Is teaching religion to children wrong?

[OccamsRazor]

This question is one that I am re-asking from a thread entitled "Is Baptism Wrong?" McCulloch correctly pointed out that although my point of this question refers to broader terms than baptism specifically, we could get bogged down in the specific practises of different faiths.

I therefore am asking whether teaching a small child to follow a specific religion is wrong? Rather should you teach them many options to allow them to decide for themselves?

[McCulloch]

Moderator Intervention

... You sir, are a complete idiot and I have no problem saying so.

Debating Christianity is Civil. Respectful. Intelligent. Thoughtful. Challenging. Please re-read the rules.
1. No personal attacks of any sort are allowed.
Please limit yourself to the point being debated and avoid personal attacks.

4. Stay on the topic of debate. The other debaters' mental state is not the topic of debate.
5. Support your assertions/arguments with evidence. Even if it was relevant, you have provided no evidence that the other poster was an idiot withing any standard definition of the term. Simply disagreeing with your point of view does not make one an idiot.
14. In general, all members are to be civil and respectful.

[OccamsRazor]

Sorry 1John2_26, I am not attacking religion and I think that it is laudible to teach as many religions as possible as is your view on peace and non-violence.

My comment was a complaint about calling another forum member an "idiot". I was saying that this is unnecessary.

[juliod]

juliod, I think that you are falling into a common fallacy. Most people in the world are tuaght a religion. On this basis you could make the assertion "Sure, some hairdressers are not taught religion as a child, but most are. This means that a child taught a faith is more likely to become a hairdresser".

Oh, sure. Let's all be nice and careful and rational, while another generation of children are led down the road to religion. Why are you against protecting children?

Most people are taught a religion. Yes. And most people are violent, too. Coincidenc? I hardly think so.

Opposing my reasonable, well-thought-out suggestion that we protect children is just so hateful. Why do you hate children?

DanZ

[juliod]

But facts bear out that more peaceful people are not in prison than are.

Right. This is exactly the point.

Atheists are 10-fold underrepresented in the prison population. All else being equal, your child, if raised as an atheist, is 10-times less likely to end up in prison.

Only someone who hates children would raise them as a religionist.

Note that I am not saying that children should be raised as athiests. I am merely making the reasonable and clearly beneficial suggestion that it be a felony to teach religion to a child.

DanZ

[OccamsRazor]

Why do you hate children?

This is simply irrational. Are you honestly asserting that I wish to harm children because I do not agree that religion is fundamentally wrong?

Most people are taught a religion. Yes. And most people are violent, too. Coincidence? I hardly think so.

You cannot wildly make claims that religion is the cause of violence without proving a logical argument to do so.

[OccamsRazor]

Atheists are 10-fold underrepresented in the prison population. All else being equal, your child, if raised as an atheist, is 10-times less likely to end up in prison.

Again this is the same fallacy. I am not sure where your statistics are from but surely in a dominantly Christian society, most people in the penal system will also be Christian.

I am merely making the reasonable and clearly beneficial suggestion that it be a felony to teach religion to a child.

What? Am I getting this right. You want to make it illegal?!?

[Jose]

Thank you, McCulloch.

juliod, I think that you are falling into a common fallacy. Most people in the world are tuaght a religion. On this basis you could make the assertion "Sure, some hairdressers are not taught religion as a child, but most are. This means that a child taught a faith is more likely to become a hairdresser".

No, O/R, I think juliod is looking at the empirical evidence, that much of the violence is performed in god's name, or at least is aimed against people of other religions. That's why we have jihadist groups proliferating, and that's why we were so Morally Certain that destorying Iraq was such a good thing to do. That's why the Murrah Federal Trade Center in OKC was blown up--to get back at the govmint for its treatment of David's Branch of True Christians in Waco. It's how people justify killing doctors and oppressing people whose brains are a different sex than their external plumbing. Indeed, there is also other violence born of despair from being oppressed, which may not be religiously motivated. Still, juliod raises an interesting point, even if most of us would rather not hear it.

Why not teach children religion and let them decide for themselves by experiencing as many religions as possible?

This would be a good idea if we actually did as you say--give children experience in many religions, with no indoctrination into any of them. Maybe we should use a different religion every year until the age of 21. Unfortunately, this isn't how it works. Children are actively taught both the religion and the hatreds of their particular group. They are too young to evaluate the reality or validity of what they are taught. Rather, they are often taught that if they even consider thinking differently, they will fry in hell for all eternity. This is not exactly a fair and balanced treatment.

To do what you sound like you're saying, we should follow my grandfather's advice:

"Children should not be exposed to religion until they're old enough to know better."

This probably sounds awful when applied to your own religion, but like perfect sense when applied to other religions. Interesting.

Why the need to attack religion when so many believe in it?

Maybe that's the very reason to attack it... Let us speak hypothetically here: suppose a whole lot of people believed something that was wholly fictitious, and that was demonstrably harmful. As an example, you might consider Nutritional Supplements, most of which have no effect whatsoever, some of which are toxic, and all of which are protected by law as a result of the Republicans' so-called "Contract with America" (where "on" would be more accurate than "with"). Would it be a good thing, or a bad thing, to try to convince people to give up their belief in a falsehood? At best, this falsehood leads them to pour hard-earned money into the coffers of the purveyors of the falsehood. At worst, the falsehood causes illness or death.

