Anyone else just go to church with your spouse and go through the motions?

I admit I take communion at my wife's Lutheran Church. But I totally don't believe.

We are expecting our first (and only) child, both atheist for 10+ years but not vocal about it to family.

I know we will likely get a “baby’s first picture Bible” or two from aunts, grandmas, etc. but I’m curious if y’all would say thank you then stash it or toss it later, or pre-empt with something on the baby shower invite (or by word of mouth) that we would not like religious books, clothes, or toys. We’re from the south so I’m thinking the grin-and-bear-it is the most likely recommended, but it would also be nice to not have to field “Jesus loves me” crap for years to come

[self-promotion advisory :) ]

I wrote a children's book, a story I would have liked to have read to my son when he was little.He's 11 now and he loves it, but unfortunately I got the inspiration years too late for him to be at the prime age for it. We're in the middle of putting together the final product (I'm working with an amazing artist, Cara Bevan, to illustrate it, and she's about halfway through... just getting to the pages I'm most excited about!).

Mother Forest and Her Gifts is my version of an old folktale or creation myth, but as if the original prehistoric storytellers had understood the process of evolution.

In a nutshell, "Mother Forest" is my anthropomorphic stand-in for Nature, and she is handing out gifts to the animals that help them do their thing - claws for the big cat to help her climb trees and snare deer, a shell for turtle to protect him, and so on. Each animal has a question about their gift, because every gift has a drawback; for example, Turtle complains that his shell is bulky and he can't run with it - Mother Forest explains that he won't need to run anymore, because wherever he goes, he is already home and safe... you get the picture. Finally we come to the family of apes, and the rest of the story is about the apes and their journey to make use of the confusing set of gifts Mother Forest has given them. That's about as much as I want to spill before the actual book is out, sorry!

I don't want to paste the whole story on the internet for obvious reasons, but I would be happy to answer questions about it, about me, or about the experience of self-publishing it.

We're over halfway to the finish line with illustrating and designing the book, and we've had to put up a Kickstarter to help with the production costs. We don't have any spare money to invest in the project and have already borrowed a little against our house, and would like to finish it and pay for promotional costs without borrowing even more. We're self-publishing, not because I showed it to a lot of publishers and they didn't want it (I didn't submit it anywhere, just went right to self-publishing), but because I didn't want to have to fight a publisher as a first-time author to soften the evolution theme of the story for broader commercial success. I wrote this for kids, and for parents like me who have too few books to choose from that support a reality-based worldview - not to sell as many copies as possible at the expense of the message.

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Yeah that's my name; I decided to \"doxx myself\" a while back. My FB profile links to my u/ page, my reddit handle is on my personal/business cards, etc.

I have two more stories already written, not sequels but written in the same vein - stories that read like old oral-tradition folktales, but which incorporate a modern understanding of nature. One of them is called "The Lesson of the Bees" and it uses bees as examplars of hard work, community spirit, and self-control.

Anyway, if you're into it, slide over to that Kickstarter page where you can see some of the finished pages and art, and support the project if you think it's worthy and/or to get a copy as soon as it's in print (the lowest reward tier is basically list price + $10 to cover shipping, so it's about the same as simply pre-ordering the book).

Keep on keepin' on, fellow nonbeliever moms and dads!

Rant incoming: I just found out about two teachers at the elementary school that are bulling LGBTQ kids. Such as two teachers going up to a little kid that was wearing a pansexual pin, and telling her that she needed to explain what the pin meant and why she was wearing it. Then laughing at her when she completely shut down. Or when one of the above teachers told a young child that wants to be called them/they, that they were born a girl, and will only be called she/her at the school. These teachers are known bullies, and I have put in complaints on one of them before for telling my daughter's friend that she was, "too dumb to pass this grade." as well as other things just as bad. I've submitted a complaint, but I still feel that these teachers will be allowed to continue bullying these poor kids. They should be fired, but they might get a light talking-to. I'm just frustrated and feel horrible for these little kids. There is no hate like christian love.

