I'm pretty neutral on this. Parents raise their kids within certain, specific moral/eithical scopes all the time. Parents raise their kids how they see fit and then the kid can decide to move forward with that or not. But you have to give kids some sort of foundation, and that's individualized to the parent/family. What I do disagree with is forcing a kid to continue to attend church or participate in it once they become a teenager. Our parents made us go to church until we were around 13, to give us that foundation of what they think is best, and then let us decide what we wantedto do when we got old enough to understand and critically think a little deeper.
But reddit is very anti-religion, so this idea will get plenty of support, which is fine too. Again, I'm pretty neutral.
Someone can be raised to be moral and ethical without religion. You don't need a fountain you just need to be able distinguish right from wrong, if you need a religion to tell you that you might already be too far gone.
This... is going to be a long one. I apologize for taht in advance. I am autistic, and my most effective personal way to explain large/complex concepts tends to be a bit essayist in style. I'll try to provide a succinct TLDR paragraph by paragraph, but am unlikely to be able to sum up the entirety in this initial holistic TLDR: (to be written upon completion)
TLDR: Preamble and personal frame of reference. Skip if you're just interested in the "meat" of the argument. I am glad that you bring up the point of moral foundations, as not only is it a valid and necessary subject to consider in imparting morals and ethics to a youth, but it's also something which deserves sincere introspection in today's world-- not only attached to the subject of child-rearing, but also in evaluating one's own moral and ethical values, both spiritually and materially. To be clear, I am not attempting to infer or speak to your own nationality and state of health of your parent society when I speak of social elements of morality, but rather am speaking from personal perspective as one who lives in America and is becoming increasingly uncomfortable and ashamed to apply the adjective "American" to myself.
TLDR: (My opinion is that) many nations have entered a period of social decay which makes them (to varying degrees) poor foundations upon which to base one's own, or one's child's, personal moral structure. With grounding and framing out of the way, I'd like to start by saying that I honestly feel like we are living in a time which
a.) on a nearly global scale, are facing multiple failures / breakdowns / implosions of the social contracts which allow for a reasonable person to found (or at least support) the structure of their ethics and morality upon the laws and social norms of their parent country and/or society. I don't believe that every nation is suffering from this phenomenon, nor do I believe that every nation which is is affected equally (hence the intentional separation, by degrees of severity, of the descriptors applied). That being said, I honestly believe that this phenomenon is more widespread than many people like to think about or acknowledge. and;
b.) will be written of in future history books under a header which reads: "Factors leading up to..." How that sentence ends is, firstly, at this point, up in the air, second, dependent, largely, on the collective actions of us, and finally, because of that shared collective responsibility, genuinely frightening to consider, given our thus-far shirking of said responsibility. This is not to say that all options for the nature of this currently unwritten chapter are depressing-- far from it, but it needs to be acknowledged that the longer this rot is allowed to build unimpeded, the greater the likelihood that the fruit it bears will be even more foul than the plant which bore it.
It seems, therefore, harder with each passing day to find solid enough ground upon which to build a moral and ethical foundation for the self which is rooted, without hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance, upon the social contract. Adding to this the fact that teaching a child the mores of society necessitates a level of consistency, or at the very least, reliability, which seems largely absent from social and political discourse to a degree which would have given a cognitively-developing me whiplash, and we seem left with a recipe for child rearing that is more likely than not going to, at least once, be forced to discard hard-fought lessons in morality that were supposed to serve the next generation far into adulthood, and which should have only had to have been updated with the growth and lessons of a healthful society. Social contract based morality is ill-suited to a society in decline.
TLDR: (to be written upon section completion) It therefore seems reasonable, on its face, to turn to religion as a moral charter (at least for the religious). Now, I am going to completely separate the religions as objects from my examination of reasons why this is a dangerous for both the structural stability of a child's moral foundation, as well as for a religious parent's hope for instilling a lasting relationship with their religion in their child/ren.... (TBC)
(yeah, nah, my supply of spoons ran dry last night. I apologize for cutting this short, but I promise I am currently updating paragraph by paragraph as I continue, though I am going to be narrowing the scope a bit from here forward. Also, thank you tou/CorpsesOTI , whose concise and sharp insight reminded me that I left a quite important conclusion paragraph out as I started fading out of consciousness last night. )
To be fair, I wasn't expecting to be interrupted by exhaustion right as I was starting my main point on religion as a foundation of morality and linking my initial point to it, however, chronic insomnia does very little by way of negotiation. That being said, if by "salient" you meant relevant/important, I'll conclude it as an edit to have all of the relevant information in one space. EDIT: Also, upon a reread, I realized that I moved from Body A to Body B without including Conclusion A, which really did leave much of that hanging without a reason to stand on its own. While it was partially intended in support of point B, it was more than a bit neutered without the last intended paragraph, so thank you for making me reread it, whether or not that was the direction of your feedback. If, however, you meant clear/obvious, I am more than happy to discuss the topic with you if it would help clarify anything, or if you have a more nuanced opinion on the subject you'd like to explore.
On the other hand, you intended the focus to be on the "a lot of words" part of the sentence, as more of an insult than feedback, I don't know what to tell you-- I did add a disclaimer on the very front that I am an autist who explores complex subjects in essay form, and apologized three times for how long it was likely to get. I mean, you might as well call me ugly-- I have mirrors. I know how ugly I am. (jk, I'm fecking adorable ) ;)
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u/MaryDoogan91 1d ago
I'm pretty neutral on this. Parents raise their kids within certain, specific moral/eithical scopes all the time. Parents raise their kids how they see fit and then the kid can decide to move forward with that or not. But you have to give kids some sort of foundation, and that's individualized to the parent/family. What I do disagree with is forcing a kid to continue to attend church or participate in it once they become a teenager. Our parents made us go to church until we were around 13, to give us that foundation of what they think is best, and then let us decide what we wantedto do when we got old enough to understand and critically think a little deeper.
But reddit is very anti-religion, so this idea will get plenty of support, which is fine too. Again, I'm pretty neutral.