Question for Atheists/Agnostics with Kids

[Andarvi]

Please dont turn this into a discussion about why atheism/agnosticism is right/wrong or why religion is, i have a specific question for those who are atheist/agnostic and are parents. Feel free to hypothetically answer the question if you are not a parent yet.

Basically, I consider myself indifferent really, i dont think there is a god for many reasons but cant prove there isnt one so i just strattle the fence between the two. My girlfriend was raised "christian," never really practiced, and after we started dating she stopped really caring about it in general. However, every now and then she starts to consider christianity more and more, which is fine.

Thus, seeing as we are serious and I can see myself with her for a long time, I was wondering how atheist/agnostic parents raise their kids in regard to religion. I see possible problems with the children being ostracized because their peers are oh so impressionable when they are younger. Also, just the child's natural inclination to question their existence and want to explore the various religions. How do you/would you deal with this? If you are atheist/agnostic, what do you tell a child who has yet to decide for themselves?

[Skyylya]

I am an atheist and my fiance is a methodist/christian(i dont' know exactly) and while we don't want kids, my stance is that I wouldn't tell my kid one way or the other what I believe or what she believes unless he asked about something. I figured out at a pretty young age where my beliefs were (i was raised catholic). I would allow him the freedom to learn all sides and decide what best suit's him/her.

Religion is a personal thing, and whether you believe in god or not is completely irrelevant. What is important is how that belief impacts your life and whether or not your belief makes you a better person, or better able to live your life to the fullest.

There are problems with everything, such as other kids pressuring your kid to believe or disblieve, or other parents having problems with your kid telling theirs something contrary to what they teach at home. But the important thing is to let your kid decide for themselves when they are capable.

Don't preach to your kid, but don't deny them anything either, if he askes a question, give him your answer and have your wife give him her answer and let him choose which he prefers. obvoiusly at younger ages he won't grasp the concepts, but in time as he grows he will.

[Jujubie]

My friend is Wiccan, paegan or something like that. She doesn't believe in the the tradtional religions. She is raising her daughter to choose which is right for herself. She tells her daughter about the way she feels, her daugher has also goes to church with friends and other family so she has been exposed to catholic, mormon, and baptist. Her grandmother on her Dad's side has her going to the baptist church when she visits her Dad. My friend doesn't put down other religions or beliefs, just tells her daughter that different people choose to do it differently and that no one way is right or wrong, just what is best for them.

[Mizango]

I am an atheist and my fiance is a methodist/christian(i dont' know exactly) and while we don't want kids, my stance is that I wouldn't tell my kid one way or the other what I believe or what she believes unless he asked about something. I figured out at a pretty young age where my beliefs were (i was raised catholic). I would allow him the freedom to learn all sides and decide what best suit's him/her.

Religion is a personal thing, and whether you believe in god or not is completely irrelevant. What is important is how that belief impacts your life and whether or not your belief makes you a better person, or better able to live your life to the fullest.

There are problems with everything, such as other kids pressuring your kid to believe or disblieve, or other parents having problems with your kid telling theirs something contrary to what they teach at home. But the important thing is to let your kid decide for themselves when they are capable.

Don't preach to your kid, but don't deny them anything either, if he askes a question, give him your answer and have your wife give him her answer and let him choose which he prefers. obvoiusly at younger ages he won't grasp the concepts, but in time as he grows he will.

This is exactly what I would say had I not been beat to the punch. My daughter is 7 and my wife and I have chosen to let her do her own "homework" in regards to her beliefs. My wife was raised Christian and I Baptist/Christian, but for me personally, I stopped believing in fairy tales when after watching my parents go to church 2 times a week for 30 some odd years, then coming home to having to listen to cops and medics explain to me and my family that my parents were just murdered/tortured while they were merely sleeping in their bed.

I got tired of hearing the cliche fucking bullshit like "God never gives you anything that he doesnt think you can handle", "He did this out of love" or my personal favorite "The lord called your parents home to his glorious kingdom". Since when does being called home mean being fucking bound and gagged, beaten, raped and then having industrial strength solvent containing sulfuric acid (which oddly enough ate skin, eye lids, hair and even fingernails off)constitute being "called home to his kingdom". Then to watch the both of them suffer at a burn center in Chapel Hill, NC for 3 and 5 months respectively, gg God, gg.

No matter how bitter I am or what I crock of shit I think relegion is I will under no circumstances force her to believe or disbelive either way. That is a choice that she will make through her own experiences and what is best suited for her and her family. We all have different reasons for what we choose to belive. Children, like us, are no different. I would leave it up to him/her to form their own opinion(s) of this world or the next and trust in them to make the decision accordingly.

