Do you believe in God?

[Barty]

"""The writing is on the wall"" https://www.facebook.com/valdinn66617 IRONS"

[BBondsBootlaces]

"don't indoctrinate your kids, teach them critical thinking skills."

[WHU(Exeter)]

"I reckon you should be able to say what you want Pickle. Right now there’s a competition going for WHO prick of the year. It’s deep into injury time, but you’re the player whose madly celebrating slamming in an 89th minute penalty to make it 4-0 for you, against any team still left standing. Enjoy."

[Mike Oxsaw]

"* thinks out loud * ""I wonder if the lack of absolutes that religion supplied has been substituted by the extremism we now see in many walks of life (Brexit, politics (in general) etc, etc.), toss-pots arguing that black is right simply to try and give the impression that they are not wrong and are stating facts (FACTS)..."""

[Chigwell]

"Voltaire said it (or something like this): if God did not exist, Man would need to invent Him."

[Hammer and Pickle]

Oh and Wils - can I just say you are quite obviously full of shit?

[Mike Oxsaw]

"swindon hammer 7:25 Thu Nov 30 The only time she went voluntarily to church (and I flatly refused to join her) was at some oddball Christian sect's church in Luton for the baptism of an oddball friend of her's baby's baptism. She was bat-shit crazy on hiding the Xmas tree, though (which I tolerated), behind a ""bigger pile of presents for the kids than last year"". Not sure that counts as being devoutly religious. In the time I knew her, no religious indicators whatsoever. None from any of her family either, except a funeral service in Scotland for a family member who turned out to be ex-SOE. The kids knew all the simpler stories in the Bible when they came to live with me, and I was not averse to retelling them as bedtime (fairy) stories for a while (until they decided my ""off-the-cuff"" ones from a ""magic book"" were much better, even if equally improbable. To be honest, my kids don't actually remember the service as they were all still very young - and I never knew about it until one of them mentioned if a couple of years after coming to live with me - but they fiercely object to have being subjected to it, even though it seems to have (had) no practical impact on them either way."

[wils]

swindon hammer You are very probably right there. Have a good evening too.

[Hammer and Pickle]

Good luck as you clearly have a lot to learn as as a parent.

[swindon hammer]

"Wils, you sound like a decent bloke but you seem to be going full on preacher mode now and that’s wasted on me and probably many others. Have a good evening."

[wils]

"""Nonsense. You have clearly never been a parent."" My two seem to be doing fine."

[Hammer and Pickle]

“As a parent you have to tell your children to live their best lives as you understand what a best life is.” Nonsense. You have clearly never been a parent.

[wils]

"swindon hammer wrote... ""or as a parent you try and bring them up to be nice and polite and respectful to others without any religious meanings/influence and then when they are old enough they can make their own decision on whether they want to go in that direction."" Being religious is not a hobby. It's a profound belief in the meaning of your existence and the very cause of your ""respect to others"". As a parent you have to tell your children to live their best lives as you understand what a best life is. You can tell your kids to ""be nice"" but to the religious mind that's all pretty vacuous unless you are providing them with a meaning for ""being nice"". When you abandon Christianity you are required to abandon the rationale for it's morality. If you don't believe God told Moses to command the masses ""Thou shall not kill"" or the son of God has told you to ""Turn the other cheek"" but you want to keep those values so people see you as ""nice"" and ""respectful to others"" you need to come up with a new rationale for believing in them, Many people do to varying degrees of robustness. But the people who do this are not all in agreement. So if you are going to instruct religious parents to refrain from indoctrinating their kids in their beliefs because they may not agree when they are older then why would you exclude the atheists who are not in agreement on what is and isn't moral? It will look very much like bigotry."

[Hammer and Pickle]

err.. Generally I would say “We believe in you son” though in your case I’d say I believe in the bourgeois order.

