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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Religious indoctrination of children is like child sex abuse
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Last weekend, I bumped into a childhood friend of my sister (we'll call her 'G') whom I haven't seen for thirty-odd years, and I'm here to complain about how she's been harmed by her indoctrination into religion by her parents. It very badly fucked her up, and I hereby call all parents who do this stuff to Hell.
Her parents were (and remain) zealous Christian evangelists, and they inflicted their religious views on their children in ways that I, even as a child then, considered abusive. Now, G tells me that she herself feels she was profoundly abused by their religious indoctrination, and that this has caused her terrible pain and suffering. She blames this single aspect of her childhood experience for much of the trainwreck of her adult life (drug abuse, self-harm, eating disorders, disastrous relationships, divorce, you know- the usual shit), and this seems reasonable to me. But I'm not impartial.
Many of you here know how strongly I feel about this particular issue, and I know how strongly some of you do too- hence my choice of this nonflammable board for the heat of what I hope may be a frank discussion with no holds barred. So, here's the first throw. I feel that religious indoctrination of children is on a moral level right down there with child sex abuse. There are obvious parallels; with paedophilia, adult abusers of minors will often claim they mean no harm and that they act out of genuine love, for example. However, religious indoctrination of children can be as harmful as sexual abuse can be, and society should condemn it similarly.
I call to Hell all parents whose intentions are to indoctrinate their children into their religion, however they happen to view it. Tampering with their minds like that is as wrong as tampering with their genitals.
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این نیز بگذرد
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
You would need to give concrete examples, otherwise this will merely be a thread where folk talk across each other about different things without realizing they are talking about different things.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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Left at the Altar
Ship's Siren
# 5077
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Posted
Well, my mother tried it with me. I turned into an atheist. No harm done. I think your response is a tad of an over-reaction.
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
You were lucky, LatA. Others don't seem to get away with so little harm caused.
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این نیز بگذرد
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Patdys
Iron Wannabe
RooK-Annoyer
# 9397
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Posted
What values would you pass onto your children? And where do you draw the line?
I think what your friend is objecting to is her parents, not the religion they were trying to instill.
In the same way, we have posters on board who share common belief systems but express themselves in very different ways.
There are times we should shoot the messenger and note the message.
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Marathon run. Next Dream. Australian this time.
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
I draw the line with harm, Patdys.
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این نیز بگذرد
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Patdys
Iron Wannabe
RooK-Annoyer
# 9397
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Posted
A lot of what we do harms children.
We live, we love and we die. We hate. We lie. Our relationships are fragile.
Your comparison is emotive, but ultimately untrue. Abuse is an aspect of humanity, not religion.
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Marathon run. Next Dream. Australian this time.
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
I am unwilling to live with such a complacent view.
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این نیز بگذرد
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Patdys
Iron Wannabe
RooK-Annoyer
# 9397
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Posted
You may wish to start by unpacking what you mean by 'However, religious indoctrination of children can be as harmful as sexual abuse can be' because if you can claim that, I am going to claim 'You owe me a bottle of gin and some Boddingtons' Both these have equal merit and proof to date.
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Marathon run. Next Dream. Australian this time.
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Can you start by agreeing in principle that religious indoctrination may cause harm to the indoctrinated? Otherwise it's a nonstarter.
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این نیز بگذرد
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Patdys
Iron Wannabe
RooK-Annoyer
# 9397
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Posted
I wouldn't underestimate the continual evolution of religious thought either BTW.
I have moved from conservative to moderate to relational to liberal/relational. And my family has been along for the ride. We don't believe the same things and that is OK.
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Marathon run. Next Dream. Australian this time.
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Patdys
Iron Wannabe
RooK-Annoyer
# 9397
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Can you start by agreeing in principle that religious indoctrination may cause harm to the indoctrinated? Otherwise it's a nonstarter.
You are utilising highly emotive language and attempting a rational discussion from it. For me, it's a non starter. (and x-post BTW)
I look forward to reading more replies tomorrow from more erudite than I. G'night
[ 28. August 2013, 10:50: Message edited by: Patdys ]
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Marathon run. Next Dream. Australian this time.
