[Gust Hubb]

I spend a lot of time thinking back onto childhood, especially having kids of my own and reliving my childhood adventures such as camping, but now as the father. And as I watch them grow, I wonder at the role of religion in my own childhood and worry about their future in a world so divided by belligerence in the name of religion, particularly the monotheistic ones. I think about the Shia and Sunni, battling across the Middle East, the preponderance of apocalyptic thinking among conservative Christian elements in my own country, and the history of war, which is mostly religions fighting each other.

I grew up fundamentalist Christian, and am now fundamentally atheist, becoming more so everyday the more I think of all the things wrong with my previous faith and how it distorted my worldview. The hatred of homosexuality, the pity for those going to hell, the continual feeling of guilt at my daily sins, the schizophrenic conversations with an imaginary being and fearing his opposite was whispering evil into my head all the while...

So my OP, so to speak, is asking others of their own experiences on thoughts, whether it is conversion from non-belief to belief or vise versa. Please keep it somewhat civil, and since we are in the Phoenix Inn, irreverence is welcomed.

This post has been edited by Gust Hubb: 23 June 2014 - 04:29 AM

[Aptorian]

Christianity as a philosophy and not a biblical code of law is great. It teaches you to be kind, to be understanding, to love unconditionally, to be charitable, to be humble, to reject violence, etc.

Teaching you kid such values and letting that kind if belief guide their childhood sounds pretty good to me.

[Una]

If anybody asks me, I just tell them I was "educated Catholic" and let them draw whatever conclusion they like.

[Obdigore]

Apt Hoc, on 23 June 2014 - 04:52 AM, said:

Christianity as a philosophy and not a biblical code of law is great. It teaches you to be kind, to be understanding, to love unconditionally, to be charitable, to be humble, to reject violence, etc.

Teaching you kid such values and letting that kind if belief guide their childhood sounds pretty good to me.

Depends on if you are reading the fire and brimstone old testament or the 'treat others as you want to be treated' new testament.

Edit: Anyway, Religion is generally just another means of social control, and I view teaching religions to young children as a form of indoctrination. That said, if people weren't going to war in the name of religion it would be over nationalism or racism or some other idealogical viewpoint that is a fingers breadth different from some other groups, because conservative groups are very 'us v them' and that is the actual root of the problem.

http://www.ted.com/t..._the_moral_mind

This post has been edited by Possibly Brent Weeks: 23 June 2014 - 05:53 AM

[Macros]

The moral values that religion can instill are valuable yes.
however organised religion gives too much power to individuals, and power corrupts.

[Stormcat]

I grew up in an extremely diverse family. My father was raised an orthodox Jew, my mom is Pagan, my maternal grandfather atheist. I was allowed to go to church with my Catholic sitter. I went to a Christian church and bible study when I was in the Army. I feel extremely lucky that nobody hammered a specific religion into me. I told my children that they should investigate and learn about all religions and follow their heart on what is right. But some things are a must. Kindness to all living creatures, empathy for others and ourselves, tolerance and always help when you can. You don't need religion to be kind and do the right thing.

[Kanubis]

Apt Hoc, on 23 June 2014 - 04:52 AM, said:

Christianity as a philosophy and not a biblical code of law is great. It teaches you to be kind, to be understanding, to love unconditionally, to be charitable, to be humble, to reject violence, etc.

Teaching you kid such values and letting that kind if belief guide their childhood sounds pretty good to me.

From what I've seen the fluffy Scandinavian branch of Lutheran Christianity is quite good at promoting it as a moral guide first and foremost. Even my childhood Anglican church made sure there was a much heavier emphasis on thoughts and practices that I personally think are morally harmful to a child.

Personally I think it is healthier for children to learn to act morally without the concept of a divine judge. Essentially the concept of heaven is that the purpose of moral living is to earn an eventual reward, rather than just being 'good.' I don't like that.

BUT - as an athiest, I have to realistically concede that it's not so simple. Most fairy tales and children's stories in general carry a message of eventual reward or punishment for a person's actions. I doubt many athiests are particularly opposed to these. The New Testament is a similar tool if used correctly, and it would be hypocritical of me to completely deny that.

