Come out come out wherever you are!

I was so excited to see that people actually posted on the other thread. This board has been dead for so long! I would love to get this board rolling again. So first things first, who all is here? Introduce yourselves.

For those of you that don't know me, my name is Alissa, and I'm 31. I've been married to my DH for 6 years, and we have a 3 year old named Tristan. Sometimes I'm more agnostic, depending on my mood, but most of the time I identify as an atheist. My DH is definitely an atheist - no agnosticism there. LOL My parents are pretty hard core evangelical Christians, and DH parents are devoutly Jewish, so we have a lot of religion coming at us. Our son currently attends pre-school at a Jewish school, but we are considering whether we are going to send him again next year because it has been more religious than we originally thought it would be.

Oh yeah, and I am one of the hosts of the General Debate Board.

So, who else is here? :D

Its nice to be able to chat about issues concerning my lack of spirituality somewhere. Its definitely one of those (if not the only) things you DO NOT bring up on a regular BB.

I'm Erin. I'll be 30 next month, gulp. DH and I have been married for 2 years, together for 7. Married by a lesbian on a beach in Mexico. His Born Again Dad loved that. We have a 1yo daughter named Teagan. We're a natural birthing, AP, extended-BFing, vegetarian family. In the circles I run in, couples with similar parenting styles come in two flavors; atheist or hardcore Christian. I was raised without religion and DH was raised by Christian commune hippies. He never bought into it and has identified as atheist for as long as he's been able to self-identify. We are both currently getting our PhDs in the hard sciences. DD also goes to a Jewish pre-school. Its like they have the lockdown on the good pre-schools, at least in our town ;). We're quite happy with the school but I've also had concerns about their curriculum as DD gets older. It's no big deal to me that they go into the Temple on Friday and sing songs with the Rabbi. Painting the sukkah yesterday sounded like lots of fun. As far as I know, they don't try to proselytize to the older kids. I'd say a good half of the students in the school aren't Jewish. We'll see. I'm going to be really bummed if we have to switch pre-schools because I REALLY love the one she's at.

Hi Erin, nice to "meet" you!

I am very torn about DS's preschools because I think it is a really good school, and there are a lot of positives to it. DH and I both work full time, so it would be next to impossible for us to get T to and from a partial day preschool program, but my MIL lives within walking distance of the preschool, so she takes him in the mornings and picks him up in the afternoons. Without that help from her (which I doubt we'd get if we went to a different school) T probably wouldn't be able to do preschool at all. And they have some really great programs - soccer on Wednesday afternoons, music and dance on Friday afternoons, gardening and composting in the preschool garden which the kids help out with, doing things like making apple sauce from scratch and eating it....all of that stuff is so cool and I'm so happy that he's doing it. On the other hand, I know that the religious talk is sinking in because he now talks about God constantly, and he's even gotten to the point now where he insists that we say a blessing before meals and what not. So, we're torn.

If my DD were coming home insisting we say a blessing before we ate, I'd probably pull her out. But we also aren't in a tricky situation like you are. We have her where we do because its one of three NAEYC accredited schools in town and its the only place that would let DD go part time under age 1. We couldn't afford to send her full time at the infant rate. Once she's two the rate for a nearby secular school becomes doable. Problem is, we plan to have another wee one sometime in the next couple years and there's no way we could afford an infant and a toddler at the secular school and I'm not going to drive to two schools twice a day. Ugh. I just hope they don't lay on the God stuff too hard.

Hi girls, I haven't posted here in a REALLY long time, and Alyssa we were on BLC board together for a while, right? Anyway, I'm Charlene, 38 years old with two DDs, Sierra (6) and Madison (4). I would consider myself agnostic mostly, but leaning towards atheist. I feel like my kids are to the age that I probably need to start explaining things, because the other day at the park, one of the school moms mentioned someone going to heaven after they dies and Sierra looked at me with this confused look, so I explained to the mom that we haven't talked about heaven because I don't really believe in it, and I think the mom was a little put off, but asked for another play date so I guess wasn't as offended as I'd thought (or maybe she thinks it's her job to convert me, LOL)...

Religious pre-schools are tough, I think until they're probably 4 years old, stuff goes over their head, but once they're 4 and 5, they absorb and believe EVERYTHING they're told so it's a hard decision!

Anyway, work is slow at the moment, and that's the only time I get on-line these days, so will be here as long as I can!

Charlene

Yay Charlene! So good to see you!

I really struggle with what to tell my 3 year old at this point when he talks about God and Jesus (totally my mom's doing.) I always try to frame it in terms of "Some people believe that..." and leave it at that. Charlene, do you actually talk to your girls about not believing in God, or do you just not talk about God? That's the line that I can't figure out.

I haven't specifically said to her that I don't believe in God, but after the heaven thing she asked me what heaven is and I just said that some people believe after you die, your spirit goes up to Heaven and she did ask if I believed that and I said I didn't really believe it, but it's possible... That's about as far as we've gotten, other than telling her we're not religious and that's why we don't go to church like some other people we know...

Charlene

I'm still here :) Life is just chaotic but I'm here!

I'm Danielle, I'm 25 and mama to 3 boys- Adam (9), Logan (5), and Xander (almost 2 :eek:). I've been an atheist for probably the last 10 years.......DH, Ed, is also 25 and also an atheist. We are hardcore science nerds and the belief in god just doesn't seem plausible.

It's so nice to see all of you Heathens. LOL Any ideas for what we can do to make this board active again? There are lots of things that I would love to discuss with my fellow Heretics, but this board has been so slow that I have mainly kept to myself. What would you ladies like to see?

You know, for me, I'm trying to reduce time I'm on-line... I rarely am on at home other than to check e-mail, and if I get on here at work it's only if it's a slow day and if I remember, so there isn't anything specific that would bring me around more often, just how much my life and work gets in the way, LOL!

Charlene