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Again, you're one of the lucky ones. I'm glad for you. Seriously. But all cases are different, and some don't work out so happily as yours. In some cases harm is very obviously done by religious indoctrination.
It's complicated, because some people feel unharmed and yet it could be argued that they are, and so the fact that some people feel in particular feel unharmed by their own religious indoctrination is no mitigation against it in general. Nobody thinks they're a Phelps- not even the Phelpses.
I would accept the assertion that most people feel unharmed by their religious indoctrination and are grateful to their parents for it. However, some people who were sexually abused as children don't feel harmed by it as adults, and yet we condemn it in those cases just the same. Don't we?
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این نیز بگذرد
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Can you start by agreeing in principle that religious indoctrination may cause harm to the indoctrinated? Otherwise it's a nonstarter.
Depends on the doctrine, depends on how it's taught.
If you throw out all religious teachings, then you have to throw out "love your neighbour as yourself" alongside "you're a filthy sinner who deserves to burn in hell unless you pray to Jesus every night". I can understand categorising the latter as abusive, but not the former.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Sure. Given more provisos than can be contained in this discussion, religious indoctrination of children may be harmful.
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این نیز بگذرد
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I would say that any heavy indoctrination can be harmful. For example, my parents were abusive atheists, or rather, anti-theists. They often ridiculed religion and spiritual stuff. They were horrified and incredulous when I got interested in Christianity, and ridiculed me. My father told me that it was all imagination, and imagination is shit.
I still bear the scars from this, which I won't spell out in detail! But I did a ton of therapy to get over it.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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IntellectByProxy
Larger than you think
# 3185
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Posted
We need a working definition of 'religious' and 'indoctrinaton'.
I am a Christian, and I am a Christian because I believe in the truth and applicability of Christianity to life. I believe in the historicity of Christ and the accounts of his death and the works of his first followers. Christianity is credible, and I believe in it.
But I absolutely share your views about indoctrination of children, and so I tread a fine line with my own.
Since I consider Christianity to be the truth, naturally I am going to share that truth with my kids. And I do so unashamedly.
What I do NOT do is feed them any peripheral crap about creation, homosexuality, women bishops...etc etc etc.
When we read the genesis account of creation I tell my kids that some people believe that it actually happened like this, but mummy and I think it is just a story trying to explain what people couldn't really explain at the time.
My five-year-old knows the word 'allegory' and what it means. I am bringing my boys up to be critical thinkers, to examine everything they are told to see if it is sensible.
But, again I say, I tell them what I consider to be the truth about Christ - that he lived, that he died, and that he was God Incarnate.
I teach my kids about evolution. My boys love dinosaurs and get that most died out and birds are what the rest became. When we play the animal game ("I'm thinking of an animal, what am I" "Do you have fur?" "Are you bigger than a dog?") I often throw humans in there and explain to my kids that we are just one of the five great apes with a couple of mental tweaks. I answer my kids' questions about science to the best of my ability and never say "that's how God wanted it."
So, tell me, am I indoctrinating my kids? I think the answer is yes and no.
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www.zambiadiaries.blogspot.com
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Hi IBP. We share the same values in parenting, I think. I would consider our approach ethical, as we are presenting our beliefs in ways that are designed to permit our children their own free choices. I am here to complain about indoctrination that does the opposite.
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این نیز بگذرد
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
British poet Philip Larkin probably summed this up in his poem "This be the verse"*. You'll have to look it up as it is NSFW and that's where I am.
*I think that's the one.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
All teaching of children, especially young children, is indoctrination. They lack the critical apparatus to filter what we tell them. What you need to do, Yorick, after normal breathing resumes, is distinguish between abusive indoctrination and non-abusive indoctrination. Which requires some subtlety of thought and isn't as easy as spraying hatred on all religious parents who try to teach their children their most cherished beliefs (as if atheists don't do exactly the same thing).
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I would consider our approach ethical, as we are presenting our beliefs in ways that are designed to permit our children their own free choices. I am here to complain about indoctrination that does the opposite.
