This Has to Stop

[AFTT47]

I don't usually do this but I'm entering a thread late without reading the whole thing.

This is a difficult, gray area. On one hand, there is the right of a parent to raise a child as they see fit. On the other hand, there is societal protection of the child against what is considered abuse.

I once heard of a Steve Martin comedy skit where he hypothetically raises the idea of raising a child and deliberately teaching him/her the wrong words for everything in the local language. On the child's first day of school, he/she needs to pee so he/she asks the teacher, "Mame, may I mumble dog paddy down to the banana patch?"

Obviously, a parent doing this would be dragged through the coals. But is there really any difference between this and feeding a blank, impressionable child information about an all-powerful, all-knowing, Master of the Universe as if it were fact?

There is nothing wrong with telling someone else about your faith - when they are mature enough to parse it objectively. But what is the difference between raising a child with a false language or indoctrinating a child with your religion or indoctrinating a child with the Peanuts (Charlie Brown) idea of The Great Pumpkin? None, IMO. Feeding information to a child as if it were fact when it is NOT fact is child abuse, IMO.