Labeling children as a member of a particular religion is immoral

[1robin]

The fact that I don't accept the validity of your proposition is surely highly relevant if we're having a debate. You can't just make statements and insist that anyone who wants to debate with you has to accept them as true, or insist that people accept your favoured form of logical argument.

If you deny the sun's existence at this moment how is that that relevant to the sun's existence. I never said you must accept anything I said as true. I said saying No, "it is not" is not an argument. You supposed to be here to debate not practice the "I know you are but what am I" tactics of 5th graders. Again it is not my argument. It is the state of that particular argument in the minds of scholars since Socrates. There is no alternate position. You can only argue that Yahweh does not exist, the moral results of his existence are inescapable. However you have done neither. No debate, no argument, no reasoning. Just denial (which is assumed between any two people debating an issue. I know you do not agree, that is assumed, I am waiting for why your disagreement can stand up to scrutiny. Last chance. I am not debating your lack of debating any further. Do you have an actual argument or would you prefer to join a denial forum?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

You can only argue that Yahweh does not exist, the moral results of his existence are inescapable.

OK then I'll argue that God doesn't exist.

 

[Riverwolf]

Right and wrong in this context are objective by nature. Without God right and wrong as categories of actual moral facts do not exist. Without God morality is ethical preference and not in any way related to a non existent right or wring fact. I did not make that very clear but when I mean actual moral right and wrong. I mean objectively true right and wrong. Man has no power to make anything right or wrong. We can only make them legal or illegal.

I disagree. I've discarded concepts of morally "right and wrong" as nothing more than cultural constructions. It's why I focus, instead, on more utilitarian ethics of harm vs. help in regards to the community, and/or the bigger picture.

To say something causes harm to an arbitrary life form does nothing to show it is actually wrong. You must first show why harming something is actually wrong, hen why harming humanity is wrong, in which cases it isn't and why. Harm does not equate to wrong. In fact harming other sis at times considered morally good.

Because we're an empathic social species, and so just naturally hate bringing harm to those we perceive as part of the "Tribe". It's part of what makes us human.

You have only restated my question. Why is harming communities wrong or destabilizing nature immoral? Without God humans are nothing but biological anomalies and to harm them is no more wrong than harming rocks.

No, we're not, because we're not to ourselves.

How is it in anyway proof that anything is wrong? Without God no matter how you dress it up whatever basis you have for morality (or claim to) is equal to opinion and preference. No preference or opinion can actually make anything wrong or right. Without God your left without anything to fill the void where the foundation of moral fact is supposed to be. You just keep shoving arbitrary terms in there and claiming that makes things wrong but it doesn't. It's a semanticshell game which cannot even begin to perform the function.

It performs the function just fine. Not all subjectivity is equal in scale. Again, I point to the value of money, or political boundaries. All of these are subjective in their existence, and yet their existence is quite, quite real.

This is not a logical problem; it's a primal emotional one. Empathy is as primal as the sex drive.

That is Frigga.

 

[Trantorfuzz]

You didn't understand the argument whatsoever.

I made several comparisons to show why religious labeling is bizarre. We don't label children republicans or homosexuals, or any other very personal decisions that require a lot reflection and personal analysis. Religion is actually the most complex of them alland requires the most personal reflection. So labeling children is ethically questionable.

The comparisons don't prove anything about the desirability or malevolence of parents teaching their religious beliefs to their children. In the case of prepubescent children, it senseless to label them as hetero- or homo- sexual only because such children are not conscious of their sexuality. In the case of political affiliation, it is senseless to label children as "Republican" or "Democrat" only because young children don't understand politics. Therefore, it does not follow teaching children that Jesus, the guy with the beard and the robes, loves them is ethically suspect.

"Also I find it strange that you're asking why propaganda inhibits a child's development. I mean, do you think the propaganda in North Korea inhibits a child's development, or not? There's no evidence for it that im aware of, and yet im sure you'd agree that they're imposing values and beliefs too vehemently."

I would agree that inculcating anti-social beliefs in children is unethical, but unless you can make a case that all religious beliefs are anti-social, you can't make a case that teaching one's own children one's own religious beliefs is unethical per se. Parents inevitably transmit some kind of belief system to their children, because children are intellectually dependent on adults.

