You kind of waffle here, but based on your later statements it is clear that you think some forms of child abuse should be legal. I disagree, but mainly on a conceptual level. That is, I tend to think of child abuse as mistreatment of a child that rises to the level of a crime. Obviously, since you don't think that all child abuse is criminal, you disagree.

If that is the worst thing I've said, I'm doing pretty well. I heard you say we should take away children etc. when you claimed that religious instruction is child abuse. Since I hold the view that child abuse is a crime (like, e.g. murder is a crime, stealing is a crime, is a crime, rape is a crime, etc.), if you claim that religious instruction is child abuse, then I think it is a crime that should be made illegal.

Also, since I don't think that the only thing that the state or individuals in society should do is punish crimes, if I don't think that religious instruction is a crime (which I don't), then it doesn't follow that I think we should ignore it.

I don't really see how you could have a psychological study showing what you say here, but I'd be interested in the ones you are thinking of. Incidentally, some countries (e.g. the U.S.S.R) and some philosophers (e.g. Plato) have made or recommended making it illegal for parents to instruct their children in their chosen religion.

Also, I agree with you that we should educate people, "raise awareness," etc. about some false religious beliefs. I also don't think that religious instruction = child abuse.

My main point (which you think is the worst thing I've said) is that child abuse should be considered a criminal activity. As such, we need to distinguish it from other things that potentially harm children, but are not criminal--such as religious instruction. This is not to deny that religious instruction can or does harm children. It is to deny that it is not the kind of action that should be made illegal.

Children are not born with an inherent ability to do science. Thus, when parents train them in such a way that they will not do science, they are not "taking away" this ability, they are just making it more difficult for them to grow as a person in a particular way (i.e. to become more self-actualized). Also, let's not act as if all religious instruction is fundamentalist in the way you describe here.


Actually, I was worried that you were defining "severe" religious instruction as religious instruction that leads to bad outcomes. That would be tautological and uninteresting. In my experience there is no correlation between happiness and the "amount" of childhood religious training. Now, obvious my experience is sort of worthless here, but then I am not using it to support my other beliefs. If you have actual evidence showing that the amount of religious instruction is relevant to future happiness, please show it, I am open to being convinced.

youtube? thats your idea of convincing evidence of God's miraculous healings? I'm shocked God hasn't struck you down with lightening for making Him look like a ******ed buffoon.

btw:

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...m+healing&aq=f

sorry, when people ask for cases of healing, they usually want documented cases that have some support from either scientists or doctors confirming that it is indeed both:

1. A miraculous healing
2. A healing that can be attributed to the prayer to the Christian God.

Perhaps you might find this study interesting (but its probably too advanced for your feeble brain):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12082681...h-heart_health

your God is indeed quite humorous.

iamunLUCKY,

How do you feel knowing that millions of good, kind, caring, generous people will be tortured for eternity for not being Christian? Do you think it’s just?

Its the only reason im still talking on this forum. Yes, it is very just b/c it is our choice whether we want to be with him or not.

Everyone seems to be bashing me but all they need to do is repent and ask for the holy spirit and really want it. No one will understand unless they at least try to do that. If nothing happens then you all have a valid point not to believe.

Ah, I think you are confused over what it means to "have control." Two points, first of all, the amount of control that "society" allows parents is not completely up to society because it is either practically speaking impossible for society to take some control away, or because if society tried to take away some forms of control then society would distintegrate.

Second, I am not asking who gets to decide how much control parents have over their children, I am asking how much control should parents have over their children. Our answer to this second question influences the amount of control ceded by society to parents. It is sort of like when your boss gives you a project at work. The amount of autonomy given to you to complete the project is up to your boss, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible for your boss to give you some autonomy.

Tried it for 15+ years and nothing happened.

I guess I have a valid point to not believe?

whether u really tried or not idk, but i guess so....

Here's my scores:

70/96 overall.
28/28 for Critical Existential Thinking.
17/20 for Personal Meaning Production.
9/28 for Transcendental Awareness.
12/20 for Conscious State Expansion.

