Idea for a book.
Offline Hi guys!
I used to write songs for the Lord! I hate even the thought of that now! So, having been a Christian and now an atheist (don't you just love that word?) I have a yearning to educate young people - teenagers and even younger. I am a Depute Head Teacher and am responsible for (oh the irony!) the RE curriculum! I don't mind that actually as educating children about religion is important. However, what I DO mind is children's heads being filled with rubbish about God is love and God knows everything your thinking etc etc.
So, my book would be "Think For Yourself! - a quick guide to God!" (working title!)
Here's a bit to give you the flavour. Comments Please!
Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-GB
X-NONE
X-NONE
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0cm;
mso-para-margin-right:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0cm;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
Note To The Reader
I would imagine you are reading this book for one of a few reasons:
You are a young, curious Christian*
Your are a young, curious atheist**
You are young ***
You are curious****
I have written this book for many reasons:
I used to be a Christian
I am now an atheist
I am a teacher
I believe that children have the right to be free thinkers
I want to dispel some of the myths which confuse children
I want to share my experience
I want to amuse you
I think religion is interesting
I think it is important to understand religion
I want to ask you some questions
I want YOU to search for the answers
* Christian: a person who believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ and that He is the only son of the one, true God. A Christian also believes that The Holy Bible was written by God. A Christian is generally considered to be a good person (not strictly true).
** atheist: a person who does not believe in God. An atheist is generally considered to be a bad person (not strictly true).
*** young : you (probably, unless you are having a sneaky peek and are actually a good bit older)
**** curious: you
In this book I will discuss, in simple terms, the Bible, Christianity, my personal decision to become an atheist and ‘the big questions’ about life and, yes, chocolate. Actually I was going to write ‘death’ but I thought it sounded a bit harsh. However, now that I have actually written it, it doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, I’ll write it again. Death. Death, death, death, death, death!
Now I have softened the blow, I can write it and you can say it out loud. If you are on a bus or a train or waiting in a doctor’s surgery this will be funny! Say the following sentence out loud whilst striking a thoughtful pose (forefinger on chin and staring into the distance). OK! Go ahead: “Mmmm…life… and death!” Now that I think of it, it might not be a good idea if you are in a doctor’s surgery, or on a plane. Dentist waiting rooms and buses should be OK, depending, of course, on your dentist and the bus driver.
I will present my arguments and observations in a humorous way in order to amuse you and hopefully have you think, “Mmmm…this is a good little book!” Then you will encourage all your friends to run out and buy it and ask for it for Christmas. That would be ironic! *****
*****Ironic: your parents or teacher use irony – usually sarcasm. “I cleaned your room today. You’ve got a carpet!” or “Ah! Mary! You’re early today. You’re only ten minutes late!”
Chapter 1
THE BIBLE
OK! Let’s start from the beginning, a very good place to start, according to Mary Poppins.
I will, in this book, talk about Christianity only. I will mention other religions sometimes but not very much.
As a child, you probably only read the Bible for one of the following reasons: you were told to do it for the school assembly or RE lesson or you were told to do it by your Sunday School teacher or your parents. Very few children read the Bible by choice. This is mainly because very few children are Christian. Professor Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist in the whole wide world and possibly the universe, also believes this. There are, he points out, children of Christian parents. You may be one! You may even be two, if you and your sister or brother are reading this at the same time.
I simply cannot imagine a child, like you, choosing to read The Holy Bible. I would imagine you would rather get stuck into a Harry Potter, a good ‘Goosebumps’ or a football magazine. Anyway, it is important for you to know what the Bible is all about. It’s actually quite interesting! It is also quite horrible. You may have read Terry Deary’s “Horrible Histories” books. They are mild compared to some things in the Bible! For example, in Judges 3:22 (We’ll get to the names and numbers later!) King Eglon was stabbed to death while he was on the toilet! The story also tells of the fact that he was so fat that the dagger could not come back out. “The fat closed upon the blade”. So, not as lovely as you thought eh? And there are plenty of more nightmare such as children being eaten by bears because they made fun of a bald man (Kings 2: 23-24) Oh yes! And then there’s the talking donkey (Numbers 22: 28 -30)
I have told you already that I am a teacher. I am always amazed at the blank stares I get when I ask older pupils a basic question about The Bible. A question such as “What is The Bible?” is met by silence or an answer like, “It’s about Jesus.” Another question might be, “Who wrote the Bible?”Sometimes, the answer to that one is, “God!” Let me tell you that both of these answers are wrong! If you answered these questions in that way as you were reading them (be honest) then you deserve to have your arm ripped off and be hit with the soggy end! Well, actually you don’t deserve that at all because you didn’t know any better and some adult probably misled you!
Here’s why the answers are wrong, or at least not quite right! Let’s take the first one first. ‘Good idea,’ you think!
- Login to post comments
The entire concept sucks. You are trying to make people think. Thinking is bad. If people think they might not be sheep. The world needs more sheep.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Yes, thinking is baahhhh-baad...
Sorry, couldn't help myself.
I killed your duplicate thread for you.
Past that, the way that you are setting your book up, it is only going to ever see the light of day in communities where skepticism is already fairly well established. Not that that is a bad thing.
However, since you are declaring yourself to be openly atheistic on the first page, you will get no play at all in theistic communities. Quite the opposite, you do so at the risk of being used as an example of everything that is wrong with free thought.
Don't get me wrong here. It is your book and you can only write what you need to write. However, you may want to take a step back ans ask yourself what your real goal is. If you want to reach into theistic communities, then you probably want to stealth the atheistic material.
