With regards to Atheists and their children?

Question

Lets say youre an atheist who wants to raise children with the same outlook into the world as yours. What happens when your child asks you why the majority of the people in the world believe in a god? Do you tell them the majority of the people in the world are delusional?

What happens if they ask you at a very early age and as a consequence they get the feeling that theyre surrounded by delusional people, that the world is a place full of crazy people, and theyre among the very few who arent? How would that actually make the child feel?

If you dont do any of these, what do you tell your child when they want to know why so many people believe in God?

Doesnt an explanation like: the world is full of delusional people and youre in the upper 5% of rational ones. Make the child look down on others? or perhaps make the child start his/her life with a negative outlook on other people?

Note: Im not Christian

Answer 1

What happens if they ask you at a very early age and as a consequence they get the feeling that theyre surrounded by delusional people, that the world is a place full of crazy people, and theyre among the very few who arent? How would that actually make the child feel?

you say this like it's a bad thing? i think the kid would feel greatful that he wasn't crazy!

Answer 2

When people grow up to the point of being able to think in the abstract, they start to wonder about life:
1) Where did I come from?
2) Why is the world such a mess?
3) Is there a solution?
4) What is my purpose?

Parents can tell there children what they know and experience, but while human reason and perception are legitimate ways to gain knowledge, we cannot depend on these methods alone because they're not enough.

Some information needs to be given to us from outside the system. An outside Revealer provides information we can't get any other way. Revelation--revealed truth from the One who knows everything--is another, not only legitimate but necessary way to know some important things. Revelation is how we know what happened when the earth, the universe and man were created. Revelation is how we know what God wants us to do and be. Revelation is how we can know how the world will end and what heaven is like. Revelation in the form of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only way we can experience "God with skin on."

If the Atheist is determined to let their children seek out truth, they will allow the child to study and integrate various worldviews. I believe Atheists have a desire to have their children live with integrity. When their children find out that worldviews contradict each other and can't all be true, they will come to their own conclusions about God and truth.

Answer 3

I have been raised in an agnostic/atheist home, but never in that perspective. We read bible stories sometimes if my mother felt they fit a situation, and we had a big book on comparative religion which put five major religions side by side on different subjects, I read that a lot. I never got the suggestion that religious people were crazy. As a child it never occured to me to lump all religions together, so the question you're suggesting would not have made sense to me. And by the way, children have a rich imagination anyway, I believed practically every book I read to a certain degree. So that grownups did the same did not seem weird to me at all.

Answer 4

I don't have kids yet, but I think I will raise them the way my mother raised my sister and I. We were sent to different churches, even though my mother didn't attend. We were told to hear it out, and make up our own minds. We were taught to try to respect everyone based on who they were, not on the god they believed in. We were encouraged to read about everything. I never asked why so many people believe in God - I was a kid. I was more concerned about my Barbies and Legos than anything else.

My mom is a Deist. My sister is agnostic now, and I'm an atheist. I get along with most everyone, regardless of faith. I'm engaged to a Christian who believes as I do - children should be allowed to find their own path, and encouraged to do so. Our kids won't be baptized unless that's what they want. We won't impose our ideas on them, but will discuss them when the time is right. Unconditional love is just that - unconditional.

Answer 5

I have made it very clear to my son that he is free to choose what he believes and I will love and accept him no matter what his choice is. He is 13 now and has gone to a baptist church several times and decided it wasn't for him all by himself. Then for a short while he was interested in Budhism, but it was mostly because he liked a Budhist girl, and when the infatuation ended so did his interest in Budhism. He is a very sweet and loving person who already has a good grasp of the sanctity and frailty of life that surpasses any child's understanding that I've encountered so far. For now he claims to also be an atheist, but if that changes, my love for him will not. As far as the rest of the world and how he sees it, I tell him alot of people feel the need to believe in a higher power of some kind, it makes them feel special and loved when they otherwise might not, plus it gives them comfort to think they'll go to a happy place when they die. I tell him that the truth is no one really knows if our consciousness or "spirit" as some people call it, lives on after our bodies die, but we will all find out sooner or later.

Answer 6

so what did you % your youngster to declare? it rather is completely ok for the youngster to tell all of us santa did not exist, i did while i became a newborn, i made a 9 3 hundred and sixty 5 days previous cry - she became 9 and nonetheless believed. if the mother and father are caught in a lie - too undesirable. if she thinks angels are pretend - do you settle? specific. and honest through fact there are not any, and the originals had no wings - so as that they are pretend. you are able to purely instill on her that your loved ones does not have confidence in those issues. uncertain how ordinary that's, regardless of the undeniable fact that it rather is all you're able to do.

Answer 7

no, i wouldn't call them "delusional"

i would simply tell my child that all those people needed the reassurance of a life after this and that there is a higher power watching over them.

now, if they asked me my opinion, i would tell them that whoever invented religion was a genius (what better way to make people behave than threaten them with an afterlife of eternal agony?) but i simply feel no need to put my faith in an invisible, silent, weightless, tasteless, and with no evidence of its existence "god"

however, i don't beleive in forcing something onto them. my own parents are christian (i used to be) and they never try to convert me or anything, which makes me appreciate them even more.

Answer 8

Actually, I am agnostic, my son did get raised with some religion in his earlier years.

However, I have ALWAYS taught him that there is a wide variety of belief among people, and that ALL people are to be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their beliefs.

As a theist, what would you tell your child(ren) if they asked you why some people don't believe in God, or why most of the worlds people are NOT Christian ?

Answer 9

I don't necessarily want to FORCE my outlook on my son -- that's the same mistake that has allowed religion to persist as long as it has! What I want for my son is for him to be educated and insightful enough for him to judge the facts for himself, on their own merit. I wouldn't begrudge his belonging to a church (or temple, or mosque) if he gets something worthwhile out of it.

Already, when we read from his "1,000 Questions" book about ancient civilizations, we talk about the gods that the Egyptians or Greeks or Mayans worshipped; and about how they used their myths to explain the things they didn't understand or that scared them. And we also talk about how the lessons we learn from these stories are still important and useful, even if things didn't really happen just as the story says. It's the same as when we read comic books -- truth, justice, and personal responsibility are all useful traits to cultivate in ourselves, even if there isn't a real Spider-Man or Green Lantern.

The same thing applies with religion -- my wife and I explain to him that that building over there with the big letter "t" on the roof is a place people go to hear stories about how to be a better person and live a good life, and to spend time singing and meeting with our neighbors; and that we can even go and check it out if he's interested. But since we ground this knowledge by placing it in a historical perspective, I feel pretty confident he'll be able to do the math and realize that it's just another collection of myths....

Answer 10

If I was an Atheist, I'd probably tell my child that these people belong to churches and see that they need to believe in God, but that they are normal and the same as everyone else, and nothing makes them better or less than us.