I was in a discussion about raising children without a particular religion, with the thought that they should be allowed to choose when they are old enough. There was some discussion about the difference between raising them neutral and raising them specifically atheist. One atheist said that she is doing the latter, and would be sad if her children turned out religious. Which makes sense...certainly religious people are disappointed if their children turn out not to be believers.
Since so many mellos are atheist, I thought I'd ask you, would you have similar feelings?
Comments
Now, if my child's religious beliefs labeled me a sodomite bound for hell and my child started preaching to me and my partner about how evil we were? Yeah, I'd be pretty disappointed.
However I might have problems with certain beliefs. Once a religion claims some kind of privileged authority over non-believers things start to get problematic.
It's not even that I find Wicca particularly worrisome, or self-destructive. I just cannot stomach the ahistoricity of the religion.
(I do recognize the irony of that from someone who had been raised Catholic, with the number of events listed supposedly in the Bible that are unlikely to have ever happened.)
For the most part, however, I think Zuul's position sums up my own.
My feeling is, if you were truly religious, it wouldn't even be necessary to announce what or who you had faith in. If choosing a religion is the most personal decision a person can make, how about keeping it to your fucking self, m'kay?
Although I can't imagine them joining any social, organized order with all the blasphemy I'd fill their heads with just via off-the-cuff commentary. I'd much rather they became some ghost-hunter or Wiccan, etc. At least those are fun and come with fancier actroutment and don't preach anything super crazy -- like there's an infallible god-king called the pope or whatevs.
I'd actually consider it one of my priorities in raising my child to keep religion AWAY from them.