An example of non-indoctrinating child-rearing: My folks gave me two books. One was a book of Bible Stories, the other was a book on Evolution. I even went to church several times (though I stopped going the instant I found out people actually believed the shit they were singing about -- I only came for the singing after all). It's the advantage of having an atheist father from a heavily Christian background (he was even convinced of the EASTER BUNNY until age 13), and a quietly deist mother.
I was given an actual choice. Now, they weren't worldly enough to give me access to the Ramayana and the Quran or a Daoist book, but they at least gave me the choice between the paths of science and magic, without forcing me in to one or the other. My sister, given similar choices, went for Christianity, albeit for the social scene, and doesn't get any flak from it.
That said, I hope to hell that, when she's no longer stuck in a religious area, she can slip back in to the non-magical world, but she at least had a chance, which is far more than most kids get. She at least didn't end up like my dad, a teenager believing in magical bunnies. Just magical angels and devils and the occasional leviathan.
I don't think I even have to explain how my dad's Easter Bunny thing shows how unhealthy indoctrination can be. Especially considering his intelligence is far above average.
Ditto for me, my sister and I were brought to church, we were simply never told that it was the truth. We observed, and we eventually decided that it wasn't anything that made sense to us. I believe my sister said something along the lines of "They don't expect me to believe that, do they"?So we stopped going to church at around 6 years old.
My parents were raised catholic, and afraid that our lack of relgion in our lives would make us lose something in terms of moral thought. But instead of forcing us back, they simply talked to us a lot, which allowed us to form our own opinions without becoming apathetic.
The only thing I have kept from my Catholic upbringing is irrational guilt and a love of chanting.
I love Gregorian chants.
In this I consider myself fortunate, but I agonized in my younger days over the existence of God. It would keep me up at night, particularly the problem of Hell. There have been few greater feelings of relief in my life than the day I just up and tossed the whole thing out.
I went to a Church of England church until my brother and I kept sleeping in later and later to make it more and more hassle for our parents to take us. Once they'd given up on trying to take us, they stopped going themselves.
It's hard to justify CofE once your kids know that Henry VIII invented it because he was fed up with the Pope telling him what to do.
Should a religious parent be allowed to raise their child? Is there a way that we can go in there and check people and be like "whoa, guys, there is such a thing as too much". Like, Jack Chick for example, is there any way his kids could possibly get out of his house remotely mentally healthy? And what of the parents who send their kids to that I-shit-you-not-concentration-camp on that island in the Carribean? Is that really okay?
Should a religious parent be allowed to raise their child? Is there a way that we can go in there and check people and be like "whoa, guys, there is such a thing as too much". Like, Jack Chick for example, is there any way his kids could possibly get out of his house remotely mentally healthy? And what of the parents who send their kids to that I-shit-you-not-concentration-camp on that island in the Carribean? Is that really okay?
Should a religious parent be allowed to raise their child? Is there a way that we can go in there and check people and be like "whoa, guys, there is such a thing as too much". Like, Jack Chick for example, is there any way his kids could possibly get out of his house remotely mentally healthy? And what of the parents who send their kids to that I-shit-you-not-concentration-camp on that island in the Carribean? Is that really okay?
Good answer thanks.
You're fucking with me but seriously, how is it legal for those parents to send their kids to a concentration camp on their (not the child's, the child is usually essentially kidnapped from his own room while they sleep, handcuffed, tossed in a van and driven to a private plane) whim?
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
edited April 2007
Unfortunately, separation of Church and State goes both ways. Which is why I said earlier, we cannot legally do anything without screwing over the Constitution. Cat's suggestion, that we change the social attitude, is really the only way.
Edit: I don't like what a lot of parents do, especially in the name of religion, but what exactly can we do?
Should a religious parent be allowed to raise their child? Is there a way that we can go in there and check people and be like "whoa, guys, there is such a thing as too much". Like, Jack Chick for example, is there any way his kids could possibly get out of his house remotely mentally healthy? And what of the parents who send their kids to that I-shit-you-not-concentration-camp on that island in the Carribean? Is that really okay?
Good answer thanks.
