Atheists: Would you be sad if your child turned out to be religious?

I was in a discussion about raising children without a particular religion, with the thought that they should be allowed to choose when they are old enough. There was some discussion about the difference between raising them neutral and raising them specifically atheist. One atheist said that she is doing the latter, and would be sad if her children turned out religious. Which makes sense...certainly religious people are disappointed if their children turn out not to be believers.

Since so many mellos are atheist, I thought I'd ask you, would you have similar feelings?

I'd think my kid was a bit dumb and/or mentally ill but I'd love them anyway.

So long as it wasn't a religious or philosophical path that I personally found unhealthy, I wouldn't care. If it gave my child peace or comfort, that is the important thing. My children aren't an extension of me and while I can understand a religious person fearing for their child's salvation, what does it matter to me if my child believes? So long as it isn't a destructive set of beliefs, I'd be happy my child was happy.

Now, if my child's religious beliefs labeled me a sodomite bound for hell and my child started preaching to me and my partner about how evil we were? Yeah, I'd be pretty disappointed.

If they had a *genuine* set of Christian beliefs that involved not being a fundamentalist arsehole, it wouldn't worry me much at all. My only real concern would be if they wanted to join a blood-drinking cult, or terrorist organisation or something. But those things would bother me just as much without the spiritual element, anyway.

Strictly speaking, no.

However I might have problems with certain beliefs. Once a religion claims some kind of privileged authority over non-believers things start to get problematic.

A lot of it would depend upon the specific religion in question. Just for example: I have trouble understanding how anyone can take Wicca seriously as the logical and proper successor of the non-violent druidic religions of Europe. If my child started spewing that at me, I'd feel compelled to sit them down with as many primary sources as I could find.

It's not even that I find Wicca particularly worrisome, or self-destructive. I just cannot stomach the ahistoricity of the religion.

(I do recognize the irony of that from someone who had been raised Catholic, with the number of events listed supposedly in the Bible that are unlikely to have ever happened.)

For the most part, however, I think Zuul's position sums up my own.

Well, while I'm generally okay with religious people, I do think they're straight-up incorrect. I think they believe in something that's untrue, so I guess I would be at least a little unhappy if my kid embraced that. Unhappier yet if they became a fundie or a Mormon or a Wiccan or an Islamic fundamentalist or something weird and crazy like that.

I'd rather any child I had, watch The Itchy And Scratchy Show 24/7/365, than be exposed to any of the bollocks passed off as wisdom that comes from all the mainstream religious organisations.

My feeling is, if you were truly religious, it wouldn't even be necessary to announce what or who you had faith in. If choosing a religion is the most personal decision a person can make, how about keeping it to your fucking self, m'kay?

While I'd never say it to them, absolutely. Most of my good friends down here are religious -- and I'm not just talking agnostic or what have you, but actually church-going cross-wearing folk. But for me, I'd feel like I failed to give my child a real understanding of the world. Believing in religion, despite being raised in a semi-religious environment, is such a foreign thing to me. It'd make me sad that that would stand between me and my child.

Although I can't imagine them joining any social, organized order with all the blasphemy I'd fill their heads with just via off-the-cuff commentary. I'd much rather they became some ghost-hunter or Wiccan, etc. At least those are fun and come with fancier actroutment and don't preach anything super crazy -- like there's an infallible god-king called the pope or whatevs.

I'd actually consider it one of my priorities in raising my child to keep religion AWAY from them.

For me it would depend on how seriously they were taking it, and what flavor of religion. Anything of an extremely conservative or fundamentalist nature I have to admit would dissappoint me. A lot. I don't think I'd be upset at all if they joined a liberal Christian de0.0

I guess I should have clarified in the OP that I wasn't really thinking about holding moral views that are different from your own. For the purposes of this exercise, let's assume that they haven't turned away from the values you taught them...the only difference is that they believe in God and choose to worship him in some way..

I would be very disappointed and sad if they took an extreme one on. I am honest enough to admit I would be mildly disappointed if they felt a need for anything more serious than Unitarian.

Hey turns out if you leave your computer on mid-post, and it goes into power-save mode... when you start up again, it'll post for you!

If it turned out to be the "eat a bag of mushrooms and feel a strong sense of interconnectedness with the universe and realize that we're all made of stars" kind of thing I'd be fine with it as that's a healthy sense of spiritualitiy which is mostly harmless to other people and it's a lot of fun. Granted they'd better be in their late teens before trying something like that.

