Christian prog vs secular prog

 

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: About Dawkins, you said it all when you mentined he hates religion, that is all for me, he is allowed to hate religion, but not force us to act according to our doctrine.

I never said that Dawkins hates religion – I said that you should not take what I quoted him as saying as coming from pure hatred of religion, but just as a forceful way of making a point. I doubt he feels the emotion of hate about religion – has a very strong intellectual dislike, yes, but nothing so base as just hatred. But I don't know the man, so it's just speculation, but that's how he comes across on TV and in the written word.

I'm aware of the duties of parents, god-parents and so on. But this duty serves the purpose of ensuring the continuation of the religion, the survival of the meme – get 'em whilst they're young, the Xavier quote. It's a control mechanism.

It's possible to raise children in a moral environment without brainwashing them with religion from an early age and then let them make their own minds up nearer adulthood, but the likelihood of them choosing to follow their parents' religion is likely to be diminished, so there's the rule about bringing them up in the faith to reduce the chances of the faith dying out. See it as "survival of the fittest" for religious memes ;-) .

I think Dawkins probably uses the phrase "child abuse" because he sees your doctrine (and that of other religions) of having a duty to raise children in the faith as very damaging to children and very wrong and something to be strongly discouraged. You see it as your right to follow your doctrine, he might argue that you shouldn't have that right because he feels strongly that it is as immoral as neglect or any other form of emotional abuse.

Some people go a small way toward addressing this by not having their children baptised, but dedicated, then if the child wishes they can have a confirmation ceremony and be baptised, which I think tends to be in their teens. Of course, for the children exposed to religious brainwashing during the intervening time them wanting to be confirmed at a later date is likely to be a foregone conclusion.

If a particular religion really was that obviously the logical, rational choice for how to live one's life, there wouldn't be the need to indoctrinate children into it, they would see the obvious benefits and flock to it of their own free will once they were old enough to make that choice without coercion.