Should atheists participate in religious ceremonies?
If they (heaven forbid!) choose to instigate a religious ceremony such as a Christian marriage ceremony, what are the most inappropriate bible versus to use?
My opinion - telling lies for personal comfort and convenience is immoral. It’s okay to stand there, or be there to support others, but not to say the words. Not for disrespect of God or the church, but out of politeness and personal integrity.
As for versus, I’d go for the beatitudes from Mark and Luke. Instead of “This is the word of the Lord, Amen” at the end, I’d ask the reader to say “So did Mark miss some out, or did someone come along later and edit Luke? I think there’s something in that for all of us.”
My wife doesn’t believe in god, but she still considers her self catholic, and will recite the words and stuff when we go to weddings, etc. It makes no sense to me, but she says it is the “way she was raised”. The only thing I participate in is the “peace be with you” hand shakes…I can get behind that.
We did not choose to have religious wedding, though. That seems weird.
I’ll expand on my personal experience, which I summarised in that other thread. I’m an atheist, and I have been except for a short time as a teenager when I was baptised and confirmed in the Anglican Church – I was old enough for it to be adult baptism. My wife, in spite of some doubts and difficulties with the official line, is a Catholic. We married in a Catholic church.
Before the ceremony, I made no secret of the fact that I wasn’t a Catholic when we talked to the priest. My wife asked is we needed to go through pre-marriage counselling, and his response was, “Well, we’ve had this little chat, haven’t we?” (My wife was 26 and I was 31 at the time, so we weren’t exactly lovestruck teenagers).
So we had the ceremony, but not the nuptial mass, and everyone (including my wife’s Catholic relations) were all very happy. However, it’s not exactly the situation in that other thread, because the OP in that thread is apparently concealing from some people the fact that his Catholic faith has lapsed to the extent that he now calls himself an atheist. I made no secret about my lack of religious beliefs.
I will participate in religious services, hell yeah! I even take the blessings and leave money and take the holy food. And one of my dreams is to have a big old Hindu wedding.
I mean, why not? But then, Hinduism doesn’t actually require belief in a God.
Religion often isn’t about religion. For a lot of people, it is about community and togetherness. It is a cultural center for whole families and communities. Just because you don’t believe in the underlying tenets of that religion doesn’t mean you should be barred from participating in the communal aspects – even if that means you have to lubricate the process by reciting bible passages so that Aunt Ethel doesn’t make a scene.
There is still a whole lot of prejudice towards atheists. In some families, coming out as an atheist is harder than coming out as gay. I don’t think there is anything wrong with sacrificing a little honesty in order to avoid being de facto disowned and losing your family.
Also, there are plenty of atheists who “believe in religion”, meaning they value the literature, the togetherness, the meaning it brings to people’s lives. They can take everything as a metaphor while still participating in the religion. It’s not my style, but I don’t actually see anything wrong with this.
My wife and kids know I am an atheist, and you guys, that’s about it.
So my wedding was in a church. It made my mother and her family happy so I stood there and said words that had no meaning to me. It has never bothered me in the least FWIW.
If they want to. A lot of the words won’t mean anything to atheists, so there’s no particular reason they *shouldn’t * participate. But there are plenty of reasons to choose not to.
Who is the atheist lying to here, and for whose comfort and convenience?
An atheist - like anyone else - should do whatever the fuck he/she wants to do, so long as he acquiesces to property owners’ requests concerning private property, and accepts whatever legal recourse may result. But I couldn’t care less whether he gargles wth the sacramental wine, buggers an altar boy on the altar, and takes a crap on the bible. I doubt most churches would care for such behavor, tho. And I would not personally act in that manner.
As someone who is quite religious, I’m a little torn.
I wouldn’t want someone participating if they were harboring feelings of disdain or mockery toward the ceremony, whether it was obvious or not. God knows what is in their hearts. Better to be honest with your family and politely bow out.
If someone was doing it out of respect for their family or the church, but didn’t really believe, it’s more of a gray area. I can see the possibility of good coming from that. After all I’d rather have people come to church than not come to church, because if someone is present there is always the chance of a little Grace happening.
I guess the bottom line for me is: if it’s a chore for you, don’t do it. You’re not doing anyone any favors.
