[pqs]

I don't understand the down voting. I also believe that the idea of the Christian god that most (non-Christian) people have is quite naive and distinct to the idea of God in the great Christian thinkers, such those mentioned by the comment.

[libertine]

>people have is quite naive and distinct to the idea of God in the great Christian thinkers, such those mentioned by the comment.

But that would mean people would need to drop their condescending sense of superiority over others... come on, don't take that away from people for in their eyes it's an easy win.

[Claude_Shannon]

In defence, that is not the idea of God many people would grow up with.

I'm a Pole, even during "religion" classes or in church during preparation to baptism, the idea of God they would try to show us WAS the "man in the clouds" one, not philosophical one.

[libertine]

You're baptized while you're a child, and the use of tales and short stories is pretty common for plenty of subjects when ever you want to teach children.

The main idea is to pass down moral values.

I can't speak for others but I find it very hard for people to hold on to the literal content of the bible with today's education. Some might believe in the man in the sky, others might stand by just doing what they think is the right thing to do in the framework that was passed on to them, others turn to it in very difficult times because there's nothing else to hold on to and that gives them hope/peace/comfort.

I say this as someone who had catholic upbringing, took those classes for baptism and first communion. Yet I don't consider myself a catholic, still it was part of the context where I grew up.

[mbrodersen]

> The main idea is to pass down moral values.

I am not sure that is true. You can absolutely pass down moral values without involving a God. That is what happened to me. It seems to me that the goal of a lot of religious teaching is to use a bogeyman (God) to scare little children into doing what you want instead of teaching the children why it makes sense to do the right thing.

[libertine]

I'd agree with you if somewhere down the line the, let's call it, character of Jesus was introduced as the personification of God's ideals in a human being.

Suddenly we could move away from the "fear based framework" to the "strive to be closer to the idea of God" framework since we had someone to emulate.

In fact we can arguably say that God gave us complete freedom, and full responsibility since he died on a cross (and in that process He even doubted himself) left us with a role model.

>why it makes sense to do the right thing.

This seems like a trivial task but it's not. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't make any sense at all.

[mbrodersen]

> Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't make any sense at all.

I am struggling to find examples where that might be true. Can you give an example?

[Claude_Shannon]

Sorry, I've made an error - I meant to say confirmation, not baptism, confused these words. :/