Religion
In reply to the discussion: I don’t want my wife to indoctrinate our two-year-old into religion [View all]Sweeney
(505 posts)Religion is the childhood of human kind, and children see the world magically. Ask any adult to believe, and really believe in Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny and they would blow you off. God on the other hand is beyond proof, and what can we prove anyway? Like the man said: We can manufacture God and can't make a worm.
The most terrible disease of modern individualistic society is loneliness and God helps to solve that problem. Death is another constant problem of humanity. We cannot figure out whether death is real, but the idea of God makes death seem false. As hard as it is to lie to your children, who wants to be the one to kill Santa Clause, or the Easter Bunny, or God, when God makes the fear of death manageable?
I am a reasonable person. Reasonably, any sum that amounts to zero is inconsiderable. Believe in God, or don't believe in God and the result is still the same. You cannot disprove it or prove it so screw it. But this is just tangled up nonsense to the child. They need the community of church. They need God to scare away the boogieman of death. Many people grow out of that feeling. The rational person we want children to become will say: It does not matter if I believe or do not believe, and I can find perfectly good reasons for morality apart from God.