"Standing too close too a cliff might get you killed, but religious beliefs won't practicality help you at all. It will probably only help you waste time performing some mindless ritual a child doesn't understand."

That is a matter of opinion, not of fact. Religious people could argue, for example, that teaching kids that their dead grandparents are in heaven helps them handle the loss. They could also argue that the idea that God is always watching them helps them behave well even when no one is looking. As a non-believer, I don't think that these beliefs are necessary for good child-rearing, but that doesn't mean that the parents in question are morally blameworthy.

"And I never made an appeal to authority at all; all i did was cite one of their arguments--it was never "Im correct because Christopher hitchens says so." You should really become more versed in argumentative fallacies before using them. Generally plagiarizing an argument is bad; people who are educated know that. Citing =/= argument from authority."

Then why mention Hitchens at all?

"Is there any evidence that strict North Korean propaganda hurts a child's development? I mean where do you draw the line before personal enlightenment and being told everything you have to believe in and value. My stance is that children should be able to have the most personal enlightenment possible. And I will provide some more deductive evidence since you seem like you could use some education. According to a poll 42% (46% in others) of US students believe in young earth creationism for human origins. This staunchly defies the scientific evidence and denial of the scientific method (evolution, geology, plate tectonics,etc), while hurting the future generation of scientists and engineers because of religious beliefs; this is definitely robbing children of their future, and hurting the future of everyone else since the world needs as many scientists and engineers as it can get. Students would rather believe in religious assertions than science because their families imposed beliefs on them when they were young. They're more likely to believe in religious texts and follow doctrine than learn valuable scientific knowledge."

Most Christians are not creationists. Christianity's largest and arguably oldest denomination, Roman Catholicism, is quite comfortable with the fact of and the explanation for (theory of) evolution.

But let us address the fundamentalists who DO teach creationism to their children. Should this be legally and psychologically classified as child abuse, such that children could be taken from their parents by the state in order to end such abuse? My answer is 'no.'

Regarding your frequent references to "forcing" one's beliefs on children: Children don't have the ability to critically analyze adult beliefs. In other words, children are intellectually dependent on adults--they don't arrive at their beliefs independently. This means that the transmission of *any* belief to a child could be labeled as coercive. Do we speak of *forcing* beliefs on children only when we don't like the beliefs in question?

And finally where is YOUR evidence that teaching a child religious beliefs has any benefit whatsoever?

I don't have to prove that teaching a child religious beliefs has any benefit whatsoever. You have to prove that teaching a child religious beliefs is per se harmful to the child in order to equate such teaching with child abuse. Absent such proof, I will continue to deny that religious instruction per se constitutes sufficient harm to the child to justify calling the Child Protective Service.

 

[Trantorfuzz]

Some of what gets conveyed to children is dogmatic, some is evidenced-based. We should minimize the former and maximize the latter.

I agree with this principle. If I had been a parent, I would try to implement it. But this principle is a far cry from the thesis against which I am arguing, namely that teaching children religious beliefs is a form of child abuse. If I'm wrong, we'd better lobby for laws that allow the state to remove children from the homes of religious parents. Isn't that what we should do on behalf of abused children?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

In the UK people are allowed to remove their children from school on religious grounds and teach them at home. Is that a good thing?

 

[1robin]

I disagree. I've discarded concepts of morally "right and wrong" as nothing more than cultural constructions. It's why I focus, instead, on more utilitarian ethics of harm vs. help in regards to the community, and/or the bigger picture.

Your response would reduce this down to merely a semantic exercise.

1. If you define morality as mallum prohibitum (meaning merely ethical opinion) then I agree with you. Without God that is the best we can do. There would exists no moral facts but we would have to fill the gap with legality.
2. However the definition of morality in question is Mallum in se (meaning acts contradictory to or in accordance with objective moral fact. This is what society so desperately needs, what is almost universally apprehended as the case, and what I was discussing. If God exists then this definition is true and our moral systems can be based in fact instead on conjecture (without God).

