I used to think I would give a child the choice as well, but since then I have decided that I would not likely promote or allow religion to be promoted in any way.

They leave the house and head out on their own they can play musical religions if they want but I would not have a hand in it.

I used to think of sending them to church or sunday school so they would have experience with it and a better understanding of people who are religious later on.

But really I would not inflict that on a child, it should be a crime to send kids to church for weekly brainwashing and the fear of Jesus and his hell.

There isn't going to be much of a debate, as everyone here is going to agree with you unless some random theist pops in.

It is okay to tell our children what we believe, but we should not force our beliefs upon them. If we indoctrinate them with our worldview, then we are not much better than the fundamentalists. Instead of teaching them what to think, we should teach them how to think, to be open-minded and decide what's right for themselves. They will learn that truth is something to be discovered rather than obeyed.

Atheistextremist, I agree.

They should be taught the 'facts of life', in the broadest sense - IOW what is known with a fair degree of confidence about 'Life, the Universe, and Everything', and the basics of how that knowledge has been gained. At a level appropriate to their age and comprehension at each stage, of course. As early as possible, so they will be hopefully less susceptible to swallow crap that might be thrown at them by friends, teachers, the media, etc.

Show them how and where they can find out for themselves stuff about things people, even you, try to tell them.

Somehow try and inculcate in them the idea that we can all be wrong, they shouldn't just believe something because someone tells them it is true, no matter who they are.

Of course, I just know that some Theists will see even this advice as 'indoctrination' into 'scepticism', or even 'atheism'.

I see it as vaccination against 'faith' - unjustified belief of any sort.

Tell 'em that an honest confession that 'I don't know' is nothing to be ashamed of, far more honorable than just accepting some 'explanation' that makes no sense to them.

 

 

I disagree with the OP in the same was Atheistextremist does (I think).

 

Doing any less than informing my children on the reality of religion would be a failure at educating them.  Religion is not the same as irreligion, and informing children as to the irrefutable falsehoods of religion is not indoctrination- it's legitimate and crucial education.

I intend not only to both tell and show them what's what, but use apologetics as critical thinking exercises.  If my children can't confound a Jesuit by the age of five, I'll be woefully disappointed.

 

Indoctrination would be forcing my opinions on them- such as my not liking religion, or crack smoking. 

I'll let them make up their own minds about whether religion, or crack, is good or bad for society, and whether or not religion/crack is a plague on this Earth and her people. 

If they chose to become televangelists, provided that they know the facts, and that they don't really believe what they're preaching, those are their choices to make.

If they chose to smoke crack or become a drug dealer, provided that they know the facts, and don't actually believe it's healthy for them, those again are their choices to make.

They will, however, be informed.

 

 

Educate your children on facts; allow them to form their own opinions and make their own life choices.  The falsehood of religion is fact.  The ethics of that falsehood is opinion.

"The falsehood of religion is fact."  Ha!  Tell that to Knewton, or the string theory boys you roll with--see how that's working out for you.  Better yet, take a trip to the other disciplines that investigate humyn behavior at a post-structural level.  Taste a bit of Agamben and question why he won't step foot on an American University.   Put your flag up, "Isolate and dismiss"--great dialogue. 

Your use of "fact" is like me saying "prove God doesn't exist"--C'mon

Extreme mask wearing guy:  child abuse is telling your children that those people over their are insane, stupid and are stealing our money, etc.  What's next, lock them up?  Your choice of language can be critiqued at many levels.  "look at at all the evils of religion"  Duh. . . bait and switch--leave it alone.  I'm discussing your accusation, and yours alone.  

 

Once again, I would like to see the data of how many of you are ex-Calvinists or fundamentalists?  

Lol. Although, technically, he hasn't answered the most important question, so I'm asking him now.

Hmmm, it would depend on my kid's age, and what my kid was doing. If my kid was five years old, I might ignore it or even play along with it. If he was old enough, like, 12, and claimed that there were unicorns in the backyard, I would be a bit worried and try to reason with the kid. 

For a little kid? None of those.

