Is Teaching Religion To Children A Form Of Child Abuse?

Oh, I think eyewitness is evidence for sure, admissible in a court of law as "direct evidence". Whether or not it's credible is another matter, to be judged by the trier of fact. I have friends who are generally sensible people who can usually be reiled upon for accurate information. But sometimes I don't believe them. One, for example. claims to have been healed from a wound after sleeping overnight in a pyramid. Another tells me he sees auras that let him know how people are feeling. I find both accounts hard to believe, and store them in my X-files for future reference. We have plenty of reported eyewitness accounts of UFOs and extraterrestrials, but none I'd consider credible. For extraordinary events, we need lots of evidence, but I'd accept circumstantial evidence. That's why I tend not to believe in accounts of miracles. As you say, when observations vary, we need to decide which ones to accept. New Testament scholars use various rules of thumb that make sense to me in making those decisions. Obviously, they're not scientific.

 

I look at in in evolutionary terms, drawing on Dawkins' concept of memes. Ethical systems, relgious or secular, are systems of memes, and Dawkins argues that they respond to natural selection. Abrahamic religions, for better or for worse, have survived the compeptitive struggle with Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, the cults of Isis and the Magna Mater, etc. This is not necessarily because they are "better" in a moral sense. To some extent, it's because they were nastier. I happen to think Progressive versions of Christianity are far superior, from the standpoint of rationality and civility, to fundamentalist forms, but I must admit, the latter, nastier kind may whip mine's ass because it has more mass appeal. People want to be sure they'll get to heaven, and there will be golf courses there, and the folks who didn't listen to Preacher Bob will burn in Hell. The phenomenon has its parallel in politics. Let's just hope that the nicer, more sensible, memes are able to adapt and find a way to beat our the meaner, dumber ones in the struggle for the hearts and souls of humans. I say the Episcopalians and Nethodists need to explore drive-thru communion and sermons on DVDs you can pick up and return the same way! Adapt or die!

 

"Nasty"...is nasty....perhaps more popular...but do you really want to kiss it?

i don't.

 

One difference between governments and religious elites is that governments have the means to employ force to compel obedience. These days in western countries, religion has no such power.

A totalitarian regime can enforce whatever they see fit. A religion, even the most bellicose, can't do that unless they take a route similar to Islamists and become political and totalitarian in their aim. Most totalitarian regimes of the past have had little time for any kind of religion.

I think having an ethical code embedded in various religions could act as a kind of safeguard. Even if the people who say they believe don't adhere to the ethical standards, at least they're there. And unlikely to to disappear any time soon.

 

Yes, indeed. I was in a bible study class recently when a member said innocently: "The Old Testament seems kinda violent." The class erupted into laughter. I guess one redeeming feature is the fact that the violence probably didn't happen, at least not on the scale reported. Archaeological evidence doesn't support a mass invasion of Israelites into Canaan, followed by all that blood and guts. Why the Israelites would make up stories casting themselves as genocidal mass murderers remains unclear, but modern biblical scholars think these stories came centuries after they were supposed to have happened, as a way of saying "This land all belongs rightfully to us and God doesn't want you to get involved with those Canaanites, Samaritans. etc.,who shouldn't be here anyway." Scholars think the Aztec's likewise exaggerated the extent of their cannibalism and human sacrifices, possibly to give themselves a bad ass reputation.

 

Somehow I always feel I'm playing devil's advocate to some extent in seeking to defend 'religion'. Something in me though is unwilling to let go of the notion that it does serve some useful functions. Something in me finds an attraction to certain aspects of it.

I'm more for personal spirituality, and developing one's own moral sensibilities than any kind of ideological or dogmatic approach.I tend to value the heart over the head, even if that doesn't come across in many of my posts.At the same time, I'm definitely some kind of intellectual.One has to balance heart and mind.
Because I'm also, and I'm almost ashamed to say it, a little bit of an elitist myself in some ways, I don't think the mass of the population are going to develop that personal inner ethical sense to the level that could make a difference, so they need to be guided by some kind of external code. My position is similar to that of the anti-nomian trend in Christianity. The rules exist to help us transcend the rules. But fools need rules.

"Just abandon all dharmas and surrender to me" - said to be the last word of the Bhagavad Gita.

