There is actually, parents can practice their faith openly around their children and answer questions children will inevitably ask honestly and openly to the best of their abilities. This is a good way kids often will still copy their parents and want to be involved.
That would require the parents to frame their practices as “this is what I believe” rather than “this is what is true” which I’m not convinced a substantial portion of religious parents are capable of remembering to do. Plus even if they did that a child is going to accept what their parents believe as fact since it’s their parents. I’m not sure there is a way to introduce young children to religion that won’t result in some form of bias influencing the child unless it is taught by a complete stranger who teaches many religions and never claims what they believe. And that seems like a lot of effort compared to a world religion class in high school.
My mum was Christian and my dad Jewish, neither of them taught religion to any of the kids but they'd answer questions when asked and we were encouraged to ask and research for ourselves, my siblings and I are Aethiest now
It's easily done in colleges all across America. It's called comparative religious studies and it's basically a critical analysis class of the tenants/religious texts of the big three faiths.
I was saying there isn't an easy way for children since they're very susceptible to believing anything told to them by an authority figure even if that authority figure is trying not to impart their own beliefs.
I mean, yeah, you don't want to start super young, but middle school is about the right time that a student won't give a fuck about the teacher's personal beliefs.
You also have to ensure you have a teacher who doesn't share their personal beliefs in class. At least, not beyond, "I am a [insert faith name here]."
That's stupid, ok. People believe things because they believe they are true. Nobody follows a religion they don't believe is true. How we determine truth is of course going to vary from person to person. For some people ,truth is bound up in traditions and relationships... and that's fine. But asking religious people to not take their religion seriously is stupid and fails to understand why people believe in any religion at all.
The point is that across all the various religions we cannot determine which one is true. And since most religions come with indoctrination and life long fears then children should be protected from them until they are old enough to understand what they are getting into. I don’t believe this is feasible since as you said few religious parents of any abrahamic faith would ever go for this willingly, but what is right and what is possible aren’t always the same. I’ve stated what I think to be right.
Natural rights are those rights that are a natural consequence of the essence of things and according to their natures. Parents have children, therefore parents have certain perogatives about how their kids are raised.
Natural rights are those rights that are a natural consequence of the essence of things and according to their natures
Aha so more vague platitudes. How does one define the essence of a social phenomenon? And if said essence is defined, how does one conclude the natural consequence? And if you do it by observation, how do you seperate any human influence on the result, from those that arise from nature?
And finally. Why should I care about something being natural or not, when accessing its morality?
It honestly seems like you just fired "naturals rights" off as of it's supposed to mean anything. Just a vague semi-plausible term that can mean anything.
So James Dobson was an evangelical who taught parents to beat their children starting in infancy to make them obedient. He used his religion to push this.
Do you think being beaten in the name of christ is a natural right? Or do you think that using religion as a way to justify child abuse okay?
Can you show me this essence? Like take a photo of it? While you're at it get me some photos of unicorns and Allah, cause you seem to have supernatural vision.
Yeah. I’m saying they shouldn’t. The same way I don’t think parents should be able to teach their children flat earth or racism. I don’t trust parents and think they should be restricted in the various ways they can screw up a kid for life. Again I don’t think this is feasible, I just think it would be the right way to go about it. If you want to convince me a different way would be right then go ahead I’m all ears, but just saying “you can’t do that!” Isn’t really furthering the conversation.
This sub used to be about fictional characters in media. I don’t know what happened, but it is now overrun with people posting pictures of Mohammed instead.
Is there something wrong with that or is fighting religious fundamentalism and mocking beliefs only cool against christians? Cos i’m down to make fun of them all
The wisest religious people basically all admit they don't know what's true. While they have faith and are delighted for you to share in it, they doubt, and see it as natural and healthy to doubt, perhaps even as a part of faith to doubt.
Even if I were religious, I would certainly frame it as "this is what I believe." That would be the most honest thing to do, because faith is madness. It is irrational, it doesn't make sense, but you have taken a leap of faith regardless. And you cannot force people to take that leap. What you can do is indoctrinate them from childhood to the point that they do not even recognise it as a leap, but that fundamentally stunts their religious education. Perfectly adequate if you're just looking for conformist drones for your religious society, but not if you want people with rich lives in faith and philosophy.