The only problem is your assumption that such indoctrination is always religious, and that religious teachings are always examples of such indoctrination.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
So you're not going to give concrete examples of what you're on about then?
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
It's interesting that this came up with some of Dawkins' comments, and some of his critics asked him if he would therefore take kids into care, with heavily religious parents, or people like JWs.
At that point, I think Dawkins began to pull back, since he could see he was walking into a trap. But I guess if you genuinely believe that some religious indoctrination is child abuse, then you would argue for children being removed from parents, or even, for the parents to be imprisoned.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
All teaching of children, especially young children, is indoctrination. They lack the critical apparatus to filter what we tell them. What you need to do, Yorick, after normal breathing resumes, is distinguish between abusive indoctrination and non-abusive indoctrination. Which requires some subtlety of thought and isn't as easy as spraying hatred on all religious parents who try to teach their children their most cherished beliefs (as if atheists don't do exactly the same thing).
I don't accept this, though you make a highly reasonable stab at it. Thank you.
Some people who own firearms don't shoot other people, but this does not make firearms harmless things for people to own. Shooting guns at people causes harm, even if some/most people don't do it. Religious indoctrination of children can cause harm. The fact that it sometimes/usually doesn't is immaterial to this. Cars kills people, and we only (reluctantly) accept this when we perceive the harm caused to be purely accidental. If the driver is drunk or driving too fast we do not accept it. We have rules that regulate the use of guns and cars in the interests of limiting harm, and hope for the best. Although we regulate the sexual abuse of children we do not regulate religious indoctrination of children, but it can cause harm. That parents may feel their intention in indoctrinating their beliefs is purely good is immaterial in this, in a similar way to that the existence of cars and guns causes harm in general regardless of the intentions of any specific gun owners or car drivers.
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این نیز بگذرد
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IntellectByProxy
Larger than you think
# 3185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Hi IBP. We share the same values in parenting, I think. I would consider our approach ethical, as we are presenting our beliefs in ways that are designed to permit our children their own free choices. I am here to complain about indoctrination that does the opposite.
The problem is that it is an irregular verb: we share, I teach, you indoctrinate...
or to put it another way, it's the No True Scotsman Fallacy: I just teach my children the truth, but YOU indoctrinate them into your false religion.
As MouseThief says, all teaching of young children is indoctrination. My five-year-old has critical faculties, but my two-year-old certainly doesn't. I think I am doing ok with them, but I suspect Daniel Dennett would think me an abuser.
It's all a matter of degree.
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www.zambiadiaries.blogspot.com
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Hell, Yorick, FEEDING children can cause harm. As can bathing them. Until you can distinguish between harmful indoctrination and harmless indoctrination, AND you stop teaching your children anything, you have no standing.
ETA: You missed out my point that atheists also indoctrinate their children. Please cover this in your next offering.
[ 28. August 2013, 11:33: Message edited by: mousethief ]
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Yes, it's always the other guy who is abusive. But would you take his kids away from him?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Yes, just repeating what I said earlier - my parents were horrifically abusive anti-theists. It took me about 20 fucking years to get over their shit, and I still bear the scars.
How does that compute in the metric of indoctrination? Are they somehow exempt from condemnation? If so, why?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Yes, Q, I would. (And so would you, I'm sure. Suicide cults, extremism, etc.).
mousethief, you know that I agree that it is impossible to avoid inculcating our values on our children, and that doing so is what parenting actually IS. I'm talking very very specifically about indoctrinating religious beliefs when this causes harm (regardless of intention).
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این نیز بگذرد
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Q, indoctrination in atheistic beliefs is the same, for the purposes. (I'm sorry about your pain, BTW.) It's also the same for child sex abuse, which is the charge I lay here.
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این نیز بگذرد
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
I have to go now, but with love I leave the thread in your good hands until I can get back- maybe tomorrow sometime.
