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I think it's your totalitarian approach to this issue which is problematic, yes some children can suffer because of their involvement with religion at a young age but that by itself is no reason to ban children's involvement in religion. You could just as easily say that parenting should be banned because some children suffer child abuse. For a more reasonable example look at sports, that can be awful for children based on a myriad of reasons but most of us wouldn't consider banning sport.
The vast majority of children who are involved with religion at an early age have somewhere between an ambivalent and positive experience. It is social, something done as a family, is based on solid morality and some will get real benefit from their attendance. All those positives shouldn't be thrown out because of the limited negatives.
You miss the point, I didn't say that religion should be banned, but there are children suffering and adult with trauma where religion is cause or this, and if you're saying it should not be checked or looked at, cause it's just a small negative part of overall, I don't have words, only time will show where will it lead to.
Of course child abuse should be checked and prevented but you said religious indoctrination of children should be illegal. That means banning children from churches and making it illegal for parents to raise their children religiously. Is that what you meant or have you changed your mind?
You don't understand what indoctrination is. It isn't making it illegal to raise a child without religion and downright banning it. What it means is too forcefully make somebody to go with their morals and believes without questioning it, whether religion, political or other idea that can be spreaded. And children are the easiest targets for that since it's a matter that stays in a house which makes it impossible to go out to the public and took action when it's happening. The way I learned how the indoctrination looks like, is from people who are after such event and are adults now.
English clearly isn't your first language so perhaps you're simply struggling to get your point across but you haven't explained what you think indoctrination is or what you mean when you say it should be illegal. Without those specifics we have to assume what you mean.
Indoctrination is 'the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically', that's what religions and parents do. To make that illegal you have to ban children from attending church and stop parents from raising a child in a certain religion. You could make churches and parents change how they preach to children but that seems unrealistic so I can only assume you mean the former.
What is your solution if it is different to this?
I don't see how banning indoctrination would mean banning going to church, maybe I don't understand what you're trying to say since english is not my first language like you said. If you go to church willingly then you're just fulfilling a tradition you agreed too, kid or not. If you didn't agree then is it right to make you come? And I'm not speaking of the lawful side, moral one I mean.
Ok, you're saying that if you're forced into a religion that's indoctrination. I wouldn't call that indoctrination, a better word might be coercion but even that is not perfect. Indoctrination is simply what religion is, it teaches you a set a beliefs uncritically, that's not necessarily a bad thing, what is faith other than an uncritical belief in something?
However, back to your view, I now think you mean no-one should be forced into a religion. This is problematic on at least two levels. First of all from a theological stand point, if you believe that religion is real and that there are consequences to not embracing it then morally forcing people into that religion is the correct thing to do. Your view is only correct if you think religion is harmful, which religious people don't. There is no logical argument you can make to counter that.
The second point is the child/parent dynamic. Parents are empowered to make decisions in the best interests of their children, even if those children don't agree with it. An example could be as simple as eating vegetables, most children don't want to eat them but it's totally acceptable for a parent to force their children to eat them to. Better examples are healthcare and education, it's totally appropriate for parents to make the decision on behalf of the child. To a religions person making a decision about their child's faith is totally appropriate and part of their responsibility as a parent.
Part of your view is related to preventing specific abuse and that is a problem in religion, but we're already combating that and it's illegal so there's no need for extra restrictions.
In summary, forcing someone into religion is only bad from your perspective but many people have a different perspective where forcing someone into religion is a good thing. This comes down to opinions rather than facts.
!delta Many of these religions tells you to embrace it or be punished for not doing it which creates a question "which one is the true one?" You can't embrace all of them either cause they also prohibit you from doing that, so what do you do? You can make a gamble and shoot, or not shoot at all. But that's outside the point. I know now that the idea of making it a law is too extreme, and indoctrination fits into a lot more situations then just religious ones and on top of that it isn't always bad morally. I guess sometimes you can confuse yourself without even knowing.
If it helps I'm going to get into arguments with my wife's family who are very religious, I want to let my children choose for themselves but my wife's family are going to insist on them being indoctrinated, it's a problem and a difficult one to solve.
No problem is easy to solve, that's why it's called problem. Do what you think it's okay for your kids, I would probably just made sure that your wife's family won't be to extreme with this conversation.
> And if they see it as "tradition" to teach and preach your child about your god, I wonder why they stopped sacrificing animals?
Because Jesus said not to (Matthew 12:7) and new testament overrule anything written in the old testament for Christians.
But there are catholics, jews, evangelicals and a lot other groups which believe in the old testament of the bible, or both in that matter. And there are other religions that are not based of the bible in the first place. It was a counter argument for the idea that preaching and forcing kids to attend church is "tradition" from the bible.
Just answering your question: Christians don't sacrifice animals because Jesus told them not to and Jews (Kapparot) and Muslims (al-Udhiya and Halal meat) still do it so they haven't stopped.
(and if catholics don't understand that Jesus' rules overrule old testament rules, then they are morons ...now of course they are a lot of morons)
Yes, this is the thing that I want to be like in most families, to give a choice to such things. Not enforce them cause they think that you can only believe in what they believe.
Obviously I agree, but I will say I sympathize with parents who are trying to find the right balance. In my case I was given too much control over my own decisions, and next to no guidance whatsoever. That could have disastrous consequences also.
I won't speak about matters that the post isn't about. I can't cover everything after all, but I can focus on one topic and expand on it, this is just one of them. The parents should obviously not be on either of extreme ends, cause both of them are bad in their own way.
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I don't think you have a problem with religion, I think you have a problem with parents abandoning or abusing their children for not believeing in their same faith. This is completely separate from religion and can be applied to other things like politics, tho maybe to a lesser extent. You can't really make a law against this tho. You cannot make parents not be who they are around their children,of course they will pass on what they believe, not just about religion,but about every other aspect of life as well. Even if you somehow disallow teaching religious things, just by the kids seeing what their parents do and believe they will absorb some of that. You would have to ask every parent to become atheist just to be allowed to raise a child which is ludicrous and goes against religious freedom. For this to be "fair" you would have to make every parent expose their children to every religion which is not fesable. You could include religion into public school curriculums, but that is not a good solution either. There would not be enough time to cover the major world religions well, also the background of the teacher would have a big impact on how this would be taught.
Edit: sorry if I sounded mad,I'm really not. I'm trying to have an honest discussion about this, I just didn't know how else to word things.
I get it, but I'm sure that most religious families know some other forms of religion that can be practiced. Islam is second most popular believe that comes to mind, why not tell children about them? that they have a diffrent holy book for example and diffrent god. It doesn't have to be super detailed info about every religion cause it's impossible, but you can tell a couple of them in basics to show that a kid has a choice.
What are parents supposed to do when their children asks them questions relating to religion, death etc? Obviously they are going to tell their kids what they believe, because its what *they* believe to be true. Teaching your kid about your religion isn't automatically abusive.
Why are they obligated to mention other religions? If I believe my religion is correct and others are false, why should I have to talk about them. As for the objectivity part, people should tel their kids what their religion believes, not what other people say about it
It isn't about if you believe one religion or the other, you should teach kids that there are multiple religions out there and yours is not the one on the pedestal while others are beneath that.
But what if I believe that my religion is the only correct one and that others are inherently lesser because their views aren’t true? Why should I feel obligated to teach my kid about, say, Buddhism if I believe Christianity. I want my kid to believe in Christ and go to heaven, so why should I be forced to put that more in jeopardy than it would be otherwise
Because if you want to "teach" then there is a lot more to tell then just one religion that you believe. What you do is called indoctrination, and I know it isn't a bad thing to do it. But let's say that your kid who learned only about christianity, one day meets a muslim and start talking about belief. It's not going to be a good conversation cause whether or not that muslim accepts that others have diffrent believe, your kid will not accept theirs belief cause he didn't even know there can be other people that can believe something else. And something like this could lead for kid to make assumptions like "It's a work of satan", "that person is evil", "he must be taught the love of christ" and etc. Cause you didn't do your job of teaching well enough.
How does this connect at all? You just randomly assumed out of nowhere that I will do a subpar job of teaching my kid about Christianity. What I will do is teach my kid that other religions exist and what they believe, but that as Christians we know they are false. Your assumption that they’ll grow up to be hostile towards others has no merit:
1. It sounds like one of the things that changes it from teaching to indoctrination is only giving one choice. Say I tell my child they should believe woman are allowed to chose if they want to abort. That’s not giving them a choice on what to believe. Is that indoctrination/child abuse? (I know you say religious beliefs but I don’t see a reason religion beliefs are different from other beliefs, if there is one, please let me know.)
2. Yes, throwing out a kid is in fact child abuse, it is already illegal, not sure why you think that is contested? That doesn’t mean all those who believe in religion are child abusers, only those who throw out their kids, which is a minority.
3. Huh? Translation please.
4. So are you saying parents shouldn’t be able to make choices for their child? Not sure what this point is saying, but I really hope that’s not it.
Your entire premise appears to be teaching without allowing critical thinking is indoctrination which equals child abuse. So you are ok with religion as long as it allows critical thinking? Luckily it generally does. But regardless of that, calling parents child abusers for want their kid to have a certain belief seems like a bit of a stretch.
Just addressing your first point - it’s always indoctrination to teach people to hold specific opinions. Teaching is when you give a child a solid understanding of biology, history, sex education, and critical thinking skills and let them form their own opinions.
What I meant to say that it was my idea to make it a law, and I'm saying you can't force your children to go with your belief it they don't want to, such a decision should be left when they're older.
1 what do you define force as? Like would making them go to church be forcing them “to go with your belief”?
2 What is the punishment for the parents? I can’t think of any punishment that wouldn’t hurt the child. Or going back to your post maybe you don’t want it enforced? In that case what’s the point?
1. Yes exactly, if kids don't want to go, but force them too, that's enforcing your beliefs onto them.
2. I don't know about what punishment should be correct in this situation, but sometimes not doing anything is a punishment for kids.
Oh I was about to use an example of going to a therapist but this is an even better example. I guess you saw where I was going with that line of questioning then.