You're fucking with me but seriously, how is it legal for those parents to send their kids to a concentration camp on their (not the child's, the child is usually essentially kidnapped from his own room while they sleep, handcuffed, tossed in a van and driven to a private plane) whim?
I don't think it should be really.
But my question was more on behalf of the hypothetical religious parent who isn't shipping their child to a Carribean concentration camp. As improbable as such a person might be.
Unfortunately, separation of Church and State goes both ways. Which is why I said earlier, we cannot legally do anything without screwing over the Constitution. Cat's suggestion, that we change the social attitude, is really the only way.
Edit: I don't like what a lot of parents do, especially in the name of religion, but what exactly can we do?
Use semantics to craft a law that makes it illegal for a parent to forcibly send their unwilling child overseas to an institution that does not hold itself to U.S. Department of Education and Human Rights standards, for starters.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Unfortunately, separation of Church and State goes both ways. Which is why I said earlier, we cannot legally do anything without screwing over the Constitution. Cat's suggestion, that we change the social attitude, is really the only way.
Edit: I don't like what a lot of parents do, especially in the name of religion, but what exactly can we do?
Use semantics to craft a law that makes it illegal for a parent to forcibly send their unwilling child overseas to an institution that does not hold itself to U.S. Department of Education and Human Rights standards, for starters.
First children need to be classified as something other than basically property of the parent.
one of my suitemates in college had been sent off to some christian "camp" in the Philipinnes while in High School. Apparently he'd been "getting into drugs" but weather that meant he couldn't find a vein anymore or he'd been caught with a joint I don't know. His parents felt this was their only option; again, whether this it was really that bad I don't know.
I do know that he says he was beaten (caned), starved, and given the full B.F. Skinner treatment for several months until he "got in line"
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Yes,... yes, I agree. It's totally unfair that sober you gets into trouble for things that drunk you did.
Unfortunately, separation of Church and State goes both ways. Which is why I said earlier, we cannot legally do anything without screwing over the Constitution. Cat's suggestion, that we change the social attitude, is really the only way.
Edit: I don't like what a lot of parents do, especially in the name of religion, but what exactly can we do?
Use semantics to craft a law that makes it illegal for a parent to forcibly send their unwilling child overseas to an institution that does not hold itself to U.S. Department of Education and Human Rights standards, for starters.
First children need to be classified as something other than basically property of the parent.
They are, at least enough for this. Child abuse and raping your children are both illegal, I don't see how making it illegal to ship them to a concentration camp requires any more human-status than those.
How, exactly, should a religious parent raise their child?
Teach her to think critically, skeptically, and honestly.
Good enough. Easier with my religion perhaps than others.
Well, I'd say that there are more fundamental filial obligations than the impartation of scientific thought. Raising a worthwhile human being, for a start. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but at least the former can be more easily learned later in life (Loren himself being an example).
Love, empathy, and intellectual adventurousness would be my fundamentals.
Oh, okay. Yeah, I was, but that shit honestly didn't make sense to me. Unitarianism is about as nonreligious as you can get if you're a kid. I'd define my childhood more as growing up with Carl Sagan, reading in my parents' bookstore.
My parents are Unitarians. Neither of them can coherently tell me what that means, but they're both really bored with their church. They mostly just go these days because they like the people. But even that's starting to fade. My dad has implied that he is an atheist in the past, though.
"Probable" is a misnomer given the circumstances of the choice to believe, as it occurs before probability can be measured or factored into the choice (see other thread for that mess).
The fundamental thing here seems to be that as long as you're teaching critical thought alongside your religious tenets, it's not really indoctrination, as long as you specifically direct your child to apply their critical thought towards your religious tenets. Learning being what it is, a clever religious parent is going to get a very long way before the child makes a point that they can't answer, and by then, I think the child has a good grasp on the ups and downs of their belief and whether to also accept it.
The camps in the Phillipines are so abhorrent they blow my mind.
You can simply teach your kids as many mythologies as possible, all in the same way. My parents told me stories from the Bible, Norse mythology, Greek mythology, etc etc. I didn't get much Hinduism or Islam but they covered the bases pretty well.
