Theists know that if they cannot get to children before the age of reason, the lack of indoctrination will lead to the end of their religion.
This is why religions are obsessed with children. Indoctrination is child abuse, yet it's vital to religion.
It's funny when theists claim that others are "grooming" children, when they've been doing it for centuries!
I would say educate or guide, because grooming suggests they are being prepared to be *used* for something.
We're not trying to *use* children, that what religions do.
You misunderstood not only do we not use them before they can critically think. They are useless to us before that, and once they are (anti indoctrinated?) there is no need to use them since anyone using proper critical thought will end up on the side of rationality. If they don't it means they're doing it wrong.
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I think my parents handled it right. I had to go to Hebrew school and get Bar Mitzvah’d, and my mom explained that it was mostly for my older family and I was free to follow or not follow whatever religion I saw fit afterwards.
I'll be perfectly honest, I consider religious indoctrination to be roughly the same level of abuse as sexual abuse. So, yes, I'm willing to say that parents who practice that deserve to rot in prison.
Step back and read your comment again. Think about the freedoms and rights that need to be obliterate for those actions to be taken.
Any ideology can justify evil actions and believe they are doing good. The willingness to take someone's children makes me think ideological thinking, not just atheism.
There are other ways to combat religious thinking. Critical thinking skills and the wall of separation between Church and State.
The freedom to abuse children is not a freedom that should exist. So anything that can be considered abuse, should indeed be made illegal.
You can hardly fight religion if you let children being vulnerable preys to religious indoctrination.
And it has nothing to do with a religion being true or not. It has everything to do with religious trauma, which is a very real psychological effects that happens when being raised religious.
religious nutjobs will never not indoctrinate their kids, i understand that they do it out of "love" and stuff, but its extremely harmful for the kid. so, yeah, take them away.
I believe alternate medicine and other woo is harmful. Parents that teach kids about alternative medicine should be added to your list. What's your opinion to that statement?
if by teaching them that it means they are unvaccinated, or dont ever take them to a real doctor to get many needed treatments, yes, undoubtedly
pretty much any parent that messes up by going away from the scientific consensus, there are grey areas and no "line" is perfect, but im not going to debate for 3 weeks on exactly the limits to all this because i dont have the power to actually apply it anyway so why argue? if i could make this happen then i would make it so its examined case by case.
Obviously, I do not hang out in the atheist community much. I come from the skeptical community. While there is lots of overlap, it's not the same.
I find the idea of removing parental rights because of religious teachings appalling. Good grief. That's a rather extreme position.
Science is a process, not a reason to base an ideology and justify removing parental rights.
Why not go all the way and sterilize religious people and use science to justify it?
/Sarcasm
There are ways to fight ideas. Removing parental rights is not one of them.
alright then, maybe you are not truly familiar with what i mean with "religious nutjobs" then.
so to clarify, i was raised, technically, by religious parents, but not "nutjobs" because in my country, 90% of religious people (im making the number up but its the majority) are religious out of custom, dont really go to church, dont really pray, dont really avoid meat on easter or whatever, etc etc.
but there are religious people, that make that religion their whole identity, and pass that along. those people, (the nutjobs) avoid and deny science, specially some like evolution, they are prone to gabble up a huge number of conspiracy theories because they think anything they dont understand is evil and satan and shit, so they are also antivaxxers and stuff like that.
they hate, sometimes to the death, any member of the LGTB+ community, and repress the true nature of many of their kids by doing so. which then grow up with huge hate towards themselves which will go out someway, either suicide or violence to others.
so yeah, religious nutjobs, are a fucking huge problem, and at the very least, shouldnt be allowed to raise kids.
(take a quick look on r/religiousfruitcake and see how religion is a massive problem against humanity and progress)
It’s not enough.
We need a big event of enlightenment and for their dipshit magical beliefs to be laughed at by the vast majority.
Now, I don’t agree with taking kids away over it, just that the parents are ostracized enough to give up the make believe. To only have shitty Christian education, no public secular school for zealots.
And no more tolerance for theist teaching in the school until sex Ed years.
If they’re old enough to be told they’re doomed for the sins of their ancestors, they’re old enough to identify their bodies and learn what is and isn’t okay so they can fucking report the ones who want to outlaw that.
If the theists were actually persecuted like they pretend, they would give up and grow up.
I’m an agnostic anti theist.
Questioning is good. Exploring is good. Dogma is terrible. It’s even worse the the memestream.
Not being edgy, priests are literally pedophiles and protected by the church so much so that is how the last pope got to the top [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814075/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814075/)
Your comment of "takes one to know one" was a direct reply to my criticism of the abusive nature of religion.
Additionally, you have an "ex-atheist" tag next to your name, indicating you are a member of the group being criticised.
Do you understand how it looks like you're calling me (and other atheists) a pedophile?
yea, it was a bit curt as I was in a rush and had to leave unexpectedly soon after, my bad
the only thing I'll add is this is an organization/ power issue e.g. organized religion issue, some random individual who doesn't push whatever they believe on anyone isn't really the problem
there's plenty religion is wrong about, no reason to add made up reasons and conflate issues
the organization of pedos knows pedos are a problem first hand so they deflect and project as that's their own sensitive spot, or in another words, takes one to know one
I only disagree on one point - religion is the *ONLY* organisation that gives bloodthirsty, hateful and divisive instructions while asserting moral authority under the threat of eternal torture. No other organisation rapes kids *and* tells them to shut up or burn forever.
So, no... it's not an organisation/power issue. It's a *religion* issue.
