[quote="aban57";p="2626959" We could also forbid the teaching, in all schools, not just public ones, of anything that is not supported by a solid amount of evidence. That would solve the problem within a handful of generations.[/quote]


Unfortunately people will not agree as to the strength of the evidence about various ideas, be those ideas religious or scientific. A christian will insist that the evidence for the historicity and accuracy of the Bible is sufficient to warrant their faith, and others will repudiate that notion. This debate rages on and on with both sides standing their ground. It has been said by others that "whoever controls what is taught in the schools, controls the minds of the next generation". I agree with the idea that critical thinking needs to become a way of life. Censoring school curriculum by the government, especially that of private schools, has and always will be a battleground. This is definitely the case in America. Should people be free to practice their religious faith without interference from the government? This question itself leads to a firestorm debate. A complex issue in a pluralistic land.

Thank you for your comment to this thread.

Chris Putnam wrote:Across America there are countless christian fundamentalists who send their children to such school as the parents see fit to teach their religious viewpoints. Countless others teach their own children in a home school environment. These children are taught strict Biblical doctrine regarding many topics from young Earth creationism to the return of Christ in the Book of Revelation and everything in between. This is also done in other religions such as Islam, Mormanism, etc. Should these practices be allowed. I know of some who view this as a form of child abuse.

Comments anyone?

I just found out that my niece, who I had great hope for, converted to Fundie and is home-schooling her children. They just visited the Noah's ark museum. My nephew has adult children, in Texas (go figure), that were home-schooled as fundamentalist and strict, no music, no dance, xtians. His son disappeared off the earth for awhile and then appeared one day at their door. He proceeded to try and stab his parents to death. Then he disappeared for a few years again and recently was found to be living in his car in Oregon with his new wife and two children. He is now also claiming to have become a she.

(anecdotes) but fuck!

Chris Putnam wrote:I don't think it is abuse.

I think it is the worst kind of abuse. Better yet, in the case of my great nephew above, his mom sexually abused him and his being home-schooled allowed the abuse to go on undetected.

Children have rights outside of their parents concern. Societies cannot continue to disallow basic human rights to the most vulnerable segment of our population. Unless of course one thinks that they are unformed fetuses until they turn 18?

Chris Putnam wrote:The idea of a society claiming the right to remove kids from their parents over ideology is that it would give the state a great deal of power to set the favored ideology of those in power. This is undoubtedly practiced in totalitarian states. Fear of loosing custody of ones children is a strong motivator to "tow the line". Then when someone takes power in a society they can use the power of the state to force their ideas "down peoples throats". I find this concept troubling. Perhaps this thread should take another direction. What religious teachings are acceptable? The Bible, the Koran, sin, salvation, hell, heaven, the second coming of Christ, and any other multitude of controversial religious doctrines? Shall we live like those in Marxist states and ban any teaching outside the party, especially religion? Please comment.

That just makes it a difficult problem. One that can be solved with advocacy for the children. Part of that advocacy would be exposure and education to alternative thinking. There is nothing marxist about fully educating children. The doctrine that we would be 'shoving down the parents throat' would be that of denying that exposure to ideas harms a child.

Now that is real interesting because of our penchant here in the US, and elsewhere, to pretend to protect children from ideas about sex and any other 'adult' topics.

[quote=“SpeedOfSound”]
Children have rights outside of their parents concern. Societies cannot continue to disallow basic human rights to the most vulnerable segment of our population. Unless of course one thinks that they are unformed fetuses until they turn 18?[/quote]


If a fundie looked at this post they could consider the abuse kids in American public school take. The argument could be that such abuse happens all over and it is in no wise limited to private religious school. Sometimes the abuse comes from unscrupulous teachers abusing students, or students abusing their peers. It goes on in public, private and home school environments and is not limited to religious people. Kids must be protected from physical and sexual abuse without a doubt.

Truly though I wish to redirect his thread to its original intent. To discuss kids being indoctrinated into a belief system of a religious nature and a belief in the fundamentals of that faith system. Multitudes of kids are taught young earth creationism, Noah's flood (thousands visit the Ark Encounter), Moses, and the fundamentals of biblical Christianity. The bible becomes the "inerrant" guide that they live by. These kids frequently have loving kind parents that provide well (no abuse) and they may excel academically. Regardless, is the practice of educating kids this way acceptable?

