Is it child abuse to raise your child to believe in your religion?

[Mobyseven]

My reasons for saying it should not be legislated against are not as noble as others.

I simply feel that if we allow ANY sort of legislation about religion, it opens the door to a different government down the track repealing or amending the legislation to create legislation that is favourable of religion.

 

[Darat]

I'm in a country where there is a state religion and where we've been embroiled in sectarian violence and discrimination for literally centuries.

And whilst I am certain that there would still have been violence and discrimination without religion I am certain that religion has prolonged a lot of the violence and discrimination.

So in my country we have a siltation that we can demonstrate that parent's indoctrinating (note not educating) their children has directly lead to violence and discrimination, why as a society should we not try to stop the perpetuation of such practices.

Should this be done via legislation? I don't particularly believe that is necessary since I believe on the whole legislation follows behind the shifts in societies attitudes on issues such as this.

What we should strive to do is educate people the dangers of indoctrination, to explain that bringing children up to believe that because "they" in the next street have an extra line in the Lord's prayer is not a reason to judge them as being evil and wrong and therefore discrimination and violence against them can be justified.

The reason why religious indoctrination of children is a form of child abuse is the same reason as we consider indoctrination of adults to be wrong. To deliberately use an emotive example - if you do not think religious indoctrination of children or adults is wrong then you have no rational objection to something like the mass suicide that happened at Jonestown.

ETA: This is what religious indoctrination leads to:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/jonestown/die_2.html

A tape-recording of the mass-suicide reveals that there was little dissent about the decision to die. One or two women who felt that the children should be able to live protested, but they were soon reassured by reminders of the alternative undignified death at the hand of the enemy and the shouted support of the group. The poison-laced drink was brought to the hall and dispensed. The babies and small children, over two hundred of them, were first, with the poison poured into their mouths with syringes. As parents watched their children die, they too swallowed the fatal potion. The moments before the final decision to die brought resistance from a few, but armed guards who surrounded the room shot many of them. Of the estimated 1100 people believed to have been present at “Jonestown” at the time, 913 died, including Jim Jones; the rest somehow escaped into the jungle. It is not certain whether Jones shot himself or was shot by an unknown person.

The most puzzling question, which has arisen out of the tragedy at "Jonestown", is how one man could achieve such control over a large group of people to the point that they would willingly die at his command. It would be easy to assume that “Jonestown” was a unique situation that could only have occurred because of Jim Jones’s dynamic and charismatic personality, combined with the weakness and vulnerability of his victims. Such an analysis may bring some peace that such a thing could never happen again, but it falls a long way short of providing true understanding of the situation, thereby leaving us all vulnerable to the danger of further tragedies such as “Jonestown” occurring.

And this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4763731.stm

CCTV footage could provide vital clues for detectives investigating the murder of a 15-year-old boy in County Antrim, a court has heard.

Michael McIlveen died in hospital on Monday after being attacked by a gang at Garfield Place, Ballymena on Sunday.

...snip...

The former Presbyterian moderator, Dr John Dunlop, said more should be done to tackle sectarianism.

"We haven't recognised how widespread this problem is," he said.

"Some people think sectarianism is an infection that afflicts some people here and there. What I am saying is that sectarianism is an endemic infection which affects all of us across the whole society, Catholics and Protestants, and people in different social classes."

...snip...

Stopping parents religiously indoctrinating children is not suppression of religion it is promoting freedom of religion.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Speaking of government legislation. Seeing as today is Norway's Constitution Day, I'm posting a few articles from it that are related to religion.

What would happen if less than 50% of the elected legislators where of the correct religion?

 

[Beth]

Thanks for all those who responded. Obviously a subject that generates a lot of passion. I'm relieved to know that even on a predominately atheist forum such as this one, the vast majority agree that trying to stop parents from teaching their children their religious beliefs is a bad idea.

 

[Darth Rotor]

The reason why religious indoctrination of children is a form of child abuse is the same reason as we consider indoctrination of adults to be wrong

I am trying to decide if this form of expressing the idea is bait and switch, merely using a loaded term, or outright lying.