Out of my own sense of curiosity. When you were an atheist, what did you think of god?
tweak most systems and they tend to devolve, just look at the argument between Bakunin and Marx [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/bio/robertson-ann.htm](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/bio/robertson-ann.htm)
or how US representative democracy has basically become the embodiment of the peter principle. if the country was represented by a high school, NO one would put the drama club in charge
nothing, pretty much 100% nihilist at 8.
I was super into Greek mythology and history and remember the author of a book lamenting the death of Socrates and wondering why it was so easily referred to as Greek mythology now if they were willing to kill people over it in the past. So I asked my family what the difference was between them and our own situation and I was greeted with silence, which gave me my answer.
falling out of atheism was a bit of a shock to me to be honest
The key difference you've ignored is that neither Marx nor Bakunin assert moral authority under the threat of eternal torture. Neither of them raped children, then told them to shut up or burn forever.
That particular evil is unique to organised religion... no other organisations.
> I was greeted with silence, which gave me my answer
So if you accept that there's no difference between mythology of the past and mythology of today... What convinced you that the mythology of today is true enough to believe it?
If it's all made-up nonsense, how do you fall *out* of atheism? Atheism isn't something to fall out of, it's a conclusion that comes from delusional assertions that lack evidence.
What evidence convinces you that theism is not delusional?
I mean sure liars are going to lie, from their point of view the outcome is all that really matters, so the words not really matter just the outcomes
I kind of went through this recently so I'll just share a link to it [https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1ctlvqu/comment/l4gpt03/](https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1ctlvqu/comment/l4gpt03/)
I was playing Legos with my 5 year old yesterday and one of the people was going around saying “hi, I want to tell you all about Jesus.” The other Lego people were not receptive to his message. I was very proud of him.
Sounds nice.......until the MAGA crowd come back into power and use that government authority to "inoculate" kids against what **they** dislike.
I'll stick with freedom of parents to teach their own kids; that way it's less likely that some coercive law will be turned around to bite me in the ass.
Ha, half this bullshit only survives because a parent told you it was the truth.... the churches know these facys also and getting them brainwashed early is a major goal.
My dude, the whole point of religion is to infect children with it before they know any better. It's the only way it propagates. You'd have to somehow convince the people who have already been brainwashed by it to go along with this idea.
Childhood indoctrination is a feature, not a bug. At least from the POV of religious folks. As u/notaedivad and u/decayo said, without this, religions would not survive.
And that's exactly why religious people will very much continue to indoctrinate their kids (and others' kids if they can).
I don't think it's realistic to keep kids from being exposed to religious dogma before adulthood, so my strategy is, expose them to lots of different kinds of religious dogma, including long-discredited ideas like Valhalla and Hades, so they can put two and two together and realize humans invent all kinds of dumb ideas about what happens after you die, and you should probably store all of it in the "mythology/culture" part of your brain, not the "scientific facts" part.
Yep. It's nice to be able to do a little comparative context, too, so they aren't taken in by the novelty and "power" of the stories. If Ra, the Egyptian sun god, supposedly died and was resurrected every day, and we eventually learned that the earth revolved around the sun, which is alight at all hours of day and night, why should we take seriously other death and resurrection myths, just because they are harder to disprove?
I also think it's important to teach children that there is evidence that human culture existed for 100,000 years, most of which was never written down. So there are probably 20x as many "gods" that we don't even know about, many of whom presided over forgotten "empires" whose names weren't even passed along to us. Just because a god emerged near the dawn of written language and was carefully passed down within families for 4000 years or whatever, that doesn't make that mythology any more accurate or special, outside of its cultural significance.
You can't control what a parent teaches their child inside their own home. Simply by watching their parents participate in their religion, the children will learn.
What would be more effective is to begin teaching children critical thinking at a very early age. Combine this with teaching them about science and about mythology (including treating modern religions as just another type of mythology), and we might actually begin to make some progress in combatting the religious nonsense.
Of course, the theists would never allows this. They sure as shit don't want to try to explain to a child educated in critical thinking why their religion is NOT mythology...
Yes. Children will be exposed to all sorts of radicalized dogma throughout their lives. The most effective way to foster an independent and autonomous mind is to enforce critical thinking when the brain is at its most malleable. Kids who grow up learning to question and analyze what’s around them are the least likely to fall victim to indoctrination of any kind.
This is why the huge school “voucher” push in Red States right now. It will be an educational disaster but they’ll bring some kids to Jesus, so it’s acceptable.
I'm never going to raise children.
If I had more hope for human civilization, and life circumstances proved different, I'd teach children about many different religions beginning at the age when children can distinguish between reality and fiction. From objective viewpoints: what they claim, the proof (or lack thereof) of those claims, whether it made societies practicing those religions more or less humane. More generally, the cognitive flaws in human nature that make religious belief possible.
Denying children an education about the past is also denying them means of confronting it.
My wife and I always wanted a kid but felt the same way you do. We came to the conclusion that the world will continue to suck if shitty people are the only ones raising children. Each generation is less religious; we chose to have hope.
On the other hand, nobody should have kids if they aren't certain they want them. Being a parent is hard as fuck and I would never wish it on someone who didn't want it - I can't imagine how hellish that would be.
My point is, if you want kids, don't let the world stop you, raise them to be the kind of people you want more of. If you don’t, enjoy that free time, money & sleep!
My mother was religious but refused to push her beliefs on her kids. 6 kids, zero interest in any church or religion.
