Belief (Another Cart-Before-The-Horse Post)

I don't keep close tabs on who reads this blog, I know a few gaming dudes do, and a few close friends do.

I'm a somewhat hard-core atheist.  My parents, though divorced, are both pretty fundamental (southern baptist style) Christians.

For the record, I don't have a problem with Christians, my problems are with some of the more binary and closed minded parts of the faith.

Since I like to think about shit way ahead of time, I've tried to figure out how to approach religion and such with my daughter, and managed to raise more questions than I have answered.

It is worth mentioning that I'm not "out of the closet" to my parents.  Maybe they're more clever than I give them credit for, but as best as I can tell, they figure I'm a god-fearing, non-church-going sort of christian.  Heck, "Christian" is my middle name - seriously - but that's another story.

So I assume that at some point something is going to give.  Either Mom will want to take Piper to church, or something similar.  Maybe I'm wrong though - could be that Piper will be three or four years old before she catches wind of religion.

I take a pretty skeptical view of religion, but I try to be pretty tolerant.  I figure if you choose to follow a religious path, it is certainly your choice, and I'm not going to knock you for it.  At some point, religion is going to come up, and I'm going to have to offer some opinions or explanations or options to a young girl.  I don't mind if she goes to church, though I'd plan to go with her.  One of my big gripes against the "mainstream christian church" is its dogma, and how binary things are.  I'm open to Piper forming her own opinions about things and such, but I will have serious issue with the "heaven or hell" approach.

In fact, we've discussed doing Religion 101 with her... when she becomes aware of religion, helping her to attend a christian service, a  muslim service, a buddhist service, etc.  I think that religion is a matter of personal choice, and anyone who advertises it differently is dangerous.

So yeah, as an atheist, I'm not opposed to my daughter adopting a faith or religion, but I'll encourage her to apply critical thinking and free thought to it.

And back to the topic of this post:  my folks are pretty mainstream Christians.  As I said before, they may be more clever than I give them credit for, but I am anticipating some friction from them, especially my mother.  She tries to be open minded, but when she hears that her granddaughter is being raised by atheists, I wonder how her evangelical-ism will play out - whether she'll be able to respect people's opinions and philosophies, or whether we'll have a blow-up of sorts.

That's all I've got.