When Your Kids Are Confronted with Faith

I’ve tried telling my kids what others believe & then why I don’t. I always leave it open though for them to decide for themselves. One thing I like to do is have the kids read mythology. That is a good way to get them understand how people believe in god(s) and now they don’t. That is actually what helped me make the connection back when I was in school.

We don’t have any children yet, but when we do, I think one of the main themes we’ll try to teach them is to always ask for evidence. Where’s the proof? What evidence is there to support that or any other claim?

If my kids want to be theists, they can. I am currently harboring an ex-Mormon atheist teen (with her parents’ permission), but if she were a devout Mormon teen who needed a place to stay, she could stay here. People should be who they want to be. I told my kids that people believe different things and they can decide to believe whatever they want. When my daughter was 4, we were caught in a scary lightning storm while tent camping at Arches. She asked me if I believed in God and I said no, but your Grandma and Grandpa do. She said, “I wish there was a god and I wish he were here RIGHT NOW.” She’s currently a 28-year-old atheist, working in the national parks. As a vegetarian, I hate it when people choose to eat meat in my house; as a human, I’m offended when they choose to be racist, sexist, or homophobic. Those beliefs are far more offensive to me than a belief in God.

In one of Carl Sagon’s books is a made up creature that our family has adopted. It is the invisible floating dragon that lives in the garage. My eldest son, seven years old, named her Cathleena. When he mentions religious figures or places I ask him if he thinks these are real or like the dragon. Whatever he answers I ask him why. Mostly, I try to keep my end as questions and let him work through it -he knows that I don’t believe in god. Right now he has decided to believe in a god and so I’ve been reading to him about different deities. When I asked him which god he believes in and why, he said he’d have to think about it. For now, this is good enough for me. This approach has worked very well but it did backfire on poor Tooth Fairy and Santa who bit the dust two years ago.

I never pushed my atheist ways on my son, I always gave him the choice. I always explained to him why I didn’t believe. He was strongly influenced by his father’s side of the family to believe in god. When he was 13 he started studying Greek mythology in school, this was when he realized that my decision to be atheist made the most since. He has proudly told his dad’s side of the family what he believes, I don’t think they are too happy, but it is his choice.

Honest to god, it should be illegal to try to convert other people’s children. It’s not much different from giving them narcotics. Probably unenforceable, but what a moral outrage.

When the subject comes up, my first response usually is, “What do you think?”

I feel it’s more important to guide the kids through the steps of critical thinking, rather than outright answer their questions. It’s an ongoing process that becomes more in-depth as the child ages.

I also recommend reading mythologies and discussing the relevance of each during their time periods. Other good books are, “In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World” by Virginia Hamilton and “One World, Many Religions” by Mary Pope Osborne.

I have also given my kids a Children’s Bible. I remember one evening when my 10yo daughter finished it, she approached me and said in a stunned voice, “They actually believe the guy died and then came back to life??” I just nodded and she said, “Oookay,” and walked off shaking her head.

I have discussed ways to behave if they are approached or pressed with anything religious. That way they aren’t caught off guard and have a rehearsed, polite response they can call upon if necessary.

A few months back, out-of-the-blue, my 5yo son informed me, “I’ve decided to believe in god because if you don’t believe in god you can’t believe in Santa Claus and I like Santa Claus.” I replied, “Okie dokies,” while standing there wondering where in the world that came from. LOL

My daughter (9) and I were at a display of very Christian art. Her best friend is heavily Christian. As we walked around the display, she told me wryly that her friend would just love this stuff. Obviously, she didn’t. That was great. I’ve always been honest about my beliefs (or lack thereof) but have been careful to say that they were MINE, and that she didn’t have to have them too. But, I also said that she didn’t have to believe what her friends did either.

P.S. Fritz:

Santa is OK. Ditto Easter Bunny. Ditto Elijah.

Fiction is fine. Taking fiction for fact is not so good. Lighten up already!

I’m not a parent, but the Reasonable Doubts podcast had an episode awhile back on godless parenting that you might be interested in: http://www.doubtcast.org/podcast/rd59_parenting.mp3

I have 3 kids, ages 14, 12 and 10, and my ex-wife is still a fundamentalist Christian (AG) and one of the main reasons for our divorce was religious differences. While the children were small, we made it known to them that Santa Claus was a hoax but it was fun to play the part anyway, for tradition’s sake. We thought this would keep them from disbelieving in Jesus if we were up front about modern myths.

So now my ex-wife and I alternate Sundays with the kids. On her weekends, she takes them to church and youth group, which they like primarily for the social interaction. But at this age, they realize they have to pretend a lot to stay in line with church teachings. On my Sundays, we typically watch Discovery channel or anti-theistic YouTube videos instead of going to church. Is this indoctrination on my part? Probably, but I leave it open to them whether they want to believe or not. For the most part, they reject the doctrine of heaven and hell, and the story of young earth creationism. When they are with me, I welcome them “back home to the land of reason” which is an inside joke pointing out how crazy their mother acts and the bizarre things she chooses to believe in.

I try not to be too heavy handed, but one time I did give them the sermon of reason and all the problems with the Christian faith. Truth matters to me, that is, the “real” truth, not what some robed shyster labels as “truth”, and I think all the kids have caught onto my skepticism, even if they haven’t completely embraced it themselves.

I’m not used to posting things

(Fritz, sorry for the duplication (unclear what got saved or not) didn’t mean to harp.)

But (and this is my last word):

Many say that they are letting kids decide what to believe. Not clear at all to me why one should do that. You wouldn’t let them decide whether to believe that 2+2=5 or that grass is green or that blood is red… Why the toleration of falsehood in this domain?