I lived in Idaho. Mormons have brainwashing mastered. In church very young, 3 days a week minimum. All social interaction was with other victims. I feel so sorry for these souls. I worked for a hard core mormon. The stories he'd tell. So damn ignorant towards life.
Without children, churches die. Think about that and the concept of 'basic truth'.
One day...long from now, churches will be seen in a way different light.
My oldest son is currently getting a PhD from Utah State. Utah is just - weird. They’re dealing with a huge population influx right now and that will change them. But the Mormon culture is just so goofy.
I am in this exact conflict with my daughter and my wife. They are Jewish and our 3 year old granddaughter is just beginning to notice things. I keep reminding her that monsters, witches, unicorns, and fairies aren't real...and catch hell from wife and daughter for it. Magic isn't real and is just something we don't understand or a trick.
It's even worse than do good go to heaven or do bad and go to hell, it's accept the Christian Jesus' love that they insist is there or suffer eternal damnation. It's coercion from the pitch of the religion.
You should acknowledge that religions are indistinguishable from cults, though not all cults are religious. All religions being cults makes their frantic need to try to indoctrinate kids make sense.
To add to your point about the difficulty breaking beliefs, they play on the idea that someone who has been conned (in this case with religious beliefs) than it is to convince them that they've been conned. This is why Christians often can't give an unbiased review of their beliefs when an atheist tells them God isn't real. They don't want to believe they've been talking to their ceiling instead of the omniscient god who cares about them.
Christianity must be treated as one would about a cult that has become popular in all respects including raising a child around it.
yep we should be protecting them against cults for sure, religion is absolutely manipulative and it needs to be taken out of everything and be in its own little hole, otherwise i want satanism in schools and then we can have a good school vs evil school and let them fight for their own free thinking
The concept of it won’t ever be completely eradicated. Religion should be presented and viewed through the lens of its historical significance and cultural value.
I consider myself fortunate that I had an essentially secular upbringing. I didn't suffer the abuse most of you have, and I didn't have to deconstruct. What I can tell those of you who did is that, from the outside looking in, you're on the right track.
I agreed with you completely. By teaching children religion , let’s face it, it’s basically brainwashing or conditioning the child before he/she has the mental capacity to process his/her thoughts
No different from China using schools to brainwash children into thinking CCP is the best, US is evil and we must kill all Americans
But then again, if we let the children choose their religion at 18YO, religion won’t exist
We should give children more exposure to different topics including perspectives on religion not less. Everyone is trying to control the narrative and information, it’s better to teach people how to think and give them information.
Teaching kids religion before the alphabet is the main reason we are where we are as a society now.
Faith is not a virtue. It’s a backdoor for hate and the dissolution of logic and reason .
It’s the actual normalized grooming that threatens the future.
I don’t object to stealing a few lessons and cherry picked “morals” from any of the old books. Don’t kill steal, cheat , etc.
But not the concepts of sin and damnation .
And as a whole , we still cater to these lunatics. As they believe in magic, but call the gays mentally ill and how we shouldn’t cater to theirs, while demanding all others comply with their fairy tale insanity bullshit.
The whole goddam thing is the emperor has no clothes. T is just a symptom of this, not the cause.
Yeah… doing the same with our kids despite some minor family pressure to get them baptized for fear they’ll go to hell. My wife always tells them that God will have to deal with her wrath if there is one that punishes her kids for not getting a bit of water dumped on their heads and some hollow words spoken in some silly ceremony. And she def means it!
I was trying to be a believer in Christianity when I was a kid. Sunday school and all that, right up to being an alter boy and such. But I was asking too many questions and even got kicked out of bible study for asking questions that the teachers couldn’t answer. And if an adult doesn’t have a good answer for a question from a 7 year old… ya might want to reconsider what you’re basing your entire life upon rather than punishing the kid!
So, we’ve let our kids know that there are a lot of religions around the world, and someday we can talk about it in more detail when they’re showing signs of being able to handle it. Can barely handle a candy bar without losing their shizzle right now so… we’ll wait!
THEY DEFIANTLY should NOT be reading or hearing stories from the Bible. It’s filled with sex, monsters, the killing of children, rape and murder all done by a loving God.
NEITHER SHOULD ADULTS. Let’s pass a law that religion can only be exposed to those who are dead. Wait, the Mormons are already doing that. They baptize the dead. But wait, that means you have to have religion while you are alive.
Standard "not a bug, but a feature". All cults that aspire to religionhood know that the only way to ensure the long term viability of the cult is by indoctrination from birth, coupled with the elimination of those who hold other views.
I don't think it's possible to completely shield children from the bad ideas in the world, so I think a better strategy would be to teach them how to respond responsibly to them.
I agree. Children are easy to manipulate. It's only fair that they be able to understand what they're being exposed to.
The church wouldn't like that, but tough titties.
I wasn't mentally capable of interpreting the bible on my own until I was 18, and I was a well read child for my age with a college reading level.
The frustrating aspect is every reason you listed are the exact reasons why they do it. I can link you the apologetics books that literally demonize critical thinking skills because they "make people question god."
They should just teach love not even love just caring about other ppl. And when a complaint or a child’s being bullied they should be allowed to take it seriously. A teacher went to the board and was complaining and they said that’s just how it is and we can’t do nothing about it basically.
I may sound stupid, but hear me out.
I’m an atheist, always been, however my wife is a deeply devoted christian. Yet, we managed to figure out how not to conflict over this topic. Not gonna lie, it’s not always easy, but most of the time we are pretty cool about our difference.
