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Slate on skeptic-ish parents considering distilling more of a religious sense for their kids. But this quote: "It was all so beautiful and comforting and safe" is not how I think about my childhood (or at least later childhood?) sense of the divine.

Even though my folks or (for the most part?) people in my church weren't excessively fire-and-brimstone-y, that's the part that stuck with me the most: you have to toe the line in this world or eternal punishment in the next results. It's hard to know what's the cart and what's the horse but somewhere in my development maelstrom that sense of needing to do what was right, not just for its own sake (though I got some of that too) but because of future judgement or retribution from some other - God, or Society, or Fate, or something... became a prominent feature. I guess that's helped me make some better-for-me lifestyle choices, but it's also kind of a miserable way to be at times.

(and to be honest there's a sophomoric part of me that carries disdain for watered-down, child-comforting "just the sweet parts" faith, even as a wiser part of me thinks "yeah, barring real evidence for one of the many supernatural explanations that's probably a decent way to be".)

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Via Slate: Movies on Vinyl: A Thing That Actually Happened in the Early 1980s. My Aunt Susan and Uncle Bill had a player and a bunch of movies.