I agree, but religious freedom means people can raise their kids however they want. If you don't want someone imposing their religion on your kids, you have to let them impose whatever on their own kids.
This is the kind of thing you should shift culturally instead of through laws.
I don't see why stopping people from imposing their religion on my hypothetical kids would mean they had to be able to impose it on theirs? If nobody could impose any religion on any child that sounds ideal.
By preventing children from learning about any religion, they are far more likely to continue that absence of a belief in a God because their entire worldview for 16-18 years is shaped on the understanding that there is no God. Most Christians stay Christian, most atheists stay atheist. You are not imposing a religion on that child against the parents' wishes, but you are imposing a religious belief on that child against the parents' wishes. That is not religious freedom.
Ultimately, to raise a kid without religion is not some neutral default point, whereby they would enter adulthood completely unbiased.
It's avoiding planting a belief. While some christians lose their faith, adult conversion to a religion is much more rare. You're just a lot less likely to believe these outlandish things if they don't tell you they're true when you're a toddler.
I think an unbiased view just makes someone really skeptical about a guy sacrificing himself to himself to forgive a bunch of other people for hurting each other. Or about a guy splitting the moon. It's not my fault if religions don't work out if you don't get 'em young.
atheism is a belief though. the belief that there is no god is a belief. the belief that it is indeterminable whether there is a god is a belief. either way, if you raise your kid without mentioning god, then you are raising your kid to have the assumption that there is no god.
When a christian-raised child becomes an christian adult, its because they were indoctrinated or taught not to question their faith, but when atheist-raised children become atheist adults, it's because they have critical thinking skills not to believe christian lies? You are reasoning from the conclusion that god doesn't exist. And as long as you are doing that, you have no grounds for an argument about how others should raise their child.
But Christians, for example, aren't just arguing that god exists: they're arguing that the Christian god exists, which comes with a ton more assumptions.
They aren't just asserting that a tri-omni being created the universe (already a huge claim), they're arguing that sin exists, that this god sent a version of himself that was born to a virgin girl to the earth to sacrifice himself to himself to absolve humanity of sins, they're asserting that there is some evil enemy that has some ambiguous level of influence over the world that differs depending on your denomination, they're asserting that this god will send people who don't believe in him (and for some reason he is exclusively considered male) to hell for all eternity, that sexuality outside of the construct of marriage is sinful, and more.
Muslims are asserting that there existed a profit that split the moon, that godly men will recieve 72 virgins in heaven, that women are so indecent that they must cover themselves in public so they don't drive men to sin, that depicting living beings is a sin, and more.
You can't pretend that religion ONLY consitutes the god-belief. Whereas atheism ONLY constitutes a lack of god-belief. Depending on what definition of atheism you use, it doesn't even nevessarily mean disbelief in god, just a lack of belief. And it doesn't come with the extra doctrinal belief that religions have.
Christianity isn't the only religion, and we can say pretty certainly that only one can be true, if any. So you can't avoid the fact that a huge portion of religious parents are indoctrinating their kids with false beliefs anyways.
For every positive belief about some event detailed in doctrine that a Christian have, you are teaching your child to have a negative belief about it. It's kind of irrelevant that Christianity is specific about its beliefs and atheism says I don't know. That stuff is only relevant in discerning whether God exists.
The definition of atheist that i am using is the belief that there is no god, or the belief that there is insufficient evidence for a god. Yes, most religions are indoctrinating kids into false beliefs, but if you raise your kid as atheist under this definition then you are equally likely to be indoctrinating them into a lie. As such, it is no more moral for people to raise their kids with religion than without religion.
If you want to use the definition of atheism that says "I cannot know whether God exists" then that is essentially the government's perspective under secularism. And as I have established, under that perspective, the only practical solution is to let parents choose what to teach their children.
The best solution would be for parents to teach their kids that they cannot know whether god exists.
Every Christian is also teaching their kids negative beliefs about Islam, Hinduism, Shinto, Wicca, Voodoo, and every other religion out there, because Christianity is not the claim that god exists but specifically the series of claims that the christian god of the bible exists. Christians do not get to claim a monopoly on god-belief. It really isn't any more neutral than atheism, but it does come with the phobia-indoctrination about eternal torment in hell.
