OK atheist parents - how do you deal with The God Thing?

[Bibulus]

DH and I aren't believers but we don't make a big thing out of it. We made the decision early on to be as neutral as possible in the way we talked about religion with DD, i.e. 'some people believe this, some believe that....'

She prays at school, she knows all about baby Jesus and his mother Mary, although she's probably a bit sketchy on the details of it all and has barely ever set foot in a religious building.

Anyway, this evening she asked to visit the local churchyard, so we had a little walk around, and she was asking lots of questions about the people buried there, why people brought flowers to them etc. Then she wanted to go into the church, and it was open so we poked our head in.

DD was spellbound by it - she said breathlessly, 'why is it so pretty in here mummy?' and asked a million questions about how you talk to god, what does heaven look like, who are the pretty ladies with wings on the wall.....! Then we got collared by the vicar, who was very pleasant and sweet to her and showed her round the church which enchanted her even more.

Am now regretting taking her in there a bit! I didn't want to ruin it for her so I haven't said anything to undermine the idea of god or praying or heaven. Now she is sitting next to me on the sofa practising praying. DH will do his nut!

So anyway, I'm interested to hear how other non-Christian, non-believing parents handle all this stuff?

that's a bit rude entropy, dear.

Come on, tell us how it works.

No inconsistence there at all. The gene pool is a lottery. I look like my maternal grandmother, my younger brother looks like my mother. I have the same outlook as my maternal grandmother, my other brother is a difficult mix of both grandfathers which causes angst. My middle DS is my DH through and through the others are not. DS 1 looks come from the Swedish part way back. I could go on and on.

ohhh if that was rude then it's just as well that I didn't post what I just wrote (sometimes MN eats stuff for the good of mankind....)

It is all very simple....50% of your kids genes come from you and 50% from their other parent. There is no mystery...no lottery. It is deterministic.

The connection between your unique (unless you have an identical twin) genes and your appearance, religious beliefs, height, propensity to become fat and bitter as you get older is difficult to follow because the information in the genes interacts. Again this is totally deterministic but complicated.

If there was one gene for hair colour then you would either have the same colour as your mother or father. But there are likely hundreds of genes that control hair colour, so without knowing exactly which of your mothers and fathers genes you got it is not possible to predict your hair colour. (again if you DID know your exact genetic make up you COULD predict this accurately - it is deterministic).

My DD is 50% genetically identical to me. My sister on the other hand may be anywhere from 0% to 100% genetically identical to me. Or in other words she may have gotten exactly the same 50% from my mum as I did, and exactly the same 50% from my dad as I did or she may have had the other 50% in both cases. On average one shares 50% of ones DNA with a brother/sister but in my specific case I may share a lot more or a lot less and may be more or less similar to my sister as a result.

Right so - there IS a genetic component to your capacity to believe without proof. But it will also be controlled by a large number of individual genes and so there will be SOME but NOT PERFECT correlation between my capacity to believe and my DD's. There may be a lot or very little correlation between me and my sister (depending on how similar we actually are) and there will be a lot more correlation for identical twins (which is what the researchers found and how they know it is true).

hmmm I just realised that the minimum % of genes my DD shares with my MIL is in fact around 3% (because she definitely got an X chromosome from her) whereas she is not guaranteed any genetic information from my mum at all...

This seems to suppose that it you choose your DCs father with care you can have a blank sheet of a DC. This isn't true at all-they have their own personality from day 1. My cousin and his DW have the sort of DC that you wouldn't expect-I'm not sure they are exactly comfortable with her-although they admire her (I think)- but she is nothing like them. She is however very like her great aunt.

But don't forget that most genetic inheritance comes from the maternal grandmother when the egg that will be the mother is formed. Epigenetics innit?

I go with Kahlil Gibran:

On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

You only have to read MN to see how many posters don't get on with their own parents-generally because the parents think they can control what they think.

yes but that hasn't got anything to do with genetics...

I don't know whether there is a genetic predisposition to faith or not- the fact that siblings are different obviously wouldn't be conclusive evidence against it; not all siblings are the same in other respects either and we do each inherit a double set of genes.

But I think it is a mistake to regard an analytical brain as one entity- one single gene that you have either inherited or not, and regard that as incompatible with a disposition to faith.

It would be very difficult in that case to know how to deal with the many eminent scientists who have in fact been deeply religious (or still are, it's not that rare today): do we write their science off as useless because it can't be analytical if they are also religious (we'd lose an awful lot of science that way), or do we decide that they can't really have a faith because it isn't compatible with the analytical thinking they are clearly capable of. Or do we accept that the human psyche is a pretty complex affair?

hmm epigenetics...DNA methylation and mitochondria no doubt....racial memory even...and for that matter spontaneous mutation.....and of course Nurture.

while agree that all of these are also important factors, a) it doesnt stop it being true that your genetic code predisposes you to have faith or not and b) I don't think exotic needs confusing any further...