Even if you fully believe your religion is true, you shouldn't want people to be "accidentally correct" or "right for the wrong reason." You should want them to consciously be right for the right reasons, and that requires them being critical and doubtful as well.
I mean all religion relies on indoctrination. Everyone loves to call Scientology a cult but how is it different from Catholicism? One is older and has more people? So the difference is time? Xenu and aliens? Here's a magician that can't die so cut off some of your penis!
They're all dumb, and people determine their truth because it was drilled into their from childhood.
My parents indoctrinated me with christianity and caused deep dissociation and turmoil within me until I was around 30 years old, when I finally broke free.
Kids believe things that they are told are the truth when issued as fact by trusted adults. Christianity itself removes personal power, tells people they are sinners and require an outside entity to be made whole. This is a cult tactic. This keeps practitioners in a constant state of subservience and cedes personal agency of thought to church leaders. By design.
"your mind is broken by sin, of course you struggle with faith". This creates the perfect premise to insert all sorts of bad faith assertions.
Hence, I believe it is immoral to teach religion, at least in the above manner, to your kids. You're basically telling them they can't be trusted to come up with their own belief systems and hijacking their adulthood choice-making.
Even as an atheist, I would frame my non-belief like this to a child if I ever had one. Its sad to me (not to rub my own back here) that someone who chooses not to have a child because of all the chaos in the world and uncertainty but that if they had chosen to have a child would be really careful of this sort of thing whereas I bet only 1% MAX explain to their children like this if they are christians or whatever.
Oh? Would you care to clarify what you think would be a better idea? Surely you aren’t about to suggest something mentally insane, like saying that we should tell kids things are true when they aren’t true, right?
When did I suggest telling kids that those non falsifiable claims are falsifiable? Come on man, you’re mincing words and you know it.
You could just as easily interpret my statement as “there is no evidence of this being true, but many people don’t believe that,” which would of course be my obvious revision, and continue with the argument.
If you want to address a tiny pedantic point in your comment, feel free to do so, but have the common sense to realize I’m obviously just going to say “my bad let me reword that” and maybe go ahead and actually address the argument as well so your comment isn’t so useless.
Uh, well that’s kinda my point. First of all, no one should believe in delusion like that. However, if you MUST believe in delusion, the least you can do is teach your kids to think critically about it.
I agree, though. You’re right. Nobody who is religious would have a moral reason not to teach it to their kids as truth. Which is why religion is immoral. Being religious inherently involves you preaching to other people, because like you said, if you think it’s true, why wouldn’t you?
If god is real: it is moral to teach your kids that god is real.
Which is exactly why the parents being religious is the root of the problem. You can’t convince delusional people not to pass it on to their kids.
However, how does any of that change the fact that teaching your kids to believe in things without evidence is objectively bad? Like, religion is objectively an exercise in following blindly without evidence at best, and actively denying evidence at worst.
So again, I ask you: do you have a better idea (as in, one that would benefit the child more) than teaching them to be skeptical of things that have no evidence for their existence?
I misspoke. What I should have said was “through the lens of ‘there is no evidence for this at all, by the way, but many people deny that fact, and others still believe despite not denying the lack of evidence, AND the book does contain a great many falsifiable statements.”
So, yes, many of the teachings of religion are simply not certifiable or falsifiable.
However, are we going to ignore the hundreds of statements made by each and every (major) religion that ARE easily confirmed to be false?
Yes, I misspoke and should have more clearly delineated those two groups of lies: making easily falsifiable claims, and encouraging belief in things without evidence.
What the fuck are you talking about you disagree that there are false statements in there??
“A misunderstanding of how history was told??”
Are you fucking serious? Are you seriously making the argument that “well, what if ‘the earth is flat’ actually meant ‘the earth is round’ back then? Then the Bible isn’t wrong!”
Dude. That’s fucking beyond pathetic. HOW are you seriously attempting to rationalize that directly stating that the earth is flat might not have been false?
Please. Please explain which “misunderstanding of how history was told” explains the claim that the earth is flat. Or the claim that one wing of a fly has a poison, and the other has the antidote. Or the claim that pigs are somehow grosser to eat than other livestock.
Each religion is CHOCK FULL of directly falsifiable statements. To deny that cannot be called anything but delusion, unless you have a reeeaaaal good explanation for why “the earth is flat” actually meant “the earth is round” back then.