Then they told me, once I was a bit older and had read more of these texts/mythoses, that some people believed in the god or gods mentioned in the stories. I had a choice in believing in all of them, some of them, one of them, or none of them. All they asked is that I apply the same level of critical thinking to this as I did to everything else in my life.
I spent a lot of time thinking about it and ended up being agnostic for most of my life. I didn't know my parents were atheists (though my mom might be a deist, she's not sure yet) until I stopped being agnostic and came out as an atheist in college thanks to conversations, courses, books, and self-reflection.
Disclaimer: My dad was raised Jewish and my mom Catholic.
For all you that think your children has a free choice in what religion they belong to when you prack it on them.
Ask yourself this:
1. Why cant you just wait untill the kid is older and then teach him about your religion? So that he has a real choice?
Do you intend to hide your atheism/agnosticism from your children so they have a real choice?
There's a huge difference between teaching your child and telling him what your position is.
Not when they're five.
More important I think is the fact that atheism is, to me at least, not a philosophy or teaching. It's just a logical conclusion of critical thinking.
Up to a certain point you're gonna have to tell kids some things that aren't strictly or always true, but I certainly hope any five year old I contribute to is going to be able to wrap her head around, "I don't know why Tommy's family thinks that. Have you asked him?"
You can simply teach your kids as many mythologies as possible, all in the same way. My parents told me stories from the Bible, Norse mythology, Greek mythology, etc etc. I didn't get much Hinduism or Islam but they covered the bases pretty well.
Then they told me, once I was a bit older and had read more of these texts/mythoses, that some people believed in the god or gods mentioned in the stories. I had a choice in believing in all of them, some of them, one of them, or none of them. All they asked is that I apply the same level of critical thinking to this as I did to everything else in my life.
I spent a lot of time thinking about it and ended up being agnostic for most of my life. I didn't know my parents were atheists (though my mom might be a deist, she's not sure yet) until I stopped being agnostic and came out as an atheist in college thanks to conversations, courses, books, and self-reflection.
Disclaimer: My dad was raised Jewish and my mom Catholic.
Reminds me a little of my childhood.
Anyways:
To you that want to teach your kids about your religion when young, ask yourself this:
1. Why cant you teach them when theyr older, like 15?
2. How many people that werent raised christian do you seriously believe will become christians?
3. Would a kid without any kind of religious upbringing believe in god?
4. Do you think your kids are capable of chritical thinking when you teach them?
I know I believed(when a small kid) that aliens had come down to earth and been seriously documented, just because a teacher at my school showed me a picture in a comic-magazine.
Kids believe in what you tell them. I also believed that there lived a frickin monster in a vent close to the school.
Basically my point is that if given a choice, most people will be agnostic. If you teach kids that unicorns exist, but are never seen, then they will believe in it as long as a reasonable ammount of people tell them its true.
For all you that think your children has a free choice in what religion they belong to when you prack it on them.
Ask yourself this:
1. Why cant you just wait untill the kid is older and then teach him about your religion? So that he has a real choice?
Do you intend to hide your atheism/agnosticism from your children so they have a real choice?
There's a huge difference between teaching your child and telling him what your position is.
Not when they're five.
More important I think is the fact that atheism is, to me at least, not a philosophy or teaching. It's just a logical conclusion of critical thinking.
Up to a certain point you're gonna have to tell kids some things that aren't strictly or always true, but I certainly hope any five year old I contribute to is going to be able to wrap her head around, "I don't know why Tommy's family thinks that. Have you asked him?"
Good said. I mean to tell them to be critical of what people say is never bad. I believed in all kind of crap, and it made me mad when I found out about lying.
For all you that think your children has a free choice in what religion they belong to when you prack it on them.
Ask yourself this:
1. Why cant you just wait untill the kid is older and then teach him about your religion? So that he has a real choice?
Do you intend to hide your atheism/agnosticism from your children so they have a real choice?
Why not? You dont have to talk about EVERYTHING with your kid. If he asks, I might say what I think. But you dont have to bring up everything.