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این نیز بگذرد
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Wow, Yorick, you are going to be needing massive social work depts, if all these kids are going into care. Are you quite sure you have figured this out?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Plique-à-jour
Shipmate
# 17717
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Posted
I feel that atheist indoctrination of children is on the same moral level as child abuse. I was raised in a physically and emotionally abusive atheist 'household'. Nothing sexual, thanks be to God. I was spared that. I was beaten randomly, whenever something had annoyed my father. It didn't have to be something involving me. He always had some excuse. He got away with it.
I was told that I was nothing, told I might as well commit suicide. I was physically put out of the house. Anything I achieved at school was derided, because he was borderline illiterate. When I was bullied at school, he sided with the bullies. He was a bully himself.
My father's atheism mandated all this. His delusions of reference were bolstered by his idea of himself as a freethinker. He hadn't read anything. He hadn't engaged in the most basic disciplines of critical thinking. But at least he wasn't religious, which made him better than other people. He seemed to think most people were religious. He never finished anything he started, but at least he wasn't religious. He blamed prices for being too high, but at least he wasn't religious. He had no friends, but at least he wasn't religious.
I could write a book. The point is, if I hadn't felt the presence of God at fifteen, I wouldn't be alive now. If I hadn't cultivated a certain kind of self-will before I was ten years old, I wouldn't be alive now. You have to free your mind. Hatred can be beautiful. It has been a major engine of what little success I've achieved thus far. I forgave my father years ago, purely on the principle I later heard phrased as 'don't let people live rent-free in your mind', but I still draw on that anger, and the disgust it cooled to. It's a great energy, and I hope I always have some kind of access to it.
After a certain age, it's all on you. You may rage in private against how off-course you are because of the failures who raised you, but your failure is your own. Going around telling people how responsible others are for the choices you've made? No, no, no. You're just repeating the pattern of their lives, sodden with other people's wills, other people's decisions. You're giving them a power over you they could never attain by their own efforts. Failures cannot make you a failure any more than bullies can make you commit suicide. You have to own your own will, and move on.
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Posts: 333 | From: United Kingdom | Registered: Jun 2013
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Q, indoctrination in atheistic beliefs is the same, for the purposes. (I'm sorry about your pain, BTW.) It's also the same for child sex abuse, which is the charge I lay here.
The pain is OK, Yorick, it's the fucking guilt that I couldn't be like them, that used to cripple me. Fuck those anti-theist wanking tossers! Fuck them to hell and back again, those anti-theist fuckers. Fuck them. Fuck them again. Go on fucking them, Yorick. Anti-theist cunts.
It also made me angry, by the way.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
I was raised in a denomination that has been repeatedly (and rightly so) accused of being a cult, is banned from many university campuses for its aggressive recruitment of students, and teaches that it and it alone is the "true church." This may explain the topic I posted in Purgatory not long ago.
From childhood I was taught that all "Christians" outside of this church were actually lost, that God would punish me with death if I did not formally join their church, that if you're not constantly evangelizing (as in door knocking/randomly approaching people) you're weak. Long story short I rejected everything to do with God and church for many years until I finally started to learn the real Gospel.
I've had some major heart to hearts with the parent who was responsible for this, and they now understand the damage that was done to us as children due to the church's indoctrination.
If an adult wants to join some hard-core legalistic church that is their choice, but the children don't have any choice. I'm all for teaching children the Gospel but requiring membership or commitment from them equal to that of adults and using guilt or control to keep them from leaving the group is extremely wrong.
So OP I relate to your friend and I agree with you, parents who behave this way should be called to this toasty place. For those of you who grew up in normal churches I suspect you will struggle to relate. I'm not talking about CofE childrens' church here (which looks like an absolute delight compared to what I had!)
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Her parents were (and remain) zealous Christian evangelists, and they inflicted their religious views on their children in ways that I, even as a child then, considered abusive. Now, G tells me that she herself feels she was profoundly abused by their religious indoctrination, and that this has caused her terrible pain and suffering. She blames this single aspect of her childhood experience for much of the trainwreck of her adult life (drug abuse, self-harm, eating disorders, disastrous relationships, divorce, you know- the usual shit), and this seems reasonable to me. But I'm not impartial.