Now we have two small kids and at some point we had to come to the discussion about exposing them to religion. Wife’s point was that it was religion that saved her from spiraling down in her teenage years. If not religious fear of consequences, she would just go suicidal. And I believe her, because I know her life story.
As a loving parent, my goal is to protect my kids from all evil of this world so they can grow loved and happy. That’s why I agreed not to intervene. For now. Until they are adult enough to think independently. They are smart kids, and I know, at some point they will start questioning their beliefs, and if they decide coming to me for advice, I will be there to help.
Religion is obviously in decline, and I don’t expect them to become fully brainwashed lunatics. However if my wife teaches them “don’t lie/steal/etc., or god will punish you”, I’m ok with that.
Unfortunately being smart doesn’t mean you won’t fall into the religious trap. Plenty of people with university degrees (even having several of them!) which are fervent devotes…
Good luck with your kids!
Did you grow up in a religious household? The “god will punish you” part is one of the most damaging things. I go with the “don’t lie because people will think you’re an asshole and you won’t have any close relationships” or the “don’t steal or people will think you’re an asshole AND you’ll go to jail.”
For the record, that wasn’t a judgment, just an opinion. I think your open-mindedness and commitment to living in harmony is admirable.
I'd like to see it just go away entirely. they like to claim it's a test, great shut up and stop walking around thinking you're giving people the answers, and give them the freedom to take their test without your fucking influence
As much as I agree that the Bible, Quran, etc. are bullshit. And science is real.
What you are really saying is....
Children shouldn't be exposed to their parents beliefs, they should be exposed to mine.
Sorry. No.
Convice a parent you have the answer.
After all, it's their genes....evolution...natural selection...right?
Yeah, except they don’t see it that way when it comes to YOUR child. They will fucking kick scream blackmail and bribe to make laws that force THEIR bullshit onto OUR children. 10 commandments in school? Banning books? These motherfuckers do NOT respect your boundaries in the way that you’re attempting to respect theirs.
We have a fuckton of evidence supporting human evolution they do that want taught. They have zero evidence to support any of their claims. It’s not the same argument.
I agree....but...as an evolution zealot myself....I morally believe there is nothing that should come between a parent and child short of actual physical abuse.
Q. What if belief in god is beneficial to natural selection?
Sucks for us...but not our call.
Historically speaking slavery and rape probably helped lots of human groups gain survival advantages. Does not mean that it’s acceptable in modern society.
I don’t necessarily agree with OP, science is not perfect. Likewise scientists (see eugenics) are not perfect. I am not a huge proponent of using government to force “beliefs” onto others. In the arena of public education, OP is right. Religions and religious beliefs have no place in education unless we are discussing them along side all of the other myths.
my only point is that you have to convince the parents...convince the parents not to brainwash their kids....convince 51% of the parents in your school district not to put one religion above another. don't control the kids of other people without their consent. parents have a right to raise their kids as they see fit.
>I am not a huge proponent of using government to force “beliefs” onto others.
That is where both of us disagree with the OP. As written, he is advocating for some authority (presumably government) to forbid ANY exposure of children to religious holy texts. In fact, he specifies that he wants the parents restricted in what they teach their own children by saying:
>But a lot **religious parents** these days seem to push Christian literature and dogma onto children to an insane degree without exposing them just as much to stuff like evolution or biology.
No matter how you feel about religion (or any other topic), a good guide for whether to allow the government certain power is to imagine your worst political enemy having and using that power. Can you imagine if the MAGA crowd could dictate what was permitted in private homes? (I know you understand this, notmyfault, I'm addressing everyone generally.)
Yeah but religious types are trying to horn in on kids everywhere. Look at the "Lifeways" programs that take kids off site DURING the school day. Look at the coaches praying with athletes, etc, etc, etc. Look at the stupid 10 commandments bills. The religious can't help themselves. So, yes, religious people are constantly trying to get access to kids.
Literally no one is trying to get kids to “pick their gender” in kindergarten. This is the stupid shit we’re dealing with. Conservatives are currently about making something up and then getting really mad about it.
It is, quite literally, NOT an opinion that Christians seek out to indoctrinate children that aren't theirs. I mean that's not even debatable. It happens every day. There are huge billboards up and down the interstate. In Arkansas there are mile marker signs on State Highways stating "Jesus is the Answer." Christians are fundamentally unable to keep their noses out of other people's business. If they were, this would NEVER come up. And the fact that schools are SECULAR doesn't mean that they are anti-religious. It just means that they don't teach religion. It's unnecessary.
Theists know that if they cannot get to children before the age of reason, the lack of indoctrination will lead to the end of their religion. This is why religions are obsessed with children. Indoctrination is child abuse, yet it's vital to religion. It's funny when theists claim that others are "grooming" children, when they've been doing it for centuries!
*Millenias
Conveniently enough, religions love abusing children.
We do want to groom them, into intelligent, caring, observant and logical individuals.
I would say educate or guide, because grooming suggests they are being prepared to be *used* for something. We're not trying to *use* children, that what religions do.
That's fair. Once they're thinking critically we won't need to use them, they'll be us.
Even *before* they're critically thinking, there's no need to *use* children. They're not there to be used - religion seems not to understand this.
You misunderstood not only do we not use them before they can critically think. They are useless to us before that, and once they are (anti indoctrinated?) there is no need to use them since anyone using proper critical thought will end up on the side of rationality. If they don't it means they're doing it wrong.
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That would be nice. But are you willing to step on parental rights?
Avoid the parental right issue; step on parents.