To each his own.

[Kuya]

The above responses were all pretty much dead on. And holy crap, i'm sorry to hear that Miz.

[Mizango]

The above responses were all pretty much dead on. And holy crap, i'm sorry to hear that Miz.

<3

[Neosutra]

It is very hard to balance out teaching your children solid scientific foundations, free thought, and a genuine questioning nature, AND to keep an open mind, all the while knowing that they are being told by all of their peers(whom they spend more time with then you), that they are going to hell for not believing like them. With you, they may get open minded discussions on the world and origin, but at school/friends, it is most likly one sided. I would simply encourage your child to always talk to you about religion/science/cultures that they encounter at school, and reason with them about their decisions. Many of the religions recruit children as young as possible through advertising schemes such as "lock ins" and youth ralleys. So you need to watch out for youth gatherings under the guise of entertainment, all the while focused on recruiting your child to the latest and greatest cult.

It is easy for a child to be pulled into religion, as they may not have a solid grasp on alot of the basic scientific principles, so the idea of magical creatures that do wonderful things often times sound believable and apealing. For atheist, all I have to do is give a child the bible, have them read it, and that is usually enough to turn them into an atheist. As for an agnostic, I would think it would be very challenging to keep your child open minded about religion AND not swept away into whatever religious movement is trying to get their membership at the time.

[Elesirdur]

I'm not a parent, but I will give you my two cents vis a vis my childhood.

Both my parents grew up in families where religion a fixture; my mother much more so than my father. My maternal grandfather was very active in his church and was was a Gideon (the evangelical group that distributes bibles and puts them in hotel rooms). My father's family was half catholic and half protestant and never really cared much either way, but he was baptized catholic and they went to church every so often - they were farmers in rural New Brunswick.

Both my parents spent a long time in university, they both have PhDs, and were never devoutly religious at any time in their lives. My father was too busy working and his parents never really cared much, and my mother pretty much gave up on organized religion (but not necessarily faith or spirituality) when she was about 12 or 13 and asked a question at the dinner table about the nature of the universe and why it was as the church said and her father replied something to the effect of "because that's what the church says and you're not to ever question the church". That turned her right of religion, but the up side is that is made her much more interested in her scholastic work.

In my entire 24 years of life I think I've been in a church for a service 3 times; once for a funeral and twice when my maternal aunt forced our family to attend Sunday mass when we stayed with her in Toronto on a family vacation. She was extremely religious, but a zealous born-again anglican after sleeping around and generally being a slut in her teens in the late 50s and getting knocked up 3 times before she was 20. (First pregnancy was when she was 14 or 15...yeah their father must have loved that.)

Anyways, my parents introduced religion (and really just Christianity) to me when I was young as a matter of information and to help me understand a lot of the social and historical undertones of Western society. They never went to church, and to this day I still find the notion of going to a building x times a week a strange and slightly confusing activity. I have no clue if I was ever christened or baptized (though I bet my maternal grandfather lobbied my parents hard to have me dipped) and I would be a bit personally offended if I was at this point in my life. We celebrate Christmas and have a big dinner on Easter (mmm...ham) but it's more as a secular holiday and a time to be with family and loved ones; not because of their specific ties to Christianity.

I went to a secular private school for my entire grade school/high school life and never had any friends that were in any way practicing religious. Granted, the private school I went to was one of the only two secular private schools in town, and the other one had a Christian and mult-faith chapel that students were "encouraged" to attend and all the big ceremonies were done in the Christian chapel. Therefore, my school friends were all from families that didn't want a religious private school - not surprisingly about half the students were from non-Caucasian families; mostly Chinese-Canadian and Indo-Canadian (the two big ethnic groups in my city). Even when I had friends who were from public schools, none of them ever went to church or had religious families.

To this day, my most 'religious' friends are Jewish and do it more as a community thing, not a specifically devout thing - which seems pretty standard for Jews anyways.

I've got two old friends, both girls, who do kind of get in people's faces if they start talking about religiosity and I think it's kind of rude on both parts. It's cool if you're religious or spiritual but don't try and cram it down other people's throats. Similarly, if you're agnostic/atheist don't go around denouncing other people's values and belief systems.