You have a choice not too.
I dont go to "atheist church" so my kid will never have to ask. Unless his friends do often, then if he asks, I will tell what I think.
My dad was honest with me, he simply said: It cant be proven for or against.
I had a choice, and I went with being agnostic, because its simply logical.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
edited April 2007
See, you're being hypocritical. You can't teach them atheism and then tell every other parent they can't teach their beliefs. Yes, you may think that atheism is the only logical conclusion, but not everyone agrees with you.
See, you're being hypocritical. You can't teach them atheism and then tell every other parent they can't teach their beliefs. Yes, you may think that atheism is the only logical conclusion, but not everyone agrees with you.
Surely I'm not unique in the opinion that people have the right to do some things which I disapprove of?
Regardless of that, I intended to make it quite clear I would (incredibly hypothetically) not "teach atheism" in any meaningful sense. Far be it from me to suggest you admit atheism is the natural result of critical thinking.
To you that want to teach your kids about your religion when young, ask yourself this:
1. Why cant you teach them when theyr older, like 15?
Because I'm not interested in cutting my (future) children out of an important part of my life. Because I don't want to deny them a good social experience and educational opportunity. Because I don't feel that moderate religion is harmful. Because I don't want to pay for babysitting while I go elsewhere. Because my profession is time-intensive and I would want to spend quality time with them. Because I don't want to create trust/respect issues with my child by selectively denying them access to something I do. Because I think it's unjust.
2. How many people that werent raised christian do you seriously believe will become christians?
I'm sure a Google search will unravel some statistics for you about converts. It does happen. [Edited: Sheikh Ahmed Katani claims 6 million muslims convert to Christianity worldwide each year. Not a great stat, best I can find on short notice].
3. Would a kid without any kind of religious upbringing believe in god?
It depends on whether they convert (see above) or if they like philosophy - there's an argument going on in another thread, which demonstrates that no choice is logically superior. This leaves plenty of room for choice based on personal intuition.
4. Do you think your kids are capable of chritical thinking when you teach them?
No. When I have kids, when they are old enough to have the neurological development for true critical thinking, I will without a doubt teach it to them and press my school district to hire someone to teach the rest of their friends. I will encourage them to criticize their own beliefs and show them the full range of apologetic/atheist argument. Until then, the safest way for me to know my kids are on the level is to let them learn from me.
I know I believed(when a small kid) that aliens had come down to earth and been seriously documented, just because a teacher at my school showed me a picture in a comic-magazine.
Kids believe in what you tell them. I also believed that there lived a frickin monster in a vent close to the school.
Basically my point is that if given a choice, most people will be agnostic. If you teach kids that unicorns exist, but are never seen, then they will believe in it as long as a reasonable ammount of people tell them its true.
Please prove your point. Kids applying critical thinking (a function that, I assure you, many religious people have) will not believe in unicorns so easily.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
See, you're being hypocritical. You can't teach them atheism and then tell every other parent they can't teach their beliefs. Yes, you may think that atheism is the only logical conclusion, but not everyone agrees with you.
Surely I'm not unique in the opinion that people have the right to do some things which I disapprove of?
Regardless of that, I intended to make it quite clear I would (incredibly hypothetically) not "teach atheism" in any meaningful sense. Far be it from me to suggest you admit atheism is the natural result of critical thinking.
I forgot that it was your choice about what should and shouldn't be taught. Sorry.
See, you're being hypocritical. You can't teach them atheism and then tell every other parent they can't teach their beliefs. Yes, you may think that atheism is the only logical conclusion, but not everyone agrees with you.
As long as you aren't teaching rote dogmatism, I don't see a problem with saying, when your kid asks you about god (or simply if the subject comes up), that you have yet to see any evidence for it, and go from there.
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Yes; the idea is that absence of religion is a consequence of critical thought, not a goal in and of itself.
An example of non-indoctrinating child-rearing: My folks gave me two books. One was a book of Bible Stories, the other was a book on Evolution. I even went to church several times (though I stopped going the instant I found out people actually believed the shit they were singing about -- I only came for the singing after all). It's the advantage of having an atheist father from a heavily Christian background (he was even convinced of the EASTER BUNNY until age 13), and a quietly deist mother.
