[FlamesAddiction]

This is something I think about sometimes. I was raised in a Catholic family, but our branch of the family was not really engaged that much. By the time I was a teenager, we were pretty much disengaged completely and it hasn't player a big role in my life since then. I consider myself agnostic for the most part now. If anything, I lean more towards a shamanistic mind set, but don't have any organized outlook.

My kid, who is 8 years old, has been raised completely without religion. She has never stepped inside a church or any other religious institution. She has no idea about it and hasn't really asked any hard questions yet. Recently, she started saying "Jesus Christ" when she gets irritated about stuff and I tried to explain to her that she could offend people, and she didn't get it. On Halloween, she went trick or treating with a Muslim kid, and at the end of the night, he gave her all his jelly candies because they contain gelatin, which is not Halal. She didn't mind of course, but she had questions that I couldn't articulate answers for that satisfied her. Or she didn't get why at her birthday party, I made an extra stop to get a Halal pizza for a couple of her friends.

I would like to get her thinking about spirituality, but not in an organized religion. But I also don't want to get her all freaked out about existentialist stuff if she isn't ready for it. I have kind of taken the approach that at some point, she will get curious and start self-learning, but I also don't want her falling for the first cult that comes knocking...lol. Most people I know who were raised without religion, never really adopted one later in life, but the couple of people I know who were raised atheists and later became religious went right off the rails with it. I think having academic knowledge about religions is helpful to let kids know that these ideas exist, and they can be good, but also dangerous.

Even though I don't consider myself a Catholic anymore, I have a lot of nostalgic feelings about the traditions and social aspect of it from when I was kid. I think it helped that my parents were not hardcore into it and treated it more as a cultural thing than a religious thing. They didn't raise me with the fear or god like a lot of other Catholics. It was just kind of like, this is what we do, because our parents did it, and their parents before them, and so on. It just kind of gave a sense of family history and continuity, and sometimes I actually feel a little guilty for being the end of that line.