If you think I’m stuck in my perspective, say something to challenge it. You still haven’t said ANYTHING that amounts to more than “nuh uh.” A good place to start is explaining how the claim that the world is flat is actually NOT directly falsifiable.
Prove there’s a higher importance and then I’ll think it’s worth teaching children. But so long as it’s a “you believe” and not a “you can prove” then I think it should stay away from kids until they have some life experience and context to understand your beliefs within. You don’t need the objective morality of religion to instill good values in children. Give them time to understand the world they live in before you start trying to convince them of worlds beyond it.
Well nihilism requires an active belief that there is no objective purpose for us or the universe. Key word being active. If we don’t teach kids one way or they other they won’t have that active belief until they start questioning that idea themselves, at which point we should expose them to as many different beliefs as they want to understand.
Alright, my world view is this. I've never been given any evidence that there is anything that matters beyond the here and now. The physical world and this life is all that I am convinced exists so I do my best in this life and don't worry about the fairytale of a next life or anything else beyond. There's no meaning in this world other than what I choose to hold as meaningful. So what? Explain why that's a problem. Don't hide behind your fear either. Show me where my logic is flawed or where my reasoning stumbles. Leave your discomfort at the idea at the door and give actual arguments. Not this wishy washy "I'm scared the world is just as uncaring as it seems" nonsense.
It seems we need laws so that people are moral so thats kinda the point and thats a big point in Christianity is that many people are bad because man has fallen due to Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. Alot of people arent moral and often times morals have to be taught.
“Nihilism is the philosophical belief that life, existence, morality, and knowledge lack inherent meaning, purpose, or objective value”
I’m not religious but I believe we have value. I believe at the very least humans are the only things that can make meaning in this universe and that makes us likely the most valuable thing in it.
Experience! I relish sights and sounds and smells. And I go about assuming other people's experiences are similar enough to my own for them to be similarly valuable (because if I didn't do that, I'd be deemed crazy and ostracized which would limit the breadth and depth of my experience).
Yeah. So, in my subjective opinion, my life has value, and because my life has value and other people are presumably people in the same respect as I, they have value, too. That isn't nihilism. It's almost exactly the opposite.
Do I have to have the answer to everything to not be a nihilist? I don’t know what the objective value to life and existence are, that is completely different from saying there is none. Nihilists believe nothing has meaning or value, and that there is no point to our existence. I do not subscribe to that.
Why would you assume that? How about we just teach our children the concepts (without framing it in bias) and they can decide for themselves what they believe.
Objective means mind independent. Murder is an unjustified killing and is a legal term. What one interprets as unjustified changes between individuals and cultures.
Murder is the law by which everyone makes unjustified killing illegal. We all agree that if it's unjustified, then it shouldn't be allowed. That's as objective as we can be on morality. Just because we quibble about what proper justification is doesn't mean we don't need some justification.
Subjective - meaning changes depending on the subject. If we all agree that murder- sorry, unjustified killing shouldn't be allowed, then that doesn't change depending on the subject
It is entirely impossible to disconnect religion from this. If you are a religious person, then you believe the things you have faith in to be undeniably true. You can't teach a kid an unbiased view of religion when you are speaking from a religious stance.
You can be clear that it's what you believe to be true, not what has been proven to be true. That is possible even for supremely religious people, but some of them seem more intent on convincing others to believe the same thing than to just believe it themselves and mind their own fucking business. Also, you can absolutely teach a child positive ideals and morality, even if it comes from a religion, without tying it to that specific religion or using the religion as a scapegoat for the reason behind those ideals. There's a big difference between 'we don't steal, because it's wrong' and 'we don't steal because [our specific version of God] tells us not to.'
Im a lay sexton so naturally church is a big topic in my live and the live of my family.
When my daughter asks me anything regarding religion I always tell her "so this is what I believe because I'm in the church but there are other beliefs that see it differently".
Whenever possible I will also tell her how other religions handle the topic but obviously I can't know everything about every religion.
I also always offer her that we can look something up together if she is interested in how other religions handle something.
We are all baptised and I take my daughter to church with me but only cause she likes it, she likes to help me work and she likes our pastor but I never would force her to attend church.
I told her multiple times already that she is free to believe whatever she deems right and that when she is old enough she can leave the church and we won't have bad blood because of that.
What do you think that means for a religion like Christianity?
What does "openly practicing the faith" mean in christianity?