That seems reasonable to you, does it? Now, I'm presumably not part of the particular Christian sect these parents belong to, and at any rate have no idea what "indoctrination" they really attempted. Neither have you, by the way, other than by limited report from an obviously biased side. But let me speculate here and guess that their indoctrination would have stood firmly against "drug abuse, self-harm, eating disorders, disastrous relationships, divorce, you know - the usual shit". Humans are complicated, so of course parents trying to teach a child to not take drugs might contribute to that child eventually taking drugs. But that's then a failure of the method of teaching (or indoctrination, if you must). It's not a failure of the content of teaching.
So the first crucial distinction here is between the method and success of teaching, and the intention and content of teaching. It is just wrong to simply equate the outcome of parental efforts to the original parental goals. Furthermore, it is dumb and actually rather nasty to simply attribute all problems that children may have as adults to the influence of their parents. No doubt parents play a big role in how one turns out in the end. No doubt their influence is limited overall though. The influence of society and peers is also highly significant, and at some point one's own decisions are what primarily shapes one's life.
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I feel that religious indoctrination of children is on a moral level right down there with child sex abuse. There are obvious parallels; with paedophilia, adult abusers of minors will often claim they mean no harm and that they act out of genuine love, for example. However, religious indoctrination of children can be as harmful as sexual abuse can be, and society should condemn it similarly.
There is a second crucial distinction that you fail to make here, in your odious comparison to sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is concrete and bodily, teaching - at least teaching of "doctrine" - is not. We can evaluate quite easily whether a 6 year old is ready to have sex. The answer is no, clearly 6 year olds do not seek out sexual activities. Clearly their bodies are not ready for it, and they also do not have the kind of conscious command over their intimacy that we associate with the "proper sex" of adults that provides a clear standard (i.e., they cannot 'consent' properly). We get rather less certain precisely when questions of mind and emotions come into play: Is a 14 year old ready to have sex? Is a 16 year old? Is a 18 year old? With whom and under what circumstances? These are actually non-trivial questions, and to some extent the laws we have made about it intentionally cut through these valid discussions in order to pragmatically provide workable rules. Now, teaching a child anything beyond stuff like "don't cross the road without looking" is automatically in the realm of mind and emotions. And thus matters are just not that simple. It is not as clear, for example, what your secular teaching of your children means for them. It is certainly not as clear as what it would have meant for them if you had raped them when young. Whatever else one may say about any attempt of "conceptual" parental teaching, whether secular or religious, it is simply not in the same realm of concrete and predictable hurt as child rape. And pretending that it is is just fuck-stupid and utterly offensive rhetoric.
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I call to Hell all parents whose intentions are to indoctrinate their children into their religion, however they happen to view it. Tampering with their minds like that is as wrong as tampering with their genitals.
Every parent indoctrinates, every parent tampers with the minds of their children. That's what all parenting amounts to, as soon as the interaction between parents and children goes beyond mechanical instructions. If you do not realise that you are doing just the same all the time, then that tells us just a lot about your total lack of self-reflection. Or to be fair, about the conceptual fogginess of modern secular thought, which does not come in neat explicit doctrines but rather in fuzzy implicit attitudes. Do you really think that your children's ideas somehow percolated out of thin air into their minds? And please do not protest that you have only taught your children to think for themselves. The level of naiveté in that is just too sickening...
A final key point though is to ask where the balance is between state power over and state responsibility for its citizens, including the very young, and the rights of individuals and in particular parents to hold their own opinions and live them in their own lives. To what extent is raising children the proper business of the parents, and to what extent may the state interfere? I would be highly cautious to let the state grab too many rights there. Obviously, some parents will damage their children if given rights over them. Still, if the state pulls those rights to itself, then such damage can be forced on all children. Furthermore, since the state is not going to run a super-orphanage, in the end the state has to force parents into being the instrument of its intentions. This raises all sort of really difficult issues with how a state may interact with its people. Are we going to run a thought-police that will spy on familial interactions? Will teachers have a duty to report to law enforcement if they see signs of suspicious thoughts in children? This can go really dark really quickly. The simple truth here is that some damage to some children will have to be accepted to avoid much greater damage to society at large and thus also children at large.
