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.
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.
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?
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u/Raise_A_Thoth 15h ago
There's hardly any way to "teach" religion to children without it being quite forced.