"How would you teach a child about Christianity without denying evolution?"
"I have a friend who wants to raise his son Christian but doesn't know how to get thru the evolution cliche that the bible and science have. Any Ideas"
My response to that First, and no offense, but I wouldn't raise a child Christian, or with religious expression as any form of intelligent consideration or paradigm by which to live one's life by. I would teach them about it, but not raise them in it as a viable way by which to live one's life by.
But if I were, there need be no disparity between evolution and a God concept. The issue is religion and how it was diluted with misinformation (See Mormonism, Scientology, they both prove you can create any nonsense and turn out good people, as you can with atheism, or Shintoism (ancestor worship) for that matter).
You can, in Christianity, separate out the old and new testaments, the new with what Jesus said and with what was said about him, although it all is hearsay anyway. I would agree that it would be better to teach them what the desired end result is, how we treat one another, than following specific and adulterated indications by using a book that was compromised any amount of times throughout two thousand years.
Christianity, and religion in general is rampant with picking and choosing what you want to believe. So pick the best, and teach that. When your child comes up to you pointing out the disparities in the teachings (and they will if they are intelligent or have been shaped to use critical thought), just skip to saying, don't worry about the specifics, what is important is who you are as a person.
After all, there will always be people pointing out how you are going about it all wrong anyway. You have to, when you delve into such questionable philosophies, close your mind's eye and bully onward, get through life, die, and hope that those whom you left behind you, those whom you have touched with your model of how you live your life, and what you have stated as truth, have gotten the best you had to offer; and that it helped them make it through their life until they die and those whom they have touched have similarly been affected.
Religions are not created on a large scale to encompass all and every. They are created small, as a kernel, for a specific people in a specific place at a specific time. They then try to evolve as they grow, though some fundamentalists try to keep that healthy thing from happening. Still, they immediately begin to devolve as they grow because as you can easily go wrong, when at the beginning of a boat journey across an ocean, you make on minor miscalculation, and you end up on another continent altogether, so to with a religion created without foresight or a sense of what is out there that it will encounter, eventually it goes awry.
You can teach a child to grow up with critical thought inherent in their being, then introduce them to religion, and allow them to find the good in it, but you cannot learn and grow appropriately from the inside of religion, rather you have to experience it from the outside, otherwise you become contaminated and the lack of insight about the real world all around you; especially those parts of the world you, and the religion (created by geoethnocentric individuals who are most likely uneducated in other areas as well), have no knowledge of and will eventually incorrectly interact with and adversely affect.
You can raise a child with a religion like Christianity, but only if you avoid all the facts, only if you teach only some of it. For to divulge all, as has been known for centuries, you destroy the religious elements, because even a child can see at some point, how it all makes little or no sense, and doesn't function well in the real world.
You cannot "prove" God, by using the Bible as the proof. Sorry. But if a text is called into question, you cannot use that text to prove it isn't false by quoting from it. The initial step off point by theocrats is always to start with the assumption that to deny their beliefs is where to start the argument, from that point forward. "God exists, now prove that false." But it lies the other direction. "God does not exist" isn't an argument either.
See? The starting point really starts before a "God" concept, which is how atheists always fail in their arguing the point with theists. It's like arguing a point of logic, by switching types of logic, yes, you can win an argument that way, but only if you are arguing with someone who has no knowledge of logic. And logic isn't really that necessary. So atheists, always get stuck with "prove God does not exist" when really it is, "prove God does exist." End of argument.
But the question was about children. I think my previously stated points are still relevant. Raising a child Christian, should be easy. Simply deny what doesn't make sense. The entire religion is set up that way, right? So, if you are going to immerse yourself in such a format, why should it be a problem? Do not worry about making it logical, that is the wrong way to go.
You just say, as we've heard so many times before, "you just have to have Faith", which is actually a way to point out a defect in oneself and saying that you cannot handle many challenges in life so you choose to ignore them. Giving your fears over to an outside force, real or unreal, has been proven to be effective for humans and can allow them to achieve great things. Thinking beyond oneself is after all, noble.
That, is a viable choice in one's life. This is America. We are loosing freedoms one after the other. So I will defend your right to believe in whatever crazy beliefs you want, as long as you are that way with others who believe what you may choose to think is crazy to you (atheism, perhaps). Although, I believe we would have a better world with a realistic belief system worldwide.
But if you choose to go that direction, then be proud of you choice of believing in a structured (albeit poorly) ethereal belief system. Just don't try to make it sound otherwise. It takes all kinds to make the world go around. We just need, from here forward, to be sure it doesn't have anything to do with harming other people as too much has been made about God and killing as we have seen for some time now. And there are Christian elements starting to think, around the world, that maybe Muslims are right and that has to be watched for, and put down.
"Regarding my Christian theistic belief, I have said more than once in previous posts that I do not, and cannot offer scientific "proof" for my position ... that is not a burden I need to carry."
Seriously? Okayyyy... that leaves me somewhat speechless and leaves one thinking that way, with a belief based upon shifting sands. It is good to ask theists to take on the burden of proof, as all though history they have pushed the burden onto the few rational ones who tried to stand up to them, and typically were murdered, by the way.
I also do not consider myself an atheist. To me that presupposes I am against a condition that did not exist to begin with, as we start with there being no God, then the addition of a belief in God comes after the beginning. Theists have chosen the non-theist argument all through history since this argument began, a very productive method used by theists to obfuscate things. The Bible, after all, is only a few years old in comparison to the entirety of time, even historical (recorded) time.
Again, I suppose if one wishes to have a belief based not in scientific or rational thought which is based upon something more solid, that is one's choice. Still, it is curious to desire to believe in things which are based all upon hearsay, and edited over time by those with a vested interest in control of those uneducated masses, as they saw it, beneath them.
But they are your kids. I leave you with a video from Hitch.
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