How would an atheist explain...?

Question

to there small children why they cant see their grandma anymore(dead)....without making them incredably sad and traumatized? ( and if you dont have kids, and you are atheist...then i am already prepared for your one-sided, unemotional and insensative answers that you guys are SOOO good at all the time)

the "she is dead" thing is obviously something that YOU have Not told a five year old and then listened to him cry hysterically and say he wants to be with his granda... see i told ya!!! unemtional and insensative...i am sooo right all the frikin time,,,,

yoda- because my way of thinking is every bit as real as yours and you are not powerful enough no matter how hard you try to change it....but have fun trying.

Answer 1

Fundies are soooo cute!!!

Answer 2

You explain that the person has died, that their body worn out and ceased functioning. Explain disease, explain old age.

Really how hard it is to do that?

With a kid I'd probably use an analogy to illustrate the point. Find a flip flop book or one about film. The what of death is not the body, it's in time and movement. Ask the kid to define a movie. What is a movie, something that moves. Run the flip-flop book. See, its moving. Freeze the VCR or DVD player. It's not a movie, it's a picture. What's a body? it's like a picture. What's life? It's like a movie run on the VCR. The movie is life. Death is when the electricity fails in the VCR and the movie cannot run. Pull the plug and get the kid to try and get the movie to play, no amount of button pushing will bring the movie back.

Now if the kid is smart, they'll ask why death is not like sleep. Why not just plug back in the electricity. You'd have to explain that death is when the pictures get so damaged that when you put the electricity back on, the pictures are messed up and the movie will not run. Explain that some diseases cause "the film" to get damaged and then the movie doesn't play right. Explain that without the "electricity" the body starts to decay inside right away and gradually decays all the way through. So grandma lost her electricity, lost her animation.

There's plenty of metaphors for death that you could use to explain death to a child. An remote control car is another good one. Break the car's wheels and its like having a body that won't work. Take out the battery and the car is dead.

Answer 3

What do you mean unemotional and insensitive, just because I don't believe what you believe does not make me either of these, would you sooner have me tell them lies so that they have a bigger shock later on in life, in other words brush it under the carpet and hope they wont learn the truth, I am a true Atheist which means that I know that when I die there is no place that I will go to, no heaven, no god , no life hereafter only nothing, go on kidding yourself if it makes the inevitable more acceptable, if you don't like the truth that you get from Atheists, stop goading us into giving answers that we are SOOO good at. I had to tell my children that their Grandmother died, which was really sad for me because she was my Mother, I did not lie and give them some ridiculous story that was made up two thousand years ago, she had lived and her life came to an end at the age of 74, my children understood and are very well balanced adults now.
Chris.

Answer 4

I have children and I'll try to be emotional and sensitive in my response.

My mother told me when I was young that I could always trust her to tell me the truth. She taught me about God, Heaven and Hell, how some people will go to Heaven and some will not. I was very young.

She informed me from the start that there was no Santa, no Easter Bunny, and no other God than Jehovah.

I remember well when my father died. I was 7 and I prayed to Jehovah that I wanted to go where ever my dad was going. I missed him immensely. I knew that he did not live according to the Bible so I knew where he was bound. You want to talk about being traumatized?

I remember when our family dog had to be put to sleep. I was about 9 then and I knew that was the last I would see of Shadow. I cried, and my brothers and sisters cried, but we knew that was reality. All living things are here for awhile and then they die. It was something we dealt with and moved on.

Now I know a grandmother and a dog are not the same. But we lived with that dog for many years 24 hours a day, and we loved him. As you can see, he lives on in my memories. That is the same way my father lives today, 2 of my sisters, my oldest stepson, and several friends.

As I grew older I respected my mother for her honesty. She taught me the facts as she believed them. I love her dearly and I don't challenge her religion to this day. If it pleases her, why should I take that from her? There is nothing to be gained by depriving her of hope.

I knew as a child that Santa was a myth. I knew as a child that I would never see my beloved Shadow again. I thought I knew as a child that people live in a place far away either in torment or bliss after they die.

I have found truth much less traumatic in the long run.

I wish only the best for you and your children, today, tomorrow, and always.

With Love, B

Answer 5

The subtext of this question is that it's better to believe in God because it's comforting (in this case to others, but a similar argument is often made that religion is comforting to oneself). The problem is that this doesn't hold water.

