Giving religious education for Under 15 children should be banned

As we see the main reason 99.99999999 people are following a certain religion is because their parents were from that religion. The religious education to such small minds are brainwashing and should be banned. When a child is getting brainwashed from his 4th birthday until he is good enough to think independently makes them absolutely think in one way. There should be a minimum age for religious education based on believes.

Must be losing count with the amount of anti-religion threads and posts you have made.

Religious education is great to have. I'm not religious in most ways, but having been taught religion from an early age has given me a broader horison and given me more of a way to understand the thoughts and need of other people.

Education is never bad for anything, the lack of education is the problem.

RealGunner wrote:Must be losing count with the amount of anti-religion threads and posts you have made.

2 threads at most. This is not really anti religion though, im calling for a minimum age for religious education so the kids won't get brainwashed like what it is now and they may even choose the right religion(or none at all) by thinking independently.

Great thread Adit.

Religious people HATE questions. They hate thinking on their own. Because it's been drilled into their head that all their questions is answered in the religion. They hate freedom of speech, they hate freedom of thought. They LOVE group-think, You know what ?

If you ask them a question about the religion that they can't answer, their default result is: "Because God wanted it to be like that"

What that has been proven by proof, can be dismissed without proof.

I was born in a religious country. We had it drilled in our head every year since grade 1. Magical stories about prophets, how they got pregnant without sex, how an honest would wouldn't get rich, because the person who used to live at his house before, didn't do prayers, and how all that crap. It drills you. I admit. I was a victim for a while, despite a very non-religious background. Even I was becoming drowned into it. Some people GIVE UP, and never question those drills, which are as intense as effective as Simeone's Atleti Defense and set piece routine drills....some people dare to dream and ask whether all that they were told at childhood makes sense now ?!

That's the difference.

We are not allowed to choose which major we want to choose at University before 18....we're not allowed to vote before 18, we're not allowed to drink before 18....WHY THEY HELL ARE WE ALLOWED TO CHOOSE A RELIGION BEFORE 18 THEN ????

Why though? surely educating someone on a subject as early as possible is only a good thing?

@Adit Okay, fair enough.


What kind of religious education are you talking about. The ones in School or the ones given by parents at home?

Deciding what other people's children are allowed to be taught is always let's say, precarious. Actually, totalitarian probably. Of course the challenge is knowing where to draw the line at mental abuse.
I believe if parents want to teach religion to their children they have a right to do that. They can do it themselves or send them to a religious school.
If you don't want your children taught religion then that is also fine of course.

In short, if someone I don't know dictated to me what I can teach to my own family, I'd tell them where to go, in no uncertain terms.

In Germany you are allowed to choose your religion at 14 years of age. That was when I chose to leave the protestant church I was forced in at birth. I have gone to a protestant kindergarten from 3 to 6 and a protestant primary school, too.

Obviously they didn't manage to brainwash me, but then, I always got into heavy fights with my teachers in the school subject "religion" as I always asked uncomfortable questions they couldn't give me sufficient answers to.

DuringTheWar wrote:Deciding what other people's children are allowed to be taught is always let's say, precarious. Actually, totalitarian probably. Of course the challenge is knowing where to draw the line at mental abuse.
I believe if parents want to teach religion to their children they have a right to do that. They can do it themselves or send them to a religious school.
If you don't want your children taught religion then that is also fine of course.

In short, if someone I don't know dictated to me what I can teach to my own family, I'd tell them where to go, in no uncertain terms.

Agree.

DuringTheWar wrote:Deciding what other people's children are allowed to be taught is always let's say, precarious. Actually, totalitarian probably. Of course the challenge is knowing where to draw the line at mental abuse.
I believe if parents want to teach religion to their children they have a right to do that. They can do it themselves or send them to a religious school.
If you don't want your children taught religion then that is also fine of course.

In short, if someone I don't know dictated to me what I can teach to my own family, I'd tell them where to go, in no uncertain terms.

