Devil's Advocate

[suspectclass]

I find it interesting that in response to my little poll so many people said that they would leave religion up to the discresion of their children. So this brings up the question of when people are capable of making significant decisions for themselves. When are you capable of choosing a faith? When are you capable of choosing to modify your body? Is it possible that there is worth in being rasied within a religious tradition for the sake of culture, ethics and tradition? Does the presence or absence of religious and/or spiritual belief add to or detract from the worth of the ethical code? If you make the choice not to raise your children with religion because you don't believe it, feeling that they will make the choice later, isn't it possible that you've already made the choice for them?

Comments

[artartart.livejournal.com]

My mother raised me Jewish. She taught me that God was everywhere and in everything, including all people, and that He knew everything, including what was in people's minds.

I used to lie in bed at night and think in the following train: "If God knows what I'm going to think, did he know I was going to think this? And did he know I was going to think that? And that? And at what time did he know? Did he always know? Can I think faster than God will know I'm going to think this? Or did he already know I would think that?" and so on ad nauseam.

Interestingly though, my mother also taught me that thoughts had no moral value. That I could think anything and there was no moral rightness or wrongness to thinking it. It's one of the few things my mother taught me about morality or religion that I still believe.

I think you're capable of choosing a faith or lack thereof as soon as you know it's an option. If you really wanted your kids to decide for themselves, the best idea would be to educate them about a lot of different faith systems, plus the idea of atheism, and talk to them about what they thought was most likely, and why, and what each belief would mean morally, etc.

Counterpoint. I remember coming to my mother at age 10 with my newly formed theory that the universe was ephemeral, and could be simply peeled away like an orange peel and nothing would be left. That is my example of how sometimes you can come to believe something even if nobody ever let you know it was an option.