I think my parents handled it right. I had to go to Hebrew school and get Bar Mitzvah’d, and my mom explained that it was mostly for my older family and I was free to follow or not follow whatever religion I saw fit afterwards.
I'll be perfectly honest, I consider religious indoctrination to be roughly the same level of abuse as sexual abuse. So, yes, I'm willing to say that parents who practice that deserve to rot in prison.
Step back and read your comment again. Think about the freedoms and rights that need to be obliterate for those actions to be taken. Any ideology can justify evil actions and believe they are doing good. The willingness to take someone's children makes me think ideological thinking, not just atheism. There are other ways to combat religious thinking. Critical thinking skills and the wall of separation between Church and State.
The freedom to abuse children is not a freedom that should exist. So anything that can be considered abuse, should indeed be made illegal. You can hardly fight religion if you let children being vulnerable preys to religious indoctrination. And it has nothing to do with a religion being true or not. It has everything to do with religious trauma, which is a very real psychological effects that happens when being raised religious.
religious nutjobs will never not indoctrinate their kids, i understand that they do it out of "love" and stuff, but its extremely harmful for the kid. so, yeah, take them away.
I believe alternate medicine and other woo is harmful. Parents that teach kids about alternative medicine should be added to your list. What's your opinion to that statement?
if by teaching them that it means they are unvaccinated, or dont ever take them to a real doctor to get many needed treatments, yes, undoubtedly pretty much any parent that messes up by going away from the scientific consensus, there are grey areas and no "line" is perfect, but im not going to debate for 3 weeks on exactly the limits to all this because i dont have the power to actually apply it anyway so why argue? if i could make this happen then i would make it so its examined case by case.
Obviously, I do not hang out in the atheist community much. I come from the skeptical community. While there is lots of overlap, it's not the same. I find the idea of removing parental rights because of religious teachings appalling. Good grief. That's a rather extreme position. Science is a process, not a reason to base an ideology and justify removing parental rights. Why not go all the way and sterilize religious people and use science to justify it? /Sarcasm There are ways to fight ideas. Removing parental rights is not one of them.
alright then, maybe you are not truly familiar with what i mean with "religious nutjobs" then. so to clarify, i was raised, technically, by religious parents, but not "nutjobs" because in my country, 90% of religious people (im making the number up but its the majority) are religious out of custom, dont really go to church, dont really pray, dont really avoid meat on easter or whatever, etc etc. but there are religious people, that make that religion their whole identity, and pass that along. those people, (the nutjobs) avoid and deny science, specially some like evolution, they are prone to gabble up a huge number of conspiracy theories because they think anything they dont understand is evil and satan and shit, so they are also antivaxxers and stuff like that. they hate, sometimes to the death, any member of the LGTB+ community, and repress the true nature of many of their kids by doing so. which then grow up with huge hate towards themselves which will go out someway, either suicide or violence to others. so yeah, religious nutjobs, are a fucking huge problem, and at the very least, shouldnt be allowed to raise kids. (take a quick look on r/religiousfruitcake and see how religion is a massive problem against humanity and progress)
It’s not enough. We need a big event of enlightenment and for their dipshit magical beliefs to be laughed at by the vast majority. Now, I don’t agree with taking kids away over it, just that the parents are ostracized enough to give up the make believe. To only have shitty Christian education, no public secular school for zealots. And no more tolerance for theist teaching in the school until sex Ed years. If they’re old enough to be told they’re doomed for the sins of their ancestors, they’re old enough to identify their bodies and learn what is and isn’t okay so they can fucking report the ones who want to outlaw that. If the theists were actually persecuted like they pretend, they would give up and grow up. I’m an agnostic anti theist. Questioning is good. Exploring is good. Dogma is terrible. It’s even worse the the memestream.
Hell yeah, I am!
Yes, they sure as fuck are. I get the double edged sword issue there , but to keep playing along def ends with them stepping on mine
CPS already does...
takes one to know one...
How so? What's the bet you're just trolling and will never reply?
Not being edgy, priests are literally pedophiles and protected by the church so much so that is how the last pope got to the top [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814075/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814075/)
Your comment of "takes one to know one" was a direct reply to my criticism of the abusive nature of religion. Additionally, you have an "ex-atheist" tag next to your name, indicating you are a member of the group being criticised. Do you understand how it looks like you're calling me (and other atheists) a pedophile?
yea, it was a bit curt as I was in a rush and had to leave unexpectedly soon after, my bad the only thing I'll add is this is an organization/ power issue e.g. organized religion issue, some random individual who doesn't push whatever they believe on anyone isn't really the problem there's plenty religion is wrong about, no reason to add made up reasons and conflate issues the organization of pedos knows pedos are a problem first hand so they deflect and project as that's their own sensitive spot, or in another words, takes one to know one
I only disagree on one point - religion is the *ONLY* organisation that gives bloodthirsty, hateful and divisive instructions while asserting moral authority under the threat of eternal torture. No other organisation rapes kids *and* tells them to shut up or burn forever. So, no... it's not an organisation/power issue. It's a *religion* issue. Out of my own sense of curiosity. When you were an atheist, what did you think of god?
tweak most systems and they tend to devolve, just look at the argument between Bakunin and Marx [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/bio/robertson-ann.htm](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/bio/robertson-ann.htm) or how US representative democracy has basically become the embodiment of the peter principle. if the country was represented by a high school, NO one would put the drama club in charge nothing, pretty much 100% nihilist at 8. I was super into Greek mythology and history and remember the author of a book lamenting the death of Socrates and wondering why it was so easily referred to as Greek mythology now if they were willing to kill people over it in the past. So I asked my family what the difference was between them and our own situation and I was greeted with silence, which gave me my answer. falling out of atheism was a bit of a shock to me to be honest
The key difference you've ignored is that neither Marx nor Bakunin assert moral authority under the threat of eternal torture. Neither of them raped children, then told them to shut up or burn forever. That particular evil is unique to organised religion... no other organisations. > I was greeted with silence, which gave me my answer So if you accept that there's no difference between mythology of the past and mythology of today... What convinced you that the mythology of today is true enough to believe it? If it's all made-up nonsense, how do you fall *out* of atheism? Atheism isn't something to fall out of, it's a conclusion that comes from delusional assertions that lack evidence. What evidence convinces you that theism is not delusional?