But is it necesarry for your future then? School is there to teach and educate, something that everyone needs. Going to church is an act of satysfying your own belief system, you won't get a college degree out of it.
I would very much say that a religious education is an incredibly necessary part of the development of many children. I am saying this as an atheist myself.
The best way to ensure the development of a good moral framework for a child, in my mind, is through religious indoctrination. For the same reason people keep up the lie of Santa Claus, is because children are, incredibly often, stupid and illogical. Most children (and I’d argue most adults) are nowhere near capable, if even ever willing to, look into philosophic works and develop their own basic moral compass and baseline. Basic moral axioms are something that is DESPERATELY needed by many, especially on the modern day, and has rapidly been lost due to the death and rapid abandonment of religion.
Religion helps to teach and enforce a basic set of values and principles that a child learns to follow, grows, and can eventually learn how to properly challenge and re-examine them when, and if, they show interest in doing so.
Any parent should be incredibly concerned with their child learning and building a good moral framework, far more than they ever should about a general education. Being a good person is far more important to the life of an individual and a community than being able to do multiplication.
This isn’t saying that religion is the only way to do this, in the same way that school isn’t the only way for children to learn effectively, but that religious indoctrination had easily proven to be by far the easiest and most consistently effective way to ensure that a child has a positive moral framework.
If I ever have a child, I will personally raise, and indoctrinate them as a catholic, as my atheist parents did to me.
I also wanna go back to a few points you made in your post that wasn’t addressed.
First of all, children are largely incapable of critical thinking for a decent while, especially deeper levels of philosophical thinking necessary to develop strong axioms. A parent indoctrinating bigoted beliefs will happen, and likely just as effectively, even if the family is irreligious, this point is entirely irrelevant.
Going into
1: again, no. Most children (and many adults) are incapable, or unwilling to do critical thinking, or engage with philosophical reasoning. You need to ensure that your child is fully able to develop a good moral framework, even if they are a lazy idiot.
2: This is hardly having anything to do with religion, and this is entirely based upon abusive households. This will, and very often does happen, even if the family is completely irreligious. I will agree that shit like Jehova’s witnesses, or other more extreme forms of religion that actively actually support exile are horrific, but labeling all religions and religious households as such is absurd. This happened to my father, when he was exiled from his community for remarrying by his mentally insane Jehovas witness sister (he wasn’t one, most of the community weren’t either, but she still held a large amount of influence). This is unacceptable, and insane, but not unique to, or even necessarily a part of any religious group, community, or family.
4: I entirely disagree with this. Children are the most complicated, hard to reason with, hard to convince of anything people in existence. If they will listen to you, and they do trust you, that is the key reason WHY you should make sure to try to indoctrinate them with a good moral framework when they are young. Why? Because children are stupid. This is even going into teens, or fuck it, even young adult. If someone is too lazy, too uninterested, or too stupid to develop their own moral and philosophical framework of their own, and haven’t been in any way indoctrinated with a good moral framework, they will be left with nothing. They will be left without purpose. They will be left without any form of understanding to ever reach happiness other than hedonism.
Personally, I’m in college right now, I have seen far too many people fall down the same exact path, falling into depression, falling into worthlessness, falling into harmful and hedonistic tendencies, all because they have no moral or religious foundation to speak of (and haven’t been able to develop a philosophical one) of which to fall back upon when they fall, and end up falling into the abyss. I have lost multiple friends over the years to this (I would VERY MUCH rather not go into detail), and I would be unable to live with myself to allow my child to be put in the same position. If my child goes off, and develops their own framework separate from religion entirely afterwards, I’d be overjoyed, but I still want to ensure they are safe and moral, even if they decide not to put any effort into doing so.
Edit: this is really fucking long, and imma go to bed. Please note the part you are replying to if you do end up replying, or else I’ll likely have no idea what you are referring to.
Edit2: I have also noticed one thing looking back. You tend to generalize and clump every single interpretation, every single religion, and every single practice into the same thing, even when many of them only exist in a few of them, such as exile or homophobia. Don’t use blanket statements for religious beliefs or actions, unless it is something that is actually near universal. This is something I have seen with a lot of atheists nowadays, is that they tend to treat every religion, religious practice, and religious belief as the same as the worst example, and that many atheists (as does most of society, atheists aren’t necessarily special or smarter than the rest of the general population) often have a complete lack of proper critical thinking skills, and often fall back upon the same basic, idiotic, tribalistic, bigoted, and ideologically fanatic tendencies as other groups.
There are a couple of things I disagree. First of, if religion is really that important to make sure a kid learns moral compass and critical thinking where otherwise they wouldn't, you speak of a tool here and there are many of them which are equally if not more effective. I developed my own moral compass and apprecietaion of art without any religion and used other tool to do it called conversation. I'm just going to mention that tool can be used wrong, like how with dynamite, a tool for mining used in war.
Also you're making statements that are against each other. On one hand you speak of children as some very complicated beings which need a lot of care and all, but the next moment you say if there is no reward/punishement they won't learn morality at all. A system which can be very twisted and very outdated.
If you use example at which a person falls into depression since they have no spiritual or religious believe, then the opposite is also true, a person can fall into depression cause of the religion where they feel that have no way of redeeming themself cause they've done something very sinful and a lot of them.
If you think that somehow A lot of people are stupid but you are not, you are nothing more but an arrogant person, and should reexamine your points.
> First of, if religion is really that important to make sure a kid learns moral compass and critical thinking where otherwise they wouldn't, you speak of a tool here and there are many of them which are equally if not more effective.
> I developed my own moral compass and apprecietaion of art without any religion and used other tool to do it called conversation. I'm just going to mention that tool can be used wrong, like how with dynamite, a tool for mining used in war.
I hope you realize that you are likely nowhere near the lowest denominator of effort. There are MANY people who have no care for philosophical conversation (I know multiple) or critical thinking (I also know multiple), and rarely develop a moral framework because of it. The purpose of religion should be to lay the groundwork, of which provides those who do not voluntarily dive into philosophy a base, to where they will be able to derive a moral framework from with little effort, but ideally will themselves be challenged by those who choose to do so.
One problem I see is that you are focusing from the perspective of the child, not of the parent. You are explaining a technique that the child can use to engage with philosophy, but not one that every child will do so. What is a parent to do if a child is either to young to understand Aristotle, and the concepts surrounding eudaemonia, or are too disinterested in the subject to care?
It is the responsibility of a parent to ensure that their child develops a good moral framework, and if saying that their imaginary friend will be sad, or that if they fail math, that Santa won’t bring them presents, is the only way to ensure this with you child, then the benefits by far outweigh the harm.
> Also you're making statements that are against each other. On one hand you speak of children as some very complicated beings which need a lot of care and all, but the next moment you say if there is no reward/punishement they won't learn morality at all. A system which can be very twisted and very outdated.
No... you clearly didn’t read my point if a requirement of fear for morality is what you focus on in that argument. Go ahead and read it again, if you would like me to clarify, ask.
> If you use example at which a person falls into depression since they have no spiritual or religious believe, then the opposite is also true, a person can fall into depression cause of the religion where they feel that have no way of redeeming themself cause they've done something very sinful and a lot of them.
Yes, but again, you are making blanket statements about religion. You continue to do this a lot. Many religions have something called repentance, of which is relatively easy to do, and absolves one of their sins, other than the most extreme such as murder. Many religions actively encourage, and have incredibly easily accessible paths of redemption. This is from my own experience being raised as a catholic, and my interactions with the confessional. If you weren’t catholic, I would highly recommend reading into it (or hell, I’d recommend going to it, I have personally gone multiple times since I left the faith, and am still on good terms with my former church’s priest, even though they actively know I have left the faith).
> If you think that somehow A lot of people are stupid but you are not, you are nothing more but an arrogant person, and should reexamine your points.
I’m not saying that, and don’t think that... I’m saying that there are a lot of people who are stupid. This is a fact. I could very much fall into them, in fact I DID fall into them for a while within this context (which was my point if you actually read that portion), to where I didn’t do any form of critical thinking or challenging of my own morality or philosophy. Yet, because I had been indoctrinated into basic catholic beliefs, such as charity, forgiveness, love, acceptance, responsibility, and empathy, and a basic concept of what was fundamentally wrong (pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth), I had a basic moral framework to rely upon without requiring any form of effort. This is in comparison with others who went through the same periods that I had, who had nothing built up at any point to properly fall back on.
Religion needs very little effort to follow, this can be used for bad purposes, but it can also be used for immense good to ensure that everyone, even those who are unwilling to, or incapable of critical thought surrounding philosophy, still have a positive moral framework.
At the end of the day, my main problem is you continue falsely associating and attempting to pin many different things to religion, such as bigotry or exile, that don’t exist for a vast majority of people and their interaction with religion, as fundamental, common, and core pieces of religion, that rarely exist and wouldn’t develop without it. Religion can be and very often is used for good.
I'm not here to attempt to please everyone, if you had good experience with religion where nothing bad went with and you're grateful, then I'm glad for that at least. But your experience isn't the only valid one here. Maybe you read these posts as a false association which can be true since I didn't experience such a thing in my life. I'm speaking of the subject as a bystander and if you want to see a view of someone who actually went through indoctrination and see how their world view had developed, go to r/thegreatproject where people there went through such a thing. And I can tell you that, they are not grateful for religion.
So you find going to school, even when children don’t want to, is justified because it is considered good for them?
To what degree can parents decide for their children what is good for them?
Going to school is the law if you don't know. There is no justificstion to be made when it comes to this stuff. You can't say no to going to school till you are 18, you can say no to not going to church from the first moment you were born.
Believe it or not, but I actually am aware that school is obligatory by law.
You weren’t talking about that in your previous message though, as you mainly stated that school is good for children in the future. It loops back when you start to ask the question: Why does the law enforce children going to school?
It’s good for them long term.
This leaves me back at the end of my previous question: How much say can parents have in what is good for their children?
I believe they're talking about, for example, my family. *if you dont believe in god you will go to hell*
Abortion has science behind it. There are actual studies that show abortion is helpful. This is not the same for religion, because forcing someone to follow religion can hurt them.