"This seems to suppose that it you choose your DCs father with care you can have a blank sheet of a DC."

What in the world is that supposed to mean (if anything)?

No matter who the father and mother are, each baby is born with the genetic information that will determine the vast majority of their innate physical and mental behaviour. What we do as parents to fuck them up on top of that is of course a separate issue.

I like the Kahlil Gibran thing...I mean if it were science then it would be wrong..but it isn't and is quite beautiful in a naff sort of a way.

It also represents a pretty compelling reason for not getting your children's ears pierced...I think I will use it next time that debate goes around...

I thought epigenetics was busy proving pretty thoroughly that there's more of nurture than nature in us? Nobody is born to be a believer any more than they're born to be a killer, it's down to environment and the unique character-shaping experiences we all receive. Even twins get different upbringings.

cory well you might not know that a predisposition to belief without proof is genetic but others have, in the course of their day jobs as researchers, demonstrated it compellingly to be the case.

It would indeed be a mistake to think of the whole human brain as being determined by one gene. But I don't see anyone making that particular mistake so I wonder why you mention it?

Lots of people do indeed seem to think that rationality and scientific method can not exist in the religious brain. But do not worry about these people as they are simply wrong - as any line up of the enormous number of highly successful, extraordinarily competent religious scientists will easily demonstrate.

zule epigentics is also nature...think you may have gotten confused. Your epigentic code is also inherited from your parents.

also I am a born redhead...why shouldn't I be a born killer...or a born atheist? Of course Nurture has an impact too but why should it be that there is possible gene combination that makes killing or non-believing inevitable?

hmmm left the 'no' out of 'no possible' there...

Have any of you heard of the God gene that was quite the media darling of a subject some years ago?

It's not entirely proven that that particular gene is responsible, but there is little doubt that a propensity to spirituality is an inherited trait:

"Based on research by psychologist Robert Cloninger, this tendency toward spirituality is quantified by the self-transcendence scale, which is composed of three sub-sets: "self-forgetfulness" (as in the tendency to become totally absorbed in some activity, such as reading); "transpersonal identification" (a feeling of connectedness to a larger universe); and "mysticism" (an openness to believe things not literally provable, such as ESP). Cloninger suggests that taken together, these measurements are a reasonable way to quantify (make measurable) how spiritual someone is feeling.

The self-transcendence measure was shown to be heritable by classical twin studies conducted by Lindon Eaves and Nicholas Martin. Interestingly, these studies show that specific religious beliefs (such as belief in Jesus) have no genetic basis and are instead memes, that is cultural units transmitted by non genetic means, as by imitation."

" Nobody is born to be a believer any more than they're born to be a killer, it's down to environment and the unique character-shaping experiences we all receive. "

Genes don't make you a killer or a mathematician. They make you very aggressive or highly analytical, which significantly increase the chances that you will end up a killer or a mathematician.

In a similar vein, if your genes say you have the propensity to be a religious/spiritual person, you have a high chance of being one. Unless, for example, you get born in Soviet Russia and are indoctrinated from early childhood in evils of all religions.

"I thought epigenetics was busy proving pretty thoroughly that there's more of nurture than nature in us?"

That is a gross misunderstanding of what Epigenetics is.

Epigenetics is about how the genome of an embryo is affected by the environment of the mother while baby is still in the womb. It is a genetic process (hence the '-gene-' in the word Epigenetics) whereby genes are turned on or off during the embryonic stage.

Nothing to do with Nurture, which starts after a baby is born.

thanks for getting the fact together cote I was too lazy :)

and you are of course right in your killer/mathematician argument.

I think the term genetic predisposition is exactly correct. You are predisposed to a way of acting/thinking but that doesn't mean that life will give you the chance to express that predisposition.

thanks too cote ^^ I knew it was out there, just no idea where (as ever)

It is true in other genetic traits, as well.

Having the Parkinson gene doesn't mean you will have Parkinson's, either. It just significantly increases the chances that you might have it.

Google's Sergey Brin had his genome mapped and discovered that he has the Parkinson's gene with a certain mutation, which means he has 30-75% probability of developing this disease at some point in his life. He is pouring incredible amounts of his money into research for a cure. Fascinating story here

Re that Khalil Gibran poem: I couldn't even get past line 5. It makes no sense to me and reads like fuzzy gibberish.

Just goes to show how different our brains are.

"A propensity to spirituality is an inherited trait" - yep I buy that.
So if DS wants to practise a religion (or more - have you read Life of Pi? - I found the bit about religion fascinating) he will be supported to do whatever he wants by his atheist parents.

I think that you only need the important lines of the poem.

'They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.'

Too many people think they are a possession and they are yours to programme in a way that suits you. My mother is able to think whatever she likes on any subject, but I am completely free to agree or disagree.