I've taught myself to resist false information from a very early age, and was able to fend off any brainwashing or indoctrination attempts by adults including teachers. But I was lucky. My parents never indoctrinated me. They never dragged me into sunday school. And on TV I saw a lot of scientific programs, where I learned to be intrigued by how things work, what there is to discover, and that there are reasons behind every mechanism there is.

I basically replicated this with my kids now. Expose them to lots of ideas on how something might work. Searching and recognizing how mechanisms, how anything works. And posing falsehoods, pretend they're true for a bit, and then go "true of false?". Kids immediate response: "FALSE !!!".
So they know how to see how an idea without any explanation as to how it actually works, how that is probably false.

Plus I also make it clear that I find all the religious ideas in this world ridiculous. There are much better explanations as to how things work.

Noway anyone is going to get any religious planting of ideas or feelings past them.

So the point is that future proofing your children takes a bit of effort. Expose them to science early on. Find educational materials about things like space, computers, electricity, chemistry, and discovering nature, evolution, how earth formed, how life emerged, ideas on how the big bang might have been triggered. When they get a bit older, arm them with mindsets like from Carl Sagan and Michael Shermer, with each their own Baloney Detection Kits (look it up, it's great).

If you don't, then one day they might get won over by false fantasies, like some jesus or mohammed or other such absurd nonsense.

Peace, heath, prosperity! Discover! Develop! Evolve!

My almost 4 year old has been asking about the Easter Bunny and I'm not sure how to go about it. We celebrate Christmas and did Santa - but "he" only brought one mid value present. I like the holiday season- Christmas trees, decorations, gifts and all the fun traditions that come with it, and ignore the Jesus bits. But Easter feels too religious for me and I wasn't really planning to do any celebration around it. Has anyone else successfully navigated Easter or have any words of advice?

When I hear the word indoctrination, my first thought is religious indoctrination. I had a moment a little bit ago that was very clear I am indoctrinating my daughter. And I'm OK with it. In fact, I was a little proud.

She booed the Packers. :)

The feeling of pride was there.

What have you "indoctrinated" your kids with?

Specifically in Roman and Greek myths.

I believe this how I started to wonder how mankind created these gods then later on I started questioning the Christian God.

Little by little I'm telling them stories about Christian mythologies, starting with how God killed the unicorns.

If this the wrong sub, please redirect.

I'm currently a parent and an atheist, however I'm considering joining religion (for context).

I have a few questions for others about parenthood:

1. did you plan to become parents or not?
2. if planned, did you perform a rational analysis of the decision and conclude to proceed?
3. if so, can you describe the logic you used?

For myself, I would say that I could not conceive of a logical argument which is sound to become a parent at all, and in fact had to take a "leap of faith" to do so.

This is one of various practical life experiences which has demonstrated to me to futility of the secular/atheist ideology... if it's not actually practicable for the most basic of life decisions, it seems like it's not an empirically accurate model of reality.

A follow up question would be this:

4. are you familiar with antinatalist arguments and have you considered them? An example goes something like this... Future humans can't communicate consent to be created, therfore doing so violates the consent of humans. The ultimate good is to avoid suffering, and this is impossible without sentience. If one eliminates sentience by not making more humans, one achieves the ultimate good by eliminating suffering.

Often there's a subsequent follow up, which is that those who do exist can minimize their suffering by taking opiods until they finally cease to exist and also eliminate the possibility of their own suffering.

I can't create a logical argument against this view without appealing to irrational reasons about my own feelings and intuitions.

To me this seems to highlight the limitations of a purely logical/rational approach to life.

Any thoughts?

For context, My husband (31/m) and I (31/f) are both atheist, we have a 6 year old. My mother (62/f) is a Christian.

