3 Things:
#1) Ask him to see it from your perspective. Would it be okay for you to talk to his kids about their being no god(s)? Or if you were Muslim, to tell his kids that Allah is the one true god? Why shouldn't you be afforded the same respect?
#2) Your kids do not have to say the pledge. They are afforded the right to respectfully decline to do so, if that's what they want to do.
#3) No one here should tell you how to raise your kids, but hopefully it's not crossing a boundary to make a suggestion. It might be easier in this world where religion is so pervasive to teach your kids how to question things and come to their own conclusions instead of telling them what "we" believe, "we" being the household. We are no better than the Christers if we are indoctrinating our kids. I don't mean that you should remain neutral. But teaching them how to think critically and skeptically will prepare them for the real world where you cannot hope to shield them from all the woo woo bullshit that crops up all the time. From religion to pseudoscience to birthers and anti-vaxxers, they will get some of it, and teaching them to become independent thinkers will allow them to come to logical conclusions by themselves, and at the very least encourage them to ask questions and seek you out for guidance rather than an answer that they must accept to be like mom and dad.
#1) Ask him to see it from your perspective. Would it be okay for you to talk to his kids about their being no god(s)? Or if you were Muslim, to tell his kids that Allah is the one true god? Why shouldn't you be afforded the same respect?
#2) Your kids do not have to say the pledge. They are afforded the right to respectfully decline to do so, if that's what they want to do.
#3) No one here should tell you how to raise your kids, but hopefully it's not crossing a boundary to make a suggestion. It might be easier in this world where religion is so pervasive to teach your kids how to question things and come to their own conclusions instead of telling them what "we" believe, "we" being the household. We are no better than the Christers if we are indoctrinating our kids. I don't mean that you should remain neutral. But teaching them how to think critically and skeptically will prepare them for the real world where you cannot hope to shield them from all the woo woo bullshit that crops up all the time. From religion to pseudoscience to birthers and anti-vaxxers, they will get some of it, and teaching them to become independent thinkers will allow them to come to logical conclusions by themselves, and at the very least encourage them to ask questions and seek you out for guidance rather than an answer that they must accept to be like mom and dad.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---
PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---
