Reply to agnostics/atheists parents: how do you explain/talk to your kids about it?

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[quote=Anonymous]Non-religious person here, raised in non-religious home. My daughter is still young, so I cannot tell you how we addressed this, but I can tell you how it worked for me as a child.

My parents are not religious - my mom goes to church, but we never went as a child and it was never something that she pushed on us at all. Her relationship with the divine is her business, in her opinion. My dad is similar, and they both have their "religions" other than actual religion. When I was a kid, I knew that there were people who went to church on Sundays and people who believed in God the same way that people believe in Santa Claus (I'm sorry if that comparison offends Christians as it always seems to do, but when I was a kid, for me, these two things were of similar spiritual value). I learned about religion as pertains to history both in and out of school, and sporadically did youth group type things with my friends through my sophomore year of high school. I grew up in the midwest and religion as a social institution was fairly unavoidable there. I never felt left out for not being part of a religious community - my parents always just taught me that some people believe one thing and some people believe another. They were careful to include a lot of different religions into their explanations of human spirituality.

I am now in my 30s with a young child. I've never been a "member" of a religious community in a former way. We were married in a unitarian church because we liked the venue. Our officiant was a friend of ours who was in seminary. Her readings were spiritual but not liturgical. I do yoga 3-4x per week, which is about as close to religious as I get, outside my love of nice pinot noir and Mad Men, and I love the spiritual elements of yoga.

I guess that my question for you is what role your beliefs play in your life. It just wasn't a big deal for my parents growing up. They cared about a lot of things and we talked about a lot of them. If I'd had a question about why we were not religious, I suspect that their answer would be that it's just not something that our family did as a family, but that if I was interested, they would be happy to explain various theologies and take me to churches to explore them. I do not remember asking about those things. My parents are not "atheists" or "agnostics" as such (especially my mom, whose spiritual life is complicated and private), and I think that their non-prioritization of religion in our house resulted in it not being a big deal.[/quote]

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