Help me convert my wife?

[delta45]

First time to post, but I've been following and listening and thinking since 2006

What follows isn't a feel-good 'hello, this is my story' brief, rather, it's a part of the issue at hand...

My wife and I've been married 3 years now - we have two daughters, one of whom was already one year old when I met my wife (now almost 8), and one who was born almost a year ago, and is my first child. As the last year has passed, I've become increasingly driven to ensure that NE (the almost-one-year-old) doesn't grow up with any religious (mis)beliefs... When my wife and I decided to get married, I forewarned her that I cannot accept any religious influence on our children, to which she agreed with words to the effect of 'we'd both be free to express our opinions to our children, with the qualification that they are accompanied with a disclaimer of 'this is belief only, not fact, you decide'. So, that sounded fine to me, and indeed I was quite happy with that, given that my wife was from a strict (and prominent) catholic family, and I was previously somewhat concerned that she would have a hard time putting it to the side to the extent that would be required to serve the interests of our children. It's perhaps not my primary concern whether or not my wife is religious, rather to ensure that the children don't get raised 'religious(ly)'. My wife is old enough to make her own decisions, but I won't accept cruelty against my children.

So, here's the problem - since the 'we'll present statements as belief only, not fact' agreement, she has been able to satisfy that condition to the extent of convincing me so when we've discussed it, but she seems also to have been able to express her beliefs and frame them as truth to our eldest daughter, who is now nearly 8 years old, and who now seems to 'believe in god' but want to hide it from me, which of course leads me to believe that there have been quiet chats to the effect of 'listen, god IS real, but don't tell your father because he's a heathen... just pray for him'. Our eldest hasn't had much involvment from anyone outside our family who is religious (no grandmother, etc), because until just a few months ago we had mostly lived in a third country (not her place of birth, and not my place of birth) where neither of our in-laws or extended families were around, save for the occasional visit. So, I suggest that any religous influence would have come from my wife - unless of course 8 year old girls really love to believe fairy-tales enough so as to really *believe* them.

In the interest of guiding the responses to this issue, and without any derogatory intent to my wife (obviously, because she's my wife) I must point out that my wife isn't 'an intellectual'. She just accepts things the way they are, and is quite happy to do so... which makes an intellectual discussion about religion, or indeed anything else, an impossibilty (as though it wasn't hard enough already to objectively discuss religion with religious folk!).

Indeed the title of this post, upon reflection, is probably not accurate - I suppose I don't really care to convert my wife (though it would be a nice bonus); all I care to do is make sure that NE doesn't get raised religiously, in the way that our eldest seems to have been brainwashed already... When it comes to religion I've probably given up on the eldest already, because the look in her eyes when the topic is discussed tells me that it's past the point of no return. In a harsh moment of self reflection I considered whether or not I've given up on her cause so easliy because she's not 'my blood', considering in contrast how driven I've become to ensure that NE, who is at the age already where she is starting to record her earliest foundations of thought and memory, doesn't meet the same disaster. In any case, whatever the reasons, those are my 'feelings' on the issue.

So, the real question... how to save my dear almost-one-year-old NE from religious interference? Nothing is off the table - please hit me with anything, however, I'd really prefer to avoid having to weigh whether I value my daughters freedom from religion more than I value my marriage... that could be a rather difficult one

[MysterionMuffles]

you're gonna have to have a discussion with your wife about honesty and your older daughter. Confirm if she HAS been told to believe in God and keep it away from you. Also remind your wife about the chat you had before about presenting things as just beliefs instead of facts. You need to ask her why it's so important that your older daughter needs to believe in God and why she herself believes so hardly. Or even more important, how she feels about you being Atheist.

[delta45]

Confirm if she HAS been told to believe in God

I approached my wife about this almost 6 months ago - she blatantly denied it then, and continues to deny it now.

There's not much reasoning with someone who lies to you (assuming she is lying)...

As for the "why is it so important" question - I think it's easy enough to predict what the response will be, but I'm not sure how that angle will help?

