Children raised by religious fundamentalists—can this be a form of child abuse?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TP,

It's an interesting and examination of the idea that religions are primarily responsible for most wars.

[Summah]

Is there actually anything missionaries do that couldn't be done better by secular organizations?

Missionaries are frequently ineffective and not infrequently actually harmful to the people they're trying to help, and this doesn't just include destruction of local culture, but promotion of practices that lead to death, like insisting on abstinence only in regions with high rates of HIV. Not to mention all problems caused by the preference of many people to donate used clothing or canned goods, which not only often leads to useless giving but can destroy local industries.

[drawkcabi]

I have read this thread and my sympathy goes out to those who were indeed abused by too far extreme religious families :grouphug:

I keep thinking back to my own childhood...but because that was such a good part of my life and what I believe has provided me a strong foundation to find stability and security in life. It was not perfect, but it's not possible to raise a child without making any mistakes in any case.

My grandmother was a lapsed Catholic and so was my father. My mother tried many different religions, from Southern Baptist to Buddhism, in the end was lapsed in everything as well. Until I was 10 I thought I was Catholic though I rarely went to church. I also thought Catholicism = Christianity. I remember being surprised to learn how many different sects of the religion there were and that there was a prejudice towards Catholics themselves in the world.

My brother married a Jehovah's Witness, so I was exposed to that religion some. To go back a few pages to correlate a bit with Warg Arry, I do remember in any religious discussion there being an abundance of talk of demons, almost to an obsession with them. Mostly I just remember always being a little fretting over whether to give/accept Christmas presents and such or what to do regarding invitation to Easter, Christmas, Halloween, Birthdays, and such events. Usually with my nieces and nephews ultimately coming along and joining in the festivities. I do remember specifically one time when my SIL had my niece instructed to be removed from class one year during their Christmas party.

I also remember one time playing at my brother's house and me having brought some of my toys with me like He-Man, Transformers, etc. And my sister-in-law's sister takes me aside and starts to talk to me much in the way of the mother in the video Warg Arry linked to. She started asking me questions about the bible, about Noah, his wives and sons and all that such. But I also remember having an answer for almost everything she asked because I knew it all because I was allowed to be exposed to everything as a kid sacred and secular. Most of the answers I gave her I knew from Disney cartoons and other animated specials I'd seen. But eventually not being able to considerably stump me, she sent me back to my He-man and Transformers toys to play.

I guess where I fall in the question is, yes I do think religion in the world does good, for some it does only or mostly good, but in general it does more harm than good. I do not think that it should be banned and people stopped from practicing their beliefs, ever, but that it bears watching out for extreme religious families treating children similar to the extreme stories in this thread and treating that as abuse as much as physical, emotional, and sexual abuse is.

ETA:

The arguments being made against TP when he said this:

Is it abuse? Yes. Unequivocally. All religions are harmful to young children's mind, even the benign, friendly, socially progressive ones. We are okay with most of the non-extreme forms because it's social inertia and cultural tradition to do so. Society has ever advanced in spite of religion and religions bring more harm than good to this world.

Should it be banned? No. Religious parents should be allowed to raise their kids in a way that aligns with their religion. Even if this means causing harm to them. It is the price we must pay to live in a pluralistic society when it comes to faith and religion, just like there will always be cases of your children killing others in firearm accidents Ina society with widespread gun ownership.

I don't think they'll get anywhere on either side. The first paragraph is what you are mostly arguing over. Only if he said "Yes" in the second paragraph could I see pertinent points against him made relevant for this thread. Otherwise, IMHO the rest is too subjective to ever change a position in either direction. Not that that's ever stopped us before, but just sayin'...

[TrueMetis]

You don't get it, that's not an acceptable joke to make to a teenage girl ever, even if meant as lighthearted it's fucked up and likely to give her issues. In this case I do know the story, Brook is my fiancee and the man in question being an abusive asshole is beyond doubt, but you do not need that context to know making pig noises at a teenager girl is never OK in any context ever.

ETA: Tried looking at those 3 links, first one is apparently blocked in Thailand as I just got a green page in Thai writing which I can't read, WebMD and the CNN article both list "reduced risks of x,y,z" but give no numbers for how large the reduction is or what the risks of these things are in the first place, the risk of penile cancer for example is tiny and even halving the risk of that is a very very marginal health benefit. I think you could also view tranmission of HIV in Africa as a somewhat different case to transmission in developed nations, and once again the numbers for that aren't listed.

It's like the massive freak out over HRT for women in menopause where there were indications it led to an increase in breast cancer, but the increase was actually tiny and not even statistically significant but medical ethics have prevented further studies so people are still scared of it when they shouldn't be. These health benefits are extremely minor, and not worth the potential downsides.