I was given an actual choice. Now, they weren't worldly enough to give me access to the Ramayana and the Quran or a Daoist book, but they at least gave me the choice between the paths of science and magic, without forcing me in to one or the other. My sister, given similar choices, went for Christianity, albeit for the social scene, and doesn't get any flak from it.
That said, I hope to hell that, when she's no longer stuck in a religious area, she can slip back in to the non-magical world, but she at least had a chance, which is far more than most kids get. She at least didn't end up like my dad, a teenager believing in magical bunnies. Just magical angels and devils and the occasional leviathan.
I don't think I even have to explain how my dad's Easter Bunny thing shows how unhealthy indoctrination can be. Especially considering his intelligence is far above average.
My parents were raised catholic, and afraid that our lack of relgion in our lives would make us lose something in terms of moral thought. But instead of forcing us back, they simply talked to us a lot, which allowed us to form our own opinions without becoming apathetic.
I love Gregorian chants.
In this I consider myself fortunate, but I agonized in my younger days over the existence of God. It would keep me up at night, particularly the problem of Hell. There have been few greater feelings of relief in my life than the day I just up and tossed the whole thing out.
It's hard to justify CofE once your kids know that Henry VIII invented it because he was fed up with the Pope telling him what to do.
Good answer thanks.
You're fucking with me but seriously, how is it legal for those parents to send their kids to a concentration camp on their (not the child's, the child is usually essentially kidnapped from his own room while they sleep, handcuffed, tossed in a van and driven to a private plane) whim?
Edit: I don't like what a lot of parents do, especially in the name of religion, but what exactly can we do?
I don't think it should be really.
But my question was more on behalf of the hypothetical religious parent who isn't shipping their child to a Carribean concentration camp. As improbable as such a person might be.
Use semantics to craft a law that makes it illegal for a parent to forcibly send their unwilling child overseas to an institution that does not hold itself to U.S. Department of Education and Human Rights standards, for starters.
First children need to be classified as something other than basically property of the parent.
Teach her to think critically, skeptically, and honestly.
I do know that he says he was beaten (caned), starved, and given the full B.F. Skinner treatment for several months until he "got in line"
Good enough. Easier with my religion perhaps than others.
They are, at least enough for this. Child abuse and raping your children are both illegal, I don't see how making it illegal to ship them to a concentration camp requires any more human-status than those.
Yeah, some religions are definitively worse than others. Others are pretty much innocuous.
Well, I'd say that there are more fundamental filial obligations than the impartation of scientific thought. Raising a worthwhile human being, for a start. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but at least the former can be more easily learned later in life (Loren himself being an example).
Love, empathy, and intellectual adventurousness would be my fundamentals.
you got all scientific when you were older
edit: assuming I parsed that right
IIRC, you were raised Unitarian?
I didn't mean to be presumptive or anything... Sorry if that offended.
Every kid's parents should own a bookstore.
Ask yourself this:
1. Why cant you just wait untill the kid is older and then teach him about your religion? So that he has a real choice?
2. How many persons would become christians if their parents didnt prack it on them?
Do you realize how impossible that is?
as for the second, the majority of people in any religion are the same religion as their parents. But the question is still valid.
Do you intend to hide your atheism/agnosticism from your children so they have a real choice?
There's a huge difference between teaching your child and telling him what your position is.
Not when they're five.
Huh.
My parents are Unitarians. Neither of them can coherently tell me what that means, but they're both really bored with their church. They mostly just go these days because they like the people. But even that's starting to fade. My dad has implied that he is an atheist in the past, though.
"Probable" is a misnomer given the circumstances of the choice to believe, as it occurs before probability can be measured or factored into the choice (see other thread for that mess).
The fundamental thing here seems to be that as long as you're teaching critical thought alongside your religious tenets, it's not really indoctrination, as long as you specifically direct your child to apply their critical thought towards your religious tenets. Learning being what it is, a clever religious parent is going to get a very long way before the child makes a point that they can't answer, and by then, I think the child has a good grasp on the ups and downs of their belief and whether to also accept it.
