As an Atheist, what do you tell your little kids?
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Anonymous
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I can't imagine ever respecting anyone who lies to me about life after death. Why should I believe anything you ever say, if you just say (or worse believe!) whatever you think will temporarily placate me instead of the truth?
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Anonymous
Of course, no one really knows “the truth” about divine things, life after death or the other matters typically considered the subject of religion. People have beliefs. Not all beliefs agree. People disbelieve. They disagree with each other. There are all sorts of things nobody understands. |
Anonymous
| Im Jewish and an atheist as well. I never needed comfort of a higher being. And you'd be surprised by some kids. Mine are very sensitive to fairness and have a lot of empathy. They have religious friends and even in early ES they ask "if there is a god, why would he allow xyz to happen- referring to wars and friends' challenges like health issues or other things". |
Anonymous
So, I'll agree with other posters - I think this is something that, because of how you were raised, you took comfort in, because you were taught to, but those who are raised outside religion often find that's not really necessary (and often, when seen outside the lens of religion, this is really a creepy concept.) In the situation where someone dies, for example, I tell my little kids that they are "all gone" to help them understand. I explain it's okay to be sad, and it's okay to miss them, and we can take comfort in remembering the good times we had with them.
As the kids get old enough, I explain that there are a lot of people who believe in a god. *We* know that gods aren't real, but some people take comfort in believing they are real, just like a friend might have fun with/take comfort in having a make believe invisible friend. It's ok for people to believe in gods as long as they're not hurting us, so even though we know it's not real, we shouldn't tell our friends that the god they believe in isn't real. (Not only is this a kindness thing, but even in the liberal DC area, this is a survival skill.) As for the parents angle, that can be tough. I would be very uncomfortable if gifts like that were coming to my kids, but I'd try to remind myself, especially if someone didn't know about my atheism, that the givers are just making an assumption and that they're coming from a kind place. I might tell them, hey, I appreciate the thought, but our family is not Christian, so I would appreciate it if the gifts of a religious nature stopped being given to my kids. If you really can't have that conversation with your family, you can do things like censor the mail (throw the gifts away before the kids see them) but that can be risky. You can also try to limit contact, but at the end of the day, I would always vote to have the conversation if push came to shove (instead of silently letting family give and kids receive those types of gifts.) |
Anonymous
This was certainly true in my case. I had given up on religion except for life after death which really appealed to me. When I became an atheist, that had to go too. Everyone’s life ends at death, of course, but thinking that it’s going to go on forever can be a great comfort, until you realize how ridiculous it is |
Anonymous
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It’s important to offer your kids a consistent and honest message about death from the start. Kids can understand basic concepts of this very early and you just need to adjust what you tell them based on their age. But keep the message the same so they know they can trust you, they control how much they take in at a time (keep things simple and answer questions directly but don’t go off on some long confusing and overwhelming tangent). They may feel scared or sad, that’s okay, that’s how kids learn how to handle these feelings.
Remember too that things like heaven and God are abstract, so they aren’t going to understand it anyway when they are young. It’s very confusing to get one message from the person you are suppose to trust and another message later on. Also, I think you’ll find that once you start trying to protect them from scary things, there is no “older age” that you will feel okay with sharing scary things…. it only gets harder. Attempting to protect them from pain and trying to control their feelings, will only lead to kids who are less able to cope with hard facts, or difficult events, like death or loss of a friendship, or learning about all the other scary stuff in the world. |
Anonymous
| Comfort of a higher being? Then explain the Holocaust. I'll go first. God is not here to prevent anything bad from ever happening. Whatever the supreme being, it is more to present a set of lessons for people to follow. |
Anonymous
Just like we don’t know “the truth” about Santa? |
Anonymous
Right -- It's so obvious once you give up the crazy idea of eternal life. It's very interesting to me that some people, according to what they have said here on DCUM, never could bring themselves to believe in God, despite being indoctrinated, while most of us fall for the idea of a god looking over us, despite the regular reminders that no god is doing any such thing. |
Anonymous
| You don’t sound atheist. |
Anonymous
I'd just say about the nativity set "Yeah, I'm not really into that. Actually, let's donate it to someone who would appreciate it but maybe can't afford it." And then drop it off at a church. |
Anonymous
That's OK, in that it makes light of the idea of a nativity set, but it may seem like Mom is just asserting her power rather than teaching the kids something of value. Perhaps it would be better to assert that it's make believe. |
Anonymous
And there are more and more things that people do understand, thanks to modern science, which didn't exist when most religions were formed. Please don't write off religious beliefs like that. It seems quite irresponsible. It doesn't make any sense that a good Jew would go somewhere different after death than a good Christian. We all just die, like our beloved dogs and cats. |
Anonymous
You don't sound like a believer. Actually, I have no idea what you believe and you have no idea what OP believes. |
Anonymous
This |