Diary of an Irreligious Kid

The other night, I was coming home from the movie theater with my 6th grade son after having watched Diary of a Wimpy Kid (cute movie). Somehow the conversation turned to a discussion he had recently had with a boy at school over the existence of God. I don't know how the topic arose between the two boys as my son did not provide those details. However, according to him, this was the verbatim conversation:

R (my son): "I don't mean to offend you, or to say that one of us is any more right than the other, but I don't believe in God." (and I can't believe he was that polite, but I guess he wanted to keep his friend)

J (other boy): "How can you not believe in God?"

R: "What proof do you have that God exists?"

J: "Food, life, heaven, hell...If you don't believe in God, you'll go down to hell when you die."

R: "Dude, I'm already in hell. It's called school, the bus, other kids and geography class with Burgos the Devil. Seriously though, Hell is just a place made up by some guy to frighten Christians into being good...and you can't expect me to believe that some other guy got a message from God and wrote a book called the Bible." (I think he might've confused Christianity with Islam on this one & might need a refresher course in basic belief systems of the major religions.)

J: "If you don't believe in God, you must not believe in food." (huh?)

R: "Obviously, I believe in food because I'm eating it right now. What I don't believe in is an invisible guy in the sky that there is no evidence for. I have my own free will and I can believe what I want. I think maybe we should just agree that we have different opinions and change the subject."


Needless to say, while I have not deliberately attempted to raise atheist children (it goes against my core anti-indoctrination philosophy), there is no doubt that they have been influenced by the beliefs/nonbeliefs of their parents and our very academic treatment of all things religious. All in all though, I have to admit to feeling a bit proud of the way he handled the situation, (i.e., trying not to come off as self-righteous or adversarial, yet standing up for his beliefs) as those are tricky enough waters to navigate as an adult, let alone as an 11-year-old.

As a quick aside though, while I was writing this, I was consulting with my 6th grader over the finer points of the conversation when his younger brother came in and decided to join the conversation. Apparently in his belief system, God did exist at one time, but now he is dead...Perhaps the atheists killed him.