Do Christian Parents Abuse their Children?

[Catholic_Lady]

It certainly would be if I were trying to compare the two men.  Please, don't misunderstand; I have the utmost respect and admiration for Dawkins.  I'm just saying it's not unreasonable to think that a Theist may have a personal distaste for an outspoken anti-theist.  It's personal for her.  It doesn't mean she is trying to start trouble on the forums.  That's all I'm saying.

What I don't understand is why does she garner so much respect around here. She is, and always has been an attention whore. Everything is about her and how she, and her beliefs are being disrespected. Well cry me a fucking river.
She's having a good run mind you. Wherever she appears, she creates bother and that, in my view is not accidental. As I said up thread, I seriously doubt her sincerity.
Ok, how about we try a wee experiment.

Catholic Lady! How do you reconcile the laws of physics with your god of the bible?

I'm flat out waiting.

Sincerity about what exactly?

Interesting being accused of "causing bother" by the guy who was temporarily banned for not being able to follow a simple forum rule after being pointed out about it several times lol.

Anyway, your bonner for me around here is interesting. This should be fun. I like the attention, as you say, so thank you.

[Bow Before Zeus]

What I don't understand is why does she garner so much respect around here. She is, and always has been an attention whore. Everything is about her and how she, and her beliefs are being disrespected. Well cry me a fucking river.
She's having a good run mind you. Wherever she appears, she creates bother and that, in my view is not accidental. As I said up thread, I seriously doubt her sincerity.
Ok, how about we try a wee experiment.

Catholic Lady! How do you reconcile the laws of physics with your god of the bible?

I'm flat out waiting.

Sincerity about what exactly?

Interesting being accused of "causing bother" by the guy who was temporarily banned for not being able to follow a simple forum rule after being pointed out about it several times lol.

Anyway, your bonner for me around here is interesting. This should be fun. I like the attention, as you say, so thank you.

How about transubstantiation? This is a physical impossibility. We have known from the time alchemy became chemistry that one element cannot change into another. So how to you reconcile the physical impossibility of transubstantiation with the catholic church's insistence that it literally happens?

[Edwardo Piet]

Is this a category error? William Lane Craig is universally recognised as being one of the biggest liars for Jebus that walks this earth. Dawkins on the other hand is a highly respected biologist. I would be most interested in CL's views on Dawkins; 'Unweaving the Rainbow'.

It certainly would be if I were trying to compare the two men.  Please, don't misunderstand; I have the utmost respect and admiration for Dawkins.  I'm just saying it's not unreasonable to think that a Theist may have a personal distaste for an outspoken anti-theist.  It's personal for her.  It doesn't mean she is trying to start trouble on the forums.  That's all I'm saying.

In my experience many theists and also "I'm an atheist but..." type atheists are very anti-Dawkins.

I often hear he's an asshole from a lot of atheists actually, just because he speaks his mind very brutally and has a fetish for the truth (and if you have a fetish for anything surely the truth is the best thing to have a fetish for?). And I also hear that he's "Islamophobic" from a lot from those who can't tell the difference between being anti-Islam and anti-Muslim.

He's very brutal. But he's mild compared to people like Hitchens who defended the war on Iraq and he's also anti-abortion and a self-described anti-theist. I always feel like Hitchens was grotesquely overrated. Like in the God Delusion Dawkins explains how and why God is man-made nonsense but in his own book Hitchens just asserts that God is clearly man-made and man made God and not the other way around. Now to us atheists that is obviously true but it is rather question begging and his task was to explain to theists why their beliefs are nonsense not to just assert that they clearly are.

I'd still pick Hitchens over Dan Dennett though as Dennett's digressions are not only frequent but they take up about nine tenths of his books.

I mostly agree with Sam Harris but I was rather disgusted with his ignorance with his defense of Douglas Murray. Although after getting over my initial disgust I have since been able to compartmentalize that very easily as compartmentalization is my specialty (although unfortunately it is now my opinion that my compartmentalization is why I lose a lot of my friends. I say stuff that I expect others to compartmentalize but they can't and we end up falling out over irrelevant shit. So any friend who is very good at compartmentalizing is probably a keeper for me).

Dennett does make some great points and he's also, nice, decent and polite but he's so unnecessarily verbose and his common approach to say something isn't an illusion or a delusion it's just not what we think it is is so annoying. It makes me wonder why he doesn't take the same approach to God and say "God does exist it's just not what we think it is. See, God is the universe." My guess is that he's much more of a pragmatist than he admits he is and he doesn't find the belief in God useful but he does find belief in consciousness and free will useful. Although it just demonstrates to me that he's lost the debate when he says stuff like "Free will is real like money. It's a social construct." And he has verbatim said "Free will is a real social construction." He's basically admitting that it's not real but it's useful to pretend like it's real.

Dennett is a lovely guy, the nicest of the four horsemen I reckon, but he's also annoying as hell and looking for his good points (and he does make good points) is like looking for a a needle in a haystack.... the haystack being his mounds upon mounds of irrelevant and unnecessarily verbose - it often seems as though he's trying too hard to come off as an intellectual and to seem like the professor that he is - digressions.

[GrandizerII]

Saying it's abuse is pushing it. At the end of the day, parents get to decide what they want to teach their chidlren, and even atheist parents are prone to teaching nonsense to their kids.

I do think there is something not right about imparting "knowledge" confidently about stuff one is not really confident of as that might dangerously mislead children. I'd rather a parent make it clear to their child what they believe is true (when it comes to God and religion) as opposed to asserting stuff as facts and truths without warrant. More sincere this way.