I consider myself a secular humanist. If I have faith in anything, it's the capabilities, knowledge and understanding of humanity. Perhaps not in all individuals, but as a race and species as a whole. I don't 100% discount the possibility or presence of divine beings, because I cannot wholly disprove them it would be illogical to say they cannot exist; I'm skeptical of a lot of things and use my critical thinking and reasoning skills to interpret and understand the world around me and beyond. I've never much felt the need for religion or spirituality in my life - an interesting contrast to my current girlfriend who's very artistic and creative, but was brought up half catholic, half wiccan, all aging hippie (a constant source of aggrivation and joy to me when we're together) - but I certainly don't count out the possibility that at some point in time I might. The entire idea of organized religion as a social structure grates against the very core of my being because I feel deep down that spirituality and religion (as a framework for spirituality) is a fundamentally personal journey, not one that involves going to a building once a week or getting on my knees and praying towards a geographic coordinate six times a day.

Back to the question at hand: I have never, once in my life encountered a person who's chastised me for my lack of religion. I've met some devout people who question my secularism, but I don't like to argue with evangelical people much as it's akin to talking to a brick wall. (Just my views, I'm not putting anyone down here.) They probably feel the same way about me because if I'm anything, it's stubborn about deeply personal issues.

In a way it makes me sad to think that one needs to think about religion when having a child as to how they will be accepted into social circles while living in a post-modern country like Canada or the UK. However, I know the U.S.' penchant for Christianity is rising every day and Canada's one of the most secular countries in the world (according to our 2006 census data) so it's hard for me to say what it's like south of the 49th.

[Venture]

Our mother is one of the few exceedingly intelligent people to ever marry into our father's family tree, so she not only raised us both to be either atheist or agnostic, but she constantly pressures us to raise our kids faithless. She's worried, and so am I and my brother and my sister-in-law, that all she contributed to improving the family line will be for naught if her kids, or our kids don't break the blue-collar yolk that rules our father's family lines. Neither me or my brother have really hit on our intellectual potential yet, and there's hope that if we pick the right wives, we might finally have a family line that works at NASA instead of building boats and digging ditches. We don't want kids that have faith. We want them to question everything, have a desire to tear things apart, then try to put them back together or improve their design.

I know it's fucked up to tell your kids what they shouldn't believe in, but if we have to be the asshole generation who forces our system on our kids to finally get offspring with the mental wiring to go to Harvard, MIT or Yale, it'll be worth it in the end.

[Lulu]

I'm wiccan and although my daughter is barely 4 I just let her believe whatever she wants. My whole family and my husbands do the whole pagan holiday/belief thing and always have so we don't really go that deep into it.

I had Christianity force fed to me while I was at school as a young child (not a religious school, just... one of those things I guess) and I've studied plenty of religions and they all seemed pretty unimpressive, especially knowing the basis and reason behind most of them. So, she'll probably get my bias away from religions like that but who am I to tell anyone what to think.

[Tyche]

Why does your mom tell their kids that they should question everything, yet raise them to be completely faithless (do you meant faithless as in she lets you make your own decision, or faithless as in she stamps the "atheism" into your head at a young age). Do they not question her? People read studies that atheists have higher IQs and automatically think they shuold raise their children atheists and they'll be much more intelligent, which is working the correlation in reverse. It's people with higher IQs that become atheists as opposed to atheists just automatically netting higher IQs. Oddly enough, however, almost half of mensa members in the U.S. are christian.

[Demosthenes11]

Our mother is one of the few exceedingly intelligent people to ever marry into our father's family tree, so she not only raised us both to be either atheist or agnostic, but she constantly pressures us to raise our kids faithless. She's worried, and so am I and my brother and my sister-in-law, that all she contributed to improving the family line will be for naught if her kids, or our kids don't break the blue-collar yolk that rules our father's family lines. Neither me or my brother have really hit on our intellectual potential yet, and there's hope that if we pick the right wives, we might finally have a family line that works at NASA instead of building boats and digging ditches. We don't want kids that have faith. We want them to question everything, have a desire to tear things apart, then try to put them back together or improve their design.

I know it's fucked up to tell your kids what they shouldn't believe in, but if we have to be the asshole generation who forces our system on our kids to finally get offspring with the mental wiring to go to Harvard, MIT or Yale, it'll be worth it in the end.

so ignorant its funny

[Elesirdur]

Why does your mom tell their kids that they should question everything, yet raise them to be completely faithless (do you meant faithless as in she lets you make your own decision, or faithless as in she stamps the "atheism" into your head at a young age). Do they not question her? People read studies that atheists have higher IQs and automatically think they shuold raise their children atheists and they'll be much more intelligent, which is working the correlation in reverse. It's people with higher IQs that become atheists as opposed to atheists just automatically netting higher IQs. Oddly enough, however, almost half of mensa members in the U.S. are christian.

