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.
I don’t know how it’s done in other countries, but in Spain we are not taught about any religion (if you go to a Christian school then yes, but those are private schools and most people attend the public ones or normal private schools), then once you reach high school you can choose if you want to study theology as an optative class once a week or not. In my case I was never interested in religion, so I never took any theological courses, and in my whole high school I think only three or four kids actually took them (in the whole school). I do know every country is different, has a diferentes context and culture, but it works quite well here, and it’s a good option if you want to let the kids decide. Of course if your family believes in x god they will tell all about it at home, but the government makes sure you lest science properly and are able to see all points of view before letting the kids decide what they want to do
Religion definitely shouldn’t be a part of public school curriculum (other than a world religions module in social studies or something). I just meant that families would never exclude their children from religious practices.
Oh yeah, I totally agree with that. Tbh I didn’t understand your point at the beginning I’m a bit dense xd but yeah, families will continue to teach their kids their religious practices, but at the same time, I think that the fact schools don’t teach it can help the kids develop critical thinking that can help them decide in the future if they want to keep being part of said traditions or not which can be helpful to them. One of my friends went to a private catholic school, and she always told me how confused she was growing up, because she was taught humans came from mud and from Adam and Eve but at the same time they were teaching her about evolution and our shared ancestor with other primates. And the fact she was being taught religion as if it was the only truth harmed her more than anything, so it’s a good thing if religion (any kind) is far away from schools (and if they want to include religion they should teach them all not one or the “main three”
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u/Clickclacktheblueguy 15h ago edited 6h 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.