So if you define morality as no. 1 then I agree that that is all there is if God does not exist.

Because we're an empathic social species, and so just naturally hate bringing harm to those we perceive as part of the "Tribe". It's part of what makes us human.

So if I murdered every single human being who is not a member of my tribe but competes with my tribe for resources then your moral world view would justify those acts. This is the problem. With God there are moral facts that would make this wrong, but without God no matter how you define morality it will never produce justice. It won't fit, it will always have gaping holes, and it will be 100% assumption based on speciesm and self interest. Without God that is all that is left and it will not work.

No, we're not, because we're not to ourselves.

However that opinion would be ontologically false. It would be the fact of the matter that we truly are only biological anomalies without any inherent value or worth. We can believe otherwise but that is only to compound error upon error which is what the absence of God always results in.

It performs the function just fine. Not all subjectivity is equal in scale. Again, I point to the value of money, or political boundaries. All of these are subjective in their existence, and yet their existence is quite, quite real.

No it does not because it cannot. In a moral context all subjectivity is equal in scale. It is 100% opinion unrelated to any objective moral truth (because there is no actual moral fact to which it could relate). It's existence is not real. No more then my belief in unicorns would make them real on any level. I can make rules, I cannot make those rules reflect truth. Without God we can sit around inventing horrifically flawed legal codes yet they would not contain an actual moral fact what so ever.

With God we can make moral rules that theoretically reflect objective truths, without him we are left to substitute pathetic attempts to fill the void where the need for objective moral truths is left unanswerable.

This is not a logical problem; it's a primal emotional one. Empathy is as primal as the sex drive.

Primal does not equate to true. Hate is primal yet is considered immoral.

That is Frigga.

I don't know what Frigga means.

 

[1robin]

OK then I'll argue that God doesn't exist.

Well at least that is the pretext to an actual argument. You may fire when ready.

 

[Levite]

I find that calling a child catholic,or muslim, or hindu, etc, is completely unethical and unfair to the child's development. It inhibits personal advancement and thoughtfulness because its a limitation that is imposed on them--a metaphorical ball and chain. Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have argued, which I agree with, that you wouldn't call a child a republican, or a democrat, or any other political position because a child isn't old enough to understand the complex issues behind various stance--there is nothing more complicated than the nature of reality, which makes religious labeling even more disgusting.

The reasons why religions like this is obvious--its a form of early prostelization that sticks with a child more easily because their families and communities which they grew up with are peer pressuring them to conform to their societal standards. Children are also more susceptible to suggestions. However, it completely demolishes the chance for most children to have an unpolluted period of personal progress where they can individually learn about what beliefs they find most appealing. Religious families inherently tarnish this fundamentally important process.

In an ideal world I would like there to be laws prohibiting the prostelization until they are capable of making more sophisticated judgments. In conclusion parents are doing a disservice to their children by demanding that they stick to the family household religion . It really is a form of child abuse since it obliterates the potential for a child to learn for themselves, instead of being force fed a bunch of garbage created by iron age peasants.

Wow, what tripe.

Parents make choices for their children as to how best to raise them. Those choices include culturalization, socialization, lifestyle choices of all sorts from health care to clothing to schooling. Raising a kid in the family religion is no different. In fact, quite often the religion is intertwined with the culture, which makes the idea of raising a kid in a religious vacuum, despite what their family traditions might be, all the more ridiculous.

Nothing prevents kids from growing up, deciding they disagree with their parents, and becoming another religion, or becoming atheists or agnostics. It happens all the time.

If you don't like religion, don't raise your kid with a religion. That simple. But just as you would be annoyed if religious people tried to foist their ideas on your kids, don't try to foist yours on the kids of religious people.

 

[Riverwolf]

Your response would reduce this down to merely a semantic exercise.

1. If you define morality as mallum prohibitum (meaning merely ethical opinion) then I agree with you. Without God that is the best we can do. There would exists no moral facts but we would have to fill the gap with legality.
2. However the definition of morality in question is Mallum in se (meaning acts contradictory to or in accordance with objective moral fact. This is what society so desperately needs, what is almost universally apprehended as the case, and what I was discussing. If God exists then this definition is true and our moral systems can be based in fact instead on conjecture (without God).

