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Ethics/Morality of teaching children religion
- Thread starter -Ryn
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I don't think you know the meaning of the word faith. It's a necessary logical mechanism for things we cannot prove. Quantum mechanics for example is almost purely a product of faith.
Sabotage
Member
"Do unto others as you would want them to do to you" I get it, but is one morally obligated to follow it? After all it's merely your perception of what is or is not damaging...
"If I perceive it as bad it is therefore bad." Not sure about that...
The other thread about fat-shaming has plenty of on-going conversation as well. Make of that what you will.
You have to be naive if you believe the OP isn't being judgmental or lacks awareness if questioning the ethics and morality for teaching religion isn't inherently offensive to religious people.
I never indicated the OP made any claims of indoctrination, nor did I say he claimed all religion was harmful. That was quite obviously directed at other participants in the thread.
It isn't any of the OP's business what parents teach their children as fact. If they teach their children Jesus could turn water into wine as fact, then that is their perogative. You and I can approve or disapprove, but it isn't our business.
You would do well to heed your own advice and read my posts with context in mind.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
Actually that literally means he is an atheist. The word means "absence of a belief in a deity", which is exactly what he is lacking.
Anyone who has not encountered religion yet, i.e. all babies, is an atheist simply by definition. It doesn't have to mean you've given the topic a lot of thought and have come to the conclusion that there is no god.
boiled goose
good with gravy
You seem to be defending some weird interpretations so I assumed you Christian. Who is your god then?
Also you never explained why we should nt kill those people if it says we should on the bible. Unless the Bible is bullcrap?
And which people can be murdered and still go to heaven and I will need a citation.
So the Israelites that slaughtered thousands of "heathens" throughout the OT in the name of god all went to hell? Kind of a dick move tbh.
boiled goose
good with gravy
I would disagree with the baby example. It only has an absence of belief because it can't evaluate the claim.
rocks and pineapples would be atheist too.
Anything to which your child could turn around and ask "Where's the proof?", shouldn't really be used to shape their values and morals in life.
Just because some part of your belief system happens to teach some positive stuff (ignoring for now that just about every major religion has some abhorrent shit attached too), doesn't mean you should use that faith as a crutch when raising your child. It's unnecessary when those lessons can be taught without all the baggage and nonsense.
Just because some part of your belief system happens to teach some positive stuff (ignoring for now that just about every major religion has some abhorrent shit attached too), doesn't mean you should use that faith as a crutch when raising your child. It's unnecessary when those lessons can be taught without all the baggage and nonsense.
Sabotage
Member
So then to the point of this thread, you can't say that teaching children religion is right or wrong; right?
Sure we could, but then who or what draws the line for what is and is not deceptive?
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
Moses is a fictional character, there is very little evidence for him actually existing. More likely a composite of figures, like King Arthur.
Don't have a traditional god the best way to view it reality or the universe is my God.
Why do I need to explain why an irrational kill list which is not stritcly adhered by the same group making the list should be acted upon.
I never said the last bit. Just incase people are getting it wrong the bible has examples of people who have killed and murdered whom then have gone in to heaven. I literally just a post above used two really good examples of that. I'm not advocating people should be killed at all.
Seriously in a discussion about the bible you're going to use that line, some of you have no hope.
The OT is all about dick moves, I mean the flood literally sums up what kind of god you're working with, that or job in my book never sits well with me.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
No, it has an absence of belief, because it hasn't yet been told that it should believe in anything. These beliefs don't just materialize. Ability to evaluate the pros and cons doesn't even come into it. You're not born knowing about any religions.
Again, I'm just breaking it down to the level of language from the Greek translation:
theism = believing in a deity
a (as a prefix) = absence of this thing
So literally, by the dictionary definition, all babies are born as atheists. They can start to believe in a god later, sure, but that doesn't change the way they're born.
It's just as valid as the point you made dude. He wanted you to back it up, you gave him a fictional character.
Omegasquash
Member
The agreement in my house is that my wife can share her faith with our children first, but nay NOT use it as a means of control, fear, or belief. When I was a kid it was all hellfire and brimstone, something I'm not a fan of exposing children to.
Sharing her faith and the culture are critical to both of us, as it the openness and my ability to share my beliefs when they're older. Church as a social construct is great...you meet other kids, make a few friends, and ideally just get taught "don't be a dick." When you get older you can make a choice about what you want to believe based on your life experiences, and since the wife and I are of opposing views on the matter I won't hesitate to share my outlook with my kids.
tl;dr: Culture and belief often go hand in hand. Sharing what you believe is important, but it's more important to empower kids to make their own choices.
