I feel that Der Trihs is allowing personal anguish to get in the way of his reasoning abilities here. Most kids in Sunday school are not being “indoctrinated” to one day “launch Armageddon.” They are being educated in a faith that a vast majority of the world population manages to be, overwhelmingly without any dire consequences. 4th graders are painting pictures of Jesus, not learning about deviant lifestyles of the non-Christian. I think that his personal experiences are a small sample size and they seem to have left him paranoid about the subject.
Shouldn’t you have requested the agreement of the parents?
I don’t have much issue with people talking about their belief with strange children, for instance, but letting them participate in an organized event, class or activity without the parent’s agreement and without even knowing who are the parents seems over the top, especially if it involves proselytism, politics, or any other form of indoctrination.
But how are you going to choose which religion they’re going to be taught about and why?
I’m not a religous person. My family is not really religous, either. I went to Catholic school when I was a kid, and watched Davy and Goliath in class, and was sent to mass along with all other students. After all that, I came out essentially agnostic. Today I wish I had paid more attention to all those Bible stories: whether I believe in the divine or not, those stories are an important part of our culture and our literature.
By that measure, I think it wouldn’t be a bad thing at all for a kid to go to Sunday school to get some education in these matters, provided that the parents check out the school in question to make sure that the children are being taught well, extremist religous views are not being foisted upon young minds, and the teachers aren’t weirdo child molesters or anything. (You know, the things parents should do for any activities for children.) And, of course, parents should talk to their children about their own views on religion, whether they’re die-hard atheists or real Bible-thumpers.
In a side note, I am struck by how many posters have decried the lessons that young ears might be exposed to in Sunday school, as if children have to be protected from the lessons of organized religion. It really strikes me as analagous to fundamentalists decrying how children might be horribly scarred (in a moral sense) if they were ever to see a boob on TV or a mention of evolution in science class.
In both cases, whether the kid is taking in something from Sunday school or happening to catch a glimpse of Baywatch Nights, I think it makes perfect sense for parents to provide a context to what children are being taught, so children can begin to process these lessons to form their own views on this stuff, rather than try to protect kids from all the things that parents might not care for themselves.
I went to Sunday school for years. I even have a bunch of perfect attendance medals. Hanging out with friends was fun, but I don’t think I learned much. I do remember one of my teachers saying that people were like cokies. White people were done just right, “orientals” were overcooked, and “negroes” were burnt. This was just outside Boston, so I can just imagine what was taught elsewhere.
More like 32%.
The kids were there, and Baker was not the one who brought them.
I also teach Sunday School - if a kid I’ve never seen before shows up, I’m going to assume it’s because that kid’s parents either want him/her in Sunday School or do not mind if they’ve been brought. It isn’t public school or a government activity. It isn’t a surprise, stealth religious activity (e.g., “Come Over to Watch Movies” where unbeknownst to the parents I’m going to slip religious messages between the films). It’s called Sunday School. It’s at a church, on Sunday morning, while the services are being held. There are crosses around. There’s children’s artwork depicting bible scenes on the walls. There is a shelf of Bibles in the corner.
I think it’s a valid assumption that the parents of the children who are there have tacitly (if not expressly) agreed to having their kids taught something religious. And if not, I’m not the person who they should be angry with. (nor is Baker).
When we do get visitors, we’re going to try to make them feel welcome there. But I’m also still going to go ahead with the same lesson plan.
I am referring to religious faith in general, not specifically any form of Christianity. Someone who attended Jewish school already weighted in here and Sunday School is well-known for both Protestants of all stripes and Catholics. I have to assume that spiritual training a la “Sunday School” is also not unheard of vfor Muslims. Der Trihs seems to indict all religions in his rants, not any particular one, and the vast majority of human beings do have some kind of religious beliefs.
So your contention is that there are “no dire consequnces” to being exposed to religious faith in general.
Have you watched the news recently?
To be fair, going to Sunday School is not analogous to seeing a stray boob, but more to going to a strip club (hey, you started it!) Kids are used to being in a classroom where the teacher presents true stuff that the kid is expected to learn and believe. I don’t think it is particularly odd for a parent not to want a kid in an environment where the stuff being learned goes against his beliefs. It’s not just atheists - I don’t think any of my daughter’s LDS friends went to the religiously oriented kids club at the Presbyterian church.
For the evolution analogy, I’d think that sex education is a better example, since evolution should be taught as morally and religiously neutral. Kids can get excused from sex education, which is unfortunate but appropriate.
