At what age should a child be introduced to religion?

[Angrboda]

Sorry, how does this follow from what I've said? You don't become a Christian just by being aware of the existence of Christianity... and I wouldn't have become a Christian as a child without the active influence of my parents. Ie I wouldn't have become a Christian just by what I passively picked up from society... media... school etc.. unless I was specifically curious/interested which I was not.

The thread topic, as I understood it, asks "At what age should a child be introduced to religion?" 

"Introduced to" casts rather a wide net, I think. When a child asks "why do those women have their faces covered?" or "why did the new President put his hand on that book?" the answers will involve religion. Giving the child an honest and age-appropriate answer will include introducing them to religion. 

Maybe you were thinking about a more targeted sort of introduction -- the sort of introduction in which there is a danger that the child will believe the religion is true. 

Religious people believe their religion is true. When a Shinto priest teaches his children that the rocks and trees have kami in them, he is not, in his own view, indoctrinating them. He is teaching them what's true. 

No doubt flat-earthers would like us to wait and not teach our children the earth is round until the kids are about age 12 or so, and are old enough to make up their own minds. Then the education should be given in a balanced way by neutral, government-approved education specialists. But I don't think so -- if a kid asks me what shape the earth is, I'm going to tell him what I think is true.

Great. You've mastered the fine art of equivocating and playing dumb. What's next on your list? Smashing straw men for fun and profit?

[Ranjr]

Listen kid.  I know the world around you has been difficult but none the less navigable so far.  It's a wonder to me you can be so wonderful and have magic in your head.  I believe in your dreams.

That's why it's best I tell you now some of the fucked up things people think.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

With a bit of editing, 'The Simpsons' gave us a universal blueprint for introducing children to religion:

Bart: Dad, what religion are we?

Homer: It's the one with all those well-meaning rules that don't apply to real life. It's...umm...whadyacallit...Christianity.

Boru

[emjay]

Sorry, how does this follow from what I've said? You don't become a Christian just by being aware of the existence of Christianity... and I wouldn't have become a Christian as a child without the active influence of my parents. Ie I wouldn't have become a Christian just by what I passively picked up from society... media... school etc.. unless I was specifically curious/interested which I was not.

The thread topic, as I understood it, asks "At what age should a child be introduced to religion?" 

"Introduced to" casts rather a wide net, I think. When a child asks "why do those women have their faces covered?" or "why did the new President put his hand on that book?" the answers will involve religion. Giving the child an honest and age-appropriate answer will include introducing them to religion. 

Maybe you were thinking about a more targeted sort of introduction -- the sort of introduction in which there is a danger that the child will believe the religion is true.

Okay, fair enough, my bad I guess. It is a wide net indeed and the issues of education and indoctrination can bleed into each other, and where they do that's obviously of most concern to me, but if the question is just strictly when a child should be introduced to in the sense of becoming aware of religion, then that's not really a contentious subject for me and you're right, in that sense, contact with the world will do that job of introduction... but I don't think that poses any danger of indoctrination unless it is pervasive and targeted in some sense. My aforementioned Middle school for instance could be considered a Christian school, and it in turn reflecting the 'Christian Nation' culture of the country, in the sense that we had RE classes, sung hymns at Assembly, and participated in various Christian festivals throughout the year, but none of that is what I'd consider a danger of indoctrination, and indeed I have nothing but fond memories of it all... if I had children I'd have no objection whatsoever to them going to a school like that, but I would have an objection to them going to a specifically religious school that intended to pervasively and targetedly teach religious doctrine alongside or even instead of the normal curriculum... that sort of school I wouldn't touch with a bargepole, on principle.

But narrowing that net again, I probably should have been more clear; my response to Orbit was meant to implicitly follow on from my earlier post to you, and that in turn was asking, based on a possible misinterpretation of your parody, if and if so how, you and/or God would justify bringing up a child in a specific religion, as a theist, given the difference in how the beliefs are arrived at. But if that's not what you had in mind with your post, or you consider that off-topic, then again my bad for jumping to conclusions.

Religious people believe their religion is true. When a Shinto priest teaches his children that the rocks and trees have kami in them, he is not, in his own view, indoctrinating them. He is teaching them what's true.

No doubt flat-earthers would like us to wait and not teach our children the earth is round until the kids are about age 12 or so, and are old enough to make up their own minds. Then the education should be given in a balanced way by neutral, government-approved education specialists. But I don't think so -- if a kid asks me what shape the earth is, I'm going to tell him what I think is true.