Sharing her faith and the culture are critical to both of us, as it the openness and my ability to share my beliefs when they're older. Church as a social construct is great...you meet other kids, make a few friends, and ideally just get taught "don't be a dick." When you get older you can make a choice about what you want to believe based on your life experiences, and since the wife and I are of opposing views on the matter I won't hesitate to share my outlook with my kids.
tl;dr: Culture and belief often go hand in hand. Sharing what you believe is important, but it's more important to empower kids to make their own choices.
Liamario
Banned
Your use of the word absence is misleading. The concept of a deity has to be first proposed, before one can be a believer or not.
You can't be categorised without first understating the categories.
Heaven in it's construct is fiction too, unless you want to point out where in the universe it exists.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
No, it really doesn't. You are by definition an atheist if you lack any belief in a deity. You don't have to have been exposed to religion yet or not.
Let's try a thought experiment. Imagine there was a society where the idea of a creator or deity had never even been proposed. I know that's unlikely / ridiculous, whatever, that's the point of a thought experiment.
Now, what would you call these people? Atheists? What else would you call them if not?
Vincent Grayson
Member
You can say it, but you're likely only speaking from your own perspective (and that of those who share similar views). Of course, many worldviews believe that morality is absolute and that anyone not sharing their views of morality are objectively wrong.
But for the purposes of this discussion, I would assume OP intended people to voice their own opinions rather than try to ascribe a universal ruling on the morality of teaching religion to kids.
A as a prefix often means not.
I find this argument pretty ridiculous anyway. A baby more than likely can't even articulate in his/her mind the question of whether this universe has a god or not. If a baby can't ask the question then how can you claim they have a position? For all we know, a baby could think their mother, who probably feeds them and carry them around all the time is the god of the universe that makes all things happen.
It's a pretty stupid argument to hang your hat on.
boiled goose
good with gravy
I don't think the proposition has to be made, but the belief has to at the very least be possible to hold or comprehnd. my are rocks atheist question was never answered.
But we are deviating from the topic And this is largely irrelevant. Just brought it up because babyb is a bad example to use in an argument.
Liamario
Banned
I don't know what I would call them, but it wouldn't be atheists. They may well believe in a god should one knock on their doors. I think we both have different definitions of God. Atheism to me is a position on the question as to whether there is a god.
For you, an atheist is someone who's a blank slate as well.
A football supporter/a non supporter of football/someone who has never heard of football. A child would fall into the third option to be truly fair.
You reminded me of a video of someone saying that rocks are atheists because they lack a belief in a deity.
Are they though?
CurlySaysX
Banned
I think it should be ranked under the child abuse banner and CPS should get involved it if gets bad enough.
boiled goose
good with gravy
Atheist is not a positive claim.
Atheism means lack of belief in god.
Football example is not good. Because you can also hate football.
Regarding gods there are 2 separate questions with two stances
I believe in gods
I don't believe in gods
I believe there are no gods
I don't believe there are no gods.
if you choose the second option in the first set, you are an atheist regardless of what you pick in the second.
Also those members of a society are definitely atheis ts they are different from a dog and rock and baby. You can ask them. Do you believe in this? They would say no. if they don't have a concept of it you can describe it they would still say no.
SkeptiMism
Member
Yes, I'd say that if there's conversation regarding the topic itself, instead of people only shitting on the OP in every single post, then it's a worthy subject to talk about. And since you keep mentioning that thread, in my opinion it's absolutely not a ridiculous thing to talk about. Something being comparable doesn't mean that it has to be exactly the same. The way how people look down on fat people is in a way very comparable to racists looking down on people of other races.
If something is inherently offensive to someone, it doesn't necessitate that it couldn't be talked about. For example, there was an example in that thread about the man fighting for his son who went through leukemia, and in a meeting with other parents he brought it up that maybe unvaccinated kids shouldn't go to school. The parents whose kids weren't vaccinated were obviously furious, but that doesn't mean the man shouldn't have said it. Or as another example, there are tea party supporters and very likely even some creationists here on gaf, and you can bet they're insulted at some threads that vast majority of people have no problem with at all.
Also, it's important to note that there are believers in this thread who see what the OP means and are not insulted. Not nearly every believer imposes their personal beliefs to children obviously.
As for the OP being judgmental, well, I'd say Occam's Razor applies here. Why would he judge? Why would we believe he is judging people when he says he isn't (not in the OP, but in a later response to one excellent post). What reason do we have to believe he would be lying?
Here's the quote by the way:
--
Fair enough, I apologize. It was a bit unclear though, since you immediately jumped from calling the OP ignorant and offensive to such general mentions.