IIRC, Richard Dawkins has made this phrase, meme, soundbyte rather popular, so I am not pointing the finger at you, Darat, but at a deliberately disingenuous, and intellecutally dishonest, abuse of the English language.

The presumption behind this meme is that all religious teaching is malignant, which when one opens the book a bit on, for example, the Sunday School and CCD efforts used to pass along this element of cultural heritage, is blatantly not.

Tossing out the baby and the bathwater as a social norm? Not so good.

I understand an objection in principle, and ideologically, against religion. Got it. Let the debate continue, it is healthy. To resort to this dishonest form of ad hom, that those who raise their children in the Church, be it Greek, Catholic, whatever, is to abuse those children, is to falsely assert that all elements of that cultural passing of the torch is malignant, and to further assert that all elements of religion are malignant. Glass half empty, at best.

What about teaching your children "love thy neighbor as thyself" is abusive?

I await, with baited breath, the answer to that question.

I'm relieved to know that even on a predominately atheist forum such as this one, the vast majority agree that trying to stop parents from teaching their children their religious beliefs is a bad idea.

I am as well.

DR

 

[Foster Zygote]

I may find religious beliefs to be delusional but I can't agree that all religious indoctrination of children by their parents is inherently abusive. It certainly can be abusive (just look at the Phelps family) but then again some parents can turn little-league baseball into a form of child abuse. I just know too many people who were raised with varying degrees of religion who, none the less, turned out to be healthy, happy, kind adults.

When is it abuse? I think any time the indoctrination includes absolute restrictions against free questioning of the religious beliefs, persecution of dissent, hatred and dehumanization of "infidel" groups, psychological/physical abuse, dogmatic denial of clearly observed reality etc. then it can be said to have crossed the line into abuse.

 

[jsiv]

What would happen if less than 50% of the elected legislators where of the correct religion?

The Council of State is the executive branch of the government, roughly equivalent to the United States Cabinet. There are no religious requirements for the rest of the government.

There are currently 19 people on the Council (including the Prime Minister,) but the constitution only requires it to have a minimum of seven people and the PM, so the chances of not being able to find enough religious people is fairly slim. Still, I don't know what would happen. Legally speaking the Council could not be formed.

Having said that, the the constitution does say that "Under extraordinary circumstances, besides the ordinary Members of the Council of State, the King may summon other Norwegian citizens, although no Members of the Storting, to take a seat in the Council of State." I don't know if that could be used.

 

[PrincessIneffabelle]

My point was that groups that are far from the fundamentalists in issues of doctrine and such. How is the catholic church fundamentalist, exclusivity or hate mongering? Those where the way you where claiming to recognize middle of the road churches, by their lack of such things.

Now many members of any church are not going to be fitting into the general fitting of the church. There was an interesting report on all things considered last night about fundamentalists who have a real environmental agenda.

I am not saying that all religion is bad, but that it is hard to find a religion to label middle of the road because the ones that people would generally think of as such can have some strong reactions when they can't ignore certain issues any longer.

I think I finally got it!

I wasn't saying that my previous religion or church was "middle of the road", I was saying that my personal religious exposure to it at the hands of my parents was. I was talking about the way I was raised concerning religion, not the actual religious doctrine of any particular church or group. I'm not trying to label any religion as "middle of the road"; I'm talking about what and how parents teach their children about any religion. Catholics can teach their children to love or they can teach them to hate. So can Muslims, Jews, Methodists, atheists, or agnostics.

The original question was "Is it child abuse to raise your child to believe in your religion?" I maintain that it is not abusive to indoctrinate your children into your religion as long as no child is getting hurt or neglected and no laws are broken. To me it's not the actual religion that is abusive, it's what the parents teach and how they teach it.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I think I finally got it!

I wasn't saying that my previous religion or church was "middle of the road", I was saying that my personal religious exposure to it at the hands of my parents was. I was talking about the way I was raised concerning religion, not the actual religious doctrine of any particular church or group. I'm not trying to label any religion as "middle of the road"; I'm talking about what and how parents teach their children about any religion. Catholics can teach their children to love or they can teach them to hate. So can Muslims, Jews, Methodists, atheists, or agnostics.