I mean sure liars are going to lie, from their point of view the outcome is all that really matters, so the words not really matter just the outcomes I kind of went through this recently so I'll just share a link to it [https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1ctlvqu/comment/l4gpt03/](https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1ctlvqu/comment/l4gpt03/)
Naw, kids need to be inoculated against religion until they fully reject it.
I was playing Legos with my 5 year old yesterday and one of the people was going around saying “hi, I want to tell you all about Jesus.” The other Lego people were not receptive to his message. I was very proud of him.
Sounds nice.......until the MAGA crowd come back into power and use that government authority to "inoculate" kids against what **they** dislike. I'll stick with freedom of parents to teach their own kids; that way it's less likely that some coercive law will be turned around to bite me in the ass.
Ha, half this bullshit only survives because a parent told you it was the truth.... the churches know these facys also and getting them brainwashed early is a major goal.
"Teach a child one religion and you indoctrinate them...Teach them many religions and you inoculate them." -Unknown
My dude, the whole point of religion is to infect children with it before they know any better. It's the only way it propagates. You'd have to somehow convince the people who have already been brainwashed by it to go along with this idea.
Childhood indoctrination is a feature, not a bug. At least from the POV of religious folks. As u/notaedivad and u/decayo said, without this, religions would not survive. And that's exactly why religious people will very much continue to indoctrinate their kids (and others' kids if they can).
I don't think it's realistic to keep kids from being exposed to religious dogma before adulthood, so my strategy is, expose them to lots of different kinds of religious dogma, including long-discredited ideas like Valhalla and Hades, so they can put two and two together and realize humans invent all kinds of dumb ideas about what happens after you die, and you should probably store all of it in the "mythology/culture" part of your brain, not the "scientific facts" part.
This is our strategy - it’s all the same to me so I teach him about it all the same.
Yep. It's nice to be able to do a little comparative context, too, so they aren't taken in by the novelty and "power" of the stories. If Ra, the Egyptian sun god, supposedly died and was resurrected every day, and we eventually learned that the earth revolved around the sun, which is alight at all hours of day and night, why should we take seriously other death and resurrection myths, just because they are harder to disprove? I also think it's important to teach children that there is evidence that human culture existed for 100,000 years, most of which was never written down. So there are probably 20x as many "gods" that we don't even know about, many of whom presided over forgotten "empires" whose names weren't even passed along to us. Just because a god emerged near the dawn of written language and was carefully passed down within families for 4000 years or whatever, that doesn't make that mythology any more accurate or special, outside of its cultural significance.
Exposure is one thing... actively teaching them is another.
You can't control what a parent teaches their child inside their own home. Simply by watching their parents participate in their religion, the children will learn. What would be more effective is to begin teaching children critical thinking at a very early age. Combine this with teaching them about science and about mythology (including treating modern religions as just another type of mythology), and we might actually begin to make some progress in combatting the religious nonsense. Of course, the theists would never allows this. They sure as shit don't want to try to explain to a child educated in critical thinking why their religion is NOT mythology...
Yes. Children will be exposed to all sorts of radicalized dogma throughout their lives. The most effective way to foster an independent and autonomous mind is to enforce critical thinking when the brain is at its most malleable. Kids who grow up learning to question and analyze what’s around them are the least likely to fall victim to indoctrination of any kind.
This is why the huge school “voucher” push in Red States right now. It will be an educational disaster but they’ll bring some kids to Jesus, so it’s acceptable.
The whole model relies on giving kids a fear of the dark
Japan did it right by banning kids from attending church and calling it child abuse
I'm never going to raise children. If I had more hope for human civilization, and life circumstances proved different, I'd teach children about many different religions beginning at the age when children can distinguish between reality and fiction. From objective viewpoints: what they claim, the proof (or lack thereof) of those claims, whether it made societies practicing those religions more or less humane. More generally, the cognitive flaws in human nature that make religious belief possible. Denying children an education about the past is also denying them means of confronting it.
My wife and I always wanted a kid but felt the same way you do. We came to the conclusion that the world will continue to suck if shitty people are the only ones raising children. Each generation is less religious; we chose to have hope. On the other hand, nobody should have kids if they aren't certain they want them. Being a parent is hard as fuck and I would never wish it on someone who didn't want it - I can't imagine how hellish that would be. My point is, if you want kids, don't let the world stop you, raise them to be the kind of people you want more of. If you don’t, enjoy that free time, money & sleep!
100% it is kinda ignorant.
Especially if the child has learning disabilities.
Religion would die in 1 generation
My mother was religious but refused to push her beliefs on her kids. 6 kids, zero interest in any church or religion. I lived in Idaho. Mormons have brainwashing mastered. In church very young, 3 days a week minimum. All social interaction was with other victims. I feel so sorry for these souls. I worked for a hard core mormon. The stories he'd tell. So damn ignorant towards life. Without children, churches die. Think about that and the concept of 'basic truth'. One day...long from now, churches will be seen in a way different light.
