I finally told my oldest daughter I'm an atheist. Now she's upset and crying.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Wow, that is a really shitty situation. For what it’s worth, I’m with the people that think you should have been open with your kids about this from day 1, and then you wouldn’t be in this situation. But since you don’t have a time machine, the damage is done there.

I think telling her what you did about “I don’t believe, but it’s OK for you to believe and it’s OK for you to think I’m an idiot for not believing if you want” is probably the best way to go here.

Speaking from my own personal experience, I was raised as a devout Catholic and was a believer until I was 17 or so. My dad – who was divorced from my mom and who I only visited on weekends, so the situation is different in that respect – is an atheist, and was always fairly open about that with me. I went through a phase of praying for his immortal soul and thinking he was going to Hell, but eventually I grew out of that, and when I did, I had a lot of respect for him for always having been honest with me. My opinion of him would have been a lot lower if he’d made up some bullshit about being a Buddhist or let me think for years that he was a believer just like me or whatever. But that’s me, and my dad, and you and your daughter aren’t us of course. I’m just saying that that’s what my reaction was in a somewhat similar situation.

I haven’t actually been up-front with my own kids about my atheism, mostly because the topic just hasn’t come up, but I can tell you that after reading this thread, that’s going to change ASAP. We aren’t church-goers and my husband isn’t religious (side note, that thing about your wife saying “you should just be Catholic like the rest of and that would solve this problem” strikes me as being really shockingly offensive and something I’d have a hard time letting go, personally) so it’s less likely that my kids are going to run off in tears when they find out their mother is a heathen unbeliever, but still. No reason to hide my beliefs from them.

42

I’ll say it then.

You and your spouse need to get on the same page and deal with the situation properly. Agreeing to disagree is fine for you two, but your daughter is now far old enough to understand important questions about religion. I’m going to be blunt in an effort to be as clear as possible, so please don’t take what I’m about to say as an attack on either of you because it’s not meant to be.

This isn’t about damage control. This about a very real, and very serious matter that will forever shape your daughter’s worldview. Even though many, many people come to reject theism at a later date, it will shape her opinions, values, and attitudes toward a great many experiences regardless of later understanding. She is old enough to have a serious talk about the nature of religion and it is up to you two to get together to have it in the right manner. She needs to be taught about the existence of other faiths, the lack of evidence for any of them, (and so by extension the equal validity of any of them) including catholocism, and informed about respecting other people’s beliefs while choosing her own. This is a whole package talk, and can’t be parsed up. It may well be like Santa all over again, and this time it might be worse. How you give it is up to you and your wife, but in the end if you hit those points, she will be able to understand things in a far better way than simply putting the band-aid on the hurt. Time put on your serious dad pants.

Good luck.

43

Theravada Buddhism does. Mahayana Buddhism does, at least to the extent that they claim all sentient beings have Buddhadhatu. And as I understood it, Zen derives from the Mahayana school.

Does Zen Buddhism still have a goal of buddhatta? (That’s the Pali word applied in Theravada Buddhism for attaining a complete buddha nature). If so, I’d argue that alone is a supernatural belief, since it implies the end of rebirth.

44

I’m sure she’s smart, but they’re right that a child that young is not going to pick up on this nuance and won’t appreciate the fact that it’s technically honest. The impression it gave was misleading and that’s what counts. I don’t know how old your middle children are, but at some point soon, when your daughter has assimilated this information and gone on her merry way, I think you and your wife need to revisit how you’re handling this.

45

Kids don’t make those distinctions. If it comes from your mouth, she will accept it as coming from you no matter how you couch it.

The sprog was confronted by one of his peers recently when he told the other boy that he didn’t believe in God. The other boy completely flipped out while the sprog remained pretty calm and explained his argument that if we no longer worship Zeus, why should we worship God? (The kid’s brilliant! He takes after his mother. :D) This led to a conversation about belief and non-belief, and that it’s OK not to believe. I also told him that I don’t believe but that Dad does. He was fine with that answer, but I know there will be more questions as he gets older.

Of course, this is the same sprog who told me that I shouldn’t eat scalloped potatoes because “Jews don’t eat scallops.” (He identifies as Jewish.) He laid this fact on me at the in-laws’ Easter dinner while he was eating ham. I didn’t say anything because I’ve accepted that it’s his Catholic half that likes ham.

46

DtC, I think that you did the right thing in answering her truthfully. You may have avoided the question up to now, but you hadn’t directly lied to her. I think that you and your wife need to sit down and discuss how to better approach this with the other kids.

Is your wife somewhat in denial about your atheism? Reading between the lines, it almost seems like she doesn’t want to confront the issue.
The most important issue is why are your drinking clamato? If I were you, I would take that secret shame with you to the grave.

47

I’m another one who thinks it’s at least partially about the secrecy. You say she was giving you “a lot of questioning” – so sounds like she knew something was up and wanted to get to the bottom of it. Even if she says she’s crying over the state of your soul, she’s 11, she’s not necessarily going to be able to articulate if it’s a family dynamics problem that really has her upset. Your soul is a topic she has the vocabulary for. How to deal when you find out your dad’s been keeping something from you isn’t something that they teach in school.

48

Yeah, after reading through this whole situation, the only thing I’m feeling is anger at the wife for creating it.

