A couple of questions for atheists

[Jenny A]

I think too many people are ready to define anything that they wouldn't do to their own child as child abuse. If indoctrinating children is child abuse, then the vast majority of children are abused and have been since the dawn of time. Interference with child raising, unless it's for very good reasons is a human rights violation. Even the most backward, stupid, gun toting, religious nut, has the right to teach his children what he believes as does the most socialist, pacifist, gay-loving, atheist.

Not too long ago in the U.S., the government had an integration policy under which American Indian children were removed to boarding schools and punished for speaking their native languages and taught that their parents' religions were backwards, wrong, and superstitious (which like most religions including Christianity they are). Every effort short of not allowing them to go home for summer, was made to separate them from tribal traditions. The results were not good. Unfortunately, that, or something akin to Big Brother and the thought police is what springs to mind when someone suggests that parental indoctrination is child abuse.

I can imagine some extreme instances in which religious practice or indoctrination would be child abuse. These include: dangerous practices like snake handling or some forms of fasting; long term physical disfigurement like tattoos or genital mutilation; denying medical treatment; encouraging or requiring children to break the law; prolonged mental abuse akin to a struggle session; or physical abuse. But those are all things that would be child abuse whether there were a religious motive or not.