drpmjhess, you seem to have much clarity of thought on these issues, especially by your ability to put yourself in the shoes of others. You are right on the money with 1 and 3, and your perspectives on the others aren’t flawed, either, but I do have some comments to make about them.
(2) However, I have no problem bringin my boys up in the Catholic faith, having htem baptized, go to confession and communion, etc. I don’t agree that it is irresponsible not to bring children up in a faith rather than in no faith until they are of an age toi deice for themselves.
I was raised Catholic, and I definitely don’t think it harmed me permanently or anything, but then it is important to note that my parents also weren’t so dogmatic or irrationally devout about their faith, besides their making sure I went to church with them once a week. We didn’t study the bible in our home, but I went all the way through the traditional path of the sacraments, including Confirmation. I never really had much of a thorough knowledge of much of the theology until I studied it for myself in college later in the game. I probably have studied the scripture and philosophy behind Catholicism more than my parents have ever done so.
It is important to note that my immediate family is about half Catholic and half Protestant (my father was raised Baptist, but converted to Catholicism recently, and he had always gone to church with my mother and me, anyway).
To be honest with you, I don’t think I ever truly believed in God in a rational sense, and I definitely never felt the presence of God in the spiritual or emotional sense. It was all just an extended episode of something like believing in Santa Claus as a child, where I was following the tradition of my parents and what I had been exposed to and told by adults, and by not questioning authority, (I had gotten the impression that that was sinful.) In a sense, I was told that I should believe in God, and so I believed in the belief in God, you might say, as something I was supposed to do. (the philosopher Daniel Dennett likes to talk about this “belief in believing” phenomenon when he is interviewed on these matters)
I wasn’t really exposed to any other religions in depth in my childhood, nor was I taught about atheism, or any kind of secular moral systems, as those were either foreign to my parents, thought of as “weird” cults to not participate in, or not taught to me in school. Funny how only one’s own religion that one is raised in is the non-weird one, isn’t it?
The key is to teach critical thinking. My twelve year old has been asking tough questions since he was five: how do we know God actually exists? What are there contradictions in the Bible? How do we know whether Christianity or Islam (or either) is the one true religion? Why should we take Genesis seriously since it ignores the dinosaurs? I have welcomed and encouraged his questioning,a nd I daresay his Cathiolicism is the stornger for it.
To me, the thing that I think would involve the most critical thinking, would be to have kids study comparative religions, really. I mean, what harm could it do? Without the familial pressure to practice one religion, a lot of these artificial pressures and limitations for unbiased thinking just fall away.
I would have kids research into answering the question, “What makes their family’s religion the clear, inarguable, ultimate truth above all other world religions and systems of morality?”
Now, I am not talking about them coming up with some personal, subjective opinion, like they get to pick one because they “like it the most”, but an in depth, factual study of human philosophy, psychology, behavior, world religions, ethics, and morality. I guess this isn’t such child’s play! To me, if one doesn’t seek to get to the bottom of this question, then he has simply allowed himself to compartmentalize his brain, by never working out the most basic, unstated major assumptions of his beliefs.
That very question is usually is the one that humbles me. I have heard some people take some shots from the Christian perspective, by defining Jesus’ uniqueness, and from the general perspective of the Christian moral system being the best one, but I have never been won over by these arguments. They still assume way too much.
I remind myself that if I had been born in India I would likely have been raised Hindu and be on a Hinduism forum right now, discussing these matters, and if I had been born in Saudi Arabia, I would be a Muslim, and would be on an Islamic forum. I would be thinking about things from THOSE religion’s perspective, and how they would have been taught to me in my childhood as being the ultimate truth would have a profound effect on my world view.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not subscribed to this view.