[MysterionMuffles]

Hm I feel like we need to trace back and remove your daughters from the equasion to focus on your relationship. I'm assuming you're Atheist right? How does your wife feel about you being Atheist? Were you always one or was it during the span of the relationship you eventually became one? Like what IS your relationship like as you two individuals in a couple? Are you honest with eachother normally or do you also have to beat around the bush with each other? I ask without judgement of course, why did you get married to her in the first place? What is it about her that drew you to her? What virtues does she possess that resonate with you?

[delta45]

I think a good solution would be for me to pick a 'ridiculous' (ie not mainstream, and some wildly silly ideas) religion, and whenever any influence of catholicism is introduced to my children, I can counter it with a "no no no, that's not the real religion, THIS is the real religion"... in that processs, they would see that both, when considered, have silly claims... and hopefully decide to not accept either of them <br>The risk there is, that they may indeed decide to follow one or the other of them, depending on which parent they 'believe'...

 

 

[cherapple]

 

I think a good solution would be for me to pick a 'ridiculous' (ie not mainstream, and some wildly silly ideas) religion, and whenever any influence of catholicism is introduced to my children, I can counter it with a "no no no, that's not the real religion, THIS is the real religion"...

 

 

You'd ridicule your wife in front of your children with that option. I wouldn't recommend it. It will create insecurity in your children, having a mother that is worthy of ridicule and wondering whether they'll be ridiculed for being wrong next. If your wife senses ridicule from you, it will likely push her more toward the comfort of religion. If you suspect that she's lying to you and manipulating you and the children, how can you even begin to have conversations about truth and honesty? Responding to her with your own manipulations won't solve the problem. Have you considered couple's counseling?

[delta45]

I never have and never will ridicule my wife, whether in front of the children or otherwise... I think you missed the point and your mind went somewhere entirely different. The point was that religion itself would be examined, and revealed to be worth of ridicule...

[Lians]

 

I never have and never will ridicule my wife, whether in front of the children or otherwise... I think you missed the point and your mind went somewhere entirely different. The point was that religion itself would be examined, and revealed to be worth of ridicule...

 

 

Religious people often identify with their ideology. They internalize all attacks against religion. Instead of focusing on religion as a discrete entity, a more productive approach would be to concentrate on her needs that are met only through religion. Does she want to maintain her relationship with friends/family by going along with their beliefs? Does religion provide some sort of comfort that would otherwise be lacking? If you're curious and sensitive about these topics she's much more likely to open up to a discussion. A direct attack on religion is very likely to backfire. Be careful!

[MysterionMuffles]

 

I think a good solution would be for me to pick a 'ridiculous' (ie not mainstream, and some wildly silly ideas) religion, and whenever any influence of catholicism is introduced to my children, I can counter it with a "no no no, that's not the real religion, THIS is the real religion"... in that processs, they would see that both, when considered, have silly claims... and hopefully decide to not accept either of them <br>The risk there is, that they may indeed decide to follow one or the other of them, depending on which parent they 'believe'...

 

 

 

yeah that's not a good idea. Quite offensive I think. What I think is a good idea is to examine your relationship like I originally asked. We need to know how your interactions normally are like before we can determine how you really can have a discussion about this with her.

[Existing Alternatives]

You’re stuck, buddy!

It seems like you KNOW that your wife is lying to you about something that’s explicitly important to you. What does it say about the relationship in general?

If it’s not the case, then you should really figure it out where your daughter is getting these ideas from. There is also school, friends, books, etc.

All that aside, your agreement is about “stating things as beliefs,” so, now it’s your turn. Have you made a compelling presentation to your older one about your “beliefs”? Presentation about atheism does not have to be anti-religion, or ridiculing anything. Perhaps, maybe even your wife would learn a thing or two about you and your belief and atheism.

Disclosure: I’m not an atheist, but the question of spiritual influences on children is very dear to me.

[andros]

Firstly, I don't have any children and am no longer married, but for what it's worth, here goes...