It's not a religion. It's just normal for a little kid to potentially imagine supernatural entities and phenomena lurking behind every corner. Well, that was an exaggeration, but you get the point.

Edit: Ah, you mean like, as a source. Well, ancestor worship seems more like an adult thing, after they've seen relatives die. Spiritism and animism are more instinctive here.

Nah.

Eventually, that is exactly what I would do. Of course, I'll wait until my child is an appropriate age to do it. Although, if my child hasn't figured out that it's all bull**** by then, I'll be extremely disappointed.

Same for esoterics like you and the religious fundamentalists.

No offense, but I think that's just you, Luminon. Most people lost their extra "supernatural eye," as they get older. 

You mean Newton? String theory is a religion? 

Anyways, if you had a kid, what would you do? Force Christianity on them? Lead by example? Teach them how to think? Make them go to church? Science? Philosophy? Critical thinking? Faith?

I never bought it. There was one time where I got close to becoming generic "born-again" Christian; that was all. 

 

 Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.

 

 I agree with Dawkins as does the Bible. It is pretty clear from the evidence. We are all born atheist, knowing no god. We have to be taught about Moses, Paul and Jesus.  I frankly believe we cannot help ourselves. Children look to their parents for guidance and if the parents are loving the child will follow their parents views on religion and politics. You might believe that it is important to expose your child to all beliefs because you want that for yourself. You might think Jeebus is the bomb and learning about evolution is evil. That will be passed on. I think in spite of ourselves we can do no other.  However, once the child grows up or rather as he grows up he questions. Perhaps the chains of religion will be thrown off - whoops did I give it away.

I grew up in a strong religious environment and followed it. The deeper I went into it the less it made sense which is typical. When literally read the bible is the best vehicle to becoming an atheist. This is why many atheist know the bible so well. My parents continue to believe, but they just listen to the preacher and let him pick out the nice parts. It is a social club with happy faces, lots of nice people who hardly realize the reality of the bible, twisted and morbid. "Stay out of Ezekiel" is what my minister  used to say when I was a young man.

 

I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I take vengeance on them

 

I'm not sure what relevance the falsehood or otherwise of religion has to do with this discussion. But I'm pretty sure fundamentalism driven home with a stick and sitting in the shadow of god threat would be child abuse if it related to any other aspect of human culture but religion - a prism that seems somehow beyond reproach or question. You've heard of hell, right? As for the general evils of religion - I don't recall mentioning this particular strawman at any time back there.

As far as I am concerned facts are nebulous concepts, endelessly open to the application of further evidence. It's the 'truth' about god that dropped anchor 2000-plus years ago and if that suits the way your mind operates, enjoy it.

In relation to your point: "child abuse being that those people over there are insane, stupid and stealing our money" I'm not sure if I'm dealing with a strawman or a misconception. In any case, in the context of this discussion I pointed out, as I always do, that I am the child of fundamentalists, with an end-to-end fundy family. I also end with the statement that those who did not grow up in the environment I did would not understand - I'm pretty sure that's you, StDis.

Of course, such things are subjective. My brothers and sisters grew up in the same family, are strong christians and looking forward to an eternity of going to sleep at night after jesus has brushed their shining hair.

I think a fundy upbringing is child abuse on the basis of my experience and my reading of the doctrine. You are free to offer an alternate opinion based on something actual any time you like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, what would the reasoning be like? In that case I'd go along the lines of, well, not scaring other people that can't see the unicorns, it's better to not talk about invisible unicorns to people who would not understand. But it's good to make observations that could eventually lead to explanation, and to make sure that this will not lead to problems in real life. You see, I'd prefer most reserved approach for young children in such a case.

Well, to be precise, I don't get the point. Take my example, there was and is this supernatural occurence around me, and I always knew what is the difference between imagination and reality. The reality is something that exists regardless of your effort, but imagination requires participation on your side. Reality, no matter how supernatural, doesn't start with you, it's an independent phenomenon. I had read these stories about kids telling lies, making things up, or fantasizing, but I've never seen it in practice.