Would you expect believers of the falsehood to jump for joy at having their belief attacked? No. BUT, the mere fact that many people believe it has no bearing on the truth of the falsehood, or its negative impact on society.

Does not empiricism drive most educated people to make decisions in life?

Alas. Most people turn out not to be sufficiently educated to use actual empirical data to make decisions. The most recent survey indicated that 50% of the population was unable to do so. Therefore, it might be necessary to look at the data more closely here. Let's see...the level of education increases as we go from high school dropouts to high school graduates to college graduates to teachers to professors. According to your suggestion here, we'd expect the use of empirical data to make decisions would increase as we go through this series of different groups of people. Lo and behold, it does! In parallel, we see an increase in "liberal" politics and in non-theism. Does this, perhaps, tell us something?

[OccamsRazor]

No, O/R, I think juliod is looking at the empirical evidence, that much of the violence is performed in god's name

Jose I disagree with this interpretation of juliod's remark. The comment "Sure, some murders and terrorists are not taught religion as a child, but most are" implied that because they have been taught religion as a child, this is why they became murderers and terrorists.
I think that to properly analayse murder and terrorism you must also consider all of the other social and economic factors.
I agree that many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion but you cannot say that therefore the teaching of religion causes murder and terrorism.
This is analogous to saying that listening to loud rock music causes acne simply because most acne sufferers profess to liking loud rock music.

and that's why we were so Morally Certain that destorying Iraq was such a good thing to do.

This reinforces my point. In this country Tony Blair made no mention of religion being a cause of the war in Iraq. The original reason put forward was weapons of mass destruction.

(Edit: Got juliod's name wrong at the top......sorry juliod)

[Jose]

But, O/R, no one would have beliefs that their religion justifies killing others if they hadn't been taught those particular religious beliefs. I agree that the methods are not condoned by religion. Islamic terrorists use fire, which is expressly forbidden except in grave circumstances. They justify their actions by convincing themselves that there are grave circumstances that warrant extreme action in god's name.

We now have a scholarship at our university in the name of a foreign student who was killed in god's name, justified by the claim that the bible tells us to fight for white supremacy.

You're right--these are misrepresentations of what religion should be. You're right that teaching religion "better" would eliminate such bizarre rationalizations. But I'm right too, when I say that these bizarre rationalizations are people's religions. Some of these religious beliefs, wrong though we may think them to be, are actively taught to children who are too young to know better. One of the reasons that we recognize them as wrong is because we heard about the rationalizations when we were old enough not to be sucked in.

Yes, there are many other reasons that people commit atrocities. But those other reasons are not among those of which I speak.

The religion argument is, I suspect, merely a subset of the general human instinct (selected by evolution) to adhere to one's group and distrust members of other groups. This group adherence instinct is the basis of ethnic problems (and fights over soccer matches, too). Breaking up into various religions simply adds one more mechanism of forming groups that beg loyalty. Eliminating religion would not eliminate this basic instinct or the wars that go with it. At best it would eliminate one way of rationalizing the behavior. Overall, however, it might eliminate a restraining influence more effectively, and make things worse. I'd vote for teaching religion better, and just outlawing fundamentalism (the various flavors of extremist views).

In this country Tony Blair made no mention of religion being a cause of the war in Iraq. The original reason put forward was weapons of mass destruction.

Yeah, the Bushies said that too. They were wrong, and the data (even then) said they were wrong. They simply cherry-picked the few unreliable statements that supported the decision they'd already made. Nonetheless, it was well known that the Blair/Bush Dynamic Duo were in the same haze of Moral Certainty. I can't believe that Blair is enough of a bozo to believe what GW Bush says. I thought that was reserved for my compatriots.

[OccamsRazor]

Jose I agree with most of what you have put down here, this was not the issue I raised. The point is that you simply cannot say that because the majority of murderers in (for example) the US penal system are Christian that this is why they are murderers. This is more an observation that the majority of people in the US are Christian.

When you bring terrorism into the debate you are dealing with a different mindset. Terrorists may justify their ends via a religious ideal but it may be that in the main the root cause could be a socio-economic one.

You're right that teaching religion "better" would eliminate such bizarre rationalizations.

I never made such an assertion. I cannot say how a religion could be taught "better". One could argue that teaching a religion better is simply adhering more formally to the scripture. In some religions I think this may be wrong because some religious texts profess bigotry and contempt.
I would however suggest that the most dangerous form of religion is extreme conservativism or fundamentalism.

I largely agree with what you have said, Jose but my main issue was with the statement that to protect our children we must prevent the teaching of religion. I do not believe that fundamentalism purely stems from a method of religious teaching more from economic and political factors. It could be suggested that many of the fundamentalist groups we see today come from societies with oppressive governments, which western democracies have felt it necessary to meddle in and poverty.