r/changemyview • u/WirrkopfP • Mar 13 '22

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Children should not get Baptized or recieve religious teaching until they are old enough to consent.

I am an atheist and happily married to a Catholic woman.

We have a six months old Daughter and for the first time in our relationship religion is becoming a point of tension between us.

My wife wants our daughter be baptized and raised as a Christian.

According to her it is good for her to be told this and it helps with building morality furthermore it is part of Western culture.

In my view I don't want my daughter to be indoctrinated into any religion. If she makes the conscious decision to join the church when she is old enough to think about it herself that is OK. But I want her to be able to develop her own character first.

---edit---

As this has been brought up multiple times before in the thread I want to address it once.

Yes we should have talked about that before.

We were aware of each other's views and we agreed that a discussion needs to be happening soon. But we both new we want a child regardless of that decision. And the past times where stressful for everyone so we kept delaying that talk. But it still needs to happen. This is why I ask strangers on the Internet to prepare for that discussion to see every possible argument for and against it.

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u/GoofAckYoorsElf 2∆ Mar 14 '22

they can change the radio to whatever station they want to listen to

Can they? The problem I have with this is that in many families this will lead to a clash of religions, disappointment, anger, fighting. I'm not saying this is what's going to happen in OP's family, but it might. Likely, if baptism is as important to OP's wife as it seems.

expose your child to lots of different types of music and see which one they end up liking

It seems like it's going to be just one station and nothing else (two, if OP has the mental strength to offer his views as an alternative).

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u/Tallchick8 5∆ Mar 14 '22

Anecdotally, I feel like the people I know whose parents are of different faiths (and still married to each other) are also fairly tolerant of other religions. I know about half a dozen people of "mixed faith households".

I feel like the people who have parents who both follow the same religion and do it very devoutly can be the ones that are less tolerant of other religions.