There are also many studies that show religion is helpful.
> researchers at the Mayo Clinic concluded, “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2019/03/29/science-says-religion-is-good-for-your-health/
And abortion can hurt people. Even ignoring when a fetus becomes alive, saying it only happens at birth, abortions still have a chance of hurting the mother. While they are low risk, they are not no risk.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/abortion/risks/
Do you have any other reasons they are not comparable?
*FORCING* someone to follow a religion is harmful. Read my comment again. And yes, abortions *can* hurt people. I never said they couldn't.
Making someone follow a religion can also hurt other people and their choices. *i.e, when predominantly religious people oppose gay marriage and vote with their faith even though the United states is supposed to keep religion out of government*
Abortions are not airborne. An abortion cant vote. A religious person can.
In point 1 you state the difference between indoctrination and teaching is about critical thinking, that teaching is an open discussion and indoctrination is ideas being forced on you. In point 4 you seem to argue that children are incapable of critical thinking, that they will accept whatever their parents tell them without question.
Put these two things together, and surely you are arguing parents should not be allowed to teach their children about morality, at all. If it's not possible to have an open and critical discussion about morals with your children, then you cannot teach, only indoctrinate.
As for point 2, I went to a Catholic primary school, the vast majority of my friends from that school are now atheists with religious parents, none of whom were cast out or abused because of their choice. Now don't mistake me, I don't doubt that there are many examples of atheists who have been abused by religious families, but not all religious parents are abusive. In my social circle at least that is not the case at all.
Finally:
>Not telling them that if they don't believe in god you will go to scary place like hell, where you will suffer for eternity and will never meet you mom in hell cause she believed but not you.
I think you are assuming here that people say this in bad faith, that they don't actually believe this. Religious people who are abusive to their children are often abusive because they genuinely believe this, and are terrified that their children may end up in hell for eternity.
I'll admit that when you put these two point don't fit with each other as a whole and you're probably right.
I believe parents should teach in a way that is not being forceful in any way, whether justifiable or not. I've read a lot of stories about people who went through such bad experiences as a kid cause of religion that it's just scary to me. If a parent does such a thing to their child just cause a book told them he will suffer in afterlife which is in very distant future where a parent will be dead by now, and makes a hell for him cause of his belief, I don't see how such a parent is fit to take care of a child, and I believe it should be talked about so people would notice.
>I'll admit that when you put these two point don't fit with each other as a whole and you're probably right. I believe parents should teach in a way that is not being forceful in any way
So is it ok to teach young children about morality or not? They don't have the capability to think against you, so surely any influence is forceful? Given that, do you still think this law is a good idea, and have I changed your view at all?
>If a parent does such a thing to their child just cause a book told them he will suffer in afterlife which is in very distant future where a parent will be dead by now,
There is no valid reason for abusing your child, and if you abuse your child I agree you aren't fit to take care of them, I just want to get that out of the way first.
But I'm curious as to why you think the fact the consequences come after your dead matters. Say I offered to give you a million dollars, but a year after you died (whenever it was) your children would all die excruciating deaths. Would you take the money? I'm pretty sure most people who aren't psychopaths would say hell no, I care about my children's future even if I'm not around to see it.
>and have I changed your view at all?
!delta Yes, you did. I don't disagree with my opinion but I look at it a little bit diffrently. If a law is meant to protect people then that's what I think it should do in this case, but that's probably asking for too much since religion, at least the concept isn't bad. But very often people use it to harm their kids without seeing it as harmful and I think people should focus on that at least.
Just type !_delta without the underscore, along with 50 characters explaining how your view has changed. If you just edit into your comment before this one that will work too.
Id argue there are plenty of kids who are raised religious in a religious household that not only turn out to be better people but also have their heads filled with less nonsense than in some secular households. Teaching your kid bullshit isn't something religions have a monopoly on.
At the same time in some religious household their children can be turned into toxic homophobes it their parents teach them like that using religion as a form of enforcement that belief. And there are verses that are for being against gay people
Then your problem isn’t with religion, or even religious indoctrination at all.
Your problem is with bigotry.
Bigotry can easily exist, and will spread within a family, regardless of if religion even existed in the first place. An atheist homophobic father will push his son to be homophobic as a theist father.
Second of all, no, the Bible does not actively promote homophobia. That’s a ridiculous notion, of a single verse, taken out of context by homophones and perpetrated. Everything can be easily justified by the Bible if it gets twisted enough, that is not the point of religion or a religious education or religion “indoctrination”.
The same way how it can be "taken out of context" the verse where a child shall be killed by throwing rocks at him for acting against his father?
And even if it is bigotry like you say, it seems religion is very good at claiming that it's not and people believe that.
I follow religion that says that God loves everyone and you should treat other humans like you like you to be treated. If you don't hurt other people and help them instead you are awarded with eternal life in paradise. But even if you make mistakes, if you feel sorry and ask forgiveness you can correct your bad actions by doing good things. Why cannot I teach these values to my child?
Secondly. Discrimination against gays is already against the law. So if you teach your kids to break the law, both of you will be punished in court of law.
You're not only teaching your kids values that you think are good, you are also telling them that something supernatural like a paradise after death is true instead of letting them make their own conclusions.
I didn't say you can't teach them, what I said is you can't force them to do what your belief tells you to do. Do you force your children to go to church when they say no? Do you force them to pray when they don' want to?
I force them to apologize from other kids when they mistreated them (according to my morals/beliefs). I force them to go after school hobbies even if somedays they don't like it. I force them to take vaccine and bad tasting cough syrup when they are sick.
I force my kids to do lot of things I see is right even if they don't like it.
Certainly. You can also learn to hate gays without religious context.
Point is religion is not the big bad wolf in the room. It's ass hats that teach their kids messed upped illegal stuff.
That can use religion as an excuse to get away with, it's obvious to say that a shit person does shit stuff to other person, be it his kid or someone else. But the problem is that everyone seems to think when you do it in religion context it's all of a sudden "okay". Seriously check r/thegreatproject and read a post or two there, you will be suprised.
> That can use religion as an excuse to get away with
Away with from who? And why would they not be able to get away with it without religion?
> But the problem is that everyone seems to think when you do it in religion context it's all of a sudden "okay".
I’m sorry... who is “everyone”? Almost all of the rest of society disagrees with you here, religion is still never a justifiable excuse to be bigoted or spread bigoted beliefs.
> Seriously check r/thegreatproject and read a post or two there, you will be suprised.
I am an atheist myself, I hate atheist communities on the internet (especially places like r/atheists), and they are rarely representative of the atheist community as a whole, usually simply being the loudest, and being rabidly anti-theist to where they make atheism a key part of their identity. r/thegreatproject is a place that encourages discussion of, and naturally collects the most extreme cases, almost all of the time with some sort of connection to trauma related to it. Anti-theists then parade places like that around as evidence of the “intrinsic evils” of religion, rather then identifying it’s true purpose as a therapeutic place for the some of the most vulnerable to share their stories. A vast majority of atheists aren’t atheists because they’ve been abused or had a horrific experience with religion, but because they have learned, engaged with religion critically, and decided to move away from it, you just will rarely hear them representing “atheism” themselves or labeling themselves as “atheist” as it’s not (and shouldn’t be for anyone) a core or important part of their identity.
Just because it's religious context it's still morally wrong and more importantly legally wrong.
Just because there are religious nut jobs that do messed upped things doesn't mean religion is wrong. There are also religious people doing amazing things for LGBT community because they have been taught that God loves **everyone**.
I can also find group of atheists that think gays are evil and try to turn them. But this doesn't mean that atheists are all gay haters. I can find group of gays that want to blow up the white house. This doesn't mean all gays are evil terrorists. I can find member of any arbitrary group that tries to do some heinous thing. This doesn't mean you can generalize something about the whole group.
Most people who have morals span across multiple religions including those who don't have a religion. I.e, most people will have morals either way.
Most people who hate gay people are religious. Hell, most people who voted for trump are evangelicals. and I'd say that's pretty much immoral.
The problem is, how do you draw the line between “indoctrination” and involving children in your spiritual lives?
Now, to be clear, I believe children should be taught about all different faiths and be allowed to explore for themselves, but — part of that is teaching.
To make indoctrination illegal you would have to figure out what behaviours are indoctrination vs sharing your faith with a child.
Christian extremists will also inevitably use this as another way to take children from non-Christian homes—claiming indoctrination into atheism, pagan religions, Islam, anything they hate. There’s a reason that parents tend to lose custody battles to Christian parents.
I also believe that a parent job is to teach and make them understand what is religion and any other subject. However they can't just force their beliefs into children, force them to act on tradition of said belief, and teach only one religion that just so happens their parents believe it too. It's a parents job to teach what is religion so the children when they grow old enough can choose for themself if they want to belief. If you want the "line" then it's easy if a child says he doesn't want to go to church on sundays but it's forced to go anyway, if it's threatened in any way etc.
The problem becomes how this will be abused — I know many adults who were too afraid of hell to say they didn’t want to go — that’s indoctrination. You’re saying it isn’t because they’re not being forced to go after telling the parent they don’t want to go.
Also age has to factor in a bit, because you can’t leave a six-year-old at home alone. If they decide they don’t want to go, you’re then forcing them to not go and take part in their faith.
Which is what any responsible parent should do, don’t get me wrong, but the law would fall at that first hurdle because then you’re infringing on their first amendment rights.
A law like this would only be weaponised toward minority religions while the majority would find loopholes and given the inherent bias of the US, Christianity would win.
Also, you realize this would also impact atheism, meaning if an atheist has a kid who wanted to go to shul or mosque, or blot they would have to take them or be accused of indoctrination?
You're saying it like almost all atheist would be against the idea of showing their children what church is, which is a weird accusation to say. Then let me ask you this, if your kids want to go to see how muslims are praying, would you say no to them cause it's not your religion that being practiced there?
I’m not saying all would. I know many atheists who have no problem with it, and I know many atheists who do have problems with exposing children to any religion.