I was in complete agreement with Anne Neville in that one. If you’re not a professed Catholic then I wouldn’t expect you to have any great reverence for the Church, but the couple was also setting themselves up for a rats nest with their families. Getting married in the Catholic Church is an implicit promise to raise your kids Catholic. So now their parents are expecting Catholic grandchildren, and we never got to ask the OP how far he was going to take the baptism, CCD, 1st communion run with his kids. (But if there won’t be kids then that solves that problem.)
Many other US Christian denominations I wouldn’t say this, but Catholics and Catholics families can be very fussy about how the kids are raised.
I agree but the thing is that getting married in the Catholic Church is different than just going to midnight mass at Christmas and maybe taking communion, as I’ve tried to describe above. If you’re not raised Catholic (and maybe you were, but a lot of Dopers were not of course) then the unstated implications of a Catholic wedding ceremony may be missed.
I know some atheists that take the position that while they do not believe in the religion of the bible, they consider certain portions of it pretty poetry or an interesting story or moral lesson (the good Samaraitan for example) and it is these portions they would use.
What people seem to fail to understand is that many people can’t just “stand up for their lack of beliefs” without suffering serious and pointless consequences from their families and in-laws.
If everyone accepted atheists, then yes, you should be true to what you believe in. However, we don’t live in that world. For me, the question is who is being unreasonable? The atheist who is going on just to get along, or the family who won’t accept them?
Well, the middle one is illegal (providing the altar boy is under the age of consent), so I’d have an issue with the middle one.
And the religious person in me has a bit of an issue with the other two (although I think gargling with the sacremental wine is kind of funny, but I"m not Catholic), because basically said athiest is just giving a big “fuck you” to theists, I’m sure even atheists think being a dick isn’t cool. As long as you aren’t a dick to me or what I believe, however illogical it may seem, and I’m the same with you, we’ll get along fine.
Why can’t everyone just live by that? World’d be a better place …
(Yes I know Disndale was deliberately coming up with extremes, not examples.)
About 20 years ago, my sister (J) asked me and my other sister (C) - both atheists - to be godparents to our nephews. It made me extremely uncomfortable but not as uncomfortable as saying “no” to my big sister J.
After the ceremony - with lots of promising to serve God and renouncing the devil - C leaned in to me and whispered “now we are definitely going to hell”.
It definitely felt immoral to me and I vowed to never be put in that situation again. I made it clear to everyone in my family and wife’s family that I would be delighted to come to church but don’t make me take oaths or pray or otherwise perjure myself.
More recently, I converted to ceremonial deism (“the only religion blessed by the supreme court”) which has released me from my *vow. Ceremonial Deists deem any religious statement to be merely ritual and are thus free to enjoy the ceremony and community of religious practice without any of that supernatural stuff. It’s the best of both worlds! Pascal would be proud!
I actually do enjoy going to church and often go on my own. I enjoy the ceremony and the tradition and feel connected to something ancient and profound (but not necessarily true).
*
j/k I still avoid situations where I might have to swear an oath or profess some declaration of belief that conflicts with what I actually believe. IOW I agree with the OP that it is immoral to make false declarations but I feel perfectly entitled to participate in the ceremonial aspects. My religious friends and family seem to appreciate it even though they know that I am an atheist.*
Why shouldn’t atheists participate in church? I’ve been in plenty of discussions about imaginary beings. You’d have to be some kind of a dick to point out to a trekkie that both Kirk and Picard are fictional, and neither one can beat the other. Do you run up to children and spill the beans about Santa Claus?
In my opinion, 90% or more of the people who go to church don’t believe in god any more than I do. They’re pretending for the sake of other people, like the parents who put money from the tooth fairy beneath a pillow, and what’s the harm in that?
From my own personal experience, this is very true. Both my own family and that of my partner took a lot longer to accept our atheism. And after 22 years, there are still a few on both sides who think our atheism is “temporary.”
As an agnostic who has spent a lot of time in church for various reasons (and who just had his daughter baptized, for the sake of the in-laws), I’ve got no problem with attending, singing along with the hymns nor even getting blessed, but I won’t profess a faith I don’t hold nor will I take Communion.
Most of the pastors (priests, chaplains, etc) haven’t had a problem with this, largely because it demonstrates a certain respect for their beliefs even though I don’t hold them myself, and the ones who have been bothered by it have generally been jerks anyway.