Yep. Pretty much what i wanted to say

In UK, 95% of the R.E is based on Christianity, but it has never affected kids with other religious backgrounds. They are still taught at home or wherever.

If you are talking about banning education as a whole, then that's never going to happen in a democratic country unless it gets its own referendum.

I am not going to give my Kids any special religious education, but I would hate it if people tell me what to teach them and what not to.

List of some of the lies I was told as part of Religious Propaganda as school as a child (Under age of 10):

- There are 2 angles permanently living on your shoulders watching you all the time. The one o the right take note of your good behaviour, and the one on the left take not of your bad behaviour and they report it to God by the end of each day.

- Mohammad, his daughter (Fatimah) and the 12 Shi'tte Imams are the only 14 people in history of humanity not to EVER commit any sins in their lives (۱۴ معصوم)

- Every time you miss a prayer, you get moved 10 meters further away from heaven

- The 12th imam of Shi'tte (Mahdi) disappeared when they were out to assassinate him. He's still alive (Must be over 1000+ years by now) He'll return one day, when the entire world population is Muslim, and he'll lead the entire world. That day, will be the best day in the world and the end of earth as we know it, and everyone will be transferred to either Hell or Heaven that day.

- If you question God or the prophet, God has the ability to turn you into a "stone" at any given second.

- There was a girl in Netherlands who once burnt a Quran. The morning after she woke up and she was half human being, half fish. Never question or dare to insult the holy  مقدصات

I'll write more later as I remember. This is taking me back to my elementary and middle school education  

I appreciate all the responses.

@RG . every religious education.

@During the way

You say you have the right to teach your kids what ever you want to teach but don't you think the kids have the right to choose religion/reject religion at all? You are not taking that into account at all.

Why not give the same religious education when they are good enough to understand things independently?

Isn't that the right thing to do? Teaching some one something when they are good enough to grasp the concept and think about it independently and ultimately choosing the right religion or nothing at all.

Sepi's and rwopower's stories are exactly what I'm talking about. They were both forced and were getting brainwashed at a very small age. So they were getting taught something against their will.

How can some  one doesn't have the right to decide what they are taught especially a subject that may well be a lie?

Well, there were other subjects I didn't want to learn either (e.g. needle work as I considered it an insult that the girls had to go to "textile design" while the boys got to learn "handicrafts". (Obviously the teachers weren't aware that at home I had chemistry kits and construction kits etc, while I dissected every doll people tried to give me as a gift XD).

Unfortunately I didn't manage to get into the other group, and so I had some fun to find creative solutions to the tasks that I was given that usually made my teacher go nuts, especially when I told her that I doubted she was very intelligent as then she'd teach a proper subject like maths or natural sciences and not this rubbish XD

So in short - some subjects kids don't like, but does this mean they shouldn't be taught? (BTW, my main problem was not that I had to do that stuff, but that I thought both boys and girls should have been taught*both* subjects, not girls this and boys that.)

My last sentence kind of answered that rwo. A subject that is going to affect you mental health and the way you think in the future may well be a lie.... It's like HIV.. The first thing it does is kills of immunity system just like receiving Religious education at small ages kills off ability to think out side the box.

Well, they tried that with me, but obviously it didn't work. I already went ballistic as a little kid when the parson talked about God who looked after "his sheep". You can imagine he was not amused when I told him that I refuse to be a dumb animal XD

Adit wrote:My last sentence kind of answered that rwo. A subject that is going to affect you mental health and the way you think in the future may well be a lie.... It's like HIV.. The first thing it does is kills of immunity system just like receiving Religious education at small ages kills off ability to think out side the box.

That's one of the dumbest analogies I've ever heard.
Do you even know what the term 'mental health' means?

I got taught religion and look at me now, I made it, I'm an agnostic.
So does that make me smarter than all my peers and family around me who are still believers and religious today?

No that makes them nothing. If you got religious education at a young age it means a attempt happened to brainwash your thought process for ever. It's not like you were taught a number of religions was it? You were taught a religion that some one chose as best for you based on their believe.

So you are saying that vast majority of the people in the world are brainwashed?

