Greetings all:
Another reason I feel that "religion is bad":
I just came back from my nephew's Baptism into the Roman Catholic Church. He just had his 1 year birthday a few weeks ago. As I was sitting there in the pew, listening to the Priest explain to us all what this ritual means, I couldn't help but think that the whole thing was very coercive in nature. I mean here was ten kids, ranging in age from new-born to 2 years old, none of which had any idea of what was being done to them, no say in the matter and no way to disagree. The Priest went on with his explanation, telling us that once these children went through baptism, it was irreversible, that they would be born again into Christ and into the Church. He explained to the parents and godparents that it was their duty to raise these children up in Christ. He emphasized the fact to not wait until they were 5 or 6 when they begin to develop their own thoughts and question things. He said the parents and godparents must start now, to tell these children each night how to pray and so on. I happened to be sitting their with my son (who just turned 8 in March). He asked me if he was baptised, and I told him no he wasn't, and explained why. I said that me and his mother decided a long time ago that we were going to leave it up to him which spiritual path (or lack thereof) that he wanted to pursue. He seemed to understand and smiled real big at me. So I quess what I'm saying is that I object to the fact of "forcing" any child into a particular religion or denomination. We have laws protecting them from this type of under-handedness in other areas of life, but it seems when it comes to religon, people let their own prejudices overcome them and disregard the right to free-choice of our sons and daughters. I'm looking for comments on this issue.