It’s better than telling them that they’re evil if they don’t agree or that they’re going to burn in hell forever if they doubt you, or that anyone else who believes something else is evil and needs to be “saved.”
Most parents who bring up their children in a prticular religion don’t do that but a lot of them do. It’s that kind of psychological terrorism that bothers me. There’s a difference between saying “this is what I believe” and “this is what you MUST believe.”
No kid should ever be told he doesn’t have a right to make up his own mind. If children are made to feel that their minds do not belong to them, then what do they really have?
My oldest daughter is being brought up Catholic and goes to a Catholic school but my wife and I always tell her that she’s allowed to believe whatever she wants and that she can make up her mind what religion she wants to be (or choose not to follow any religion at all) when she grows up. It’s more important to us to teach her how to treat other people and follow basic, universal ethical standards (don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t hurt people, etc.) than it is to browbeat her into saying she agree with either one of us about the big questions.
I agree with you on this. I guess my issue is that I think there is a wide gulf between “you MUST believe what I believe” and “I’m not going to teach you about my religion, because I want you to make up your own mind.” I’m not sure some of the more middle-of-the-road choices are inherently unethical. It seems pretty natural that a parent would want to teach their children about something that is so important to them, and to hope that the child will follow the same path.
I have always believed that open dialogue is important, and I think that kids should be encouraged to think through things and decide what they believe…otherwise, the belief doesn’t mean much, anyway. But this is a process, anyway…my 2-year-old isn’t going to be thinking much about these kinds of things, and we will continue to be a Catholic family as she is growing and learning about things. She will question certain things, I’m sure, and we will talk about it, but it’s not like I intend to drop our religion the second she starts wondering about what else is out there…and I don’t really see what could possibly be unethical about that. Evenutally, through some evolution of her own, she will decide what she wants to be…whether this will happen as a teen or an adult, I don’t know, but as I said before, it’s sort of a case-by-case basis what I think my reaction will be.
I agree with this, as well. I have always thought that having good values is infinitely more important than what religion a person is, if any. I don’t think I’m going to throw myself under a bus if my kids cease being Catholic, as long as they are good people. But am I ethically obligated to tell them that they have these choices? And from what age? I’m not sure that I am at all, but I definitely think if I am going to have that discussion, I would be inclined to wait until the questions start coming, rather than to bring it up myself.
My parents were raised episcopalian and methodist. Both of them dumped it as soon as they were away from home and no longer had to play along. As I said, we were free to attend church and synagogue with our friends, but it never made enough logical sense to me at the get-go…no god, no point.
It’s brainwashing. They had no concept of a deity until they were told, day after day, week after week, year in and year out, that there was a higher power and there was a need to worship him to be saved from his wrath. I had a little catholic friend who was so terrified of god that she actually *grounded herself * for not thinking of him *one day * during the holidays. Incidently, none of the catholic kids I grew up with still attend church. Not one.
No, teaching about religions is not forcing. Making a kid attend a specific church against his will, after he’s expressed his opinion about his non-belief, IS forcing.
Everyone starts out as a non-believer. The notion of a god is fed to them by someone. My brother sort of semi-adopted a vague-and-fuzzy belief in “something” but I think he was hanging out with the crystal-waver for too long. He hasn’t brought it up since they broke up.
Oh, sure…I’d discuss it with him, but I wouldn’t try to force my beliefs on him. He may be serious or he may just have a passing curiosity. Either way, it’s not up to me to dictate. If he wants me to pick up a book, take him to a service, whatever, I’d help him out.
I wondered about it periodically until I reached adolescence and was able to reason it through.
There are plenty of activities that a 12-14-year-old kid can take a pass on occasionally. You seem to be equating “attending dad’s company picnic” with the larger issues of religion, god, and the universe. You also seem to be confusing real concepts like family, education and civic responsibility with a god that exists in your head but not in your child’s.
Regarding your catholic-to-jewish friend, I thought it was pretty clear that the statement I was making is not about the baptized child as much as it’s about you. I assume you tell your kid she was baptized and that she’s catholic. I mean, it’s not a secret, is it? Don’t you think that plays into the whole indoctrination thing? Don’t you think it has a psychological affect on most kids…that being “catholic” is just what they are? She had no control over it whatsoever. YOU made her catholic.
No…it’s not indoctrination. I never forced him to a behavior one way or the other. If he adopted a religion, I would have to wonder what the heck he was thinking.
Maybe I’m part of the 1% then. I was raised a hard atheist. I was taught that people who believed in any from of religion (Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Zorasters, Pagans, Shintos, Psychics, etc.) were not deluded or mislead but foolish and stupid. This fact that all belief in anything nonphysical is foolish was the Truth of my household.