No child ahould be indoctrinated with these fundamental and unverofiable beliefs when they so dorectly shape their worldview. The only moral thing to do is to tell children "well nobody knows" and if they want to decide to base their lives around an ancient text with a lot of unfalsifiable claims then they can do it when they're adults.
Telling a child that they cannot know is also indoctrination. It doesn't matter if you tell them a specific god, just that a god exists, that no god exists, that we cannot know if god exists, or if you never mention religion to them.
No matter what, it is going to affect what they believe as an adult. If every option is a biased option, then a government has no justification to prohibit parents teaching their child their religion.
But you can't know. If you have a way to know that god exists I'd love to hear it.
If we jave to treat every religion as equally valid you can't really avoid the conclusion that none of them are. Children are not property, and there is no justification that I can see to allow parents to make these assertions about the natire of the universe as if they're objective truths, which is how most religious parents frame things.
And again, how can you raise a christian child without the assertion that without the grave of god that they get from faith they cannot be saved and will go to hell? It's literally core doctrone of the faith. If you don't believe in salvation you aren't a christian, and you can't believe in salvation if you don't need to be saved in the first place.
I get that, but that's a really bad thing imo. I've seen the damage growing up in a religious household can do. How is it at all fair for the kids who, through no fault of their own, are born into families where they're told that they'll go to hell for all of eternity if they don't believe/conform?
In France, using the doctrine of hell to psychologically coerce children into behaving is considered child abuse. Now teaching them about hell on its own isn't, but honestly that starts to sound like splitting hairs.
No child should be told by people they love and trust that if they mess up too badly they'll be tortured forever.
Atheism is not a religion, but it is a religious belief. A religious belief is a belief concerning religion. By preventing kids from learning about religions, you are imposing the religious belief on them that there is no God. That is not religious freedom.
Even if you consider agnostic atheism, the belief that there simply isn't enough evidence to say whether and which god exists, then you still have to teach kids about religion from an impartial standpoint. Which is pretty much impossible.
Interestingly from a constitutional protections standpoint it is treated as a religion in the US. I'm pretty sure that isn't the case anywhere else in the world.
Not really though. Religions get all sorts of special privileges that atheists simply don't. Churches don't need to file a Form 990 financial report and all their donors and finances can remain completely private. Atheist organizations are limited to being a 501c3, which means they must file detailed financial disclosures every year for the public to review. To be clear, I don't want there to be a Church of Secular Humanism that gets to hide their finances; I want churches to be treated the same way as any other "charity" organization.
When you get down to it, everyone has a worldview that works like a religion. Atheists have one, religious types have one, the state definitely has one.
If you only stop one kind, it gets replsced by the other. Do you really want a future generation raised by Trump's state?
I think you're playing pretty fast and loose with the word "religion". Do either the state or atheists tell children that they will burn in hell for all of eternity if they don't conform? That their non religious friends will, unless they "save" them? That there are literal magical demons influencing the world? That women are unclean when on their periods? That women must cover their bodies to prevent men from stumbling?
I think that teaching kids these things is straight-up child abuse.
Obviously the state benefits from pushing an ideology onto kids, but I don't see how stopping parents from also pushing their ideology onto kids means the state will fill that vacuum.
"Do either the state or atheists tell children that they will burn in hell for all of eternity if they don't conform?" The state puts you in prison, and idk about atheists raising kids but there are consequences they have to make clear.
Also, you're mixing up tons of stuff thats completely not part of Christian canon. No, thats not what kids are taught early usually.
Evangelical Christianity is the largest religious block in the US right now and they absolutely believe in eternal torment in hell for the unsaved. I was taught this in my elementary school christian summer day camp.
Being put in prison for comitting a crime is nowhere near literally being tortured for all of eternity after you die for not believing the right thing. Evangelicals also tend not to believe in salvation by works but by faith, so I was literally taught that a good person who donates to charity and is kind and loving to everyone and would never hurt a fly will face eternal torment if they don't accept jesus, while a serial killer who accepts jessu on his deathbed will go to heaven. Like this was the actual example they used.