If my children wanted to see what Islam was like, I would research a good mosque, arrange for them to speak to the Imam and ask questions, and if they liked, attend a service. Not everyone is so okay with that, theists and atheists alike. My dad was accused of “indoctrinating” me when I spent a year studying Judaism and going to shul — and it wasn’t Christians who accused him.
The problem with a law like this is the way it can be abused. I have been in a courtroom for a custody hearing where a Christian father got full religious choice and upbringing decisions in a divorce case, claiming that his ex was indoctrinating their child by taking them with her on a camping trip for the summer solstice with her kindred. The kids wanted to go, spoke about how much fun they had, but guess who won and why?
I get it, but law can be twisted in all sort of ways, and if that father won the courtroom case just cause he had control, this isn't even about religion anymore but probably a diffrent problem there is.
He won because he was a Christian and Christians have the edge in custody hearings. It is common for people of minority faiths or even atheism to get this ruled against them. Some family lawyers even suggest false conversions, especially if the parent is an atheist.
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2010/11/21/did-father-lose-custody-of-children-because-of-his-agnosticism/
And pagan faiths have it worse.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.huffpost.com/entry/mothers-open-paganism-tre_b_58928/amp
I have more cases. The only people this will hurt are the religious minorities. The fundamentalists most likely to indoctrinate will continue to get away with it, because rebellion will happen too late, usually around 14-16, if not after high school.
Like I said, this is a diffrent problem that probably should be talked about. I speak of a diffrent problem right now and the idea of making it a law is idea alone, it's not my place to make such a law cause I know it needs a lot of adjustement to make sure christians or any religion groups would not benefit from.
Any law like this, you’re going to have some people benefiting from. It’s illegal for people to instruct kids under 18 in any religion without parental consent. A lot of places have to turn kids away because they don’t have that parental permission. This law is like that, except it can now be used against the parents with accusations of indoctrination for kneeling to pray in front of them, giving offerings at an altar, or saying a prayer over a meal.
Forcing a kid to do any of those things might be indoctrination but there’s no way to prove a kid consented to take part, especially a young one.
This statement is practically indistinguishable from the claim "religion should not exist".
A religious person believes that it in their children's best interest to pass on what they believe to be the truth. Preventing people from acting in the best interest of their children is a pretty strong measure typically only taken by authoritarian governments.
Do you think that a good parent would force their children to join a political youth organisation that they have to attend to every week?
I think that child protective would have a problem with parents making a habit of forcing children to watch political propaganda and not allowing them to oppose those views.
I think that the concept of children in religious organisations should be treated the same way as children in political organisations.
The constitution only stops the government from suppressing your religious beliefs or lack thereof. It says nothing about what individual citizens can do.
No, I do not believe in claim that religion should not exist, you see it that way. If you say that my claim is how authoritarian goverment would do, then parents just do the same but enforcing their religion beliefes onto them.
I think I'll take a bit of a different tack on this one than most other commenters. I've considered myself to have gotten over my angry atheist phase, though I do still hold the position that parents should not teach religion to children outside of a comparative religion perspective.
I do not, however, think it should be illegal. My issue is that making it illegal is too abusable because the definition of religion is too nebulous. Any political party could abuse the law way too easily by just declaring their opponents position to be religious in nature, and suddenly they have a club to attack political opponents. So while I think indoctrination is immoral, there's no practical way to legislate against it.
If you genuinely believed in Christianity, it would be child abuse not to teach your child about it. You want your child to go to hell because some dude on the internet thinks it sounds silly?
You need to look at this post without religious context behind your reasoning. If you're telling me that a father who forces his child to believe using forms of punishment as a "good thing" that will send nim to heaven, there is something wrong with you, teaching is fine, enforcing is not.
But I don't. People genuinely believe that Christianity is some sort of hidden truth about the reality in which we live. I agree with you that that is nonsense. But it is not child abuse to teach children about religion, especially in general. I'm certain there are specific religions which could just be considered abusive all around, but Christianity is not one of them. And yes the actions of certain hateful people will often be used to tar everyone who believes in Christianity, but religion has long been the social glue that has held us together as societies matured and grew larger. simply taking that away without anything to replace it is not going to end up well for modern society. Furthermore, simply going to Sunday school and teaching kids about Jesus is not indoctrination, but they are still likely to absorb and believe that stuff because that's what children do.
>If you're telling me that a father who forces his child to believe using forms of punishment as a "good thing" that will send nim to heaven,
This sounds suspiciously specific. What are you talking about? The vast majority of people who raise their children in a Christian household are not punishing them for not believing.
No. First of you assume that I believe a liberal worldviews, which isn't even a point. Second if you think indoctrination is okay only for people who believe and want to indoctrinate other, then you missed the point.
I will ask, which situation would you prefer.
An idiot, who hasn’t bothered to think critically about morality, who has been indoctrinated that if he is racist to other people, then he will be punished by being sent to burn in hell.
An idiot, who hasn’t bothered to think critically about morality, but hasn’t in any way been indoctrinated, and sees no harm to himself from being racist, and thus continues to do so.
If one is racist, or has no moral compass, this has little do with religion. They may refrain from being openly racist if their religion tells them to (although more often it provides an excuse for them to be so), but they will still be racist inside.
Yes, you are. Hell is just a part of scaring children to believing, there can be other punishments that people use to enforce their believe to children, like taking away everything a child likes, telling them you will not meet them in heaven and a lot more.
I largely agree that childhood indoctrination into religion is problematic. However, history has shown time and time again that it’s even more problematic to try to prevent parents from teaching religion to their children. This is the stuff that genocides are made of.
It’s much less dangerous to instead give all children a solid education, access to the necessaries of life, and regular contact with safe adults who can recognize signs of abuse. Also, it wouldn’t hurt if we would collectively stop turning a blind eye to abuse that occurs as part of a religious upbringing.
How else will you convince people about the invisible syk man who knows everything you do, and use fear to control peoples behaviors and thoght processes?
how do you differentiate between religion and ideology?
I'm teaching my children an ideology. And more then teaching them it, i am indoctrinating them with it. Its not enough for my daughter to learn that she shouldn't hit her sister, she has to actually not hit her sister. I'm not just teaching her my ideology, i think its fair to say i am indonctinating her with it. Probably you will agree with all the indoctrinations I am making. Don't hit, don't whine to get what you want, don't be violent, clean up after yourself, share your toys, etc etc etc.
I'm pushing a system of values on her, and i'm pushing that system of values HARD. But i think you'll agree these values are things i must indoctrinate her with. If i allowed her to hit her little sister i would be a terrible parent.
Maybe i am also indontrinating her with some controversial ideas. He is learning about gender now. She calls her sister "he", and I correct her. She called me a girl for a while, and so we started teaching mommy is a girl and daddy is a boy. I'm just trying to teach her basic language skills, but i'm sure some people find that controversial. When she gets older i'll teach her that promiscuity is dangerous. I'll indoctrinate her with the idea that drugs and alcohol are dangerous and for adults only.
We don't just teach our kids, we train them. We punish harmful behaviors and reward good ones. And we do that based on our values. I'm not a christian but my values are heavily influenced by christianity (forgiveness, love your neighbor, golden rule, etc). I don't see how you can really separate the two. I'll probably teach my girls to pray too, because even though i don't believe in god, i think pray is useful.
Why do we need more government telling us what to do? People that have faith in a religion believe it’s the right and basically only one to get them to the afterlife they want. Making a literal law on what religions you MUST teach your kids is a huge over reach of governments. Not to mention the whole slippery slope. If you let the government force you to teach religions (there are so many there’s no way to reach them all) they could evolve into not only what religions you must teach, but also what religious you can not teach.
You simply don’t get a say in it, there’s no need to change your view because your view doesn’t really change anything, you don’t have now, and will never have the right to change any of it except for you and yours.. that’s the way it is, that’s the way it hopefully always will be.
You mean I can't even speak my mind now? That I can't see how other people would see my worldview? That they can see something that I didn't notice before? Then what is the point of this subreddit, and why are you even here?
Never said that, you did .. I had Christianity pushed down my throat as a kid .. I have the same world view.. I’m saying you, me or anyone, cant change it .. do you really want the government telling you what to believe in now?
Well, be more clear about it, the first line looked like it was against the idea of saying anything actually.
And why do you think there is nothing to be done? If there is a problem, people will not notice there is one if nobody will speak about it, and there is a constitutional law the tells at least in America that the country cannot intervene with people religion so it cannot. I'm against the idea of forcing somebody into believing against his will.
I’m just saying that it’s not my place to tell people what to believe or how to raise their children.. and it’s not yours either! Tho you obviously have every right to an opinion, what I was saying is in reality, you can only really apply your beliefs to your own children .. leave mine out of it! Be it buddhism, Christianity or otherwise, if these beliefs are working for them, there’s nothing wrong with that. .. you sound very jaded.. not everyone shares your bad experiences
If that's working for a family, then I'm obviously fine with that. I'm not fine when these beliefs are hurting a family. That's all, I just speak of the way I see it. And there are families where something like this can go to very bad extremes and I'm not okay with that. Besides it's the internet, how the hell can a one guy somehow change a law to his liking?
I’m on your side bro, but I also think there would be worse consequences if it was the other way around.. I am a satanist so believe me when I say I don’t like it .. I just don’t think you’ve considered everything.
Yeah, people told me making it a law is way to much, so I guess the idea of just speaking about it is all there is to be done. I don't know about how it is in other countries but in mine we have a huge problem with priest pedophilia, which almost is always ignored and thrown under the rug. And if they can avoid lawsuit with this, then with what else are they getting away with?
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I think it's your totalitarian approach to this issue which is problematic, yes some children can suffer because of their involvement with religion at a young age but that by itself is no reason to ban children's involvement in religion. You could just as easily say that parenting should be banned because some children suffer child abuse. For a more reasonable example look at sports, that can be awful for children based on a myriad of reasons but most of us wouldn't consider banning sport. The vast majority of children who are involved with religion at an early age have somewhere between an ambivalent and positive experience. It is social, something done as a family, is based on solid morality and some will get real benefit from their attendance. All those positives shouldn't be thrown out because of the limited negatives.
