[lit-ideas] Re: Some Things Are True
- From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 12:15:47 -0500
No, there's an even simpler solution. Tell your children this:
"Religion is a highly personal matter, and no one should impose their
religions views on anyone else. So I'm not going to raise you in any
religious tradition whatsoever; I'll leave it up to you to decide as an
adult which of the religions (if any) seems to fit you the best."
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Of course the problem with this approach is that much of religion is
really pre-rational and pre-adult; it's something you "do" before you
believe anything, and if one doesn't "do" it first, one is extremely
unlikely to ever "believe" it later.
Religion shares this quality with love; if one waited until making a
rational decision, one would seldom (if ever) fall in love.
Come to think of it, religion also shares this quality with what
Aristotle called "moral virtues;" these are things you teach a child to
do before they can reasonably chose to do them, so that by the time they
can be reasonable, they have the discipline necessary for good choices.
In Japan, Shinto is something that makes you Japanese; it's not a belief
system, it's a way of being raised.
To make religion a purely adult, rational choice is to eliminate most
religious choices.
Aye, there's the rub!
Mike Geary wrote:
It just occurred to me, thinking of Paul Stone and his up-coming
Christmas child-rearing crisis, the perfect solution: go Jewish! I
can't believe I didn't think of this for myself with my kids --
Christ, I could have saved $10,000 at least. Raise them Jewish until
time for Bar or Bat Mitzvah, then announce the family's conversion to
Hinduism. But you must make it very clear to the kids that
you are Reformed, else they might start demanding that you obey all
those dietary laws and who wants that?
Mike Geary
not believing I missed out on such an easy out.
Memphis
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be
explained by incompetence and ignorance."
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John Wager john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Lisle, IL, USA
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