Post by Maverick on Aug 9, 2004 23:21:08 GMT -5
Summer camp gives non-believing children a place to belong
Click here to read the original article
Posted on Mon, Aug. 09, 2004
Associated Press
MOUND, Minn. - There's horse camp, piano camp, chess camp and church camp.
Now, there's godless camp.
Minnesota atheists, humanists and free thinkers just finished the state's first summer camp for children who don't believe in God.
The program at Camp Quest Minnesota, "The Secular Summer Camp," was modeled after an Ohio camp for atheist children that has been in operation for nine years.
Local atheists and humanists created the camp because they wanted to give their kids a sense of belonging in a free-thought community. They thought bringing unbelieving kids together for a week of fresh air would counteract feelings of isolation in a world many atheists feel is awash in religious beliefs.
"I think this camp, unlike all the other camps, will focus on critical thinking and skepticism to fantastic claims and supernatural claims," said August Berkshire, a co-founder of the Minnesota camp and owner of "ATHEIST" automobile license plates.
Edwin Kagin, who founded the original Camp Quest in Ohio, said the Ohio program has attracted kids from as far away as Canada, Japan, England and the Netherlands because they couldn't find a God-free camp experience anywhere else.
"Kids come there and they cry," Kagin said. "They say it's the first time in their life that they're able to express that they don't believe in God."
Eleven campers, ranging in age from 8 to 16, attended the Minnesota Camp Quest. Most of the participants were from the Twin Cities area, but one camper came from Georgia, and one of the six counselors came from California.
Many of the campers have been raised by atheist parents. They don't miss God because they've never believed in God.
Brothers Joseph, 12, and Michael, 10, of Shorewood, described themselves as nonbelievers as they spent some of their free time at camp playing with a unicycle.
"Half for me," Joseph said.
"How can you be half?" Michael said.
"I can be half. Like a Unitarian," Joseph said.
"We celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah. My mom's Jewish," Michael said. "We don't, like, say prayers. We just give out presents."
Chad, an 11-year-old camper from the Atlanta area, said, "Most of the time, I'm an atheist, but sometimes, I'm an agnostic. ... Instead of Christmas, we celebrate winter solstice. We get gifts."
Many of the kids asked that the St. Paul Pioneer Press use only their first names or just their middle names, saying they didn't want to be identified as the atheist kid in class.
"It's sort of hard. You can't tell anyone," Michael said. "They'd treat me different ... We like being in this camp. There are other people who don't believe in God, so you don't feel so alone," Michael said.
"It's better than Boy Scout camp," said Andrew, 16, Robbinsdale. "Whenever we ate, we had to do a prayer. It got rather annoying."
Fifteen-year-old Collin of Apple Valley described his mother as an atheist activist, vigilant about keeping religion from creeping into public schools.
"After 9/11, there were some signs like God bless the U.S.A., and she got those taken down immediately," he said. "She got the religious holidays taken off the school calendar."
"I look at it now and I'm glad I'm atheist," he said. "I just don't think (religion) makes a whole lot of sense."
Being atheist means dodging Bible study and prayer meetings, but the campers had their own sessions to attend at Camp Quest - including lectures on critical thinking, game theory, evolution, overpopulation and ethics.
Jerry Rauser, a board member of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, talked about the separation of church and state. On a flip chart, he illustrated a society where conflict between the state-sponsored church and competing religions led to "wars, bloodshed, persecution and prison."
The next page showed the situation when there is separation between government and religion.
"Here's the free thinker," Rauser said, pointing to one of the stick figures. "He has a nice smile on his face, because he can ignore the church if he wants to. So there is freedom of religion and freedom from religion."
More pages got flipped over as Rauser went on to ask campers whether posting the Ten Commandments in a public school or having prayers at graduation violates the separation of church and state.
"Here's a sticky one: the pledge of allegiance," he said. "This is a big problem, because this is wrapped up in an expression of patriotism."
The campers also were told that an invisible dragon lived at the camp. If any camper could prove the dragon didn't exist, he or she would win a godless $20 bill. That's a piece of currency printed before Congress ordered that money say "In God We Trust."
Berkshire said the kids quickly made a connection between belief in God and belief in invisible dragons.
"You can't disprove a dragon, and you can't disprove God's existence," he said. "But that doesn't mean that the dragon or God exists."
The Minnesota project was started with a $5,000 grant from the Institute for Humanist Studies, a secular humanist think tank based in Albany, N.Y. The camp cost $550 per child.
Counselor Norm Barrett said he had a road-away-from-Damascus experience when he was 16, the same age as some of the older campers. But it took several years before he worked up the nerve to tell his parents he no longer believed in God.
"I admire some of these kids. In a way, some of them are a bit more courageous than I was," he said. "It kind of gives me hope for the future. We are kind of succeeding in passing our values on to the next generation."
---
On the Net: www.campquest.org.