My mother is mad at me for setting boundaries, told her she cant talk about her religion with my child anymore and I took away sleepovers unless Im there, because she continued to talk to my child about Jesus & the bible like a week after this conversation. She isnt talking to me and has cut me out of work we do together so this is also effecting my financially 😵 Is there any Scripture or anything that talks about respecting a child's parents' wishes? Because I'm only finding verses regarding children respecting their own parents. If yoy dont have a verse advice wouls also be appreciated, I miss my mom & I hate that shes trying to punish me for parenting my child my own way. Thanks a bunch!

I know the Christianity community would probably have more knowledge on verses but Im unsure if they'd be on my side in this lol

My in-laws (especially my mother-in-law) are very religious. My wife and I are atheist (both of us were indoctrinated in Christianity as kids) and have chosen to avoid exposing our boys (8 and 7) to religious teachings until they are older and have more developed critical thinking skills. We have made our in-laws aware of our choice and asked that they refrain from religious talk around the boys.

At least once a month, our boys visit their grandparents' house and stay overnight so that my wife an I can have an occasional child-free date night, just the two of us. It's much appreciated. Lately, the boys have been making odd comments here and there about "god" and "heaven" and such. When questioned about where they heard such things, they will default to "other kids at school," so I didn't think there was too much I could do about it except to insulate them by reminding them that they should not just believe everything they hear. People are often wrong about things and I teach my boys to question ideas and not take something as truth without evidence, but they are still young and therefore rather impressionable

Recently, when they started making comments about "death" and "heaven" and I questioned them, they reluctantly told me that "grandma" had been telling them about "god, Jesus, and heaven." Obviously, I was more than a little annoyed. She had been made aware of our wishes and was willingly teaching them things that I explicitly told her not to expose their young minds to.

So here's the reason for this rant. A couple years back, my nephew, who suffered from severe depression, took his own life at the age of 18. My boys were VERY close to my nephew and loved him dearly. My 8-year-old reminds me a LOT of my nephew; he is a VERY sensitive kid. They constantly mention missing him and quiz us on exactly how he died, but we have withheld the exact details because of their young ages. So, of course, grandma has told my sons something to the effect that their cousin has gone to heaven to be with Jesus and is waiting to see them again.

The other day, my younger son was teasing my older son in the car about "getting the flu" and my 8-year-old said, "Good. I hope I die so I can see ****** (my nephew) in heaven." I almost fucking lost it. I am still seething. This "hoping to die" comment/thought process is 100% the fault of her filling his head with her religious bullshit.

When I can do so calmly, I am going to meet with her and call her out on violating our wishes. I'm going to mention what he said, how I believe her religioius indoctrination contributed to those thoughts, and explain to her that if I find my 8-year-old hanging from a god-damned rope in his bedroom, my wife and I are going to hold her personally responsible. I also drill into my kids that we do not keep secrets from each other. I will tell her that if I find out she is continuing to poison their little minds during sleepovers, there will be no unsupervised time with grandma in the future. This is tantamount to child abuse in my opinion.

/rant

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My kids believe in God I don't I can't tell them because it feels like I am taking Santa away. My oldest is 12 she is super smart. She takes advanced placement classes. When she was in kindergarten her teacher told me she could do Disney and she would write the letter of recommendation. My teacher called me once before parent-teacher day and said don't come in she doing wonderful in everything. Her school counselor called her future valedictorian. She is different. She has told me some disturbing things that I think she getting from religion. This conversation came up because her friend is bi and has a girlfriend. She told me she could only be straight because she was Christian and Christians are straight. She also told me that an abortion is when someone kills their baby. She also told me she doesn't believe in the theory of evolution she believes in the bible. I am against all this I don't care if she is gay, I am pro-choice and I am beyond floored she does not believe in evolution. I want her to make her own choices of what she believes I don't know what to do.