"reduced risk" is like "contains a clinically studied ingredient" technically correct, but meaningless.

As far as HIV goes, there's been no replication of the claimed benefits in the west, and even in Africa the studies I've read made the numbers look suspect.

I clearly said that it was wrong whether the intention was harmful or not.

You claim that the "health benefits are extremely minor, and not worth the potential downsides" even after reading the articles, but all four links I've provided have said the EXACT OPPOSITE. Quoting from WebMD "The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) found that the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks,"and that is literally the title of the CNN article.

Well shit if we're just gonna go with what perdiatric organization say, "After reviewing the scientific evidence for and against circumcision, the CPS does not recommend routine circumcision for newborn boys." -Canadian Pediatrics Society.

Personally I'll go with what the studies show, and the studies show the reduced risk are negligible, and even if they do outweigh the risks they don't outweigh the rights of the child to not have medically unnecessary procedures done on them.

How?

"You need to believe in this thing that we can't prove exists." Seems harmful to me. Then again I object to belief in the religious sense on principle.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

Absolutist materialism for the win?

[TrueMetis]

TM,

Absolutist materialism for the win?

If you consider absolute materialism to be "prove your claims" than sure.

[Shryke]

When texts outright say "don't do X, Y Z" there's not really any room for interpretation.

"If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death;" Leviticus 20:13 - There's no room for interpretation. As a Christian you can only be tolerant of Gay people if you ignore parts of the bible.

Not familiar with human history, are you?

Or, to be thorough here, with translation either.

[Shryke]

"You need to believe in this thing that we can't prove exists." Seems harmful to me. Then again I object to belief in the religious sense on principle.

How is it harmful?

[TrueMetis]

How is it harmful?

By conditioning people to accept things without evidence.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

So, because I'm religious I'm going to generally accept absurd claims that are made without evidence? It's not possible to have a scientific mindset and religious belief but compartmentalize them?

[Summah]

protar, all religions cherry pick. You cannot for example take everything in the Bible literally, some of it contradicts itself, so the leaders or members of the religion make choices about what to accept. So even among the most conservative, fundamentalist believers it's not as simple as you say (though some may be taught that way, the cherry picking may have already been done by someone else).

[Shryke]

By conditioning people to accept things without evidence.

But people do that without religion. And people don't do that with religion. There is no conditioning going on.

[TrueMetis]

TM,

So, because I'm religious I'm going to accept absurd claims that are made without evidence? It's not possible to have a scientific mindset and religious belief but compartmentalize them?

You already do. God is an absurd claim. And while you can compartmentalize I now have to keep an extra eye on you in case your gonna make other exceptions.

But people do that without religion. And people don't do that with religion. There is no conditioning going on.

I disagree.

[protar]

protar, all religions cherry pick. You cannot for example take everything in the Bible literally, some of it contradicts itself, so the leaders or members of the religion make choices about what to accept. So even among the most conservative, fundamentalist believers it's not as simple as you say (though some may be taught that way, the cherry picking may have already been done by someone else).

That's kind of my point. If the religion can only work by ignoring parts of it's text, how can you stand by the validity of the text? And if you can only be a decent person by ignoring certain parts of that text, again - how can you support it?

[protar]

Not familiar with human history, are you?

Or, to be thorough here, with translation either.

What is the direct translation?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

What would you propose be done about people's occasinal habit of taking some propositions on faith?

BTW, have you ever heard of the "problem of induction"?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

Protar,

That's kind of my point. If the religion can only work by ignoring parts of it's text, how can you stand by the validity of the text? And if you can only be a decent person by ignoring certain parts of that text, again - how can you support it?

You are assuming the religious text is a predicat to the faith. Not so with Christianity. The Bible was assembled by the Church in the 3rd Century AD after the faith itself was settled upon. Therefore the text is anticedent to the faith.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

dunno. are postmodern bourgeois liberal propositions abusive? they do after all encourage obsessive self-orientation, animalistic individualism, and lack of awareness of anything other than one's own myopic desires. perhaps for one person it is not a big deal, but taken as a universal law, it is a recipe for a neo-hobbesian paradise of a war of all against all. good job, pomobourgylibs?

It's a shame that your thought was mostly ignored. This is something that I have weirdly wondered. We're constantly being bombarded by capitalistic advertising and messages of consumerism, commodification, and corporate materialism in society. It's replete with a range of attitudes that shames weight, diets, appearance, lifestyle choices, and non-conformity (often while also promoting conforming to other ideals of counter-culture). Is that abuse?