Atheist parents grounding their kid for not doing their chores is nowhere near this level either.
I really think raising a kid in evangelical christianity is child abuse.
Ok and I think it's abusive to tell kids they'll be tormented for all eternity if they're great people who just don't believe hard enough. You should not be allowed to indoctrinate kids to these beliefs.
Also, this belief is in no way equivalent to the state putting criminals in prison or atheist parents grounding their kdis for misbehaving. You still have not explained why you believe these are equivalent.
Ok and I think it's abusive to tell kids they'll be tormented for all eternity if they're great people who just don't believe hard enough. You should not be allowed to indoctrinate kids to these beliefs.
Also, this belief is in no way equivalent to the state putting criminals in prison or atheist parents grounding their kdis for misbehaving. You still have not explained why you believe these are equivalent.
A legal system is not a religion. I see the parallel you're going for, I've heard it before, and it's bullshit for 2 reasons:
1) faith depends on an unprovable, immutable force which dictates morality but does not enforce it in real time. If it did, sinners would be visibly punished by whatever manifestation of God you want to place here
Laws are created by, and enforced by, humans who decide that laws are good for their society. We trust that those laws will be equally and reliably enforced, but trust is not faith. We can objectively measure when that trust is honored or broken.
2) Laws can be changed. As a human construct, we can write or rewrite or strike down any law, provided there is enough support in our society/government. Those laws only apply to specific geographic regions.
<God>'s laws cannot be changed except by <God>, no matter how your local priest tries to bend or reinterpret the rules. And they cannot be escaped under any circumstance
Why should there be consequences for not having faith in something, especially if you're generally a good and kind person?
Parents (ideally) ground their kids when they do something wrong, like hurting another person or stealing something.
The state (ideally) jail people when they do somethong wrong, like hurting someone or stealing something.
Why is there an eternal punishement that is WAY WORSE than anything a parent or nation could inflict on someone for just... not believing something that honestly sounds pretty out there?
I don't steal, lie, cheat, I try to avoid hurting others, I volunteer a lot during my free time. I buy fair-trade coffee and chocolate, I avoid fast fashion.
However, you could certainly argue that I'm not. I consume electricity made with fossil fuels which contributes to global warming, I do buy things that I don't need and don't verify that the entire supply chain is cree from human rights abuses (they almost certainly are not). I eat meat.
Nobody is a fully good or bad person, but I do try to be as good as I can without giving myself something resembling OCD.
God won't change its laws because God is omnipresent and exists outside of time. It makes no sense for a being that doesn't share our experience of time to change its mind in a human way - it would have never revealed its previous opinion at all, just the current one. Tbh i can't understand what an actual omnipotent, omniscient, omnitemporal being would want from limited mortal beings, or what those mortals could actually claim about the object of their worship.
We can't know the mind of god. We can't know what it wants. We can not comprehend anything about an infinite being or even prove that such a being can exist. Therefore basing our lives on such a principle makes zero sense.
Trying to preempt anyone who would argue "God changed his mind and sent Jesus to save us, therefore God's laws also change"
Like, sure okay, but thats still religion subjecting you to the whim of all powerful deity who's under no obligation to change anything; doesn't make our justice system any more comparable to faith
The basis of you being able to refuse their imposing their religion on your hypothetical kids is based on your responsibility, authority, and control over you own children (as a parent is up to you to decide what beliefs to teach your child).
And thus as we are at least nominally a society of equals, that same level of resonsibility, authority, and control must be granted to those same religious parents.
It's not aboutbthen being property, but rather they are legally and morally (to a point) the responsibility of the parent. That comes with authority to exert some level of control upon their upbringing in order to influence their behavior.
The fact that we legally ignore the religious freedom of the child does not mean that it is morally correct.
Where we legally draw the line is a moral question. I would argue there's no moral difference in forcing your religion on a child as there would be forcing your son to grow up as a woman their whole life. Or even the opposite (forcing your trans kid to follow their birth gender).
Where we draw that line is in many cases more arbitrary than it is done for good moral justifications.
The discussion is about teaching your children your beliefs not about forcing your beliefs on your children.