Edit: When my daughter came home from school today I talked with her. I still did not come out saying I don't believe in god but told her there were some things about Catholic Christianity that I wanted to share. I told her about the Crusades. I also told her that the Bible contains parts from different regions the old testament is Jewish, easter and Christmas are pagan holidays, and the story of the virgin birth is from an Egyptian religion. I told her she meant to be drawn to Christianity because it is a religion that our country follows. But in other parts of the world, different belief systems are followed like Buddism, the Tao, Hinduism, and Muslim examples. I explained to Santria how when the slaves came over from Africa they hid their gods in the saints and the religion now is a mix of catholic and African religions. I told her religion can become a problem when people stop respecting other beliefs. I told her I am pro-choice and support lgbtq. It is a start.

Ive been teaching my 6 year old about various religions. Ive kept her sheltered but a family member talked to her about God and Heaven. We responded by taking away unsupervised visits as it was discussed before and we've been reading books about Roman & norse mythology, religion, folklore and fairytales. We got her the movie Hercules, we have Pocahontas on the way, and we're going to get The Prince of Egypt next. I was wondering if anyone has movie suggestions, ANY religions are good and Im also looking to possibly find movies about the story of Jesus or Adam and Eve without there being any messaging of "God is the only truth, God loves you, ect ECT" Just the storyline without indoctrination. We would like to introduce her to the stories before someone else tries to teach with an agenda, as we live in a dense christian area. Thanks!

My daughter has a new found interest in Jesus and Christianity since recently learning about the birth of Christ at school. Since its nearly Christmas her school and or teacher have decided to include Jesus in the first grade curriculum. She brought home a nativity scene she made for an art project. She attends public school. I believed public schools legally were not allowed to teach children about religion in any manner? Am I mistaken? I am 30 and don’t remember any of my teachers bringing up the topic of religion even briefly when I was in grade school, through college, let alone teaching us specifics about Jesus and the Christian religion.

Im pretty angry about the whole situation. If they were teaching briefly about all religions in an unbiased manner I would be totally accepting and open to it. But that’s not the case, and I am extremely angry that they are attempting to indoctrinate my child. She is asking to be baptized and go to church now out of the blue. What can I do about this situation, is this even legal? Do I have options? What can I do? I live in NE Ohio.

Hey Guys,

I'm pregnant with my 1st and I'm not sure if their is another sub for this. I'm so over pregnant religious people, and it seems like all of them are.

I hate reading about miscarriages experienced on my mom board and seeing "everything happens for a reason," "God knows best," or the fan favorite "thoughts and prayers" groups that flood the board with religious nonsense and platitudes.

There was a lady who decided to "comfort" a woman who had miscarried by saying "god picks the best ones, and he knows which children are right for you," or something to that affect. How awful to believe in a fucked up god so much that you try to spin a miscarriage as god doing what's best, when so many kids are forced to be born only to live a few short agonizing months. He couldn't have taken those ones?

I'm pretty recently atheist, so I still have that ball of rage in my chest when I come across these types of posts or comments.

I'm sure this sub is for navigating parenthood in a religious world and not necessarily the journey to parenthood itself. I just have no idea where to go to talk to rational parents about this isolating part of life. It feels so much more isolating with everyone thanking a god that they had sex and are doing something every single thing on this planet does. There are those that struggle with infertility and miscarriages and I'm much more understanding of those situations.

It's just difficult to explain how frustrating it is to be going through pregnancy and having people say "you are so blessed," and so many other religious oriented things. It feels like one giant performance where everyone is buying into this make believe reality and they expect you to play along. Every time I talk to someone I'm on the defense wondering when they are going to connect my pregnancy with their god and assume that I buy into the same bs they do.

I don't know if anyone experienced anything similar. I would like to hear your thoughts on how you navigated this part of life. If this isn't the right sub I completely understand. Mods let me know if I need to take this somewhere else.

My non-binary, gay 11yo, who has been (mercifully) raised without religion by two parents who abandoned our Catholic upbringings, has informed me that they want to become Christian. Their best friend is Christian—the type who thinks they hear devil worshipping in secular music and whose Christian mother I know to be homophobic.

