I raised my children with no religion at all. I never once took any of them to church but I did not stop them from going with their friends either. My daughter is nearly 39 so my raising of her is long done.

She had a stillborn daughter when she was 23, had some problems dealing with it and ended up in some trouble that still sometimes comes back to haunt her. She needed to believe her daughter was in heaven and I see no reason to fight with her about it.

She is aware that HER daughter (my granddaughter) does not fully accept the existence of higher powers and is permitting her to believe or not believe as she wishes so I think perhaps I did do something right in that my daughter who does believe in god is not forcing her children to as well.

But usually it's vice versa.

@Mofo1953 True - it is more common the other way round.

Same in my life.

atheism can't really be taught. it can be planted. to teach atheism you first have to teach what it is you don't believe in. there's a long list, right? zeus, shiva, quetzlcoatl.... i suggest a better thing to do would be to sit a kid down early on and say "you're going to meet people who believe all sorts of magical things, not for fun but for real. some of them will sound like fun to you and that's fine, but i want you to think really hard about whether they're real or not. if you have any questions, ask me and i'll help you figure it out. meanwhile, lookie here, i have this nice book about science for you!"

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I raised her with no religion. She went to church with her friends as a child because I did not forbid it but she really got behind religion as a young adult. Now she seems to be becoming non religious. She certainly is not harassing her children for not believing since her oldest is openly atheist and it appears her youngest is as well.

The middle has never really said either way but he likes to make fun of religion. He laughs every time we are out in public and god shit gets mentioned so I suspect he will ultimately come out as atheist

I think the vast majority of Christians would regard Eve as a myth just as most of them will not believe in a a world wide flood that destroyed everyone except Noah and his cohort. Religious belief is not a sign of lack of intelligence. We think we know better than them but most of them are not stupid people.

@Fretherne1 There are plenty of people who are also not stupid who DO believe Eve existed, there was a world wide flood, etc.

@greyeyed123 Exactly my point. Having religious beliefs does not mean someone is stupid. It just means they do not share the same world view as us. Religion depends on faith (blind faith?) This belief is not held in the same way as science based knowledge. It is not open to scientific proof. We all have to remember that although we are probably right and there probably isn't a God that we are on the wrong side of Leibnitz's wager. The believers are on the only possible winning side of that wager.

@Fretherne1 If you mean Pascal's wager, then simply withholding belief until such time as evidence is presented is NOT a losing side. It's the only pathway to truth we've ever discovered, and along that path is the flourishing of humanity in every way.

Wasting your only life on unproven, unprovable nonsense is a losing side. All you have to do is ask a Christian if spending your life as a Muslim is a winning bet to demonstrate this.

@Fretherne1 From what I've heard and seen, many (though not all) fundamentalist Christians do take everything, or at least almost everything, the Bible says as literal fact. But there are very many Christians who are not fundamentalists, too.