Do Christian Parents Abuse their Children?

[brewer]

Saying it's abuse is pushing it. At the end of the day, parents get to decide what they want to teach their chidlren, and even atheist parents are prone to teaching nonsense to their kids.

Here's an extreme and obvious example of child abuse by religious parents.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016...dical-help

Teaching children primitive iron age mythologies in direct contradiction to modern science and medicine, is indeed child abuse. It leads to the suffering and death of children generation after generation. It perpetuates mentally warped concepts that kill people - children and adults. Teaching children this is child abuse. Because of this, I disagree with you. Parents should not be allowed to teach children doctrines that kill.

Based on your statement I was an abused child. Damn. Know a lawyer who will take up my case? Or yours?

[SteveII]

I didn't think you had an argument. What's worse is that you don't even realize it. A parting lesson on arguments:

1. troll: One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument
2. BBZ has now posted two threads with very provocative titles with no attempt to justify them--using them as a platform to complain about other aspects of religion not related to the thread title.
3. Whereas one such thread could be a misstep, two is a pattern.
4. Therefore BBZ is a troll.

Logically sound. Conclusion follows from the premises.

Wow you suck at logic. Your first premise includes intention and the other premises don't and you are completely blind to that. It's not logically sound at all, you merely assume that he's intending to cause disruption and argument when he could easily be making a thread arguing that religious indoctrination is child abuse, not because he's intending to provoke, but because he thinks that religious indoctrination is child abuse. I myself hold that view and I'm not a troll either. And I say provocative things all the time, but my intention is not to provoke, my intention is to speak my mind honestly regardless of if it's provocative or not.

And I'm not surprised that a logically unsound argument made by a theist got a bunch of kudos only by other theists. It's failing to detect such subtly illogical missteps that prevents you losing your religions delusions.

What? #1 is a definition from the internet. How much time did you waste on this????

[shadow]

Your mother never forced you to learn abc's? Child abuse!!! 😋

If you put a child in a position where they were refused the opportunity to education as basic as the alphabet in a country where such education is readily available, yeah, that child would probably be taken away from their parents. Would you seriously be alright with a child not learning the alphabet because their parents didn't want them to?

[possibletarian]

What I don't understand is why does she garner so much respect around here.

I have known CL for approximately two years, and during that time she has never treated me with anything other than kindness and respect.  She has shared a lot of painful personal experiences with us here, and I have shared painful personal experiences with her.  She communicates with me as one person speaking to another person; not as a Christian speaking to an atheist.  She has never preached to me, talked at me without listening, or pushed her beliefs on me in any way.  Why wouldn't I respect her?  I don't have a need to resent theists as a default simply because of their beliefs.  Do we disagree on pretty much everything that involves religion and politics?  Yes, lol.  But I find her to be a lovely and sincere individual, and I'm glad she's with us.  She also has a great sense of humor.  😁

I agree, she has a lovely sense of humour, always answers honestly as she sees it and dare i say it, a finely tuned mischievous side too

[Edwardo Piet]

Oh fuck Drich is here. What a waste of an interesting thread.

What part? The debate on indoctrination or the imminent girl-on-girl action?

I meant the former. The latter was more stimulating than interesting

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Your mother never forced you to learn abc's? Child abuse!!! 😋

If you put a child in a position where they were refused the opportunity to education as basic as the alphabet in a country where such education is readily available, yeah, that child would probably be taken away from their parents. Would you seriously be alright with a child not learning the alphabet because their parents didn't want them to?

Better analogy. Miseducation is abuse.

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Wow you suck at logic. Your first premise includes intention and the other premises don't and you are completely blind to that. It's not logically sound at all, you merely assume that he's intending to cause disruption and argument when he could easily be making a thread arguing that religious indoctrination is child abuse, not because he's intending to provoke, but because he thinks that religious indoctrination is child abuse. I myself hold that view and I'm not a troll either. And I say provocative things all the time, but my intention is not to provoke, my intention is to speak my mind honestly regardless of if it's provocative or not.

And I'm not surprised that a logically unsound argument made by a theist got a bunch of kudos only by other theists. It's failing to detect such subtly illogical missteps that prevents you losing your religions delusions.

What? #1 is a definition from the internet. How much time did you waste on this????

Wow you suck at logic so bad that you STILL don't notice it.

The point is that #1 contains intention and #2 and #3 don't and you conclude that the argument is sound even when you merely assume his actions were intentional. Your conclusion does not follow, making the argument invalid, and your implicit assumption that his actions are intentional makes your argument unsound.