 

I recall as a child being very curious about the truth.  I obviously must have gone through the stage where I just believed without question (that right time to be entrapped by priests et.al).  When still quite young I found out that I could be told things that weren't true. Eg the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas.  It seems to me that you can't rely on "we'll present statements as belief only, not fact", because it seems from what your saying that your wife may not know the difference(?)  Instead you need to educate your children to explore such differences between beliefs, facts, truth etc., and to hopefully ask their own questions like "what constitutes good evidence?"

I recently saw this book http://www.crownhouse.co.uk/publications/product.php?product=805 which I offer as evidence that children can and do think philosophically and can be helped in that endeavour even at a young age.  I think some items in the book are for as young as five year olds.

 

I would have thought it quite possible to discuss with an 8 year old questions like "what is a fact?", "what is a belief?", "how do we know if something is true?"  (Is it by the number of people who agree it's true?) Of course there are age-appropriate considerations and perhaps the Gettier problem is not for the beginner - but who knows - we're all unique and you can guide your children in a way only you know how.  

 

I'm not suggesting a one-time intervention of some sort.  Children are exposed to all sorts of other influences at school or elsewhere other than the wife.  Better to ask interesting questions and start an ongoing enquiry regarding truth in the form of discussions, with no claims to giving "the" correct philosophical answers but instead fostering curiosity and truth seeking.  

 

I believe that it is important for children to have examples in their lives of adults who freely admit that they don't know. In my day we sat in school and got asked questions and put our hands up if we knew the answers.  This sends a message that knowing the answer is good and not knowing is bad.  But IMO this is a terrible thing to teach.  Better to teach that not knowing is a great place from which to start an enquiry.  

 

Can your child appreciate that when asked a question sometimes adults give an answer they think is true (and present it as fact), but it turns out not to be true.  At what age can a child appreciate differences in the quality of evidence.  I don't know.  No harm in mentioning at some stage that some people believe that because something was written in a very old book it must be true.  Is that good evidence? (Obviously there's a time and a place and an age for this kind of question ie not now).

 

It should be possble to have such discussions about truth regarding non-religious issues.  No need to start with "does God exist?"  How about "I can make traffic lights change just by staring at them."  Is that true?  What is the evidence for that?  Can someone choose to believe that whether or not it's true?  Does it matter that they believe it if it is not true?  What is belief?  The questions are more important than the answers. 

 

A related point is that to avoid becoming an indoctrinator yourself, sometime's you'll need to answer a question with a question like "what do you think?", and listen.  I believe it's a good lesson for a child to learn that you care what they think and aren't just going to just tell them what's so.  

 

I've no idea what to suggest regarding including your wife in such discussions. It sounds like she wouldn't really be interested so maybe your current agreement is enough.  I really can't help on that question.

 

Even if your 8-year-old is now a believer I would characterise this as a stage (although some people never get further). It's often later in life, perhaps as a teenager, that people start to question the sources of authority Eg Church, school, parents - and raise doubts regarding what they've been told and its basis.  Hopefully they then take a fresh look and make up their own minds. 

 

This may be useful at some point, or not. Consider the following statements. Do you believe them?:

* I am not my body.  I have a body.

* I am not my mind.  I have a mind.

* I am not my beliefs.  I have beliefs.

If these are true, then if you find out that one of your beliefs wasn't true would you change it?  

I find I usually get a 'yes' even though that person may be unwilling to change in practice, but it might open a door.

 

The Dalai Lama was once asked "what would you do if someone could prove to you that reincarnation is not true?"  His answer was "I'd go round telling people that reincarnation isn't true". I wonder if the pope would be so flexible.

 

I hope I've provided some food for thought.

 

All the best

[tasmlab]

This might be ticky tacky, but can anything be presented as 'this is belief only, not fact, you decide'.?  Wouldn't beliefs be presented as truth, like the same as facts?  So the agreement with your wife would be that you both agreed to present conflicting versions of the truth to your kids and then let them sort it out.

 

Doesn't sound ideal, but a lot better than some of us had it!  If I had at least one out of two of my parents advocate for reason, it would've been 50% less BS.