In fact, Carl Sagan includes "I believe this because I like how it makes me feel" as a statement to look out for in his "Baloney Detection Kit." The belief may be comforting to some (though you seem to imply that there are not other good ways to comfort people), but that has nothing to do with whether it is true or not.

I've had two friends die within the last year, and I do not need God to help me cope. That does not mean their passing did not make me sad--far from it! However, I refuse to comfort myself with fairy tales. They are gone, but I can honor their memory without pretending they are on fluffy clouds playing harps (and since one was a Jew and the other an atheist, it's probably best I don't believe in the Christian afterlife).


See, that's the other problem with coping with loss through Christian mythology--the Christian version is not even comforting when the person dying is not Christian! Christianity officially teaches that my two friends are burning in hell right now. If you're a Christian, what do you tell your kid when a non-Christian dies, eh? If you say what you really believe, then you lose your right to call us non-Christians insensitive, and you'll probably traumatize your kid.

Answer 6

Does that mean you also believe in santa and the easter bunny?

I am not an atheist, I do not believe in religion, neither did jesus, he stood against it.

There is a circumstance that lords over all life that has not been adhered to by most of us.

Things like religion are run by wolves in shepherds clothing while very few participate accordingly, primarily because we are collectively tilting life's ever balancing fulcrum because of religion and politics, commerce and greed, not because of atheists.

That, that over sees all, is not Protestant, Buddhist, Jewish, Catholic, Islamic, Irish, Canadian, Chinese or Brazilian.

That which overwhelms, such as our kind, does not judge because of race, complexion, culture, religion, dogma, politics, ratings, sales, stature, possession, philanthropy, or .
or or.

We must live in keeping with the whole sum...or fail to exist and yet people spend their time arguing over who is right.

Too many assume that at the end there is some passageway like a door, at a "speak easy", or "private" club. Where a slot opens and the applicant says I'm with Jesus, or Mohammad, or Martin Luther King or Gandhi or Buddha or maybe even Donald or Dr. Phil.

You will be with you.

Still some expect being Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu or American or generous or doing the occasional, good deed, and so on and so forth, automatically grants access to some reward or forgiveness or atonement, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.

As if life's meaning is based on some association, adherence, patronage, exemption, password or patriotic stance; as if behavior is incidental and reward is granted because of whom you know or what you have or claim upon.

Who it is said, or who we think or imagine, we are.
What we profess or preach or whom we follow…does not reflect worthiness.

How we are in humble relationship with and within all that surrounds does.

There is no deny ability beyond what is, and no reward goes to those who tip the scale of life to their purpose alone.

Guild yourself accordingly every day, in every way and thing you do.

Answer 7

Just went through this several times. As with anything else, honesty and love are the best policies. It is not loving to invent fairy tales around this stuff, it only causes resentments and inability to deal with reality later.

We have all been dying since the day we were born. Some of us get there sooner, and some later. If you've lived to be a grandmother, that's a pretty good run. And it's OK to wish someone didn't die, OK to feel sorrow and grief.

Answer 8

So I should believe in a god because then I'll have a nice thing to tell my children when someone close dies?!

What if the person was an atheist and according to most christians going to hell would you tell your kids they're in heaven still even though you'd "know" otherwise?

I'd explain that the person has died and what that means but they still live on in their (my childs) hearts and memories and that they (my child) should remember all the good times they had.

Answer 9

Children needs to be taught the cycle of life from the earliest possible point in their development. I believe it is immoral to let a human-being believe humans will live forever when everything in the universe has a beginning and will have an end. There is just on way to get around the Law of Cycles.

Answer 10

I had to explain to my kids, when they were small, many times about death. We had many small animals -- parakeets, hamsters, fish, etc. -- that died and to a 5-year-old a pet hamster dying is as bad as Grandma dying. We explained that every living thing in earth has to die to make room for the ones who come after. You don't have to go into detail about it; a 5-year-old has limited capacity to understand death. What is your point? What should we do? Lie about it and tell them stories that we ourselves do not believe? It sounds like you had to do this and I'm sorry your kid cried hysterically. Mine didn't; you can't assume that what happens in your experience happens in everyone's experience. We are all different or didn't you know that? You seem very prideful.

Answer 11

Since you are obviously seriously un-read, try reading about Swedenborgianism. It would make a delightful tale about where her grandmother went and how she will see her again some day, and here is the really good part, she doesn't have to believe in a fantasy sky pilot. Try actually spreading your thought processes beyond your narrow gap. There is a big world out there.