" Man must and will have some religion. If he has not the religion of Jesus, he will have the religion of Satan" - William Blake.

That's all very politically incorrect and might even seem paternalistic, anarchistic and God only knows what else.Probably I'm all of those and none of them. I am always wary on here about opening up too much.I often feel I have to couch what I say very carefully in order not to either offend, or draw down a shit storm. It's a shame but can't be helped. I have reached the point on here where I'm almost afraid to speak of personal experience, especially of spiritual experiences. Not because I fear critics, but because I see the pointlessness of it. Why expose oneself unnecessarily?

OK - rant over..................for now. Love you Megain, Oakie. Moonglow, and all my other friends on here.

 

Awesome Response and I think it touches on what one of Hitchens points was in that video I posted, when someone has claimed to have an experience where the laws of nature have appeared to be suspended, is that an instance where one just assume the laws of nature have been suspended or is it more likely the person had a misapprehension of reality?

But even when keeping within the realm of nature, as you say accounts can often vary. Many variables can affect a person's ability to recall events accurately and we don't even need to dig into history for this to be evident, I've seen displays of mock trials with eye witnesses where persuasion and leading questions are utilized to get eye witnesses to lean towards a certain kind of response.

A general overview video in step with this stuff:

https://youtu.be/lkvOMt34hAo

If people can be so easily mistaken when other's civil liberties are potentially at stake, it'd be no surprise that they'd conjure up even more wild ideations when they are persuaded or coerced to think something like their eternal soul is at stake.

 

Sometimes examining the "snake" can be risky. Cognitive anthropologists who study primitive religions think that two tendencies that may be "hardwired" into out brains play a major role: patterm-seeking and agency attribution. Both were highly functional in human development, although they can lead to mistaken conclusions, like the rope perceived as a snake.. Pattern-seeking helps us put two and two together, and explains why there are so many interesting figures in clouds. Agency-attribution imputes agency, intention or meaning to percieved objects. If an ambiguous object could be either an inanimate rope or a poisonous snake, better treat it as the latter. The skeptic who says there is insufficient information to decide, and proceeds along his journey, may receive the Darwin award by getting bitten in the ass and thus eliminated from the gene pool..

 

I tend to agree with you. I would, however, add this: once a child reaches the age of reason they should be allowed, even encouraged, to develop their own sense of spiritual identity. I base this on my own Catholic upbringing. I was never given a choice whether to attend church or not. I had to go with everyone else and that was that. By the time I was in my mid-teens I resented the hell out of it. Ironically, this hastened my embrace of agnosticism...so maybe some good came of it.

Interestingly, my brother and sister-in-law face the opposite situation. They are both nonbelievers but have a 14 year old daughter that is becoming interested in religion, because of her friends I presume. So they have wound up encouraging their daughter to attend church with her friends and they all talk about the experience afterwards. They did have a few ground rules though: no crazy hell-fire denominations or denominations that treat women as second-class humans...stuff like that.

 

No it is not.

 

Is it any worse than teaching kids that the toothfairy is real? Just to lie to them later?

 

Absolutely, No one kills in the name of the tooth fairy. Nor does the tooth fairy lie influence social policies.

Perhaps there is a parallel in the similar type of false reassurance and behavioral manipulation in these instances. Although as has been mentioned and as it seems to me, many adults who tell the religious myths to their kids probably believe in them as well. However I'd suspect there are some adults who would claim they view many religious stories as metaphor in adult to adult convo but probably wouldn't convey that to kids.

 

That could be the case, but I think that even if there was no theological diversity in the world, and we all believed the same god, or lack of one. Humankind will find a way to divide and conquer itself regardless.

 

I don't think I'm quite that fatalistic about the status quo though. I suppose I don't necessarily disagree with you but if we look at something like technology over the past few decades, that has radically changed the way we communicate and interact with each other. We have instant communication across the entire globe now, that didn't exist even 100 years ago. So while there is likely a fair amount of divide and conquer going on even in this realm, to spread that quickly across the globe in that short of a timeframe, there's got to be a substantial amount of cooperation. Not to mention in storing all this information across the net, we can readily access information on various sources now much more rapidly as well.

Other constructs might change at a slower pace but I'm thinking tech among other things may kind of force them to change to an extent.