Nice strawman there… No, what I am saying is that the “dire consequences” of sending the average American elementary schooler to the average religious school is nothing to worry about. A large percentage of Ameicans attend some kind of extracurricular religious-based studies - I do not know this percentage; I looked but could not find but the specifics are kinda irrelevant since it’s not an insignificant number. What percentage of them go on to become like Phelps or the Taliban? Here’s an educated guess: Not a hell of a lot.
I agree with this 100%. Thanks for articulating it better than I have been.
Not much to add, but I will say that my sister and I were required to go to Sunday school throughout grade school. My father is an atheist (which I didn’t know at the time) but my mother was a quiet believer. I never felt that my parents were being hypocritical just because they didn’t go to church except maybe once or twice per year. Later on I figured out that sending us to Sunday school may have been just to give them some alone time on Sunday morning (no, I never asked).
The religious instruction was pretty mild, and in my case didn’t take at all. Perhaps I would be more resentful now if they had sent me to some bible-thumping place.
That my sister much later became born-again is also not attributable to the influence of those Sunday school experiences.
Well a majority voted Bush into office, and majorities in many states voted to ban gay marriage. I also think that more people believe in a literal Genesis than in evolution.
As I understand it, they were brought in by another kid. ** Baker ** was the adult there, and it was his/her responsability to decide whether or not the kid should join.
Probably beause you don’t see much wrong with religious teachings. If you perceived them as similar to teaching kids about alien conspiracies or similar to political propaganda, maybe you’d be less willing to send them there once a week.
I’m an atheist and I shouldn’t see anything wrong with my kids being taught about god once a week? How many christians here would be willing to send their kids to a weekly class about Islam instead of sunday school, for instance? I assume it would be equally good for them, wouldn’t it? How many ignorance-fighting dopers would be willing to send their kids every week to some new-age place where they would be taught about psychic powers, astrology and healing pyramids?
I you aren’t a believer, you don’t want your children to be fed crap. It’s as simple as that.
A majority prefers carpet to linoleum. First you bring up a Strawman and now you’re Confusing Cause and Effect. Is it possible you can post without a logical fallacy? (Oh, and incidentally, as much as I despise Bush and feel that gay marriage should be legal doesn’t mean that those who feel otherwise are monsters. There’s a big difference between taking place in the electoral process and gay bashing; the responses here about religious “indoctrination” makes it sound like we have a generation of heinous people and that’s not the case.)
You would be mistaken. Catholicism is the biggest Christian sect and the church’s official stance is that evolution is just fine. Add in all of the Protestant sects that also feel the same way and other non-Christian faiths that feel this way and it’s easily a majority.
I love it when evangelical atheists compare religion to alien adbuctions (and Santa and the tooth fairy). It amuses me to no end.
Who here is talking about making you send your kids there? It’s obvious you are militant about this and would never do so. Fine. Wonderful. Nobody is making you. However there are many people - even those who do not posess religious faith (I’ll admit that are less of a hard ass about it than you though) - who are fine with their kids going, being exposed to a different view and eventually letting the kid come to his or her own conclusion.
My father’s beliefs are best described as a soft agnostic. This was after a childhood being raised by strict Catholics. He raised us all without making us do anything but did encourage us to seek our own paths and he would have gladly taken any of us who asked to any church (and he did). The result: Two fundamentalist Christians, one Christian of some sort (he is pretty queet about his beliefs), one atheist and me, a Deist who likes Unitarian Universalism.
None of us are axe murderers in the name of or against God.
I figured out how you (and some others in this thread) feel: When people are exposing their kids to thoughts and ideas that you personally approve of, it’s “keeping them away from crap;” when they expose them to ideas that you find repugnant, they are being “indoctrinated” and “brain washed” and there are “dire consequences,” is that it?
Sorry, but I let people raise their kids in a manner that they see fit. There are lines that can be drawn, sure, but this isn’t even close to one of them unless you’re as pig-headed as the ones you’re complaining about.
Do you have any evidence it’s more credible ? All are lies; all are impossible.
Oh, please. If that was the idea, they’d wait until the kids were older, and harder to manipulate. Kids are taught religion young because they are vulnerable to it then; if you waited until they were older, I doubt very many would get taken in. Talking bushes and invisible “good” men who never do anything or help anyone are so utterly stupid that an older person would just dismiss them out of hand - unless indoctrinated from extreme youth.
Try “plausible” and “factual” instead of “approve”; try “impossible” and “stupid” instead of “repugnant”.
That’s because you are part of a culture trained from childhood to accept the insane, stupid collection of lies and delusions known as religion.
One correction : alien abductions are highly implausible, not impossible.