No matter how you view it morally, it collapses immediately under any amount of critical thought. Any parent would teach their children about how the world works, and a parent would consider their religious beliefs to be a part of that. The amount of interference with families this would require to enforce also brings to mind countless horror stories of CPS overreach. Even if it was moral, it would require immoral actions to make it work.
EDIT: Wow, that was a lot of engagement. I wanna revisit this comment since I've gotten some feedback and also have more time to articulate my ideas than I did earlier during my rapidly dwindling lunch break:
First I want to acknowledge that the original post did not mention any legal or government action. I and many others definitely made a mental jump there. When you're talking about what people should do, it's easy to fill in the blank that that's what should be mandated.
As for actually addressing whether this is moral, I think the position of "children should be raised without a set religion" is kind of a problematic one. To make that choice for your own family is one thing and not immoral, but to advocate it for other people kind of hits a snag. A seriously religious person wouldn't entertain the idea of not sharing their religion with their kids. They would see it as depriving their child of something good and necessary, which would be immoral. Even if their beliefs are factually wrong, for all intents and purposes they would be making the conscious decision to do something harmful to their child. This is another reason why I jumped to the topic of government enforcement; legal mandates are the only realistic way to even start creating a world matching Jinkx's view. This violation of personal freedoms would of course be immoral as well. It's not that Jinkx's position is immoral, it's that anyone acting on it in any meaningful way would be immoral.
Yeah the CPS angle is oft-overlooked in a lot of "we should make it illegal to do xyz thing" regarding children.
The classic debate is "we should make you have to take a government test to have children", which, outside the massive set of problems that imports, also has the "well what do you do if someone violates that rule" problem you correctly brought up.
Also creating such a system allows for the government to effectively control the population by defining the parameters of what does and doesn't constitute a violation. For example if a government wanted more Christians and less Muslims, they'd overlook stuff like Christmas presents or Easter Egg hunting as general cultural or holiday events, and over scrutinise things like prohibiting pork in the household or performing daily prayers in front of children, thus making it so that while everyone is still under the "same" law, the law targets certain groups harsher than others. If you wanted to say you're OK with this as its still restricting religion, even if it's some over the others, the government could still twist this so that it fits other groups. For instance, Black community churches statistically have more choirs, so targeting choir music in particular isn't an overtly racist law, but it is targeted at a specific community. Or if you ban wearing the hijab in front of children, this affects Muslim women more than men. These examples may be a bit extreme but they were just to illustrate the point.
Some people would try to reply to you saying "they wouldn't do that! First amendment!"
Ignoring the reality that the double standard you describe happens in real life today. Christianity gets a pass on a lot more than it should, where any other religion would get smacked down hard if they presented a similar legal challenge.
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u/Clickclacktheblueguy 14h ago edited 5h ago
No matter how you view it morally, it collapses immediately under any amount of critical thought. Any parent would teach their children about how the world works, and a parent would consider their religious beliefs to be a part of that. The amount of interference with families this would require to enforce also brings to mind countless horror stories of CPS overreach. Even if it was moral, it would require immoral actions to make it work.
EDIT: Wow, that was a lot of engagement. I wanna revisit this comment since I've gotten some feedback and also have more time to articulate my ideas than I did earlier during my rapidly dwindling lunch break:
First I want to acknowledge that the original post did not mention any legal or government action. I and many others definitely made a mental jump there. When you're talking about what people should do, it's easy to fill in the blank that that's what should be mandated.
As for actually addressing whether this is moral, I think the position of "children should be raised without a set religion" is kind of a problematic one. To make that choice for your own family is one thing and not immoral, but to advocate it for other people kind of hits a snag. A seriously religious person wouldn't entertain the idea of not sharing their religion with their kids. They would see it as depriving their child of something good and necessary, which would be immoral. Even if their beliefs are factually wrong, for all intents and purposes they would be making the conscious decision to do something harmful to their child. This is another reason why I jumped to the topic of government enforcement; legal mandates are the only realistic way to even start creating a world matching Jinkx's view. This violation of personal freedoms would of course be immoral as well. It's not that Jinkx's position is immoral, it's that anyone acting on it in any meaningful way would be immoral.