When I raised my eyebrow at this news, my child tried to assure me they just want to be a “lukewarm” Christian—which they defined as “not ready to give up everything for god.” I bought some time by saying I need to think about what this means exactly.

I could use any advice about how to navigate this new interest. I should add that I find religion to be fascinating (even minored in religion in college). If my child came to me professing an interest in Jesus and desire to learn more and serve others in his spirit, I would have a better reaction. This feels more like jumping on a bandwagon with a superstitious and (likely) homophobic and hate-filled agenda. So…what would you do in my situation?

I was raised by Christian parents, my entire family is religious and dogmatic. Despite being in my mid twenties, until this year I was the youngest member of my extended family. Now, my cousin has had a baby and they ("he") are being raised amongst the same religious dogma that has jaded me.

Likely at least for the next several years, I'll be expected to get this child regular gifts and be a part of their life, despite technically being a bit of a distant relative, because my family is quite small.

I'm well aware that this child will never care, be affected by, or likely even know about the gift I get them for their first Christmas, but if I'm going to be some kind of part of it's life I want to always take the steps to symbolise to them (and to their parents) that they aren't trapped into the traditions their entire family and that they have at least 1 relative who will support them whoever they are. I know I have no responsibility to raise this child, and ultimately I can't protect them from a dogmatic upbringing, but I never felt I had a way out and I wouldn't wish and the irreparable damage that caused on anyone, especially family.

Now it's easy enough to buy the baby a kids book about farm animals, or baby clothes or something, but I've been thinking about ways to symbolise to the parents they (and their child) have secular support outside of their closed bubble. I think something like a book about expression (see: My Shadow Is Purple) would be a bit too on the nose, and would be taken more as an insult to the parents than anything else (also they're, not of reading age yet, just an example), I ask you reddit: any suggestions? Should I just stick to something basic like a toy instead?

This question is partly about gifting, but it goes further than that - how can I use my presence in this kids life as a positive and supportive influence without insulting the parents and causing a divide? What steps can I take as the child gets older and grows into their early teens to help? Should I even be this invested in trying to support them? Am I doing the right thing here, or am I being too extra?

I received an email from my son’s teacher right before school let out notifying me that he yelled a “cuss word” in class and she told him “that kind of behavior would not be tolerated in class.” I thought from the tone of the email that it was going to be a major undeniable swear word. I found him crying under the tree during pick up and he just kept saying that he didn’t know it was a swear word. I asked him what he said and he said , “what the hell.” He said it as an exclamation while playing a game, not in a confrontational way towards his teacher. He was sent into the hallway and she told him that she was “ashamed of him.”

Now, I agree that kind of language is not appropriate for school and I told him as much. He didn’t think it was a bad word because it is used in church. We live in a fairly religious community and unfortunately lately we’ve had a lot of religious protesters slinging “hell” around freely, some even in front of public schools and at children events downtown.

Given this, I feel like sending my son to the hall and shaming him was too extreme. I feel a simple, “I don’t like that language in my classroom,” or something along those lines would have been more appropriate rather than shaming him. I explained to my son that “hell” is in gray territory and while not appropriate to say in school, depending on context and audience it could be considered a bad word.

My husband and I are in a disagreement on if we should send an email saying that we felt the punishment didn’t fit the “crime” or just leave it. I have been trying to have a good working relationship with his teacher, even though she rubs me the wrong way. Locally she is very involved in Proverbs 31 ministries and I’ll be honest that has tainted my opinion of her. I am all for personal beliefs but I feel when it comes to our professions we have to keep them in check. It feels to me like her beliefs caused her to have a stronger reaction to a simple mistake and maybe we should just let it go. My husband is angered by the shaming and wants to contact the principal. Thoughts?

