Is it child abuse for parents in Scientology to raise their kids to be Scientologists?

No, I don't think teaching children unpopular beliefs counts as child abuse. And I can't fault parents at all for teaching their children what they themselves believe. It would be very strange if Scientologists didn't teach Scientology to their children.

this clearly wasnt my question. if i was going for unpopular i could have named a small religion.

i picked scientology because its 1) demonstrably false and 2) looks like it can be very detrimental to peoples well being.

religions are more than dry beliefs. if scientology parents had their kids "audited" and sent through grueling therapy in order to get better...would that be child abuse?

Yes. Same as most other religions. For a forum example see Prax's daughter's inability to imagine absence of gods.

gah, the more i think about this response, the more it irks me. you didnt even give it much thought, but secondly, this statement isn't even true!

there are plenty of unpopular beliefs that would certainly count as child abuse. and i know dam well you're smart enough to think of some without me enumerating them.

so am i to assume you think scientology is benign enough to not count as child abuse? and if so...why not elaborate.

i understand being all for individual freedoms, but I think you just go too far with it. yeah, it's good to allow parents freedoms when raising their children, but people are generally stupid and hold some pretty crazy ideas. i think that the way most people raise their children counts as child abuse. while on an intellectual level i don't feel that laws should be passed to regulate how parents raise their kids, on an emotional level, i wish this was the case. at least from my experience, ideas put in my head by my parents really ****ed me up and i wish every day that they had never raised me. i hate the idea that parents "own" their children and can do whatever they want with them. that is not right, and parents shouldn't put stupid harmful ideas in their kids' heads because that's what they were raised to believe. that's just a continuation of their abuse as a child. the abused child grows up to abuse his/her child.

edit: i still don't think that what parents teach their children should be regulated by the government, but some things that parents do to/teach their kids is absolutely 100% child abuse, in some cases, worse than physical abuse. to say it's not is extremely naive and, to me, terrifying.

Obviously. Even far worse than fundamentalist christian or jew or muslim.

is it though? what is the difference between scientology and christianity? they both tell people that you are born evil and need to be cleansed by the church to be "saved." the only difference is that scientology was created recently enough that we know that it is bullcrap. so i guess any mental anguish that comes from ridicule of being a scientologist would be the difference

Raising kids as atheists seems abusive to me. I do not really pay any attention to Scientology so I do not have much of an opinion on that.

Dont make claims such as this without stating your reasons.

well raising your kids to believe that any religion/atheism is correct would be child abuse, really. the only proper way to go about things would be to let them make their own decision with minimal exposure to many various ideas. of course, a parents views will always have an impact on their child's views but that is far different from beating it into their heads that your way is the only way

I don't know enough about Scientology but I'm inclined to think that it's worse than bringing up a child as Christian, on average. Christianity has had plenty of time to become watered down. Giving a child a Christian upbringing has more to do with bringing them up with a modern set of morals with extra emphasis on sharing, helping others and generally being nice. In other words, they use The Bible to reinforce the values that most civilised people see as good, but ignore the more ridiculous teachings that go against their sense of morality.

With Scientology, there hasn't been the time for this dilution to occur. I can't conceive of a moderate Scientologist who definitely believes in Scientology but doesn't really his life that way. I think a Scientologist is way more likely to actively live his life according to his bat**** crazy beliefs than is a Christian, and for this reason, I think you could more reasonably consider it child abuse.

To be honest it didn't require much thought. Parents teaching their religion to their children isn't child abuse, in my opinion. Plenty of secular humanists keep saying it is but I don't agree. It might not be my idea of optimal parenting, I might not like what they're teaching, but I don't see it as child abuse. So that's my (little thought required) answer to your question.

We clearly have very different ideas about what constitutes child abuse. Teaching them false beliefs as if they were facts wouldn't count for me. I think parents should be able to teach their children nearly anything. Ok, maybe they shouldn't be allowed to teach their children that they can fly, and then point them to the nearest cliff to test their wings. That seems like murder. But I can't think of any beliefs that actual parents teach their children that I'd call child abuse. Even disreputable beliefs like "We are the master race, the dark people are inferior" - I think parents should be allowed to teach that to their children. I would personally avoid people who think that way, but I defend their right to teach their children what they believe.

I don't think it's child abuse. If you want to call it child abuse, the burden of proof is on you to say why it is.

im not even entirely convinced scientology is a religion.

ive made no claims one way or the other. OP was a question. my issue was why you even bothered bringing up popularity...as though thats somehow relevant.

youre a bit confused on what i asked. i didnt ask what freedoms should parents have in raising their kids. i asked what amounts to abuse. those are two very different questions.

i agree that parents should be able to teach their children whatever they want (for the most part.) but thats not what i ****ing asked.

to evil steve...is it child abuse when religious parents pray for their child to get better when ill, rather than seek medical attention?

Popularity or lack thereof isn't relevant to your question. Fair enough.

Ok, well I assumed you asked the question about child abuse because, if X constitutes child abuse, X should not be allowed. At least that was the connection I made, and I would expect most people to make that connection. So I thought this thread was ultimately about whether or not parents should be allowed to teach Scientology to their children. I'm actually not interested in the child abuse question if it has no connection to the question of whether or not parents should be allowed to teach Scientology. So I'm done here, feel free to ignore everything I posted in this thread.

before you go, please answer the above question. is that abuse?

I think generally parents should be allowed to insist on whatever type of medical treatment they think is right for their children (or no medical treatment) - but I'm not very sure of myself here, and I can think of extreme cases where I might go the other way. If there's a highly effective, low risk medical treatment available and the child will almost certainly die without it, I'd have a hard time defending the parents' rights to take the child to a faith healer instead.

Like I said previously, I'm not interested in the definition of child abuse in and of itself. Just the question of whether or not the parents should be allowed to decide on their child's medical treatment.

That depends on how fundamentalist your talking.

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fair enough. thats still an intereseting question.

as i take it, you draw the line further to the extreme (in favor of greater personal liberties id assume) than i do, in what parents can and can not do with their children.

while i dont dismiss this outright, i question why children dont have the right to avoid having their minds tampered with while so impressionable. you said this extends even beyond religious teachings to knowably harmful things like the racist one you mentioned.

doesn't a civil society bear some responsibility in doing the best it can in keeping children free from not only physical abuse but psychological, which can be equally tramatic, if not more so, in the long term?

Yeah, raising kids who can think for themselves is extremely abusive. This is all "raising as an atheist" entails, because for the gazillion'th time atheism makes 0 claims, it's not a religion, it's not a philosophy, it's not a worldview.

LOL

There's a huge intellectual chasm between "think for oneself" and atheism. There are, in fact, many people who think for themselves and happen to reach a conclusion regarding the existence of God.

Atheism makes zero claims; this is true. This also means it makes zero conclusions. Therefore, atheism is an intellectual void. Raising a kid "as an atheist" therefore means teaching the kid nothing at all.

So whether you want to admit it or not, you really mean that you want kids to be raised "scientific materialist."

You dont raise a kid to be an atheist they are that by default.

Cite some sources.

Cite some that say they aren't. There are and have been cultures without Gods.