Christian Wedding

Tonight, I went to a Christian wedding of some friends of my wife (Lauren) and I. It was a gorgeous wedding! The decorations were beautiful, the ceremony in the church was amusing as the pastor made a lot of jokes and seemed to know the couple very well. The pastor quoted many bible quotes, and at one point suggested that the woman (as a woman) must submit to her husband. A few people in the audience chuckled, and then the pastor went on to explain that it's not submission as in domination, but .... and explained it in a nicer way. Inside I thought, just another way of bending literal meanings to suit current social standards... Yet homosexuality is still an abomination? Just a thought...

Anyway, on the way to the church, I asked what I knew would be a loaded question to my wife, I said, "Do you regret that we didn't get married in a church?" She shrugged, side to side, and said, "Not regret, but it would have been nice." For her entire life, she had dreamed about a big church wedding, walking down that long aisle, beautiful pictures on the church steps, rice, the whole nine yards. Did I feel bad taking that away from her? Of course I did... it was a few weeks of very stressful times when we had to figure things out as a couple regarding religion, morality, and church. They're still not 100% figured out, because she added, "It will be hard, though, not baptizing our children."

Now, indoctrination at such a young age, as you may have figured out from my last post, is something that I do not believe in. I am sure my wife thinks that when we have a child, I am going to try to indoctrinate him/her with my beliefs, constantly saying, "God doesn't exist, he's a myth some losers believe in." But that is simply not the case. As Dale McGowan said in his 9 minute interview, indoctrinating children with ANYTHING is not right. What he meant by this is religious indoctrination is not good. Parents should wait until their children are of an old enough age to actually fully comprehend what they are believing. Now, that being said, I am indoctrinated as both a Leafs fan and a Christian, but only one path do I still follow, so it's not related to intelligence or belief(leaf?) that will cause a person to choose a religious or non-religious path later on in life.

However, let's hypothesize that 90% of people are brought up by their parents being told God exists. (No, I have no proof of this number, just an estimate) And of adults in North America, apparently somewhere around 30% are atheists, secularists, freethinkers, etc... (aka, do not believe in God). So that means that 20% of people who are indoctrinated will change their opinions later in life after doing some soul searching or studying of their own. Someone once told me that atheists know more about religion than most religious people do. I would believe this entirely because when people go on spiritual journeys to find what they truly believe, they often times end up reading and studying their own religion, to find what really doesn't "jive" with them anymore.

Now, that leads me to my next gripe. Many religious people will say that it's not entirely fair to NOT tell children about God early on in life, or to not indoctrinate them. They will say that indoctrination is needed to give God a fighting chance. Does this all of a sudden make it right then? What they are saying by this is, "If you were to give educated children the option, too many would reject the God hypothesis because it is extremely far fetched and has no proof."

Even Catholic high schools teach the Scientific Method. How does the Scientific Method jive with the existence of God? And on that note, I once straight up asked my biology teacher if he believed in evolution, and he couldn't even answer me, because he was teaching in a Catholic school.

Anyway, if you watched the man in the 9 minute video speak about how to parent without the use of God, you will see he is an intelligent man with some very smart things to say. Things that make a lot of sense. He just simply asks for parents to explain God as a "theory" (because it is a theory!) and you can even say, "I believe strongly in this and it is a big part of my life, but you can choose to believe whatever you want" and in this way, the child will always know he/she has the option, and later in life if the things they learn in school or life disillusion them from belief in God, they won't be left out in the dark like I was for many years. If you are a person who is sorta "meh" about God, read the definition of Secular Humanism... you may find it is what you are. That's what happened to me!