However, while I wouldn't use the word indoctrination, I can certainly see where the people using the word are coming from. If you specifically impose your beliefs on another person (instead of teaching why you believe what you believe and let the person make their own choices when they can) who hasn't developed any capabilities to critically examine those beliefs, then one can definitely make an argument that it can be called indoctrination no? Making that argument isn't saying that the belief itself would be harmful either.
However, I do obviously agree that there are some very militant atheists who go way over.
It's nobody's business to tell another person that pineapple sucks in a pizza and that rice sucks in a burrito, but we have such threads all the time.
This is a forum for conversation, we are in the Internet. We can talk about how illogical it is to be a creationist. Someone could even make a thread discussing why they feel that atheism doesn't make any sense. On the gaming side we have threads all the time criticizing games and even their developers.
Nobody's here trying, or even would be capable in any way, to limit what other people teach to their kids, but we can have conversation about it. Why would it be off limits?
I'll try.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
No. To have a lack of belief in anything, you must also have the capacity to have a belief in something. Rocks are not sentient and do not have beliefs, and are therefore not atheists.
Also - seriously?
Maninthemirror
Banned
I hope no one with that line of thinking comes into power..
oh wait its already happened
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoctrination
the current russian generation in power part of the above indoctrination
Yea, that's what I thought when I saw the video I mentioned.
But then again, are babies capable of belief?
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
Yes. Come on.
I'm serious. Are their brains really developed enough to be capable of that? How about this: Are chimpanzees atheists?
Union Carbine
Member
Late to the thread but I have a nine month old. Neither I or my wife is religious, at all. If I had to categorize myself, I'd say I'm agnostic. Not positive but ultimately, I think my wife falls into that camp too.
I don't know when I'll broach the subject with my daughter but I think I'll teach her about religion in the broad sense and different religions within that umbrella and less about belief in a single religious dogma. I absolutely adore mythology and I have as long as I can remember. I'd love to be able to present all religions in that context, how they all aspire to convey some truths (or what was held once as truths) and leave out any assignment of one being more true than the rest.
I don't know when I'll broach the subject with my daughter but I think I'll teach her about religion in the broad sense and different religions within that umbrella and less about belief in a single religious dogma. I absolutely adore mythology and I have as long as I can remember. I'd love to be able to present all religions in that context, how they all aspire to convey some truths (or what was held once as truths) and leave out any assignment of one being more true than the rest.
You are being very prescriptive in your view of religion. Most militant/internet atheists tend to make certain assumptions about a religious persons view (strawman) and then shoot them down. If you dig through my post history you can probably find me doing the same thing. Which is fine, but you should at least be open to the idea that someone's faith can be beautiful.
For one, I don't believe in literal streets paved with gold and living forever in a big puffy cloud. I also don't think you "need" god to love.
The premise of this thread is that religion is bad and shouldn't be taught to children. My point being I find nothing unethical about instilling the teachings of my Rector in children. He speaks of equality and love of others as being the most important virtues of a Christian.
I find religion to be extremely important in the context of meaning in my life and find a lot of comfort in a higher power and community that can help me deal with issues.
I read a book a few years ago that explored religion as a natural phenomenon that speaks to part of human biochemistry and that the loss of the cultural ritual has a tendency to make us less happy. I tend to believe this is true. The ritual is very important to me.
I think the larger question is why religion bothers atheists so much. Normally the argument is to point towards fundamentalism and dogmatic belief as the problem. That's probably true in any context, not just a religion though. It seems to me to be a weak belief system when you feel the need to beat down anyone with a differing opinion until they relent.
Captain Chaos
Member
Don't do it, it's nonsense.
squarerootofpie
Neo Member
I legitimately want to know this.
Maninthemirror
Banned
An atheist will push no faith to his kids and his kids will have to chose faith from the position of being brought up as an atheist
A theist will push faith to his kids and his kids will have to chose atheism from the position of being brought up as a theist
An atheist will come to think of theism and take a leap of faith to believe in the unseen and ponder more on the why of purpose of living for this life with consequences of action for this life in the next as he would start believing that there is an afterlife
A theist will come to think of atheism and not take the leap to believe in the unseen (and if he has taken it, stop the belief) and start focusing on the purpose of living for this life and this life alone with no consequences for the next as he would stop believing that there is an afterlife
A theist will push faith to his kids and his kids will have to chose atheism from the position of being brought up as a theist
An atheist will come to think of theism and take a leap of faith to believe in the unseen and ponder more on the why of purpose of living for this life with consequences of action for this life in the next as he would start believing that there is an afterlife
A theist will come to think of atheism and not take the leap to believe in the unseen (and if he has taken it, stop the belief) and start focusing on the purpose of living for this life and this life alone with no consequences for the next as he would stop believing that there is an afterlife
This is what I've been arguing, but you're just going to get dismissed. I agree though, if you can say a baby is an atheist, than what kind is it? A gnostic atheist or agnostic atheist? If a baby is an atheist, is a toad? Where does the classification begin and end? It gets really murky and obtuse and I feel like when the word was created it wasn't meant to apply to babies. It's a new thing as well (through Dawkins I believe) to say atheism is a lack of belief where in most of the history I'm familiar with it means one that doesn't believe. That point is debatable sure, but I think it'd be easier to just leave babies out of the equation than to argue what our 'default' state is or whatever nonsense.
entremet
Member
Religion is way too diverse in scope and intensity for this to be a black and white discussion.
