Is Teaching Religion To Children A Form Of Child Abuse?

My maternal side of my family has a strong religious background. But I began to stray away from christianity when I was a little boy when a preacher told me that my dog wasn't going to heaven.

 

I don't think teaching ABOUT religion is abuse. I think what most parents don't do that they should be, is giving them a choice.

I honestly don't think I'll even tell my children about religion until they're old enough to understand and then I'll show them some books and let them choose for themselves. If they choose nothing, that's fine.

I think most people find so much conflict with their faith is because they were forced as a kid and even though they learn science and reason, they still choose what they were taught and they are taught as kids also not to question "God". Faith can be a good thing as long as people use it for the betterment of their lives and take certain things with a grain of salt. If you're ever told not to ask questions, it's because they don't have the answers and they don't want you to think. Once you do, the whole house of cards falls down.

My point is, religion should be a guideline to your life, and not be the only thing about you that matters, or a pedestal to claim you're superior to others. It's a personal thing and when it should never have stopped being a personal thing.

 

I think it can be misused as a tool for child abuse.
I had an abusive childhood, and I remember having religion used against me, mentally, many times.
Catholicism lends itself particularly well to instilling profound guilt in children, but is not inherently abusive, as I said. It can be quite the opposite, in fact.

 

It depends on the details. Teaching religion to your kids certainly is not abusive by default. But it can easily turn in a form of abuse. I was raised christian and even though i was taught stuff I know is factual (and in some instances even morally) wrong, I don't think it was a form of abuse in my case. I only saw it as dubious in my puberty when I was figuring out some of the beliefs I was taught didn't compute with my perception of reality. But later I also accepted I wasn't misled by my parents on purpose. They just raised me in a similar way they themselves were raised, and they had good experiences with it. I also later realized how religion can really be (ab)used to mislead or keep down people. Puts my upbringing in perspective.

 

... ... ...

Sighs.

There is millions of words in this thread. But somehow there is still uncertainty and discord.

Finding Jesus Christ is NOT a RELIGIOUS experience. It is a very deeply profound and sacred SPIRITUAL experience that opens you to a JOURNEY of love, healing, forgiveness (of yourself and others) understanding, reasoning, wisdom, compassion, charity, patience, obedience, purety and the most important one of all HUMILITY.

If you call yourself a “Christian” but yet your daily existence is not transforming into; or your endeavours not entirely focused on the above virtues then you haven’t truly found your maker yet.

It’s time to call a spade a spade. If a “religious” person is alienating his fellow man, and pushing them away from the saving grace of a living a gospel life with judgemental and hypocritical bigotry, hatred and condemnation then they have failed.

Jesus came to save EVERYONE.

It’s not for us humans to judge one another if that spiritual journey back towards Christ is supposed to take 5 seconds like it did for Saint Paul when he fell off the horse, or an entire life time.

Seek Truth and Seek God with all your heart...
Want it more then your next meal...
Want it more then your next drink of water...
Want it more then the roof over your head...
Want it more then your next breath.

Then you will know true repentance. Then you will see the difference between the secular and the spiritual, the religious and the divine, the possible and the impossible, the weak and the all-mighty, humanity and its Creator.

 

Not to many years ago a family member was living in a predominantly Mormon city in S. Idaho. She and her family were radical fundamentalist Lutherans. She related that one day their daughter came home from school in tears because her LDS classmates were not going to heaven. Smells a lot like child abuse to me.

 

... ... ...

When a blade of grass is born, it’s finite purpose is to become food.

When a tree is born, its purpose is to bear fruit and/or become a home to animals.

When a creature of the ocean is born, if it does swim, it perishes.

When the parents of a chick decide its ready to leave the nest, if it does not fly it perishes.

Everything in natural creation has a purpose. From the Sun, moon, stars, ebb and flow of tides, to the smallest singular cell.

If this was the child’s testimony, one should not be looking to justify anyones behaviour with labels. True faith doesn’t come in brands, and it can’t be sold, or borrowed.

The laws of God in the bible is the natural universal standard against which humanity is destined to be calibrated. If the child bore witness to behaviour that brought her to tears, then perhaps she feels somebody is out of alignment.

However, somebody needs to educate her that the only true judge of humanity against these laws is our saviour, Jesus. The reality is that the shedding of the blood of the new and everlasting covenant is truly a spiritual mystery that humanity can’t really fully appreciate, comprehend or understand using its five senses.

Our duty as his followers towards each other and non-followers alike is not to judge one another. But instead to encourage one another and pray for one another at all times, to find and remain dedicated to a truly spiritual journey dedicated to our same saviour, Jesus Christ.

For, in his eyes we are all the same. We are nothing more then a blade of grass.

