Cradle Atheists

beliefnet

I am not sure if I've really met any "cradle atheists."
Larosser

You probably wouldn't know it if you had. Most cradle atheists pay no attention to religion and only do what is necessary to comply with the mores of the community. My father as an example played mental golf in church and the only comment we might get on the whole service would be "I wish the minister would stay with his boring sermon topics, I only got 12 holes played today."

My mother's family is atheist and incidentally feminist back to my great grandmother who was the matriarch. Most went to church as a social necessity, this was the midwest, but chose a Unitarian Church if available and a Congregational Church if not. That way when people asked where you went to church you had an answer, and whatever church was chosen had a decent choir, we were musical as well as atheist. The matriarch wrote children's stories and songs which were read and sung by all of us as children. Typically a g-greatgrandaughter changed a mildly derogatory (today) racial reference in one of her songs that was taught to the g-g-g-g-grandchildren.

Socialization was the responsibility of all, and morality was taught on the street as the responsibility of all adults. I remember quite clearly an incident when I was visiting an uncle as a child, and a store clerk overpaid the change by a few cents. My uncle returned the few cents, without a fuss but asked me if I would have done the same. I said sure, a few cents makes no difference, but a few dollars would be different. His comment "Dollars or cents, WE do not steal." WE was clearly "Our kind of people." To this day, I cannot download copyrighted content because "WE do not steal." In everything from sexuality to race relations to ordinary politeness the lesson was always the same "WE do not do it that way." If I wanted to be a part of WE and there was really no choice, there was no choice. In the family free will was a joke. We were encouraged to think rationally about everything, but there were a few rational conclusions that were mandatory. If we came to the wrong conclusions we were shown the logical errors in our reasoning.