Yes, that's what I meant by saying I thought it was unrealistic to generally expect otherwise... the nature of passionate belief, whatever it is, whether mainstream or complete outlier, well evidenced or not, is to consider whatever it is fact/truth and potentially pass it on with the same conviction. But I'm just saying that though it may be unlikely/unrealistic in some/many cases, especially when people are too far down the rabbit hole so to speak, I think it's still a nice ideal that people be mindful enough to preface their statements with 'I believe', escpecially when they know their beliefs are contentious or part of a multitude of views on a subject. I know in practice it would be unlikely, if not awkward, to be able to do that all the time, but imo even some of the time is better than none of the time. I'd like to think I'd do the same thing as an atheist if I had kids, and likewise if they expressed genuine and willful curiosity about religion.. ie what in my other post I considered the more justifiable route to faith... then I'd like to think I'd answer their questions objectively without hesitation or judgement, and ultimately be happy for them to become a theist if that was what they wanted and they got there of their own accord.

[Belacqua]

I think it's still a nice ideal that people be mindful enough to preface their statements with 'I believe', especially when they know their beliefs are contentious or part of a multitude of views on a subject.

Yes, you're certainly right that raising kids rationally will include acknowledging this kind of thing. Ideally parents would be willing to say "Well, in our tradition we hold that X, though you'll find that others don't agree" or something like that. 

I guess it's part of a larger rule, that all of us should be willing to look in the mirror and say "of course, I may be wrong." 

I apologize if I seem overly tough or snide about this. I suppose it's because it's one of those things that comes up periodically, and some people seem to me unreasonable about it. Non-religious people may see religion as something to carve out from a kid's education. Since we don't think it's supportable, we want other adults to refrain from teaching it, or wait until the kids are old enough to be smart and skeptical, like us. But if it's part of someone's life, then they're just going to raise their kids that way, and asking them to keep their kids innocent of it isn't practical or fair. 

I've been trying to remember all those years ago, how I learned as a kid about religious ideas. My family was completely without religion, we never talked about it at home, and I never attended a church service. (I never have in my life.) And I'm so old that I grew up before religion became weaponized politically, to get voters angry. When I was a kid, religion and politics were still things you didn't talk about socially. (And my dad was mayor for decades, but couldn't be in the current climate, since he was a left-wing atheist in a tiny midwest town.) Yet I obviously heard about it, and knew what the churches were for, and knew that my best friend in the school was different because he was the only Jewish kid in town. His parents raised him very much as a believing Jew, but it wouldn't occur to me to think of him as "indoctrinated." It was all very matter of factly "his family is that way, our family is this way."

[The Grand Nudger]

I think it’s a lot easier to stick to the ideal in a mixed faith family. It might even produce a higher quality faith. Neither of us were ever explicit. We even deflected questions about what we believed, or didn’t, with answers about what some people believe and some don’t. Neither of us thinks that adding the personal ownership of an ideology, and that all important approval, assent, or complicity of parents is a way to build people who deeply hold a genuine faith. As it turns out, you really don’t have to do much exposition these days. The kids will just ask Siri in their own time.

That’s not to say that there’s no current in our kids own ideas about the sacred. They’re a pretty obvious combination of the wife’s and my own. They may not think that the sacred can be contained in any kind of person- but they would tell you that life is sacred, love is worship, and all are compelled to the good….though they’re still learning how to put that into practice. If that’s the product of indoctrination( explicit or implicit)…I’ll take it.

[Mister Agenda]

Could you elaborate on how this relates to Bruce's post, particularly given that Bruce was kind enough to elaborate on what was meant by 'introduce', which you omitted?

It means that it's not practical to wait until a child is 11 or 12 to discuss religion.

Ah, I didn't take Bruce as literally as maybe I should have, I thought he meant a 'talk' like the birds and the bees, only for religion. Of course children are going to be exposed to religion before they're eleven, and that should be addressed in an age-appropriate manner when it comes up.

[Belacqua]

It means that it's not practical to wait until a child is 11 or 12 to discuss religion.

Ah, I didn't take Bruce as literally as maybe I should have, I thought he meant a 'talk' like the birds and the bees, only for religion. Of course children are going to be exposed to religion before they're eleven, and that should be addressed in an age-appropriate manner when it comes up.

Yes, that's the kind of thing I was thinking about.

My niece has four-year-old twins. Before she had them she got a master's degree in music therapy and early childhood development. So she has been very particular about the kind of input her kids get, and what media they're exposed to, that kind of thing. And of course half their lives have been during Covid lockdown, so she's had about as much control over exposure as you can have, short of living on a desert island.

But kids are such incredible sponges, that after a few hours at pre-school, or a walk through Walmart, they know all kinds of things that they didn't know before. And it's no good pretending those things don't exist -- religion is all over, and they need to talk about it.

[The Grand Nudger]

There are all sorts of things that are all over that we don’t discuss with children.

I’d no sooner explain the blood god to a child than I’d explain porn. Explain religion, sure, np.

[Oracle]

It means that it's not practical to wait until a child is 11 or 12 to discuss religion.

Ah, I didn't take Bruce as literally as maybe I should have, I thought he meant a 'talk' like the birds and the bees, only for religion. Of course children are going to be exposed to religion before they're eleven, and that should be addressed in an age-appropriate manner when it comes up.

That's exactly what I meant.