Ask Lemmy

The fundamental difference between religion/spirituality and science/reason, as far as I'm concerned is this: religion demands that you accept something as an indisputable truth and that questioning it is not only discouraged but forbidden and will be met with an arbitrarily horrific punishment (eternal damnation, etc), with what the specific something is dependent on the teacher, their interpretations and their intentions. As a mental framework, I don't think it's healthy for either individuals or societies to unquestioningly accept - or be made to accept - that any ideas are defacto sacred.

I'm with Terence McKenna here: Culture is not your friend

Imagine how different society would be if people weren't introduced to religion until they were 18.

No it's not ethical. I say this as a queer man indoctrinated in Christianity. I was lucky to make it through childhood without killing myself. I tried several times. Religion is a cancer that should be exterminated.

It's not ethical to train your child's brain to believe fairytales. It's like foot binding, forcing an unnatural form on their growth. They grow up handicapped.

Where do you think the line is between practicing your own religion faithfully and unethically forcing your beliefs on someone else?

That's not just someone that's a child, their child. So, the question should be: where do you think a parent should stop being a parent who has authority over their child? And where a child stop being a child (someone being taken care of and who is subject to the authority of their parents) to become a person (someone responsible for themselves).

Parents are responsible for their kids up until the child is reaching the 'age of reason' (sorry, not sure how to say that in English: when the is (legally) able to live and decide by themselves). How would anyone be able to raise (be responsible for) a child and make decision without pushing their own values on the kid? I mean, for me it's almost impossible. You can give options, a lot of options, but there will still be limits. Heck, even the simplest 'eat your veggies', 'brush your teeth', or 'you must do your homework before you can play your video game' (or their exact opposites, aka 'do whatever you want, I don't care about you') is already telling a lot about what values the parents are pushing onto their children.

My parents raised me as the atheists they were. That too is an ethical/philosophical/moral personal choice they pushed onto me without me being able to object anything, right? They never asked me if I was an atheist, or not.

The funny thing is that them being hardcore atheists did not prevent them to tweak the system so I could be send to a private catholic school because my father knew it was the best school. Another (unethical?) choice of them on which I had little to say as a child. And to be frank with you, now aged 50+ this is probably the second of only two reasons I feel gratitude towards my parents (the first one being that I had a roof and I was fed up until I was able to leave): the teaching there was demanding but it was also amazingly good.

Like mentioned already I would say: it's the parent's call. Because if christian or whatever else parents should not be allowed to share their faith with their own child, then logic mandates that no parent at all should be allowed to share no personal value at all with their child. Then, no parent should be allowed to raise their own child.

That may not be bad, though: Plato considered the idea in his Republic, suggesting kids should not be raised by parents but by city (the Ancient Greek ancestor of our modern States and Nations) operated and controlled institutions. But then, the question instantly becomes: who will decide what this city/state/nation controlled education should be about?

Real great question, with no simple answer I'm afraid.

I'd say yes, as long as they're tolerant of their children questioning those beliefs and developing their own later on in life. Parents will always make an impression on their kids, that's just what being a parent is. It can get more nuanced of course. Teaching your kids homophobia is unethical, but that's regardless of whether it's for religious or other reasons.

The problem with "faith" is its literal meaning: belief that is not based on evidence.

A society based on faith can only work is everybody has the same faith (think: Ancient Rome, theocracies, communist countries). The only reason modern Western democracies work is precisely that they are not based on faith but rather on evidence, on reason, on truth-seeking. This is the amazing and historically anomalous heritage of the enlightenment and it's looking more fragile by the day.

Teaching kids fairytales and calling it truth is the reason religion exists. It's the reason it's so hard for adults to leave the religions they assimilated as children. And in a free society where we have to find a way to live together, it's profoundly dangerous.

So my answer is: no.

I think the ethics mostly come into how you raise them, religion or not. It's ethical to teach kindness and empathy. It's ethical to allow your kids to explore while asking them questions that help that exploration. You can do those kinds of things no matter what faith (or non-faith) you practice.

Speaking as someone who was raised in an environment that gave lip service to kindness and empathy but was really very harsh, judgmental, and rigid, only one of my siblings kept something reasonably approximating my parents' faith. The rest of us are mostly some variety of pagan. Each of us had a painful journey out of our parents' faith to something. No matter how you raise your kids, they are their own people and will come to their own conclusions. You can make the path much more difficult than it needs to be or you can set them up for a much less traumatic journey.

Definitely think that kids should be explained different beliefs early on.. plus they should be respected if they don't want to follow the same beliefs, and be able to opt out of any traditions.. though I suppose the faith I follow tends to be a lot less "damned to hecc" than some others, so to some parents if breaking a tradition means making their kid go to hell that's probably a lot tougher of a thing than im imagining it to be

I think it's important to teach children the cultural traditions of their family and religion can be a good tool to teach children the social contracts of ethical behavior. The abstract metaphysical elements of faith can be a good substitute until they're old enough to understand the usefulness of moral behavior from a social contract perspective.

The line is crossed when religion is used as a tool to teach bigotry. But the world is made richer by cultural traditions and those should be carried on.

it's nice to have culture or whatever, but practicing a religion is inherently unethical as it is giving legitimacy to a scam and perpetuating objectively bad ideas

Yes, it's their familial culture and it's up to the kid to decide whether to break out from that or not later

Their kid, their call up until the point the child's safety is in danger.

I have no more right to tell them how to raise their kids than they have about my entirely hypothetical and undesired kids. I may not agree with their choices and they may not agree with mine, I may think they are raising their kids to be less moral, they may think the same with the added bonus that I'm condemning mine to an eternity of torment.

That's life in a pluralistic society.

If it impacts someone else besides yourself.