When I was 13 I made the decision that Christianity made more sense to me than Atheism. During my teen years my beliefs were constantly challenged and ridiculed. Now, more than 30 years later my parents are still extremely unhappy with my choice.
So, should my parents have been able to forbid me from going to church until I moved out? When did their right to teach their Truth to their children stop and my right religious rights as a child start? The other side of your OP.
I know a number of people won’t agree, and that this is a tangent from the original purpose of this thread…but I disagree. I think people are born ignorant, so I think it’s wrong to classify them as non-believers.
Not every religious person raises their kids in the same way. I was never, ever afraid of God, and I certainly don’t intend to raise my kids to be afraid of God. And what is the point of telling me that your friends no longer attend Church? If anything, this just proves that they were not, in fact, “brainwashed.”
So taking my child to church and giving her classes in the religion is NOT unethical? It becomes unethical at the point where she tells me she no longer believes in it, if I then try to “force” her to do so? (Again, I’m not sure how forcing attendance is forcing belief, but I guess I’ll just have to remain confused on that point.)
I have to agree with Othersider on this one…children don’t know anything when the start out. There is not belief or non-belief…in anything at all. They learn about things from society. Your brother had the opportunity to learn about a particular religion from someone, and had the choice to accept or reject it…just as he has probably learned a lot of concepts about a lot of things from a lot of people, and has the choice to accept or reject them.
There’s that word “force” again. No one is talking about forcing anyone. My point was that if my daughter comes to me and says “I want to be Buddhist” or “I don’t believe in God and I"m not going to church anymore,” I would have a discussion with her about it, where she got the idea, and try to determine how serious she was about it and why. As I have stated earlier, these kinds of conversations would help me decide if there was good reason for her not to attend church in the future.
No, I’m not equating it with the company picnic…I am equating it with important, serious family obligations such as the birthday party mentioned by an earlier poster. There is an important theological reason in Catholicism that weekly mass is not supposed to be missed. By setting the example of attending every week, I am attempting to stress the importance of this piece of the theology. Other activities regarding religion, such as the CCD classes could and I’m sure will be given a pass on occasionally, as the kids get busier and other activities come up. I don’t get at all your point about “confusing” it with “real” concepts, such as family, education, and civic responsibility. All those things are important, and religion can be interwoven with them or not.
She was baptized and raised Catholic. My point was that no matter what I do now to raise my kid Catholic, she may well turn out to be something else…as has been pointed out by you from the first sentence of this post to the last. So, what irreparable harm am I doing to her, again?
I’m not saying every person raises their kids in the same way, and my friends parents weren’t instilling fear in the kids by any means…it was the basic concept that only believers can be saved. But if you believe that only believers are saved, that’s a big fear factor, in my book. My friends don’t attend church, but because of baptism, confirmation, and catholic school, they still consider themselves catholic. They haven’t been able to break away altogether. Not one of them behaves like a catholic. They just are…
You keep skipping over the religions, plural. You tell your kid catholicism The Truth (after all, she’s been baptized, she’ll be confirmed at a very young age, and you’ll tell her that ccd classes are “important”). Teach her about *all * the major religions, (if you feel she *must * have some sort of belief to get by in this world) and let her make the choice if any of it makes sense to her when she’s old enough to reason it out.
So far, it appears all of this pomp and circumstance is only important to YOU. She hasn’t made one deliberate decision on the matter, but at least she’s catholic…right? That’s a lot of “undoing” when she becomes old enough to think for herself. That’s brainwashing.
As we all do. It’s easier to do when you don’t have a particular concept deliberately seeded from birth.
We are all atheists at birth. It isn’t a belief system. It’s the absence of one.
You’re still pointing her in a specific direction. You’re still telling her that catholic is the “correct” way. It ain’t necessarily so. And she still has to “prove” herself to you. Who died and made you god?
*So what * if she’s pissed off at her brother and doesn’t want to celebrate his birthday? There are life lessons to be learned by giving her the choice. She’d probably feel bad afterward. She may decide to come out of her room and join the festivities because she’s guilty about being so hard on him. She may realize that the reason she was pissed off pales compared to how much she really loves him. She may learn that she’s hurting no one but herself. She may realize, through all that guilt, that her brother and her family are important to her. Those are all valid lessons about life and choice that she would carry with her forever.
You’re interweaving YOUR religion into all those other concepts. That’s the point. It’s not hers. It’s extraneous to anyone but YOU. If she wants to interweave another religion, it shouldn’t be up to you to decide if she’s allowed to. If she wants to interweave community service because it’s a tangible way to express her compassion for her fellow man, who are you to say it’s not a valid way to spend her time?