 

I wonder who has the harder to case to make?  Religion takes a lot of indoctrination and presenting things that don't seem true.  You may have the upper hand.

 

At 8 years old, I don't think your older daughter is beyond hope.  She has lots of time.

 

Story about me:  After I met my (to be) wife and we were dating/engaged/married, I had to go to her family's house for holidays with usually a dozen adults and dozen children having Christmas or whatever.  I cheerfully promoted my atheism to the family, such as when it came time for grace or going to church on the holiday.  I didn't try to convert anybody, but the example I set allowed just about all of the children to begin questioning and enabled most of the adults to question too.  After about eight years there wasn't a believer in the bunch and now it is a bit of a joke within the family*.  Not because of my great ideas, but I showed there was no dreaded consequences to examining the truth here.

 

My advice, for what it is worth:  Keep on cheerfully explaining your position and provide an awesome example in yourself.

 

 

 

* My now 80-year-old father-in-law stuck out the longest, but finally rejected the idea of a Christian god.  Unfortunately, of sorts, he died briefly with a heart attack and he experienced his soul floating around the room until a medical professional resuscitated him.  He now believes in 'something out there' and a soul of some sort.  To his credit, he has some (unverifiable) sensual evidence on this one.

[MysterionMuffles]

Andros: Wow I didn't see it that way. The fact that we have to raise our hands to answer and placing our sense of self on the basis of answering correctly. Some teachers were harsh with wrong or incoherent answers instead of being curious on how the student can elaborate further. That paradigm always made me feel like asking, "does THIS teacher even know everything like they expect us to?"

 

Also that's pretty cool about the Dalai Lama saying that. The newest Pope was actually open minded enough to say for Christians to forgive Atheists and let them be as long as they're "good" based on whatever their perception of GOOD is. Either way that's cool of him, but I don't need his goddamn validation.

 

tasmlab: Um really, just be positive and humourous about your Atheist views and that's enough to dispell the impending hostility of people getting their mythologies crushed before their very eyes? I'm sorry, I need a little more clarification on h what you did to get your family to accept Atheism. It feels like you skipped a lot of in between work. What I want to know is how opposition was faced and if there WAS hostility that you were successful in disarming with just pure positivity.

[tasmlab]

 

tasmlab: Um really, just be positive and humourous about your Atheist views and that's enough to dispell the impending hostility of people getting their mythologies crushed before their very eyes? I'm sorry, I need a little more clarification on h what you did to get your family to accept Atheism. It feels like you skipped a lot of in between work. What I want to know is how opposition was faced and if there WAS hostility that you were successful in disarming with just pure positivity.

 

Hi MCS,

 

You are correct, it was a years-long process and I skipped a bit in my 400 word post.

 

The hardest of the debates were with my septuagenarian in-laws and those were usually at smaller events, dinners with just the four of us.  They were extremely active in their church, going weekly for probably 60+ years and both held positions in managing the church (my father-in-law the church comptroller and mother-in-law alter guild).  This said, they weren't hard core evangelicals or Tim Tebow types who found Jesus embedded into everything.  Dedicated but down to earth Episcopal. 

 

I guess what made this easy (relatively) is that they always enjoyed the conversations even when voices were raised.  Nobody else in the family ever brought up anything interesting.  We always remained cheerful and shut down the conversation if anybody became angry or upset.  Copious amounts of alcohol were always involved.

 

I was also viewed as a stand-up and favorite guy in all other regards (good job, nice to their daughter, helpful, etc.) which really helped.

 

It also helped that my in-laws are bonkers nice, respectful and loving people as well.  Like, simply magical in their kindness.

 

The generation down, my wives brother and sisters and their spouses also enjoyed the talks and we later relieved to be able to speak their minds.  On Christmas eve people started enjoying not having to go to night time church service.  As I had set precedent, the others could relax their views.

 

At one dinner, a 10 year old niece finally asked the crowd if Jeff (me) really didn't believe in god and then asked if that was 'allowed'.  Since none of the parent group were active church goers and were relaxing their beliefs at least in these forums, the Christianity just sort of fell apart.