#1 is from the internet, your assumption that #1's part about intention applies to the OP isn't, and yet that misassumption on your part is implicit in your argument, #2 and #3 aren't from the internet either and your conclusion (#4) doesn't follow. If you actually read my post correctly you'd see I've already explained all this. I didn't take issue with #1 I took issue with how you implicitly assume that #1 applies and after making two more premises that still don't demonstrate your unsound assumption you make a conclusion that does not follow.

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You can't implicitly assume that person X is doing something intentionally and offer a definition of a troll that implies intentional behavior, and then notice that the person has done such a behavior but you still have NOT argued that the person has done that behavior intentionally, and then conclude that that person is a troll. You still merely assumed that the behavior is intentional. You really really suck at logic if you think that argument is sound. Your conclusion does not follow.

---

This is the logical equivalent of your unsound and invalid argument Steve:

"X behavior done twice intentionally Y makes person P a troll.
Person P has done X behavior twice
Conclusion: Person P is a troll."

^ invalid.

The conclusion is false because you're still missing intentionally Y. No wonder you're still a theist when you think unsound arguments are sound. I'm not going to miss your logical mistake, sorry.

Furthermore you say "Logically sound. Conclusion follows from its premises." And not only does your conclusion not follow from your premises, but that itself does NOT make an argument sound. A conclusion following from premises makes an argument valid but not necessarily sound. For an argument to be sound the argument not only has to be valid but all the premises have to be true too

Oh and by the way, not only did I not waste my time by pointing out that your argument was invalid, and not only did you waste your time by making an unsound argument (and embarrass yourself by not only continuing to falsely think your argument is sound, but you also embarass yourself by clearly not knowing the difference between soundness and validity) . . . but how much time did it take me? A few seconds for that post and a few minutes for this one. I hardly have to worry about wasting 'time' when typing anything.

---

Here's an extreme and obvious example of child abuse by religious parents.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016...dical-help

Teaching children primitive iron age mythologies in direct contradiction to modern science and medicine, is indeed child abuse. It leads to the suffering and death of children generation after generation. It perpetuates mentally warped concepts that kill people - children and adults. Teaching children this is child abuse. Because of this, I disagree with you. Parents should not be allowed to teach children doctrines that kill.

Based on your statement I was an abused child. Damn. Know a lawyer who will take up my case? Or yours?

Legally accepted to be abuse and abuse aren't the same thing.

Laws would never need to change if they were always right.

[Bow Before Zeus]

Here's an extreme and obvious example of child abuse by religious parents.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016...dical-help

Teaching children primitive iron age mythologies in direct contradiction to modern science and medicine, is indeed child abuse. It leads to the suffering and death of children generation after generation. It perpetuates mentally warped concepts that kill people - children and adults. Teaching children this is child abuse. Because of this, I disagree with you. Parents should not be allowed to teach children doctrines that kill.

Logically speaking, not all religious doctrines are doctrines that kill or likely kill. So disagree with me, but in doing so, you're being unreasonable.

Yes, now we are getting to the finer details. Religion in the western world was defined as a god-based philosophy. In more recent times, the west has become aware of "religions" that do not have a central god-creator figure so the definition has changed. When I refer to religions I do mean the former rather than the latter.

I categorise religions into two categories. The predominantly faith based religions and the predominantly experiential religions. The faith-based religions are the ones I am referring to here.

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An authoritarian's rhetoric can cause violence and death among his people all by itself.

Edit: oh, thoughts, not words. I'm going to agree with LP and say that the thought leads to the action.  To say it has no role would just be semantics

I see your point. But it confuses the question "Are one person's thoughts unethical?" when you begin speaking of dictators whose actions and decrees represent a collective effort. I also agree with the Buddhist notion that one ought to cultivate benevolent thinking in order to improve one's moral character.

Bad thoughts may lead to bad actions. But I still assert that the thoughts themselves are not unethical. After all, one cannot have bad thoughts unless one has a beating heart and functioning brain, but we don't call healthy organs "unethical" even though they are instrumental in the performance of unethical thoughts and actions. It reminds me of Jesus' assertion that anyone who hates his brother is guilty of murder. I think it's perfectly natural to occasionally have a thought of hurting someone. To me, a person who has a violent thought and does not act on it has demonstrated that he/she is an ethical person... a person who is committed to acting morally.

How about a thought experiment? Suppose you were going to be locked in a room with one of two people. Would you rather be in the room with Person A (who has many violent thoughts but NEVER acts on them) or Person B (who has very few violent thoughts but ALWAYS acts on them). Person B, despite his better thinking, poses a real danger to you. Person A does not.

