how's best to approach religion with ds when im a non-believer?

[juicychops]

ds is 6 and learns about god at school. he knows about god making the world in 7 days - well 6 then a rest day, and he knows basics about jesus and easter/xmas etc.

ive been honest with him from the start and told him i don't believe in god, but its fine if he wants to, he can believe in whatever he wants to as many people believe all different things.

today he was telling me some more about god and he said i SHOULD believe in god.

i then told him again that i don't believe in god just as many people dont, and that he shouldn't tell people what they should and shouldn't believe as everyone is free to believe in what they want to believe in.

my nephew and niece are getting christened next month too so he's learning bits about what it is to become a christian.

I know he's only young, but im finding it hard to have conversations about things i don't believe in where i have to explain things he's unclear on to do with god/jesus etc. all i can say is "well some people believe that god..." etc.
i cant bring myself to say "god/jesus did x y z..."

is this best way to handle it? i don't want him to just automatically believe in what i believe in, i want him to make his own mind up

"That completely contravenes government guidelines. "
Really? Which government guidelines do you mean? It's true that the phrasing in the National Curriculum tends to be of the "what people believe about.." kind. However, faith schools would be able to teach that - anecdotally there are faith schools which teach creationism as fact.

I like that quotation - very neat :)

Religion isn't all bad news

Something we often say at Quaker Quest is "What kind of God do you believe in/ not believe in?" I call myself a believer, but I don't believe in a Person with a Plan. This year (!) I believe in a God who perhaps is omniscient but is anything but omnipotent: who watches the grief and suffers horribly because humans won't listen to him/her/it and look after one another properly.

Have just seen your thread and have copied and pasted my response to the AIBU thread. Hope this helps.

" My DS is at a faith school and I am an atheist. When he was younger, we used to have the "how was the world made?" and "where do humans come from?" conversations. I would give him both sides of the argument and tell him what I believed. When he was 5/6, he concluded that God made the world and the people like he was told at school. From the age of 7/8, he was a staunch believer in the Big Bang theory, evolution etc, because once he was old enough to understand it, we talked about it and I have shown him PROOF (lots of insights for him at the Natural History Museum). He also gets very pissy if you try to fob him off with stories about Santa or the Tooth Fairy. Quote: "I didn't believe in Father Christmas last year but he came anyway, so it must be you."

I suppose what I'm trying to say is five is very young. I've always wanted to give my kids both sides of the story and let them make their own minds up, and one teacher telling a child to pray at five isn't going to convert them into Christianity for life, particularly if the get both sides of the story at home.

It's not 'both sides of the story' though is it, it's not like there is equal weight behind the big bang theory/evolution and creationism!

Why be scared to teach your children about this subject when you would presumably want them to be correctly informed about everything else in life?

When my DS is old enough I'll be telling him that there isn't a god, but some people think there is.

JeelyPiece

I don't think you read what I said - I certainly didn't give equal weight behind the big bang theory/evolution and creationism and I'm certainly not 'scared' to tell my child there is no God, although I prefer generally to say that there is no proof there is a God.

But DS was at a school where he was being taught stuff like God made the world, and he was talking about it with me, so I had to acknowledge that some people believed in creationism. If you read my previous post, you will see that I 'would give him both sides of the argument and tell him what I believed". I also told him the reasons why I didn't agree. I was doing what you are advocating.

He was five and didn't have the capability of objective rationalisation of the arguments at that age. He thinks differently now he's older.

I would be pretty uncomfortable if my grandkids came home full of Bible stories taken literally. But stories can be inspiring even when they are plainly fictional: "Oops there goes another rubber tree plant" and stuff. The interesting question is what the moral of the story is supposed to be. You don't have to believe in the incarnation (I don't, in any straightforward sense) to think that a God who could become a helpless baby is doing his/her/its utmost to get in touch with humans.