Great post, encompasses everything I wanted to say.

I realized early on that just doesn't work (in my mind) when you become responsible for teaching little minds how to think. My kid knows that many of our relatives pray and what they mean by it, but she knows their beliefs are mainly bunk and why. I deeply believe my child believes life is even more special because she knows it is fleeting. YMMV.

Jeremiah 29:1 "This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. "

If you do not fit in the above categories, then the letter was not written to you.

A particular religion can be true or false regardless of how good or bad the people who claim to be followers are at following the religion.

In post 14, you questioned people who follow a God they don't really understand and now you question people who have tried to make God small enough to understand? I think there are aspects of God that we can understand by way of analogy, but I agree it is a mistake to try to fit God in a box.

No. Just no. You are not causing your child any problems by not baptizing them. You are also not taking away any choices from them, quite the contrary. If they decide they do believe later in life, they can get baptized if they want to. There's no age restriction.

Forcibly shoving your children into a box labelled "religion" is what can cause them problems.

i thought lukasz was joking because to me it's so insane.

My mom did some crazy shit when I was younger but not having me baptized was an awesome decision

Its my belief, that one should try to find God/god/whatnot on more personal level - call it seeking self enlightenment, revelation, becoming in harmony with world or whatever: i dont have word for it. However, what it isnt (in my opinion) - is just taking someone elses word for it.

Bad analogy maybe - but tell your wife she is fat and should start living more healthily she'll probably do nothing and ignore the comment. However if she goes to dance with her slim friends to a disco, notices that the dancing isnt as easy as it was 10 years ago - there's fair chance she'll tell you the next day she'll start to go to gym or whatever.

The point being, the difference of knowledge given and knowledge gained by ones own effort is worlds apart.

Priests, bibles, monks, sutras, gurus and all that can be helpful to bring some idea's into one's mind - but if you just accept unquestionably one author over the rest, well then in my mind youre going astray. Badly.

Like you said yourself God (or whatever divinity) hardly fits in a box. ...do you know how Seth killed Osiris? :)

I am not sure if there is a final answer. Also I am not sure if really all answers are as good as the others. Some could be worse than others. Surely it depends on the individual. So my answer could be different from yours.

It is not insane because if he was in USA I would say baptizing a child is silly. It is an issue of reality in which the kid is going to grow up

Yes. As an adult you can baptize yourself have first communion which are both necessary for church marriage... And i think comfirmation too. Doing that all in reasonable time as adult with work commitments, a child maybe is a bitch. It is not something as simple as paying 20 bucks in duty stamp and waiting for mail with your certificate. You have to take classes study exams.

And you can have kickass party. But how do you think your child is going to feel when all his friends participate in communion and he will not. Do you think he will fully comprehand why he is outsider?

You want to give your kid a choice then in Poland you should baptize him otherwise you are limiting is future options and hurting hi in potential future without really any point.
So if parents do not practice religion you still have religion shoved in just because when you were 2 months old some old dude poured a bit of water on your head?

What I said has nothing to do with faith but about polish reality in which kids are going to grow up. If you don't know this then p,ease do not reply


And I don't what kid believes what is his her faith, That's not an issue in regards to baptism. So when replying to me read the post properly

Yes, we don't know how it's in Poland, but you should've stated BEFOREHAND that you're especially referring to a specific situation in a specific country.
Your comment was stated in a very broad manner, as such nobody could know that it's directed towards a specific country.

But even what he's saying is becoming less and less true. I think Poland needs more families like ours. Every year, more and more families are curageous enough to not baptise their children. Few years from now, not attending to religion at school shouldn't be a problem too.

I wasn't attending religion since 2nd grade primary school (gimnazjum) and never had any problems because of that, the slightest.

I did read it properly, and you said nothing, nada, zero, zip, about your opinion being specific to a Polish reality. Your profile says "Australia", which is no help at all. So when you post, write the post properly.

Note that when I posted about not baptizing your children, I did not write that it also meant they wouldn't have to pay church tax. Why didn't I write that? Because I know that is specific to the Danish reality, and I don't know if that's the case elsewhere. Hence I don't put that forward as an argument on an international forum.

In a strict and logical sense, yes, but any religion that doesn't inspire most of its followers to basic decency is hardly a religion worth a damn.
Look I didn't comment before (at least I don't think) because I'm trying to be polite (something I have a very hard time with on these subjects), but this stance is insane. You seriously think teaching your child that they have to conform to shit they don't like and you don't support is a good life lesson? Fucking A, man, the reality is he'll do far more for his child by teaching him how to deal with differences in an intolerant and religious society than by being a hypocritical, go through the motions weakling.

You teach your child how to be a decent person while maintaining their own beliefs, how to be polite when others offend, and how to make peace with their own beliefs as opposed to the beliefs of others.
At the risk of being even more polemical, do you also think Rosa Parks should have just shut the fuck up, because that's the reality she lived in?

Some things are worth changing, shit like you're describing is among them. Being a coward and just "living with it" is sure as hell not the way to go about it.

In Belgium (where I live), most traditions are rooted in religion which is a problem since fewer and fewer people are believers. Because of this, more and more parents are starting to "rebrand" Catholic ritiuals and renaming them into something else.

The First Communion (when 6 years old are finally allowed to go to the communion - it's a rite of passage of sorts) and the Formal Communion (11 year olds who enter puberty) are being replaced by "spring festivities". Sadly enough, the latter is more like a hipster/hippy thing, with lots of flowers and stuff and not much better than the Catholic stuff (minus the religious theme).

Christmas is being replaced by Winter Festivities - which is fine in a way because the religious theme had nothing to do with a tree and ornaments in the first place.

In the end, I'm an agnostic myself but only in the sense that I'm intelligent enough to realize it's not possible to be 100% certain there's no force out there that spawned the universe - and heck, even if there was such a force, why should we worship it? We don't worship gravity, do we?

To the OP - pretend that you are a devoted scientologist for a while. Your relatives might start thinking that you were better off as atheist :)