 

demanding anyone pretend the same things as yourself is abusive of anyone.

children need to know what is useful to get by and not hurt each other in this world,

but they certainly don't need to be told to lie to themselves about the unknown,
nor that their own imagination about it, is any less valid then someone else's,
no mater how long ago they might have lived or when they wrote it down.

children (and adults too) need to be taught not to be needlessly harmful,
but outside of motivating them to not be,
what each of us pretend to know, about what is not known,
has very little, if anything, to do with it.

 

. Dawkins, Kraus and other atheists have charged that religion is a form of child abuse. Is that true?

It depends on the religion. If child abuse is defined as something which harms a child, toxic faith syndrome is a form of child abuse.
Toxic Faith
5 Warning signs of a toxic faith
21 Beliefs of a Toxic Faith–Stephen Arterburn
8 Warning Signs Of A Toxic Church - Faith in the News
On the other hand, giving a child the benefit of parental guidance on morals and values is a positive duty. Being agnostic on those subjects and letting the kid pick it up as best (s)he can on the streets is a form of child abuse. How can we tell which is which? In the last analysis, good judgment. And when push comes to shove, except in extreme cases, parental judgment needs to trump the state's. And it is entirely realistic to expect that parents will withhold from their children their own strongly held beliefs that they believe to be positive, whether they be religious or political. My own upbringing, besides being taught by nuns with rulers, was like being raised by Fox news. A lot of good that did!

 

Where do morals come from?

 

I think there are behaviors and qualities that many of us would describe as moral found in animals. The seeds of morality might've been sown in social animals, particularly mammals, that had to face obstacles of group structure, hierarchy, sustenance, etc. I do think humans have a unique ability to conceptualize morality. Perhaps language, particularly written language was the main catalyst for this and provides the basis for morality as supreme principle which is espoused by many religions and moral philosophers like Kant.

 

Empathy and reciprocal altruism are well documented in animals, but in primitive human societies those emotions tend to be extended to genetically related or closely similar individuals. Evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson thinks that at some point in our evolution, possibly as early as homo habilis, self-interested motives and group-interested motives became modularized in human brains--resulting in the familiar conflict between desire and conscience. As human societies grew in size in response to commerce and conquest, the need arose to extend the empathetic, altruistic, collective-oriented sentiments to larger and larger collections of humans who were not as homogeneous. That's where universal religions and moral philosophies came in--and the conceptualizations that you mention. .

 

Would humans be just as moral without religion? I doubt it, but its a complicated question. Arguments that they would are: (1) early religion seems to have been less concerned with morality than with placating deities by sacrifice to secure material benefits. Moral norms were basically customs enforced by neighbors and village elders.(2) universal religions have often been perverted to serve the interests of ruling elites and clerics--justifying violence and wickedness. and (3) secular institutions and ideologies have taken the place of village elders in providing guidance and looking out for the common good. Religion seems to be on the wane in the industrial democracies of western Europe, where people seem to have adopted the norms of social democracy. On the other hand: (1) anomie (a sense of normlessness and meaninglessness) has plagued modern pluralistic industrial democracies, as secular values provide cold comfort to their adherents; (2) without grounding in moral priorities, people are easily led astray, seeking meaning in such ephemeral ends (false gods) as wealth, status, power, and sensual indulgence which cannot bring true happiness. (3) secular ideologies (Communism, Fascism, nationalism, nativism, populism) have supported destructive political movements, and secular institutions are only as good as the politicians who direct them and the notoriously impersonal bureaucrats who run them.

It doesn't have to be this way. There are alternatives, in religious belief systems that downplay hierarchy, ritual, and other-worldly concerns and emphasize peace and social justice. Those are hard to find in western societies. Catholics strike me as too hierarchical, authoritarian and dogmatic. Evangelical Protestants are too hung up with sex, superstition, biblical literalism, and right wing political causes. Mainline Protestant churches can be bland. I've been fortunate to find kindred spirits in sub-groups: progressive Sunday school groups and private discussion groups in the mainline Protestant churches. But at least they all provide structure for inculcating and reinforcing moral values that remind people of duties beyond self. One of the groups I attend consists of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), and I must say I'm impressed by the decency and moral commitment of the members. Most view atheism as a statement of what they're not, but go on to add a value system like humanism to express what they're for. Good enough for me.

 

Perhaps it's the idealist in me but I think humans could be just as moral without religion. Conceptualizing morality often doesn't entail practicing morality and as you allude to in your 2nd point in the post above, religious figures throughout time often did not practice what they preached and/or had been in cahoots with prominent figures that have subverted moral doctrine.

The primary difficulties that I see replacing religion as the paradigm to derive morality from are that religions address more than morality, so even if morality can be cultivated from other sources, existential angst, ideas of the numinous, and for even stronger believers, origins of the universe and life are addressed by religion. These concepts provide comfort, meaning and are delivered in a way that are palatable to children. I'm not saying that science and philosophy couldn't provide the same benefits but such concepts are often addressed across a more varied spectrum with science and philosophy and not all provided in one book. Also the communal experience of religions, probably helps to bolster these concepts. Some of these might have been issues with some of the secular ideologies of the 20th century that pretty much all arose during times of civil unrest.

