Indoctrinating Children in Religion

[Dystopia]

Meh, even indoctrination as the forced teaching of ideas is inevitable and is better off not being criminalized. Parents indoctrinate every kind of ideas. Political ideas, for example, rely heavily on indoctrination - It shouldn't be like that - I'm going to teach my kids what I believe in politically but I'm going to show them a list of all existing ideologies so that they can check the pros and cons themselves.

[Norman Humann]

Meh, even indoctrination as the forced teaching of ideas is inevitable and is better off not being criminalized. Parents indoctrinate every kind of ideas. Political ideas, for example, rely heavily on indoctrination - It shouldn't be like that - I'm going to teach my kids what I believe in politically but I'm going to show them a list of all existing ideologies so that they can check the pros and cons themselves.

Though I agree with you that it could not be criminalised, I have to say political indoctrination isn't as harmful as religious indoctrination in most cases. Particularly because it does not involve telling children that they are going to a place of eternal torment.

[Dystopia]

I don't agree with you, it depends on the context - Indoctrination of religious belief may not involve telling kids they'll go to help, it depends on the method being used - I could tell my kids that they must really believe in god because there's lots of evidence and there's none for other gods, and they would believe me (most likely)... Political ideas can be as dangerous if not more than religious ones, and they can cause a lot of hatred and intolerance

[Norman Humann]

I don't agree with you, it depends on the context - Indoctrination of religious belief may not involve telling kids they'll go to help, it depends on the method being used - I could tell my kids that they must really believe in god because there's lots of evidence and there's none for other gods, and they would believe me (most likely)... Political ideas can be as dangerous if not more than religious ones, and they can cause a lot of hatred and intolerance

And religious indoctrination doesn't involve hatred and intolerance? I'm not saying political indoctrination isn't harmful -- it certainly is -- but I have doubts it can cause as much damage as religious indoctrination.

I agree, it doesn't necessarily mean condemning to hell, but in too many cases, it does.

Pardon me if I get worked up. It's a touchy subject to me, because of personal experiences.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I didn't indoctrinate my son in my atheism, and I didn't permit his indoctrination into his mothers erstwhile faith. We taught him to think for himself, answered his questions honestly to the best of our abilities, and let him plug in data and retrieve results.

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Teach your kids how to think, not what to think. Encourage questions. Provide them with good source material so they can learn to look up things themselves. And if you must bombard them with religious instruction at a young age, then respect them enough to expose them to a variety of religious and non-religious traditions and let them come to their own conclusions. Your children are people in their own right -- not your property and not clay you get to mold into your own misshapen image.

I know, I know . . . it's pie in the sky, at least as far as most religious households are concerned. The last thing they want is a real marketplace of ideas where their bullshit competes on an even footing with other points of view. But I can dream.

This is also great advice for atheist households. Programming one's child to accept atheism unquestioningly can actually make that child vulnerable to religious appeals to faith or fallacy.

Teaching your child to make his or her own reasonable judgments is the first and most important job of the parent. If you're not doing that, you're not preparing your child for a world that does not care for him or her.

[robvalue]

Lek, man... I can't argue with you if you continue to equate things that aren't the same. I've pointed it out already and you twist the analogies further and they're still faulty. Stop trying to pretend atheism is a religion and "as bad as" christianity. Strawman and tu quoque fallacy.

I'll try one more time. Giving children shots has a demonstrably positive effect. Circumcision is bodily mutilation based in superstition. If you think those two things are the same, if you really think that, then I can't discuss with you. Circumcision is "good" for them how? Because it's written about in an old book? What about if they later decide they want nothing to do with religion but are stuck with this mutilation? How far can I go mutilating my kids based on my superstitions? Can I pull out a fingernail? Can I chop off a bit of their ear? Can I pull out one of its teeth? How do you draw a line with something like this?

And... If my kid came home and someone had been teaching my kid about christianity, I would be perfectly happy with that. I'd even teach them about it myself. Why not? What you're trying to do again is equate education with indoctrination. Do you really not know the difference?

You're better than this so please, stop equating false things.

[TubbyTubby]

We all indoctrinate our children with our beliefs. Many atheists have stated in this forum that they wouldn't allow their children to be exposed to christianiy or other religions.

No. My children have access to all sorts of varied material to learn from. When they have asked me about gods, I tell them that I don't believe in any but they are free to make up their own minds about that. In fact they are free to form opinions about anything they wish.

There is no comparison between this approach and making your child believe what you believe as true. That is horrendous to any free thinking person, unfortunately that description doesn't apply to theists so you wouldn't recognise how repulsive indoctrination really is. Most of you are victims of course after all.

The only traits my children take from me are broad guidelines on being polite and pleasant to anyone they meet, and the idea that they should work for things they want. If they want to ask me about any other subject then I'll give them my opinion, it's almost the same as talking to, you know, another human being!

[Thumpalumpacus]

Do you think I'm not going to tell my children to look both ways before crossing the street, but rather let them learn that for themselves or wait until they are sixteen?

It's a shame that the god you worship could not give Adam and Eve the same caring concern before he turned them loose on a highway ... when he knew Satan was a truck-driver.

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I also made sure my children got their shots, which they didn't appreciate at the time.

Inoculations benefit the child's physical health. Circumcision only benefits your (very curious) emotional health.

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Again, shots and circumcision, completely different. It's great that you all happen to be OK with it, but I would have been furious with you had you done it to me (circumcision).

I cried my eyes out when I was cut.

[h4ym4n]

I thought it would be interesting to have a thread dedicated to the indoctrination of children in religion. How far is too far? If you are a theist, would you force your sixteen year old to attend church if they disagreed with your religious views?

If I had children hopefully they would agree with the teachings of the scriptures, if they did not they would still attend church until they were out of the house, when they leave would depend on what their goals in life are.

GC

Why not leave your kids alone and let them wait until god decides to change their lives like you claim god did for you?

God's responsible for my turn around not me -

God looked down through history and saw my needs, supplied those things I needed to chose -

[Thumpalumpacus]

If your kids came home from school and said that someone had been teaching them about christianity, would you be okay with that?

After I broke up with my son's mother, she found a partner who was allegedly born-again, and who tried to program my son with your horseshit.

I stopped that, because it both violated the agreement her and I had made, and also started making my son fearful of things like "daddy's going to hell".

I couldn't control what he heard from his friends, and that's fine, because I understood my status as an authority figure in his life. But having another adult trying to put such poisonous fingerprints on my son's brain was unacceptable.

It wasn't about indoctrinating him into my atheism. It was about not letting someone else extort his belief in something by holding his "soul" hostage with threats of hell.