Observation is an observation. If an observation is made, then it's not bullshit, it just is. You cannot argue that the observation is not made, that would only undermine the child's confidence in you. Children cease to believe in Santa Klaus and tooth fairy because of a lack of observation and have better explanation. (parents did it) But contrarily, these invisible friends or whatever usually cease through pressure of authority, and nobody is concerned if they're real or not. I'm seriously concerned, because esoteric writings say that occurence of less or more clairvoyant children in population will gradually increase in this and next centuries, which will eventually broaden our notion of reality. But in the beginning it may mean many distressed conservative families.

I don't think this fits. Fundamentalists are believers with no evidence, that reassure themselves through emotions and extremism. Esotericists get their evidence through occult activities. I'm an extreme example of that, my etheric perception is a literally tangible evidence for me, always within my reach, among others. So I'm 100% certain that there is "something more", but just as well I'm aware how very little we still know about it, and how mistaken can people sometimes be. So I wouldn't judge anything prematurely, not even what children say. I was such a child, and I was right, and I had the luck to have tolerant parents that neither denied my observation, neither they invited an exorcist

No, I think it may be more widespread than it seems. Benjamin Creme is another example. It's just the society, school, parents, and so on, that decides for children what is real and unreal, possible and impossible, sane and insane. It's still the old cartesian, mechanistic notion of the universe and nature. Which is pretty outdated by now. We have proven quantum entanglement, we know of dark matter, we have string theory, relativity theory and chaos theory. It's time to start thinking differently.

Even the string theory itself predicts worlds not so unlike our own, possibly teeming with life. The scientists fantasize of contacting these worlds through multi-dimensional natural force, the gravity. But I seem to be the only person thinking, that if these dimensions always existed alongside our own, then there very probably already is some interaction. And what else might that interaction produce, than legends of spirits and supernatural worlds, that appear in every society in the world. And those too young, intoxicated, insane or englightened are on the fringe of society, having the least conditioned perception and therefore the greatest interaction with the extra-dimensional phenomena.

I wouldn't be surprised if children had experiences similar to those that adult believers feel support and justify their beliefs, whether their parents are religious or not.

This is a separate issue as to whether such experiences actually impart anything justified labelling as 'knowledge', other than knowledge of what it feels like to have such experiences.

It is a massively unjustified assumption that such experiences actually impart any actual knowledge about reality beyond the internal world of the imagination, unless they can be backed up by empirical data.

It is simply not possible to verify in any degree by purely intuitive, non-empirical reasoning that any particular internal experience is anything more than a random thought or idea, a speculation, a fragment of a dream, even if somehow it did happen to correspond to something that actually did exist.

The only pretty certain existential knowledge we can conclude from thought alone is the basic 'cogito ergo sum'.

Yep - it is quite unreasonable and illogical to demand that unless something can be invalidated it should be accepted. 

But we have to sense whether the axioms of each new realm of reasoning are self evident. The axioms of logic and causal reasoning, and even our basic trust in the senses, are based on our feeling that we should not deny them. Reason takes its orders, at the most fundamental level, from an emotion. You can't define knowledge as the empirically verifiable without consigning much that is clearly knowledge to the category of opinion. You may not have had a religious experience, but you can't say that a religious experience does not have the property of self evidence just because you haven't had one.

How about this: You have to be able to show that something is invalid, before you say that it's invalid. Would you consider that proposition logical, reasonable, etc.?

Logic, causal reasoning, and our trust in sensory data seem to be grounded in a subjective sense of self evidence; your definition of a reasonable method of obtaining truth would seem to rule this out, leaving us without logic et al.

Religion is not identical to theism.

Meh, maybe I'll just wait for my kid to grow out of it. I'll tell my kid my opinion if I'm asked, and that'll be it. 

Right. Well, now that I think about it, I've never seen it in practice either. Kids imagine all this stuff, but they rarely actually believe it by themselves. They usually believe it when it's told or confirmed by their parents, like on Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, etc. 

There was definitely an observation, but I question whether the observation was really a "spirit," etc. 