Perhaps you want to put more stress on just how fun science can be. Provide some examples of how science can be done in every day life. For example, I could go into how to measure the size of the earth by using simple geometry and measuring the shadow of a flag pole or some similar object. Since even theists don't really do the flat earth thing much anymore, you can probably get some kids to see how a bit of critical thinking can produce useful ideas.
From there, I could use the basic idea to lay out the basics of how big the solar system is and the real size of the sun and the moon.
You get the general idea.
Done that way, you stay “under the radar” for lots of stuff and you possibly get play in the theistic communities.
Just a thought.
=
Agree. The way to get your message out is to take advantage of Poe's law. Write a book as a fundie, but make it so overly fundamentalist that even a child can see how ridiculous religion is but the fundamentalist adults think it may be a serious book. Something in the spirit of Landover Baptist church...
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
A couple of ideas:
- To make it book-length, you'll probably either have to a) make it a short book, b) find a way to pad it out into a typical book length without losing steam on the humour.
- While AIGS is right about having it accepted by general audiences, there *may* be a specific niche audience that you can target, which, as I hinted, would be the bright, idea-minded kids. For example, I think the same niche audience is the one that would go to Camp Quest, or would read Douglas Adams at age 12-13.
- Related to previous point, you should pick a specific age group to aim it at, and tightly focus your words on that group. If your humour's too childish, the older kids won't like it, if it's too hip, the younger kids won't get it. If you mix both, nobody will like it. For example, the joke about ripping their arm off and hitting them in the head with the soggy end... not gonna work with the young-uns, especially if their parents find out. (Gotta remember the parents. Though shouldn't cater to them.) Likewise, the pedantic explanation of sarcasm would be a turn-off to the older kids. Bright, idea-minded kids probably learned about sarcasm when they were 8 or 9. I think this point is particularly important for this kind of book. If it's going to spread by word of mouth, you have to make sure the person recommending it doesn't feel embarrassed to make the recommendation ("I don't know, Joe, what kind of crap is this? A joke about 'poopy'? Sounds like it was written for little kids. What were you thinking?"
. If you give the book a consistent tone/feel that works all the way through it, then when the right kid reads it, it will strike all the right chords, and the reaction will be more like, "Oh, man! John, you gotta read this book. It's flippin' rad, dude!" (or whatever the slang is these days. lol) I think the term they use for this idea is 'age appropriate'. Pick one specific audience and write specifically for them.
- You may (may) want to find some sort of thread of story or argument or issue or logical progression or character that helps to structure the book in such a way as to answer the questions, "Why am I still reading that book, again?" and "How do I explain what this book is about to my friends?" which will inevitably pop up in a kid's mind when the book is not immediately in their hands being read. What I mean by this is hard to pinpoint, but as a totally contrived example, imagine if you created a central character in the book who episodically, between your 'as a teacher and an atheist' rants, goes about normal kid life and notices all the bizarre shit we do related to religion. Or, maybe there's a more abstract book-long argument you're making, like in the God Delusion. Or, like Douglas Adams, maybe there's a 'story' that's really just a framework for a series of tangential observations about religion. Just throwing out some ideas. The point of this is to keep the kid reading till the end of the book, and then recommend it to their friends.
- When you say "Here’s why the answers are wrong, or at least not quite right!", that strikes me as the wrong tone to my ears. The reason I liked the 'death death death' thing is because it points out the bizarre quirks and taboos of our culture. It's a mischievous thing to contemplate, "What if I *did* just randomly say 'death' on the bus?" I tend to think that bright kids would want to read something that makes them think, "Oh my god, that's so true! I never thought of it that way." or "Isn't that totally bizarre? It's just weird!" or "That would be a hilarious thing to do!" I guess I'm saying that I would hope that the book doesn't peter out into a kind of lecture mode. The whole point is to get them to think for themselves, as you say, right?
- Some other ideas, but I forget now. I'm sure they're along the same lines.
Wonderist on Facebook — Support the idea of wonderism by 'liking' the Wonderism page — or join the open Wonderism group to take part in the discussion!
Gnu Atheism Facebook group — All gnu-friendly RRS members welcome (including Luminon!) — Try something gnu!
Oh, right, I remember now. If you keep the book short, then it won't be such a big challenge to finish it (i.e. not too much personal effort), and you won't really lose much if it turns out to be completely unsaleable as AIGS is warning. Then you could try to market it yourself to various groups related to free-thinking, atheism, science, etc. and see if any of them 'pick up' on it. Sell it as a special-interest item. Possibly self-publish, although there might actually be certain publishers who specialize in this kind of topic, such as Prometheus Press.
If you're in the UK/Ireland/whatever (still don't know how that works), and you finish the book, you could contact Richard Dawkins and try to get his people to help promote it. He's apparently also working on a book for kids, so he is certainly interested in this topic.
Wonderist on Facebook — Support the idea of wonderism by 'liking' the Wonderism page — or join the open Wonderism group to take part in the discussion!
Gnu Atheism Facebook group — All gnu-friendly RRS members welcome (including Luminon!) — Try something gnu!
A lot of good things here. Thanks for the feedback. I'll give it some thought. Chapters include history of the Bible, inacuracies etc what atheism is about, what theism is about, encouragement to think for themselves and not be sheep and so on. Humour as you know is useful to make points. I would also include short scenarios in order to point out the ridiculous nature of some of the stories e.g. creation and the virgin birth. Probably teenagers are the ideal audience.
Thanks again!