I'm glad someone pointed that out. Not being religious is not some surefire path to intellectualism. From the 14th-19th centuries in Europe a predominant trait amongst Natural Philosophers and later scientists was the desire to understand God's universe better in the way it worked and functioned and therefore have a stronger connection to their God and faith. Sir Isaac Newton himself was devoutly Christian and his theory of a "Clockwork Universe" was one where the universe was like a clock that God wound up, a perfect machine, that kept ticking along according to the laws of physics. Early physicists and astronomers were very skeptical of the idea that "x happened in the universe because God willed it so" and assumed that God would create a world that was ruled by laws and order - not a chaotic melee of celestial bodies that would cease to move or function should His will not endure them any longer.

I do find totally faithless people somewhat sad in a way. As I mentioned in my epic tl;dr post I do have faith in humanity and in myself if nothing else. To be totally skeptical about everything and never believe in anything on faith seems to me a rather sad and hollow life.

[Kaylia]

If your wife/girlfriend insist of teaching him religion, let her do it I guess. As long he get a proper education, your kid will be able to take decision by himself when he get older.
If none of you care, teaching him the reasoning behind agnosticism is probably the best to let the kid take his own decision. I usually find religious people and pure atheist too extreme...need to let the kid think by himself.

Either way, the most important is to teach him some human value to live in society. >_> Doesnt really matter if you use a religious basis, or go from an atheist stand point.

[Remyo]

mormon

run as far away from Provo as you can.

and +1 to tyche in reply to ventures post.

To the OP: just explain all the options there are(or most of the basics) and if your child wants to pursue one of them do the very best you can to help them get to mass, temple, ooga booga hut, or w/e. even better to attend service with them (if they choose that path) that way if they have questions you can help them or point them to the best person that can answer their question. just take all your bias out of the equation, maybe your child will grow up to believe the same way you do, then you can mock people that have religion, which would just be insensitive and hypocritical.

[Amastacia]

I was raised in a non-religious household.

My mother is either a deist or a Christian, but doesn't really practice (I think "believes in some higher power of some sort, and generally ascribes to a liberal interpretation of Christian moral philosophy" best describes her). My father was raised Catholic, which is reason enough that as a thinking human being he is now agnostic at best, but certainly doesn't qualify himself as Christian.

Way it worked for my brother and I was no religious indoctrination of any kind, just letting us choose our own path and explore alternatives until we found what worked for us. Since neither of our parents practice, we never went to church as a family, however no one stopped us from going either (i.e. with friends).

I'm certainly biased, but I think the only way anyone should raise children is to give them the space and the freedom to make their own choice. I could never look myself in the mirror and be comfortable with what I saw if I effectively brainwashed my own children into believing what I tell them to believe, rather than letting them believe what they want to believe.

[Venture]

Don't want out kids to be flat-out Atheist, because Atheism is a form of belief as well. If anything, i'd hope that our kids don't feel the need to apply titles to themselves to justify their place amongst religion. Honestly, I hope they at least think about it, so they can understand why people feel the compulsion to choose for or against a God, but not to choose faith because their faith helps them to place understanding in things they can't figure out for themselves.

If one of their friends dies in a car accident, I wouldn't want them to think: "It was their time." or "It was God's will". I'd want them to come to terms to the factors that made the accident happen, and why their friend dies i.e. no seatbelt, spinal compression, ejected from car etc. So they can learn from their friend's accident, appreciate their friend's contribution's to their and other lives, and be able to understand how it happened so they can move on with their lives.

Will also have to accept the terms that raising any kid to not easily place faith is going to be hard raising a kid, because if you raise a kid to question everything, they're likely to be rebellious in their youths until they mature mentally to fully understand the purposes behind every action. Don't expect to have a smooth relationship with them, and when they're about 25 years old, and have matured mentally and emotionally as adults, we could sit down with them like our parents did us, and air everything without the teenaged instability that haunts adolescents even in their early 20s getting in the way of a mature conversation.

[Neosutra]

Why does your mom tell their kids that they should question everything, yet raise them to be completely faithless (do you meant faithless as in she lets you make your own decision, or faithless as in she stamps the "atheism" into your head at a young age). Do they not question her? People read studies that atheists have higher IQs and automatically think they shuold raise their children atheists and they'll be much more intelligent, which is working the correlation in reverse. It's people with higher IQs that become atheists as opposed to atheists just automatically netting higher IQs. Oddly enough, however, almost half of mensa members in the U.S. are christian.