The original question was "Is it child abuse to raise your child to believe in your religion?" I maintain that it is not abusive to indoctrinate your children into your religion as long as no child is getting hurt or neglected and no laws are broken. To me it's not the actual religion that is abusive, it's what the parents teach and how they teach it.

My point was more that I don't know what middle of the road is in terms of religion. Groups that can seem pretty moderate can be very much out of the middle of the road on many issues.

As for religions, so it is fine to teach the proper ways for a man to physicaly correct his wife? There are beliefs that most religions contain that most people would lable as detrimental.

So all the people who are concidering religion child abuse is that intentionaly exposing children to something that is harmful is abuse.

 

[baskett_case]

As an anthropologist, I find this thread fascinating. In anthropology, we are constantly battling each other about this issue, specifically because all culture is indoctrination. In the western cultures (I am referring to European-based cultures), for example, we are taught that time is linear, and we have discovered that this is not a universal belief. Because ethics and morals are not universal, just as the experience of time is not universal, are such discussions valid?

I believe religion is not child abuse, any more than teaching children the belief that they can be rich and successful via capitalism. However, I feel from my own experiences with religion that it is usually an impediment toward many and hurts our own culture more than helps.

 

[UserGoogol]

As an anthropologist, I find this thread fascinating. In anthropology, we are constantly battling each other about this issue, specifically because all culture is indoctrination. In the western cultures (I am referring to European-based cultures), for example, we are taught that time is linear, and we have discovered that this is not a universal belief. Because ethics and morals are not universal, just as the experience of time is not universal, are such discussions valid?

And for that reason, all culture is bad, although probably a necessary evil. When people act or believe according to their culture, they are not doing what they are doing for logical reasons, but simply because "that's how they've been raised." At best, culture serves to force necessary order onto a society and provides a sort of collective heuristic to compensate for the fact that the cognitive abilities of human beings are limited, but still, it prevents people from thinking freely and dampens intellectual diversity.

 

[aries]

That depends on what you mean by religion. In Denmark, the line between political and religion goes through the individual, not the State or the Constitution (as such).

If you by religion mean the scare tactics of the right-wing religius right (cough -jerry falwell -cough) who would lash out at anyone who didn't believe what they did, religiously or in other ways, I would classify this a child abuse in some way. Although, mentally instead of physical. It can as demeaning and demoting to a child not getting heard and just be overruled with *I'm your father, and you need to think or do what I say or think before I'm able to love you.* *And if you don't agree with me on the God issue, I am not going to love you anymore.*

Some religiuos people all over the world find justification for hitting their children in religious texts. And this, is of course, child abuse - just the actual physical hitting. And so, is course, letting a child die of appendicitis, when you just pray over it to get God to make it better.

Somehow, I do feel that this thing (the turning away from modern medicine and letting God do everything) is more of an American than European problem. Even the most right-winged religous Christian in Denmark would not let a children die from appendicitis, I think. And I hope that even the most staunch Catholic wouldn't let the child die either --- pouring all his or her hope into praying to God.

In Europe, for 800 years now, there seem to be an ongoing philosophical debate, about the relationship between faith & knowledge, sparked by a certain monk (Thomas Aquinas) who introduced the Europeans to Aristoteles concept of reason. It is in this tradition that the current Pope, Benedict XVI (16.) talks from & into + continues when he talks about faith and knowledge, saying that science is important, but that there are boundaries, even for science, as to what science can explain. Before Christianity, before Islam and maybe even before recorded Judaism, a man killed Euripides lived in Greece. In one of his plays, he urges the crowd to pay tribute to or recognize the deep unseen world that his hidden. (in the mind).

And somehow I feel that science really can't fathom all what is going on in this 'unseen' world. The reason being that the unseen world wouldn't just be what we know would describe as the unconsious, but also would include all the hidden&secret memories of the families that would affect any individual, both in Euripides time as well as today. And one of the conditions of being humans are that we need to die. Science can, of course, explain the how, and the what. But the why ?? Here again we must go to the 'hidden world' to find an explanation. Some people find it in tradition religion, while others find the answer philosophically. And who's to say who is right ?

