Originally posted by
[email protected] 28, 2006 10:57 pm
Here we go again, LSD. The only evidence you have that religious faith results in limited cognitive development is your opinion that you have to be stupid to believe in God.
This isn't about "stupidity", t_wolf; smart religious people can ace an IQ test just as well as smart atheists. The problem, though, is that with childhood indoctrination and "faith"-based upbrining comes inflexibility and conceptual limitations.
Those are the cognitive contrainsts I'm talking about. Intelligence doesn't come from religion or lack thereof, but what one does with one's intelligence is largely determined by how one is raised.
So if someone is brought up to "have faith" and to not question the world around them, they won't question the world around them.
Again, that doesn't mean that they'll be trapped in dogma for the rest of their lives, lots and lots of people escape from superstition all the time; but there's simply no reason that they should have to put up with it in the first place.
Children should be brought up doctrinally neutral; that way they can come to their own judgments on all these issues. Religion and spirituality and politics and all the rest should certainly be discussed but in an open and skeptical and productive way.
You see, the point here is that "parental rights" don't exist. Guardians exist to serve the interests of those in their care, not the other way around.
So it doesn't matter what "values" those guardians may or may not have. All that's relevent is what kind of education would best serve the child.
And while obviously that question is a highly charged one, it's ducking the issue to assert that its "impossible" to come to a reasonably unbiased conclusion.
Obviously we're all subjective animals and our preconceptions shape our thinking, but we nonetheless as a society need to come to an understanding of what is and is not accdeptable parental behaviour.
And, in my judgement, dogmatic indoctrination falls on the unacceptable side of that scale.
Frankly I found myself agreeing with the studies you posted at the same time I realized they had nothing to do with actual evidence of cognitive limitations.
What they showed quite clearly is that childhood dogmatic indoctrination is strongly linked with authoritarianism, prejudice, close-mindedness, biggotry, and ignorance.
Religious people are just no less likely to get into Harvard or to ace their standardized tests. But they are less likely to accept evolution; and they're far more likely to be homophobes or sexists.
The issue here, again, isn't intelligence -- there are lots of smart racists out there. The problem with dogma is not that it stops people from being smart, it's that it stops them from acting on their smarts. It limits them to the confines of doctrinal rules.
And that's deeply harmful, whether you want to admit it or not.
And the best we can try to do is to explain why that's wrong, isn't it?
No, the "best we can do" is to stop racists and sexists from indoctrinating kids!
Again, you're coming back to this notion that parents have a "right" to raise their children however they want. Well they don't. Rights stop at the end of your person, they don't extend to indoctrinating others.
Children aren't just "little adults"; they're highly influencable and hihgly vulnerable to brainwashing. So a lot of care needs to be taken in determining what should or shouldn't be presented to them.
And while there's nothing wrong with discussing religious questions with children of pretty much any age, "faith" does need to be avoided.
Another statement of opinion portrayed as fact.
No, actually it's a statement of fact portrayed as fact.
Sure, monogamy happens in the animal world, lots of things happen in the animal world. But the so-called "nuclear family" is nonetheless a social invention and one that can certainly be improved upon.
I suppose you're right, "natural" is rather irrelevent. So let's just leave it at flawed then, OK? 'Cause while the origins aren't the issue here, what can be done with it certainly is.
And let me guess, you've decided it's up to you to decide what's ok to teach and what isn't.
No, I've decided that what's OK and what isn't must be rationaly and logically determined because unlimited "parental rights" is a nonsensical suggestion.
Even you admit that some constraints must be placed on what parents can do to their childre, the only issue at question is exactly where to draw that line.
So the preacher in the park has to shut up when kids are around?
No. A preacher in the park isn't going to have a dominant influence on a child's development. A parent, however, is.
Restricting the former's freedom of speech, therefore, is an unjustifiable infringement. Restricting the latter is a reasonble constraint.
