Why do so many none-christian families get their kids Baptized - OT

Its mainly about tradition but also about where they might want their kids to be educated. I know all of our lasses family are so they go to the same catholic schools the family always have. The kids aren't religious but the schools are considered better.

 

Loads from many peoples perspective. And none from other peoples. It really depends on whether believe whether you'll see religion as having shackles or being restrictive.

 

If said child grows up and wants to be a devout Christian, chances are they'd grow up to thank their parents for Christening/Baptising them. The parents practising it makes no odds, I guess it's mostly about giving the child the option of being "in god's family" from a very young age as opposed to them having to fight their way in later on in life.

I wasn't allowed to by my nephew's Godfather because I wasn't baptised. There's many reasons why people do this, each to their own.

 

Closemindedness to science and reality, indoctrinated bigotry and prejudices, indoctrinated subservience, etc.....

 

!

 

Haha no, sorry, I don't. It's small but not that small!

The point remains that lots of people will never make a choice. They are as they have been brought up. This is sad.

I don't want to hear people say 'Oh, that's a Catholic child'.

They should say 'That's the child of Catholic parents'.

Or Protestant parents, me being from Carrick

 

You could say that about people who dont have a belief in any god though,

Closemindedness to religion and reality, indoctrinated bigotry and predjudices, indoctrinated subservience, etc.....

Making a sweeping statement about people or having a stereotypical point of view on something doesnt make it any more believable.

 

Closemindedness to science and reality...

Look through a list of Nobel Prize winners for physics - you'll see a list as long as your arm of professors. Probably 1/4 or 1/3 of them are Jewish. They tie you up in knots with what they know about science. Most will have pure minds as a result of their religious belief with quality information running through it, they are likely to be able to form opinions based solely on fact, which you can't do, evidently.

I'm atheist by the way, as a result of what I believe, not because other people believe things which I cannot scientifically comprehend as plausible.

You are your own subject...that's the funny part.

 

Exactly!

 

Completely this...


How can you blame religion for close mindedness or indoctrinated bigotry...

Christianity teaches that God forgives all, man should love his neighbour and not commit crimes against people. Its not religion that creates prejudice, its the war mongering political leaders and monarchs who use it for their own personal gain - and even then, fundamentalists are in the vast minority! Saying religion creates bigotry and prejudice is like saying football is a violent sport because some idiots get drunk and fight!

I would agree that religion in previous forms was certainly created subservience (still is to some degree and in certain countries).

 

RI was the first lesson of the day, everyday when I was a kid. That's how I grew up to be as good a citizen as I have.

Must admit I hated it!

 

God forgives everyone... but do what he says, how he says it, or you'll be turned into salt.

The values you talk about are perhaps a result of a post-Christian culture, but you only view such things - forgiveness, modesty and so on, as 'good things' because of your culture.

For pure evolution, humans have managed to get along with each other long before Christianity.

The problem is people use religion to try to ban abortion, to ban euthanasia, to ban stem cell research and so on. They use it to war, to enhance control... It always reminds me of an old Nietzsche quote, a man who had his flaws but was always dead on the money about religion:

''Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances."

If you base your morality, your thought, your opinions on global issues, family etc on religion you will, if unknowingly, live a limited, depraved and diluted existence.

 

Sometimes it seems to me that people baptise their children because ‘it’s what you do’ rather than it being about any real understanding about or belief in what it is they are actually doing. The meaning for some people has been lost I think.

My siblings and I were not brought up in an overtly religious household, we never went to Church and for my part I am an atheist. I can't speak for my siblings' religious beliefs, but both have baptised their children. Neither are overtly religious or go to Church (which I accept does not mean they are not religious) - and being honest, it just feels like it was a case of ‘I have a child, now I must baptise him/her’.

 

That's entirely down to both the interpretation of the religion and your own interpretation of what a 'full' life entails.

For example, if a lad finds a girl he believes is 'the one', waits until marriage to sleep with her (sanctity of marraige) , has a few children with her (no contraception, but you can quite easily time it right), works as hard as he possibly can to provide for his family (Protestant work ethic), goes to church every Sunday where he socializes with the rest of the congregation, gives up his free time to volunteer, helping those less fortunate than him, traveling all over the world in the process, dying safe in the knowledge that his God will be pleased with what he has done - what about that is limited, depraved or diluted? It's not my personal preference nor my beliefs, but then, what is the 'right' way to live? To go everywhere, sleep with everyone, drink, inject or inhale everything? At the end of the day, surely a full life is simply whatever one makes you happy?

 

There is, of course, no right way to live.

If someone, like this hypothetical person, bases their decisions on religion, and thinks they're good things because of his religious thought, in my view he's both doing it for the wrong reasons and missing out on a lot of life.

I don't really think the 'sanctity of marriage' is a good thing - and certainly charitable work shouldn't be done out of fear of God or personal salvation. But of course, if someone does these things out of genuine belief in them you can't stop them.

What I'm really saying is this - We all know someone who's been brought up by strict religious parents, they're devout, god-fearing, cookie-cutter people. They'll get respectable jobs, go to church, maybe start a fund to repair the roof and they'll have 2.5 children as per they should. I feel so sorry for these people - you only get one life, live the bastard.

On what a fulfilled life could be, I don't personally believe any true fulfilment is possible. There's obviously no real meaning to any of it. You can say a lot for existential thought - personally I find it hard to see past the futility of anything I do or can do... but I'd rather die knowing a lot about the world around me, having read good books, travelled and so on than not... So I guess there'd be some fulfilment in that.

 

Just what the hell are you on about here??? Explain to me how belief a diety created it all will lead to a pure mind when approaching science??? How are they more likely to be able to form opinions based on pure fact when they take the word of 5-2000 year old scribblings? Im pretty sure most of the nobel science winners are "jewish" or "catholic" etc because most people were born into a family with a religion, doesnt mean they are practising. I was born into a catholic family, consider myself atheist but still would probably be labelled a catholic despite not practising it.

 

fair points, I'm not in any way religious myself and live a life that would most certainly get me sent to hell, should it turn out it exists, I'm happy with the way its going, but if others wanna do it another way, I'm in no position to judge!

 

I'm very anti religion and my wife is a christian. her family has no less tha 3 vicars in it and her whole family is religious. they all know that i'm not.

I stop short of ridiculing their beliefs to them as they're nice people but my wife knows the drill. we're due to have a kid in 6 weeks and i'm dead against forcing a religion onto my kid but she'll insist. I will simply make sure the kid has more sense that to buy into any of that crap when its old enough to know the score.

 

Pampa

Evolution doesn't contradict Creationism.

You thought it did didn't you?

Your argument is all centred around religious people who refuse to acknowledge evolution. Took me a few minutes but I got it. Funny thing is, no atheists (I'm no exception) believe in creationism, yet many religious people believe in evolution, how close-minded is that!

 

Don't please confuse pressies at Christmas/Yuletide/Saturnalia and marriage with Christianity.

All three of the major Abrahamic religions have such festivities and these pre-date those to pagan times with handfasting and other ceremonies and celebrations.