Hello! I’m just trying to make a support group for honestly all or any non religious people that would like to rage, rant, vent, hype up, do a happy dance post about a successful anything, or even just weep. My daughter was diagnosed with cancer(leukemia) at the age of 1 it sucked and still does. I’m coming close to the year mark of her diagnosis and the thing I’ve found extra hard is that most support communities are religiously based. And while I appreciate their help and support I often felt that the prayer and thanking of gods tiring. It made me think there must be something for us because I’m atheist and I care; Surely there must be others. Turns out there are! We just haven’t formed a group yet. So here I am! Give me you’re weak, tired, and hungry godless people and let’s be here for each other. Who knows maybe we can even hold bake sales and actually make our own kind of change and help? <3

My kindergartener borrowed this book from the school library. Would I be out of line by contacting the school and asking that they not send books like this home with him? I told him it was inappropriate... but he can't read more than sight words right now so it's not like he realizes.

My 7 yo goes to a private school where they go to church weekly. It’s by far academically the best option where we live, and the material is taught well without an overbearing religious slant. My son has started to really get into the church part and will occasionally ask me or argue about god. I pose questions for him to think about (god loved everybody so much he decided to kill them all? That doesn’t make sense to me, would you want to kill everyone you love?”) or answer confirming he’s right in remembering the stories he learned, and yes a bunch of people believe that, but there are also people who don’t believe it.

Well the other day he announced out of nowhere, “did you know that no one knows that hell is real?” I assume this was alluding to the fact that hell doesn’t have a biblical basis, but I said “you’re right, no one knows if heaven or hell is real.”

The kicker… he said “yeah they just tell kids it’s real so they’ll behave.”

Maybe this whole religious thing won’t stick after all.

So about 6 months ago I notice my mom pushing her Christian religion on me and my family(31F, 31M, and 5F) in our last conversation I told her how I'm leaving thay decision up to my daughter when she gets older. If she ever decided to follow a religion it will be because it was her idea, not something that was forced or pushed on her. I told her please dont talk to her about it or go behind my back and take her to get baptised or something, we wouldnt miss something like that for the world(in 10 years if it would be HER choice) The conversation "Okay its your child so I guess I dont have a say" and we've been okay since, besides my mom letting her play computer games after I told her no more because my daughter would cry everytime i told her she cant go there just because she wants to play a game. And my daughter told me while we were all eating and my mom told her "shhh! You need to learn to keep a secret" which i quickly replied "Not in our house we dont keep secrets" I brushed it off because that kind of stuff happens at grandparents, they give you too much candy, ice cream, or games in this case. Last week my daughter stayed over at her house because my daughter asked to go. So we made it happen, no problem. I picked her up and not even after 10 minutes of having her she asked me what heaven was and what happens after we di e. I was so upset, we decided at this point since a conversation has taken place and she STILL talked to her about this anyway, were taking away unsupervised visits. And my daughter knows there are not going to be anymore sleepovers. My mom already asked her "When you going to stay the night again?" And my daughter respectfully told her no thank you with no explanation(I love this kid lol) I can see this is all going to have to come down to another conversation. The only reason I'm nervous because the type of person she is, persistent, petty, & unrelenting so once this conversation happens I feel like it'll be a war between us and open communication will not even be a thing just more "secrets" adding up. I love how close we are and I dont want to push things to where its going to be me vs her & I eventually have to cut her out because she wont stop. I feel like she knows because she has suddenly sent me YT videos of church this morning. Does anyone have an suggestions? I'm upset about it but if i approach like that she will just match my energy and that won't get us where I want to be. I want her to be in our lives, but not if she doesnt even respect my husband and I enough to follow our rules.

I am an Atheist who was raised Southern Baptist. I've always been very open minded and enjoy learning about all the myths and legends. Religion is just a part of that. My son today asked what the 'mansion' we passed today out on the road was. I said, "oh that's just a church."

Son: Oh! I wanna go to church!

