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children and religion

Started by Meghatron, December 09, 2010, 04:05:09 AM

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Meghatron

I assume I am not the only person on this forum with a child. My daughter just turned 6 and I wonder when it is a good time to enrich her about other religions. My immediate family are all Catholics and her fathers family are all Muslims. When she asks questions about death or where people came from, and other innocent things children wonder about, my mom or other family members have always popped in some BS about God. I don’t mind too much.  I know I want her to know about the correlation between geography and ones religion and I want her to know basic knowledge of main religions. Obviously, I want to teach her about evolution, science, and the universe. I’m just not sure when it is appropriate. I don’t want to wait until she is brainwashed by society, but a part of me feels that she is too young. Suggestions??
what a coincidence I was just thinking how stupid you are!!

"Let's stop praying for someone to save us and start saving ourselves
Let's stop this and start over
Let's go out - let's keep going
This is your life - this is your ******* life"
KMFDM

LegendarySandwich

I don't think it's too young to teach her about the basics. For example, concerning evolution, you could simplify it way down and say that animals change over time into other animals, and stuff like that.

elliebean

In case it doesn't occur to her, remind her to ask where gods come from too.  ;)


I did when I was  about that age and never got a satisfactory answer. Wish someone had challenged me to press it.
[size=150]â€"Ellie [/size]
You can’t lie to yourself. If you do you’ve only fooled a deluded person and where’s the victory in that?â€"Ricky Gervais

Gawen

I never took my kids to church for one thing. Kids cognitive/critical thinking skills are not developed until somewhere in their teens. It's why kids believe in Santa, tooth fairy, fairy tales. Start teaching kids about the Christian god, subject them to communal reinforcement, such as family members who believe and all those nice and wonderful people and kids at church...well, there are a billion and a half case studies that will show you what happens.
When my kids started asking me questions they picked up from other kids in school (around age 7 or 8), I had to tell them in so many words 'why'. I also told them that we won't be going to a church. That THEY could go to a church, temple, synagogue, tabernacle, ring of mushrooms when they were older and make up their own minds if they want to believe in make believe. Of course, they were invited by kids from school a couple times and curiously they went. They never went back.
My kids are 24 and 22 years old. They are normal young adults with a lack of belief of gods. They both understand that all the other kids are normal as well, but deluded with a belief in their particular flavour of God/Jesus/Mohammad. My kids understand why their friends are the way they are.
The essence of the mind is not in what it thinks, but how it thinks. Faith is the surrender of our mind; of reason and our skepticism to put all our trust or faith in someone or something that has no good evidence of itself. That is a sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith is not.
"When you fall, I will be there" - Floor

lundberg500

My daughter just turned 10. My wife still goes to church and she takes my daughter with her while I stay home. My daughter has no clue about my atheism. My wife knows all about me though. I have no problem with my daughter going to church with her mother. It's something they can do together. I feel that she is just too young to make any decisions about religion right now and it's not my place to demand that she be an atheist. That needs to be her own decision when she is older. Anyway, she gets a chance to see what the Christian faith is about and then compare that to common sense and logic when she is much older.

But, every opportunity I get I show her my books on evolution and anything pertaining to science and history. When she has a question where a religious response would easily satisfy the weak minded Christian, I give her the scientific or historical evidence instead. This doesn't seem to bother my wife at all.  Being a Christian, my wife has very little interest in history and science where I have literally hundreds of books, mostly about religion and history but several on science as well.

My entire family is Christian except for me. My grandmother, who just recently found out that I was as atheist, was overly concerned that I was swaying my daughter towards Satan himself. I reassured her that I was going to let her make any decisions on religion when she gets older. I have a strong feeling that the logic and reason of non-theism is going to outweigh the absurdities of religion to her when she does get older. She's a daddy's girl too and is very intelligent. At that point I'm sure I'll get blamed for turning her into an atheist and my entire family will vilify me. Oh well.. It's not easy being a free thinker, especially down south in Texas.

Ihateyoumike

I thank god my fiance isn't religious.  :bananacolor:
Prayers that need no answer now, cause I'm tired of who I am
You were my greatest mistake, I fell in love with your sin
Your littlest sin.