Amie Parsons gets the Fabulous-Mom-Award!

If I was rich I would endow this camp and make is so cool, fun and smart that every kid in the nation would want to spend a week or two of summer there.

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

If I was rich, I’d by a small island and get the fuck out of here.

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

awesome initiative!!!!!

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

there may yet be hope for Texas

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

Many of you left England to get away from religious persecution and then built it in the USA   Thank God here in the UK God is only big on stand up comedy
DO get the book   The Bible the old testament according to Spike Milligan

GOOD LUCK AMERICA

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

This is a fantastic idea - I have a 4 yr old that I do not want exposed to religion when she is so impressionable. This idea should be taken a step further… we need SCHOOLS like this. I realize that our public schools are supposed fill that role but they do not.

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

That is a ballsy move in the area she lives. I lived in Collin County for 9 years and there is a super church with huge enrollments on every corner. Good luck to her and I hope they don’t start picketing her but my guess is they will. Have a good night heathens and sinners!!

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

In response to 5. Carl Salter:

“Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you’re being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don’t forget what you’re celebrating, and that’s the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn’t want to pay their taxes.”

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

I totally agree on having Athiest schools. I mean there are Catholic schools so why the hell not have them for the Athiest kiddos too. Kuddos to the mom that is opening this camp. I wish I had a kid to send to it.

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

I do not support this. Now would I support an atheist school. I do not believe that we should be indoctrinating children with any idea, even if it is soundly based in reason. Having grown up in a secular household, where my parents were both raised in very religious households (father Irish Catholic in south side Chicago, went to Catholic school, and my mother’s father was a Lutheran minister in Madison Wisconsin, also went to a Lutheran school), they instead chose not to raise the issue of god in any instance, never encouraging nor discouraging belief in any way. Being raised in this secular environment and being gifted with a highly logical personality I grew to becoming firmly atheist. As long as our schools, either private or public, stay secular, and teach sound reasoning, and true scientific method, then the issue of belief should not need to be brought up at all.  There is a reason I did not grow up to become an Evangelical, and I think everyone here is very familiar with the reasons why, and knows them themselves. Hiding our children from opposing beliefs will only further propagate the problem at hand. We should be encouraging discourse and social pressures, while complementing them with a sound education. I do not want to see Atheists fall to the same “us and them” tactics deployed by all of those most dangerous religious leaders throughout history. Let children work things out on their own. If we as adults abuse our authority over children by pushing any idea, even Atheism, then we are no better than even the most horrible dogmatists in human history.

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

RE: 10.cmortell
It’s not a matter of “Hiding our children from opposing beliefs”. That would be a virtual impossibility in this day and age (unless you homeschool). The idea is to give these children an outlet for expressing how they feel and what they believe (or don’t), without fear of ridicule. I can only imagine what it must be like to grow up in that part of the country. I was born and raised just outside of NY City so people are much more moderate here, or at least they were before 9-11. The whole “God and Country” thing is so crazy at this point that I think any sanctuary from real indoctrination should be applauded.

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

RE: 11. Kevin
I hear you loud and clear, and I certainly feel for the children in these situations, but I still disagree with Atheist camps and Atheist schools as a solution to the problem. I speak from some experience that peer pressure from religious kids will have minimal impacts on that person’s true beliefs if their home environment isn’t one which encourages religion. Albeit I can guarantee I was subjected to substantially less pressure than many of these kids you’re talking about, but I still believe my basic premise is correct. And this works both ways, too. These last couple of years I was in an advance degree program where the vast majority of students, and all of the students who excelled in debate (including myself),  were very vocal about their atheism. I know for a fact that at times we applied some very overwhelming pressure on the few religious students in the programs. However we never (despite out best efforts) convinced anyone to give up their faith. What we did accomplish, perhaps wrongfully, was to silence these kids and discourage them from vocalizing their beliefs. And I’m certain that this would be very similar even in a program with the opposite demographics, the kids who consider themselves atheist will sooner cease to voice their opinions than change adopt the aggressor’s faith. I place this phenomenon on my small and rudimentary sociological understandings, and would predict that what a person believes comes from their home, and how they act comes form their societal pressures. So, although interpretation does at first seem to work against my point, it is my own personal opinion that it does not. That although this may or may not be fact, I will not blame schools as a source of indoctrination, and rather place the blame solely on the household, and so then logic would dictate that that’s where the change has to occur. However the immersion that can result from being surrounded by an opposing view point is the same that would come from any other immersion, understanding. I feel that those kids who are constantly surrounded by religious zealots have a certain benefit that results from this, but only if they have arrived at absence of faith on their own terms. If said student was instead raised an atheist, then I feel that atheist is going to take the same role in that child’s mind as any religion would. Something indoctrinated from an early age by their foremost authority figure(their parents), and then when they are exposed to religious arguments they’ll more likely than not react the same way someone raised religiously would react to an atheist making an argument against god, and stubbornly cease all willingness to learn. That’s what’s so unique in my mind about atheism, that it is the only conclusion someone can arrive at reasonably, and so therefore is a completely different entity than religion.  If we start treating atheism the same way Christians or Muslims or Jews treat raising their children, then we present the possibility of blurring that line, and thus defeating the merit of atheism as a whole.

