A New Start

I am starting this blog as a means of blowing off a little steam from what is becoming an ever more complicated task... Raising my daughter without having her be exposed to religious dogma before she can learn to evaluate claims based upon their truth value.  Amazing that this task has already presented a few big challenges despite the fact that she is only in her 10th month of life. 

Fortunately for me, the largest hurdle in my path has knocked itself over. About 6 months ago, my wife told me that she had abandoned her Christian faith.  This was a HUGE step for her, and I definitely know how difficult that can be.  I came from a rather strict Christian upbringing, myself.  

Most of my family is fairly supportive of how we want to bring up our daughter.  My father is a very clear thinking agnostic physician who pretty much raised me with Christian dogma more out of tradition than anything else.  My mother has moved away from her evangelical faith (more out of laziness than anything else) and has adopted a "moderate" view of Christianity in which there is no hell and in which the scriptures can be interpreted to mean anything that makes her feel good at the end of the day... Yes, she is a rather interesting person. 

My in-laws are another story entirely... I will save the bulk of this for future posts, but for now it will suffice for me to say that they are not aware of our lack of faith and that when we tell them that we are atheists and furthermore that we do not want them exposing our daughter to their religious dogma, let us just say that the conversation will not be pleasant.  We are planning on having the conversation with them within the next 2 months.   Details will follow and will, with little doubt, be very entertaining.