I’d probably tell my child that religion is for softheads who want a purpose or meaning given to them. People pretend it’s true because they want it to be true.
I can’t imagine being married to someone religious. In fact it upsets me that we’re supposed to give greater esteem to an adult who bases life decisions on an imaginary friend.
I’m an atheist and the serious girl friend is a believing but non practicing Christian. To be honest, it’s something that’s been worrying me. The idea of my children going to church without me doesn’t bother me, but Sunday School lessons filling my children’s head with crap does.
The girlfriend had a good impression of church life and her friends there where a positive force in her life. Naturally she would want to duplicate that experience for her children and as much as I’ve always prided myself on an open mind I have to admit deep down I would be creeped out if my kid recited Bible passages.
Wife and I are both atheist. We have 3 kids, aged 16-20. I’m sure my RC mom baptized them each in the sink sometime or another.
We attended a UU church, where the kids received some comparative religion education. The UU church had some kind of ceremonies, where the kids were welcomed into the church community, and a nonparent “sponsor” is named. I believe for one of our kids, we named a sponsor who is RC. At his request, we allowed him to baptize the kids as part of the ceremony. Thought it might make my mom feel better about us raising them heathen, but she was convinced it was of no value since it wasn’t by a priest or in a “real church.”
I’m also a godparent for one of my RC nephews. Not sure what my sister was thinking, but godparents never really played any significant role in my family. The kid is now 23, and we’ve never spoken of religion, our relationship as godfather/godson, etc. He’s a good kid. I don’t think he’s very religious himself.
We freely discussed any aspects of any and all religions with our kids. It is interesting being an atheist, because you can discuss all religions equally - and equally irrational. I’ve always wondered how a religious person could tell their kids that - say, protestantism is right, and all those jews, catholics, and muslims are wrong.
The kids all think the idea of a God/gods pretty silly and irrelevant to anything that matters - other than possibly figuring out why some believers are acting irrationally and being judgmental.
Note that the title of the thread is: “…Would you raise your children religious?” It’s hypothetical.
I don’t think this is true. I think the premise of religious education is often to assure that if a kid is of a religious bent, they’ll end up in the religion being taught. Or alternatively, even if the kid isn’t religious, the education will keep the religion alive. The latter seems to me to particularly characterize Hebrew schools. Nearly all the Jews I know are non-believers, and yet many send their kids to Hebrew school. The kids will grow up and in turn send their own kids to Hebrew school, and so on, generation after generation. No one will be brainwashed, no one will deviate from unbelief, and yet the religion will be preserved. (And actually, I see the Catholics headed in the same direction.)
Dunno about the last bit, it is quite true that for many Jews “religious school” is better named “Jewish culture school”, but we Jews place a lot less emphasis on belief than Catholics from what I’ve seen.
I went to Hebrew School for five years (even after my bar mitzvah) and it didn’t affect me. I agree that it is mostly a cultural thing, since if you are born into it you’re there. We learned history (some real, but starting at Abraham - they didn’t pretend the first part of Genesis was real history) and mostly Hebrew so you could read your bar mitzvah portion. The very first story we read was about how Abraham was skeptical and disproved the idols when he was a child in Ur. Now that lesson took. 
A lot of Protestants I know change religions more often than some people change underwear, since the differences aren’t that great. It’s a bit more serious for us.
However, the real reason I got sent was that my father wanted a high prestige party when I was 13 (so he could invite his friends) and kids in Hebrew School got the coveted Saturday bar mitzvah slots. He was more interested in running the Mens Club and starting a boy scout troop than religion, and his mother was observant.
True. But those of us who have done it might be a bit more believable than those who haven’t.
I’d be wrong to say it didn’t affect me - it gave me a lifelong love for archaeology, and in particular the archaeology of the Middle East. I just found it endlessly fascinating that all that stuff in the Bible referred to events and myths that were so old, as growing up in Toronto, everything seemed so new.
Absolutely not. I would be a bit disappointed if they went in the religion direction, too.
Not that I’m ever going to have kids, but if circumtances were such that I did, it would depend significantly on the inclinations of my wife. The woman I love is religious; in fact religious differences (as far as I can tell) are all that’s stopping her from being willing to marry me, in part for the express reason that she would want to present a unified front in indoctrinating the kids. So, if she outgrew her other religion-based objections but somehow kept that one, I would allow her to brainwash the kids however she liked with the bare minimum of interference that I could constrain myself to (with the caveat of course that I would not myself participate). The goal in this scenario would be to preserve the marriage, and to that end I’d be willing to sacrifice my kids to ignorance and superstition. (After all, I can’t be a passive beacon of reason and rational thought if I’m not there, can I?)
In a situation where I was able to act entirely on my own preferences, of course I wouldn’t steep my children in that garbage. I’m not a liar by nature, and so wouldn’t be able to brainwash the poor kids properly anyway, even if I had any rational reason whatsoever to do so, which I don’t.
That said, I would still celebrate Christmas and to a lesser degree Easter, sheerly for the fact that 1) they’re fun, and 2) all the good parts are secular anyway. I’d of course throw out all the superfluous religious rubbish in my presentation of them, though when the kids asked what everybody else was talking about, I’d tell them, the same way I’d tell them what I know about religion when the subject came up. I’d be frank about my atheism and inform them flat-out of what’s true, what’s not true, and what’s “santa-claus-level” true (ie you can’t totally disprove it, but come on now).
If my kid ever expressed a desire to attend a church, I’d be as supportive and helpful as if they asked me to buy cigarettes for them - I’d refuse and attempt to get them to rethink their decision. These tactics might change as they got older and if I ever got less lazy; I don’t know if I’d ever get so unlazy that I’d drive them out there myself, but certainly if they’re able to drive themselves, then I wouldn’t try to stop them. (I would not let friends or family try to take them if the kid’s too young to drive; such people wouldn’t offer if they didn’t have brainwashing on the agenda.)
Needless to say, I’d be unhappy if my spawn joined the ranks of the religious faithful.
This is where I was. I never really worried about going to hell, having been taught a pretty soft-pedal brand of Catholicism, but the mere idea of existing consciously *for eternity *wigged my shit right out. Then ironically when I rejected the idea of an afterlife, I got all panicky over facing the fact of not being someday. All around, it sucked.
When my four year old asked what it meant to die, I told her straight up what I think to be the truth - you just stop, you have no thoughts or feelings anymore, and your body stops working completely. It clearly is something she’s wrestling with these days, asking when her grandmother will die and stuff, but I think it’s easier on her if she just integrates the naturalistic explanation from the get go.
And that brings me to my answer - no, I would not raiser her in a religion, nor would I be as neutral as many in this thread. For me, it’s impossible to avoid incidental indoctrination because, as in the situation above, I’m not going to say, “Well, some people believe this, and some believe that, but I believe t’other.” I’m just going to answer her questions as honestly as possible. (And that does include the fact that no one can disprove the existence of a deistic god, and also that I’ll love her whether she’s more faithless than Dawkins or a devout believer.)
BTW, I am an atheist “godparent” to three Catholic kids in the sense that my (atheist) husband and I are their designated guardians in the event they are orphaned. Some family members stood up as the actual godparents, but we are entrusted with their mortal coils.