Do atheists indocrinate their children into their belief system?

That's a priceless post, Fraggle Rocker! Thank you!

 

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So... you don't really care about your parents?

 

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Oh, I do it because it's a right act with no reward from it in mind.

 

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Thank you, tresbien, for the first time you said something that makes sense, and without having invoked a god. Congratulations.

:bravo:

I now take back the comment I made referring to the last turkey in the shop.

 

Thanks. Clearly your parents did not teach you any religion.

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Not quite. While it is a tree and it on some occasions may symbolize the world tree which is met in many, not just the Nordic myths, the primary symbolic meaning of fir tree and other evergreens like pine and juniper is eternal life or simply life.
It's symbolizes life and the hope for life in the harsh winters of Europe when sometimes the question is that of survival.
That is also the case in Baltic mythology to which culture I belong to.

 

Were in paradise. Until we took a big shit on it anyway.

 

Not only that but if we shit all over this place we'll shit all over the next place too.

 

It's not just that, it's 'yule' which is nordic, the reindeer, (Odin rode one), the tree being placed in houses, (Odin), Mistletoe, (a sacred norse thing), the twelve days, the gift giving gnome Tomten with peaked red hat, etc etc and so on.

 

Well, over here Christmas is still called Winter celebrations or Ziemassvētki, as it has been called even before Middle ages (we lack written sources before that). We don't have any mistletoe, but we have had evergreens since forever.

Forgetting names, it's an old, old indo-european celebration or festival that can not be connected just with Nordic, Celtic, Baltic or any other single indo-european branch, and it's older than any localized god, like Odin. The primary deity in winter solstice is the Sun and the message is that of the return of light and the hope for life.

 

In spite of the thread title, which I still consider trollish, this thread has been redeemed by some of the participants.

My parents both believed in some sort of god. But they almost never spoke about it (actually, I don't think I ever heard my father speak about it). We did not attend church, and the usual holidays were only celebrated in a secular way, divorced from their religious meanings. Reading was encouraged, and both of my parents were open to being questioned about anything. One of the most valuable things my mother taught me was to freely admit when you don't know the answer to a question.

I believed in a sort of Christian god until I was around ten or so. I began to have doubts, and they only increased with age. Around that time, a Seventh Day Adventist uncle really gave us the pitch for his religion when we spent a summer with him. It didn't take. Around that time, I can remember baiting the kids of a religious family we knew about why they trimmed the tails of the Poodle puppies they raised. "If god wanted them that way, why didn't he make them that way" I asked.

By my early teens I was an atheist. By fourteen, I would tell anyone who asked me what religion I was that I did not believe in any, but I never volunteered the information (which really isn't much different than now).

I was talking to a good friend who doesn't believe as he was watering his garden one day. His then nine year old daughter said to him, "You don't believe in god, do you?" "No Lilly, I guess I don't" he replied. "Well I do", she said. "That's fine Lilly", he replied. And that was that

 

Hence my comment. Any religion.

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are they alive.If no do u think will u see them again.

 

I'm a product of a later generation and at school (6th grade, I think) I was given the choice whether to study Christianity or ethics. I chose Christianity, because it was much more easier, as I always have had interest in mythologies, but I got bad marks in it, because I was kinda critical in my essays.

 

So, I should probably share my story as well.

My grandparents didn't talk about religion, my mother partially comes from a Catholic Polish family, my father also has Catholic ancestors. They are Christian, but we never talked about religion in family, it wasn't also a part of Christmas or Easter, they were family occasions.

My grandfather with whom I spent lots of my childhood together was an atheist, but he didn't talk about religion too, save for once, when he told that kosmonauts have been in the cosmos and haven't seen any god up there.

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I spent lots of time either alone or with my grandfather in the forests. We were fishing and taking photographs, my grandfather was a hunter and an old war hero.
We talked lots about animals, birds, their habits, woodwork, etc., also about his war adventures.

On my leisure time I read folk stories, mostly Latvian, Russian and Indian ones, but I read also Arabic, Native American, African, Maori, Aboriginal, German, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Uzbek, Tajik, British, Irish, Inuit.... you name it, I read them all. Including "1000 and 1 Arabian nights" with oil paintings of naked women, dead bodies and murders. All folk tales I could get my hands on. My grandfather and aunt, and mother also read them to me, although my mother had taught me to read when I was 2 years and 1 month old I enjoyed listening to stories.

It's funny about the forests really. When you are in the forest you are alone with the nature and your mind, your thoughts are a lot louder and your imagination more vivid, there are no distractions. And the fantasies, they take shape are metaphorically speaking alive, all the creatures from the tales, the wolfmen, the devils and witches, and spirits, and gods, they are lurking right beside you just beyond direct line of sight.
In the forest from your consciousness you give life to all the mythical creatures, they are as if projections of your mind, but outside of it.

It was then around when I was 5 or 6 when I began to be interested in Baltic paganism, I learnt the names of gods, their nature, their signs and rituals from folk songs - I already knew their stories from tales.
I performed rituals and I lived in the world of wonders made alive by my own mind.

