Growing up in an irreligious household.

Great Debates
1

I really didn’t know where to put this, so I put it in the Forum of Forceful Opinions. If incorrect, if a mod could be so kind as to move it. Thanks!

My wife and I were discussing religious education in regards to our 2 year old daughter and, well, we have a dilemma:

We aren’t really religious. At all.

We both were raised Catholic (her family was more devout than mine, but then, most families are more devout than mine) and, like many kids, drifted away as we got older. I can’t speak for her, but for me, even as a kid being “good” wasn’t something I did because I was concerned that God or Jesus or Allah was going to punish me, I was “good” because it made my life easier, that chosing “right” tended to always be the more long-term pragmatic decision. I have never been concerned with my afterlife - if it exists, it does, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

My wife went through a few years soul searching before she pretty much came to the same conclusions. We still feel it’s important to teach Sophie about the Bible in order for her to learn about one of the pillars of Western Civilization, but as the major part of a comprehensive belief system? Uh, no, not interested. Thanks!

Therefore, we were wondering what would be the effects if we raised Sophie (Sophia when she’s being naughty) in an irreligious environment and if anybody here has been raised in such an environment. And by “irreligious” I don’t mean “Dad was actively atheist and would go on and on about the horrors of religion”, more like “my parents didn’t really care about all that so we never went to church.”

2

I was raised this way.

But I was instilled with a strong moral foundation.

We did a lot of things together that encouraged a strong sense of the importance of family.

We went camping a lot to respect and love nature.

We worked together in volunteer projects to be thankful for all we have, and treat well those who don’t have as much.

We learned a lot about love, honesty, respect, and committment.

We just did it without church or religion.

3

My $0.02:

Raise your kids however you feel is right. If it doesn’t feel right to send them to chuch/synagogue/etc, don’t.

Teach them about what’s out there, start at an early age. Don’t just teach them about the bible. I’d recommend teaching about religion, in general: “Christians believe this, Jews believe this, Muslims this, pagens this, etc.”

Don’t force anything on them. Both of my parents are semi-lapsed Jews, who forced me through years of religious school. Don’t do that. It makes for unhappy, angst-ridden teenagers later in life.

Don’t not let them get involved in religion, either. If they show interest in something, help them get involved. Be nurturing and supportive, not dictatorial. Really, it’s up to you, though - you can’t tell someone else how to be a good parent. You know what’s best.

4

Teach her about John Forbes Nash Jr.'s work on game theory, and John McCarthy’s work on multi-agent systems, and why it logically makes sense to be moral.

In this day and age, morality no longer needs a mythological foundation.

5

I was raised in a manner I generally call “secular Christian”, Christianity as essentially an ethnicity rather than a religion. There was no church-going, but we celebrated Christmas (tree and decorations and presents and Santa Claus) and Easter (jelly beans and chocolates and plastic grass). When I got older, there was a bit of stuff in the Christmas celebration – specifically something to the effect of “Jesus was born today so we’re celebrating his birthday”, which makes perfect sense to a six-year-old, really.

Neither my brother nor I was baptised; my parents were of different faiths (and both, I think, estranged from them; my mother has referred to herself as a recovering Catholic, and I think my father is solely interested in religion from a cultural and philosophical standpoint), and thought that their children should be able to choose what was best for them, if anything, without having that sort of obligation imposed on them.

When I was six or so, one (or more, I don’t know; this is stuff my parents told me) of my schoolfriends and some of the neighbours Expressed Concern that I was being raised godless. (Hee hee.) My parents asked me if I was interested in going to church with the neighbours or the friend; I said okay. I switched off for a while between their churches, except on the days I begged off to watch Sunday morning cartoons, before I settled on one of them. (Partly because it was my friend’s church, and partly because the neighbours’ church scared me; it was fairly formal-rite Catholic, and I had utterly no clue what was going on, what the rules were, what the protocols were. The Methodist church gave out a little piece of paper saying what was going on with every service, and also had the kids come up to the front and given connect-the-dots things to keep us quiet for the rest of the service.)