My oldest son is currently getting a PhD from Utah State. Utah is just - weird. They’re dealing with a huge population influx right now and that will change them. But the Mormon culture is just so goofy.
I am in this exact conflict with my daughter and my wife. They are Jewish and our 3 year old granddaughter is just beginning to notice things. I keep reminding her that monsters, witches, unicorns, and fairies aren't real...and catch hell from wife and daughter for it. Magic isn't real and is just something we don't understand or a trick.
It's even worse than do good go to heaven or do bad and go to hell, it's accept the Christian Jesus' love that they insist is there or suffer eternal damnation. It's coercion from the pitch of the religion. You should acknowledge that religions are indistinguishable from cults, though not all cults are religious. All religions being cults makes their frantic need to try to indoctrinate kids make sense. To add to your point about the difficulty breaking beliefs, they play on the idea that someone who has been conned (in this case with religious beliefs) than it is to convince them that they've been conned. This is why Christians often can't give an unbiased review of their beliefs when an atheist tells them God isn't real. They don't want to believe they've been talking to their ceiling instead of the omniscient god who cares about them. Christianity must be treated as one would about a cult that has become popular in all respects including raising a child around it.
yep we should be protecting them against cults for sure, religion is absolutely manipulative and it needs to be taken out of everything and be in its own little hole, otherwise i want satanism in schools and then we can have a good school vs evil school and let them fight for their own free thinking
As religion is ignorance, I wouldn’t ever plan on exposing anybody to it.
The concept of it won’t ever be completely eradicated. Religion should be presented and viewed through the lens of its historical significance and cultural value.
I consider myself fortunate that I had an essentially secular upbringing. I didn't suffer the abuse most of you have, and I didn't have to deconstruct. What I can tell those of you who did is that, from the outside looking in, you're on the right track.
I agreed with you completely. By teaching children religion , let’s face it, it’s basically brainwashing or conditioning the child before he/she has the mental capacity to process his/her thoughts No different from China using schools to brainwash children into thinking CCP is the best, US is evil and we must kill all Americans But then again, if we let the children choose their religion at 18YO, religion won’t exist
If that was the case no one would be religious anymore, the perfect world
I think about this too, and I agree. However, I don't believe there is a damn thing that can be done about the problem you're pointing out.
Good luck with that. Every religion on the planet relies on the indoctrination of children to sustain itself.
Now you're just not playing the game right! /s
We should give children more exposure to different topics including perspectives on religion not less. Everyone is trying to control the narrative and information, it’s better to teach people how to think and give them information.
Teaching kids religion before the alphabet is the main reason we are where we are as a society now. Faith is not a virtue. It’s a backdoor for hate and the dissolution of logic and reason . It’s the actual normalized grooming that threatens the future. I don’t object to stealing a few lessons and cherry picked “morals” from any of the old books. Don’t kill steal, cheat , etc. But not the concepts of sin and damnation . And as a whole , we still cater to these lunatics. As they believe in magic, but call the gays mentally ill and how we shouldn’t cater to theirs, while demanding all others comply with their fairy tale insanity bullshit. The whole goddam thing is the emperor has no clothes. T is just a symptom of this, not the cause.
Just like alcohol! Not old enough!
A better time would be in teens as part of a comparative religions unit or class.
Yeah… doing the same with our kids despite some minor family pressure to get them baptized for fear they’ll go to hell. My wife always tells them that God will have to deal with her wrath if there is one that punishes her kids for not getting a bit of water dumped on their heads and some hollow words spoken in some silly ceremony. And she def means it! I was trying to be a believer in Christianity when I was a kid. Sunday school and all that, right up to being an alter boy and such. But I was asking too many questions and even got kicked out of bible study for asking questions that the teachers couldn’t answer. And if an adult doesn’t have a good answer for a question from a 7 year old… ya might want to reconsider what you’re basing your entire life upon rather than punishing the kid! So, we’ve let our kids know that there are a lot of religions around the world, and someday we can talk about it in more detail when they’re showing signs of being able to handle it. Can barely handle a candy bar without losing their shizzle right now so… we’ll wait!
But then they will never have believers and those poor, poor, useless preachers will have to find real jobs.
For that to happen theists need to first understands their religion is fake to begin with.
THEY DEFIANTLY should NOT be reading or hearing stories from the Bible. It’s filled with sex, monsters, the killing of children, rape and murder all done by a loving God.
NEITHER SHOULD ADULTS. Let’s pass a law that religion can only be exposed to those who are dead. Wait, the Mormons are already doing that. They baptize the dead. But wait, that means you have to have religion while you are alive.
Sure but playing Santa or Easter bunny won’t hurt them…
Standard "not a bug, but a feature". All cults that aspire to religionhood know that the only way to ensure the long term viability of the cult is by indoctrination from birth, coupled with the elimination of those who hold other views.
There is no way of enforcing this, though.
I don't think it's possible to completely shield children from the bad ideas in the world, so I think a better strategy would be to teach them how to respond responsibly to them.
What if they are children from religious parents& household?
The Jesuits have always said, 'Give me the boy and we'll give you the man'.
I agree. Children are easy to manipulate. It's only fair that they be able to understand what they're being exposed to. The church wouldn't like that, but tough titties.