I'd keep any child a mile away from the Old Testament though. It only takes three chapters to get to the bit where slavery is quite explicitly condoned. I think it's genuinely sick and disgusting. The fact that we think a story where God decides a blanket murder of the entire species save one family is a suitable one for kids genuinely shocks me.

[Chance]

Grew up with a mix of Lutheran (the fire and brimstone kind if somewhat mellowed) and the Catholic (a pretty chill version of it), very early decided they where ridiculous ideas and became a "Whatever it was called somone who does not care either way."

More and more I beliving that teaching defenseless childen about "the one religion and path to salvation" is akin to actually harming them, let them make their own decisions when they are mature enough to do so.

If one belives humans need religion to be good, then one has already decided humanity is inherintly evil and needs threat of punishment to be good. Teach people to be good not about religion I say, there is too much contradictions and blind obedience stuff in any religion for it to be truly a good thing.

This post has been edited by Chance: 23 June 2014 - 09:02 AM

[Illuyankas]

It's extremely hard sometimes to decide how much of a religion is good to follow and not harmful - like saying 'Hey all the nice things Jesus are great just ignore the majority of the rest of the book especially the slave endorsing, killing gay people, harvesting foreskins, man offering his daughters to be gangraped and being judged the only good man in a city that gets wiped out, said daughters getting their father drunk before shagging him, condemning a son for seeing his dad drunk, torment a country and bolster its ruler against giving in personally, murdering dozens of children with bears for laughing at a bald guy parts' - without feeling incredibly selfrighteous and smug for making that decision. I mean that's Dick Dorkins country, and viewing his egotistical racist* ass as an atheistic role model nowadays is a fool's errand.

That said, the separation of church and state needs barbed wire and gun emplacements. Get (the polite option) your creationism out of my classroom you repressive dicks!






*There is a line between disliking a religion because it has tenets you disagree with, and hating the followers of that religion because they're other, and foreign, and 'lesser than you', and the latter is both increasing and was already far far far far too common.

[QuickTidal]

My parents weren't really religious when I was a kid, and though I was baptized (apparently), all it took for the smattering of religion they did practice to go out the window was my sister and I in a christian school where they informed her (in grade 1) that her parents were going to hell because they didn't attend church on Sundays. We were removed and sent to public school and religion was never really brought up again.

I should note that years later, my mother and stepfather have been KIND of indoctrinated along with my grandmother by my fairly religious aunt and uncle and now say grace at the table ect. at their house. It hurts no one for them to have embraced this, so it's all good. Though my grandmother once realized that as everyone else said the grace at dinner I stayed silent...and she looked at me and growled "Learn it!"...to which I responded that since I don't follow that faith, would it not be blasphemy for me to recite words to do with said faith? It shut her up but she wasn't happy with me. The message was, I'll sit quietly while you practice your faith, but I'm not going to pretend to follow it either.

As far as the OP to do with kids. I'm not going to indoctrinate my kids into any religion. My plan is to educate them about religion in general and the various ones around the world from antiquity and modern day. My hope is that they will come to their own conclusions about what they want to do. As far as the values that, for example, Christianity can teach about kindness, understanding ect.... we will teach them as common sense daily living and I'll feel no need to link that to a deity or scripture. I'd rather lead them by education about history and with common sense guidelines about how to live a decent honest life.

[D'rek]

My parents got all their kids roman catholic baptized and we used to attend church and the kids did Sunday school and all that jazz. In hindsight, I think we were pretty much just doing it to placate the grandparents, who were fairly serious catholics. Thing is (and I didn't realize this at the time), it's not like my parents stuck around for all the post-mass potlucks and other social aspects of being in the parish or anything like that... so definitely we weren't really big on the church thing but that doesn't mean they didn't seriously believe, though.

