The travelling atheist teacher

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Okay so I’ve been at my school in Thailand teaching 10 year olds (Science and English) for a year now. All my kids are Buddhist but the school itself is a private Christian school. Every Tuesday afternoon I have a one off fifty minute conversation class with them where I pick a random topic and we just talk it about it. Sounds simple enough, and it is. The other day, while talking about sound energy in a Science lesson, my lecture suddenly turned to religion after a student asked me (out of no where) if god was responsible for changing the vibrations of airwaves. I laughed it off and told her no. She then asked me if I believed in god and I threw her the question back to her without answering directly myself. She then stood up, in front of the whole class (incidentally this particular student is my star pupil) and she stated that the whole class were Buddhist and didn't believe in
a Christian god. I was surprised that out of the the whole class (16 students),
even having bible classes by some Indian fruitcake woman who really throws it
down their throat, not one of them believed in anything about the bible! When I
asked if they enjoyed their bible class, they just said some of the stories
were interesting and they liked to sing! I was kinda proud of em. I couldn't
help but give them a little insight as to my views so I told them as no
scientific evidence has ever been brought forward to suggest there is a god, I
neither believed in god or the teachings of the bible either. Suddenly, my
science lesson was irrelevant. They started firing questions at me left right
and centre.....

'Why does our bible teacher believe in god?'

'If noah built an ark why was it never recovered?'

'Why do people pray?'

'Is Buddha real......?'

This was amazing....I love these kind of discussions, but with 10 years olds, in a
Christian school surrounded by bible bashing teachers! I had to tread careful.
Trying to get away from this discussion and back on to the topic of sound
energy (good old Science) I told them that if they wanted to talk about
religion more, we would utilize that 50 minute window of conversation class we
have together on Tuesday afternoons.

Anyway, this all happened last week, and I assumed that the kids would forget about my offer of a religious discussion but a ten year old's memory should never be underestimated. This morning they reminded me once again, while I was teaching them English, that the religious conversation class had not been brushed aside and they were all very excited about such chat.

I have to be careful with this one as you can imagine, and most of the lesson
will be me asking them their views rather than me expressing mine. Im extremely
proud of their honesty and speaking out about their lack of interest in religion,
they did also mention that they didnt believe in a heaven and hell as such and
that being judged for your behaviour in this life would somehow have an effect of where you end up in the after life. You often hear people banging on about free speech, but its the thought that goes into that speech which is much more important. The power of free thought is what makes humans so indifferent to the rest of living organisms on this planet, and that gift alone should never be underestimated.

Im looking forward to this lesson tomorrow.

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