Atheist Dopers - would you raise your children religious?

Great Debates
21

We’ll raise our children to be open to ideas and concepts and to decide for themselves what they feel is right. My husband is a geneticist and has an interesting take on the god question–as a scientist he sees the beauty and order of the natural world, right down to the molecular level. He doesn’t, personally, believe in god, but also believes that science will never prove nor disprove the existence of god and that there’s absolutely room for faith in science for those who believe.

We’ll teach our children about religion, and allow them to explore if they choose, but if they ask me what I believe I will tell them, with the caveat that it’s what we believe, which is different from knowing.

22

It’s complicated in my situation. I’m an atheist and my wife is Catholic. She wants to raise any children we might have as Catholics. Obviously, I’d rather raise them free from religious beliefs and we can’t have it both ways.

We’ve decided to compromise should we ever have kids. She gets to take them to church and tell her side. I get to tell my side. Ultimately we will leave the decision up to them.

23

I allowed my religious mom and grandmother to pay for religious private school for my kids when they were young because it was a much better school than the public one they would have gone to. Besides, they sent me to a Christian school, and I got over it! However, at the age of sixteen my daughter claims to still believe. We don’t usually discuss it, but a couple of days ago I got quite vehement while talking about Huckabee and said some things that were shocking to her. (She already knew that I was hellbound, but she didn’t seem to realize how strong my anti-religious feelings are. How could she? They seem to grow more so every day).

Anyway, I tried to rein myself in…I don’t want her to rebel and become a fundie. :wink: I ended the conversation by saying to her that she should probably go to church a lot more. (Worked for me!) That killed the topic, because although she believes, she doesn’t want to go to church. It’s boring.

24

Absolutely I would. Every Sunday we’d get up early in the morning and put on our special outfits and then spend a few hours appreciating the beauty of the world and the natural order of things while having coffee and hot chocolate. Our religion would be called “fishing” and our church would be “the lake”. That’s as close to spiritual as I’d get.

My girlfriend OTOH would have the little bastards in Catholic church as soon as possible, so we’ll see.

25

I was brought up an agnostic, I suppose - my parents never claimed to believe in God, but didn’t go out of their way to dissuade me from believing, and I went to a Church of England state school.

I certainly wouldn’t bring any child of mine up as religious, as I am not. I wouldn’t have a problem with them taking up a Faith if they felt they must, but I would feel obliged to debate the likelyhood of God with them as I do with anyone (who will listen…).

26

I’m in there with Kyla and IvoryTowerDenizen. I don’t think I would personally have done anything, but my wife sent both kids to Hebrew school so that they’d have some clue about being Jewish. They, like us, are atheists (although I think my wife is more of a pantheist; I have a hard time telling the difference).

My wife is very fond of her Jewish heritage; as a convert, I’m less invested, but I quite like it. I have no clue how my children feel about it. They identify themselves as both Jewish and atheist (a common combination), but I don’t know how much of the heritage they internalize. Seems like not so much, though.

27

I’m an atheist and my husband is Lutheran. My husband did want the kids to be raised with exposure to traditional Christianity. He also wanted them to be baptised, which I had no problem with. I raised them as I had been raised – sort of culturally Christian. We did Christmas and Easter; bible stories and the Golden Rule; and so on. I also told then religious stories from other cultures.

They are grown now. My daughter (20) went through a pretty devout stage and still self-rdentifies as a Christian. My son (21) is an atheist.

28

Sunday School = free babysitting

29

I kind of think I wouldn’t worry about it. Basically, I am waiting until he is old enough to decide for himself. I’m an atheist, as is my wife, but we both come from religious families (or at least somewhat) and made our own decisions about faith. I will gladly allow my son to believe what he wants to, but my general answer would be “I believe differently” for discussions of religion with him if he chose to be religious.

Brendon Small

30

No.

I would also say to my kids (and some of the posters above) that it’s one thing to claim to be open minded about the subject and that science might not ever be able to say anything about the existance of a ‘god’. But these arguments really only hold water for a very deistic prime mover. I think science and history have a lot to say about specific gods as described in different religious traditions.

31

I wish I’d kept my kids strictly away from religion.
My spouse “didn’t think it was a big deal” that her friend was taking our daughter to Sunday school for a few months. But clearly it was a big deal or why was I mislead into thinking it was just spending time with the friend’s daughter?
Anyway, my daughter was a real pill once I found out and it was a sticking point in both the marriage and parenting relationships. Went away after a while, and my daughter didn’t suffer any permanent harm, but the whole thing was something I wouldn’t wish on anyone else.

32

Agreed. Point?

33

Atheist married to a Catholic. My kids go to Sunday school, and did their First Communion the other year. I really don’t see much harm in it. We never talk about religious subjects, sort of by common consent. I fully expect my kids to emerge as cultural Catholics, but atheists in actual practice.

Basically I think of religiosity as a heritable trait, and my kids didn’t seem to get it.

34

My point is that MOST religious are not in the business of worshipping a deistic prime mover. Saying that science can’t say anything about such a being should not then automatically mean that yhwh or zeus, etc could exist or that christianiy, judaism, etc have it right, which is what I see being implied in some of the posts above. Essentially: “Well science can’t say antyhing about god, therefore chrsitianity is perfectly plausible.” is what I’m hearing people will say to their kids. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting?