The test scores to get into mensa arent really that high (average college graduate could get in). And saying 50% of an "intelligent" society is religious further displays the decrease in religious beleifs as education/intelligence increases(due to 95% of the general populous being religious). I would agree with your assertation that people with higher IQs tend towards atheism, and not the other way around, but I wouldnt knock his logic. "Intelligence" and problem solving ability is heavily built on education and how you approach life, and can be improved/developed (i.e. your not stagnant in your I.Q. it varies based on your natural ability, age, education, etc), thus raising children in an atmosphere of logic and scientific foundation will increase their reasoning skills and perpetuate their probability to go into "non blue collar fields" as he put it.

As to Demons, not really even worth responding since all you ever do is quote people and go "lol". Perhaps your misunderstanding of every atheist views are so construed that you are incapable of even responding intelligently.

Edit: And to venture, whom posted as I was posting this: I would disagree with your labeling Atheism as a set of beleifs. Atheism is a disbeleif in theist dogma. As an atheist, you have no set "beleifs" or tenants you must follow. There are no rules, no historic rituals, no meetings on sundays, no offerings. I dont get a tax writeoff for being athiest, and I dont have a T-Shirt asking "what would the Nothing do". Dont be so hasty in tossing atheism into the same crowd as religion, it is very insulting.

Athiest are not here arguing "athiest" principles, we are arguing principle of science, logic, and free thought. Its a common tactic to attempt to classify it as just another "set of beliefs", which implys some amount of faith.

[Tyche]

In reply to the OP, I have a 4month old daughter. I believe in god, but I am in no way religious. I'm just not a huge fan of organized religions. I was christened a Catholic at birth, baptized a southern baptist in my teen years, and now I belong to no church. The latter two were my decisions to make, and in no way were influenced by my parents. My wife is catholic, and her family is catholic. I've told her that our daughter will make her own decision about how she wants to handle her spiritual life.

@Neosutra. Requirements for mensa is to score in the top 2% of the population on a standard IQ test. I wouldn't say the average college grad would meet those requirements, unless you went to a completely different college than I did.

And saying 50% of an "intelligent" society is religious further displays the decrease in religious beleifs as education/intelligence increases(due to 95% of the general populous being religious).

I said that 50% were christian, not that 50% were religious. Only 10% of mensa members are agnostic or atheist, so this point is really moot.

[Neosutra]

In reply to the OP, I have a 4month old daughter. I believe in god, but I am in no way religious. I'm just not a huge fan of organized religions. I was christened a Catholic at birth, baptized a southern baptist in my teen years, and now I belong to no church. The latter two were my decisions to make, and in no way were influenced by my parents. My wife is catholic, and her family is catholic. I've told her that our daughter will make her own decision about how she wants to handle her spiritual life.

@Neosutra. Requirements for mensa is to score in the top 2% of the population on a standard IQ test. I wouldn't say the average college grad would meet those requirements, unless you went to a completely different college than I did.

And saying 50% of an "intelligent" society is religious further displays the decrease in religious beleifs as education/intelligence increases(due to 95% of the general populous being religious).

I said that 50% were christian, not that 50% were religious. Only 10% of mensa members are agnostic or atheist, so this point is really moot.

You only need an IQ of about 130ish to get into Mensa.

With a little searching I found:

125 Mean of persons receiving Ph.D. and M.D. degrees
115 Mean of college graduates
105 Mean of high school graduates
100 Average for total population
75 About 50-50 chance of reaching ninth grade.

So it seems your correct in saying that general college graduates fall just below this. I was a bit off based as I finished my degree in EE and physics, so most of my colleagues were the typical academic type and were probably at the higher end of the study and thus my perception is a bit skewed. (Its a bit harder to finish a phd in "quantum physics" then say "phys. ed".)

Where did you get the data that only 10% of mensa members were atheist/agnostic?

edit: Found this, which was apparently a semi recent (last 10 years) survery:

Mensa Survey

Christian

Catholic: 21.4%
Protestant: 17%
Anglican: 9.6%
Unspecified Christian: 5.9%
TOTAL: 53.9%

Religious - Non-Christian

Jewish: 2.3%
Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu: .6%
Unconventional: 6.1%
TOTAL: 9.0%

Other

Agnostic: 6.2%
Atheist: 5.5%
Skeptic, misc. against: 5.7%
None, unaffiliated, lapsed: 5.1%
Undecided, searching, sometimes: 4.7%
Humanist, individualist, life, nature, hedonist, eclectic, etc: 5.4%
Ambiguous, unclassifiable: 4.5%
TOTAL: 37.1%

I wouldnt quantify that as 90% religious >.>

Not to mention, it doesnt deliniate between devout christians, and those that simply categorize themselves as christians due to cultural heritage.