I take it that you accept that religion does inculcate tribalism and ethnocentrism, then? And your retort is that lots of other things in human society introduce tribalism and ethnocentrism and therefore, we ought not criticize religion for ALSO doing these things?

Yeah, you can and should criticize things that encourage such behaviors in harmful ways, but it seems foolish that you are unfairly singling out religion here and describing it as abusive. What of sports teams? Outside of the US, these rivalries between teams are often rife with tribalistic, ethnocentric overtones. What of the increasingly more popular nation-state built around the sovereignty of ethnocentric tribalism? You have described political parties, which often do try playing to ethnocentric and tribalistic mentalities. Fuck, we see this sort of shit play out in Mean Girls, which is certainly not religious. Humans form groups that identify themselves in relation to and against other groups. And you yourself are certainly guilty of such "othering" behaviors against religions and people of religious belief, so clearly your atheistic enlightenment has not freed you from such harmful human conventions.

When texts outright say "don't do X, Y Z" there's not really any room for interpretation.

"If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death;" Leviticus 20:13 - There's no room for interpretation. As a Christian you can only be tolerant of Gay people if you ignore parts of the bible.

You're only exposing your ignorance then, as Jewish and Christian history begs to differ. The Talmud is basically a series of differing interpretations of scripture in dialogue with each other. Hell, even the New Testament attests to differing interpretations of scripture, as seen in Jesus's dialogues with some Pharisees. That's a big reason why interpretation history exists as a sub-field within many academic disciplines of the Humanities, for both religious and non-religious texts alike. The absurd idea that there is no room for interpretation flies against everything that has come out of Post-Modernism, Post-Structuralism, Translation Theory, and 20th and 21st century Literary Theory.

[TrueMetis]

TM,

What would you propose be done about people's occasinal habit of taking some propositions on faith?

Aside from general education not much to be done. Just because I don't like something doesn't mean I don't accept the reality that it's gonna happen. People will continue to accept things without evidence, they likely always will. Hell I probably do so on things I don't care enough about to investigate thoroughly. All I can do is encourage critical thinking in myself and others.

BTW, have you ever heard of the "problem of induction"?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

I don't really see a problem. As new evidence comes to light we will use that evidence to improve our views. That's actually the opposite of the problem in my book, that's the whole point.

[TerraPrime]

Yeah, you can and should criticize things that encourage such behaviors in harmful ways, but it seems foolish that you are unfairly singling out religion here and describing it as abusive. What of sports teams? Outside of the US, these rivalries between teams are often rife with tribalistic, ethnocentric overtones. What of the increasingly more popular nation-state built around the sovereignty of ethnocentric tribalism? You have described political parties, which often do try playing to ethnocentric and tribalistic mentalities. Fuck, we see this sort of shit play out in Mean Girls, which is certainly not religious. Humans form groups that identify themselves in relation to and against other groups. And you yourself are certainly guilty of such "othering" behaviors against religions and people of religious belief, so clearly your atheistic enlightenment has not freed you from such harmful human conventions.

How do you know I am okay with the other things? How do you know I don't want to also see an end to all professional sports (I do)? Or abolishing nation-states/countries (I sometimes do)?

If your criticism is that I am singling out religion, well then, I can only plead guilty of doing so in a thread dedicated to talking about whether some types of religious up-bringing is harmful, or not.

Ultimately, you're using the same argument that Shryke is using - BadThingA occurs not just as a result of religion, but as a result of other things, too; therefore, it is wrong to hold religions accountable for the instances where religions are the cause of BadThingA. It's a poor argument.

For instance, people can be sexist without religion. But, in the west, by and large, sexism was justified, mangified, and codified, by religion. We still live with the consequences of that, today. In other parts of the world, religion continues to be the central force in subjugating women, often in horrific ways. It is not wrong to hold religion accountable for the history and for the on-going residual effects of sexism and use that in evaluating the over all impact of religion on humanity.

[karaddin]

It's a shame that your thought was mostly ignored. This is something that I have weirdly wondered. We're constantly being bombarded by capitalistic advertising and messages of consumerism, commodification, and corporate materialism in society. It's replete with a range of attitudes that shames weight, diets, appearance, lifestyle choices, and non-conformity (often while also promoting conforming to other ideals of counter-culture). Is that abuse?

Maybe some of us are too dopey to actually understand that paragraph from solo, rephrased like this it does sound like a worthwhile discussion (albeit a derail of this thread).

But then this thread is pretty thoroughly derailed anyway, and Scot seems to want someone to make the claim that he's an awful parent and his kids should be taken away so his over defensiveness can be justified.