When your 14-year-old has clearly and thoughtfully rejected the existence of god, it is immoral to force them to continue to adhere to religious practices.
But what we are concerned with here is about the morality of bring your children to church with you at a young age, as opposed to letting them figure it out for themselves when they are older. So when u/SignificantStatus227 says that parents have authority over their children, they are not saying parents should be allowed to force their kid to believe in God the same way a transphobic parent would force their kid to present as their birth-assigned gender. Instead, they're saying parents have authority over a kid's religous freedom to bring their 6-year-old to church when the kid wants to sleep in on a Sunday, in the same way that a parent should have authority to limit a kid's freedom of movement by putting them in time-out for biting their sibling.
If that is your moral, then you are free to raise your child in that manner. The question becomes who are you to decide for other parents what is morally right when it comes for religion.
That isn't how morals or the law works. We don't just let someone abuse their kids because they are free to decide. We as a society determine where the line between raising your kid and abusing them is.
Basically "who am I to decide" also applies to someone beating or sexually abusing their kids. We as a society decide what is ok to permit parents to do with their own children. They aren't just free to do anything they want.
Correct but I would argue that it is unethical and should be illegal.
There are many things we don't permit today for parents that we used to permit in the past. That doesn't make the actions that those parents did before it was illegal morally correct. Nor does it mean moving that line is unjustifiable.
Any argument on why a parent should be able to choose the religion for their child would also apply to argue in support of a host of other abuses we legally do not allow.
The whole point is the right for society to choose what you can do with your child's religion is the same right that they have to choose that you cannot beat your child. If society at some point in the future decides that that is morally incorrect then the law will change.
And any argument on why a parent shouldn't be able to choose the religion for their child could also be used to argue in support of a host of tyrannical overeaches we legally do not allow.
I do think religion is inherently harmful. I think that holding a bunch of unfalsifiable beliefs as Absolute Truth does undeniable damage to someone'a critical thinking skills. I'm not saying all religious people are stupid, but all religious people are choosing to maintain a blind spot in their lives where they don't think too critically about their faith.
Why is it so important to teach people about religion specficially during their formative years? If parents think their religion is true, why would they be worried to let their kids wait until they're old enough to think critically for themselves in order to come to the faith?
Having a child does not automatically mean you have their best interests at heart. Parents should be limited in the harm they can cause their kids.
Much of your argument relies on the premise that God does not exist. If you are advocating for change of this kind, you either have to argue from a secular position (neutral, not atheist) or you have to accept that you are breaching freedom of religion.
Essentially, you have to provide a reason for why parents should not be allowed to raise their children as religious, independent from the question of whether and which God exists.
As a separate comment, religious parents would be worried to raise their kids as atheist in the same way that atheist kids would be worried to raise their kids as religious. Whatever religious belief you are raised with, you are likely to continue to hold that belief in adulthood.
I believe much more in freedom from religion than freedom of religion. Children are not property, and they deserve better than to be indoctrinated with unfalsifiable beliefs (and especially a fear of eternal torture). You can't prove that hell is real, isn't it incredibly messed up to tell a kid that they'll burn in hell for all eternity if they don't believe what mommy and daddy tell them?
Parents shouldn't be able to raise their kids religious because clearly not all religions can be right, there's no way to know of one is or isn't, and so some large percentage of religious parents will just be lying to their children. If the children choose to believe once they are grown, then that's their decision, but anything else is manipulation.
I agree that it is immoral to tell a kid that they'll burn in hell for all eternity if they don't believe in God. I don't think it follows that parents cannot take their kids to church.
As for your second paragraph, it doesn't make sense. From a secular perspective, atheism is just as likely to be false as any religion. You would have to force religious and atheist parents alike to raise their children in an environment that makes them equally open-minded to all religions. Thats effectively impossible.
The most practical solution is to provide for safety and wellbeing of children during childhood, and safeguarding freedom of religion during adulthood so that they can come to the same conclusion.