So if you define morality as no. 1 then I agree that that is all there is if God does not exist.

I think number 1 is a severe understatement. Opinion typically involves individuals, and carries inaccurate connotations for this topic.

It's not just your "opinion", for example, that one hundred dollars is the value that it is, and yet this is subjective and relative.

So if I murdered every single human being who is not a member of my tribe but competes with my tribe for resources then your moral world view would justify those acts. This is the problem. With God there are moral facts that would make this wrong, but without God no matter how you define morality it will never produce justice. It won't fit, it will always have gaping holes, and it will be 100% assumption based on speciesm and self interest. Without God that is all that is left and it will not work.

Justice as we understand it does involve an authority over the individual "tribes" in order to hold them accountable to agreed-upon rules, but this does not require any God. A High King can do it, or High Council, can fit the bill.

Besides, I don't see "justice" in any monotheistic theology. I see the exact same thing I'm describing, except it's pretending to not be.

However that opinion would be ontologically false. It would be the fact of the matter that we truly are only biological anomalies without any inherent value or worth. We can believe otherwise but that is only to compound error upon error which is what the absence of God always results in.

Only under Aristotlean conceptions of "A can never be B", which is perceptually false. The sky can both be blue and gray at the same time, depending on who's doing the observing or describing.

We aren't to ourselves, because we don't perceive ourselves to be, and that's what ultimately matters. I don't have a monotheistic God, and I don't perceive of myself as a mere biological anomaly, and therefore the absence of God does not always result in this.

No it does not because it cannot. In a moral context all subjectivity is equal in scale. It is 100% opinion unrelated to any objective moral truth (because there is no actual moral fact to which it could relate). It's existence is not real. No more then my belief in unicorns would make them real on any level. I can make rules, I cannot make those rules reflect truth. Without God we can sit around inventing horrifically flawed legal codes yet they would not contain an actual moral fact what so ever.

With God we can make moral rules that theoretically reflect objective truths, without him we are left to substitute pathetic attempts to fill the void where the need for objective moral truths is left unanswerable.

Except I've never seen that happen anywhere that claims to "have God". I see the same exact thing that you're denouncing.

In any case, "objectivity" cannot be grasped by any of us. All we have is our subjective perceptions and agreements.

Do you consider the values of money and political boundaries to not exist?

Primal does not equate to true. Hate is primal yet is considered immoral.

I don't consider hate to be inherently immoral. But then, I don't regard any emotion to be immoral inherently; only actions. (So yes, I do disagree with Jesus, quite vehemently, when he says that even just looking upon someone else's wife is adultery).

All primal means is that it's an inbuilt part of who we are, and without it we are not. It doesn't make certain behaviors okay in any given cultural context.

I don't know what Frigga means.

The word roughly means "Beloved". She is the Mother of Balder, wife of Woden, Queen of Asgard.

Spoiler: big picture

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

In fact, quite often the religion is intertwined with the culture, which makes the idea of raising a kid in a religious vacuum, despite what their family traditions might be, all the more ridiculous.

You aren't the first person I've heard say something like this, but it suddenly occurs to me that I don't actually know what the intended meaning is here.

It seems to me that you're saying that the religious and social aspects of a cultural tradition are all a package deal... as if not eating meat on Friday and having big family Easter dinners means that there's nothing wrong to teach a gay kid that their orientation is "sinful". Is that the sort of thing you're arguing? If not, can you clarify your position?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I am the only one with a world view that includes an actual basis of morality. You at best have a basis for ethical opinions. That is just the fact, if that means you no longer want to discuss it that is up to you.

That is like saying you believe morality is defined as whatever is good for you and you have no interest in any other definition. Let me give the official definitions of morality: There are two different kinds but I am not discussing one of them. I have always pointed out I am talking about morality that is objective in nature not that is contrived by humanity.

1. Malum in se (plural mala in se) is a Latin phrase meaning wrong or evil in itself. The phrase is used to refer to conduct assessed as sinful or inherently wrong by nature, independent of regulations governing the conduct.

