I'm telling you this because a lot of people believe that it's true. I might believe it's true as well, but that's beside the point. You may think that the stories are too far-fetched, and I wouldn't blame you for thinking that. But you shouldn't just ignore them, instead you should read about them for yourself to see if you can find anything to back them up, and not just in the books written by Jesus's followers, as they may be a bit biased. And you should read about the other religions too.




The first is what the Catholic faith does to children, along with similar setups in other faiths. The second is telling children the truth. As you can see, it takes a little longer to tell the truth, and you can't be so free with words. So I ask you again. Which approach is fairer to children, which is more honest, which one is designed to get them thinking - and which one is the morally correct approach?