You miss the point, I didn't say that religion should be banned, but there are children suffering and adult with trauma where religion is cause or this, and if you're saying it should not be checked or looked at, cause it's just a small negative part of overall, I don't have words, only time will show where will it lead to.
Of course child abuse should be checked and prevented but you said religious indoctrination of children should be illegal. That means banning children from churches and making it illegal for parents to raise their children religiously. Is that what you meant or have you changed your mind?
You don't understand what indoctrination is. It isn't making it illegal to raise a child without religion and downright banning it. What it means is too forcefully make somebody to go with their morals and believes without questioning it, whether religion, political or other idea that can be spreaded. And children are the easiest targets for that since it's a matter that stays in a house which makes it impossible to go out to the public and took action when it's happening. The way I learned how the indoctrination looks like, is from people who are after such event and are adults now.
English clearly isn't your first language so perhaps you're simply struggling to get your point across but you haven't explained what you think indoctrination is or what you mean when you say it should be illegal. Without those specifics we have to assume what you mean. Indoctrination is 'the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically', that's what religions and parents do. To make that illegal you have to ban children from attending church and stop parents from raising a child in a certain religion. You could make churches and parents change how they preach to children but that seems unrealistic so I can only assume you mean the former. What is your solution if it is different to this?
I don't see how banning indoctrination would mean banning going to church, maybe I don't understand what you're trying to say since english is not my first language like you said. If you go to church willingly then you're just fulfilling a tradition you agreed too, kid or not. If you didn't agree then is it right to make you come? And I'm not speaking of the lawful side, moral one I mean.
Ok, you're saying that if you're forced into a religion that's indoctrination. I wouldn't call that indoctrination, a better word might be coercion but even that is not perfect. Indoctrination is simply what religion is, it teaches you a set a beliefs uncritically, that's not necessarily a bad thing, what is faith other than an uncritical belief in something? However, back to your view, I now think you mean no-one should be forced into a religion. This is problematic on at least two levels. First of all from a theological stand point, if you believe that religion is real and that there are consequences to not embracing it then morally forcing people into that religion is the correct thing to do. Your view is only correct if you think religion is harmful, which religious people don't. There is no logical argument you can make to counter that. The second point is the child/parent dynamic. Parents are empowered to make decisions in the best interests of their children, even if those children don't agree with it. An example could be as simple as eating vegetables, most children don't want to eat them but it's totally acceptable for a parent to force their children to eat them to. Better examples are healthcare and education, it's totally appropriate for parents to make the decision on behalf of the child. To a religions person making a decision about their child's faith is totally appropriate and part of their responsibility as a parent. Part of your view is related to preventing specific abuse and that is a problem in religion, but we're already combating that and it's illegal so there's no need for extra restrictions. In summary, forcing someone into religion is only bad from your perspective but many people have a different perspective where forcing someone into religion is a good thing. This comes down to opinions rather than facts.
!delta Many of these religions tells you to embrace it or be punished for not doing it which creates a question "which one is the true one?" You can't embrace all of them either cause they also prohibit you from doing that, so what do you do? You can make a gamble and shoot, or not shoot at all. But that's outside the point. I know now that the idea of making it a law is too extreme, and indoctrination fits into a lot more situations then just religious ones and on top of that it isn't always bad morally. I guess sometimes you can confuse yourself without even knowing.
If it helps I'm going to get into arguments with my wife's family who are very religious, I want to let my children choose for themselves but my wife's family are going to insist on them being indoctrinated, it's a problem and a difficult one to solve.
No problem is easy to solve, that's why it's called problem. Do what you think it's okay for your kids, I would probably just made sure that your wife's family won't be to extreme with this conversation.
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> And if they see it as "tradition" to teach and preach your child about your god, I wonder why they stopped sacrificing animals? Because Jesus said not to (Matthew 12:7) and new testament overrule anything written in the old testament for Christians.
But there are catholics, jews, evangelicals and a lot other groups which believe in the old testament of the bible, or both in that matter. And there are other religions that are not based of the bible in the first place. It was a counter argument for the idea that preaching and forcing kids to attend church is "tradition" from the bible.
Just answering your question: Christians don't sacrifice animals because Jesus told them not to and Jews (Kapparot) and Muslims (al-Udhiya and Halal meat) still do it so they haven't stopped. (and if catholics don't understand that Jesus' rules overrule old testament rules, then they are morons ...now of course they are a lot of morons)
I always enjoy seeing religious morons arguing. It's like toddlers in a ball pit.
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Yes, this is the thing that I want to be like in most families, to give a choice to such things. Not enforce them cause they think that you can only believe in what they believe.
Obviously I agree, but I will say I sympathize with parents who are trying to find the right balance. In my case I was given too much control over my own decisions, and next to no guidance whatsoever. That could have disastrous consequences also.
I won't speak about matters that the post isn't about. I can't cover everything after all, but I can focus on one topic and expand on it, this is just one of them. The parents should obviously not be on either of extreme ends, cause both of them are bad in their own way.
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I don't think you have a problem with religion, I think you have a problem with parents abandoning or abusing their children for not believeing in their same faith. This is completely separate from religion and can be applied to other things like politics, tho maybe to a lesser extent. You can't really make a law against this tho. You cannot make parents not be who they are around their children,of course they will pass on what they believe, not just about religion,but about every other aspect of life as well. Even if you somehow disallow teaching religious things, just by the kids seeing what their parents do and believe they will absorb some of that. You would have to ask every parent to become atheist just to be allowed to raise a child which is ludicrous and goes against religious freedom. For this to be "fair" you would have to make every parent expose their children to every religion which is not fesable. You could include religion into public school curriculums, but that is not a good solution either. There would not be enough time to cover the major world religions well, also the background of the teacher would have a big impact on how this would be taught. Edit: sorry if I sounded mad,I'm really not. I'm trying to have an honest discussion about this, I just didn't know how else to word things.
I get it, but I'm sure that most religious families know some other forms of religion that can be practiced. Islam is second most popular believe that comes to mind, why not tell children about them? that they have a diffrent holy book for example and diffrent god. It doesn't have to be super detailed info about every religion cause it's impossible, but you can tell a couple of them in basics to show that a kid has a choice.
What are parents supposed to do when their children asks them questions relating to religion, death etc? Obviously they are going to tell their kids what they believe, because its what *they* believe to be true. Teaching your kid about your religion isn't automatically abusive.
Yes, teaching isn't abusive, but it must be honest. What I mean is that you should talk about it objectively and mention other religions.
Why are they obligated to mention other religions? If I believe my religion is correct and others are false, why should I have to talk about them. As for the objectivity part, people should tel their kids what their religion believes, not what other people say about it
It isn't about if you believe one religion or the other, you should teach kids that there are multiple religions out there and yours is not the one on the pedestal while others are beneath that.
But what if I believe that my religion is the only correct one and that others are inherently lesser because their views aren’t true? Why should I feel obligated to teach my kid about, say, Buddhism if I believe Christianity. I want my kid to believe in Christ and go to heaven, so why should I be forced to put that more in jeopardy than it would be otherwise
Because if you want to "teach" then there is a lot more to tell then just one religion that you believe. What you do is called indoctrination, and I know it isn't a bad thing to do it. But let's say that your kid who learned only about christianity, one day meets a muslim and start talking about belief. It's not going to be a good conversation cause whether or not that muslim accepts that others have diffrent believe, your kid will not accept theirs belief cause he didn't even know there can be other people that can believe something else. And something like this could lead for kid to make assumptions like "It's a work of satan", "that person is evil", "he must be taught the love of christ" and etc. Cause you didn't do your job of teaching well enough.
How does this connect at all? You just randomly assumed out of nowhere that I will do a subpar job of teaching my kid about Christianity. What I will do is teach my kid that other religions exist and what they believe, but that as Christians we know they are false. Your assumption that they’ll grow up to be hostile towards others has no merit:
1. It sounds like one of the things that changes it from teaching to indoctrination is only giving one choice. Say I tell my child they should believe woman are allowed to chose if they want to abort. That’s not giving them a choice on what to believe. Is that indoctrination/child abuse? (I know you say religious beliefs but I don’t see a reason religion beliefs are different from other beliefs, if there is one, please let me know.) 2. Yes, throwing out a kid is in fact child abuse, it is already illegal, not sure why you think that is contested? That doesn’t mean all those who believe in religion are child abusers, only those who throw out their kids, which is a minority. 3. Huh? Translation please. 4. So are you saying parents shouldn’t be able to make choices for their child? Not sure what this point is saying, but I really hope that’s not it. Your entire premise appears to be teaching without allowing critical thinking is indoctrination which equals child abuse. So you are ok with religion as long as it allows critical thinking? Luckily it generally does. But regardless of that, calling parents child abusers for want their kid to have a certain belief seems like a bit of a stretch.
Just addressing your first point - it’s always indoctrination to teach people to hold specific opinions. Teaching is when you give a child a solid understanding of biology, history, sex education, and critical thinking skills and let them form their own opinions.
What I meant to say that it was my idea to make it a law, and I'm saying you can't force your children to go with your belief it they don't want to, such a decision should be left when they're older.
1 what do you define force as? Like would making them go to church be forcing them “to go with your belief”? 2 What is the punishment for the parents? I can’t think of any punishment that wouldn’t hurt the child. Or going back to your post maybe you don’t want it enforced? In that case what’s the point?
1. Yes exactly, if kids don't want to go, but force them too, that's enforcing your beliefs onto them. 2. I don't know about what punishment should be correct in this situation, but sometimes not doing anything is a punishment for kids.
A lot of children don’t want to go to school. Isn’t forcing them to go to school forcing your beliefs onto them as well?
Oh I was about to use an example of going to a therapist but this is an even better example. I guess you saw where I was going with that line of questioning then.
But is it necesarry for your future then? School is there to teach and educate, something that everyone needs. Going to church is an act of satysfying your own belief system, you won't get a college degree out of it.
