It's always seemed to me that if god is real, and the children will have an 'eternal life' with him, then it really wouldn't hurt to allow children to explore all the world's belief systems and then when they're 18 or so, teach them the 'truth'. What's 18 years compared to eternity? The main advantages of waiting being that they would then have come to god willingly and that they'll be intellectually more capable of understanding what they're being told.

Teaching children about Gods isn't like teaching them to cross the road safely, there are many god beliefs and no one knows if any of them are the 'truth' so is it really fair or ethical to teach it to children as if it were undeniable?

I'm willing to take this approach with my children, in fact that's exactly what I'm doing, is there a reason why religious parents wouldn't do it?

No idea. But - kind of the point of the article about parents lying - I have very little reason to believe that those same parents wouldn't find some other way of pressuring their kids into compliance if the devil-narrative wasn't available. So the devil is in this case just a token for archieving the underlying objective of the parent. That shouldn't be something the religion has to account for, but the parent, no?

Basically, my argumentative strategy regarding the question about kids and religion goes something like this:

1. Parents mess with their kids. Get over it.
2. Kids need and want to be educated, guided, shaped. They want role-models etc. etc. Denying them that probably isn't ideal.
3. Religion is one of the areas parents influence (and hence: mess) with their kids.
4. Sometimes that can go horribly wrong. Often it doesnt. Same as with any parenting style and belief system.

Yes, well, kids are easily impressed. My cousin of 6 years can't really watch any of the movie-adaptations of Grimm's fairy tales because he gets nightmares from them. He just doesn't take witches well.

Seems likely that the preacher guy wasn't the most sensitive type. There are numerous other biblical stories, though, that'll make little kids eyes shine. If I had a bunch of 6yr olds and would tell the story of noah ark and let each of pick some animal to draw/act/research etc. etc. there'd be bliss in the classroom. So why is him scaring them with a scary story something about the religion he took the story from and not about his "teaching skills"?

In the day and age of "The Walking Dead", "Resident Evil I through MCVII" and Zombie iPhone games? o_O

You didn't address my suggestion about leaving religious 'truth' till children, well... aren't children anymore.

The guy in my example was a lay preacher and the Head of the School is a Christian, married to a Vicar. The use of the Devil puppet was explicitly condoned in a religious context and I think that's probably representative.

I don't think this is an acceptable attitude. Many of our problems are the result of childhood 'influence'. Why should I have to 'get over it'?

I'm not denying them those things. I'm being fair and unbiased and not urging a particular 'belief' system on them. I still teach the skills they need to negotiate life though and I don't consider those the same things as a belief system. Articulating the difference, and agreeing common assumptions, is where this discussion keeps breaking down though.

Yes.

I'd say that often it does in that even the smallest influence is helping to perpetuate a system that IMO we'd be better off without. Some may see it as harmless but I don't, you know this.

so you agree that it was perhaps inappropriate for the age range? (5-7)

I don't let my kids watch those programs or play those games either.... That's not the point though. I'm arguing that the religious context context allowed a massive amount of leeway where the story subject matter was concerned and I don't think the same leeway would be allowed in most other contexts.

I wouldn't be allowed to go into a primary school history lesson and graphically describe the hanging to death of a pirate the way our local vicar used a lump hammer and a handful of 6 inch nails to illustrate the crucifixion of Jesus in a school service I went to see one time.

I would seriously question that. Whenever we turn to some kind of example, you bring up your school vikar or RE-teacher that does some crazy **** that makes me just go I realize that living in the former GDR, one of the most atheist parts of europe, my own perspective is likely not representive either, but I can at least submit that during my ten-or-so years in university (in the western part of germany) I've met what is likely a representative sample of what graduating RE-teachers in Germany are like from, say, 20 years ago on.