I was a part of that church community for a while, even doing acolyte stuff (which majorly amuses a lot of my friends these days). It was . . . really a decision of inertia. After we moved, we used to come back for the Christmas candlelight service, because they had, essentially, a full orchestra in, and the music was amazing. But it was always, essentially, for the music. They’ve gone now, and it leaves me feeling kinda sad; I found out where the pastor is preaching and I need to write him a letter. He meant a lot to me, because he talked about real things in his sermons, and I always felt he took me seriously. (I was a frightfully, painfully earnest kid.)

My brother attended services at I think a Unitarian church for a while, because his best friend of the time did. I don’t know if it lasted long. People would ask me what the family religion was, and I’d blink at them and say, “Dad’s an Anglican, Mom’s Catholic, I’m a Methodist, and my brother’s Unitarian.” I was never clear on the whole meaning of the “what’s your religion” thing as a kid, either, or the expectation that it ran strongly in families.

Both my brother and I came out of our childhoods with some pretty intense spirituality. I don’t know how common that is, or if it’s just one of the (stunningly few) personality traits he and I share. I’ve finally settled down in a pretty obscure corner of paganism; as far as I know he’s happy not having any particular religious affiliation. Or he’s looking. Or he just hasn’t told me. Denomination doesn’t much matter to us, I think.

For the most part I’m in agreement with your general attitude: doing the right thing doesn’t need some sort of divine kneecapper to justify it, and the concept of afterlife is pretty irrelevant to living here and now.

Questions I’d suggest that you consider: first of all, how will you respond to those terribly earnest people who are Deeply Worried about your daughter’s soul? (I actually had no experience of serious religious proselytisers and pushy bastards before high school; you probably will want to think about how you’ll react to them if your family’s less lucky.) If a friend invites your daughter to join them at church, how do you feel about that? Would you react like my parents did and let her make up her own mind, or say that you don’t do that sort of thing, or what? If your daughter winds up in a church organisation, will you support her in that? If she winds up deeply spiritual like my brother or very religious like myself, how will you feel?

From my point of view, you’re sounding like you’re doing something completely normal and straightforward (and very ethically sound). I hope my experiences are useful to you; please feel free to ask questions if there’s something you’d like me to elucidate.

6

I was raised with no religion at all… never went to mass or Sunday Church. My parents never practiced any religion at all. I dont kill, drink, take drugs or fornicate excessively. I have never robbed or broken anything of value either. My 2 brothers are good and normal people too.

So I say... raise 'em with no religion. At worse they might feel a bit lost over existance and search for something as adults... and at best they will be extremely rational and reasonable people who dont depend on priests telling them what to do.

Just make sure that when they do ask about religion that you dont present a negative image and also that they might feel a bit excluded if the other kids around do go to some kind of church... which wasnt my case. Never heard anyone under 14 years thinking church was important to go. Most kids hate churces....

Even if you were religious... you would be force feeding on your kids you own personal beliefs. So let them grow and chose themselves what they want to beleive.
7

I was raised to be a rabid religious fundie. Unfortunately for my parents, I have an IQ above the single digits, so it didn’t take. But I do advise dragging your kid to an ultraconservative Baptist Church sometime, especially on one of the high holy days. Just a trip or two should be all it takes to steer him clear of mythological reverance and unquestioning respect for authority for life.

8

If you don’t believe, you really needn’t worry about teaching your children religious beliefs. It’s not like you are committed to having them carry on your religious traditions. Knowing about religion is certainly important, and like any activity, if they show an interest in a particular religion, it makes sense to encourage and support their interest. But if they have no interest in it, there’s no reason to feel you have to force it. It’s way way way more important to instill important values, and make sure all the family relationships are healthy, than to worry about what they believe in or don’t (religiously).

My parents weren’t particularly religious. We did go to church, but my father was always very open about not believing in an actual god or afterlife: he valued the community and caring that the church provided and represented. Frankly, religion never really had much impact on my life. I was confirmed in my church, but I can’t remember actually ever believing: or even thinking about the fact that what I was doing implied believing (I’m not sure I even knew what believing was). My group of friends consumed (and still do) my life, and I owe far more to them than anything else. That’s life: different things matter to different people, and that’s okay, as long as SOMETHING matters.

9

I was raised in a nonreligious household. Not anti-religious, or active athiest, simply nonreligious. Religion simply was not a factor.

It wasn’t by intentional avoidance, it simply wasn’t a topic that often came up for discussion.

Ben Hur was just a movie, Chistmas was just a holiday, Passover was an obscure little word you’d see on the occasional calendar.

