RE: Religion and children
June 27, 2014 at 11:30 am
(This post was last modified: June 27, 2014 at 12:02 pm by Jenny A.)
@ Willow Blackbird
I don't have any magic bullet, or perfect advice for you, but I can tell you what we do with our kids. I am atheist and my husband is deist in such a vague non-personal way that it's irrelevant. But both sets of grandparents are Christian though not evangelical. So various things have always made their way into our household: Veggie Tales; bible story books; little cross pendants; etc. And when the kids visit their grandparents alone, church is an inevitability. Further, many of our kids' friends come from very religious backgrounds.
Like your children, mine are intelligent. So we talk at the dinner table and elsewhere about what other people believe about god and more importantly, why we don't. We also talk about religions other than Christianity, and why they aren't real either. Conversation about why you are atheist and what that means is the answer.
I don't have any magic bullet, or perfect advice for you, but I can tell you what we do with our kids. I am atheist and my husband is deist in such a vague non-personal way that it's irrelevant. But both sets of grandparents are Christian though not evangelical. So various things have always made their way into our household: Veggie Tales; bible story books; little cross pendants; etc. And when the kids visit their grandparents alone, church is an inevitability. Further, many of our kids' friends come from very religious backgrounds.
Like your children, mine are intelligent. So we talk at the dinner table and elsewhere about what other people believe about god and more importantly, why we don't. We also talk about religions other than Christianity, and why they aren't real either. Conversation about why you are atheist and what that means is the answer.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