I haven't figured most of this out yet. I am planning on having children; maybe I'll figure it out then... 

Heh, if I have clairvoyant children, I promise you that I will consider their talents with an open mind.

Well, they also often claim to have personal experiences that confirm their beliefs, such as hearing God's voice, feeling the presence of the Holy Ghost, etc. 

Hmm, what you say makes some sense. But, I'm a skeptic, man. I need evidence.

Your esoteric perception might be overwhelming evidence for you, but I can't hold in much higher regard than anyone else's perception of the unknown.   

 

 

a resistance to branding a child with their parents' religion a 'Dawkinsian rhetorical ploy'. A rhetorical ploy. Apparently Presup has no memory of his childhood and/or he grew up without independent thought or questions of his own. And apparently nothing Dawkins has ever suggested existed until he said it.

 

 

 

If you can show that it really is "something" in the first place.

Okay, children have independent thought. Their independent thoughts are highly vulnerable to suggestion.  Children uncritically accept all sorts of stuff that they don't find out is wrong until later, because they just don't have the critical thinking skills - and if you have such a good memory, I'm sure you remember plenty of stuff like that too. They believe in the Easter Bunny, and Santa. The most skeptical child is afraid of the monster under the bed. And those are just the ideas we give them in a tone of fun! If they believe in those things, it is reasonable to expect them to believe things that are taught to them seriously. Religion is taught seriously; the parents will present it as the truth, even if they aren't particularly devout. The child will be punished for sinning against God by many religious parents, and he will probably hear simple arguments for the existence of God at home or in school. I have never seen a small child that did not accept the religion of his parents, and these explanations account for that fact pretty convincingly.

 

my parents given I had no idea what they were actually talking about but I was aware pretty early of god and the teachings surrounding him - I suppose at 6 or 7? My feelings about god where based on fear, not love, so I was certainly afraid of the monster under the bed. You'd have to agree with me that no quality argument about anything needs to be presented to children along with a threat of eternal torment. That's a fallacy from force, isn't it? I guess that's what the original thread was all about and it's also why I maintain fundamentalist religious instruction is child abuse. It's not about teaching truth, it's about perpetuating a threat. Why? Is it because all humans actually are evil and deserve to die screamingly and eternally, as I was taught from the age of 6 or 7? Or is that just a vast adhom? A form of mental abuse? If you believe that hell stuff is true, Presup, why do you believe it? Did you discover actual proof of hell, or was it drummed into you through abusive teachings?

 

 

'Empiricism' can be justified to anybody, since it makes explicit reference to external reality, which everyone has access to. The information conveyed by our senses is certainly not perfect, but has a very high degree of correlation across all reasonably whole and healthy individuals. They can also be compared with other methods of gaining information about the perceived phenomena, through instrumentation, which can convey data about the things we see, hear or feel to us via different sensations than our direct experience. When we seem to perceive a solid object of a certain weight, shape and color, all of those things can be physically measured, and so support the assumption that our senses are indeed perceiving something that exists, in whatever makes up 'external reality', with useful accuracy.

Whereas 'spiritual' or other experiences, not being anchored in physical reality even indirectly, have nothing to back them up except whatever aspects of them are common to other individuals. Unless such correspondences can be shown to be not explainable by factors like shared exchange of ideas, common source material both people have read or heard of, common tendencies of our brains to have certain sorts of ideas, or whatever, there is no way to 'validate' them as sources of knowledge. So they are intrinsically less justifiable as conveying knowledge about some kind of reality outside the mind and imagination of the individual than what is experienced though the senses, even though those senses are less than perfect.

For example, if two or more individuals independently have very similar experiences which contain very specific details in common, which are original and maybe unusual, and do not correspond in any way to their shared physical environment or past experiences or areas of study, then there is something for a James Randi or other informed investigator of the paranormal to investigate.

Simply showing that two sources of 'knowledge' are both limited in some way does not make them equally flawed, you need a somewhat less superficial analysis.