Both my parents were nonreligious- again, not an intentional avoidance, it simply wasn’t a pastime, hobby or occupation that anyone partook in.

Churches were just another building you saw in town- as a kid it was like the Real Estate agents, the city planning office, or the courthouse: you rarely, if ever, went there, and when you did, there were no kids or toys there, so what reason did a kid have to be there?

My parents were big on the “look it up” school of thought, when it comes to answering the Great Questions. We always had large numbers of books: unabridged dictionaries, entire Britannica sets, specialized encyclopaedia like Childcraft and a Brit How it Works set, the usual books like Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island, even works by Tolstoy.

We had books on car repair, metal casting, stained glasswork and electrical theory. Illustrated kids books that demonstrated esoterics like Archimedes’ principle and the Bernoulli Effect. I fondly recall a Mr. Wizard volume that showed a kid how to make an electromagnet, or a Leyden Jar, or a compound wet-cell battery.

When one of us kids had a question- why is the sky blue? Where do tadpoles come from?- the usual reply was “look it up”. They’d steer us toward the right volume, perhaps, occasionally help us find the topic in question, but often the search itself was as much an educational exercise as learning the quested tidbit itself.

As near as I can recall, the only time the process led to any frustration or anger was when we had no reference for the topic, which happened often enough, even with our copious library.

By the time I was old enough to hear of religion and God and the purpose of churches and such, the desire to learn was well ingrained, and the skill to search for the data was growing. I remember clearly an occasional question like “Why is Easter on this particular Sunday?” or “what is ‘jehovah’?” and looking it up.

The Britannicas in particular were reasonably decent, even back then, with presenting the god-figures and religious icons in a neutral light- like mentioned above, “these people believe this, so…” or “the inhabitants of XXXX tended to believe in So-and-So…” as opposed to having, say, “God is the Creator of All…” etc and so on under the listings.

I was allowed to make up my own mind, free of superstition, mythology or religious propaganda, and I found religion in general wanting.

Again, it wasn’t an intentional avoidance, it simply wasn’t something that held any appeal. Go to church? What for? Pray? Why?

I suggest raising the child with as much educational matter as she can handle, but don’t force more than that on her. When she asks why the sky is blue, say “let’s look that up and see”, whether you use a dusty old encyclopedia or Google. The act of ‘looking it up’ is as educational as the thing being looked for.

10

I was raised in a moderately unreligious household. I went to Hebrew School, but that was so I could get bar mitzvahed and have a party like my friends. My father’s mother was religious, but not pushy, but she died when I was very little. I think my mother’s father was actually an atheist - I never saw him in a temple, and he let his daughter marry a Christian, quite a daring thing for the '30s.

My kids are raised unreligiously. They do know how to reason, and we went over Genesis, to give them a direct view of the contradictions and other foolishness within. They both went to preschool in a church, with no ill effects, and my younger one goes to a church youth group (but never to Church itself) for social reasons. Many of her friends are Mormons, and she feels quite lucky that she is not. Her boyfriend, I am happy to say, is less religious than she is.

So, what worked for me is to teach them to reason, and don’t keep them from going to some activities with their friends when they are old enough not to be brainwashed. Definitely don’t treat religion as something forbidden and therefore tempting.

11

I can think of only one down-side to being raised in a nonreligious household, and I’m not sure how one can avoid it. From high school through college, I was usually oblivious to the Biblical references in a lot of Western literature. I knew the big, well-known stories like the Judeo-Christian creation myth, Noah’s Ark, and the Exodus, but beyond those, it was mostly a blank. Hell, I still can’t reliably tell you about Cain and Abel, or who Abraham was and what he did, etc., etc.

It’s a shame that our educational system hasn’t figured out how to teach the content of the Bible without teaching belief in its truth.

12

I was brought up in a non-religious household. Years later I found out just how rabidly anti-all-religion my mother is, but at the time, I thought her views were the same as my fathers, just not interested in religion.

I remember reading a book about all the major world religions (simplified massively, as I was young) and asking my parents what religion they were. “None” was the answer. “Why?” was, of course, the follow-up question. “I didn’t believe in any of them” was that answer.

