Saturday, November 25, 2006

Parental Guidance

OK here's a quandry.

I am an atheist, also a parent. My wife is 'spiritual', meaning she is kinda unsure, but 'fairly conscious of a larger power'. Our daughter is 10, up to asking questions, which I don't want to answer with my opinion, but to only encourage her own clear-thinking analysis. I want her to form her own opinion, based on the world around her. This is working, to some extent.

The school she attends is Anglican Christian, so she hears all the God stories. But she is already clear that she doesn't believe any of it. Nice work! At home, I've never heard my wife tell bible stories or anything like that, and that pleases me. But, how far should we go in negating stories she may begin to believe?

Advice please.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Personally this is a tricky one, because you want them to come up with the right answer (ie no god), but by their own thought processes. The problem comes with schools pushing religion as if it's fact, I was proud when my 6 year old said "daddy, I know all this god stuff is rubish and that he doesn't exist" (nice one!). I've already managed to stop grace being said before his school lunch and now I'm trying to get prayers removed from school assembly (his school is a non-religous school). The problem with both of these things is that some kids will find it hard to detach fact from fiction. Religious subjects should be ring fenced into RE classes where kids know what they're being taught.