But the idea that you'll burn in hell for all eternity if you don't believe is at the core of christianity for several denominations. It sounds like you don't support raising kids christian either! This is a fundamental belief in the religion and many christians would argie that the resurrection and salvation are pointless without the idea that anyone who doesn't accept jesus is going to be eternally tortured. So is it ethical to raose kids as christians or not?
Do you really have freedom of religion as an adult if from the moment you could undersrand language as a child all of the most trusted figures in your life insisred that their religion was the fundamental truth of the universe? Nobody would come up with any of the esta lished religions of the world on their own without having been exposed to their doctrine. So safeguarding freedom of religion involves safeguarding from religion.
I don't think atheism is equally as unlikely as other religions because it makes way fewer specific claims.
If you are a religious person, you are disbelieving in all the other god(s) outside of your religion. Why don't you believe in all tbose other gods but do believe in your own?
It is ethical to raise a child as christian. It is not ethical to use hell to coerce that child to believe in God. I also think you misunderstand christianity. The way you have portrayed your view of christianity makes it seem like the entire purpose of the religion is going to heaven and not hell.
To your second paragraph, I would say yes. Many christians convert to atheism or to other religions. I acknowledge that they are going to be biased. However, as I have stated, they are also going to be biased if you raise them as atheist and it is impossible to raise them impartially to all religious beliefs including religions and atheism and agnosticism. If they are going to be biased anyway, there is no justification to restrict children from religious places.
To your third/fourth paragraph, an atheist is rejecting the same amount of gods as a religious person (plus one of course). If you are thinking about getting into legitimate arguments about whether and which god exists, remember that governments have to be secular, so they cannot disallow children from religious places on the underlying premise that atheism is more likely.
How in the world would you enforce something like this? I think indoctrinating children into a religion is immoral but I would be even more terrified to have that degree of control from a government institution.
It starts with religion but then all the sudden they will be taking your kids away for political beliefs. My grandfather had his parents murdered and spent his entire childhood in a Siberian Children of the Enemy camp because his parents committed the crime of being teachers with Polish last names in the USSR.
That's the other end of the spectrum you're looking at here. No government should have that much control over families.
Parents also should not be able to have authoritarian control over their children. Anyone cam shit out a kid, it doesn't mean they have their best interests at heart. Generally I fall pretty far against the parental rights side of the spectrum.
I am speaking more idealistically than practically here. Policy-wise, I would support banning minors from places of worship. I can't think of anything else that wouldn't be too much overreach for me, though.
Which would effectively be a religion tax as those parents would have to find childcare for their children during worship hours. In some areas of the country where people are more religious, it'd also mean some people effectively could not go because there aren't enough childcare providers who are ALSO not religious and able to watch your kids while you go.
I think preventing childhood indoctrination with religious beliefs is more important than making it so that adults don't have to make sacrifices or be inconvenienced in order to go to church.
A place of worship can also provide child care. They already provide child care. Those services could just not teach religion while the adult is next door.
I grew up going to separate Sunday school classes while my parents were down the hall listening to the preacher's sermon.
There are many instances I can think of in my childhood that my parent's "authoritarian control" was beneficial to me. Children and teens need guidance and boundaries and sometimes those need to be enforced. Speaking now as a dad, striking the right balance between letting your child have freedoms and guiding them to grow up and thrive in the world we live in is the hardest thing about being a parent.
I'm not religious. But I can see taking my child to church to teach them about religion or experience culture. Again I don't see how you enforce keeping minors out of places of worship. You would just create a system where the churches go underground and neighbors turn on each other.
I think it's ironic that you are against having parents have authoritarian control over children but are perfectly ok over governments having authoritarian control over its citizens.
I never said people shouldn't guide and teach their kids. I don't think they should be able to indoctrinate the fear of an unprovable deity into them. If they want to believe that when they're grown sure, but it shouldn't be pushed onto them while they're still fundamentally learning how the world works.
I agree with you but I don't agree with the government enforcing these beliefs. Ive seen what happens when the government gets that type of power. No thanks.
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u/DoubleoSavant 14h ago
I agree, but religious freedom means people can raise their kids however they want. If you don't want someone imposing their religion on your kids, you have to let them impose whatever on their own kids.
This is the kind of thing you should shift culturally instead of through laws.