Hopefully, as I have presented it, you will see that my argument is not one of semantics, but rather of discernment of where the locus of ethics really lies.

I prefer to be locked in a room with Person C who is incapable of having any violent thoughts. That way I am guaranteed that he will not act in a violent manner.

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Sure, here's some:

http://www.skepticfiles.org/american/prison.htm

No, an article from a biased source paraphrasing other articles without linking to the source isn't evidence. If a theist presented something similar from religionfiles.org or some such, the atheists here would appropriately reject it.

Let's go to a more neutral source:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are...-atheists/



As you can see, you're partially correct. Atheists are only 1 in 100 Americans (Kind of surprising; thought it was higher), but only 1 in 1000 among American prisoners.

First a question - is prison representation a fair measure of whether a "child is ill equipped to make their own way in the world when they go out on their own"?

If so, then we'd apparently do best if everyone were Pentecostal. The atheist ratio is 10:1, but the Pentecostal is 35:1.

Your argument is against Christians in general. Protestants and Catholics make up most US Christians. Protestants are underrepresented in prison, while Catholics are equally represented. So, while we'd be best off as Pentecostal, Christianity in general isn't churning out felons.

Of course, correlation doesn't prove causation. I doubt that American Indian religions per se turn people into criminals. I'd guess that it has more to do with poverty and perhaps discrimination. Maybe Pentecostals and atheists have more education and wealth than other groups, and that's why they look so good.

Plus, those stats are on religion reported today. We don't know about conversions.

So, you need to do better on evidence.

Or send your kids to a Pentecostal school.  

Keeping me honest. Good one. The other example I gave of parents refusing medical care to their children for religious reasons is probably a better example of child abuse.

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I don't use "Dawkins said so" as a support for his argument. That doesn't make any sense. It's like saying "the bible says so - so it must be true". See? It doesn't make any sense.

There is no historical proof of JC's life let alone how he died. How then can anyone state there were 14 or 15 or 12 or any "stations of the cross"? This is an absurdity. You don't even know what you had for lunch a year ago, how would anyone know what JC did 2,000 years ago?

"The fact that  you did not find any meaning in the NT, is an individual matter" - No, it is a matter of simple logic. Unless you do a great deal of mental gymnastics, there is little to no consistent, coherent meaning in the bible. It's why I had to read the NT 3 times - just to make sure I wasn't missing something.

He does not say it in the god delusion. He says it in interviews and in articles.

I have defined unwholesome thoughts, words and actions as being those that harm or kill living beings. Your god is responsible for the death of millions of living beings in one supposed act of his - the great flood. But this is just one of his many heinous crimes.

I didn't think you had an argument. What's worse is that you don't even realize it. A parting lesson on arguments:

1. troll: One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument
2. BBZ has now posted two threads with very provocative titles with no attempt to justify them--using them as a platform to complain about other aspects of religion not related to the thread title.
3. Whereas one such thread could be a misstep, two is a pattern.
4. Therefore BBZ is a troll.

Logically sound. Conclusion follows from the premises.

You know, Steve, in this whole thread, I have not personally attacked anyone, xtian or atheist. Yet I have endured continual ad-hominem attacks. I leave this here as further evidence of these attacks.

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Yeah I was getting trolly vibes from BBZ as well. The BS he spews seems too obnoxious to be serious.

CL, if by BS you mean I am being brutally honest, I admit that the naked truth can hurt people but I am not good at sugar coating the truth. I'm more Richard Dawkins than Sam Harris. Although, no maybe my attitude is more a bit of both.

I think I am being more serious than obnoxious. If you have noticed I have not attacked any xtian personally here including any that have attacked me. I have been respectful to you and others that have attacked me.

I think now it's time for me to ask for the same courtesy in return from yourself and other xtians.

---

Not my assertion but Richard Dawkins believes that bringing children up to believe that their parents religion is true is tantamount to child abuse. The argument is that by doing so the child is ill equipped to make their own way in the world when they go out on their own.

I have a personal story about this. My oldest daughter went to a catholic primary school for the first 2 years of her schooling. The intention was to enrol my younger daughter in the catholic school as well when she was old enough. One day my older daughter came home from school and started talking to me about the 14 stations of the cross. Anyone know what that is? I didn't at the time so I googled it. What I found shook me to the core. These intellectually handicapped adults were brainwashing my child to become as intellectually handicapped as them - in short, child abuse!