 

It depends on what you mean by "religion" and "moral". Religion comes from the Latin ligare (to bind), and means re-binding or connecting humans to the sacred, transcendent or numinous. Usually, but not always, this is to a supernatural being or beings; at minimum, it is connection to "some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power...".(James, Paul & Mandaville (2010) Globalization and Culture, vol. 2: Globalizing Relgions.) London: Sage Publications. Scholars have identified several criteria that distinguish religion from spirituality or the sense of the sacred, often called the 4 Cs: creed, code, ceremony (cultus), and community. Some world religions may lack one or more of these, but if it has more than a couple, it's a religion.

Code (morality) hasn't always been central to religion. In fact, it seems to have been minor in ancient religions before the Axial Age (8th to 3rd century B.C.E.). A number of my atheist and agnostic friends are active in the Unitarian-Universalist church, which has no common creed. They attend services with Christians, Jews, pagans, etc. The ceremonies are rudimentary--consisting of an opening session in which anybody with the urge to share a thought does and then there is a sermon on some suitably progressive humanistic topic. Another group I hung with for awhile, the American Humanists, were embroiled in discussions over developing rituals to give their kids a sense of meaningful experiences to mark life transitions, e.g., the "presentation of the child", as a counterpart to Christian baptism. Sunday Assembly atheist churches, including mega-churches, seem to be a growing trend. The Number Of Sunday Assemblies, Or 'Atheist Churches,' More Than Doubled Over One Weekend | HuffPost Atheist 'mega-churches' take root across US, world One of the freethinkers groups I was involved with used to say the "resentment prayer", in which we'd pray good things for people we resented. The fundamentalist atheists would mutter in the background about "praying atheists", but those participating found expression of goodwill toward enemies to be therapeutic. Not for everyone, but some consider it beneficial.

Atheists who are uncomfortable with such practices may still seek out community in groups that share and share their values. The Oklahoma Atheists Association in my state provides a wide web of social activities and get togethers to suit all tastes, and summer camps for the kids. Such gatherings, while less overtly "religious" than the ones I've previously mentioned, tend to reinforce positive norms of decency. I think it's important for atheists and agnostics, if they reject religious values, to develop functional equivalents like humanism. I have an atheist friend who posts on his website that "atheist" tells what he doesn't believe, while "humanist" tells what he does believe. BTW, I seriously doubt that these people just let their kids explore the various religions and make their own choice, free of parental direction.

As for morality, I think it's useful to distinguish between morality of duty and morality of aspiration. "The morality of aspiration refers to a system of morality that dictates what a person ought to do to reach his or her full potential as a human being while the morality of duty refers to what a person must necessarily do in order to fit in with society." Lon Fuller, The Morality of Law Morality of Law I think the former is part of "the meaning of life" , which to me is a big part of the draw of religion. Some churches place more emphasis on one kind of morality over the other. Some religious folks have the idea l that atheists must be immoral in both respects, giving themselves over to sex, drugs, and rockn'roll, lying, cheating and stealing, My experience is that this is far from the truth. The ones I know compare favorably with my religious friends in both areas of morality. Why is this? It could partly be due to the natural empathy and reciprocal altruism we talked about with lower animals. I suspect also that good parenting and inculcation of societal norms and values also have a lot to do with it. But I think it's also the case that their self-concepts of the kinds of people they want to be, their goals in life, and their aspirations are inconsistent with immoral behavior. Religious folks might counter that those societal norms they've absorbed derive from Judeo-Christian moral concepts. The aspirations, though, are a reflection of idealism born of positive self-concepts and satisfaction of the "lower" needs on Maslow's hirearchy. https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

Can societies of humans be moral without religion? Apparently, yes, because that seems to be the case in Scandanavia. In fact, progressives like me might argue they seem to be more moral in terms of their dedication to peace and social justice than our own churchgoing society. The cultural and social factors responsible for this are worth studying. For now, let's simply observe that it can happen.

 

It's not abuse. Abuse is when you don't give a damn about the child and/or go deliberately out of your way to make the child's life a living hell.

 

Some might claim that religious indoctrination of a child by his parents is deliberately going out of their way to make the child's life a living hell.

 

My church family was very kind , and let me be free . Hell was never mentioned by these Christians . What
sort is that ? Umm... some farmers .

 

Not in my experience. Where I live, you're more likely to experience hardship the less religion indoctrination you have.

 

I was raised a Roman Catholic and sent to a Catholic school that had nuns and stuff, back in the 70's. It was not fun.