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Is it ethical for a parent to raise their children in their faith tradition? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For many religious people, raising their children in their faith is an important part of their religious practice. They might see getting their kids into heaven as one of the most important things they can do as parent. And certainly, adults should have the right to practice their religion freely, but children are impressionable and unlikely to realize that they are being indoctrinated into one religion out of the thousands that humans practice.

And many faith traditions have beliefs that are at odds with science or support bigoted worldviews. For example, a queer person being raised in the Catholic Church would be taught that they are inherently disordered and would likely be discouraged from being involved in LGBTQ support groups.

Where do you think the line is between practicing your own religion faithfully and unethically forcing your beliefs on someone else?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Edit: I feel like your last sentence implies a huge misunderstanding of my point. I think religion has value as a cultural and communal institution, and absolutely not as a replacement for ethics and science

History is full of heinous things that should never be repeated and we have a moral imperative to teach younger generations about them, why they happened and why they must never be allowed to happen again and how to do your best to prevent them. A lot of them can be traced back to religion, but absolutely not all of them.

Religion is not the single source of bigotry and bigotry is the issue. There probably isn't any faith that is purely benevolent, but there doesn't need to be, it's the actions of those who practice it that matter.

I can easily see the appeal to look at the past and say "we must end religion to prevent the horrors that arise from it" but I think it's a lazy solution. Those horrors happen outside of religion as well and will continue to happen in an atheistic world if the issues causing them (e.g. inequality, injustice, bigotry, abuse of authority, etc.) continue. But by removing religion, you remove part of the many beautiful cultural traditions that make up who all the varied people on this planet are. And I don't think it's useful to destroy cultures.

Edit: of course, religion can't be used as a replacement for a scientific understanding of the world and I think at some point it must be taught that the metaphysics of religion are based in myth, but I think there's a great deal of value in the way religion is part of a culture and fosters community. The threat of religion comes in how that culture and community is used.

Lmao another edit because I thought a lot about this during the pandemic: I also used to think the world would be better off with no religion, but I think that's an easier point to make when looking at the largest religions in the world and the terrible things they've been (and continue to be) weaponized to do. As a thought experiment, ask yourself if it would be ethical to gather every Catholic in the world and re-educate them to deny their faith. Now try again with the First Nation's people, or smaller local faiths in Africa or South America. I won't speak for you, but I think at some point it crosses a line where it stops being a call for rational thought and an end to the opiate of the masses but a vehicle through which cultures are irreparably harmed or erased.