Me: Do you even know what a church is?

Son: No

Me: Why do you want to go to one?

Son: I don't know, because I want to.

Me: Well when you get older you can check it out if you want to. I won't stop you. It's just not a typical place to just go visit. It's a place for those who believe in a God.

Son: What is God?

Me: A mythical being who is said to have almighty power. You know, it's kinda like a Unicorn.

Son: Ok. Does a Unicorn have wings?

Me: No that's a Pegasus! Which is another mythical creature.

Son: Ok.

That was the extent of the conversation. I brought it up with my husband who is Atheist as well and he did not seem even remotely amused by the conversation we shared.

Husband: Why are you even having this conversation with him? It's not for children.

I'm a little confused, because I thought we were both open minded people. We've had this conversation on several occasions even before a child was even thought of and conceived. Our son will be starting kindergarten next year and we live in the Southern US. He will be introduced one way or another and I thought it would have been great to be that introduction. Especially since he asked and seemed interested enough to hold a conversation about it.

Is 5yo too young? What was I supposed to say to him then? None of your business?

There is no way I’m letting anyone in my family get custody of my children if the worst happens to my husband and I. Let’s just leave it at that.

My husband has a brother and sister in law that love my boys and financially secure. I feel like they’d be the obvious choice, but I know that the boys would have religion forced down their throats. I’m terrified of my boys being in this situation and being told that their parents are in hell because they were nonbelievers. But I do think they’d be safe and loved in that home.

The other choice would be my husbands two best friends that are married to each other but live on the other side of the country and haven’t met our boys. We keep in touch but just haven’t been able to visit lately for our boys to know them. But they would be loved, safe, and in an open minded home. But I can see how my boys being moved across the country away from everyone they know and love would be traumatic on top of trauma of losing both parents…

I also feel like my parents would fight for custody. What is the likelihood of them winning this battle?

No one told me about this part of parenting.

Today my boys (11 and 9) went over to grandma and grandpa’s house after school for a few hours. These are my in-laws, my FIL and step MIL, they’re nice people, super conservative but they don’t talk much about it. All their kids are pretty liberal so they’re basically just resigned.

My kids get in the car to go home and my 11 year old says to me, “grandma and I had an interesting conversation” I’m not exactly sure how it came up but from the telling of my son, he basically tried to convert her to atheism. Apparently he told her he understood why she would believe in heaven, because she’s getting old and is probably afraid to die, so he understands why she needs that comfort to hold on to. I can’t really remember everything he said to me, but it was really the most hysterical conversation.

I told him it’s ok, a lot of people from her generation were raised that way and it’s hard to see the world any other way after believing it for so long. And no need to “convert” people, its ok for others to believe what they want.

Not gonna lie, I’m a little worried what my in-laws think of my kids being blatantly, non-apologetically atheist, but I also kinda love it, so just thought I would share!

My daughter is 4yo and her mom and I split up a few months back. I've been adamant about not introducing her to religion. Now that we're split up she's upset that I won't let her go to a church ran pre-k (because it's cheaper even though I'm paying 80% of the cost) and is threatening to take her to church. I don't know what to do or how to keep my daughter from being subjected to that.

I got married at 20 and had her at 21, this was considered and old maid in my religious community. She is 9 years old and now we have low contact with my relgious mom and relatives. She use to say she wanted to be like grandma and grandpa (get married at 19 and start having babies), be like me (21). Cue a few days and we were talking about soil, rocks (her favorite subject) and she casually mentions thar she didn't want to have married or kids til 34 because she may want to get her PhD and travel to collect samples.

I love it. If she has kids, cool. If not, also cool. If my religious mom was more involved, she would try to say that "babies are a blessing in all situations!!!" To a 9 year old.

Is anyone aware of organizations or places that have secular youth groups? I grew up going to one in a Christian church. While I don’t agree with their beliefs, it was great commraderie at that age and I’d like to give my kid the same experience.