I had to think quickly here. I couldn't tell my daughter that this is a load of crap because that would push here even further away from me and closer to a demented mentality. So I taught her critical thinking. Firstly, I defined ethics as any thought, word or action that causes harm or death to any living being (I have to thank the Buddhist texts for that definition). Then I asked her to show me some of the other xtian texts that they taught at school and sat with her to analyse whether the thoughts, words or actions described in those texts was ethical. Lo and behold, she identified a number of unethical actions and I could see the light bulb literally switching on in her head. I won! I had just grabbed my child from the clutches of these demented people!

At the end of that year, she was out of the school and out of the catholic system. The bizarre thing is, when we told the school, they were shocked that we were taking her to a non catholic school and asked us if we had considered taking her to one of the other catholic schools. They wanted to keep her in the lunatic asylum called catholicism!

After my experience, nearly losing my child to this demented mentally abusive system, I understood what Richard Dawkins meant when he said that teaching religion to children is child abuse.

Anyone have similar experiences?

Anyone think that it's ok for xtians and muslims to teach their religion to their children and that it's not child abuse?

Oh, the irony...

What if the difference between say growing up deeply religious, and say growing up deeply scientific/predilection to science but being outdated and or simply wrong in everything you think to be 'fact?'

before you answer.

Do you assume there will NEVER be any up and coming scientific change that would have you through out what you currently define as foundational belief?

Do you/Can you follow?

Let's say you were a "scientific fellow" of the mid 1400, and was not privy to Darwin or Columbus, but as you and your circle thinks now, no God, raising your children is child abuse, and for all of the same reason... It's just some on 600 years from now can identify your version of "reality" is as backwards as you view the church... Then if that is the case, isn't raising you children in ever changing scientific fact just as WRONG as raising you kids in the Church UNLESS! UNLESS scientific accuracy is not the goal, but rather the goal being a social order without God?

On the surface you seem to be taking the intellectually high road, but the problem with that is very little scientific 'fact' can stand up to scrutiny after a few hundred years, making 'facts' of science little more than popular fiction. So then unless ALL of society had adopted this popular fiction as absolute fact, then if you are right about God there isn't an intellectual 'high road.' As all fact simply succumb to "new pop facts." If this is the case then there is no more 'rightness'/stability in believing in science. leaving you with a simple expression of faith or a want to believe in science over God.

Now if all you have is a want or desire for science to be more true than God, then how is it your children are not being abused mentally when subjected to this form of indoctrination verse any form of religious indoctrination?

This is a good point and I'm glad you brought it up. The are a number of differences between the two and I'll cover the two major ones here. Firstly science is data and observation based. That means it can be tested and verified by other scientists. Theistic religions are predominantly faith-based. There is no observable evidence you are just told to believe. The second major difference is that science is self-correcting. This is as a consequence of the first difference - what it means is that if any observation contradicts the current theory, then that theory is superseded by the most modern theory.

Let me give you an example from science. Newton came up with equations that show how gravity acts on the planets to produce their observable "ellipses" around the sun. In order to do so he created a whole branch of (my favourite) mathematics - calculus! What he achieved was nothing short of genius! But several hundred years on and our more accurate measurements of the movement of planets showed slight discrepancies with what is predicted by Newtonian mechanics. Enter another genius - Einstein. Einstein proposed that the motion of the planets was due to the curvature of the space-time continuum produced by mass. This new theory predicted the movement of the planets far more accurately - to our current knowledge, exactly. So science has self-corrected.

When xtianity is interpreted literally (as it was originally meant to be) it predicts that the earth/universe is 6,000 years old - a slight error of 5 billion years for the age of earth and 14 billion years for the age of the universe. Religion does not change with new evidence.

So, yes, it is better for children to be brought up with an understanding of science (not belief in science because science does not require belief) because if it is wrong, it is made right. When religion is wrong, however, it remains wrong.

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My mama and padre raised me hardcore, fanatical Christian. I grew up fearing hell, praying every day for the god to change my sexual orientation, feeling ashamed, and being afraid of the track of my thoughts, because the god could see them. I can’t tell you about the level of indoctrination and brain wash, because it would take a book. No “secular” music, no prom, no dancing, no out of church activities. I prayed an hour a day (at least) since I was about 5. A preacher sexually abused me and his daughter when I was six, and he made me believe I would go to hell if I didn’t forgive him. Not only that, but I had to love him in the god’s grace. I was shamed, because a preacher prayed for a depression and anxiety disorder I have, and when I said it wasn’t cured, I was told I lacked faith and this is why it wouldn’t go away. My fault. I needed to fast and repent. I was 13. I was locked in a tiny room when I was living in a Bible Institute. I spent a couple months in there going insane, the church thought it was demons. I could go on.