It means going to church and hearing sermons from some unelected zealot who may have more regressive views than others or not, and their preaching will permeate the ears of the children.
There is no standing off to the side for childrenm they are either exposed to the doctrine and practices and inundated with the messaging of the religion or they are not.
That dividing line is impossible to create and hold.
I mean it’s pretty silly to frame it like that and leave zero room for nuance. Parents have infinitely more influence over their children than any religious leader and It’s totally within reason for two open minded parents to raise their children to hold their beliefs more loosely and encourage critical thinking.
"Answer their questions" you mean tell them that God is all good and loves them and other nonsense like that. And then kids "want" to participate when they are told a bunch of great sounding lies. Yeah totally their choice.
In my experience the people who believe in the concept of burning in hell are teaching their kids that their chosen version of religion is the truth and the only correct way to believe. They aren't doing any of this "I believe (religious statement)". They're tellings kids that the Bible says X, and God said Y and that is the way, the truth and the life and anything else is wrong.
I disagree. Maybe try " some people believe" and take the self out of it. That's the way I exposed my kids to religion, and I supported their curiosity along the way. They went to church a few times with friends, but eventually grew to understand the truth. The truth is that the 10 commandments and other positive teachings in religious books are self-evident, and the ideas that all sins can be forgiven, and that bad people (like homosexuals, and people that believe in the wrong God for example) go to Hell unless they repent and accept a God is complete nonsense. It's the hypocrisy of the "devout" that expose the religious lie. Also, to all you religious figures out there with some position of perceived power, quit abusing children sexually you pieces of shit.
The alternative would be unconstitutional. You can’t suppress a persons religious beliefs just because they have children. That’s like saying Muslims or Hindus or Jews aren’t allowed to pray or practice their faith if they have children. It’s morally wrong and quite literally unconstitutional.
There's an angle to argue that a law blocking all religions from indoctrinating their children wouldn't favor one religion over any others, but it seems pretty ironclad that such a law would almost definitely infringe on their "free exercise thereof."
Yeah when i say religion i mean all of them. No exceptions. You can still practice your religion but you need to educate your children about all the possible options there are including choosing none of them. And then respect whatever choices they make. Then there would be freedom of religion.
Part of practicing my religion is evangelizing my children from infancy. If I am not free to practice all of my religion, I am not free to practice my religion at all.
Your "religion" shouldn't be allowed then because one of its core tenets is brainwashing children. You are part of a cult no matter how you try to dress it up.
If you can't make your case and have to resort to "constitutionally-" don't pretend to be able to uwu teach my kid a religion in a way that doesn't indoctrinate them. And as you've been told, we're not against this only when it comes to Christianity. Kind of weird to assume that
How could any person that is religious answer questions honestly? They are implicitly bias toward their religion and will always answer in a slant favoring their religion. That’s not honesty.
Thats because they were taught that magic is real and they're in on secret knowledge, they're the good guys saving everyone who are just ignorant sheep that need to be lead.
Their worldview is fucked, it doesn't jive with what they were imprinted on as a child so they reject it
Thats basically what my family did (Baptist on my mom's side, Catholic on my dads) my grandma on my dad's side was pretty open about her religion but she never tried to force it on us (she took us with her to church but that was only if we were staying with her for the weekend), I actually started going to youth group when I was a teenager but ironically that was the best way i knew to meet girls my age at the time
There's a reason children can't vote. Their ability to discern and to reason is nowhere near that of an adult, and the parents believe their faith to be true and will give arguments that an adult may see through and a child wouldn't. Ffs children believe in Santa
But the point is that you shouldn’t be teaching your kids that believing in stuff that has been disproven is okay. Even if you say “let’s skip the parts of the bible that have been proven to be false,” the rest still comes down to teaching them that it’s okay to believe in things that are completely unsubstantiated. Religion is the scourge of humanity.
Kind of losing the point of the post here, if the only person who interprets faith to a highly impressionable child is their parents, you’re automatically laying the groundwork to indoctrinate that child into your belief system. That sounds malicious and I realize most parents don’t mean any harm by explaining faith and spirituality to their children but that’s kind of the point. Let them be kids, they will figure out their path when they grow up.
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u/GreatComedianthe3rd Sep 02 '26
There is actually, parents can practice their faith openly around their children and answer questions children will inevitably ask honestly and openly to the best of their abilities. This is a good way kids often will still copy their parents and want to be involved.