 

After about five years in or so, grace wasn't said at meals, passed on relatives weren't said prayers and nobody except the elder in-laws went to church on the holidays.  The in-laws wouldn't actually stop going to church at all until about 10 years or so after my introduction.

 

Nobody is a vocal atheist waving their Ayn Rand and Richard Dawkins books around, but the worst of the taboo was released.  I do suspect that the in-laws still pine for an immortal soul even though they no longer believe in the bearded sky ghost.

 

(My apologies to the OP for making this all about me!)

One more Morse Code:

 

Just so I don't seem like the atheist horse whisperer, I've tried the same tact with hyper-evengelical sister with disastrous results.  I think I've been de-fooed because my case against belief was so offensive to her.  She goes to a mega church (congregation over over 20,000 people), attends three times a week, tithes by credit card I believe, and is wrapped up in the shit.  Impenetrable! 

[MysterionMuffles]

Again, sorry to be annoying--and I get that that family is uber nice--but it still doesn't explain how you convinced to believe otherwise. What I was asking was what methodology did you use to disprove the existence of God, and did they not at all worry at first about abandoning the church? Did they not at all have some oppostional arguments or was it really that easy? That they really like you, you presented your case quite intelligbly and they just so happened to accept it all?

[tasmlab]

I mostly just used the standard arguments e.g., he doesn't seem to exist, nobody can prove it, here's a bunch of fallacies and horrible things in the bible, how do you account for the other countless religions you believe to be wrong, why has his power diminished over the millenia, do you think the bible could've just been a book invented to control people, prayer doesn't do anything, spaghetti monster type arguments, etc,

 

and their responses/oppositional arguments were fairly ordinary. e.g., well, there must be SOME higher power; you can't prove he doesn't exist; billions of believers can't be wrong; how will people know how to be moral?; to finally 'this is what we enjoy, it's how we make friends'

 

I wouldn't say I presented the case intelligibly one afternoon and they accepted it.  It was dozens of conversations that slowly chipped away little bits, a gradual concession.  The first chink was just to get them to agree that the bible may not be infallible.  Then that maybe god wasn't precisely what the religion said (oh, but a power still exists they'd say).  Then making them wonder about the extent of his omnipotence.  Etc.,

 

I think it was a pretty plain approach.  As I describe it, I'm thinking i may have been lucky with some unusually receptive people, esp. given that they were in their 70's at the time.

[MysterionMuffles]

ah cool thank you very much. Guess that would be the standard way to go about it. I dont know why I was getting the impression it all happened really quickly. But yeah good for you, man. Now if I could only do the same for my family. For some it's just a past time hobby of "lets always go to church on Sunday so we don't feel guilty about the copius amounts of shopping we do afterwards." And that lame "it feels good to go" crap. I would much rather convert them to Atheism and NOT have to put up with the drama that would occur if and when...let's say...I have a kid and don't want to baptize him/her. That and the shame they try to put on me for not going to church anymore, which I do not and can not feel for obvious reasons. Anyways thanks again!

[andros]

You might find Stef's interaction with the first caller in this radio show from about 3 minutes onwards helpful

[Jordan Miller]

I haven't read any posts so far except your, delta45, so maybe this has been covered already but I think it might be useful to reflect on exactly what you want to save your NE from. 

 

what about religion causes you to want to shield her? if you know exactly those things then you can do your best to zoom in on those issues. 

 

For example, it doesn't really bother you what your wife believes; but it probably does bother you that she uses those beliefs to justify going back on her promise for an open and honest approach. you don't mind her independence of thought from you, but you do might her going behind your back (if indeed that is what happens).

 

What I'm trying to say is, you probably really want to make moral behavior (including self discipline) paramount since religion has such a powerful effect to get people to break promises/moral behavior in order to bring about what they believe is some greater good. 

 

if you can teach your daughter that even if that were true its STILL not worth acting immorally/without integrity then even if she believes in religion she'll have her priorities straight.