So, while I totally believe these to be your experiences, I have a hard time accepting them to be the norm. If they were, I can't see how religion could possibly increase mental health and happiness overall.
Somewhat flippantly phrased on my part, I agree. I'm simply saying that parents are human too and make mistakes in their kids upbringing basically by default. Mistakes, no less, that often aren't even recognizable as such at the moment of making them, and, occasionaly, simply being the result of the parent not being able to cope with the situation. It's certainly preferrable if that didn't happen, but it does and always will. So at some point this "I don't want to harm my children" attitude is just turning into idle handwringing.

If you want to argue that religion is one of the harmful influences parents CAN do something about - fine, but then I'd like to see childhood obesity, distorted body images, decreasing motor, language, social skills etc. etc. etc. included to as well and argued against with the same kind of fervor. There are much bigger fish to fry here first, imo, that have immediate harmful consequences (say, smoking parents). And once we do include those other "mistakes", I'd argue that religion is a rather minor one (and this would obv. be something you likely disagree with and one wuold have to to have a discussion about).

Sure.

Your local vicar seems to be quite nuts.

^_^
one day

Oh, and btw - the Israel Musem in Jerusalem exhibits one ancle with a nail in it from the roman period. Turns out, the feet were nailed on from the side, through the achilles heel, not through the front as most crucifixion depictions suggest. So he was likely wrong on historical counts too. You should tell him next time.

True, and further to what you said, it was also common to use a large mallet to smash the shin bones of crucifixation victims to prevent them from using their feet to push themselves up to take a breath. Unable to do that, they would suffocate to death.

The local vicar is actually female, just for the sake of accuracy.

The real problem with your view is that you are too narrowly focused on beliefs. In fact, you introduce bias and assumptions just as much in the kind of skills you think they need to negotiate life as in what beliefs you teach them. If you were various kinds of religious, you would have a drastically different view of what skills are needed to negotiate life.

I agree there are other biblical stories more appropriate for young children, but I have never thought of Noah's Ark as one of them. It strikes me as one of the most horrific stories in the Bible - and it has a lot of competition.

Earlier you wondered about children's Bibles. I checked one of ours, given to my son on his christening. The cover does show a cute drawing of a sheep, but the content is standard. All the horrors of Leviticus and Revelation and the rest are in there along with the thoughtful guidance of Jesus.

And I agree that MB's school Vicar is not representative, but she is also not alone. We have a local priest who regularly reminds young children that despite the Catholic Church's softening position, hell is real and it is horrible. He disagrees that Jews and Muslims can get to heaven, so the kids will just have to get used to the fact that some of their friends will suffer eternal punishment.

"It strikes me as one of the most horrific stories in the Bible - and it has a lot of competition."

I was basing my comment on the possibility to focus on the cuddly furry cuties, rather than the god figure that lets mankind drown because they pissed him off.

All I'm talking about is the normal telling of a biblical story and that sort of thing goes on in classrooms and 'Sunday schools' throughout the Christian influenced areas of our small blue planet. His puppet wasn't scary, no more than Punch & Judy puppet, it was the way he described the devil appearing to jesus that had the kids jaw's dropping.

You know I don't like to rely on personal experience as proof of anything and I accept that my experience is not universal. It's still what I would consider the norm from a lifetime of exposure to christian 'teachings' in the western world. I'm sure in places it's probably worse, for example 'Bible schools' or other Theological centers of learning.

Yes of we do. My decision about how to approach religion and my children wasn't so much about preventing them from personal harm, it was an objection to what I saw as highly unethical urging of a belief system on them and a desire to allow them to make their own decisions rather than agree to things that they didn't really understand as small children. It was about fairness and fighting a biased and immoral institutional recruiting system.

As I see it.

I do protect my children from all of those too. None of them are overweight, I constantly help them to speak properly, I correct table manners and social skills etc etc and I monitor their influences as much as I can.

In any case, I consider religion to be a much greater external threat to their well being, because of the effect it has on a global scale, than any of those issues.

Funny you should say that, it seems to be the general consensus even amongst the Christians that I know. Ironically, the best thing I could from my perspective is leave her to it since she seems to be driving people from the church.

