What I consider evil, like murder, other people don't. It doesn't matter, and I don't care what other people believe.
Telling a child he is going to burn in Hell is torture. We would not accept an Atheist telling his child if he does not obey his mandates, that one day he will find himself in unending, tremendous pain.
What I consider evil, like murder, other people don't. It doesn't matter, and I don't care what other people believe.
Telling a child he is going to burn in Hell is torture. We would not accept an Atheist telling his child if he does not obey his mandates, that one day he will find himself in unending, tremendous pain.
my point exactly, beliefs and ideas about religion are too varied to draw a line and say past this point its not alright.
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"Moris should be here soon to rub it in my face..." -Pizza
The point of law IS to draw a line, to say " This is not alright ". It IS possible to say when it is simply teaching, like telling a child God exists, that he should love his neighbors and then there are parents that teach their children they are cogs for whatever their parents want them for, that they will someday burn in Hell if they don't realie their place in life, that they themselves without God are worthless.
The state should intervene when the religious instruction starts abusing the children as defined already defined by law.
Emotional abuse is a horribly complicated and difficult issue to define in law. This is unfortunate, but I think unpreventable. We need to stop tolerating emotional abuse. When you see a parent verbally abusing their children in public, say something. This is how society will change. The law can't help us here.
The point of law IS to draw a line, to say " This is not alright ". It IS possible to say when it is simply teaching, like telling a child God exists, that he should love his neighbors and then there are parents that teach their children they are cogs for whatever their parents want them for, that they will someday burn in Hell if they don't realie their place in life, that they themselves without God are worthless.
Then don't raise your child that way, but you don't have a right to tell people how to raise theirs. Maybe they aren't raising their children correctly, but most people aren't for various reasons.
There's nothing wrong with teaching children to respect others, to treat people how they'd like to be treated (I'm aware you can do that without religion). The majority of religious beliefs are good for children. The whole "do good or burn in hell" is hardly how a responsible parent would handle explaining religion to a child and for the most part are raising their children the same way or close to the same way they were raised, as most people do.
A bad parent is a bad parent whether or not they have a bible in their hand.
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"Moris should be here soon to rub it in my face..." -Pizza
Well, I'm not going to say something in public because for all I know it's a random outburst. I know I've yelled at my nephew before when I really should have just talked to him, or ignored him.
I don't know much about what the law has to say on emotional abuse, if anything.
The point of law IS to draw a line, to say " This is not alright ". It IS possible to say when it is simply teaching, like telling a child God exists, that he should love his neighbors and then there are parents that teach their children they are cogs for whatever their parents want them for, that they will someday burn in Hell if they don't realie their place in life, that they themselves without God are worthless.
Then don't raise your child that way, but you don't have a right to tell people how to raise theirs. Maybe they aren't raising their children correctly, but most people aren't for various reasons.
There's nothing wrong with teaching children to respect others, to treat people how they'd like to be treated (I'm aware you can do that without religion). The majority of religious beliefs are good for children. The whole "do good or burn in hell" is hardly how a responsible parent would handle explaining religion to a child and for the most part are raising their children the same way or close to the same way they were raised, as most people do.
A bad parent is a bad parent whether or not they have a bible in their hand.
The parents do not have the right to torture their children, and I do have a right to tell them they cannot tell them that their lives are meaningless and that God will someday reject them into Hell.
I agree that the problem is not necessarily Religion, but it is primarily Religion. Psychological torture exists on a lot of levels, but Religion is just shown as being more of a touchy issue cause it isn't done out of anger ( Or so they say, I'd say many Christian and religious values are based in anger and hatred for self and others ). It is said to be done out of love, out of fundamental belief. Of course someone could say their belief is that they have to beat their child 5 times a day.
Also, this is not a rare incident. I grew up around kids that were having their minds ****ed with. Some grew up to be fine, some grew up not able to think, extremely scarred and harboring a lot of self-hatred and inferiority complexes
Sometimes it's okay to yell at your kids. Sometimes that constitutes abuse. It's impossible for the law to tell the difference.
As for religion, specifically, parents lie to their kids all the time. Society accepts this, and sometimes even encourages it (Santa Clause anyone?). I will personally not bring threats of Hell into my home, even if my children choose to be religious (and I doubt they will). I will not act as though Santa Clause is a real person. I will not pretend as though the Easter Bunny is some sort of mystical demigod that distributes eggs in the spring. I will be forthright and honest with my children. I know in my heart that this is the right thing to do, but I don't think we can legislate good parenting. We can only legislate against the most egregious and most uncommon forms of abuse.
This is not an issue of lying. I don't think we should outlaw lying, since the government has no business saying whether God exists or not. We live in a secular society, not an Atheist society. But, once again, parents should not be allowed to tell their children they will be tortured. That's a threat of force, really, at least to a child who doesn't realize that Hell isn't real, or that there is a possibility it isn't real.
I totally agree with you that designing visions of Hell among children constitutes child abuse. However, for Christians this constitutes truth. So long as the government remains neutral on the issue of religion, it will be forced to withhold judgment on this issue. As you said, it's not the government's place to tell Christians that they are wrong.
Government would not be able to say ANYTHING is right and wrong, then. I don't believe this is true.
Nevertheless, I don't think they have to favor a thought or not. They are not saying Hell does not exist as a government. They are saying teaching your children that one day they will die and be tortured forever and ever is evil, just as telling your children if he doesn't clean his room, someday people will come and take him away and torture him because of it is torture.
The government has to remain impartial on things like God, but I don't see why it should remain agnostic on ethical decisions. Of course, you're an Anarchist and so this discussion is more of what do we do NOW.
Since the government is so intent on protecting religious freedom, it bars itself from restricting the consistent teaching of even abusing religious values.
Of course, practically, this is impossible. Consider a religion whose views are to murder everyone one meets in life. Clearly, the government must intervene in the practice of this religion, or it fails in its most important task of protecting the rights of all citizens.
