Japan deems religion as child abuse

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Sorry, but the title of the thread is misleading.
You are doing atheism not a favor by exaggerating (or wrong portrayal) like this.

Hmm, how should I have titled it then? I mean isn't that the whole point of religion to incite fear by telling children they will go to hell if they don’t participate in religious activities, and flagging that as child abuse is seeing religion as child abuse?

I think the issue is that your thread title didn’t mention ‘forced participation’. 

Japan hadn’t determined that religion per se is child abuse, only that some aspects of some religions are abusive. Your bolded portion, for example - not every religion sends sinners to hell.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

Then maybe you could retitle it to "Japan deems forced religion as child abuse"?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Then maybe you could retitle it to "Japan deems forced religion as child abuse"?

I’m really not that invested. Just wanted to be part of the convo.

Boru

[Deesse23]

Sorry, but the title of the thread is misleading.
You are doing atheism not a favor by exaggerating (or wrong portrayal) like this.

Hmm, how should I have titled it then? I mean isn't that the whole point of religion to incite fear by telling children they will go to hell if they don’t participate in religious activities, and flagging that as child abuse is seeing religion as child abuse?

"Japan deems forcing children to participate in religious activities as child abuse"
because its far from being the same as
" Japan deems religion as child abuse"

Edit: Sorry, issues was addressed already  

[Belacqua]

Mr. Tetsuya Yamagami is no doubt very pleased by this bill. (He is the man who assassinated former Prime Minister Abe as a protest against the Unification Church's ties to the Liberal Democratic Party.) It appears that Yamagami has got everything he wanted.

Meanwhile, in the life of nearly every other Japanese person...

Children experience the Shinto religion as 七五三, the ceremonies at age three, five, and seven, in which they get to dress in wonderful kimono and go to the shrine to thank the gods for their happy life, and to ask for continued happiness for themselves and their families. At New Year's they go to the shrine and do 初詣, where people of all ages pray for a happy and prosperous new year.

No mention of hell is made at any of these events, which are the main ones children will experience.

Unfortunate children may have a death in the family, and this event will most likely be memorialized in Buddhist ceremonies. The priest from your family's temple will recite a sutra asking for protection for the dead person's soul. During the 49 days that the soul wanders before reincarnation, the deity Jizo-sama guides and protects the soul. In Buddhist theology it is possible for a person to be reborn into a hell-like world. But in all the funerals I've experienced here (too many, I'm afraid), not a single one has made this into a threat, or used it to scare anyone. (Such hells are also temporary, by the way.)

Last I heard about 2% of people in Japan are Christian. Those I have met have no interest at all in theology, but became Christian from seeing the charity work done after the war. The first pre-schools were set up by Christians, and they introduced other educational practices, particularly those which help girls. My wife went to a Christian pre-school and still remembers the prayer they said before they got their daily bottle of milk. She recites it completely as phonetics with no idea of what it means, which shows you how strict the nuns were about drilling the kids in fear tactics.

It's possible that some Christian families here threaten their children with hell, though I have never heard of it. As I say, Christians here tend to focus on the charitable side of the religion. Kawamura Hospital, for example, located at the exact point of Hiroshima's Ground Zero, began as a charity hospital and went on to make major contributions to the use of endoscopes in doing early cancer detection. I also knew a married couple who were both doctors -- he from Hiroshima and she from Nagasaki -- who helped to found International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which later won the Nobel Prize.

The church which prompted Abe's assassination is the Unification Church, which I think is just the Moonies. They prey on vulnerable people, especially widows, to get their money. They are evil and should be outlawed.

To say, however, that religion is typically a force for fear in Japan is just silly.

There is a kind of threat parents make to children, called お天道様. This means "The Honorable Mister Heaven's Path." This is what parents used to tell their kids when the kids went out to play by themselves and might do something naughty. The Honorable Mister Heaven's Path is watching you, so don't eat your neighbor's persimmons. It is not associated with any major religion, the punishment associated with disobeying him is never specified, and kids don't take it seriously anyway.

[Jehanne]

Of course, Christian evangelism in Japan goes back centuries all the way back to Saint Francis Xavier, who did preach about the existence of an eternal Hell; few Japanese converted to Catholicism due to his preaching.

[Macoleco]

I don’t know until what extent this can be regulated. I guess it is mainly aimed against the Unification Church and not other religions or customs

[Belacqua]

I don’t know until what extent this can be regulated. I guess it is mainly aimed against the Unification Church and not other religions or customs

The way people in Japan approach religion contrasts sharply with the way people talk about it on this forum. The difference shows how the approach we generally take here is not the only, or even the most common way, to think about the whole thing. 

Religion in Japan is almost entirely performative. People don't even think about whether they believe in it, whether there are sufficient logical arguments to persuade someone into accepting the tenets. 

For example before a college entrance examination, a very large percentage of students will go to a shrine dedicated to that kind of thing and put up a small prayer on a wooden plaque. This applies to everyone, not just people who consider themselves religious devotees. At the Obon festival in August, people put paper lanterns on their ancestors' tombstones, because that's the time when the spirits of the dead return. I am very sure that if you asked directly, "Do you believe the spirits are really there and they are happy to see the paper lantern," most people would consider it a silly question. It's not something you believe, it's something you do. 

I suspect this has been true of most people in history. We are in a small minority. 

There's an old story about Neils Bohr, which may or may not be true. Apparently he had a lucky horseshoe tacked up over his workroom. When someone asked how he, a great physicist, could believe in such superstition, he said, "I've heard it works whether you believe in it or not." 

The motivation for the new law is completely about bad religious groups demanding money. Nothing about how people do their ceremonies will change.

[Anomalocaris]

The very low level of penetration by christianity or Islam into Japanese society is the reason why laws such as this can be passed.     However they claim otherwise, being empowered to do what this measure aims to prevent is what gives these of chritianity and Islam who are most concerned with the future of their religions for whatever reason, hope for the futures of their own religions.    They will find all sorts of cunningly dishonest reasons to oppose measures such as these in much the same way the Christian Right oppose abortion.

[Jehanne]

The way people in Japan approach religion contrasts sharply with the way people talk about it on this forum. The difference shows how the approach we generally take here is not the only, or even the most common way, to think about the whole thing. 

Same mentality happens in American baseball (probably, in Japanese baseball, also); it's not at all foreign to Us. We discuss religion in a serious manner here because others in the States and Near East feign a sincere belief in it. We take their beliefs seriously only to the extent that they do.