Do you teach your children to be Atheists, or do you teach them to be whatever they want to be?
I was reading the thread; “Why should “In God We Trust” be on our currency?” and it occurred to me that I might be more passionate about things like this if I were to have children. Do you feel more passionate about keeping ‘God’ where he belongs; church and Sunday school?
What do you tell your children to say to other children when God comes up? I remember getting a scolding once in class when I stated that I didn’t believe in Santa Clause.
I treat it the same way I would treat Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. I don’t bring it up myself and if she ever has questions I’d explain that some people believe in different things and that I don’t really see a reason to believe myself.
Religion is a regular topic around the dinner table and in other family discussions. It’s handled along with other mythologies and muddled historical tales. We generally discuss ethics and morality in separate channels and don’t tie any notions of those things to religious bases. If anything, our 13yo’s attitudes are more dogmatic than the adults and we have to get them to back down to a more balanced position.
Exactly. We discuss morality, ethics and psychology often and in age-appropriate ways, but religion gets discussed in terms of culture and mythology. I’ll take my kid to Easter Mass, or to the church to light a candle, in much the same way as I take him to see a play in the theater or to go to a flower exhibit.
I plan to explain to him that some people really believe in a, or several, God (s) and that it is impolite to tell if we think that is silly. Besides, we all believe in something.
He goes to a Catholic school, so he will get the stories and the culture and the folklore there. If he really shows a love and aptitude for religion there, I will nurture it like any other hobby or talent.
We openly mock religion in our house. Any discussions of morality or ethics are explained via reason and logic, and never intersect with discussions of religion. Unless we’re talking about something that is immoral or unethical, and is done by the religious.
I’m not raising my children to respect people’s religious beliefs, I’m raising them to respect people.
This. Also, children do tend to be more dogmatic on hot button issues, so we are also teaching our children to consider all sides to an issue and learn to listen and analyze positions before drawing a line in the sand. It’s fine to have an opinion, but it helps if it’s a well-thought out one.
These sorts of flippant and condescending attitudes, directed toward the most culturally and historically powerful institution in the world, are not doing anyone any favors. I would check the hubris at the door, open a newspaper, and read about all the good and evil religion is doing in the world. Treating it (principally) like myth or comedy is not helpful.
Care to explain in what way am I being flippant or condescending? When the subject comes up I explain, in an age appropriate way, that some people believe ‘A’ and some people believe ‘B’ and that I don’t see any evidence that would lead me to believe in either.
I was referring to your comment about treating religion like Bigfoot, which makes it seem like you don’t treat religion with the seriousness or importance it deserves. Maybe I’m reading too much into the comparison though.
Well, there’s the mythical side of religion (gods, miracles, afterlives, etc.) and there’s the real-world, profoundly consequential side (religious wars, charities, rituals, arts, prejudices). Some of the comments in this thread seem to treat it only as the former.
I would say that calling the majority of people on Earth “idiotic,” openly mocking their beliefs, or trivializing the impact religion has had on the world by comparing it to Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, is unhelpful at best.
But this thread is about kids of atheists, so I’ll ask this: how would you want your children to act when they visit a temple in Japan? or see a painting of Jesus in a museum? or make a Muslim friend in school? or read about a religious war?
Should they act superior to religion? With mocking disdain? With open respect?
I don’t have kids. The plan was to teach them to think critically (and, yeah, to believe as I do, because I’m right!) but to understand how deeply faith and religion are ingrained in our culture. It would not be kind or polite to treat people like they are crazy or stupid for believing what they have been taught by people they trust. I would have expected them to have some familiarity with the Bible, because our language and literature are full of references to it.
It was just an illustration using something else that a lot of people believe with no/low quality evidence. I took the OP as referring more to the truth value of religion vs its historic/cultural significance.
