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Teaching Moral Challenges In Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

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How can atheist children learn moral lessons that they may have been lacking? The article Atheist Activists Targeting Children With ‘Good Without God’ Campaign, by Heather Clark, provides a website that can teach just that. The website mentioned is Kids Without God, which provides moral lessons for children that are not religious and provides answers on a wide range of topics. The website portrays many of its lessons through cartoons, articles, videos, and cultural icons like Bill Nye. In Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, Siddhartha goes through a spiritual journey, going through many challenges, making many mistakes, and eventually reaches enlightenment. Knowing what he learned on his journey, Siddhartha would disagree with atheism and thus the “Good without a god” campaign because he does not agree with atheism and believes making mistakes and doing bad things is a necessary part of life. Siddhartha would not agree with a secular point of view because his beliefs mostly resemble pantheistic beliefs, or someone who believes god is everything. Humanists beliefs say there is no god, creator, or supernatural being of any kind, but that we should all be good people. Darwin the Dog, from the “Kids without god” website says he, a humanist,”Doesn 't believe in any of the gods” (Kids Without God, Darwin the Dog). The idea behind humanism is that they act kindly in order to keep society functional, not because a supernatural force is telling them to do so. Siddhartha’s motivation

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