Adit wrote:I appreciate all the responses.

@RG . every religious education.

@During the way

You say you have the right to teach your kids what ever you want to teach but don't you think the kids have the right to choose religion/reject religion at all? You are not taking that into account at all.

Why not give the same religious education when they are good enough to understand things independently?

Isn't that the right thing to do? Teaching some one something when they are good enough to grasp the concept and think about it independently and ultimately choosing the right religion or nothing at all.

If a child rejected or chose a different religion to what their parent taught them, that's ok. I didn't say they didn't have a right to do that did I?
If the child does not have the capacity to do that, I don't see a convincing reason as to why that negates a parents right to teach their children.
Now I know some people such as Richard Dawkins think teaching religion is abuse, and if it was abuse I'd be against it. But the studies that have been done on this don't indicate children's health suffers from having nice parents that care about them teaching them their religion. If there is a correlation between the two it is more a positive one apparently.

Regardless of the whether you agree or not with these principles, it isn't practical to allow freedom of religion and outlaw teaching it to children.

Consider what that would actually mean. If people sincerely believe in a heaven and hell and a certain way of living determines which you go to, they are not going to act neutral in relation to teaching that way of living to their children. It's not tenable to have freedom of religion and outlaw people from teaching it to their children.

RealGunner wrote:So you are saying that vast majority of the people in the world are brainwashed?

Absolutely. That's exactly why they are choosing the same religion as their parents. Some one chose it for them and they follows it now because they followed it from the day they were able to talk.

DuringTheWar wrote:

Adit wrote:I appreciate all the responses.

@RG . every religious education.

@During the way

You say you have the right to teach your kids what ever you want to teach but don't you think the kids have the right to choose religion/reject religion at all? You are not taking that into account at all.

Why not give the same religious education when they are good enough to understand things independently?

Isn't that the right thing to do? Teaching some one something when they are good enough to grasp the concept and think about it independently and ultimately choosing the right religion or nothing at all.

If a child rejected or chose a different religion to what their parent taught them, that's ok. I didn't say they didn't have a right to do that did I?
If the child does not have the capacity to do that, I don't see a convincing reason as to why that negates a parents right to teach their children.
Now I know some people such as Richard Dawkins think teaching religion is abuse, and if it was abuse I'd be against it. But the studies that have been done on this don't indicate children's health suffers from having nice parents that care about them teaching them their religion. If there is a correlation between the two it is more a positive one apparently.

Regardless of the whether you agree or not with these principles, it isn't practical to allow freedom of religion and outlaw teaching it to children.

Consider what that would actually mean. If people sincerely believe in a heaven and hell and a certain way of living determines which you go to, they are not going to act neutral in relation to teaching that way of living to their children. It's not tenable to have freedom of religion and outlaw people from teaching it to their children.

Children doesn't have the capacity to do so though. That is exactly the point of this thread...

Teach them religion when that have the mental capacity to see right from wrong, to think independently, to question weather what they are getting taught is right...and that age certainly isn't below 10 at least.

I'd be satisfied if the state could be completely and truly free of religion. No religion lessons in public schools, no church taxes, no churches in general built with tax money, no acknowledgement of religious professions (priests etc.).

All of that can be done privately. If the state was truly free of religion and wouldn't facilitate religious beliefs and the only source of religion were your parents and no one "official" outside your household you'd automatically feel awkward about it. But as long as the inauguration speech of the president of the United States ends with: "So help me God", as long as Germany is ruled by the "Christian Democration Union", as long as schools teach religion, as long as politicians visit funeral services in churchs after a tragedy, as long as church bells ring, as long as you can swear to God in court ... as long as all that happens, as long as official institutions are promoting religion in such manner, people will be drawn towards it and find it easiert to let religion be part of their lives.

I think a big problem is if a child is born into a religion which can't be legally left at a later time. If the child has the right to leave the religion when s/he has reached the age of religious maturity, that is fine - but there are religions around that enforce their membership even by pain of death, and this is something I really consider a no-go.