This is what is under discussion and what is relevant.

2. It is distinguished from malum prohibitum, which is wrong only because it is prohibited.

This seems to be what you want to discuss and it is not relevant or even true. It is a contrived convenience unrelated to any actual moral truth whatever.

If morality depends on God, then there is not - and cannot be - such a thing as malum in se.

 

[icehorse]

Wow, what tripe.

Parents make choices for their children as to how best to raise them. Those choices include culturalization, socialization, lifestyle choices of all sorts from health care to clothing to schooling. Raising a kid in the family religion is no different. In fact, quite often the religion is intertwined with the culture, which makes the idea of raising a kid in a religious vacuum, despite what their family traditions might be, all the more ridiculous.

Nothing prevents kids from growing up, deciding they disagree with their parents, and becoming another religion, or becoming atheists or agnostics. It happens all the time.

If you don't like religion, don't raise your kid with a religion. That simple. But just as you would be annoyed if religious people tried to foist their ideas on your kids, don't try to foist yours on the kids of religious people.

If nothing else, count yourself lucky to have - presumably - grown up in a religion for which apostasy is not a crime.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

If you don't like religion, don't raise your kid with a religion. That simple. But just as you would be annoyed if religious people tried to foist their ideas on your kids, don't try to foist yours on the kids of religious people.

Out of curiosity, do you have problems with similar "foisting"?

For instance, there are plenty of parents who are against vaccination, but you can't enrol a child in school here if they haven't had all their shots.

... or curriculum standards: we have minimum standards that even private- and home-schooled kids have to meet. Is this "foisting"? Keep in mind that some groups have strong religious beliefs about education: for instance, many of the Mennonites around here consider higher education to be "worldly" and discourage it on religious grounds, especially for girls. Is it "foisting our ideas" on these families to require that their girls stay in school until at least 16 when their religious beliefs say that by 14, they should be spending their time helping out around the home and getting ready for marriage?

 

[Levite]

You aren't the first person I've heard say something like this, but it suddenly occurs to me that I don't actually know what the intended meaning is here.

It seems to me that you're saying that the religious and social aspects of a cultural tradition are all a package deal... as if not eating meat on Friday and having big family Easter dinners means that there's nothing wrong to teach a gay kid that their orientation is "sinful". Is that the sort of thing you're arguing? If not, can you clarify your position?

What I'm saying is that the problems of a religious culture-- just like the problems of any culture-- are for that culture to solve, and not for those who are not part of that culture. The answer to the problems of fundamentalist Christianity, for example, is not the purview of Jews or Muslims to provide-- it's the responsibility of progressive Christians to try and fix their religious culture. Likewise, the problems of fundamentalist Jewish culture or Muslim culture are not for Christians or Hindus to solve, they are for progressive Jews and Muslims, respectively. If progressive religious people, in seeking to solve the problems of fundamentalism in their traditions, seek outside their traditions for help, it is their responsibility to seek wisely and bring in such ideas, concepts, and practices that will solve the issues in harmony with the tradition.

But it is never the purview of secularists and atheists to come along and impose their solutions to the problems of religious culture, because it is not their culture. Just as it is never the purview of religious fundamentalists to attempt to solve the problems of secular society by the imposition of their views.

This is no different than say, French people wanting French answers to French problems, and not German answers or American answers. Or Japanese people wanting to address the issues of Japanese culture themselves, and not have answers imposed upon them by other cultures. Or Native American or Australian Aboriginal cultures not appreciating when white society forced what it deemed "civilized" answers to the percieved problems of native cultures upon them.

Out of curiosity, do you have problems with similar "foisting"? For instance, there are plenty of parents who are against vaccination, but you can't enrol a child in school here if they haven't had all their shots.

Failure to vaccinate is not only a proximate endangerment of health to the child, but to everyone around the child. It is by no means comparable to teaching a kid religion. That kind of ridiculous analogizing is one of the things that persistently undermines the statements of atheists in debate-- it's just silly to make an equivalence between teaching religion in general and refusing to vaccinate.