Please continue and thank you for your posts

I'll take religious indoctrination over being raped by a family member throughout childhood. Any damn day.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I'll take religious indoctrination over being raped by a family member throughout childhood. Any damn day.

I hope that is not the choice one has to make

So do I. Ideally kids aren't being religiously (or politically or whatever else) indoctrinated by family or being physically abused by them.

Chris Putnam wrote:

Unfortunately people will not agree as to the strength of the evidence about various ideas, be those ideas religious or scientific. A christian will insist that the evidence for the historicity and accuracy of the Bible is sufficient to warrant their faith, and others will repudiate that notion.

And that's the source of the problem : believers accept bullshit as evidence, as long as it suits their narrative. We don't need to take their opinion in consideration when building such system, since it's already biased. I know it sounds radical put like that, but at some point, if you want to move forward, you need to loose your dead weight.

Thank goodness I live in a civilised country where education is non religious.

To abridge, but not change the meaning, of the OP.

Chris Putnam wrote:...there are countless... fundamentalists who... see fit to teach their religious viewpoints. Countless others teach their own children in a home school environment.
...I know of some who view this as a form of child abuse.

It is.

Chris Putnam wrote:I don't think it is abuse.

I disagree.

Khaled Sharrouf was an Australian ISIS fighter and clearly an enthusiastic home schooler. This is his 9 year old son Abdullah holding a severed head.


Here is a selection of textbooks available to homeschoolers in the US.

Creation Science/Intelligent Design Homeschool Curriculum.
Biology 101: Biology According to the Days of Creation DVD set
Christian Liberty Press: God's Creation Science Series
Chronicles of Dinosauria: The History and Mystery of Dinosaurs and Man
Debunking Evolution: What Every Christian Student Should Know DVD course
Refuting Evolution, 2nd edition
Truth in Science
Unlocking The Mysteries of Creation, second edition

History and Geography
The Mighty Works of God

World History: Core Curricula
Christ the King, Lord of History
From Adam to Us

Geography
Hands-On Geography: Easy and Fun Activities for Exploring God's World
Then and Now Bible Maps

Here's some information from AbekaBooks, a US publisher of 'textbooks' for the homeschooler market.

Abeka Books

Biblical Foundations & Content
Our philosophy doesn’t come from what sounds good or from what other people are doing right now. Instead, our teacher-led, character-building philosophy comes from a biblical foundation—Proverbs 22:6a, “Train up a child in the way he should go.”

In history, you see God’s hand. In science, you see His design. In grammar, you see His order.
Every subject is approached from a Christian perspective, and you’ll find Scripture and biblical principles used to emphasize or illustrate concepts.

Why Abeka?
Proven Tried-and-true materials trusted since 1972
Content guided by the unfailing compass of God’s Word

Indoctrination in fundamentalist crackpottery is very clearly a type of deprivation.
The principle of deliberately teaching error is the actual issue. Whether it's violent extremism or merely inculcation of deluded fantasies is just a matter of degree.

Chris Putnam wrote:In many countries abused children (be it physical or emotional abuse) are removed from their parents care and placed in foster care till such time as the parents have proven they are no longer a risk to abuse their children. Should that be done in this case as well? I personally feel it quite dangerous for a society to disqualify parents over teaching ideology to children.

That seems a bit punitively binary. Not all abused children are "removed from their parents care and placed in foster care". A range of interventions are possible, and indeed are widely used, depending on the severity of the abuse/deprivation/parental shortfall.

But you know... if the fundamentalist loon homeschoolers don't want to be accused of child abuse, they could just redefine child abuse and describe as exercising their 'parental rights'.

Thommo wrote:It's very bad in lots of ways, I don't think it's child abuse.

I agree. It isn't abuse by default.
Dependent on the extent to which the teaching of religious fundamentalism impinges on the child's learning of other subjects, it could constitute willful neglect.

I think discouraging critical thought is bad parenting. If it's only with respect to religion and your religious views are fairly benign though? It's really no worse than imposing political beliefs on one's child, which we all do when we raise a kid to share our values.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I think discouraging critical thought is bad parenting.

