Raising Freethinkers

This book is exactly what I why I started this blog! Resources like this are too good not to share! So many parenting books focus on religion as a means of moral and ethical instruction, rather than encouraging natural development of empathy and questioning a means of exploring values. This book explains and gives equal weight to a philosophy of parenting that allows for children to find their own meaning and to explore multiple world views. Children will learn what is right and just through experience and observations if they are encouraged to ask questions and to be freethinkers. Believers in a higher power don't have exclusive rights to morality even though we are sometimes presented with that message. By giving our children the opportunity and the right to question all the wonders of the universe they are more likely to retain what they learn than those who learn belief through indoctrination and morality through fear. Fairness, peace and justice follow logically when we learn to look from multiple points of view.
This book contains wonderful resources for teaching the science of the universe, religions of the world, tolerance and understanding. There are also suggestions for building a community of freethinkers, something that can be difficult if you, like me, live in a conservative, religious area. This is one of the resources that I, as a parent, will return to again and again as my children grow and their needs change. It is so nice to know that there are others raising religion-free children with values and to be assured that despite outsiders fears to the contrary, it is possible, even probable, that my children will become moral, kind, and just adults with out the rules imposed by religious doctrine.

http://www.parentingbeyondbelief.com/