As a result, I began working things out on my own, and I grew up a liberal atheist in a family of conservative Catholics. My parents couldn’t have cared less because they know they raised a successful, healthy child, God or no God, and if that was my decision, so be it.

His strategy seems to much like “divide and conquer;” convolute the choices so that they take the easy route and adopt the parents’ beliefs. If you want to raise a critical thinker, teach kids early on that your opinions are irrelevant when it comes to what they believe; they have to decide for themselves.

This a very telling quote:

“When I have kids I’m going to”

It is easy to plan a course of action before you have kids. It is very difficult to stay on course once you have kids. I’m not knocking your plans, I’m merely pointing out that once children hit 2 or 3 years of age they develop their own agenda and often times the carrot doesn’t work.

I’ve never wanted to emulate my parents but frustration builds, patience wanes and suddenly I hear myself saying things I swore I would never say.

I’d tell my kids that it’s a fact that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead because we know that’s impossible thanks to science. I’d teach them as much about what we know and more importantly how we know it and how they can figure it out for themselves too.

After all, if you really believe that hell awaits unbelievers what parent wouldn’t try and protect their child from that.

I think i’d personally prefer to raise my children as atheists, but not through indoctrination but through explanation.

i.e. not just “some people believe that but not us” but more “many people believe that but really, there is no good reason to think they are right. And here is why…..”

Fourteen years later, I was a confirmed atheist. My dad was disappointed, but they did raise me to think critically.

I hate the “well, I believe this, but others believe that, so talk to them about it” approach. Freethinking would be to tell your child when they ask about Jesus’s miracles to ask for the evidence, and evaluate it with reason. If kids are sponges then I’m not going to pick a religious person for them to talk to, that seems like terrible advice. Does Dale include caveates for miracles that aren’t believed by billions of people or are harmful? One of his children says that a teenager got pregnant but is still a virgin, or that sexual intercourse with virgins can cure AIDS. I bet he’ll go, “well some people believe that, you better go talk to them”. It seems like an indoctrination of something other than atheism, but I guess that’s OK.

Also, you apparantly can’t present points of view that are negative towards other points of view. “Religious people are stupid” is as valid and opinion as religious opinions. How about religion is a product of natural selection? I guess that’s just an opinion, although people have done a lot of initial work in the area, providing evidence that makes it a bit more than “just my opinion”. Contrasting that with a religious person’s belief that Jesus rose from the dead it’s not even “just their opinion”. It’s a bunch of people’s opinions that got passed by word of mouth, written down, deemed true by someone else, made into a collection by a group of others, and then for hundreds of years people have been indoctrinated and coerced into believing it.

The blogger in Australia was being ridiculous comparing an atheist dad to a Greek orthodox dad. Which one is more likely to take their children to be indoctrinated by a professional? Which believes a book that makes nonbelieving in God a sin with eternal punishment? Which one is likely to associate believing in God with being a moral person?

It’s not what you believe it’s why you believe it.