There are things that can affect our perceptions and thoughts that don't come through our senses, such as strong fluctuating magnetic or electrical fields, or substances getting into brains and other parts of our nervous system, but there is far less correspondence between the content of such induced experiences, the thoughts and feelings, and the actual nature and source of the cause of the experience, than there is with information coming through normal sensory data, since the senses have evolved to convey useful information about our physical environment.

 

As I described above, 'validation' of our sensory experience is not limited to the purely subjective. If you can gain, with the help of physical instrumentation, information about the 'sensed' reality via a separate path, you can gain very strong validation.

Faulty premise: almost all "spiritual" experiences are derived from 'sense data' on, at least, a partial basis.

Ex gratia: the Native American vision quest

---

It would seem to me that most "spiritual experiences" are a means of explaining physical reality -particularly causality- to minds that have no other means of understanding their surroundings or the otherwise natural phenomena in their world.

example: sun crosses the sky daily - Ra is sailing in his solar barge (Bronze Age Egyptian Pantheon.) Family lineage has a generations-long streak of misfortune; they are "Cursed" by some mystic entity of sorts.

 

  (there's a shit load of other examples but that's the only one I can find/think of atm)

What a bless this is, in the heat of summer slack season, or as we say, cucumber season. It's not only the oppressed atheists who need this.

 

You're right, mysticism is not much about understanding an information. But there is esoteric theory and occult practice, which is the other side of mysticism, it's intellectual, logical teaching, with it's own basic axioms and technical terms. In esoteric books, laws and structure of universe, life, nature, energies and forces are meticulously described into great detail, as much as you can do without mathemathics and keep it useful for the student. It's a good framework and inspiration for scientists trying to design a new theory, it touches almost all subjects of natural sciences and philosophies. It also by the way tries to describe string theory, much before it was invented. But studying it is like studying any other science, it takes years of effort worthy of a university.

There is one fascinating thing about mysticism. Religions are all different. But their own mystical precedessors and offshoots are all about the same thing. They may vary superficially, but they're all about the same subject. They're about the one mystical, contemplative path to divinity of consciousness. Occultism is another path to divinity, one of many, but it's a path of knowledge and activity, for those that have brain and are not afraid to use it. For an occultist the mysticism is one of steps on his path, which is intellectually understood through esoteric theory. Mysticism deliberately oversteps intellect, to get from emotional aspiration and love directly to divine consciousness. Esotericism documents that process for students, but prefers the intellectual way, by it's textbookish nature.

For example, zen koans have no sense, but they have a purpose. Their lack of sense is meant to tangle the critical, ever-babbling mind into loop, short-circuit it, and allow the person to meditate. It's a crutch for those who REALLY can't calm down to meditate.
 

All right, well then.

Yeah, they have personal experiences if they do their ritual stuff. But the point is, they don't really know what they do. They use very primitive, distorted quasi-theology and when they feel something, they call it Holy Spirit or God's voice, or speaking in tongues. They don't seem to realize, that this doesn't convey any useful information or progress to them. Useful information would be unscriptural and progress would be heretical. All that they get is feeling.

What kind of evidence do you expect? My evidence is seeing it in practice, and seeing it to fit the theory I have.

Those who can't investigate the paranormal by themselves, rely on judgement of scientists. While real scientists work, local academic authorities do nothing but spew their bullshit and infiltrate government and national media councils. They're old people who grew up, studied and worked under the demands of Soviet Union (and nazis). Their thinking is totalitarian, because Soviets wanted obedience to ideology and good cadre origin, not scientific innovation or truth. During communism the way to any office or higher education led through a climb into Stalin's ass.
These old communists have to die out. Although they hide under international skeptics' movement, their arguments are nothing short of the worst creationists. Their arrogance, stupidity and lies were repeatedly proven, but they don't care, nobody else has access to national media to respond them properly. You see, this is why there is such a thing as local underground culture. I don't say we're right about everything, but this diffcult situation prevents us from getting a professional attention. (these "scientists" stopped doing any field work decades ago, they just hung out in popular science programs) In this diffcult situation we can do nothing else than just work with people and help them, as Answers in Gene( Simmons) has currently in his signature.