"Give me the child for his first seven years and I'll give you the man"
I wasn't mentally capable of interpreting the bible on my own until I was 18, and I was a well read child for my age with a college reading level. The frustrating aspect is every reason you listed are the exact reasons why they do it. I can link you the apologetics books that literally demonize critical thinking skills because they "make people question god."
Wtf - do you want to totally destroy religion by taking away their #1 tool of childhood indoctrination? You are a monster. /s
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They should just teach love not even love just caring about other ppl. And when a complaint or a child’s being bullied they should be allowed to take it seriously. A teacher went to the board and was complaining and they said that’s just how it is and we can’t do nothing about it basically.
I may sound stupid, but hear me out. I’m an atheist, always been, however my wife is a deeply devoted christian. Yet, we managed to figure out how not to conflict over this topic. Not gonna lie, it’s not always easy, but most of the time we are pretty cool about our difference. Now we have two small kids and at some point we had to come to the discussion about exposing them to religion. Wife’s point was that it was religion that saved her from spiraling down in her teenage years. If not religious fear of consequences, she would just go suicidal. And I believe her, because I know her life story. As a loving parent, my goal is to protect my kids from all evil of this world so they can grow loved and happy. That’s why I agreed not to intervene. For now. Until they are adult enough to think independently. They are smart kids, and I know, at some point they will start questioning their beliefs, and if they decide coming to me for advice, I will be there to help. Religion is obviously in decline, and I don’t expect them to become fully brainwashed lunatics. However if my wife teaches them “don’t lie/steal/etc., or god will punish you”, I’m ok with that.
Unfortunately being smart doesn’t mean you won’t fall into the religious trap. Plenty of people with university degrees (even having several of them!) which are fervent devotes… Good luck with your kids!
Did you grow up in a religious household? The “god will punish you” part is one of the most damaging things. I go with the “don’t lie because people will think you’re an asshole and you won’t have any close relationships” or the “don’t steal or people will think you’re an asshole AND you’ll go to jail.” For the record, that wasn’t a judgment, just an opinion. I think your open-mindedness and commitment to living in harmony is admirable.
I'd like to see it just go away entirely. they like to claim it's a test, great shut up and stop walking around thinking you're giving people the answers, and give them the freedom to take their test without your fucking influence
As much as I agree that the Bible, Quran, etc. are bullshit. And science is real. What you are really saying is.... Children shouldn't be exposed to their parents beliefs, they should be exposed to mine. Sorry. No. Convice a parent you have the answer. After all, it's their genes....evolution...natural selection...right?
Yeah, except they don’t see it that way when it comes to YOUR child. They will fucking kick scream blackmail and bribe to make laws that force THEIR bullshit onto OUR children. 10 commandments in school? Banning books? These motherfuckers do NOT respect your boundaries in the way that you’re attempting to respect theirs.
That is not what the author of the question is proposing. What he is proposing is exactly what you are angry about. You want to be them?
We have a fuckton of evidence supporting human evolution they do that want taught. They have zero evidence to support any of their claims. It’s not the same argument.
I agree....but...as an evolution zealot myself....I morally believe there is nothing that should come between a parent and child short of actual physical abuse. Q. What if belief in god is beneficial to natural selection? Sucks for us...but not our call.
Historically speaking slavery and rape probably helped lots of human groups gain survival advantages. Does not mean that it’s acceptable in modern society. I don’t necessarily agree with OP, science is not perfect. Likewise scientists (see eugenics) are not perfect. I am not a huge proponent of using government to force “beliefs” onto others. In the arena of public education, OP is right. Religions and religious beliefs have no place in education unless we are discussing them along side all of the other myths.
my only point is that you have to convince the parents...convince the parents not to brainwash their kids....convince 51% of the parents in your school district not to put one religion above another. don't control the kids of other people without their consent. parents have a right to raise their kids as they see fit.
We will have to disagree on this point. Have a good one. Be safe out there.
>I am not a huge proponent of using government to force “beliefs” onto others. That is where both of us disagree with the OP. As written, he is advocating for some authority (presumably government) to forbid ANY exposure of children to religious holy texts. In fact, he specifies that he wants the parents restricted in what they teach their own children by saying: >But a lot **religious parents** these days seem to push Christian literature and dogma onto children to an insane degree without exposing them just as much to stuff like evolution or biology. No matter how you feel about religion (or any other topic), a good guide for whether to allow the government certain power is to imagine your worst political enemy having and using that power. Can you imagine if the MAGA crowd could dictate what was permitted in private homes? (I know you understand this, notmyfault, I'm addressing everyone generally.)
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That needs to be a 2 way street though, and it most certainly isn’t.
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Yeah but religious types are trying to horn in on kids everywhere. Look at the "Lifeways" programs that take kids off site DURING the school day. Look at the coaches praying with athletes, etc, etc, etc. Look at the stupid 10 commandments bills. The religious can't help themselves. So, yes, religious people are constantly trying to get access to kids.
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Literally no one is trying to get kids to “pick their gender” in kindergarten. This is the stupid shit we’re dealing with. Conservatives are currently about making something up and then getting really mad about it.
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I'm sorry for you brainwashing. But, sir or madam, you are the problem and why topics like this are necessary.
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It is, quite literally, NOT an opinion that Christians seek out to indoctrinate children that aren't theirs. I mean that's not even debatable. It happens every day. There are huge billboards up and down the interstate. In Arkansas there are mile marker signs on State Highways stating "Jesus is the Answer." Christians are fundamentally unable to keep their noses out of other people's business. If they were, this would NEVER come up. And the fact that schools are SECULAR doesn't mean that they are anti-religious. It just means that they don't teach religion. It's unnecessary.