Quote:
Originally Posted by spindles
I know this is slightly offtopic, but I just don't understand people who don't go to church getting the kids baptised/christened. I've talked to the local minister about it, as my kids attend his church, but I'm an atheist and (to me) it is wrong to stand up and profess what you do in such a ceremony if you don't believe it. Hardly seems very christian to me.
My view on this has changed, given I am a god-parent, but if someone asked me now, I'd say no.
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I'm responding to this one on purpose, BTW.
Personally, I don't see it as being a big deal. I refer to myself as a disinterested agnostic (mainly because I simply don't care about religion or spirituality), but I'm married to a practicing Catholic who used to work for the Church (which is how and why I know as much as I do - coupled with my natural curiosity about the inner workings of stuff) and I'm god-parent to a couple of kids.
Babtising our kids was my wife's decision and one that was discussed well before they were conceived. When we were about to get married, I told the priest (who was under the impression that I was a Presbyterian, a notion I didn't exactly correct for him) that I had agreed to babtise any children in the Catholic Church in return for them being raised Cubs fans (cue predictable response from guccilvr), and there's a grain of truth in that joke.
The parents of one of my godsons didn't care about my lack of religion. The others were more concerned if it would offend me if they asked (obviously it didn't). There's no real duties involved with being a godparent of a modern day Protestant (and both the kids are Protestant), so it's really more about doing something nice for a friend and acknowledging a relationship for me. That said, I'm certainly not in the business of disabusing kids from religious messages from their parents, so they usually get religious-themed presents from me at appropriate holidays (one is getting the Playskool Noah's Ark from me next month).
I don't have a problem professing something I don't necessarily believe in for form's sake to make my wife or a friend happy. The ceremonies aren't about me at all - I'm simply window dressing at these things, and the last thing that I'd want to do is make a stink of it.
One thing that has confused me for at least 20 years, though, is why people make such a fuss about religion in the first place. Who cares what someone else believes or doesn't? Polite people rarely discuss it anyway, and it all seems like an overblown mess to me. But whatever, not anything that I lie at awake at night pondering.