---
Information from: St. Paul Pioneer Press, www.twincities.com
Click here to read the original article
Posted on Mon, Aug. 09, 2004
Associated Press
MOUND, Minn. - There's horse camp, piano camp, chess camp and church camp.
Now, there's godless camp.
Minnesota atheists, humanists and free thinkers just finished the state's first summer camp for children who don't believe in God.
The program at Camp Quest Minnesota, "The Secular Summer Camp," was modeled after an Ohio camp for atheist children that has been in operation for nine years.
Local atheists and humanists created the camp because they wanted to give their kids a sense of belonging in a free-thought community. They thought bringing unbelieving kids together for a week of fresh air would counteract feelings of isolation in a world many atheists feel is awash in religious beliefs.
"I think this camp, unlike all the other camps, will focus on critical thinking and skepticism to fantastic claims and supernatural claims," said August Berkshire, a co-founder of the Minnesota camp and owner of "ATHEIST" automobile license plates.
Edwin Kagin, who founded the original Camp Quest in Ohio, said the Ohio program has attracted kids from as far away as Canada, Japan, England and the Netherlands because they couldn't find a God-free camp experience anywhere else.
"Kids come there and they cry," Kagin said. "They say it's the first time in their life that they're able to express that they don't believe in God."
Eleven campers, ranging in age from 8 to 16, attended the Minnesota Camp Quest. Most of the participants were from the Twin Cities area, but one camper came from Georgia, and one of the six counselors came from California.
Many of the campers have been raised by atheist parents. They don't miss God because they've never believed in God.
Brothers Joseph, 12, and Michael, 10, of Shorewood, described themselves as nonbelievers as they spent some of their free time at camp playing with a unicycle.
"Half for me," Joseph said.
"How can you be half?" Michael said.
"I can be half. Like a Unitarian," Joseph said.
"We celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah. My mom's Jewish," Michael said. "We don't, like, say prayers. We just give out presents."
Chad, an 11-year-old camper from the Atlanta area, said, "Most of the time, I'm an atheist, but sometimes, I'm an agnostic. ... Instead of Christmas, we celebrate winter solstice. We get gifts."
Many of the kids asked that the St. Paul Pioneer Press use only their first names or just their middle names, saying they didn't want to be identified as the atheist kid in class.
"It's sort of hard. You can't tell anyone," Michael said. "They'd treat me different ... We like being in this camp. There are other people who don't believe in God, so you don't feel so alone," Michael said.
"It's better than Boy Scout camp," said Andrew, 16, Robbinsdale. "Whenever we ate, we had to do a prayer. It got rather annoying."
Fifteen-year-old Collin of Apple Valley described his mother as an atheist activist, vigilant about keeping religion from creeping into public schools.
"After 9/11, there were some signs like God bless the U.S.A., and she got those taken down immediately," he said. "She got the religious holidays taken off the school calendar."
"I look at it now and I'm glad I'm atheist," he said. "I just don't think (religion) makes a whole lot of sense."
Being atheist means dodging Bible study and prayer meetings, but the campers had their own sessions to attend at Camp Quest - including lectures on critical thinking, game theory, evolution, overpopulation and ethics.
Jerry Rauser, a board member of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, talked about the separation of church and state. On a flip chart, he illustrated a society where conflict between the state-sponsored church and competing religions led to "wars, bloodshed, persecution and prison."
The next page showed the situation when there is separation between government and religion.
"Here's the free thinker," Rauser said, pointing to one of the stick figures. "He has a nice smile on his face, because he can ignore the church if he wants to. So there is freedom of religion and freedom from religion."
More pages got flipped over as Rauser went on to ask campers whether posting the Ten Commandments in a public school or having prayers at graduation violates the separation of church and state.
"Here's a sticky one: the pledge of allegiance," he said. "This is a big problem, because this is wrapped up in an expression of patriotism."
The campers also were told that an invisible dragon lived at the camp. If any camper could prove the dragon didn't exist, he or she would win a godless $20 bill. That's a piece of currency printed before Congress ordered that money say "In God We Trust."
Berkshire said the kids quickly made a connection between belief in God and belief in invisible dragons.
"You can't disprove a dragon, and you can't disprove God's existence," he said. "But that doesn't mean that the dragon or God exists."
The Minnesota project was started with a $5,000 grant from the Institute for Humanist Studies, a secular humanist think tank based in Albany, N.Y. The camp cost $550 per child.
Counselor Norm Barrett said he had a road-away-from-Damascus experience when he was 16, the same age as some of the older campers. But it took several years before he worked up the nerve to tell his parents he no longer believed in God.
"I admire some of these kids. In a way, some of them are a bit more courageous than I was," he said. "It kind of gives me hope for the future. We are kind of succeeding in passing our values on to the next generation."
---
On the Net: www.campquest.org.
---
Information from: St. Paul Pioneer Press, www.twincities.com
