A Godless Parent in a God Fearing World…

I am an Atheist. I put no other labels on myself other than I do not believe that the universe was created by a “god”. I believe that we exist by pure chance and an amazing thing called evolution. And honestly, I am pretty fucking happy with that. I don’t have to get up early on weekend mornings to go to church, or mass, or temple, or prayers, etc. I believe that this life is the only one we will ever have and you should do your best to make it a good one. I am not afraid of growing old and dying. I don’t fret about if my life will be considered up-to-snuff by some omnipresent being that will judge me based on the decisions I have made. Besides, what kind of a dick move would that be on “god’s” part to have people be born into situations outside of their control and then punish them for it for all of eternity?

The only person in my family who seems to be particularly religious is my father, who converted to Catholicism when he wanted to get re-married (a story which could take up a novel if I were to write it out). Besides him, no one in my immediate family goes to church on any sort of regular basis, though every one of them would claim to be “Christian” if you put a gun to their head. They all know I’m an Atheist, even though a few may tell me I don’t “really mean in”, but I am happy with my choices and the lot in life they have led me to, with no help from an angelic overlord.

However, when I became a parent, something strange happened. It didn’t happen to me; it seemed to happen to everyone else around me. Suddenly everyone in my immediate and extended family wanted to know when the christening was going to be, who her godparents were, and where she was going to attend Sunday School. My aunts and cousins are all staunch Southern Baptists, and are no doubt horrified by my godless ways, and when I told them that there would be no christening, therefore it was not necessary to send me the family, heirloom christening dress (since I would probably just frame it under archival glass and put it on my wall as an art piece). You would have thought I had run through the family reunion naked, with sparklers coming out of my hoo-ha. Suddenly I was a bad person and my daughter was obviously going to grow up to be a Bangkok Hooker.

So, in the past 2 years I have had a lot of time to think about how I would raise my daughter to be an open-minded, free-thinker. In my opinion, morality has nothing to do with religion and if someone is a good person only because they will be rewarded for it in the end, then they probably aren’t actually that good. I donate money to charity, even religious charities. I help my family, neighbors, friends and even strangers. I love my family, friends and pets with all my heart and basically, if you are nice to me, then I will be nice to you. There are very few people that I wouldn’t pee on if they were on fire, and in my opinion, they deserve to get extra crispy anyway. I don’t care what race you are, what your sexual orientation is, or if you like to smear your face in peanut butter and have twelve kittens lick it off. You can do whatever you want as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult and innocent bystanders are not hurt, either physically or mentally. And in all honesty, is that a bad way to be? Am I making the world a worse place because I don’t use God to guide me, and instead make the best choices I can with the information I am given? And how is that a bad thing to teach Delilah? I want her to help when she can, to love those who love her, and to love herself because she is the pinnacle of millions of years of evolution and natural selection. And if she gets to piss off smug religious zealots, then that is just a happy bonus.