I think Lestat is making a tactical error here. Child abuse is a crime with a specific legal definition. We can disagree with this definition, or think this definition should cover a broader range of activities, but we are still talking about a very specific type of wrongness. It ends up being pretty difficult to show that teaching kids that hell is real is child abuse.

However, he could still argue that it is immoral to do so even if it is not child abuse. Everyone agrees that child abuse is immoral, which is probably why advocates against the teaching of hell are tempted to classify hell-teaching as a form of child abuse. But that is just laziness, there are lots of ways we can raise children that are immoral or wrong that aren't child abuse.

For instance, lying is generally thought to be immoral, but yet many people think it is okay to lie to children. Really? Why?

Might as well post links about this, too.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...-alone/358631/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/sc...19tierney.html

Might as well include this one then:

http://quillette.com/2015/12/01/why-...robably-wrong/

and especially this book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ie=UTF8&btkr=1

The modern conception of hell being endless torture in fire is one that is based more in Platonic philosophy and writings like Dante's inferno than anything found in the Bible.

I'd argue that the modern conception of hell isn't even in the Bible.

Yeah, there might be some form of punishment for the evil at death, but I believe it is
temporary, and not some endless torture in fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilationism

I think this violates Dawkins argument, which in turn I think can be shown to be not coherent.

Dawkins seems to mean to point out that we should test such theories in regard to that which allowed for survival (or in other words groups or entities that survived did so through the mechanisms that allowed them to).

If the human need to make sense of things is something that helped or allowed us to survive then it couldn't be that missed placed metaphorical explanations are the root of this.

These things seemingly act as a pacifier to our want to know. But admittedly they are the opposite of knowing. I think again we arrive at a system that takes complexity and transfers the important points through simplicity so that we might survive without actually knowing.

@Aaron W.; @Original Position

Of course there are gray areas and what's legal now might not be in the future. That's the whole point of raising awareness that telling children they're going to hell if they're not good is tantamount to abuse. Even if most don't consider it as such now. But hey, corporal punishment in schools used to be okay too once upon a time. I'm on board with making advances and trying to get this changed as well. Threatening children with eternal hell fire is NOT okay. It's a form of abuse.

You seem to be missing the point that your argument is formed around a terribly impossible definition:

I hope you are successful in your endeavors. 30-60 years ago systematic child abuse was much more rampant in religious based private schools, then more secular based public schools. Just the thought of a power-tripping nun/teacher paddling a child of mine or possibly breaking a knuckle of theirs with a ruler on their desk, makes me very sad and very angry. And yes, my mother had two broken knuckles from such an act 50 years ago.

And the answer is absolutely NO, to those supporting the fact that religious teachings (like going to hell for bad behavior) has served our society well over the centuries and somehow kept us morally scatheless. Only those with religious beliefs believe that morality has anything to do with being religious. It doesn't.

Just because you are religious does not mean you are moral.

Just because you are moral, doesn't mean you are religious.

Until we start concentrating on being good, moral, upstanding citizens first, rather than being religious in order to be those things, we are cannot properly move forward as a society.

If being taught that hell is real, was traumatising for you as a child....

And if being taught that hell is real, is now considered 'abuse' to you as an adult...

Your parents did more wrong in failing to properly teach and prepare you for the cold/harsh world you're about to enter, than they did, in teaching you that hell is real.

It's fine to blame religion for everything if that takes your fancy. But just sometimes, consider the radical notion that religion has nothing to do with how you are, or how you cope with things.

In fact, as far as I'm aware, it's a minor variable in psychological literature.

Is this position orthodox amongst social scientists? I know little of the field, but I thought it was well established for instance that socioeconomic status plays a huge role; if so, it seems surprising to me that parenting choices wouldn't.

Its not modern.


"The early Church Fathers were also absolutely firm on the reality of an eternal hell, as the following quotes show."


Ignatius of Antioch

"Corrupters of families will not inherit the kingdom of God. And if they who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupt by evil teaching the faith of God for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified? A man become so foul will depart into unquenchable fire: and so will anyone who listens to him" (Letter to the Ephesians 16:1–2 [A.D. 110]).

Can you provide another teaching method for children that has been known to produce severe psychological harm in some cases that you are in favor of?

Doesn't sound like I'm quite your mom's age, but I'm old enough to remember a priest making me put my hands on a desk so he could smack them with a ruler. I also remember a public school teacher who would turn around and whip erasers at us for talking. That was actually kind of funny, but if a teacher did that now and hit a pupil in the eye, he'd be fired on the spot!

