(December 11, 2010 at 12:42 pm)Chuck Wrote: @Paul : Many forms of child abuse were not done with what perpetrator would consider malice. Those who pray in lieu of giving their sick children available medical care often commits the supreme child abuse of child murder. Those who prevent their children from receiving basic secular education out of religious convictions commits abuse that will scar the entire course of the child's life. In both of those cases the abuse came from no intentional malice. But in both of those cases, I would find it impossible to avoid condamning the acts as most aggregious of child abuse and demanding the severest punishments on the prepetrators to reduce the occurrence of such behavior amongst religiously afflicted parents.
I agree. But the fact that something can and does happen, doesn't mean that it usually happens. In the majority of cases, parents that teach their kids to believe the same religious teachings that they themselves believe is not 'child abuse', although it can be argued that some of those teachings are mentally and emotionally frightening (the carrot and the stick technique). The majority of 'Christian parents' indoctrinate their children with the very best of intentions and while it can be a form of abuse in some cases, I don't see any reason to think that it is in most cases.
P.S. Obviously withholding medical care and proper education qualify as abuse, but most people don't do those things. It's a quite a generalization to claim that all childhood religious indoctrination equates to abuse.