35

I think so, at least in our case. We think that more or less everything any religion has to say on the matter is… implausible, to put it gently. That there could be a prime mover who set the whole thing in motion? Sure? Why not? That there could even be a god active in our world, today? We don’t believe so, but we can’t disprove it. I don’t think we’ll ever disprove it, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily put any stock in the notion. I can’t disprove sasquatch, but that doesn’t mean I believe in sasquatch, or unicorns.

Let me put it another way. I don’t believe in god. I don’t think people are stupid for believing there is a god, or a pantheon of gods, or whatever. I do, however, think that Christianity and Hinduism and Islam and Vodun and Mocumba and Zoroastrianism are entirely social constructs, stories humans tell themselves to make sense of the world around them. If there is a god, I think the force is one and the same and that people are too wrapped up in squabbling over the superficial details.

We plan to raise our children to question everything and think for themselves. If that leads them to any kind of religious fundamentalism, then we’ll have failed somewhere along the line. Is that hypocritical? Maybe. It wouldn’t bother me to know my children believed in god, but it would bother me to know they’re tithing ten percent of their income to a church, or making major life decisions on what Pastor Bob thinks.

36

*based on what Pastor Bob thinks.

37

My husband and I are both lifelong atheists, brought up by agnostic/atheist parents, and we brought our 2 sons up in the same way. Our children got no religious education at all.

But my 12 year old grandson decided last year that he wanted to go to the Mennonite Educational Institute for the last year of middle school (grade 8). This is a private school, of course, and the school motto is: Equipping students for Life and** Forever**. The school has an excellent academic and sports program, every modern facility.

So, long discussions. “If you go there, you have to take Bible, it’s not an option. There’s chapel every day. Visiting preachers. Etc.” Well, he decided it was still what he wanted, all his particular friends were going there. They are a nice bunch of kids, high achievers academically and in sports, and we are glad he hangs around with those kids instead of some others. When his dad was a kid, we had plenty of sad experience of “some others”. Don’t want to go through that again.

But the first term was tough. The very first assignment in Bible class was to write an essay answering the question: Is the Bible True? This was very interesting and aside from anything else, it made him think. He said, “No, it’s all bullshit, but I can’t write that, can I?”

“You can’t say ‘bullshit’ in an essay, no, but you can say you don’t ‘believe’.” And I added, “Why do you say it’s all bullshit? What do you know about the bible, anyway?”

After a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing, he got his essay done. He didn’t want to announce too loudly to his teacher that he thinks it’s all bullshit, but he wasn’t going to write a dishonest essay, either. He got a B on the essay, although he was convinced that his teacher would “punish” him for being an atheist. I knew the teacher would be fair, and he was.

He’s had to memorize plenty of Bible verses, which he hates, but memorizing long passages won’t hurt him. I had to memorize a lot of stuff when I went to school, and I think it’s a good thing, a kind of brain training. Learn the multiplication tables by rote and you never need to stop and figure out what 7 times 9 is, you know automatically. Some things are good to memorize, in other words.

If I went to that school, I would hate all the praying, too. But as long as he’s not hassled about getting saved, we’re fine with him going there. He moaned about wanting to transfer to a public school at the end of the first term, but we told him he had to finish his year out, we went to a lot of trouble and expense to get him into the school in the first place. Now he’s settled in well, and his marks are good, B’s for the most part. If he does decide to become a Christian, being a Mennonite is not the worst thing. They are good at doing good works, and while they are more or less “fundies” they are about the least offensive to me.

My main concern with the kids’ education is that they are happy in the school they attend. Having been through this once before, I have quite different priorities than I did for his dad and my other son. Religious instruction won’t hurt him. Religion is hugely important for many people, and I’m glad he is getting some understanding of why that is.

However, if it comes about that he is pushed or annoyed or hassled about becoming a Christian, we’ll move him. I don’t think it will happen, though.

38

My wife has insisted on raising our kids in the RCC. I resisted at first but now it doesn’t bother me. The school is better than a public school, plus I think it serves to demystify religion for them as well as to give them some education about what Christianity is. Most atheists I know were raised in some kind of religious tradition, so it’s not like it’s a death sentence.

When they get older, I’ll let them know my perspective on things and fill them in on some more objective data regarding religion but their minds are their own and I don’t feel the need to tell them what to believe. I’m more concerned about them being good people than whether or not they believe in God.

39

My wife and I are both atheists. We do talk to our kids about religion, but we try to make sure ALL religions get equal footing. We teach them about Christianity right alongside Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Greek and Roman pantheons. We say things like “Some people believe in gods. But there’s a lot of disagreement over how many gods there are and what their powers are and what they’re trying to do. Without any proof one way or another, it’s impossible to tell who’s right. Mommy and I don’t believe that there are any gods at all – we think they’re just pretend like characters in stories.” It seems to be working so far.

40

I view this thread as being pretty much impossible to limit to a poll. Therefore…

Moved from IMHO to GD.