I have two girls – 9 and 4. Our family is officially “non-religious”. Don’t subscribe to it and not interested in participating but we do find it intriguing to learn about. We make a point to explain from a third-party position why some people find this religious thing important and why it may be harmful. Our 9-yr-old was a born skeptic and figured things out on her own. Yet, she has gone to vacation bible school and doesn’t take the religion seriously, more like a story. Even if she goes Biblical on me for a while, she will return. Don’t know about the 4 yr old yet. I think lots depends on how the child’s brain and personality just is. They may need to use religion to supply something in their lives for a while but if you teach them independent thought from the beginning, they will likely be able to make the best choice.

Bobby said,
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I’ll drive, thanks anyway.

Good analogy!

Atheism presents something so totally out of many people’s world view that I have argued with friends over what I mean….So…got it. Atheism is a religion.

I have noticed that the people who flipped out the most when I told them I am an atheist did not go to church themselves. I always found that odd.

As a preteen, I declared firm atheism. As a teen, I flirted with druidism and other magical thinking. I didn’t believe, but I wanted to, desperately. I went to the local pagan group meeting at the UU church mostly for the free coffee.

I’ve been a declared agnostic since 18, and in the past year have come out as an atheist. It was actually more difficult than coming out as bisexual. People get that (”Oh, you like guys and girls!”) and for the most part, my contemporaries are cool with it (I’m under 25). Atheism presents something so totally out of many people’s world view that I have argued with friends over what I mean (”So, atheism is a religion?” “No, I’m an existentialist and humanist by philosophy, and atheism is just an adjective to confirm that I don’t think there’s a god. I suppose you could call me an atheistic agnostic, because I accept the possibility of evidence being brought forth to prove my current beliefs wrong and would be willing to change those beliefs accordingly, but isn’t that a little long winded?” “So…got it. Atheism is a religion.” “Sigh.”).

My fiancée is a self described agnostic. We believe the same thing–that the probability of a god existing is pretty much nil, and act on the assumption that there is no god–and share a philisophical basis, but she likes the ambiguity of the word agnostic to the negative associations still attached to atheist, so…whatever. We’re planning to raise our children to be skeptical, allowed to explore any religious claim they wish as long as they think critcally of it.

Would I be disappointed if my children were religious? Depends on the religion. I’d be perfectly comfortable with religions that are also easily classified as philosophies (like Buddhism and Taoism). I would be upset if they wanted to be a part of any evangelical/hard-line religion. Then again, I’d be upset if they wanted to be far-right Republicans or oil tycoons, too.

Perhaps you should approach your son with the angle “these are heartfelt personal questions for everyone in the world. The answers we hold as a family, aren’t necessarily the answers that other people come to. But the key is to understand that this stuff is very important to people, and people take their own answers very seriously. The important thing to do is to never treat anyone poorly because the answer they come to is different from what you’d come to. If you see anyone at school treating someone badly because of what they believe about God, you should tell a teacher.”

I’m not going to treat religious claims as different in any aspect to the question “are unicorns real?” except in the way of trying to preface it with “this is what I think, this is where the evidence I’ve seen fails to support this claim, but you are free to always question and even reject my reasoning and my conclusions.” And to follow it up with some way of explaining to her why these are delicate matters to discuss within the extended social environment.

I”m beginning to wrestle with this now – my child is 5, and I live in a town full of conservative evangelicalism. I have to guard against being over-reactive b/c I have my own issues with that. However, my son is asking god questions fairly often now. I took a deep breath and told him that God wasn’t a man, people like to think of him that way, because that is easy to understand. But Mommy believes God lives in peoples hearts and we know what he is like when we are kind to each other. I wouldn’t reccommend that approach, b/c the next question was “Mommy, am I God?” Back to the drawing board for me. I do not feel eloquent enough to discuss this with my child in a way that won’t get him into all kinds of trouble. And by trouble I mean sufferring ridicule for not believing what everyone else believes.

Siamang, I have no doubt you will be facing questions like this sooner rather than later, your daughter sounds like a thinker….

If you walked into Religious Airlines and saw a sign that only one of these hundreds of planes (obviously representing each of the different religions) would NOT crash but all the others would, then why would you opt to fly in the first place?

I’ll drive, thanks anyway.

In a world with no religion, obviously there is no need to justify your atheism. Those making the fantastic claims need to justify their ideas. But in today’s world, I think we do need some ability to describe the benefits of logic and reason and why theism is incompatible with those ideals. Moreover, believing there is no god just because your mother taught you that is, to me, just about on the same level as believing there is a god just because your parents told you so. While I’d rather people err on the side of atheism, it seems to me the whole point is teaching children to think and reason for themselves and if you raise a child who is a staunch atheist but doesn’t question things (and she hated questioning anything), then you have failed.

I don’t plan on having kids, but if I did, I would raise them to be sceptics. I would point out that they were born atheists, and challenge them to defend their statements with evidence (and teach them what evidence is), but I would also encourage them to learn about everything they can and question, question, question. I think raising a child who is an atheist but who has no curiosity about the world is a shame.

And if my hypothetical kid ended up embracing a religion? It depends. If they embraced buddhism, for example, I don’t think I’d mind too much. If they made up their own thing, I might even be slightly proud of them. (Kid wants to be a Jedi? Win.) But if they embraced Christianity or another organized religion which is, on its face, a load of nonsense.. I’d be deeply disappointed. The same way I was when my younger sister became best friends with a girl from Alabama and suddenly became a super-Christian. (They fell out several years ago, though, and thankfully my sister’s reverted into an agnostic, which is vastly more tolerable.)

Mainly because you want your child to be able to function socially as a minority in a hostile environment…. but also to have the tools to be able to understand why others are hostile toward us. Not just because religious claims are “stupid” or “for idiots” (which is how my wife was raised). Those give the child little or no tools for understanding or getting along with others. They may serve as simple answers… but simple answers are not always useful.

My child is four. We haven’t gotten into the various claims of religions yet. And I’m not going to argue for some kind of postmodernist “all claims are equal” epistemology with her in any case.

I’m not going to treat religious claims as different in any aspect to the question “are unicorns real?” except in the way of trying to preface it with “this is what I think, this is where the evidence I’ve seen fails to support this claim, but you are free to always question and even reject my reasoning and my conclusions.” And to follow it up with some way of explaining to her why these are delicate matters to discuss within the extended social environment.

I’m not saying you should encourage your kids to be a jerk about it, I’m just saying that I don’t think we should give the kids the impression that there is something special about religion that means its logical to believe for no good reason.