Here's what you said:

Now you're saying:

Do you see the difference?

Like any social study made in support of a bigger theory without being fully there, ambigious wording is of course chosen. Having worked in the field, that doesn't impress me. The simple truth is that the study explains next to nothing about how civilizations arise. There is no substantial evidence presented about the complexity of civilizations being linked to religious level of "punitivity". In European history for example, the rise of punitive religion marked an era of collapse and internal strife for the big civilizations.

Again you are claiming some types of religion foster more pro-social behaviors against strangers, this is not shown. What is shown is that they foster pro-social behavior towards the perceived co-religious. A perceived in-group is not "strangers", that is the point. We know from psychology studies that in-groups can form in seconds, and they work because we don't perceive other members as strangers.

Kin and reciprocity doesn't have to be between every agent in a system, it only needs to link them. Networks and swarms operate by the same principle. Every ant in an anthill doesn't need to communicate with every other ant, there only needs to be a network of interaction as a whole.

I don't think I'm following your argument. Are you arguing that deception makes this specific example better or that it makes no difference?

No I don't. But okay. Name a parental *method* known to cause psychological harm that you approve of.

Grunching to ridicule Dawkins for being on a crusade about teaching hell after he downplayed molestation.

I'm dove-tailing what you're saying with what Lestat is saying. Sorry for not being so clear about that.

All I'm pointing out is that even in situations where intentional deception is present, we still don't automatically call it child abuse. But Lestat has taken a very, very hard line (even stricter than where it seemed he was starting from) on the nature/definition of child abuse, and I'm trying to pull him back a bit from that ledge.

I'll highlight it for you. You keep changing the language you're using, and it's making your position both slippery and starting to read as disingenuous. (Seriously, read the thread I linked earlier, and see how much la6ki changed his language and his position. You're doing something very similar.)

And now you have the following, slightly lightened version of your second phrasing:

You need to develop consistent language in this conversation, otherwise you're going to be in a heap of intellectual trouble.

(I also really don't know why you emphasized *method* because that's about the only thing that was consistent between your two original statements.)

On the actual merits of the question itself, I'd reject the notion that a parenting "method" makes sense in isolation of broader context.

http://humansciences.okstate.edu/fac...re/debate.html

In other words, you have both a broader social context (bolded) and frequency of usage (underlined) that impact the outcomes. It's really hard to make meaningful statements about teaching "methods" because there are all sorts of way that people do it, and there are factors that matter more than the precise "method" (grounding/spanking) that is being used.

What I'm doing here is pushing back against your original definition of child abuse as the application of a method in which it is "possible to have a negative impact on a child." This definition is overly broad and not functional for a conversation.

Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of abuse in public schools as well, but no where near taken to the extreme that is was in religious based private schools. I am old enough that I was in middle school in the mid 80's. My memory fails me occasionally, but I am about 99% sure they still did some form of paddling in my public middle school. However, they needed written consent from the parents to be able to do that for extreme cases.

Can you imagine giving written consent to some random authority figure at your child's school to allow them to beat your child? WTF were those parents thinking and society in general back then to allow that? That is a rhetorical question btw .

If you think fear-mongering and scare tactics are the way to raise your child, then go for it. I for one am not that cynical.

I never said anything about how it affected how I am or how I cope with things. However, it absolutely has affected me and shaped me as a person. I went to Sunday school and did a lot of the normal 'Catholic' things when I was young. It has opened my eyes and led me to be a free-thinking and fact based belief as a person, just not in the way you, or a good portion of our society, would have wanted it to affect me. Also, if you think that religion plays no part of everyday life for EVERYONE (Religious, Secular, Atheist, etc.), then that is quite naive.

I support standardized testing in schools, and there are reports of it creating severe emotional distress in some children.

First, you are still being uncharitable. Here is what I said:

Second, you are wrong about the results. Your response is that this is just a standard in-group dynamic, no different than any other religion or group (such as one formed by wearing a blue shirt). However, the actual results found a consistent difference (more impartiality) between how people in more punitive religions treated distant co-religionists than how people in less punitive religions treated distant co-religionists. Thus, this isn't just a standard in-group dynamic, but one specific to punitive religions.

Not orthodox certainly, as even the title of that article notes. However, among scientists who pay attention to genetics, seems a pretty common viewpoint. Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate is probably the most well-known pop science book on the general topic. For what it's worth, much of Harris's book (which I would highly recommend) is a methodological critique of standard social science on the topic, accusing them of ignoring these issues.