The above preacher would also have the right, if he were so inclinded, to insult a child; to call him names. I'm not sure why he would want to do so, but if he did, no authority would have the right to lock him up for it.
A parent who constantly subjected his child to psychological abuse, however, should be removed as a parent.
Again, different rules apply to guardians than to ordinary people, even ordinary people near children.
Except it's not hypocrisy, it's common sense based on values.
You keep saying that, but I've yet to see you actually explain what that means.
Why is brainwashing children to wear a a bag made of cloth less abusive than brainwashing them to wear one made of plastic? Exactly what is so "common sensical" about permitting the former while disallowing the latter?
Appealing to "common sense" or "values" does not eliminate the overt hypocrisy of your position. "Religious values" are nothing more than a set of opinions, no more important or significant than any other.
And you have not presented one coherent argument to suggest why opinion based on "quronic law" is more defensible than those based on secular sexist convictions.
Children's rights are colourblind. No matter from where it originates, abuse is abuse is abuse.
Unless of course that indoctrination is class consciousness and a belief in your communist system.
No!
That's what you refuse to get. I don't want children indoctrinated with anything, not religion, not atheism, not communism.
I'm sure that, in a communist society, the question of communism would come up; but when it does, it should be discussed in a skeptical and questioning manner.
Nothing should be taught as "faith", nothing.
It's not going to happen for this very reason: it goes against people's basic values which unfortunately for you center on religion or spirituality in one form of another.
That may be true for a lot of people, but it's certainly not true for all of them ...and its true for less and less people every year.
Besides, if my ideas are so outside the mainstream that they'll "never" be accepted, you have nothing to worry about. But, I'd remind you that at one time republicanism was a pipe dream and today it's 85% of the world.
Unpopularity does not signify invalidity.
And it's up to you, not parents, to decide what children need, isn't it.
No, it's not up to me, nor should it be. It shouldn't be up to parents either, however.
Parents do not "own" or "have rights" to their children, they just happen to be the ones that society has appointed to care for them. That situation is neither immutable nor nescessarily optimal, however, and there's no reason that it cannot be controlled when nescessary.
When a parent brings his child into a cult, we intervene on that childs behalf without question. When that cult is called Islam, however, suddenly "common sense" stops us.
Well, "religious tolerance" and postcolonial white guilt aside, there is absolutely no reason why a Branch Davidian child has more of a right to freedom than a Muslim one.
No, I shouln't have the authority to arbitrarily determine what children need, but neither should anyone else. That's why we need to be as rational and impersonal about this as possible.
If children are being harmed by something, regardless of whether that something is "religious" or "valued", that something should go.
In my judgement that applies to "faith" just as much as it applies to racism. And I hope that someday the majority of society will agree with me.
But if not, there's obviously nothing that I can do to personally force the issue ...nor would I try.
At first I was very skeptical of what you were saying. Though, now I see the validity of your argument and agree quite largely with you. Even if that's not the societal "law" of raising children, if I do have kids someday, I'll probably raise them along those lines. I think parents shouldn't be constantly asserting their opinions as absolute truth and infallible, because whenever a child is raised that way it is extremely difficult to move beyond that (whether its racism, fascism, communism, atheism, Christianity, etc.), and that child will certainly experience a degree of pain and confusion.
THAT is true because I've experienced it myself first-hand. I was raised in an evangelical Christian home, with my immediate family being firm believers, along with all of my extended family on both sides. I've gone to church since I was born practically, and once had a very active and lively faith because I fully embraced it.
These days however, I hold strong skepticism towards the idea of God, and I move more and more everyday towards nontheism.
I still haven't sorted out what I believe, though I have been slowly moving away from my faith especially during this last year, just after my belief in it reached it's pinnacle.
When you're raised since birth with the idea that if you believe in anything else (religion-wise), you are in danger of the flames of Hell and eternal damnation and even immediate earthly suffering, it becomes extremely difficult to reject or truly consider anything else besides your faith.