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Originally Posted by Esmo  As someone who has had a rigorous religious upbringing, I personally consider Richard Dawkins' 'virus' that is religion to be much more a grey area than just a mass uncontrollable brainwashing exercise.
A religious upbringing does not completely take away freedom, but I do agree that a religious upbringing touches you in ways that you wouldn't be if you hadn't had it. The problem is that when you start criticising religious parenting like this, where do you stop? We are all affected by the ideologies and world views of our parents, that's a sad fact of life. How could we tell a religious parent that they couldn't bring their child up religiously, when logically that means we have to tell Communists, Tory voters, anti-abortionists and people who really like football that they couldn't bring up tiny Commies, Tories, anti-abortionists and football afficionados? You've either got to let parents bring up their children how they like (without harming them) or suggest that nobody brings up children at all. And as I've said, religion is not the child abuse that it's made out to be. I'm typing proof of that. |
I'm pretty much in the same boat, I went to a RC primary school and until I was about 9-10 I genuinely believed that I was being watched by an all powerful god, that my gran lived in heaven and that if I sinned I would go to hell. It opened my eyes to how disturbing religion can be. I'm not seeing how saying children shouldn't be brainwashed into religion is logically saying that they shouldn't be allowed to favour a football team. One is harmful and the other is harmless, I think that;s where I draw the line. I don't support the idea of forcing parents to bring their children up secular anyway. That would be unenforceable and morally stupid. I do however support the government making life harder for religious orginsations but I feel those ideas are pretty different. I'd rather the religious authorities just slowly deteriorated by themselves. It doesn't look like it's going to take new laws for that to happen anyway, at least in the uk.