A couple of comments. First, this is not analogous to an IQ test (sorry Splendour). Instead, it is more like a personality test, like Myers-Briggs. Second, many of the questions were ill-formed. For instance, I scored twice as high as bunny on "conscious state expansion," but yet I think that almost all such things are hallucinations or illusory while bunny bases his theism on them. I suspect that my higher score is due to the fact that I believe that we can have "higher" states of consciousness by taking drugs, which I imagine the author wanted to rule out. Similarly with the questions on Transcendental Awareness. Since I don't think there is any transcendental anything, it seems like I should have scored lower. However, the questions are phrased in such a way that my correct answer is probably misleading.
For example, one question is: "I am highly aware of the nonmaterial aspects of life." I am highly aware of these aspects. That is, I am highly aware that there are no such aspects.

I just want to highlight this point, as it was my thought as I read through the last however-many-posts.

You are absolutely right. You don't instill any views in your children. Not just religious, but any. If I have kids one day, I will not raise them as atheists. I will only encourage critical, independent thinking, provide them with references (holy books, criticism of holy books, praise of holy books, etc), and leave them the choice whether to read any of those books or not, and whether to believe in any of those books or not.

As for my assumption that god does not exist, nobody has ever presented any evidence whatsoever for his existence, other than personal experiences (which are worthless to anybody who hasn't experienced them; not to mention all the psychological explanations for such experiences, without invoking any divinity).

Look, I think the problem is that we are talking about two different "child abuses" here. When you say "child abuse", you mean the legal term which means "a crime that has to be severely punished". When I say child abuse, I mean (a) child (b) abuse: abusing children in the most literal sense. If you ask me whether it should be put in the same legal category as child rape, I would definitely say 'no'. But if you ask me, independently of legal bureaucracies, whether indoctrinating children in religion COULD BE child abuse, I would definitely say 'yes', and this is the case more often than most people suspect.

And when we are having such moral discussions, I think the best thing we could do is completely ignore the legal status of actions, because it is the morals that determine what is legal or not, not the other way around. It is obviously legal to stone women in Iran. Does that mean we shouldn't care about the stoning there, even though by our standards it is a horrible thing to do?


There are numerous studies which show that reducing the probability of a bad behavior by punishing it or increasing the probability of a good behavior by rewarding it (the so called operant conditioning) is one of the least effective techniques (contrary to what behaviorists like John Watson thought and even to some extent Bobby Skinner thought). Social psychologists have been investigating many other techniques which prove to be so much more effective. The topic of persuasion is to me the most interesting part of social psychology anyway, and I think even people who don't like psychology in general would find the results obtained there very intriguing.

I was talking about raising awareness that religious indoctrination is child abuse, not raising awareness that religious beliefs are false. This is a completely different area.




Children are born with the predisposition to develop abilities to do science. They are also born with innate curiosity about a lot of things. Parents can suppress both traits with improper education. As for the bolded part, there are a lot of parents indoctrinate their children in the fundamentalist way I described. I already pointed out that not all religious teaching is child abuse, so I don't see a reason to keep repeating it. I brought this up in the first place in relation to iamunLUCKY. From his writings you can clearly see that he is one of those unfortunate people to have been born in fundamentalist surroundings and it is clear that he has been abused. Maybe my main mistake when I first brought it up was that instead of saying "You are an example of why religious indoctrination IS child abuse", I should have said "...CAN BE child abuse".

Okay, here's an example:

"These discoveries may lead us to an understanding of the geneticsusceptibility to OCD and give us a better understanding of what suppressesthe expression of the disporder in genetically vulnerable individuals.Correlational research suggests that the triggers for OCD may lie inattachment schema and other early childhood experience. From the attachment and social learning perspectives, the disorder in children is associated with parenting that instills religious scrupulosity, an excessive sense of responsibility, or exposure to experiences that seem, at face value, to stimulate magical hypothesizing (e.g., a child’s wishing that his fatherwould die violently coinciding with the father being killed in a caraccident)."

Arden, J. & Linford, L. (2009). Brain-based Therapy for Adults, chap. 9, p, 192. New York: Wiley.

Here are some other references, in case you're interested in reading original research:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8730535
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs...ournalCode=cap

I can agree with this statement. What I was primarily concerned with was your seeming identification of religious indoctrination with child abuse. However, I agree that some forms of religious indoctrination constitute child abuse.