But what this here is really about is the good old "protect the children" ruse to bypass a gridlock in adult conflict. You know full well that you will get nowhere with forcing your incoherent and bland secular worldview on the religious "imbeciles", so you are seeking a soft target for some nasty rhetoric to break the gridlock. And children are the softest of targets, and comparing parenting to sexual child abuse is the nastiest of rhetoric, so here we go...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
All teaching of children, especially young children, is indoctrination. They lack the critical apparatus to filter what we tell them. What you need to do, Yorick, after normal breathing resumes, is distinguish between abusive indoctrination and non-abusive indoctrination. Which requires some subtlety of thought and isn't as easy as spraying hatred on all religious parents who try to teach their children their most cherished beliefs (as if atheists don't do exactly the same thing).
My sister is a maniac. Just the other night I saw her telling her children quite forcefully that they needed to clean their teeth before going to bed. It's appalling indoctrination I tell you, appalling!
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Plique-à-jour
Shipmate
# 17717
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
I was raised in a denomination that has been repeatedly (and rightly so) accused of being a cult, is banned from many university campuses for its aggressive recruitment of students, and teaches that it and it alone is the "true church." This may explain the topic I posted in Purgatory not long ago.
From childhood I was taught that all "Christians" outside of this church were actually lost, that God would punish me with death if I did not formally join their church, that if you're not constantly evangelizing (as in door knocking/randomly approaching people) you're weak. Long story short I rejected everything to do with God and church for many years until I finally started to learn the real Gospel.
I've had some major heart to hearts with the parent who was responsible for this, and they now understand the damage that was done to us as children due to the church's indoctrination.
If an adult wants to join some hard-core legalistic church that is their choice, but the children don't have any choice. I'm all for teaching children the Gospel but requiring membership or commitment from them equal to that of adults and using guilt or control to keep them from leaving the group is extremely wrong.
So OP I relate to your friend and I agree with you, parents who behave this way should be called to this toasty place. For those of you who grew up in normal churches I suspect you will struggle to relate. I'm not talking about CofE childrens' church here (which looks like an absolute delight compared to what I had!)
You know, I think people like you and I who come to faith in one way or another after a total rejection of the worldview we were raised in are possibly better off than people who stay in the denomination they were born in. This may be a subject better addressed in a different thread, but I sometimes wonder if some of my differences with the general population of the Church of England have been because a convert thinks in a different way to a lifelong adherent.
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Posts: 333 | From: United Kingdom | Registered: Jun 2013
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
So far, Yorick is at the stage of denunciation, which is fair enough, but I am curious as to how he proposes to deal with this abuse.
We have some sort of model in the treatment of sexual child abuse, which he explicitly compares religious indoctrination with.
So, Yorick, do you suggest the following?
1. parents who heavily religiously indoctrinate should go to prison.
2. their kids are taken from them.
3. they are placed on a 'religious indoctrination' register.
4. they are kept away from kids in future.
I suppose one problem with this is the administration. As others have pointed out, you could end up with a massive state apparatus, to regulate all of this, and a massive state orphanage to house all the kids separated from abusive parents,and presumably, some kind of informer system, so that such parents can be identified.
Well, Yorick, what say you?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Plique-à-jour
Shipmate
# 17717
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Do you really think that your children's ideas somehow percolated out of thin air into their minds? And please do not protest that you have only taught your children to think for themselves. The level of naiveté in that is just too sickening...
This view of human agency is indistinguishable from the most determinist allegations of anti-theists. Children are not the vessels of their parents' will. They're easier to bribe or bully than most adults, and they have fewer references when trying to discern if they're being deceived, but they do think.
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the famous rachel
Shipmate
# 1258
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Posted
This response may be a little too measured for the venue, but here goes:
Whilst I agree that religious indoctrination can be harmful, I think it is worth remembering three things:
The first point is that deeply held religious beliefs rather obviously alter ones parenting priorities. If you honestly and absolutely believe that if your child does not conform to certain standards of belief and/or behaviour they are damned to eternal torment*, then your over-riding priority must be to get them to conform to those standards. In this context happiness in the temporal world matters little in comparison to one's eternal destination. Not passing on one's beliefs could be considered abusive.