... or curriculum standards: we have minimum standards that even private- and home-schooled kids have to meet. Is this "foisting"? Keep in mind that some groups have strong religious beliefs about education: for instance, many of the Mennonites around here consider higher education to be "worldly" and discourage it on religious grounds, especially for girls. Is it "foisting our ideas" on these families to require that their girls stay in school until at least 16 when their religious beliefs say that by 14, they should be spending their time helping out around the home and getting ready for marriage?

I can see the argument for why it's infringing, but since it's only a couple more years, I don't think it's much of a problem, especially since it's fairly easy to decide not to make use of things one has learned. And especially since it's fairly easy for parents to counter-teach their particular ideas in order to balance out whatever they find troublesome about the curriculum-- all the more so when the family culture is so strong.

 

[Avi1001]

What I'm saying is that the problems of a religious culture-- just like the problems of any culture-- are for that culture to solve, and not for those who are not part of that culture. The answer to the problems of fundamentalist Christianity, for example, is not the purview of Jews or Muslims to provide-- it's the responsibility of progressive Christians to try and fix their religious culture. Likewise, the problems of fundamentalist Jewish culture or Muslim culture are not for Christians or Hindus to solve, they are for progressive Jews and Muslims, respectively. If progressive religious people, in seeking to solve the problems of fundamentalism in their traditions, seek outside their traditions for help, it is their responsibility to seek wisely and bring in such ideas, concepts, and practices that will solve the issues in harmony with the tradition.

But it is never the purview of secularists and atheists to come along and impose their solutions to the problems of religious culture, because it is not their culture. Just as it is never the purview of religious fundamentalists to attempt to solve the problems of secular society by the imposition of their views.

This is no different than say, French people wanting French answers to French problems, and not German answers or American answers. Or Japanese people wanting to address the issues of Japanese culture themselves, and not have answers imposed upon them by other cultures. Or Native American or Australian Aboriginal cultures not appreciating when white society forced what it deemed "civilized" answers to the percieved problems of native cultures upon them.



Failure to vaccinate is not only a proximate endangerment of health to the child, but to everyone around the child. It is by no means comparable to teaching a kid religion. That kind of ridiculous analogizing is one of the things that persistently undermines the statements of atheists in debate-- it's just silly to make an equivalence between teaching religion in general and refusing to vaccinate.



I can see the argument for why it's infringing, but since it's only a couple more years, I don't think it's much of a problem, especially since it's fairly easy to decide not to make use of things one has learned. And especially since it's fairly easy for parents to counter-teach their particular ideas in order to balance out whatever they find troublesome about the curriculum-- all the more so when the family culture is so strong.

This is an oversimplification designed to meet the needs of the religious leadership. Sure, it is nice to say secular people should not be involved in solving the problems of the religious...and the religious should not be involved in the secular problems, but in the real world, problems and people do not divide themselves so nicely and neatly. Some religious people share secular views. Religious leaders might try to force us into their areas of control, but it will not work.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

What I'm saying is that the problems of a religious culture-- just like the problems of any culture-- are for that culture to solve, and not for those who are not part of that culture. The answer to the problems of fundamentalist Christianity, for example, is not the purview of Jews or Muslims to provide-- it's the responsibility of progressive Christians to try and fix their religious culture. Likewise, the problems of fundamentalist Jewish culture or Muslim culture are not for Christians or Hindus to solve, they are for progressive Jews and Muslims, respectively. If progressive religious people, in seeking to solve the problems of fundamentalism in their traditions, seek outside their traditions for help, it is their responsibility to seek wisely and bring in such ideas, concepts, and practices that will solve the issues in harmony with the tradition.

Nobody belongs to just one culture. A Jewish Canadian, for instance, belongs just as much to Canadian culture as to Jewish culture... and in reality, both of those may be less meaningful for him than his political party membership or his sports team affiliation.

Also, culture is gradated; it's not as distinct as you make it up to be. There can be more cultural distance between two members of the same family of religions than there is to someone of a different faith. I think it's ridiculous to say that, for instance, an Ethiopian Muslim should be less concerned with the problems of a Coptic Christian than a Quaker from New England should be.