You need to understand that it's far from obvious that Christianity is true. People from other religions believe theirs is true with just as much confidence and conviction as you do about Christianity. You can convince yourself that Christianity is true and the rest is false, but every other religion has people just like you doing the exact same thing with their religion, for pretty much the exact same reasons.

You have faith that you're a part of the correct religion, other religious people have just as much faith as you that theirs is correct. You can say with a straight face, that those kind, compassionate people, should their faith turn out to be misplaced, be tortured for eternity? So after 80 years of getting tortured, its still not justice... 200 years of torture? Nope. 1000? Nope. 100 billion, trillion, trillion years of getting tortured? Still not even close to enough punishment... All for the comparatively miniscule time they spent on Earth having just as much faith as you do, just as much conviction its true and just as logical reasons for believing as you?

Meanwhile a horrible paedophile that has raped and tortured a number of kids, who before dying is genuinely sorry for his actions and accepts Jesus as his saviour... spends all that time in heaven?

I think your belief in such things is morally indefensible.

Actually, I disagree that a belief is necessarily a moral judgment. If he believes that Christianity is uniquely and exactly a description of the way things are, then that is independent of personal morality. There are many things in existence that are different then my moral desires, but to reject that realization based on my morality is just blindness. Better to accept the reality and do the best that can be done to deal with the situation, improving it where possible.

You could argue that his belief is irrational or illogical or lacks self consistency. But calling it morally indefensible is incorrect.

That’s what I’m asking him – whether he thinks it’s just, I already know he considers it true. I too don’t think a belief is necessarily a moral judgment. I’m not saying he can’t believe what he believes unless he thinks it’s moral. If he came to the conclusion: ‘yea I believe that’s just how it is, personally it seems very unfair to me, but God knows best’, then fine.

However, it stands to reason that it is more difficult to believe in the morality of a God which is in direct opposition to what you, as a human, consider moral. So if he was to come to that conclusion, I’d probably expect him to relax his notion that all non-Christians burn in hell for eternity and come up with something more morally defensible, in his own mind.

While I do think his belief is irrational, illogical and lacking in consistency, I don’t think he can defend the morality of all non-Christians burning in hell for eternity. Again, that’s not to say he has to. But it’s intellectually very difficult to hold a judgment of morality that differs from the God you believe in.

I suppose there's a line somewhere between indoctrinating and exposing a child to a worldview/belief and I'd say exposing is more right and indoctrinating more wrong, if that makes any sense. I don't know how you'd get around the practical reality of parents presenting beliefs that they think are beneficial to their life in a positive manner and vice versa, though.

As to exposure, there is evidence (studies) that religion can be beneficial to a person's wellbeing and social adjustment along with a great many people claiming religion adds to their life in a positive manner, so would it constitute child abuse for an atheist (weak/strong/militant) to not expose his child to religion in a completely objective manner?

References?

I'd rather avoid the trees for the forest, but 30 seconds on google:
http://www.uic.edu/classes/psych/Hea...sy,%202003.pdf

…Third, in a number of investigations,
higher levels of an intrinsic religious orientation
have been associated with better mental health, including
self-esteem, meaning in life, family relations, a sense of
well-being, and lower levels of alcohol abuse, drug abuse,
and sexual promiscuity (see, e.g., Donahue, 1985; Payne,
Bergin, Bielema, & Jenkins, 1991)….

…In sum, it is now known that religion is linked to
physical and mental health.


Edit: To avoid the debate over studies, let me just pose the question hypothetically: if studies show that religion can have a positive impact on the individual, then is the atheist committing child abuse by not exposing his child to religion in an objective and encouraging manner?

See the thing about other religions is that they just claimed to know God with no proof other than just saying it. Jesus has plenty of proof that he is God in the flesh with all of his miracles.

You cant work for justice by burning in hell b/c its about having a relationship with God. By Jesus all sins are washed away, not mohammad, buddha, etc. I cant go to random persons house and be like "hey can i come in? I just did a bunch of good deeds today". They obv wouldnt let me in b/c i never knew them and my good deeds are irrelevant.