The second point is one that I would not have understood before I became a parent myself: most parents are trying very hard to do their best for their children, and have insufficient data with which to make important decisions. I have read articles which inform me that as a mother, parenting my son wrongly, in surprisingly subtle ways, can lead him to become (a) gay**, (b) autistic and/or (c) a rapist. All of that crap, which I am ignoring, only goes to show the range of conflicting advice and pressures which parents experience. If I did feel the need to set my child heading down a very specific Christian path, it would be hugely difficult to decide how best to achieve this. There are ways of doing it wrong, involving for example, physical violence, but they are obvious wrongs, which exist entirely separate to this context. Obvious rights are less easy to define here. These are hard decisions, and unlike in the context of sexual abuse, the views of wider society are varied and unclear.
My final point addresses one more thing that I have only realised since becoming a parent: from the very start, and more and more so as he gets older, I find that in many ways my son is who he is, regardless of what I say or do. I can give him opportunities to express different elements of that. I can encourage the best of what is in him. But, in the end, I suspect there are elements of who he is which will lead him in particular directions no matter what I do. I hope his adult life will be full of joys which I can celebrate with him, rather than sorrows for which he can blame me, and if this is not the case, then I will do everything I can to help. However, there are many aspects over which I will have no control, no matter what I do now or in the future. It's very easy to blame our parents when we make bad choices. I've done it pretty often myself. Since becoming a parent, however, I have started to let my parents off the hook a little bit. Broad statements about religious indoctrination by parents causing immense lasting harm, may give parents more credit for who their children become than they have any right to!
Best wishes,
Rachel.
* I don't believe this, or much else currently, to be honest. However, I can step inside the mindset of people who do, for a moment or two.
** Not that this would worry me, although it clearly worried the writer of the article.
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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.
Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I'm talking very very specifically about indoctrinating religious beliefs when this causes harm (regardless of intention).
OK, when indoctrinating religious belief causes harm that is bad. I agree. Because in fact I agree with the general statement that when X causes harm that is bad, irrespective of X. That's basically the definition of "harm". Of course, in most cases the harm caused by X would be nowhere near to the harm caused by child rape. But let's consider this as a mere rhetorical flourish that reveals more about what kind of person you are than about X...
So we have here a defensible, but utterly trivial, statement framed by the most offensive rhetoric you could muster. By the sheer assholery of it all, I had assumed that you had wanted to say something more general, like for example that all religious indoctrination causes harm (comparable to child rape). But no, you very very specifically limited yourself to saying something utterly trivial.
Uhh, well, I guess that's that then. Feel free to not say utterly trivial but horribly offensive things in future.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Plique-à-jour:
This view of human agency is indistinguishable from the most determinist allegations of anti-theists. Children are not the vessels of their parents' will.
That's a blatant misreading of what I've actually said, contradicted directly and explicitly by other things I've already written above. For example, my second paragraph in the very post you are commenting on...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
Were you the product of what you consider to be harmful childhood indoctrination of religion Yorick?
Or were you sexually abused by a hardcore religious indoctrinator?
I don't understand how you can conflate the two.
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I call to Hell all parents whose intentions are to indoctrinate their children into their religion, however they happen to view it. Tampering with their minds like that is as wrong as tampering with their genitals.
No.
Tampering with minds is not as wrong as tampering with genitals.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Whatever else one may say about any attempt of "conceptual" parental teaching, whether secular or religious, it is simply not in the same realm of concrete and predictable hurt as child rape. And pretending that it is is just fuck-stupid and utterly offensive rhetoric.
This.
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
By the sheer assholery of it all, I had assumed that you had wanted to say something more general, like for example that all religious indoctrination causes harm (comparable to child rape). But no, you very very specifically limited yourself to saying something utterly trivial.
I think he has changed his tune from the OP. The OP says this:
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I call to Hell all parents whose intentions are to indoctrinate their children into their religion, however they happen to view it.