And that was about it in my household. When I was a teen, I expressed interest in attending a youth group with a friend and went two or three times, but it wasn’t my thing. I suspect if I had’ve known of my mothers hatred of religion, I would’ve become very devout about then :slight_smile:
That’s my advice: don’t make it a big deal or something to rebel against. Just make it the way you and your SO live, and make it plain that your child’s religious views are their own personal thing to decide and nothing to do with you or your SO.

13

Seems there are not many christians aroud here who advocate you’d raise your children in a religiuos way.
I dare ask: How could you do it anyway being not religious yourself? Don’t you think your daughter will consider you to be a phony? What worse could happen to a dad?

14

I think it’s important to raise your children to be culturally literate & that means knowing something about the majority faith (and minority faiths) of your society, but as far as actually raising your children with a religion when you yourself aren’t- don’t. But be open when your children discover it on their own. Just check out the churches they are invited to visit from their friends to see if they would conflict majorly with your values.

15

Religiousness seems to have a significant genetically inherited component, as demonstrated in this study.

The abstract for the original study, Waller et. al 1990 says:

I couldn’t find the whole article, sorry.

A quote from Dawkins

And lastly, this excerpt from Judith Rich Harris’ The Nurture Assumption.

So, it seems that your daughter is likely to inherit a similar level of religious interest as you and your wife, JohnT. As the Harris and Dawkins links state, parents can have a strong environmental effect on their children, but presumably if you raise your daughter in an irreligious manner she will be more influenced by her peers than by her parents.

Practically, what this means is that raising your daughter in an irreligious environment will have very little effect on her in the long run. If she wants to be religious, she’ll be religious. However it may mean that she will be more influenced by her friends (with regard to religion) than most when the time comes that she talks about religion with her friends, as a result of being raised in an irreligious household. If this thought bothers you then perhaps it would be best to introduce her to your beliefs, whatever they may be.

IMHO though, like FriarTed said it’s important to teach your daughter about the big religions in order to be culturally literate. It would be hard to understand certain people’s actions if you don’t have a basic understanding of what they believe, even if you don’t think it’s correct.

16

I’d say find out what’s true, and stick to that. If you are going to impart morals, you want to make sure you’re building on a strong foundation.

I was once agnostic, until I realized I too had an iq above a single digit. Seems I spent more time there than I have where I am now.

17

Introduce your kids to the idea of “honor”–a code of conduct that you accept for yourself, above and beyond what the law requires of you, and imposed by no other person than yourself.

The idea of “integrity”–being true to yourself by being perfectly honest with yourself about your own actions, and how you feel about those actions. No self-deception.

Sit down and have regular talks at specific times about these ideas. Don’t turn them into nagging sessions. Let the kid ask questions, be totally open and honest, and respect his opinions. No topic off limits.

18

I grew up in sort of an odd family - my grandparents believed in God, but didn’t like the idea of worshipping Him in a building, if you follow me. My mother followed in their footsteps. She’s still more or less a Christian, but never goes to church, and never took us to church as children. I used to go to Sunday school if I was bored, so I picked up some of the basics of it all, but it was never really a big thing. (Which church did I go to? I dunno… the white one?) My brothers went seldom, if at all. We’re all more or less productive members of society, and none of us seem to be especially religious. In fact, my brother and his girlfriend have a daughter, age six, who has been raised in a religion-free household, and she seems to be equally well-adjusted.

You know, if they get curious about it, let them be curious. If they want to go to church with their friends, let them. But if they don’t ever go to church, they’ll probably still be okay. If you’re a good parent, and you sound like you are, everything should work out.

19

My dad is Jewish and my mom Lutheran (neither of them practicing).

They joined a Unitarian Universalist church pretty much for the religious education program. Among other things it included a broad and very general understanding of many world religions and cultural traditions.

If you’re just concerned about a moral foundation, though, I wouldn’t worry too much. I don’t think it’s ever been statistically proven that non-church-goers on average tend to be criminals and jerks any more than particularly religious people.

20

Some very good responses here. (as far as religiousness being inherited, I guess that fundamentalist child of Madalyn O’Hair must have been switched in the crib :).

I’d go with raising children without religion, if that’s what you’re comfortable with.
That’s what happened in my family (drove the grandmas a little bit nuts). All three of us kids wound up with productive lives, long-term marriages and no prison records. I guess there was a value system learned from our parents, even if we weren’t grounded in “the faith”.