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Edited on Tue Jun-03-08 01:21 PM by dropkickpa
My mother was raised a strict Catholic, and Dad was raised Prebyterian, but lackadaisically. His mum was excommunicated from the Catholic church back in the '30s (she divorced her first husband because he was an asshole). She started doing the presby thing when she started dating my grampa, but they both rarely attended church after they got married (neither one felt a strong need to). After he died, Gramma would go to church, mostly for the social aspect of it and because she enjoyed singing in the choir. When she remarried, she supposedly became a Methodist (that's what Dick was, his name was appropriate), but never went to their church because the choir wasn't as fun, so she went back to the presby churh. She doesn't even bother going to church now, she says her singing has gone to crap (she's 90) so there no reason to go.
Mom's family was strict Catholic, they NEVER ate meat on Fridays (still usually don't), etc. Grandma and Grampa (before he died), were horrified when they found out that 1. none of us kids were baptised and 2. we were all athiests. Grandma still gives me in particular shit about that (none of the rest of my siblings has gone to visit her in more than 10 years, so they avoid it, and I am now refusing to go, too).
I've only been to sunday church services maybe 8 times in my life, mostly with friends as a kid, and I went to all sorts of churches. I went to Baha'i, Presby, Catholic, methodist, and couple of other services. All seemed to me, to be perfectly honest, like a bunch of hogwash. Having 6 kids, my parents didn't think it was necessary to send us to church stuff just for the social aspect of it, not to mention they didn't want us to be indoctrinated into any of it. One of my brothers has buddhist leanings, but without the religious part, if that makes any sense, and another has actually been exploring Astaru. The rest of us are totally non-religious.
Even with 2 brothers that make their lives as artists (the two mentioned above), science was always presented to us as a valuable thing to learn about, and we were taught to question things that we are asked to "take on faith". I'm the scientifically inclined kid, but we *all* have an interest in it.
What I've always found to be funny is that me and my siblings have a very strict moral code based on the principles of "make the best of what you've got, cuz this is all there is". The vast majority of the time, it's a lot more strict than our friends who are "believers" and were raised that way. Kinda nullifies the whole "religion is what gives humans morality" argument I hear all the time from fundies.
With my daughter, it's been tough because my best friend is a fundie (I know, I know, but she's really intelligent otherwise and wasn't always this way!), and I've had to be careful of Dropkid spending time with her kids, because they'll sometimes spout "Jesus is great!!" crap at her. BUT, my friend respects my views, and works with her kids to keep them from doing that (but the fundie nature of their church makes it hard for her to rein her kids in sometimes). Dropkid is not allowed to spend the night on Saturdays because I won't allow her to go to their church on Sunday morning. It can be particularly difficult at the age she is right now (7) because of the "joiner" nature of this age group, and, even though Dropkid is usually fiercly independant, she still sometimes wants to "fit in" and do what the other kids are doing.
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