Yeah, other people believe in all that stuff — shouldn’t we be tolerant?

But people believe in all sorts of nonsense: that the earth is flat, that it really matters whether you are a Capricorn, that there are 72 (whatever) virgins waiting for martyrs in heaven, that there really were WMDs, that Oswald acted alone — do we let our little kids decide what to believe in these cases? No. So give god the boot, and tell it like it is.

@neon genisis

I haven’t looked at your link – but I don’t think that many readers here entertain that many doubts.

I do what a lot of others in here mention – I teach them about various mythologies, and how they all seem to have the same theme about afterlife, and then I show them how religions do the same theme. My son was confronted a few years ago by a classmate who had found religion (they were 8 at the time) and he came home saying “J says I’m going to hell for not believing.” So I reminded him what I had taught him.

There are plenty of good, cheap books about mythology for children. I read mine everything – Norse, Celtic, Chinese, and present the Bible no differently. It’s easy to read a Native American folktale and say, “This is what was originally thought about the Pleiades.” Then compare it to a similar Greek story about Taurus and Europa. And so on. Present it next to science so your children understand “a chariot drawing a ball of fire across the sky was used to explain the rising and setting of the sun before science figured out about the earth spinning on its axis, which is…”

Children get that – making up stories to explain something they don’t understand yet. They learn to trust science and they know no difference between religion and mythology. I think it’s also made them more respectful of others’ beliefs because they’ve been exposed to so much.

You know, I agree with Claudia and Fiona on principle–I don’t think we should have this double standard between Santa Claus and religious myths–but from a practical standpoint, I don’t see how we can address the issues as though they were both equal. Our kids aren’t going to grow up exposed to adults believing in Santa Claus, or politicians making laws based around the Tooth Fairy.

I have to confess, I’ve always said that I want my children to choose their own beliefs and that I will respect whatever they choose… but I’m actually terrified of them becomming a fundamentalist like I was. I mean, just like every parent worries about their kid becoming a drug addict or chasing after some loser boy/girlfriend that makes them sacrifice the potential we see in them, I firmly believe that if they chase after religion the way my extended family wants them to, it would negatively affect their future… as it did mine.
So, one of the things I’m afraid of is that by pushing against religion, I’d actually be pushing them towards it.
However, I do push critical thinking, and I have been working very hard to innoculate them against my family’s narrow religion by exposing them to as much myth and world religions as I can. (fr ex, “Look at those clouds, aren’t they beautiful? Don’t they just look like you could run and jump on them? Y’know, people ~used~ to think that gods lived up there… back before science figured out what clouds actually were.”)

@JohnFrost your point about Santa Claus vs. gods is well taken of course. I’m not suggesting that children be taught that belief in Santa and in god are the same thing, I’m suggesting that they need to understand that they are equally credible.

Of course you also have to teach them, progressively and in an age-appropriate manner, that many, even most, people really believe that stuff and go into (again, age appropriate, with examples) why people do it; they wanted things to explain lightning, they didn’t want to feel alone, they wanted a daddy that would look out for them etc. Asking lots of questions is great, being a Socratic parent is fine, but pretending an absolute neutrality is too much.

My general point is that it should be possible (or it should at least be an aspiration) to not label your children, and not let them label themsleves prematurely, while still bringing them up with a clear idea of reality. Not by saying “God doesn’t exist because I say so, we’re all atheists” but by explaining religion and enforcing critical thought in such a way that, when they’re old enough, they will make the mature choice we secretly hope they will.

@ Fiona-

you said:

“But (and this is my last word):

Many say that they are letting kids decide what to believe. Not clear at all to me why one should do that.

(snip)

So give god the boot, and tell it like it is.”

We want to teach our kids to think for themselves. I hope that they chose reason over faith, and will teach them to the best of our abilities. That said, I really think that timing and age appropriateness needs to be considered as well.

When each of my three kids were around 4 years old, they worried about death. Don’t know what it was about that age, but it was a genuine worry about losing family members or dying themselves. We took the opportunity to talk to them about how different people cope with death and what comforts them. We didn’t tell our kids there is no god, and we didn’t discourage them from believing in heaven. My middle son found that believing in reincarnation was comforting to him.

This freedom to feel and believe was good for them at the time. Especially when they watched their Grandfather move quickly through the final stages of brain cancer (6 months from diagnosis to death.) My youngest was 4 at the time. We didn’t hide what was happening, were honest and open about cancer and the process of dying, and gave them the opportunity to be with their Grandfather as much as they needed. They went to the funeral as well. It comforted them to believe that their grandfather would go to heaven. That is what extended family members talked about too.

It’s been 3.5 years since, and we still have discussions about science and religion and what my children believe continues to change as they grow, learn and understand. The belief in heaven is shifting as they are able to think more critically. We talk about the finality of death, and we talk more about how DH and I don’t believe that there is a heaven or god.

Just as my kids are different ages, they are at different points in what they believe. And we will continue to have open dialogue. I am confident that they, in adulthood, will chose a path that suits them best.

It was listed somewhere above but I agreed with it – right now I am too young to have any children but my very atheist family introduced me to Greek mythology before there was a chance for the Christian brand. My mother was very passive which did backfire in my teens when I decided to become a believer, but that lasted little over a year and was due to peer pressure (my teen rebellion was Jesus….)

A conversation I do remember having with a six-year-old I babysat came at dinner time when he asked for clarifications on the different sects of monotheism. I explained what each believed and said none were the “right “way” but what people choose to make the most sense for them. (keep in mind I did not know his parents’ religion) He shared that he was very content with knowledge on what beliefs were and that he was not bound to them.