Then the revolution started and I was on the run with my mother and small sis from the Russian military police OMON, also called the Black Berets, while my father was in charge of the military and intelligence operations. During the two years we hid in many, many locations across three countries with OMON being just right behind us, sometimes a locked doorway or a garden bush away, and finally we were hid by a very religious Christian scholar. The location was very safe and my parents were very thankful to her, that's why they enrolled me into the Christian school that that scholar opened just after the revolution. I attended it from the age of 7, and it was first three years in that school that I believed in Christianity. However at the start of the 4th grade I went to my mother and told her that I won't attend another day in that school. I couldn't stand the attitude in that school towards Christianity and how they thought that it was somewhat above all other beliefs. I remember also being pissed that they didn't like me listening to Elvis Presley or dating all the pretty girls (that's what "1000 and 1 Arabian Nights" do to you, the erotic Arabian tales had played their part.

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) And I didn't feel any shame. I had also gotten over my belief in christianity, because I had analysed it and found it out to be just another fairy tale, and not one that goes well with my nature.

So I went to my mother and told that I won't attend another day at the Christian school because it limited my expression, and also because I despised the Christian belief by then, because the scholars in that school seemed so arrogant and so forcing their beliefs onto others that I couldn't stand it.

She took me right out of that school and I got into another secular school.
At that time I returned to my Baltic mythology and its devils.

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) Made wooden staffs, engraved them with signs from our mythology, wore ornaments, pendants I made from stones, etc.

Then from 8th grade till some 11th grade I was a warring atheist, because I thought that all beliefs are crap and I couldn't stand religious people.

Then I began to become more interested in Eastern philosophies, including Upanishadic Hinduism, Buddhism and Zen. They calmed my mind although I still didn't quite understand them and I began deeper exploring all the myths and religions, all as equal. By the 2nd course in University I had found out a wonderful thing in rituals and their connection with human psyche. I also began exploring Shamanism and experimenting with special teas and incense (including self made) smoke to get me into trance.

And wow what a world opened to me, the world of my own mind of course. I began to yearn to experience my own mind more and more and all the images and stories and dreams my unconsciousness comes up with. Around then I began to study comparative religion.

So now I'm here. I've found great wisdom and power in rituals. Although I don't believe in any gods, I believe in my own mind and the power it can have, if I tune it just right. The intensity of the experience of being during a ritual, it's something untellable, unspeakable, to say it's ecstatic is too little to say.
During a ritual you cease to be in the spacetime of today, you travel to somewhere that is timeless and with no boundaries. You become one with all the nature, all the stories and myths, all the trees and everyone who has ever lived in all the times. Then there are no gods, there are no others, no sounds, no thoughts, only you.

It's such a sublime experience that I feel sorry our modern world has largely forgotten it. It's such an experience that everyone who has missed it, I feel, has missed something crucial. And I don't side with those who call for the end of all religion and mystical thinking, that is an important legacy and understanding it, its methods and rituals, incorporating modern scientific understanding of reality, it can give a key to a much greater experience of life and a more intimate relationship with your own mind. No gods, no prayers, no churches.

Besides those, smaller rituals are very potent in concentrating and preparing you for a particular problem you have to face in life.
The ancient people knew that and employed that. Of course they used their understanding of nature, and that's why those old religions don't work quite like that these days, our societies have kept those religions without updating them to modern understanding of reality, that's why religions and science clash, and that's why mysticism is just a theatre play for most. They apply the old mechanism that doesn't work any more, and therefore think it has no use.
Or, like most Muslims, they have largely kept their society living in the dark ages, denied modern revelations and science, and it works darkly and is in conflict with more modern civilizations.

But I'm off topic.

So my journey is and has been of a personal quest of understanding. My parents have not forced their faith unto me, but have helped with support and respect that I admire greatly.

I still roam the woods and lately I've started creating ritual places in our woods, creating totems and leaving marks of mythology. I'm sort of mythologising our forests to a picture like they perhaps were in the old paganic days of my culture. And embedding in them marks of modern understanding of cosmology, biology and physics.
My mind is still projecting my inner world onto the physical and after years under Christianity and Atheism I'm again living in the world of wonders and myth.

 

everneo,

No such denial takes place. They are free to choose whatever they want.

And just what is the essentail difference between a god fantasy and pink fantasy? They are just fantasies.

Please read what I have said - they have been free to choose - religions simply hasn't been important enough for us to give any real time to.

And why the ad hominen?

How so? Surely fantastic baseless claims will appear to anyone that has not been indoctrinated into believing such things as bizzare. They have formed these opinions on their own in the absence of religious indoctrination or otherwise.

 

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Thats very interesting. I am attached to symbols myself and carry totems around with me, not as a religious belief but because they are connections to my culture (maybe I will take pics and post them later

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)

And I agree, keeping your mind open to nature is the most essential aspect of exploring your mind. When I am mentally tired, I go to this park nearby and sit on the swings (even though they are meant for children) or walk thorugh the woods. The "silence" of the mind is a wonderful thing.

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My father is an atheist and my mother is somewhere in between I guess.
I went to Christian schools all my life, I came out ok though.