To the extent that there are cultural lines at all (as opposed to just zones of grey), there's nothing wrong with having concerns that cross cultural lines, and there's still something wrong with interfering with someone else's life just because you happen to be on the same side of a cultural line.

But it is never the purview of secularists and atheists to come along and impose their solutions to the problems of religious culture, because it is not their culture. Just as it is never the purview of religious fundamentalists to attempt to solve the problems of secular society by the imposition of their views.

This is no different than say, French people wanting French answers to French problems, and not German answers or American answers. Or Japanese people wanting to address the issues of Japanese culture themselves, and not have answers imposed upon them by other cultures. Or Native American or Australian Aboriginal cultures not appreciating when white society forced what it deemed "civilized" answers to the percieved problems of native cultures upon them.

So the thing that's happening here - an American Jew telling a Canadian atheist how he should behave - is completely unacceptable, then... right?

You just described nationality as a mark of culture. Is a Canadian Jew not a Canadian, and therefore a member of my culture?

Failure to vaccinate is not only a proximate endangerment of health to the child, but to everyone around the child. It is by no means comparable to teaching a kid religion.

It's probably less likely to result in the death of a child than teaching a gay child that homosexuality is a sin.

That kind of ridiculous analogizing is one of the things that persistently undermines the statements of atheists in debate-- it's just silly to make an equivalence between teaching religion in general and refusing to vaccinate.

Actually, I think it's a good illustration that your argument is based on a false premise: you argue as if the autonomy of parents shouldn't be interfered with at alll, when in reality, you concede that some restrictions on autonomy are necessary. This isn't about whether there should be a line; it's about where the line should be.

I can see the argument for why it's infringing, but since it's only a couple more years, I don't think it's much of a problem, especially since it's fairly easy to decide not to make use of things one has learned. And especially since it's fairly easy for parents to counter-teach their particular ideas in order to balance out whatever they find troublesome about the curriculum-- all the more so when the family culture is so strong.

So some imposition on a culture's religious beliefs are okay. Gotcha.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

This is an oversimplification designed to meet the needs of the religious leadership. Sure, it is nice to say secular people should not be involved in solving the problems of the religious...and the religious should not be involved in the secular problems, but in the real world, problems and people do not divide themselves so nicely and neatly. Some religious people share secular views. Religious leaders might try to force us into their areas of control, but it will not work.

I do a fair bit of volunteer work involving kids. It's predicated on the idea that the welfare of ALL children is my concern. I can't tell you how embarrassed I am to realize now that I should've told the parents of the group from the private Christian school and the local South Asian association that their kids aren't welcome in the program I run, since their culture's problems aren't my concern.

Shame. The kids seemed to have fun and I bet they were looking forward to the program again this year.

 

[1robin]

I think number 1 is a severe understatement. Opinion typically involves individuals, and carries inaccurate connotations for this topic.

It's not just your "opinion", for example, that one hundred dollars is the value that it is, and yet this is subjective and relative.

It most certainly is an opinion that a hundred dollars is worth one hundred dollars. That is the entire basis by which currency exists. Commonly contrived but accepted value.

The difference is this.

1. If everyone on earth believed one hundred dollars was not worth one hundred dollars it would not be. It is purely a matter of preference and convenience.
2. Even if everyone on earth believed murder was right and God existed we would all be wrong. If God exists morality (unlike currency) is true regardless of our opinion. That is what makes it objective.

I seem to be debating people that do not understand the term objective. In the context I use the word (mallum prohibitum) it means free from it's adherents opinions.

Justice as we understand it does involve an authority over the individual "tribes" in order to hold them accountable to agreed-upon rules, but this does not require any God. A High King can do it, or High Council, can fit the bill.

However what we understand has no power to make anything true. We may have self serving interests that require we make laws about killing but those laws have no basis in objective moral truth. Why is ant supremacy not actually the right standard? What your talking about is speciesm unless a God exists that actually make humanities dominance justifiable.

Besides, I don't see "justice" in any monotheistic theology. I see the exact same thing I'm describing, except it's pretending to not be.