49

When I’ve been questioned by theists about whether I’m afraid of going to hell, my response has been something like this:

“I read about religion a lot, and I argue about it a lot. I’m always looking for answers. So far, the answers I’ve found have shown me that there is no god, but I keep learning and asking questions. And I don’t think any god worthy of worship is going to punish me for that, just because I may not have found the final answer yet, as long as I’m still looking.”

50

I think your interpretation of where atheists go when they die according to Catholics is a little liberal (I could be wrong, I left the church over 15 years ago - basically over this - I married an atheist). And I suspect that your daughter will discover that very soon as she talks to her friends and adults in the Catholic community. So I think its time to introduce “the Church is Not Always Right” in whatever fashion you and your wife can provide a united front. Maybe its birth control, or gay marriage.

i.e. The Church provides guidance on what to believe. But as you grow and your own values and spirituality develop, you will make choices on what parts of Catholicism work for you and which don’t. Your mother and I do not believe you need to believe everything that the Church tells you. For instance, the church does not believe that two men who love each other should be able to marry. We do not agree. You may find people in the church who believe that I will go to hell because I am an atheist. We don’t agree with that either.

(I’m of the “you should have always told her” and “maybe you didn’t lie, but you didn’t tell her the truth either and that to an eleven year old is the same thing” side.)

51

I have nothing to add except my own much more pleasant experience.

Around the same age, my Catholic school-attending daughter told me she didn’t believe in God. To which I confirmed my disbelieve also.

We had a nice chat about morals and being nice to other people and that was pretty much the end of it.

On the other hand, my 12 year old son and I talked about evolution, natural selection and God just this morning. I still haven’t said anything to him yet, one way or the other. He gets to make up his own mind too.

52

You and your wife owe your daughter a huge apology for setting up this situation. Your wife is equally responsible for creating this situation. Both of you have been dishonest with your child.

53

You know, you’ll go to hell for that. :stuck_out_tongue:

54

You are incorrect on every count. Not one of those schools (especially Zen) requires any supernatural beliefs. Popular practice is rife with them, but they are not necessary. Buddha nature is not a supernatural belief, but a philospophical one and refers to a non-supernatural state of awareness.

Enlightement (“Buddha nature”) is not a supernatural state, and reincarnation is not a necessary belief in Zen (or even Buddhism as a whole). Zen is a cognitive discipline, not a religious practice.

55

Poor kid. Putting your daughter through a catholic education is the only thing you should feel bad about.

56

I should have added something. You’ll all get over it.

57

Holy crap, Shirley, you’re totally awesome. I mean, I knew that already, but wow. What a great post.

DtC, if it comes up again, maybe you could say that what the Church teaches and what “God” actually will do aren’t exactly the same thing. If there is a God and that God is even remotely close to traditional Judeo-Christian conceptualization, I like to think he’s smarter than just automatically condemning a thoughtful, caring, good person because of one non-belief. If there is a God, he gets to decide what to do with you, not the Catholic Church.

58

Way back when my wife first said she wanted to baptize our kids and send them to Catholic school, I was really against it, and told her I didn’t want them brainwashed. She kept pushing. I tried to get her to compromise with UU, but she said it had to be RCC. Part of that comes from her parents who are conservative Catholics (at least her mom is. Her dad privately told me he doesn’t really buy it).

It was important to my wife. I love my wife, and we made an agreement that she could baptize them and send them to Catholic school, but when they were older (“older” being vaguely described, but essentially understood as when they were teenagers), I could tell them my OWN feelings, expose them to atheism (as well as any other alternate viewpoints they might be interested in), and tell them that they ultimately had the right and freedom to decide for themselves. Until then, I was supposed to stay out of the way, and I have. I’ve mostly just been quiet and kept my mouth shut. Last night my daughter was asking questions she hadn’t asked before about my religious upbringing and my beliefs, and I told her. I thought she was ready to hear it and would be able to handle it.

Things were a lot calmer this morning. My daughter acted normal getting up and getting ready for school. She’s saying she doesn’t want to go to Catholic school anymore, or get confirmed. To be honest, I think she’d been getting disenchanted for a long time already. She’s a smart kid. She knows how to think critically. She thinks creationists are idiots. She thinks the Eucharist is just bread. She was going to figure out it was all bullshit anyway. It’s actually kind of relief to have it out there now. I don’t have to be so careful with how I talk to her. I don’t want to disparage her remaining beliefs, though. I really tried to impress it on her that her mind is her own, that nobody really knows, that she should just make sure she really thinks about what she believes, and that all religions (and even humanist beliefs) boil down to the Golden Rule.

My wife has not said anything else about me becoming Catholic. She just said that in a fit of pique last night. She has no illusions about my atheism, has never tried to convert me in all our years together and isn’t going to seriously start now.

We still have a lot of stuff to figure out, but I think the Catholic school experiment might be coming to an end.

There have been a couple of other incidents recently which caused my wife to say, “what are they teaching them at that school?”

I said “what did you THINK they were going to teach?”

59

I assume you don’t believe this.

60

There’s no universal cookbook for raising kids. Anyone that thinks that principles should override specific knowledge of a particular child, their environment and how they’ve been raised is just blowing smoke.

Mistakes happen. It’s all about how you deal with them. I think you did fine. When she gets older, she’ll appreciate that you were trying to be truthful. And there’s no telling, she’s a devout Catholic at 11 and at 13 she decides it’s all BS and calls mom out on the carpet.