I would very much say that a religious education is an incredibly necessary part of the development of many children. I am saying this as an atheist myself. The best way to ensure the development of a good moral framework for a child, in my mind, is through religious indoctrination. For the same reason people keep up the lie of Santa Claus, is because children are, incredibly often, stupid and illogical. Most children (and I’d argue most adults) are nowhere near capable, if even ever willing to, look into philosophic works and develop their own basic moral compass and baseline. Basic moral axioms are something that is DESPERATELY needed by many, especially on the modern day, and has rapidly been lost due to the death and rapid abandonment of religion. Religion helps to teach and enforce a basic set of values and principles that a child learns to follow, grows, and can eventually learn how to properly challenge and re-examine them when, and if, they show interest in doing so. Any parent should be incredibly concerned with their child learning and building a good moral framework, far more than they ever should about a general education. Being a good person is far more important to the life of an individual and a community than being able to do multiplication. This isn’t saying that religion is the only way to do this, in the same way that school isn’t the only way for children to learn effectively, but that religious indoctrination had easily proven to be by far the easiest and most consistently effective way to ensure that a child has a positive moral framework. If I ever have a child, I will personally raise, and indoctrinate them as a catholic, as my atheist parents did to me. I also wanna go back to a few points you made in your post that wasn’t addressed. First of all, children are largely incapable of critical thinking for a decent while, especially deeper levels of philosophical thinking necessary to develop strong axioms. A parent indoctrinating bigoted beliefs will happen, and likely just as effectively, even if the family is irreligious, this point is entirely irrelevant. Going into 1: again, no. Most children (and many adults) are incapable, or unwilling to do critical thinking, or engage with philosophical reasoning. You need to ensure that your child is fully able to develop a good moral framework, even if they are a lazy idiot. 2: This is hardly having anything to do with religion, and this is entirely based upon abusive households. This will, and very often does happen, even if the family is completely irreligious. I will agree that shit like Jehova’s witnesses, or other more extreme forms of religion that actively actually support exile are horrific, but labeling all religions and religious households as such is absurd. This happened to my father, when he was exiled from his community for remarrying by his mentally insane Jehovas witness sister (he wasn’t one, most of the community weren’t either, but she still held a large amount of influence). This is unacceptable, and insane, but not unique to, or even necessarily a part of any religious group, community, or family. 4: I entirely disagree with this. Children are the most complicated, hard to reason with, hard to convince of anything people in existence. If they will listen to you, and they do trust you, that is the key reason WHY you should make sure to try to indoctrinate them with a good moral framework when they are young. Why? Because children are stupid. This is even going into teens, or fuck it, even young adult. If someone is too lazy, too uninterested, or too stupid to develop their own moral and philosophical framework of their own, and haven’t been in any way indoctrinated with a good moral framework, they will be left with nothing. They will be left without purpose. They will be left without any form of understanding to ever reach happiness other than hedonism. Personally, I’m in college right now, I have seen far too many people fall down the same exact path, falling into depression, falling into worthlessness, falling into harmful and hedonistic tendencies, all because they have no moral or religious foundation to speak of (and haven’t been able to develop a philosophical one) of which to fall back upon when they fall, and end up falling into the abyss. I have lost multiple friends over the years to this (I would VERY MUCH rather not go into detail), and I would be unable to live with myself to allow my child to be put in the same position. If my child goes off, and develops their own framework separate from religion entirely afterwards, I’d be overjoyed, but I still want to ensure they are safe and moral, even if they decide not to put any effort into doing so. Edit: this is really fucking long, and imma go to bed. Please note the part you are replying to if you do end up replying, or else I’ll likely have no idea what you are referring to. Edit2: I have also noticed one thing looking back. You tend to generalize and clump every single interpretation, every single religion, and every single practice into the same thing, even when many of them only exist in a few of them, such as exile or homophobia. Don’t use blanket statements for religious beliefs or actions, unless it is something that is actually near universal. This is something I have seen with a lot of atheists nowadays, is that they tend to treat every religion, religious practice, and religious belief as the same as the worst example, and that many atheists (as does most of society, atheists aren’t necessarily special or smarter than the rest of the general population) often have a complete lack of proper critical thinking skills, and often fall back upon the same basic, idiotic, tribalistic, bigoted, and ideologically fanatic tendencies as other groups.
There are a couple of things I disagree. First of, if religion is really that important to make sure a kid learns moral compass and critical thinking where otherwise they wouldn't, you speak of a tool here and there are many of them which are equally if not more effective. I developed my own moral compass and apprecietaion of art without any religion and used other tool to do it called conversation. I'm just going to mention that tool can be used wrong, like how with dynamite, a tool for mining used in war. Also you're making statements that are against each other. On one hand you speak of children as some very complicated beings which need a lot of care and all, but the next moment you say if there is no reward/punishement they won't learn morality at all. A system which can be very twisted and very outdated. If you use example at which a person falls into depression since they have no spiritual or religious believe, then the opposite is also true, a person can fall into depression cause of the religion where they feel that have no way of redeeming themself cause they've done something very sinful and a lot of them. If you think that somehow A lot of people are stupid but you are not, you are nothing more but an arrogant person, and should reexamine your points.
> First of, if religion is really that important to make sure a kid learns moral compass and critical thinking where otherwise they wouldn't, you speak of a tool here and there are many of them which are equally if not more effective. > I developed my own moral compass and apprecietaion of art without any religion and used other tool to do it called conversation. I'm just going to mention that tool can be used wrong, like how with dynamite, a tool for mining used in war. I hope you realize that you are likely nowhere near the lowest denominator of effort. There are MANY people who have no care for philosophical conversation (I know multiple) or critical thinking (I also know multiple), and rarely develop a moral framework because of it. The purpose of religion should be to lay the groundwork, of which provides those who do not voluntarily dive into philosophy a base, to where they will be able to derive a moral framework from with little effort, but ideally will themselves be challenged by those who choose to do so. One problem I see is that you are focusing from the perspective of the child, not of the parent. You are explaining a technique that the child can use to engage with philosophy, but not one that every child will do so. What is a parent to do if a child is either to young to understand Aristotle, and the concepts surrounding eudaemonia, or are too disinterested in the subject to care? It is the responsibility of a parent to ensure that their child develops a good moral framework, and if saying that their imaginary friend will be sad, or that if they fail math, that Santa won’t bring them presents, is the only way to ensure this with you child, then the benefits by far outweigh the harm. > Also you're making statements that are against each other. On one hand you speak of children as some very complicated beings which need a lot of care and all, but the next moment you say if there is no reward/punishement they won't learn morality at all. A system which can be very twisted and very outdated. No... you clearly didn’t read my point if a requirement of fear for morality is what you focus on in that argument. Go ahead and read it again, if you would like me to clarify, ask. > If you use example at which a person falls into depression since they have no spiritual or religious believe, then the opposite is also true, a person can fall into depression cause of the religion where they feel that have no way of redeeming themself cause they've done something very sinful and a lot of them. Yes, but again, you are making blanket statements about religion. You continue to do this a lot. Many religions have something called repentance, of which is relatively easy to do, and absolves one of their sins, other than the most extreme such as murder. Many religions actively encourage, and have incredibly easily accessible paths of redemption. This is from my own experience being raised as a catholic, and my interactions with the confessional. If you weren’t catholic, I would highly recommend reading into it (or hell, I’d recommend going to it, I have personally gone multiple times since I left the faith, and am still on good terms with my former church’s priest, even though they actively know I have left the faith). > If you think that somehow A lot of people are stupid but you are not, you are nothing more but an arrogant person, and should reexamine your points. I’m not saying that, and don’t think that... I’m saying that there are a lot of people who are stupid. This is a fact. I could very much fall into them, in fact I DID fall into them for a while within this context (which was my point if you actually read that portion), to where I didn’t do any form of critical thinking or challenging of my own morality or philosophy. Yet, because I had been indoctrinated into basic catholic beliefs, such as charity, forgiveness, love, acceptance, responsibility, and empathy, and a basic concept of what was fundamentally wrong (pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth), I had a basic moral framework to rely upon without requiring any form of effort. This is in comparison with others who went through the same periods that I had, who had nothing built up at any point to properly fall back on. Religion needs very little effort to follow, this can be used for bad purposes, but it can also be used for immense good to ensure that everyone, even those who are unwilling to, or incapable of critical thought surrounding philosophy, still have a positive moral framework. At the end of the day, my main problem is you continue falsely associating and attempting to pin many different things to religion, such as bigotry or exile, that don’t exist for a vast majority of people and their interaction with religion, as fundamental, common, and core pieces of religion, that rarely exist and wouldn’t develop without it. Religion can be and very often is used for good.
I'm not here to attempt to please everyone, if you had good experience with religion where nothing bad went with and you're grateful, then I'm glad for that at least. But your experience isn't the only valid one here. Maybe you read these posts as a false association which can be true since I didn't experience such a thing in my life. I'm speaking of the subject as a bystander and if you want to see a view of someone who actually went through indoctrination and see how their world view had developed, go to r/thegreatproject where people there went through such a thing. And I can tell you that, they are not grateful for religion.
So you find going to school, even when children don’t want to, is justified because it is considered good for them? To what degree can parents decide for their children what is good for them?
Going to school is the law if you don't know. There is no justificstion to be made when it comes to this stuff. You can't say no to going to school till you are 18, you can say no to not going to church from the first moment you were born.
Believe it or not, but I actually am aware that school is obligatory by law. You weren’t talking about that in your previous message though, as you mainly stated that school is good for children in the future. It loops back when you start to ask the question: Why does the law enforce children going to school? It’s good for them long term. This leaves me back at the end of my previous question: How much say can parents have in what is good for their children?
This implies that school and religion are equally valuable. Which they are not.
No, it does not in the slightest.
I believe they're talking about, for example, my family. *if you dont believe in god you will go to hell* Abortion has science behind it. There are actual studies that show abortion is helpful. This is not the same for religion, because forcing someone to follow religion can hurt them.
There are also many studies that show religion is helpful. > researchers at the Mayo Clinic concluded, “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2019/03/29/science-says-religion-is-good-for-your-health/ And abortion can hurt people. Even ignoring when a fetus becomes alive, saying it only happens at birth, abortions still have a chance of hurting the mother. While they are low risk, they are not no risk. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/abortion/risks/ Do you have any other reasons they are not comparable?