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

RE: 12. cmortell

I agree with most of what you are saying. Maybe I gave the wrong impression, I made comment #6 about having Atheist schools. What I meant by that was regular schools that do not have religious influences - not that Atheism should be taught. It’s what should be going on in our public schools, but is not - good old Separation of Church and State. Religion is all around us everyday, we can’t avoid it.  I just want my child to have the opportunity to learn without being introduced to religion in class.
I was also raised by 2 parents who are non believers. They never taught me not to believe in a God, it just wasn’t discussed at home. My father always placed a great importance on math and science so I just logically grew in to the understanding that there is no proof of God’s existence and actually came to that conclusion at a pretty young age.
Now that being said, I did find myself feeling as though I had to hide or not discuss my beliefs because everyone around me was religious. (as you pointed out in your advance degree program) So I don’t think it would be a bad thing for her to go to a school with people who just don’t talk about religion. I doubt non religious children would even talk about it, as religious children discuss church, sunday school, etc. Although at this point I would settle for a school that doesn’t teach Creationism in science class.
Children are much more impressionable than adults and look at how easily the adults in your classes were silenced. Maybe they didn’t change their beliefs but they did stop voicing their views. Not all people are leaders and not influenced - the majority are followers, this is one of the reasons that there are so many religious people in this world. When you add to that to introducing religion at an early age and you end up with, well what we have today.

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

Why not organize a camp to do camp and leave the “religion” whether it is atheist or Christian at home. Do the atheist teach there is no meaning or purpose to the universe or their lives. Do the Christians teach that if the children screw up they will go to hell for eternity or worst humankind has already screwed up and if they don’t believe Jesus died for their sins to appease an angry god they will still burn in hell for eternity.

Then they must drink symbolic blood and wine to appease this angry god. Ouch.

And we wonder why we have teen and adult drug problems. Go figure.

If one organizes a camp to teach children about your personal views of     religion or the universe you have just moved from being influential to influencing.

And influencing is trespassing something both the Christians and atheists and governments and corporations etc have little knowledge of. But who does? We all struggle with our desire to influence.

Did I read the article right there is only one child at that camp hoping more will join him or her.

I did volunteer work for the state with abused children sponsored by a church and they signed a document that they world not preach religion to those very children that had been hurt so badly. Well you guessed it they put pressure on those abused children to accept Christ as their savior even after they signed those papers not to do such a thing.

Even gave kudos to those kids in front of everyone when a child accepted Christ as their savior. Of course the next thing they will be teaching them is about an eternal hell if they don’t live by their morality.

Christianity may have died on the cross. Can there be anything worst than to teach an eternal hell to a child. Maybe life is meaningless would be a close second?

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

meant to write drink symbolic blood and eat symbolic flesh. whoops.

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

Why would ” the atheist teach there is no meaning or purpose to the universe or their lives” ?
Is believing in god the only way to have purpose and meaning in life?
I think an atheist camp or school would just not address address the issue of god or lack there of, and instead provide a place for children to learn and play.

You don't have permission to flag this entry.

I feel being more vocal will have much impact.

http://www.strugglingteen.net/

You don't have permission to flag this entry.