If you asked me before if this was child abuse from my parents, I would have said YES! I was resentful and exhausted from life. But I have grown and learned from being a parent. I make mistakes and I have to explain myself to my boys. It hurts. Son, I thought I knew what I was doing, and I thought it was what was best for you. My mama has cried in regret and asked us to forgive them. They didn’t know about the preacher’s abuse. They didn’t know about my self hate due to my sexual orientation. They had no idea that their teachings were keeping me from living a healthy life. They actually raised me better than their parents raised them.

I have nothing to forgive them for. They did their best. I’m thankful. They did not abuse me by doing what they thought was best. They made a mistake, but they loved me and I knew they did. Always. I have changed my mind, and I hope my kids don’t hate me for my mistakes.

As much as I disagree with religion and I wish kids weren’t brought up in it, it’s not child abuse when you wholeheartedly believe it’s the best thing. IMO. I could be biased, I admit.

Wow, thank you for sharing such a poignant and painful part of yourself. We all think we have a difficult childhood and resent our parents for something or other but you have been through more than most. At least there are some great positives here - your parents admitted they regretted their actions and asked for your forgiveness. We all make mistakes - owning up to them and making amends is important in moving on. Also, you recognised the mistakes and were careful not to perpetuate them with your family. It is the same philosophy I have applied with my family. I brought my children up in a more open and honest environment. Does that mean I did not make mistakes? No. But when I recognise those mistakes, I make them right.

Once again, thank you for sharing.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

But the notion that religious instruction in and of itself makes it harder to cope with the world simply isn't borne out by the evidence.  Richard Dawkins himself is pretty damned successful, and seems pretty well adjusted, despite his COE upbringing.

Dawkins is off the rails with this one.

Boru

Tell me Boru is this not child abuse?

Yup, seems pretty abusive to me.  But that's not what Dawkins is talking about.  He has made - and continues to make - the blanket claim that a religious upbringing makes it harder for children to cope when they're out in the world.  This is simply not true.  The overwhelming majority of believers manage to function pretty well.

I grant you can find extreme examples such as those in the video, but that's hardly the norm.  Had Dawkins said, 'There are some cases where religious upbringing becomes flat-out brainwashing and can be inimical to the ability of individuals to function well in a modern, complex society,' we wouldn't be having this conversation.

But look at the people you meet every day - the bus driver, the girl who hands you the fizzy drink and the burger through the little window, the neighbor who works two jobs to feed her three kids, your doctor, your solicitor, the bloke who walks dogs for a living, that cop who gave you the ticket.  The odds are very, very good that the majority of the strangers you run across in a single day had a religious upbringing and still mange to cope with the world and get through life with no more than the usual amount of fuss.

Dawkins' attitude about this is also hypocritical in the extreme, since (as I pointed out earlier) he had a religious upbringing, and now he writes books and shows up on the telly, and has made real, significant additions to human knowledge.

Are there cases where religious upbringing does indeed damage children to the point where it qualifies as abuse?  Clearly.  But is this the norm?  Clearly not.

As one more example, I grew up in a Catholic household.  I attended Mass and Sunday school, I was confirmed in the Church and I even won more than one award for catechism and scripture memorization.  And yet, I stand before you, the pinnacle of the well-adjusted modern human so put that down Bingo you've already had one pie said the monkey with the wooden leg.

Boru

[vulcanlogician]

I prefer to be locked in a room with Person C who is incapable of having any violent thoughts. That way I am guaranteed that he will not act in a violent manner.

That's cheating. The purpose of the thought experiment was to gauge the ethical relevance of thoughts vs actions. C'mon A or B. Which is it?

[shadow]

Tell me Boru is this not child abuse?

Sickening.

This is why I'm an antitheist.

[The Valkyrie]

Teaching children religion is not child abuse, unless it's done on a brainwashing/imdoctrination level.

Yes, there are extreme example, the aforementioned "Jesus camp" and other such indoctrination methods are a perfect example of something that needs to be investigated and stopped.

The majority of religious parents, however, just teach their children their own beliefs without resorting to such measures.

I DO have a problem with anything that can be used to harm a child, whether physically or psychologically, such as telling a child he/she is worthless, or denying a child medical treatment (Christian "scientists", I'm looking at YOU!).