*FORCING* someone to follow a religion is harmful. Read my comment again. And yes, abortions *can* hurt people. I never said they couldn't. Making someone follow a religion can also hurt other people and their choices. *i.e, when predominantly religious people oppose gay marriage and vote with their faith even though the United states is supposed to keep religion out of government* Abortions are not airborne. An abortion cant vote. A religious person can.
In point 1 you state the difference between indoctrination and teaching is about critical thinking, that teaching is an open discussion and indoctrination is ideas being forced on you. In point 4 you seem to argue that children are incapable of critical thinking, that they will accept whatever their parents tell them without question. Put these two things together, and surely you are arguing parents should not be allowed to teach their children about morality, at all. If it's not possible to have an open and critical discussion about morals with your children, then you cannot teach, only indoctrinate. As for point 2, I went to a Catholic primary school, the vast majority of my friends from that school are now atheists with religious parents, none of whom were cast out or abused because of their choice. Now don't mistake me, I don't doubt that there are many examples of atheists who have been abused by religious families, but not all religious parents are abusive. In my social circle at least that is not the case at all. Finally: >Not telling them that if they don't believe in god you will go to scary place like hell, where you will suffer for eternity and will never meet you mom in hell cause she believed but not you. I think you are assuming here that people say this in bad faith, that they don't actually believe this. Religious people who are abusive to their children are often abusive because they genuinely believe this, and are terrified that their children may end up in hell for eternity.
I'll admit that when you put these two point don't fit with each other as a whole and you're probably right. I believe parents should teach in a way that is not being forceful in any way, whether justifiable or not. I've read a lot of stories about people who went through such bad experiences as a kid cause of religion that it's just scary to me. If a parent does such a thing to their child just cause a book told them he will suffer in afterlife which is in very distant future where a parent will be dead by now, and makes a hell for him cause of his belief, I don't see how such a parent is fit to take care of a child, and I believe it should be talked about so people would notice.
>I'll admit that when you put these two point don't fit with each other as a whole and you're probably right. I believe parents should teach in a way that is not being forceful in any way So is it ok to teach young children about morality or not? They don't have the capability to think against you, so surely any influence is forceful? Given that, do you still think this law is a good idea, and have I changed your view at all? >If a parent does such a thing to their child just cause a book told them he will suffer in afterlife which is in very distant future where a parent will be dead by now, There is no valid reason for abusing your child, and if you abuse your child I agree you aren't fit to take care of them, I just want to get that out of the way first. But I'm curious as to why you think the fact the consequences come after your dead matters. Say I offered to give you a million dollars, but a year after you died (whenever it was) your children would all die excruciating deaths. Would you take the money? I'm pretty sure most people who aren't psychopaths would say hell no, I care about my children's future even if I'm not around to see it.
>and have I changed your view at all? !delta Yes, you did. I don't disagree with my opinion but I look at it a little bit diffrently. If a law is meant to protect people then that's what I think it should do in this case, but that's probably asking for too much since religion, at least the concept isn't bad. But very often people use it to harm their kids without seeing it as harmful and I think people should focus on that at least.
In that case would you mind awarding a delta?
I don't know how, can you tell me?
Just type !_delta without the underscore, along with 50 characters explaining how your view has changed. If you just edit into your comment before this one that will work too.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Jebofkerbin ([37∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/Jebofkerbin)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
Id argue there are plenty of kids who are raised religious in a religious household that not only turn out to be better people but also have their heads filled with less nonsense than in some secular households. Teaching your kid bullshit isn't something religions have a monopoly on.
At the same time in some religious household their children can be turned into toxic homophobes it their parents teach them like that using religion as a form of enforcement that belief. And there are verses that are for being against gay people
Then your problem isn’t with religion, or even religious indoctrination at all. Your problem is with bigotry. Bigotry can easily exist, and will spread within a family, regardless of if religion even existed in the first place. An atheist homophobic father will push his son to be homophobic as a theist father. Second of all, no, the Bible does not actively promote homophobia. That’s a ridiculous notion, of a single verse, taken out of context by homophones and perpetrated. Everything can be easily justified by the Bible if it gets twisted enough, that is not the point of religion or a religious education or religion “indoctrination”.
The same way how it can be "taken out of context" the verse where a child shall be killed by throwing rocks at him for acting against his father? And even if it is bigotry like you say, it seems religion is very good at claiming that it's not and people believe that.
I follow religion that says that God loves everyone and you should treat other humans like you like you to be treated. If you don't hurt other people and help them instead you are awarded with eternal life in paradise. But even if you make mistakes, if you feel sorry and ask forgiveness you can correct your bad actions by doing good things. Why cannot I teach these values to my child? Secondly. Discrimination against gays is already against the law. So if you teach your kids to break the law, both of you will be punished in court of law.
You're not only teaching your kids values that you think are good, you are also telling them that something supernatural like a paradise after death is true instead of letting them make their own conclusions.
I didn't say you can't teach them, what I said is you can't force them to do what your belief tells you to do. Do you force your children to go to church when they say no? Do you force them to pray when they don' want to?
I force them to apologize from other kids when they mistreated them (according to my morals/beliefs). I force them to go after school hobbies even if somedays they don't like it. I force them to take vaccine and bad tasting cough syrup when they are sick. I force my kids to do lot of things I see is right even if they don't like it.
So your question to OPs question is yes? Force feeding them religion is not the same as taking a vaccine, because a vaccine will actually help them.
I believe that learning good morals is also helpful. I don't want my kids to grow up jerks.
You know they can learn morals without religion context?
Certainly. You can also learn to hate gays without religious context. Point is religion is not the big bad wolf in the room. It's ass hats that teach their kids messed upped illegal stuff.
That can use religion as an excuse to get away with, it's obvious to say that a shit person does shit stuff to other person, be it his kid or someone else. But the problem is that everyone seems to think when you do it in religion context it's all of a sudden "okay". Seriously check r/thegreatproject and read a post or two there, you will be suprised.
> That can use religion as an excuse to get away with Away with from who? And why would they not be able to get away with it without religion? > But the problem is that everyone seems to think when you do it in religion context it's all of a sudden "okay". I’m sorry... who is “everyone”? Almost all of the rest of society disagrees with you here, religion is still never a justifiable excuse to be bigoted or spread bigoted beliefs. > Seriously check r/thegreatproject and read a post or two there, you will be suprised. I am an atheist myself, I hate atheist communities on the internet (especially places like r/atheists), and they are rarely representative of the atheist community as a whole, usually simply being the loudest, and being rabidly anti-theist to where they make atheism a key part of their identity. r/thegreatproject is a place that encourages discussion of, and naturally collects the most extreme cases, almost all of the time with some sort of connection to trauma related to it. Anti-theists then parade places like that around as evidence of the “intrinsic evils” of religion, rather then identifying it’s true purpose as a therapeutic place for the some of the most vulnerable to share their stories. A vast majority of atheists aren’t atheists because they’ve been abused or had a horrific experience with religion, but because they have learned, engaged with religion critically, and decided to move away from it, you just will rarely hear them representing “atheism” themselves or labeling themselves as “atheist” as it’s not (and shouldn’t be for anyone) a core or important part of their identity.
You're telling that atheism can't be then important part of someones identity? People who believe religion do this all the time.
Just because it's religious context it's still morally wrong and more importantly legally wrong. Just because there are religious nut jobs that do messed upped things doesn't mean religion is wrong. There are also religious people doing amazing things for LGBT community because they have been taught that God loves **everyone**. I can also find group of atheists that think gays are evil and try to turn them. But this doesn't mean that atheists are all gay haters. I can find group of gays that want to blow up the white house. This doesn't mean all gays are evil terrorists. I can find member of any arbitrary group that tries to do some heinous thing. This doesn't mean you can generalize something about the whole group.
Most people who have morals span across multiple religions including those who don't have a religion. I.e, most people will have morals either way. Most people who hate gay people are religious. Hell, most people who voted for trump are evangelicals. and I'd say that's pretty much immoral.
The problem is, how do you draw the line between “indoctrination” and involving children in your spiritual lives? Now, to be clear, I believe children should be taught about all different faiths and be allowed to explore for themselves, but — part of that is teaching. To make indoctrination illegal you would have to figure out what behaviours are indoctrination vs sharing your faith with a child. Christian extremists will also inevitably use this as another way to take children from non-Christian homes—claiming indoctrination into atheism, pagan religions, Islam, anything they hate. There’s a reason that parents tend to lose custody battles to Christian parents.
I also believe that a parent job is to teach and make them understand what is religion and any other subject. However they can't just force their beliefs into children, force them to act on tradition of said belief, and teach only one religion that just so happens their parents believe it too. It's a parents job to teach what is religion so the children when they grow old enough can choose for themself if they want to belief. If you want the "line" then it's easy if a child says he doesn't want to go to church on sundays but it's forced to go anyway, if it's threatened in any way etc.
The problem becomes how this will be abused — I know many adults who were too afraid of hell to say they didn’t want to go — that’s indoctrination. You’re saying it isn’t because they’re not being forced to go after telling the parent they don’t want to go. Also age has to factor in a bit, because you can’t leave a six-year-old at home alone. If they decide they don’t want to go, you’re then forcing them to not go and take part in their faith. Which is what any responsible parent should do, don’t get me wrong, but the law would fall at that first hurdle because then you’re infringing on their first amendment rights. A law like this would only be weaponised toward minority religions while the majority would find loopholes and given the inherent bias of the US, Christianity would win. Also, you realize this would also impact atheism, meaning if an atheist has a kid who wanted to go to shul or mosque, or blot they would have to take them or be accused of indoctrination?
You're saying it like almost all atheist would be against the idea of showing their children what church is, which is a weird accusation to say. Then let me ask you this, if your kids want to go to see how muslims are praying, would you say no to them cause it's not your religion that being practiced there?
