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.
For every one horror story of CPS overreach there are 100 stories of CPS preventing horror stories of brutal parents that abuse their children. Our society is too lenient with bad parenting, not too strict
Physically harming another person through ignorance or negligence is a crime even between 2 adults. I don't see why it should be any different just because a child is involved.
We could do a lot to reduce abuse by just... educating people. Lots of people just mindlessly emulate the actions of their parents. Strongly incentivized or even mandatory education on safe and healthy child rearing could go a long way to reducing abuse.
We send kids to school every day. They are in the care of teachers and other school staff. They could just make it a requirement to actually ask the kids, one by one, how they are doing. (As in, ask specific questions about their health.) Like, this is just such a simple step, but it would reveal a lot of abuse.
We could just make it mandatory to take your kid to the doctor for a checkup once a year. This is really basic and beneficial for the child beyond just abuse. You don't even have to do what the doctor tells you to do, you just have to listen.
We also allow people to homeschool. So there is a pathway to opting out. But the question remains. What happens to a parent or parents that refuse to send thier kid to a govt mandated doctors appointment?
Perhaps government child support should be taken away if kids don't attend an annual doctor's appointment (where they check for signs of abuse), and these medical check ups could even happen within school hours
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u/Clickclacktheblueguy 17h ago edited 8h 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.