Why Do Agnostics Go to Church?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/fashion/an-agnostics-guide-to-marriage.html?pagewanted=all

The link above is to an interesting article in the New York Times this past Sunday - it was the weekly 'Modern Love' column. The writer is an agnostic who knew from age seven that she didn't believe in God but married a guy who, while not a churchgoer or especially religious, did believe in God. neither had a problem with the other's beliefs. Two years into their marriage he changed his mind and decided that he didn't believe in God anymore. Not all that unusual until you get to the last paragraph - the couple has recently become parents for the first time and the lifelong agnostic asks her husband if they should start looking around for a church. Her reasoning is so that they can "...give him some kind of spiritual base...an education of sorts about Christianity so he can have knowledge with which to agree or disagree." There is no resolution in the article, so we don't know if they ultimately decide to start attending a church and "educating their son about Christianity". Now I'm not one of those people who think that parents should shield their children from their own convictions so that one day they might make up their own minds. Children, once they get to a certain age or maturity level will make up their own minds, no matter what their parents believe or don't believe or how vigorously the parents inculcate their points of view into their children's minds. I believe that parents have the responsibility to pass on to their children ethics, morals and standards that will make them good and successful adults some day, whether that is religion or rationalism or something in between.

What puzzles me is that why someone who seems to have no interest in religion in any form seems to think that attending a church or other religious house of worship is the thing to do when life changing events happen. I came across a sermon by a Unitarian-Universalist minister who addresses this very issue. I'll include a link. http://www.uucastine.org/sermons/2010/why-agnostics-go-to-church/ - but his basic point is that they are seeking meaning, just like everyone else. Keep in mind that the Unitarian-Universalists are very inclusive and non-doctrinaire, so if you don't know what you believe, they won't give you a hard time about it.

My own opinion is that there is a huge cultural partiality toward church going as an indicator of morality, despite statistics showing that church attendance is down. People are less likely to attend church than a generation ago, but the residual bias tends to cause people to think that the way to "get one's life together" or clean up one's act is to go to church and be (or act) religious. The number of people that I have known over the years who fall into this category is far from a valid statistical sample, but since I don't believe that I live in a unique bubble that is different than the rest of the world, I suspect that my experiences translate to the larger world.

The assumption inherent in this mindset is that there are two mutually exclusive poles. On one side is the person who is hedonistic, self-centered and living for the day. On the other side is the "good" person, who, of course, goes to church. You can't be a "good" person if you are an atheist, and you're kind of suspect if you are part of a non-Christian religion (although allowances are made for Hindus and Buddhists if they were born oversees or are the children of immigrants - Jews are kind of exempt too, but they have their own problems). The idea that you can "get your life together" while avoiding Jesus is a fairly foreign concept for most people. Of course there are all kinds of self-help books out there where one can learn to turn one's life around without the help of a deity, but they are kind of frowned upon by the mainstream...and a lot of them take work. Could it be that the act of church attendance is a shortcut, a way to become respectable without doing the hard work of actually doing much changing?

Then there's the whole concept of Pascal's Wager - where you are wagering on the existence or non-existence of God. If you wager that he exists and he doesn't, well, you've lost nothing - but if you wager that he doesn't and he does - well, I doubt if I have to spell it out for you. the problem with Pascal's Wager is that it's a false dilemma, two choices are presented when there are actually a plethora of choices. It's not a matter of God vs. No God, but Biblical God, vs. Deist God vs. Hindu pantheon vs. Wiccan God & Goddess vs. Native American spirituality vs. use your imagination! Even if you think you have objective proof that there was/is a creator God...how do you know he takes the form of the local dominant religion?

You don't...