[WHU(Exeter)]

"Well that kind of falls down doesn’t it? 9 year old kid, “well what do YOU believe in” Parents - “we’re not telling you til you’re 18”"

[Hammer and Pickle]

“What sort of parent hides from their kids what they believe is in their kids best interests because it's possible when they are older they might not agree? What sort of damage is that going to do to their trust in you?” Exactly the kind of parent that is actually present and supportive as their child grows up. And it’s not about hiding anything - just about respecting their basic right to form their own awareness of the world.

[swindon hammer]

"Wils, or as a parent you try and bring them up to be nice and polite and respectful to others without any religious meanings/influence and then when they are old enough they can make their own decision on whether they want to go in that direction."

[wils]

"""Shouldn’t children be given the right to choose whether they want to be baptised/christened when they are older and can make up their own mind if it’s for them or not?"" This is Dawkins' line too. But if you believe God exists and you strongly believe that growing up in the Church will lead to their eternal salvation how could you spend 18 years of their lives looking them in the eyes saying ""maybe you will be saved or maybe you wont"". What sort of parent hides from their kids what they believe is in their kids best interests because it's possible when they are older they might not agree? What sort of damage is that going to do to their trust in you? And, of course, why not do it the other way around. If you're an atheist, why are you not taking them to church when they might grow up and become believers. Are you not keeping them away from the church because you are inflicting your own beliefs on them?"

[swindon hammer]

"Mike Oxsaw, was your ex a big church goer or did she just want them Baptised because it was a family thing? The point about your children was interesting as well. Shouldn’t children be given the right to choose whether they want to be baptised/christened when they are older and can make up their own mind if it’s for them or not? I was lucky in that my ex didn’t care for it either so we didn’t have to make that decision for our kids."

[WHU(Exeter)]

Wils is on fire. And I don't mean that in a Moses and the burning bush way.

[WHU(Exeter)]

Wils is on fire. And I don't mean that in a Moses and the burning bush way.

[icwhs]

Ham & Pic. Eloquent but you didn’t actually answer the question?

[Hammer and Pickle]

"At an individual level, religious belief may be key to viral inner resources like comfort and compassion. But it can also turn one into a swivel-eyed, dogma-driven crank capable of enormous harm. At the public level, simple, agrarian societies require religion as their integrating operating programme. However, combined with complex society and a state made up of proper law and bureaucratic institutions, it is pretty much the source of all totalitarian oppression. The shortest route from a complex to a primitive society is the alliance of the state and church. The body of constitutional law in the UK is remarkable in this respect because the separation of secular power and ecclesiastical authority is embodied in the apolitical head of state and monarch. The separation came out of the capital owners seizing power from the 16th Century onwards and reflects their interest in keeping the social order at a minimum level."

[Mike Oxsaw]

"One of the first things my ex- did after our divorce was get our 3 children baptised. They've (just about) forgiven her for dropping out of their lives completely for the first 4 years when they came to live with me, but never, ever for the baptism, which they all say they would never have consented to, given the chance. I never dissuaded them from asking about religion, and we did the ""usual"" things for the first few years until they (not me) decided it all felt a bit plastic. The last Xmas dinner we held was on 25th July (I simply threw the suggestion at them and they were all for it). Local greengrocer thought me completely bats when I discussed procuring winter vegetables with him and I had to buy (cook and freeze) a shit load of them - which the kids sure made short work of in the following weeks. Their morals & general behaviour seem level enough to be regarded as civilised and I don't believe any religious teachings would have, or will, make any improvement."

[BBondsBootlaces]

There is no evidence for a god. We need to get out of the dark ages.

[swindon hammer]

"Wils, you basically implied that the reason England was violent, depressed and miserable was because of our lack of faith/interest in Religion. I have nothing against “Christian type values” if that means being brought up to be nice and polite to each other and helping those that are struggling (That’s something every person should do and teach our kids to do) but don’t expect me to bow down to an imaginary almighty God because I don’t believe in it and as I said earlier I don’t think many others who do go to Church do either. For many It’s more of a tradition thing rather than a spiritual one. If others believe in God and want to spend their lives praying to him then good for them."