I agree but, such behaviour is pretty commonplace and has nothing to do with trying to impose religious or political doctrines.
We're not exactly educating the next generation of parents to be able to teach critical thinking skills either.

Thank you for your discussion. Please keep it coming.

And that's the source of the problem : believers accept bullshit as evidence, as long as it suits their narrative. We don't need to take their opinion in consideration when building such system, since it's already biased. I know it sounds radical put like that, but at some point, if you want to move forward, you need to loose your dead weight.

But I can here the Fundamentalists describe you with the same words as you describe them. They will stand and argue their point, fully believing it is justified. They will wish to train their kids accordingly. I just can't help but think that restricting peoples ideological parameters in relationship to how they desire to raise their kids will eventually end up giving great power to people who most certainly should not have it.

Thank you for your input. Perhaps this thread has run its course.

One important thing to remember is that whatever fundamentalists might say, about whatever group, the situation is not symmetric.

Nobody in their right mind wants schools to teach atheism. Schools should teach facts and knowledge, many would say that should include religious education (which is to say facts about religions, rather than the truth of those religions), but honestly you can exclude that with minimal loss anyway.

Schools which teach neither a religion nor atheism work just fine. If parents want to indoctrinate their kids then they need to do it on their own time (or send them to bible study group, sunday school, church, temple, mosque or whatever). If they're too lazy to do that, then let the kids work things out for themselves and reach their own conclusion.

Even if you want to include certain values of a society in its schools, there's no need to get religion, or the lack of it, involved. Kids can learn sharing, tolerance, kindness and friendship without any metaphysical input at all. Most do already.

Thommo wrote:

Schools should teach facts and knowledge, many would say that should include religious education (which is to say facts about religions, rather than the truth of those religions), but honestly you can exclude that with minimal loss anyway.

Fundamentalists would argue about what "facts" are. In a debate with William Lane Craig bishop Shelby admitted that much of their debate could have been about what really is a "scholar". WLC had his and bishop Shelby had his. They both stood by their respective "scholars" and cited their "facts". Some PhDs say the facts reveal a young Earth and the Fundamentalists ride on these ideas. Atheists repudiate them. I guess I am saying that I believe people have a right to educate their kids the way they see fit. Christian kids sometimes grow up and reject the faith of their parents. Some university trained atheists become Christians. Both sides claim scientific peer reviewed research supporting their side. I hate to think of a quest for truth as something we take sides on, but it seems to be the case on many issues.It clearly has always been a battleground for education.

Thank you for your thoughtful responses.

Outside of the area of religious belief (whether there's a god, what god is, what god has done, what god wants etc.) that disagreement doesn't matter. Maths classes aren't up for debate, English classes aren't up for debate, P.E. classes aren't up for debate, Chemistry classes aren't up for debate, graphic design classes aren't up for debate, and so on and so on.

There are basically two things that are: (i) religious indoctrination (as opposed to religious studies, which really isn't debated a lot) and (ii) biology.

The fundies are just wrong about biology though, and they are going to have to live with that.

I'd be interested in your source regarding "some PhDs" saying the facts reveal a young Earth though, because last time I checked there was a 100% (to nearest whole percentage point) agreement among relevantly qualified scientists regarding the age of the Earth being billions of years. There isn't actually the remotest scientific debate about the Earth being thousands or tens of thousands of years old.

And that has nothing to do with atheism, it's a question about scientific consensus.

Thommo wrote:

I'd be interested in your source regarding "some PhDs" saying the facts reveal a young Earth though, because last time I checked there was a 100% (to nearest whole percentage point) agreement among relevantly qualified scientists regarding the age of the Earth being billions of years. There isn't actually the remotest scientific debate about the Earth being thousands or tens of thousands of years old.

Thanks for your comment Thommo. I am not prepared at the moment with such a list of names and credentials but I will go to work on finding some names. Most like Ken Hamm and Robert Morris are repudiated by atheists and loved by Chrisitians. I read on Wiki that in the early 90s 99.9% of scientists did not subscribe to the theory of a young Earth. Christians would claim that evolution is the new "orthodoxy" and that any publications or ideas outside this realm would be met with stearn rejection from the "scientific" community. If this were not the case they claim more scientist would agree with them, but are afraid to admit it.