I never said it was irreparable (though it may be…she may not be able to shake it completely even if she wants to). I’m saying that something as important as The Big Picture is best approached from a clean slate.
A question I have been wondering to those who think that children should be allowed to “decide for themselves” (Kalhoun, I am particularly interested in your answer to this)…
How far are you willing to allow your children to make their own decisions about their faith and how they live that out? Would you be happy with whatever they decide, despite the consequences, or do you place limits on them at some point?
So what if your children joined a cult that wanted to them to quit school and move into a compound, Waco style, where they may or may not be abused sexually, would you let them? What if they needed regular blood transfusions, but they became a Jehova’s Witness and therefore wanted to stop all treatment, even though it would mean their death? What if they needed to take regular psychiatric medicine but they became a Scientologist and they told them to stop taking the medication? What if they converted to radical Islam and felt it was their religious duty to fight in Iraq, or Afghanistan, would you let them do that?
How committed do you think we should be to the whole principle of “religious freedom?” Do you really want full religious freedom for your children, or just freedom to accept a set of religious choices that you find tolerable?
Bob, it is unfair to compare coerced participation in a cult with attending church. (And if you do stand by this comparison, then you are doing more harm than good to the atheist argument.)
There may be Islamic parents who would find pride in a suicide bombing carried out by their child. There may be JW parents who would accept the death of thier hemophiliac child as God’s will rather than allow a transfusion. There were certainly brainwashed parents at Waco who allowed their children to be abused. A lot of religions appreciate a martyr- yours included. But the examples you have given are extreme, and not suitable comparisons. Neither *freedom from religion * nor *religious freedom * includes endorsing a cult.
And neither Sarahfeena’s nor Kalhoun’s devotion to the welfare of their children is in question here. It is obvious that both are equally concerned, involved, and loving parents with good intentions. From an atheist’s standpoint: the perceived harm in forcing a child to attend the family church is in the risk of instilling superstition and unreasonable fear. If the subject were an adult, the question would be one of human rights.
I think Beaucarnea said it pretty well. Cults are traditionally about control; not religion. I am not in favor of something that robs my child of his ability to think for himself. While I feel there is a degree of that in any religion, it’s definitely not the same thing as a full-fledged cult. My parent’s friends (the husband was catholic…the wife, I’m not sure) had a daughter who ran away with the moonies back in the early 70s. They forbade her from making any contact with them for a long time. She is still a Moonie, but has since been allowed to contact the family. Their hearts were broken. There were literally decades in which they didn’t know who their daughter was. I do not think the forced practice of catholicism is on a par with this.
Firstly it is a bit of a dodge to merely say but THOSE choices of belief are cults, and therefore not valid. If you believe on principle that children should have religious freedom, then that should include freedom to choose whatever they want. There is no clear definition of what a cult is anyway. What if they come to their conclusions without an obvious figure controllinging them?
Secondly I have no doubt that Sarafeena and Kalhoun are concerned parents devoted to the welfare of their child. That is the point. Every parent has a duty to oversee the decisions of their to make sure they don’t harm themselves in some way. If you are willing to say that it is OK to restrict a child’s religious choices in some ways (say, no joining cults) out of their own good, then you are using the same logic that religious parents are using. The only difference is what constitutes “harm”. If you would stop your child from doing certain things because you think it would harm them, how can you condemn other parents for doing the same?
I still don’t think that answers the question. Being a Moonie is still a religious choice, and in that sense is no different to Catholicism. Sure, both groups are very different in their theology and practice, with IMHO anyway Catholics being far more reasonable. But still they are both religions, and they are both options that your children can freely choose. What would you do if your child decided of their own free will without someone obviously controlling them to join one of these cult like religions? Is it all about the free choice of your child, or is it about making a choice that you agree with?
I didn’t say that alternative choices of belief are invalid. I stated that radical cults in which terrorism, abuse, and denial of medical care are the norm cannot fairly be compared to modern American religious practice. It is not that I don’t get your point- it is that I find your examples purposefully subversive to the discussion.
If you wish to debate the sanctity of human blood, ask a Jehovah’s Witness. If you wish to debate the appropriateness of marrying girls younger than the age of legal consent, ask a Branch Davidian. If you wish to debate the merits of suicide bombings, ask a terrorist. If you wish to debate the necessity of treating emotional illness with medicine, ask Tom Cruise, the self- appointed expert on the history of psychiatry. As none of these faiths have been represented in this discussion, I don’t see your purpose behind addressing these issues here.
In the examples you provided, the inherent risks to the child joining one of these cults are illness or death due to denial of medical care, possible suicide or terrorism, or sexual abuse. The inherent risk to a child joining the average American church is a subscription to specific religious customs and mythology. The two simply do not compare.