(italics my emphasis)
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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Hawk
Semi-social raptor
# 14289
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Sure. Given more provisos than can be contained in this discussion, religious indoctrination of children may be harmful.
Also, religious indoctrination may not be harmful.
Also, non-religious indoctrination of children may be harmful.
Also, failing to properly indoctrinate children may be harmful.
All things may be harmful, if harmful they are. If you actually wanted a discussion, perhaps something other than 'coloured things are often blue' would be more profitable.
But I suspect you do not want a discussion, you want to poke Christians with a sharp stick so you can dance around them when they react.
No dice I'm afraid. Find another game to play.
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“We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
See my blog for 'interesting' thoughts
Posts: 1739 | From: Oxford, UK | Registered: Nov 2008
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Plique-à-jour
Shipmate
# 17717
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Plique-à-jour:
This view of human agency is indistinguishable from the most determinist allegations of anti-theists. Children are not the vessels of their parents' will.
That's a blatant misreading of what I've actually said, contradicted directly and explicitly by other things I've already written above. For example, my second paragraph in the very post you are commenting on...
I'm sorry if I've misrepresented your argument, but that paragraph suggests that children eventually acquire agency, as adults, which doesn't really contradict what I thought you were saying.
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Posts: 333 | From: United Kingdom | Registered: Jun 2013
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by the famous rachel:
This response may be a little too measured for the venue, but here goes:
We do allow more Purgatorial styles of thought down here. Especially when they're as well written as THAT was.
It's more that the folks up in Purgatory won't allow a Hellish tinge up there. They're purists. We're less fussy.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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the famous rachel
Shipmate
# 1258
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by the famous rachel:
This response may be a little too measured for the venue, but here goes:
We do allow more Purgatorial styles of thought down here. Especially when they're as well written as THAT was.
It's more that the folks up in Purgatory won't allow a Hellish tinge up there. They're purists. We're less fussy.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Thanks!
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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.
Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I'm talking very very specifically about indoctrinating religious beliefs when this causes harm (regardless of intention).
You're dancing in circles. You are defining "religious indoctrination" as "harmful", and "harmful" as "religious indoctrination".
Then you insist that indoctrination of religion is special, and deserves a hell-call in the way that indoctrination of anything else doesn't. And then you slather the whole thing in non-specific language, and are trying to get people to agree with your "general principle" before you're prepared to talk about what you actually mean.
This is schoolboy debating at its worst. In fact, it is exactly the logic that I have heard used by schoolboys who aren't as clever as they think they are on many occasions.
You are angry about your sister's friend. That's fair enough - from your description, she's had a pretty bad life so far. She, and by extension you, blame the poor choices she has made as an adult on "religious indoctrination" by her parents.
It may or may not be the case that her treatment by her parents (on matters of religion or otherwise) caused or inflamed her problems. It is certainly the case that many children of parents without faith blame their parents for messing them up, and equally true that many children of religious parents are not "messed up", which tends to weaken your thesis that "indoctrination of religion" is the problem.
I, too, have a childhood friend who spits venom whenever his parents (specifically his mother) are mentioned. The object of his venom isn't his mother's faith, but his mother's neighbour. See, when he was growing up (divorced parents, mother had custody), his mother would spend all of her time with the neighbour. She would feed the children, then leave them at home and pop round to the neighbour's to drink wine and watch TV for the evening, spend the weekends shopping with the neighbour and so on. Basically, my friend resents the fact that his mother seemed to care more about her friend than her children, and expresses this as a violent hate of the rival for his mother's time and affections. If his mother had spent all her time on evangelical church activities instead, I imagine he'd feel the same way about churches.
Coming back to the point, if you want to get away with saying things like "Her parents were (and remain) zealous Christian evangelists, and they inflicted their religious views on their children in ways that I, even as a child then, considered abusive." you're going to have to back it up with some details.
So, come on, Yorick. Specifics. Exactly what ways are we talking about here. Please describe for us some things that your friend G experienced that you consider abusive. Perhaps, at the same time, you could outline what you think is reasonable behaviour by a religious parent that wouldn't get him or her tarred with your child abuse brush.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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