[ahimsa]

w8ting2badad - atheism actually isn't a religion. An atheist is just someone who doesn't believe there is a god or a higher power. There's no real dogma or anything. I don't feel that a moral person is half a christian. I have known some very compassionate christians and atheists, and I have known some very mean, hypocritical christians and atheists. Altough I think religion is definitely a way to teach kids morals, I don't think it is the only way. As far as letting my kids choose, I totally will. As a matter of fact, my husband and I are both vegetarians but we don't push it on the kids. When they are old enough and educated enough they will have to consider it for themselves. The same is true of religion. The problem is that they're not being exposed to all religions, they're being exposed to just one. I do agree though that we totally have to deal with this.

karenw - you bring up a great point about hypocrisy. I don't ever want my kids to feel that way. We never lie about our religious beliefs to anyone. Actually, we were prepared to lie, if we had to, to adopt, but it was a non-issue so we didn't. We too discuss morals a lot. We hear our kids repeating things that we say. The funniest one is that every so often my son will say "it's not nice to pull horses at Berry Farm". When we were at Knott's Berry Farm they had a stagecoach pulled by horses. The kids wanted to ride. It was a scorching hot day so I told the kids that it wasn't very nice to the horses to make them pull us around on such a hot day. Instead we watched the horses and now my son repeats his little phrase every so often! Too funny!

spaypets - I totally agree with the exchanging thing. We have done that with several gifts that we had issue with: the fishing game, the farm set, any Disney princess anything, books with only white faces, etc. However, the christian stuff is at their house in their toy box for the kids. It's not a gift to us. I did consider hiding it under the armoire when my MIL wasn't looking! Could take her a few months to find that! LOL!!!

Howdy - you totally have a point. They will have to learn to deal with those that want to "convert" them. We often have to. At some age we will tell her what we think about religion so that she has some armor against it. I just think she's too young now. My husband brought up the fact that it's hard to explain that people like to believe in things (i.e. god) to make themselves happy, when she still believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy! We did explain angels to her because that came up at school. We just told her that they weren't real, just like unicorns aren't real. We didn't apply any negative connotation to them, other than that.