The camps in the Phillipines are so abhorrent they blow my mind.
Then they told me, once I was a bit older and had read more of these texts/mythoses, that some people believed in the god or gods mentioned in the stories. I had a choice in believing in all of them, some of them, one of them, or none of them. All they asked is that I apply the same level of critical thinking to this as I did to everything else in my life.
I spent a lot of time thinking about it and ended up being agnostic for most of my life. I didn't know my parents were atheists (though my mom might be a deist, she's not sure yet) until I stopped being agnostic and came out as an atheist in college thanks to conversations, courses, books, and self-reflection.
Disclaimer: My dad was raised Jewish and my mom Catholic.
More important I think is the fact that atheism is, to me at least, not a philosophy or teaching. It's just a logical conclusion of critical thinking.
Up to a certain point you're gonna have to tell kids some things that aren't strictly or always true, but I certainly hope any five year old I contribute to is going to be able to wrap her head around, "I don't know why Tommy's family thinks that. Have you asked him?"
Reminds me a little of my childhood.
Anyways:
To you that want to teach your kids about your religion when young, ask yourself this:
1. Why cant you teach them when theyr older, like 15?
2. How many people that werent raised christian do you seriously believe will become christians?
3. Would a kid without any kind of religious upbringing believe in god?
4. Do you think your kids are capable of chritical thinking when you teach them?
I know I believed(when a small kid) that aliens had come down to earth and been seriously documented, just because a teacher at my school showed me a picture in a comic-magazine.
Kids believe in what you tell them. I also believed that there lived a frickin monster in a vent close to the school.
Basically my point is that if given a choice, most people will be agnostic. If you teach kids that unicorns exist, but are never seen, then they will believe in it as long as a reasonable ammount of people tell them its true.
Good said. I mean to tell them to be critical of what people say is never bad. I believed in all kind of crap, and it made me mad when I found out about lying.
Why not? You dont have to talk about EVERYTHING with your kid. If he asks, I might say what I think. But you dont have to bring up everything.
You have a choice not too.
I dont go to "atheist church" so my kid will never have to ask. Unless his friends do often, then if he asks, I will tell what I think.
My dad was honest with me, he simply said: It cant be proven for or against.
I had a choice, and I went with being agnostic, because its simply logical.
Surely I'm not unique in the opinion that people have the right to do some things which I disapprove of?
Regardless of that, I intended to make it quite clear I would (incredibly hypothetically) not "teach atheism" in any meaningful sense. Far be it from me to suggest you admit atheism is the natural result of critical thinking.
Because I'm not interested in cutting my (future) children out of an important part of my life. Because I don't want to deny them a good social experience and educational opportunity. Because I don't feel that moderate religion is harmful. Because I don't want to pay for babysitting while I go elsewhere. Because my profession is time-intensive and I would want to spend quality time with them. Because I don't want to create trust/respect issues with my child by selectively denying them access to something I do. Because I think it's unjust.
I'm sure a Google search will unravel some statistics for you about converts. It does happen. [Edited: Sheikh Ahmed Katani claims 6 million muslims convert to Christianity worldwide each year. Not a great stat, best I can find on short notice].
It depends on whether they convert (see above) or if they like philosophy - there's an argument going on in another thread, which demonstrates that no choice is logically superior. This leaves plenty of room for choice based on personal intuition.
No. When I have kids, when they are old enough to have the neurological development for true critical thinking, I will without a doubt teach it to them and press my school district to hire someone to teach the rest of their friends. I will encourage them to criticize their own beliefs and show them the full range of apologetic/atheist argument. Until then, the safest way for me to know my kids are on the level is to let them learn from me.
Please prove your point. Kids applying critical thinking (a function that, I assure you, many religious people have) will not believe in unicorns so easily.
I forgot that it was your choice about what should and shouldn't be taught. Sorry.
As long as you aren't teaching rote dogmatism, I don't see a problem with saying, when your kid asks you about god (or simply if the subject comes up), that you have yet to see any evidence for it, and go from there.