This Has to Stop

[Catholic_Lady]

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.

The difference is that no one actually believes in The Great Pumpkin. But if I 100% think that God is real and that Jesus was God made man who came down and taught us things and died for us, of course I'm going to teach my child about Him. Its insulting and narrow minded that you say i will be abusing my future child and that you think my mom and dad abused me, just because you believe something different.

I don't think Mohammed or Buddha or Joseph Smith were anything more than completely regular men, and I think their stories are completely false, but i would never call Muslims, Buddhists, or Mormons child abusers for conveying to their children the religious belief that they fully believe are true.