There are people who just go to church on Sundays and try to be good people, minding their own business.
There are others who become fanatical about every aspect and consider everyone else infidels not to be associated with.
There are people who just go to church on Sundays and try to be good people, minding their own business.
There are others who become fanatical about every aspect and consider everyone else infidels not to be associated with.
Ryouji Gunblade
Member
Teach kids ethics and morality with children's stories. Maybe tell them about real-world examples. Then introduce what religions are about when they're older. It'll promote an open mind.
I was raised Christian and I do feel like I was brainwashed, if lovingly so. I completely realize that Christianity is most likely false, yet it's been ingrained in me so that it is still very difficult to say even to myself that I'm no longer Christian. I just can't let it go. I know that if I had been raised with a choice I never would have been Christian in the first place.
Maninthemirror
Banned
To religious folks Abraham was real as was Adam as what Noah as was Jesus and Moses and their stories are passed down as facts
That mrans he is an atheist
That doesn't make them factual. Which is something worth teaching an impressionable mind.
Most people ignore the fact that they are being conditioned/programmed from the start regardless of the source or structure of those beliefs and values. In many cases the framework provided by a religion can be positive, clearly the flip side is also true.
As a single dad raising 2 kids it touches me closely. Even morose in that I do believe in God and I'm a fan of Jesus & Buddha. I see a difference in teaching my children the concept of God compared to religion. How one views God, what the word even means (for me) is obviously not the same as everyone else.
So while I do teach my kids about how I see God,I also try to frame it in such a way thats flexible to them. I also have been and will continue to work on cultivating an awareness in them of their thoughts and belief on the whole. As the get older I will make them more aware that the world around them my self included is conditioning them but with awareness of that they can consciously choose to a degree the models and beliefs that align with who they are and the life they want to lead.
I personally live by the philosophy that I dont know the actual truth about anything I just know of models that work within a context. This stems from looking at existence from a meta perspective. What is this conscious experience I and those around me are moving around in? I have no clue, that being the case and at the top of my hierarchy of understanding, everything is a model of potential truth & possibility from a pool of structured uncertainty.
As a single dad raising 2 kids it touches me closely. Even morose in that I do believe in God and I'm a fan of Jesus & Buddha. I see a difference in teaching my children the concept of God compared to religion. How one views God, what the word even means (for me) is obviously not the same as everyone else.
So while I do teach my kids about how I see God,I also try to frame it in such a way thats flexible to them. I also have been and will continue to work on cultivating an awareness in them of their thoughts and belief on the whole. As the get older I will make them more aware that the world around them my self included is conditioning them but with awareness of that they can consciously choose to a degree the models and beliefs that align with who they are and the life they want to lead.
I personally live by the philosophy that I dont know the actual truth about anything I just know of models that work within a context. This stems from looking at existence from a meta perspective. What is this conscious experience I and those around me are moving around in? I have no clue, that being the case and at the top of my hierarchy of understanding, everything is a model of potential truth & possibility from a pool of structured uncertainty.
Maninthemirror
Banned
To religious folks it is factual, to an atheist it isn't. Now I think what is not factual is the supernatural element taken literally speaking as a theist but those should be taken metaphorically. The biggest self loss a theist creates is to apply supernatural elements where the rules of physics are not broken by humans
How can something be relatively factual? A fact is a fact if it's true.
Cloud Strife
Member
I don't believe raising someone with faith necessarily means that respect, love, and understanding for other people are mutually exclusive.
I think I turned out alright.
I think I turned out alright.
I'm ok with teaching kids religion as long as it's not showed down their throats as gospel.
Kids are smart and will eventually learn later what to think or believe themselves. Everything in moderation. I prefer hugs though. So, hugs instead of prayers would be nice. Would make religion more desirable too.
And no. I am not a believer. Just your average normal human being.
Kids are smart and will eventually learn later what to think or believe themselves. Everything in moderation. I prefer hugs though. So, hugs instead of prayers would be nice. Would make religion more desirable too.
And no. I am not a believer. Just your average normal human being.
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