Scott Badger wrote:
> Doug Baily:
> >I've got three kids, one 5 years old, one 20 months old, and one 6 weeks
> >old [...and the 5-year-old is a budding transhumanist...]
> As part of a recent psychological evaluation of an 11 year old girl, I asked
> her what she would say if she were given three wishes. I can only recall
> two
> of the wishes off the top of my head:
>
> (1) I wish everyone in the world were atheists, and
> (2) I wish I were immortal.
>
> Hmmm, a transhumanist in the making. I did find out that her parents are
> atheists, but don't know about their views on life extension. Anyway,
> that's
> the first time I've ever heard a child say things like that.
>
Spike, you really shouldn't solicit comments from parents about their
kids. As a class we parents are capable of chewing up enormous amounts
ov bandwidth on this subject. :-)
My three kids are 8, 13, and 15, (all girls). We are nonreligious, and we
discuss transhumanism at home. Kids readily accept and understand just
about everything we discuss on this list. ( Well, the 8-year-old is
not clear on all of the math.) The big problem is that we live in
a culture that finds atheism and transhumanism to be nutty ideas. The
problem as a parent is to teach the kids to be discreet and to respect
other people's religion, without encouraging deceptive and secretive
behaviour generally. Our approach has been to introduce mainstream
judeo-christian bible stories to the kids as myths and legends, similar to
fairy tales or greek and roman myths and legends, with the difference being
that many people profess to believe that the bible stories are true.
We point out that the greeks believed in their myths, too. This is a pretty
good way to introduce some scepticism and critical thinking, also. The
kids are doing OK so far.