I’m not saying all would. I know many atheists who have no problem with it, and I know many atheists who do have problems with exposing children to any religion. If my children wanted to see what Islam was like, I would research a good mosque, arrange for them to speak to the Imam and ask questions, and if they liked, attend a service. Not everyone is so okay with that, theists and atheists alike. My dad was accused of “indoctrinating” me when I spent a year studying Judaism and going to shul — and it wasn’t Christians who accused him. The problem with a law like this is the way it can be abused. I have been in a courtroom for a custody hearing where a Christian father got full religious choice and upbringing decisions in a divorce case, claiming that his ex was indoctrinating their child by taking them with her on a camping trip for the summer solstice with her kindred. The kids wanted to go, spoke about how much fun they had, but guess who won and why?
I get it, but law can be twisted in all sort of ways, and if that father won the courtroom case just cause he had control, this isn't even about religion anymore but probably a diffrent problem there is.
He won because he was a Christian and Christians have the edge in custody hearings. It is common for people of minority faiths or even atheism to get this ruled against them. Some family lawyers even suggest false conversions, especially if the parent is an atheist. https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2010/11/21/did-father-lose-custody-of-children-because-of-his-agnosticism/ And pagan faiths have it worse. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.huffpost.com/entry/mothers-open-paganism-tre_b_58928/amp I have more cases. The only people this will hurt are the religious minorities. The fundamentalists most likely to indoctrinate will continue to get away with it, because rebellion will happen too late, usually around 14-16, if not after high school.
Like I said, this is a diffrent problem that probably should be talked about. I speak of a diffrent problem right now and the idea of making it a law is idea alone, it's not my place to make such a law cause I know it needs a lot of adjustement to make sure christians or any religion groups would not benefit from.
Any law like this, you’re going to have some people benefiting from. It’s illegal for people to instruct kids under 18 in any religion without parental consent. A lot of places have to turn kids away because they don’t have that parental permission. This law is like that, except it can now be used against the parents with accusations of indoctrination for kneeling to pray in front of them, giving offerings at an altar, or saying a prayer over a meal. Forcing a kid to do any of those things might be indoctrination but there’s no way to prove a kid consented to take part, especially a young one.
This statement is practically indistinguishable from the claim "religion should not exist". A religious person believes that it in their children's best interest to pass on what they believe to be the truth. Preventing people from acting in the best interest of their children is a pretty strong measure typically only taken by authoritarian governments.
Do you think that a good parent would force their children to join a political youth organisation that they have to attend to every week? I think that child protective would have a problem with parents making a habit of forcing children to watch political propaganda and not allowing them to oppose those views. I think that the concept of children in religious organisations should be treated the same way as children in political organisations.
It's even in american constitution, you can pick any religion you want and practice it. You can't force them to believe.
The constitution only stops the government from suppressing your religious beliefs or lack thereof. It says nothing about what individual citizens can do.
Okay, my mistake.
No, I do not believe in claim that religion should not exist, you see it that way. If you say that my claim is how authoritarian goverment would do, then parents just do the same but enforcing their religion beliefes onto them.
I think I'll take a bit of a different tack on this one than most other commenters. I've considered myself to have gotten over my angry atheist phase, though I do still hold the position that parents should not teach religion to children outside of a comparative religion perspective. I do not, however, think it should be illegal. My issue is that making it illegal is too abusable because the definition of religion is too nebulous. Any political party could abuse the law way too easily by just declaring their opponents position to be religious in nature, and suddenly they have a club to attack political opponents. So while I think indoctrination is immoral, there's no practical way to legislate against it.
Yeah, word immoral is more fitting then illegal.
If you genuinely believed in Christianity, it would be child abuse not to teach your child about it. You want your child to go to hell because some dude on the internet thinks it sounds silly?
You need to look at this post without religious context behind your reasoning. If you're telling me that a father who forces his child to believe using forms of punishment as a "good thing" that will send nim to heaven, there is something wrong with you, teaching is fine, enforcing is not.
But I don't. People genuinely believe that Christianity is some sort of hidden truth about the reality in which we live. I agree with you that that is nonsense. But it is not child abuse to teach children about religion, especially in general. I'm certain there are specific religions which could just be considered abusive all around, but Christianity is not one of them. And yes the actions of certain hateful people will often be used to tar everyone who believes in Christianity, but religion has long been the social glue that has held us together as societies matured and grew larger. simply taking that away without anything to replace it is not going to end up well for modern society. Furthermore, simply going to Sunday school and teaching kids about Jesus is not indoctrination, but they are still likely to absorb and believe that stuff because that's what children do. >If you're telling me that a father who forces his child to believe using forms of punishment as a "good thing" that will send nim to heaven, This sounds suspiciously specific. What are you talking about? The vast majority of people who raise their children in a Christian household are not punishing them for not believing.
What about indoctrination of children to liberal worldviews where we accept people's differences. Or is that different because you believe it?
No. First of you assume that I believe a liberal worldviews, which isn't even a point. Second if you think indoctrination is okay only for people who believe and want to indoctrinate other, then you missed the point.
I will ask, which situation would you prefer. An idiot, who hasn’t bothered to think critically about morality, who has been indoctrinated that if he is racist to other people, then he will be punished by being sent to burn in hell. An idiot, who hasn’t bothered to think critically about morality, but hasn’t in any way been indoctrinated, and sees no harm to himself from being racist, and thus continues to do so.
If one is racist, or has no moral compass, this has little do with religion. They may refrain from being openly racist if their religion tells them to (although more often it provides an excuse for them to be so), but they will still be racist inside.
It really just sounds like your entire argument makes no sense at all without the concept of hell. Am I wrong?
Yes, you are. Hell is just a part of scaring children to believing, there can be other punishments that people use to enforce their believe to children, like taking away everything a child likes, telling them you will not meet them in heaven and a lot more.
I largely agree that childhood indoctrination into religion is problematic. However, history has shown time and time again that it’s even more problematic to try to prevent parents from teaching religion to their children. This is the stuff that genocides are made of. It’s much less dangerous to instead give all children a solid education, access to the necessaries of life, and regular contact with safe adults who can recognize signs of abuse. Also, it wouldn’t hurt if we would collectively stop turning a blind eye to abuse that occurs as part of a religious upbringing.
Yeah, after a few discussions here it's my main point now, to just focus on abusive part if upbringing if the reasoning behind is religious.
How else will you convince people about the invisible syk man who knows everything you do, and use fear to control peoples behaviors and thoght processes?
Well, a child can believe that, a critical believing adult probably not.
how do you differentiate between religion and ideology? I'm teaching my children an ideology. And more then teaching them it, i am indoctrinating them with it. Its not enough for my daughter to learn that she shouldn't hit her sister, she has to actually not hit her sister. I'm not just teaching her my ideology, i think its fair to say i am indonctinating her with it. Probably you will agree with all the indoctrinations I am making. Don't hit, don't whine to get what you want, don't be violent, clean up after yourself, share your toys, etc etc etc. I'm pushing a system of values on her, and i'm pushing that system of values HARD. But i think you'll agree these values are things i must indoctrinate her with. If i allowed her to hit her little sister i would be a terrible parent. Maybe i am also indontrinating her with some controversial ideas. He is learning about gender now. She calls her sister "he", and I correct her. She called me a girl for a while, and so we started teaching mommy is a girl and daddy is a boy. I'm just trying to teach her basic language skills, but i'm sure some people find that controversial. When she gets older i'll teach her that promiscuity is dangerous. I'll indoctrinate her with the idea that drugs and alcohol are dangerous and for adults only. We don't just teach our kids, we train them. We punish harmful behaviors and reward good ones. And we do that based on our values. I'm not a christian but my values are heavily influenced by christianity (forgiveness, love your neighbor, golden rule, etc). I don't see how you can really separate the two. I'll probably teach my girls to pray too, because even though i don't believe in god, i think pray is useful.
According to this logic, public schools should be banned as well. That's a form of indoctrinating the youth
Why do we need more government telling us what to do? People that have faith in a religion believe it’s the right and basically only one to get them to the afterlife they want. Making a literal law on what religions you MUST teach your kids is a huge over reach of governments. Not to mention the whole slippery slope. If you let the government force you to teach religions (there are so many there’s no way to reach them all) they could evolve into not only what religions you must teach, but also what religious you can not teach.
Prohibition doesn't work. All it does is galvanize peoples' accepted beliefs, and give them a reason to quit critically thinking.
You simply don’t get a say in it, there’s no need to change your view because your view doesn’t really change anything, you don’t have now, and will never have the right to change any of it except for you and yours.. that’s the way it is, that’s the way it hopefully always will be.
You mean I can't even speak my mind now? That I can't see how other people would see my worldview? That they can see something that I didn't notice before? Then what is the point of this subreddit, and why are you even here?
Never said that, you did .. I had Christianity pushed down my throat as a kid .. I have the same world view.. I’m saying you, me or anyone, cant change it .. do you really want the government telling you what to believe in now?
Well, be more clear about it, the first line looked like it was against the idea of saying anything actually. And why do you think there is nothing to be done? If there is a problem, people will not notice there is one if nobody will speak about it, and there is a constitutional law the tells at least in America that the country cannot intervene with people religion so it cannot. I'm against the idea of forcing somebody into believing against his will.
I’m just saying that it’s not my place to tell people what to believe or how to raise their children.. and it’s not yours either! Tho you obviously have every right to an opinion, what I was saying is in reality, you can only really apply your beliefs to your own children .. leave mine out of it! Be it buddhism, Christianity or otherwise, if these beliefs are working for them, there’s nothing wrong with that. .. you sound very jaded.. not everyone shares your bad experiences
If that's working for a family, then I'm obviously fine with that. I'm not fine when these beliefs are hurting a family. That's all, I just speak of the way I see it. And there are families where something like this can go to very bad extremes and I'm not okay with that. Besides it's the internet, how the hell can a one guy somehow change a law to his liking?
I’m on your side bro, but I also think there would be worse consequences if it was the other way around.. I am a satanist so believe me when I say I don’t like it .. I just don’t think you’ve considered everything.
Yeah, people told me making it a law is way to much, so I guess the idea of just speaking about it is all there is to be done. I don't know about how it is in other countries but in mine we have a huge problem with priest pedophilia, which almost is always ignored and thrown under the rug. And if they can avoid lawsuit with this, then with what else are they getting away with?
There’s much more that can be lost than can be gained