Most loving parents would try to prevent their child from joining a group which might cause them harm or cause them to harm others regardless of their core belief system. (I say most only because there are religions which encourage martyrdom.) It is safe to say that both atheists and Catholics would discourage a child from joining a group which might cause themselves or others physical harm.
You implication is that if atheists are to encourage total religious freedom, then they must also endorse a child’s attraction to a dangerous cult. With this statement you are impugning the parenting skills of an atheist.
If you hadn’t set up these inflammatory examples, the argument may have followed the course of “How do atheists instill morality?", “To what end do you insist that your children adhere to your beliefs?”, “What age might be a fair time to allow your child to decide for themselves whether or not to worship with you?” or “Do atheists forbid or discourage their children from attending church?”
I hope I have addressed your questions. I would like to respond to the OP now. I do not have children of my own. I am an atheist, and have not attended church other than Midnight Mass for years. I am also an occasional foster parent to teenagers with challenges. I attend the church of thier choice with them when they ask. I do not discuss my beliefs or lack of, and this is rarely addressed as most of my kids are working on strenuous self-improvement programs and too self-centered to be overly concerned with the status of my soul. My reasoning behind escorting these kids to church: after being uprooted and possibly facing charges or state custody, they crave familiarity. I would not deny them this comfort regardless of my beliefs. If they make no issue of religion and do not ask to attend church, there are thousands of alternative methods to teach morality. And I do teach morality, and rigorously. I have very high expectations of my kids. All of my kids have been 15 and older and have been close to the age of consent and have the ability to make spiritual choices for themselves. If I were to be certified as a caregiver to younger children, I would follow the requests of their permanent guardians. If the child or his guardians did not request church: we wouldn’t go. I would find some other constructive use of time and use alternative methods of teaching morality.
Because the names of religions are proper nouns. It has been stated many times on this board that atheism and agnosticism are not religions. If you don’t like the names of religions being proper nouns argue with the editors of Strunk and White’s, Elements of Style.
I think we are misunderstanding each other a bit. Possibly because I have been a bit vauge.
I am not trying to have a go at atheists in general. I am coming from the position that it is a parents responsibility to oversee the decisions of their children and allow or disallow what they believe to be in the best interests of the child. And that extends to people of all belief systems, as I can only expect parents to do what they themselves think is right, even if I don’t necessarily agree with their opinions.
My overall point is to demonstrate that the “religious freedom” that Kalhoun and others seems to be advocating is not a fundamental right, but is limited to what they think won’t be damaging to their children. This is the same logic that religious people use in insisting that their children participate in religious things as well. From their point of view the child not participating and/or believing in their religion is putting them at risk of something bad or missing out on something good, depending on the specifics of the faith. As such they then decide as they do in the interests of the child, just as Kalhoun presumably would.
It is somewhat hypocritical to only allow your children to make decisions you agree with, while at the same time criticising more religious parents for only allowing their children to make decisions that they agree with. That is my point. Either religious freedom is a fundamental right, and you have to accept whatever your children decide no matter how harmful for them you think it may be, or parents do have the right to make decisions for children based on what they feel is in their children’s best interest.
And FWIW I do think that good parents should listen to their children, and take their opinions into account when making decisions. Not least of which because I don’t think that forcing children to go to church when they don’t want to really does any good. However while good parents should listen to their children, I wouldn’t call someone immoral or wrong just because they over-ruled their child’s decision when they thought what they were doing was in the child’s best interest.
Which ties into my opinion on the OP. That I think that it isn’t immoral, nor should it be illegal, to teach children the benefits of one belief system (including atheism, if the parents happen to be atheist) over others. As parents all I can ask of people is that they act in what they believe to be their child’s best interest.
I see where you’re coming from and I agree with you to a degree. The religious aspect of it is one thing; overseeing (or being unable to oversee) the physical child is another thing altogether. There are different degrees of damage and if my kid ran away with a group of people who controlled his every thought and movement, I’d have to step in. My parents’ friends lost their daughter to the Moonies as an adult. If she was 14 years old, their reaction would have been different, I’m sure.
You are right, on the surface. There is no difference between mainstream and cult religions; a kid should be allowed to pursue worship as they see fit. But I would draw the line if the pursuit of religion took over the whole person, whether the kid sat in his room doing rosary prayer all day or if he was shuttled away to a compound and fed magic mushrooms. Now, if the Moonies didn’t practice such extreme rituals (removing a person from the home, cutting off contact with past relationships) and was practiced in a more mainstream way, it would be as acceptable as any of the major religions. All religion rubs me the wrong way; some more than others.