I can't find it now but there used to be a letter online that she wrote as a response to some local residents objecting, on grounds of lack of planning permission, to a large metal cross she erected outside her church. She said (I paraphrase)

"There was a time when you could erect crosses across this country without question"

And

"I bet the Romans didn't have to apply for planning permission for their crucifixions"

I was basing my comment on the possibility to focus on the cuddly furry cuties, rather than the god figure that lets mankind drown because they pissed him off.

Fair enough. Then again, if you read Grimms fairy tales, they are pretty much loaded with all kinds of gruesome, too. Same with the Struwwelpeter, one of our most common children books. They cut the poor blokes fingers off because he refuses to cut his nails. So, I think that up to, say 30-50ish years ago, the awareness of what kind of horrific stuff we put into children stories was much less developed than now. This applies to all kinds of children literature, obv., and anything religious usually has a longer-than-usual turnover period.

Because religion exists, I''m forced to make my children believe one of them? Obviously the answer to that is no and since I don't want to do the opposite, to say that 'there are no gods it's all make believe' I'm forced into the path I'm now following.

I fail to see how teaching them about all the religions, and secularism, and then allowing them to choose for themselves when they're old enough to actually understand the choices, I could possibly be making a mistake?

how do you get to this from what Original position posted?

Of course. That's how it is normally presented. My kids had a toy ark with pairs of animals. I found it better to focus on the counting and sorting opportunities instead of the rest of the story. But kids will figure it out, eventually.

No question there are many other scary stories intended for children. And not all children react the same way. Part of parenting is the awareness of a child's readiness and potential reaction to stories like these. But I'm not surprised you used Noah as an example. It is often used as a "children's story" from the Bible. One of my problems with biblical stories over something like Grimm is that, even though other stories might describe danger or harm to a child, the Bible message often includes direct consequences to the actual child hearing the story. That is a meaningful difference.

theres a possibility the people prior to the flood were eating each other and defiling themselves with animals and worshiping strange gods and all kinds of things you can only imagine what god felt to see his creation like such, not only that but noah preached to the people what was coming and he built a huge ark right in front of them and they still didnt believe him

That's why I brought up the Struwwelpeter. It's a number of children stories that deal with "childhood deseases" such as kids not wanting to eat stuff, not wash, comb etc. touching stuff they shouldnt and generally disobey. And the consequences are horrific. The kid not cutting nails gets its fingers chopped off. The kid not wanting to eat is starving until he's literally a walking line. The kid touching stuff they shouldn't ends up buring to death within its own home Etc.

It's seriously one of germanys most widely read childrens books, and it's poisonous pedagogy in its purest form. Still, generations of kids turned out fine (more or less), despite having been raised with the struwwelpeter in the back of their heads.

None of this, obviously, is an argument FOR scary stories or something. If anything, it's an argument for "proportionality".

Telling kids scary make believe stories is not the same as telling them the the devil is real and if they color outside the lines they will eternally burn.

Assuming kids know the difference...

Pure speculation by me, but what are the possibilities of a link between this type of child rearing , and a resulting society which produces an adolf hitler and an obedient population that follows him?

I guess 19th and early 20th century, ALL countries in europe pretty much followed this method of child rearing ( children are evil, and must have the evil beaten or coerced out of them, obedience is a priority)?

I did. I would think most do since parents will often tell them.

Well the possibilities are endless. If you're trying to formulate any substantive links - good luck.

More or less. Prussian ideals likely didn't help matters but if you're trying to establish reliable and substantive links, I think there are better candidates than a somewhat oppresive approach to child rearing.

Well, then I'm sorry your parents were crazy and I put you forwad as case in point that kids usually turn out ok despite their parents screw-ups.

The Catholic Church told me mostly. My parents didn't bring up the devil much.

As far as me getting past the Church's immoral teaching to my young mind. Sure i turned out fine but thats not always the case. Some people arent so lucky.

Right. I think the same holds true for people engaging in eating fruit and vegetables. And exercising.

I mean, srsly, what kind of an argument is that supposed to be...

(The catholic church told you to color within the lines lest the devil takes you? o_O)