And if that's the kind of religion you teach your kids, then no, teaching religion isn't child abuse.
I don't even think that Danish parents do this anymore. Most Danish parents answers their children's questions about what is happening when someone dies and tell them, the children, what they, the parents believe in. And mentions that other people believe in different things. And that they aren't bad people or go to hell for believing what they do. (if they believe in say Allah or Jehova or is a Buddhist or Hindu).

 

[Darat]

I am trying to decide if this form of expressing the idea is bait and switch, merely using a loaded term, or outright lying.

IIRC, Richard Dawkins has made this phrase, meme, soundbyte rather popular, so I am not pointing the finger at you, Darat, but at a deliberately disingenuous, and intellecutally dishonest, abuse of the English language.

If you check my posting history here you'll see I've saying the same thing for many a year.

And it is none of the things you list it to be; indeed if there is dishonesty it is by the people who want to confuse the issue by trying to conflate indoctrination and teaching, even though they have different meanings.

The presumption behind this meme is that all religious teaching is malignant,

...snip...

No - that is the start of a strawman.

Tossing out the baby and the bathwater as a social norm? Not so good.

You've lost me.

To resort to this dishonest form of ad hom, that those who raise their children in the Church, be it Greek, Catholic, whatever, is to abuse those children, is to falsely assert that all elements of that cultural passing of the torch is malignant, and to further assert that all elements of religion are malignant. Glass half empty, at best.

...snip...

Again the dishonesty is your extended strawman - or at least a strawman of my position. Although you started with a quote from me you did not argue against the position I take.

(ETA - see post below it may be that I misunderstood the OP, if by raise you mean teach and not indoctrinate then I have no objections.)

 

[Darat]

Thanks for all those who responded. Obviously a subject that generates a lot of passion. I'm relieved to know that even on a predominately atheist forum such as this one, the vast majority agree that trying to stop parents from teaching their children their religious beliefs is a bad idea.

Well I voted "Yes, and it should be treated like any other form of child abuse", however if all you were meaning by "raise your child" is to teach them your religious beliefs then no I can see nothing wrong with that. (By "raise" I had presumed you meant to try to ensure they grow up to have the same religious beliefs as you have e.g. attempt to indoctrinate them.)

 

[Foster Zygote]

As an anthropologist, I find this thread fascinating. In anthropology, we are constantly battling each other about this issue, specifically because all culture is indoctrination. In the western cultures (I am referring to European-based cultures), for example, we are taught that time is linear, and we have discovered that this is not a universal belief. Because ethics and morals are not universal, just as the experience of time is not universal, are such discussions valid?

I believe religion is not child abuse, any more than teaching children the belief that they can be rich and successful via capitalism. However, I feel from my own experiences with religion that it is usually an impediment toward many and hurts our own culture more than helps.

Welcome.

Your second paragraph pretty much sums up my position. I'm certainly not a fan of religion and I feel that all of the good that religion does could be done equally well, if not better, without religion. But not all that comes from religious belief is detrimental. But then I see video of a little girl being stoned and kicked to death by members of her own family for associating with a boy of the "wrong faith" and my patience with superstition is stretched thinner.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Well I voted "Yes, and it should be treated like any other form of child abuse", however if all you were meaning by "raise your child" is to teach them your religious beliefs then no I can see nothing wrong with that. (By "raise" I had presumed you meant to try to ensure they grow up to have the same religious beliefs as you have e.g. attempt to indoctrinate them.)

Sadly, indoctrination is all too common throughout the world. My inexpert guess would be that most children are not raised with the idea that dissent is to be tolerated or that choosing the faith they are being raised in is optional and dependent on their informed decision. Most of these children are told what to think and have it made known to them that dissent will lead to negative consequences. I'm determined to teach my own son not what to believe, but rather how to think.

 

[HappyDance]

And for that reason, all culture is bad, although probably a necessary evil. When people act or believe according to their culture, they are not doing what they are doing for logical reasons, but simply because "that's how they've been raised." At best, culture serves to force necessary order onto a society and provides a sort of collective heuristic to compensate for the fact that the cognitive abilities of human beings are limited, but still, it prevents people from thinking freely and dampens intellectual diversity.