As for the guy who tortured kids. Lets say he did it and realized hes wrong and then found Jesus. If the Bible said if u torture kids u will NEVER get into heaven. Why would he ever stop doin it? We all fall short to the glory of God and we all sin. So if it said "u sin, u get hell" then not a single person would ever make it to heaven.

How many other religions have you studied? Can we assume, for instance, that you've read the Koran, are aware of any miracles listed in it?

Its very clear that you don't know the slightest about the claims of other religions so it just makes you look really ignorant and uneducated when you make claims like the one above.

there's really no point in exploring the rest of your post when your first sentence demonstrates your complete ignorance on that which you speak. (the sad thing is you posted a day or two ago that none of the other religions had miracles like Christianity. Someone posted to you a link outlining the hundreds of miracles in the texts of the Muslim Faith... proving that you were clearly wrong and ignorant. Despite someone proving you are wrong, you continue to ignore the readily available evidence that you're wrong and repeat your ignorance on the subject.

It would be more interesting if you came with a viewpoint that came from education instead of making up stuff that's wrong (or repeating what others have told you that you've just assumed are true.)

I looked at the website and it talked about miracles of math and stuff that werent even miracles lol. Please name one miracle of the quran or muhhamad, other than "the book itself". Please no link

and do u really have to tell me im dumb in every post u make lolol. I KNOW u think im dumb lol

Well, my original response was to note that I think this is inaccurate and unhelpful language to use about religious instruction. I agree with you that there are many forms of child abuse beyond just sexual abuse. I do think that "child abuse" has connotations in ordinary conversations that imply a high level of harm to a child (I would say a high enough level that it should be punishable by law, or at least where the child should be removed from the parent, but maybe you disagree). For instance, there are many instances of bad parenting that can harm children that I think most people would not constitute "child abuse." Thus I would be cautious to equate "child abuse" with any instance of causing harm to your child.

Second, I strongly disagree with you about the relevance of legality. Just as a matter of philosophy, I am a legal positivist, which means that I don't think that morality determines what is legal. I also think that laws actually can determine what is moral in some cases (although my views here are complicated and probably not relevant).

But none of that matters. If you go back to what I originally claimed, it was about the morality of the issue, not just its legality. That is, I claimed that all child abuse should be illegal, not that all child abuse is illegal. So if we go to a country where it is legal to beat your child, I would still consider beating your child "child abuse," because I think that beating your child should be illegal. In fact, this is why we should care about the legal aspect--we should try to change the law so that it is illegal to beat your child. Similarly with regards to stoning women in Iran (if that is actually legal, of which I'm not sure.).

I'm aware of some of this research on positive v. negative reinforcements, etc. However, I don't think it obviously applies to criminal punishment in the way you suggest. I don't think that the main purpose of criminal punishment should be to rehabilitate the criminal, but to provide a deterrent to other people committing that crime.

Yes, but religious indoctrination is not child abuse. Isn't this the point of your acknowledgment that you should be using the locution "can be" rather than "is"?

A couple of points. First, I think your assertion about iamunLUCKY is extremely inappropriate and that you should refrain from such statements in the future. Second, while you did earlier point out that not all religious teaching is child abuse, since your usage of these terms (both "religious teaching" and "child abuse") have remained fairly unclear (at least to me), I am still not sure what you think the connection between the two is. Your main evidence seems to be that it causes children to be less inclined to a future career as a scientist, which really doesn't seem to me like child abuse.


Thanks for this, I'll look at these articles. I'll note that at least the quoted statement does not support your assertion that the amount of childhood religious instruction negatively correlates with happiness or mental health.

I strongly disagree with almost every single thing you’ve said on this forum. Perhaps this is the first time in your life you’ve spoken to non-Christians? You don’t seem to have any reasonable answers to the majority of points raised... I don’t say that just because they don’t satisfy me, but I don’t think they would satisfy any intelligent Christian.

I disagree b/c "intelligent christians" base their faith on what the Bible teaches. It isnt based on anything else, but the Word of God. Its not me you disagree with, its the Bible.

No, it's you I disagree with. We also have very different definitions of intelligent.