Not asking for much, are you?
No, you should stop raping your kids and kicking puppies. You’re worse than Hitler. Report to the nearest maximum security prison right now, young lady! 
Lets assume for the moment that you are raising a valid point. Certainly, from an atheistic viewpoint, the degree of religious belief in America is a problem.
So you say, lets pass a law outlawing parents from teaching a belief in God. This of course requires enforcement. Many scenarios can result.
-
many children removed from their homes to be wards of the state.
-
custody battles charging opposing parents of religous belief.
-
enormous court time and expense.
-
only declared atheists allowed to immigrate into the country.
etc etc
Is this the kind of society you want to live in ?
I have a better idea. Let’s don’t.
Spot on with the rest of your post, though.
I would be opposed to a law that outlaws parents from teaching a belief in God.
he’s advocating a law that bars them teaching a belief in god as FACT, not “teaching a belief in God”
alright now you’ve got yourself in another indefensible argument. At what point does a teaching of religion become fact? Who says they’re teaching it as fact? OF COURSE they teach the tenets of their religion as fact, that’s what “taking it on faith means”. If you want to replace “God said” with “well, we BELIEVE God said” in every religious text and religious school class, then you’re simply a fool for thinking that that will make a difference.
But belief in God is faith-based. I thought you were arguing that was child abuse.
So…wait…teaching belief in God is child abuse. Child abuse is illegal. But teaching faith in God should not be illegal. But it *should *warrant CPS intervention.
I think my head just exploded.
My gut says, “I think I will go out and raise some tigers and teach them my belief in God and also how to identify and eat CPS workers.”, but my brain says, “Why should I? There’s not enough CPS workers, courts or even tigers to make the OP’s POV remotely enforceable!”
My solution: Train tigers to be athiest judges and CPS workers…even recruit ligers if you have to.
TFIIC… 
While I realize that this was probably intended rhetorically, such direct personal expressions of insult are not permitted in this Forum. (And using a conditional does not excuse it.)
Please refrain from this sort of expression in the future.
[ /Moderating ]
It’s probably worth noting that insofar as the question posed by the OP relates to a similar claim made by Richard Dawkins, his specific point was about the belief in Hell and the psychological trauma that it demonstrably has caused many young children (in particular, he was discussing one woman’s experience in which she felt that her exposure to the idea that hell existed was even more damaging for her than her childhood sexual abuse). His stated actual stated view is that we cannot and should not try to force parents to not indoctrinate their religious beliefs, but that we should condemn the practice. We’ve debated in the past whether he really should be using the term child abuse if he doesn’t feel it’s deserving of legal action.
Perhaps we can punish parents for teaching eggs raise cholesterol, and once we find out that man has nothing to do with global warming we can throw a bunch of teachers to the lions as well.
Now once you can scientifically prove that there is no ‘God’ as fact you can throw the parents to the lions.
I have nothing against teaching lies to kids. I’ve got nothing against teaching Christianity, or atheism, or anything else to kids. I do have a bone to pick with people who teach that their belief system is truth; there’s no room for argument, because they’re right.
OTOH, I don’t think it should be made illegal. I just think it’s a bad thing to do.
Well, if you don’t believe it’s fact/truth, why would you believe it? I believed for most of my life that God existed. It was a huge change in my head that took years to accomplish to come to the belief that there is no God. Each belief, in its own time, was my truth. I raised my sons to believe God existed. Why? Because I believed it was true. I taught them that God’s existence was proven by the world around them. Did I do a bad thing? Because I certainly don’t think I did.
I would say it depends on whether you left an element of doubt in there. Did you teach them that that was the way it was, and there were no arguments against it? That there was no possibility at all that you could be wrong? There’s a difference between confidence and certainty. I believe that there are no gods. But I wouldn’t teach my kids that there are certainly no gods, can’t happen, that’s the end of it.
Related to this I do get very nauseous when I see these big religious families that homeschool the children. These parents have realized that you can’t keep a tight brainwashed cult unquestioning when the outside world is available.
The “Duggars” on tv make my nausea rise to the level of wanting to blow my head off.
http://health.discovery.com/convergence/duggars/duggarfamily.html
I have to admit I’ve only skimmed the thread, so I’m really responding only to the OP. I’ve considered this problem often. My situation is that I was raised in a casual Christian home. Long after I had become an adult - and, in the meantime, become an atheist - my mother became a fundamentalist. She is raising my nephew (whom she has adopted, long story not relevant here) as a fundamentalist. Am I happy about this? No. OTOH, I don’t see any other way to run the system unless we adopt a state religion of non-religion. Not only is that unconstitutional, it’s not a plausible political reality. Like it or not (I don’t), this is a Christian country and there’s zero chance of making religious indocrination a form of child abuse.
I take comfort, though, from Bertrand Russell’s observation in the preface to Why I’m Not A Christian, a collection of essays. He laments the removal of Christian indoctrination from the public school curriculum. Without this, he argues, whence will rise the urge to rebel? Small comfort, but some.
In that case, I misunderstood him.
Yup, everyone who wants to give power to the government assumes that the government will use it to enforce his will against those who disagree with him, not the other way around.
I can’t believe anyone is actually taking this debate seriously. Are we going to try every belief system in a court of law to see which ones are acceptable? Do kids go back to their parents if the evidence changes? Neighbors narking on parents–I heard Mrs. Johnson tell her son that the earth is round. We all know it’s really an oblate spheroid–off to the gulag with her!
Even if you’re ultra concerned about children learning falsehoods (and I’m not sure why you would be–so what if someone thinks the earth is flat? He’s the one who suffers the consequences of his own ignorance, which for most jobs is virtually nil), the surest path to scientific truth is competition in the marketplace of ideas, not truth dictated by government fiat.
We certainly didn’t tell them there was any doubt in our minds because, at the time, there wasn’t. I call it the “blue sky concept.”
Child: Daddy, what color is the sky?
Parent: The sky is blue, honey.
Child: Why is the sky blue?
Parent: I dunno, sweetheart, I guess God just made it that way.
Child: Did God make everything else too?
Parent: Yup, sure did.
Child: Can I have some ice cream?
Parent: Sure. What kind do you want?
Child: Chocolate. Did God make ice cream, too?
Parent: No, honey, Meadow Gold made the ice cream.
My point is, at what point during that conversation does the parent introduce the idea that God’s existence may be open to some doubt? At what point during the child’s life? I dreaded for years the inevitable conversation about sex, but I never once gave a moment’s thought to having a conversation about God. God just was. Period.