I will give you a story to make my point. Hinduism includes a rigid caste system. If your on the bottom you stay there without any opportunity to get out. Protégées missionaries practiced a heavy handed type of faith in India but despite this Hindus flocked to them wanting to convert. The reason was that only with Christianity is there a foundation for mankind's equality. Even though bad Christians may not practice it correctly all the time the basis remains true. We are only equal under God just as Jefferson (no Christian) had to conclude. Evolution has never created two equal things in history. You can't indict Christianity for it's occasional abuse and misuse.

Only under Aristotlean conceptions of "A can never be B", which is perceptually false. The sky can both be blue and gray at the same time, depending on who's doing the observing or describing.

That is not logically true. A can be B, but A cannot be A'. Color is a result of light frequencies being reflected. Colors can only reflect light certain ways. We can call blue green but it is still reflecting only one frequency range of light. Interestingly no one can test or determine if what I call blue and you call blue appears to both of us as the same color. So using colors as a point is hazardous to begin with.

We aren't to ourselves, because we don't perceive ourselves to be, and that's what ultimately matters. I don't have a monotheistic God, and I don't perceive of myself as a mere biological anomaly, and therefore the absence of God does not always result in this.

Yes we do. In fact that is one of the primary ways in which humanity may be distinct from almost all other life forms. We recognize ourselves as distinct entities. However what we perceive is not the question here. It is a joke among philosophers that those ignorant of moral theory will respond with an epistemological response (meaning a response that depends on perception) to our moral ontological points even when you point out the difference up from. I used to tell people up front not to make that mistake but I would get it anyway so I decided not to waste my time. My claims are about what morality is and not as you suggest how we come to perceive morality. The nature of Jupiter was unaffected by the invention of the telescope. Same with morality.

Except I've never seen that happen anywhere that claims to "have God". I see the same exact thing that you're denouncing.

What?

In any case, "objectivity" cannot be grasped by any of us. All we have is our subjective perceptions and agreements.

Yes it can. It is defined in a thousand scholarly texts the same way and is a very simplistic issue.

Do you consider the values of money and political boundaries to not exist?

They vary depending on opinion (so while they do exist temporarily in a objective sense) their essential nature is not objective.

I don't consider hate to be inherently immoral. But then, I don't regard any emotion to be immoral inherently; only actions. (So yes, I do disagree with Jesus, quite vehemently, when he says that even just looking upon someone else's wife is adultery).

Two points.

1. Name anything you do consider immoral and it will likely be just real as anything you think moral. We have been moral and immoral as long as we have lived so the time spans do not matter.
2. However if Jesus exists you are wrong and will be eternally morally responsible for your actions.

All primal means is that it's an inbuilt part of who we are, and without it we are not. It doesn't make certain behaviors okay in any given cultural context.

I could easily argue that our immoral actions are more primal than the better angels of our nature (as Lincoln suggested).

The word roughly means "Beloved". She is the Mother of Balder, wife of Woden, Queen of Asgard.

Spoiler: big picture

Is that a lord of the rings thing?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

What I'm saying is that the problems of a religious culture-- just like the problems of any culture-- are for that culture to solve, and not for those who are not part of that culture. The answer to the problems of fundamentalist Christianity, for example, is not the purview of Jews or Muslims to provide-- it's the responsibility of progressive Christians to try and fix their religious culture. Likewise, the problems of fundamentalist Jewish culture or Muslim culture are not for Christians or Hindus to solve, they are for progressive Jews and Muslims, respectively. If progressive religious people, in seeking to solve the problems of fundamentalism in their traditions, seek outside their traditions for help, it is their responsibility to seek wisely and bring in such ideas, concepts, and practices that will solve the issues in harmony with the tradition.

The more I think about this, the more I find this attitude abhorrent.

There are no inherent boundaries for empathy, and each person's mind is their own. You have no special claim on the thoughts of a Jewish person just because you're Jewish yourself. If that person chooses to accept the advice of an atheist, then this is absolutely fine, even if it means giving up practices that you think are important. If this bothers you, too bad: in a free society, there's nothing you can do to stop it.

... besides making your best case to the person, of course. But at the end of the day, each person's choices are their own.