This got me wondering: what possible alternative could there be to culture?

Turn on the television, or go to any place where significant numbers of people gather, and examine the behavior of the people around you. Yes, they act mostly according to their culture, but without that cultural indoctrination, what differences would you expect to see in their behavior? Do you really envision them acting only for logical reasons, or even giving a great deal of thought to their actions? Unconstrained by cultural mores, would most people use their ability to think freely to find logical ways to smooth their social interactions? Or would the human tendency toward superstition and fuzzy thinking color some of those logical behaviors?

I wonder what that set of behaviors might evolve into. I'm just guessing here, but I think it would be a set of "shortcuts" to social cohesion: in other words, a culture.

I don't think it's fair to say that all culture is bad; culture is simply something that humans create when they build societal groups. Certainly some cultural memes are bad (Was that redundant? Are memes cultural by definition?), and it would be in our best interest to chuck the lot of them, but culture itself is unavoidable. If you've got humans living together, you're going to have a culture.

As far as thinking freely goes, I've seen precious little evidence that most of my fellow humans have any interest in doing so. Maybe if we caught them early enough, say as small children? But no, that would involve indoctrination and/or brainwashing, and that just puts us back where we started...

 

[Beth]

Well I voted "Yes, and it should be treated like any other form of child abuse", however if all you were meaning by "raise your child" is to teach them your religious beliefs then no I can see nothing wrong with that. (By "raise" I had presumed you meant to try to ensure they grow up to have the same religious beliefs as you have e.g. attempt to indoctrinate them.)

By "raise" I meant that the parents do their best to have their children grow into adults that hold the same beliefs they do. Obviously, no matter what a parent wants, the child will grow into an independent adult and choose for themselves as an adult. What most people do is make sure their children grow up participating in the rituals of their religion and are aware of the basic tenets of their faith and aware that they, the parents, hold that faith and want their child to continue to share their religious faith after they are grown.

I'm not sure whether you would classify that as 'teaching' or 'indoctrination'. It is what religious parents do when they raise their children in their faith. They have their children participate with them in some or all of their religious activities.

 

[cgallaga]

In (into) doctrine (belief(s)) ate (denoting a group).

Indoctrination simply means to teach a set of beliefs of a group aka doctrine. And it is done by every learning institution (if you want to pass the tests) as well as political system as well as every parent or OJT trainer.

Really in its simplest sense it is just the passing on of cultural memes from parent to child. Weather it be civic pride (USA is the best country), team spirit (Man U rules), cultural pride (Yang Chow style is the only true fried rice) educational (1+1=2), or religious (there is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet). In any case we are not asking the children to think for themselves on the issue, we are asking them to accept what the parent presents (and believes is) as established fact. That some things may be more universal or have stronger empirical proof than others is irrelevant.

So Darat is wrong to suggest that the word teach is necessarily different from or better than indoctrinate.

OED Tesaurus: indoctrinate brainwash, propagandize, proselytize, inculcate, instill, reeducate, persuade, convince, condition, program, mold, discipline; instruct, teach, train, school, drill.

 

[UserGoogol]

I don't think it's fair to say that all culture is bad; culture is simply something that humans create when they build societal groups. Certainly some cultural memes are bad (Was that redundant? Are memes cultural by definition?), and it would be in our best interest to chuck the lot of them, but culture itself is unavoidable. If you've got humans living together, you're going to have a culture.

Indeed. Culture is inevitable, at least until science advances to the point where we can radically change human nature. (Which I think is hypothetically feasible, but it'll probably not be here for fifty years at the very soonest, and never at the latest.) In the mean time though, I think there are better ways of handling culture. At the very least (which is something that basically is a trend already, in my opinion) it is better if people pick and choose about what cultural cruft they want to take rather than just going with whatever they're born into.

Of course, if I'm willing to toss out futuristic possibilities, one should not rule out the possibility that we could just scrap society altogether and have everyone live in their own little virtual realities.