# If you could click your fingers and make all religions instantly disappear, would you?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-click-your-fingers-and-make-all-religions-instantly-disappear-would-you/692310>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 4, 2014, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-click-your-fingers-and-make-all-religions-instantly-disappear-would-you/692310 "2014-07-04T00:48:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 6

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**Author:** ![nani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/58956e/32.png) [@nani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nani)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2014, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-click-your-fingers-and-make-all-religions-instantly-disappear-would-you/692310/101 "2014-07-08T08:48:48Z")

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> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> I didn’t say anything about a “national identity”. I said that you get thrown in jail if you don’t obey the law and that people should be allowed to think what they want about their country, without outside pressure.

I asked about raising a child as an American versus raising a child as a Buddhist. In other words, raising them with a national identity versus a religious identity.

> [@](#):
>
> Which? Agnostic? Shamanistic? Polytheistic? Monotheistic? Sacrifices animals? Sacrifices humans? Practices mutilation of some form?
> 
> Sociology and history courses in school go over the various religions, so I would expect children would encounter the fact of their existence and learn some things about them, all of which the child is able to think is awesome or stupid as he sees fit. But I don’t know how any of that is supposed to impose a particular identity on the child. If you can think of any way to give a child an identity, don’t.

Sociology and history courses approach religion (and everything else) with specific assumptions and values that are the product of the intellectual histories of the specific societies that developed them. Children who take part in them are not being given an ‘objective’ point of view. Quite the contrary. A very specific perspective is in fact being imposed.

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**Author:** ![DrumBum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e79b87/32.png) [@DrumBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrumBum)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2014, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-click-your-fingers-and-make-all-religions-instantly-disappear-would-you/692310/102 "2014-07-08T12:31:16Z")

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A “No” vote for me. While I have no interest in any of them, and there is no question in my mind that they have been the source of much misery and death, there are enough good people in the world for whom their religion is a critical part of life and I would not want to deprive them of this.

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