Both myself and my fiancee had experianced the "someone from school invites you to a 'retreat' which is actually a Hare Krishna level brainwashing camp for Jesus" thing by the evangelicals and I'd have to figure out a way to arm my kid with enough intelligence and self esteem so that they wouldn't be vulnerable to such a thing, because that's how they get a lot of new recruits. Honestly, I'd lump Christians in with gangs, hard drugs and Fox News, things you have to do your best to keep your kids away from so that they have the best chance at being a mentally healthy and happy and successful person.

Depends on the religion - like others have mentioned, I'd be bothered by a religion that was particularly intolerant,* especially if it encouraged my kid to be intolerant toward family. I don't believe in preaching at others. But I do not scorn all religious belief, and if it's something that helps my kid get through the day and serves as a context for him to live a happy, healthy life of love and kindness to others, then hey, more power to him.

*My stepkids are being raised Mormon, so I guess we'll see how that goes - but we hope that we'll provide an example of how you can in fact live a good, decent, and happy life without being Mormon. (Mormonism itself teaches that this isn't possible - a non-Mormon who thinks they're happy is either ignorant of true happiness or just deceiving themselves.)

Edit: Technically I'm not an atheist, but I'm certainly agnostic, and I don't go around praying in hope that a sentient god will change the world for my benefit or anything like that - my daily life functions tend to be largely atheist.

I'm confused, I'm not an Atheist myself but also Agnostic*, but you describe yourself as a converted Jew. If agnostic why the conversion? I feel like I am missing something.


* In my case I am unsure about God but I have some pretty strong opinions on most religions and it is not pro.

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Originally posted by What Exit?

I would be very disappointed and sad if they took an extreme one on. I am honest enough to admit I would be mildly disappointed if they felt a need for anything more serious than Unitarian.

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The Unitarians I grew up with were very Bible oriented. I found that most people I respected within the UU community viewed Christianity more as a philosophy to live life by than a rule clad religion, and heavily supported self-study religious education. There's no way people can form their own opinion without studying it themselves.

How do you guys feel about things like Buddhism?

Quote:

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Originally posted by What Exit?

I'm confused, I'm not an Atheist myself but also Agnostic*, but you describe yourself as a converted Jew. If agnostic why the conversion? I feel like I am missing something.

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There are agnostic and atheist Jews. It's not a religion that requires you to have a lot of faith. In fact, it's a religion where they're more worried about what you do, your actions, than your faith. It's sort of the opposite of Christianity that way, in which you're generally expected to have some sort of faith or testimony or epiphany or whatever, and then act Christian because of that.

Anyway, I converted to Judaism largely because of my son. He started getting to the age of asking questions, and I decided to re-examine what I believed and what I wanted to tell him. I'd always felt a strong pull toward Judaism, even as a child (as it happens, my g-grandfather on my father's side was Jewish then converted to Mormonism, which is why I have a Jewish maiden name), and after exploring various options (Buddhism, Unitarians), this is where I went. I feel very at home and happy being Jewish, and my son loves it (though he's under no pressure to remain Jewish if he decides it's not for him).

OK, that makes more sense to me now.

BTW: I'm pretty well familiar with agnostic and atheist Jews* as my wife is Jewish but non-practicing. It was just the converting part as an agnostic that did not make sense to me and you are right, it is from the Christian view of conversion that the confusion arose.

* Heck if I could be from the NYC Metro area and not know that, there would be something wrong with me.

Quote:

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Originally posted by hobbler

The Unitarians I grew up with were very Bible oriented. I found that most people I respected within the UU community viewed Christianity more as a philosophy to live life by than a rule clad religion, and heavily supported self-study religious education. There's no way people can form their own opinion without studying it themselves.

How do you guys feel about things like Buddhism?

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Just my viewpoint: The really mild almost trendy form seems innocuous at least. 20 years ago I did my little thing looking at it and left convinced it had nothing for me. But I would rate it as "Mostly harmless".

It helped me approach the Bible from a historical/sociological standpoint. Learning more of the customs made parts of the Bible pretty funny and let me see how the Apostles were able to convert people. It's amazing how many things were tacked on after the fact or were just concessions to help get converts. Once you try and distill a lot of that out, there's not a lot of difference in the overall messages of Christianity and Buddhism. A Buddhist friend of mine and I have conversations about this sort of thing, and my wife (born Buddhist but converted to Christianity) has very little problems reconciling some of her Buddhist beliefs with Christianity.

A bit of a semi-atheist Jew here (hi artifex!) and I wouldn't really care if my child decided to believe instead. So long as our value systems weren't clashing and my child was behaving in what I found to be a morally correct way, I'd be okay. Some people are scared without faith. Some people need its comfort. Who am I to judge them for that?