I’m an atheist who attends church occasionally for my son, who is about to be 9. I did not raise him to be a Christian but it turned out like that anyway (I am sure religious preschools/daycare helped that process, as did his religious dad who is convinced I will burn in a lake of fire for all eternity).
It doesn’t bother me. I do confess to being somewhat uncomfortable during certain conversations, and I have let him believe that I am not as hard-line atheist as I am because it causes him much pain to think we will not “be together in heaven” so I guess this has led to some lying on my part, but it’s not a lie that bothers me to tell, I guess, because I typically don’t make a habit of lying to my child but I let this be a major gray area.
Atheist me, Catholic wife. Kids are baptized Catholics and go to Catholic school (the ones who are old enough to go to school anyway).
They are still told they they’re allowed to believe whatever they want, question whatever they want, study whatever they want and disbelieve whatever they want. The only thing I ask is that they really think hard about it.
I also tell them that the only thing I know for sure is that nobody else knows for sure, and that anyone who tells them they do know for sure is either lying or deluded.
My wife and I have let both of our children make their own choices. We have, however, asked that they talk to us about it, and that they view everything with an open (but skeptical) mind.
I’m a Unitarian Universalist Atheist. Whatever my kids decide they are is fine, but I really, really, really hope it’s not Fundamentalist Christian. My six year old, though, has a great admiration for vengeful gods, so I’m not holding out much hope for him.
I can’t say I’d be pleased if my imaginary child decided to join any religion, but it’s not my choice. I hope that if s/he did, it would be a moderate one that wouldn’t interfere with our relationship.
I am a deist [I am an agnostic, but I believe that people need to organize their thoughts, and that format ends up being ‘religion’ more than just ‘acting morally’ which is what I try to do. What I don’t like about organized religions is the general holier than thou tendancies of humans.]
Kids are people, entitled to be treated with respect. They are perfectly able to form their own opinions. If they want to be anything they want, they have the legal right to [yes, even scientologist, or church of satan. I would hope that logic would bring them to their senses … and I would stop illegal behavior, but if they felt strongly about abortion to go and picket, they would be allowed to as long as they followed the laws of the community we lived in.]
Of course I don’t have kids, and it is doubtful we will ever get any kids … but if it ever happened
I do not have children but if/when I do, their religion is their business.
I will make sure that my children learn the basics of all major religions even if they aren’t believers simply because you can’t make an informed decision if you’re ignorant of the beliefs.
No matter what decision they make is ok by me as long as it is made from their heart and not out of pressure to conform or fear.
We raise our kids in our religion and have sent them to parochial/private schools that are faith-based (but not over-the-top), their entire lives. As well as being exposed to their own religion, and including “service” hours (aka volunteering) as part of the graduation requirements, their curriculum also includes studying other religions.
Once they’re out of high school, they are free to further explore other religions and philosophies. My mom was raised in a different religion from me, so I know that harmonious integration of different beliefs can work.
It would definitely disturb me if my children gravitated towards a fundamentalist religion of any kind. Fundamentalists are way too concerned about controlling people IMO. That’s definitely not my style. If we miss Sunday mass or inadvertently eat meat on a Friday during Lent, oh well. I’m less concerned with ritual and much more concerned with developing and following your conscience. I don’t believe anyone can ever be truly happy unless and until they treat people justly and respectfully.
So as long as the overarching theme of their new religion is one of love and respect, I could live with it.
I plan on exposing my kids to as many different religions as I can, so it won’t bother me any if they choose a religion different from my own. Especially since I don’t know what to call myself anyhow.
Cults on the other hand, are a different matter. I’d do my best to keep them away from any, including Scientology.
I wanted to expand on my original post (I am not the OP. I mean my op in this thread)…
As an Atheist, this is what I want to say. But I think I’d be being a hypocrite.
One of the things I dislike about religion is the indoctrination of children. The exploitation of the fact that their brains are ‘designed’ to believe what they are told with little to no questioning (how often have you heard or seen a child say “I think you are wrong” to a trusted adult. Children naturally accept Adults as knowing everything) by telling them what to believe.
So, no matter how convinced I am that ‘God’ is a false concept evolved in/by the collective minds of humans I should not ‘force’ my own children to believe the same as me.
I will however try to be as convincing as possible when I tell them what I believe when/if the subject comes up. If the come to me one day and bring up the subject of God (because inevitably they will. They live in a society where the word is unavoidable) I will tell them that I strongly believe God doesn’t exist in the real world, only in the minds of people. I will probably go on to try to explain why so many people believe it/he does exist. I may or may not point out that that isn’t necesarily a bad thing for some reasons, but that it is bad for other reasons.
Yes. He/she’ll do it anyway, so why force them to pretend they believe(or not believe in this case, since I’m an atheist) something else. I’ll try to raise them as atheists, but it’ll be their choice in the end.
I don’t have biological children and I don’t imagine I ever will, but I’m all for freedom of religion at any age.
Then again, I’ve been known to not freak out when my brother asked “are babies made lying down?” (after seeing a couple with a huge height disparity) or when my nephew said “when I grow up I’ll be a girl so I can wear dresses.” My role in the life of the children around me seems to be “grown up who doesn’t freak out and does answer difficult questions”.
If I did have kids, it would be a matter of “We go to church as a family & you’re part of the family”. I don’t freak out at questions, anyway, & if a Sun School teacher did freak out at my kids’ questions, I’d want to discuss it with said Sun School teacher. If as my kids got older, they wanted to try out other Christian churches, I’d support that as long as those churches were not too different (non-Trinitarian, exclusivist, anti-charismatic for example). If they left the Christian faith as adults, I’d be disappointed but would try to keep any discussions low-key & respectful.
I think this isn’t actually correct. You can’t control whether your children are Protestant, because Protestantism is based on one’s internal beliefs, but I think you can make them Catholic, because Catholicism is based on the Church and its acceptance of members. Similarly, in Protestantism, salvation is determined by God based on the belief of the individual, but in Catholicism, salvation is based at least partly on the Church; that is, the Church, the Earthly organization, has some say in the matter of whether an individual gets into heaven. The “Seven Solas”, a collection of seven criteria defining Protestantism according to the Catholic Church, kind of frame some of this; in particular, the idea of “sola fide”, “only faith”, being the Protestant criterion for salvation (the point of defining it this way is to distinguish it from Catholicism, in which faith is not the criterion for salvation, and the Church partially directly influences whether salvation occurs).
I got interested in the subject and looked it up. I think this was confirmed as recently as the Catechism of 1994, if I remember the year right.
This is the same system I’ll use. I’ll do my best to tell them what I believe, point out the evidence one way or the other and hopefully foster in them the ability to think critically and, when the time comes, make a decision of their own.