Now if a parent does preach to their child about hell and all that, then yeah, chances are some form of abuse is happening.

[Fake Messiah]

But the notion that religious instruction in and of itself makes it harder to cope with the world simply isn't borne out by the evidence.  Richard Dawkins himself is pretty damned successful, and seems pretty well adjusted, despite his COE upbringing.

Dawkins is off the rails with this one.

Boru

Tell me Boru is this not child abuse?

[Bow Before Zeus]

Saying it's abuse is pushing it. At the end of the day, parents get to decide what they want to teach their chidlren, and even atheist parents are prone to teaching nonsense to their kids.

Here's an extreme and obvious example of child abuse by religious parents.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016...dical-help

Teaching children primitive iron age mythologies in direct contradiction to modern science and medicine, is indeed child abuse. It leads to the suffering and death of children generation after generation. It perpetuates mentally warped concepts that kill people - children and adults. Teaching children this is child abuse. Because of this, I disagree with you. Parents should not be allowed to teach children doctrines that kill.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

Your mother never forced you to learn abc's? Child abuse!!! 😋

[GrandizerII]

Saying it's abuse is pushing it. At the end of the day, parents get to decide what they want to teach their chidlren, and even atheist parents are prone to teaching nonsense to their kids.

Here's an extreme and obvious example of child abuse by religious parents.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016...dical-help

Teaching children primitive iron age mythologies in direct contradiction to modern science and medicine, is indeed child abuse. It leads to the suffering and death of children generation after generation. It perpetuates mentally warped concepts that kill people - children and adults. Teaching children this is child abuse. Because of this, I disagree with you. Parents should not be allowed to teach children doctrines that kill.

Logically speaking, not all religious doctrines are doctrines that kill or likely kill. So disagree with me, but in doing so, you're being unreasonable.

[Edwardo Piet]

Saying it's abuse is pushing it. At the end of the day, parents get to decide what they want to teach their chidlren, and even atheist parents are prone to teaching nonsense to their kids.

I think that anyone who raises their children in a cult is abusing their children and as far as I am concerned religions are just socially accepted cults.

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Saying it's abuse is pushing it. At the end of the day, parents get to decide what they want to teach their chidlren, and even atheist parents are prone to teaching nonsense to their kids.

Here's an extreme and obvious example of child abuse by religious parents.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016...dical-help

Teaching children primitive iron age mythologies in direct contradiction to modern science and medicine, is indeed child abuse. It leads to the suffering and death of children generation after generation. It perpetuates mentally warped concepts that kill people - children and adults. Teaching children this is child abuse. Because of this, I disagree with you. Parents should not be allowed to teach children doctrines that kill.

I don't think teaching children about religion should be disallowed, just as teaching children about Hitler shouldn't be disallowed, and both of those should actually be encouraged. But teaching children that a deluded creed of beliefs that flies in the face of facts and reality and indoctrinates them so that it's hard to shake that nonsense off when they're older, I do indeed think is abusive.

It's indoctrination that is abusive.

Teaching children about something is not the same as miseducating and indoctrinating.

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Your mother never forced you to learn abc's? Child abuse!!! 😋

That's neither miseducation nor indoctrination. That's just education. Your post is a classic example of a false analogy.

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Here's an extreme and obvious example of child abuse by religious parents.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016...dical-help

Teaching children primitive iron age mythologies in direct contradiction to modern science and medicine, is indeed child abuse. It leads to the suffering and death of children generation after generation. It perpetuates mentally warped concepts that kill people - children and adults. Teaching children this is child abuse. Because of this, I disagree with you. Parents should not be allowed to teach children doctrines that kill.

Logically speaking, not all religious doctrines are doctrines that kill or likely kill. So disagree with me, but in doing so, you're being unreasonable.

I agree with you that not all religious doctrines are doctrines that kill or likely kill. But I disagree with you that indoctrinating children into a cult/religion isn't more abusive than educating children about different religions.

[vulcanlogician]

An authoritarian's rhetoric can cause violence and death among his people all by itself.

Edit: oh, thoughts, not words. I'm going to agree with LP and say that the thought leads to the action. To say it has no role would just be semantics

I see your point. But it confuses the question "Are one person's thoughts unethical?" when you begin speaking of dictators whose actions and decrees represent a collective effort. I also agree with the Buddhist notion that one ought to cultivate benevolent thinking in order to improve one's moral character.

Bad thoughts may lead to bad actions. But I still assert that the thoughts themselves are not unethical. After all, one cannot have bad thoughts unless one has a beating heart and functioning brain, but we don't call healthy organs "unethical" even though they are instrumental in the performance of unethical thoughts and actions. It reminds me of Jesus' assertion that anyone who hates his brother is guilty of murder. I think it's perfectly natural to occasionally have a thought of hurting someone. To me, a person who has a violent thought and does not act on it has demonstrated that he/she is an ethical person... a person who is committed to acting morally.

How about a thought experiment? Suppose you were going to be locked in a room with one of two people. Would you rather be in the room with Person A (who has many violent thoughts but NEVER acts on them) or Person B (who has very few violent thoughts but ALWAYS acts on them). Person B, despite his better thinking, poses a real danger to you. Person A does not.

Hopefully, as I have presented it, you will see that my argument is not one of semantics, but rather of discernment of where the locus of ethics really lies.