We did that for 8 years or so, then we stopped doing sunday school, then gradually stopped going to church every Sunday and soon it was only at Christmas and Easter. After a while longer, we stopped doing that, too, except for the occasional random one-off (probably depends on where we were. If we were in North Bay for Christmas, there's probably a better chance we'd go because the Xmas Eve midnight mass there is kinda cool). I think as they got older and started having more disposable income and the great north american shopping mall/box store/walmart culture came my grandparents started to relax about life and become more open-minded, and my parents realized this and felt the grandparents would be okay with us backing off on the whole church thing. Definitely if I or any of my siblings had wanted to we could have kept going, but none of us really cared all that much for it so we didn't.

Now I'm probably mostly an agnostic in that I don't really think or care about organized religion much at all. But if people ask I say I'm a Pantheistic Tengriist, because I like many of the Tengrii principles when combined with a sometimes-the-universe-just-ruins-your-day-and-its-not-your-fault non-personalized universe that still rewards you for trying to be a good person. Is this really my religion? No, I guess not, but it's fun to think about and I'd be happy if it were true!

[Shinrei]

QuickTidal, on 23 June 2014 - 01:18 PM, said:

As far as the OP to do with kids. I'm not going to indoctrinate my kids into any religion. My plan is to educate them about religion in general and the various ones around the world from antiquity and modern day. My hope is that they will come to their own conclusions about what they want to do. As far as the values that, for example, Christianity can teach about kindness, understanding ect.... we will teach them as common sense daily living and I'll feel no need to link that to a deity or scripture. I'd rather lead them by education about history and with common sense guidelines about how to live a decent honest life.

Pretty much how I feel as well. I grew up going to church (ELCA, which is the more liberal branch of Lutherans in the US) with my mom. My dad is an athiest. So, I think that gave me a good balance and opportunity to work things out for myself.

Now that I live in Japan, my daughter is going to grow up with Shinto and Buddhist traditions that have merged with the culture in such a way that they hardly even seem religious. In addition, I will take her to church from time to time (she's been baptized and we are members of a Lutheran church here), so she can experience that community as well. In the end, I will happily allow her to choose her own way.

[Grunthor]

I'm Irish, so I was brought up Catholic, however I have no interest Religion. My parents gave up on me going to mass when I was about 15, and now its just weddings and funerals. Created by man, and like everything that man creates we usually make a balls of it. I have 3 kids, they were baptised, but that was purely to get them into school. I'll teach my kids right from wrong and when they are old enough they can make there own decisions.

[Gust Hubb]

This has been very civil and good to read. Thank you all.

Shinrei, on 23 June 2014 - 02:40 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 23 June 2014 - 01:18 PM, said:

As far as the OP to do with kids. I'm not going to indoctrinate my kids into any religion. My plan is to educate them about religion in general and the various ones around the world from antiquity and modern day. My hope is that they will come to their own conclusions about what they want to do. As far as the values that, for example, Christianity can teach about kindness, understanding ect.... we will teach them as common sense daily living and I'll feel no need to link that to a deity or scripture. I'd rather lead them by education about history and with common sense guidelines about how to live a decent honest life.

Pretty much how I feel as well. I grew up going to church (ELCA, which is the more liberal branch of Lutherans in the US) with my mom. My dad is an athiest. So, I think that gave me a good balance and opportunity to work things out for myself.

Now that I live in Japan, my daughter is going to grow up with Shinto and Buddhist traditions that have merged with the culture in such a way that they hardly even seem religious. In addition, I will take her to church from time to time (she's been baptized and we are members of a Lutheran church here), so she can experience that community as well. In the end, I will happily allow her to choose her own way.

This is good to hear. It might be shaping up the same for my family since my wife is still Christian, albeit more for the social structure than the actual religious practice. I just hope my kids grow up being able to look at other religions rationally and don't turn into haters (like I was when I was Conservative Christian) if they join one certain religion.

[worry]

My parents were Catholic and my older brother and sister did the whole Catholic school thing through graduation. My mom sent me to catechism one Saturday morning and I had no idea what to expect or why we were talking about any of these things. It wasn't unpleasant -- we got to draw a picture of Jesus with crayons and what have you -- but otherwise I was totally mystified. Anyway, afterward I walked home to find that Saturday Morning Cartoons were already over! It was that moment I lost my faith, and I never went back.

