(March 9, 2015 at 2:05 pm)Clueless Morgan Wrote:(March 9, 2015 at 12:40 pm)Crossless1 Wrote: Teach your kids how to think, not what to think. Encourage questions. Provide them with good source material so they can learn to look up things themselves.
This is pretty much the attitude my mother has expressed in raising my sister and I, and even so, when I told her I was an atheist at 16/17 she responded that I was going to go to hell.
Just because you raise a child to ask questions and investigate the world doesn't mean you aren't also personally invested in whether they ultimately agree with your beliefs.
True. I admit that I would have been unhappy if my son had gone in for some form of Evangelical Christianity or Islam. I wasn't neutral when it came to the outcome. But I did encourage him to read the Bible (and had read many of its stories to him when he was young enough for bedtime reading); I encouraged him to check out other religious systems; and I exposed him to science and history from an early age. I was also up front with him about my atheism but always spoke of it in his presence as my opinion -- one with which most people (including most of his extended family) disagree. And if he had chosen a religious path, I would have supported him in his decision regardless of my misgivings.