[QuickTidal]

upworthywort, on 23 June 2014 - 07:14 PM, said:

My parents were Catholic and my older brother and sister did the whole Catholic school thing through graduation. My mom sent me to catechism one Saturday morning and I had no idea what to expect or why we were talking about any of these things. It wasn't unpleasant -- we got to draw a picture of Jesus with crayons and what have you -- but otherwise I was totally mystified. Anyway, afterward I walked home to find that Saturday Morning Cartoons were already over! It was that moment I lost my faith, and I never went back.

Does this artifact still exist?

[Vengeance]

I grew up in an off shoot of 7th day (it wasn't conservative enough apparently) called the World Wide Church of God. Both sides of my parents family were way into it. I grew up going to church on Saturdays, and bible study on Wednesdays. The church went through some upheaval and we ended up leaving. I dislike organized religion. My wife grew up Lutheran but doesn't go. We are both agnostic and religion will most likely not play a role in raising of our children. I plan on explaining the various types of religions to my son as he grows so that he can make up his own mind. True it will probably be a little biased from my experiences and from a historical point of view. But I will not prevent them from going to a church if that is something that they wish to do.

[worry]

No, very little of my early work has survived the years. You would think the world's curators would have been more on the ball, but everyone has their blind spots.

[Mentalist]

I grew up in Ukraine. Majority of my childhood was spent in the city, with my mother's side of the family, who were Soviet academics from military families, and thus, atheist-ish, with a smattering of non-practicing orthodoxy.
Whenever I spent time with my father's side of the family in the country, I was in teh care of my paternal grandmother. She is a daughter of a Greek Catholic priest, who went through repressions post WW2, and she is an incredibly religious person. Religious in a good sense--I have never met a more understanding, kind and most importantly, honest person in my life. She has tried to bring all her grandchildren to religion, though it didn't take equally to all of us.

My father, once he turned 50 and became concerned with his health also began to study religion fairly extensively. As such it's safe to say he is religious, but anti-institutional. Which is probably where I fall as well. I try to follow the moral guidelines of Christianity, but I am not overtly concerned with the ritual part of it.

EDIT: as far as children's education goes, I will probably consider it a part of my heritage, because the Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church is very closely linked to Ukrainian nationalism and Ukraine's struggle for independence, which is why I would consider it to be an important aspect of my child's heritage.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 23 June 2014 - 10:27 PM

[Puck]

I, too, grew up in Ukraine and my encounters with religion were similar to Mentalist's. I used to live with my grandma while my mom was working in the city and while both my brother and me had been baptised the general family opinion was 'Yeah, look, there's god somewhere, but more importantly, be nice, respect people, be honest and don't waste resources.' I used to have a friend at school whose family was very religious, including bible study and going to church every sunday.. My grandma declared that a waste of time and claimed that if she wanted to talk to god she could just as well do that in her own kitchen.

So yeah, I mostly grew up with that special mix of soviet atheism and orthdox christianity. Nobody went out of their way to be religious but, you know, believing's not going to do you any harm. There weren't any at my grandma's house, but when we moved away from her, my mom started hanging some icons on the walls of her bedroom and she took me to church a couple of times, so she's more religious than my grandma used to be, yet she never insisted I do anything. Since nobody ever bothered to educate me about religion I just thought that's a whole bunch of weird stuff.

I had more encounters with religion when we moved to Germany, actually, than I'd had in rural Ukraine. When we moved here we had to decide whether I was going to attend Catholic or Protestant religious education classes at school and my mom went 'What the hell? Why are they making you do that?'. I went to Protestant classes just because I thought the kids there were less annoying

As to what I'd teach children, to be honest, I have no idea, I'd probably go a similar route to my mom's, but with more proper education about facts and history. I remember being very lost about this whole faith thing, I didn't understand what it was all about and what it's got to do with me.

This post has been edited by Puck: 23 June 2014 - 10:57 PM