Why shouldn't you raise your children to be faithful?

[NERVUN]

Why should you raise your child to value individualism over collectivism?

So that they can achieve independence and move to their own house. Or at least, in theory.

Ok, that's a result, why is it good?

[NERVUN]

Why should you raise your child to value individualism over collectivism?

That's really dodging the question. This thread isn't about individualism or collectivism. TS turned the question in the title around so that the burden of proof was on the ones claiming that you should.

No, it's not. It's noting that many of the things that you will be imparting your child is probably something you haven't even thought about because they come part and parcel with your cultural make-up.

And, once more, I never have stated that one should, only that one should be allowed.

[NERVUN]

That, which oddly enough contradicts an unquestioning transmission via authority... After all, if it WAS unquestioned, why were they invented?

You also ignore missionary work.

i don't deny that people can break the authoritative chain of transmission. i deny that they do to any significant extent. see the map.

such events are rare, and the ones that work at all follow a fairly standard pattern of innovation on the part of charismatic individuals who then gain followers on the basis of others adopting that charismatic individual as a new source of authoritative revelation. in this sense its not really much of a break at all, because the methodology is the same in both cases. and charisma isn't a rational process.

That would only hold true if the major religions were of one piece, since they are not, obviously we have more than you give credit for.

and missionaries are just part of the historical process of conquest.

Oddly enough, a number of missionary works have been conducted without conquests.

[Tlaceceyaya]

That's really dodging the question. This thread isn't about individualism or collectivism. TS turned the question in the title around so that the burden of proof was on the ones claiming that you should.

No, it's not. It's noting that many of the things that you will be imparting your child is probably something you haven't even thought about because they come part and parcel with your cultural make-up.

And, once more, I never have stated that one should, only that one should be allowed.

But why is it good?

[Genivaria]

[Trollgaard]

I don't see why you shouldn't. Its kinda what you are supposed to do, assuming one is religious in the first place.

[NERVUN]

No, it's not. It's noting that many of the things that you will be imparting your child is probably something you haven't even thought about because they come part and parcel with your cultural make-up.

And, once more, I never have stated that one should, only that one should be allowed.

But why is it good?

Good and bad are relative to an extent.

I'd rather go with, "Does it do abusive harm?" because, as I have stated, the choices of parents for how and why they raise their children do come down to some very subjective choices.

[NERVUN]

(Image)

*snrk*
I wish it worked that way. Both my kids started off with "oishii" (Delicious), which is why I now dread the food budget when they hit their teenage years.

[Norstal]

So that they can achieve independence and move to their own house. Or at least, in theory.

Ok, that's a result, why is it good?

So that they can have a property of their own, attract a mate, and perpetuate their gene.

I don't know any girl who likes a guy who lives in their mom's basement.

[Forsher]

(Image)

*snrk*
I wish it worked that way. Both my kids started off with "oishii" (Delicious), which is why I now dread the food budget when they hit their teenage years.

Feed them gradually less so they get used to small appetites. Make them eat with small cutlery and serve only filling food. And just in case, start saving now.

[Norstal]

(Image)

*snrk*
I wish it worked that way. Both my kids started off with "oishii" (Delicious), which is why I now dread the food budget when they hit their teenage years.

Really now, you should be worried about them being zombies then. *nods*

[Forsher]

Ok, that's a result, why is it good?

So that they can have a property of their own, attract a mate, and perpetuate their gene.

I don't know any girl who likes a guy who lives in their mom's basement.

How cool are the basements? There's your answer.

[Gideus]

Why should you tell me how to raise my kids? When i have MY kids they will be raised as Christians until they leave MY house. I'm the parent, I'll raise them as i see fit.

While we have no say in how you raise your children, will you let them question the faith? True faith comes not from blind following but from trial and question. That, and what would you do if your kids decided not to follow the faith? What if one of them decided to go to a Mosque regularly and become Muslim, or go to a Synagogue regularly and become a Jew? You are obliged, nay, required, as a parent, to house your children, and to provide basic needs. However, you are not required to force them to adhere to a religion, and if they do not adhere to a religion and you kick them out, you could get in trouble. I understand that you can raise your kids as you see fit, but raising them to blindly obey and to follow a faith can be more harmful than good.

[Torcularis Septentrionalis]

That's really dodging the question. This thread isn't about individualism or collectivism. TS turned the question in the title around so that the burden of proof was on the ones claiming that you should.

No, it's not. It's noting that many of the things that you will be imparting your child is probably something you haven't even thought about because they come part and parcel with your cultural make-up.

And, once more, I never have stated that one should, only that one should be allowed.

I don't believe in telling your child your "beliefs," but raising them to be ethical based on societal standards and not hurting people - which, I think we all agree that "hurting people" is inherently bad and something you should teach your children. My child doesn't need me to indoctrinate them into my political beliefs or my belief on this or that. What they need to grow up learning is not to hit, not to lie, not to be mean, not to hurt people, to be kind, to place value on thinking before doing, to be patient, to learn all they can, to value those around them, etc. My child doesn't need to be told from two years old that I think socialism is great and that religions suck hairy cabbages, but once they are old enough to ask those questions and want to know how I feel, then we can explain to them and encourage them to ask more and learn more and choose for themselves and to not be afraid to be fluid and change.

[Yahkima]

Consequentialism is a necessary rather than sufficient basis for morality. It is, of course, possible to threaten people into behaving well, but that does not make the action of threatening either good or bad, it merely makes an effective means to modify behavior. Thus with faith also.

Which would work if all faith was based exclusively on that.

Your arguments were consequentialist, so I dealt with them as such.

Now your examples of faith being "good" are to me extremely questionable. "Someday my prince will come" works precisely because it takes place as part of a narrative in which this faith is rewarded; if no prince were coming this faith would actually be detrimental, because it would deter our protagonist from actively seeking out that which she desires instead of passively waiting for it. You mention faith in institutions, but this to me seems a misnomer. No one would believe in the value of - for instance - the dollar in the face of direct evidence to the contrary (i.e. "that money is no good here"), and if they did we would not applaud them, we would call them naive. Our trust (let us call it what it really is) in certain institutions is largely based on the apparent stability of these institutions, not on a dogmatic adherence to their value.

But when teaching it to a child? As stated, it cuts both ways. Faith rewarded is applauded, faith taken to extremes is not.

I cannot for the life of my figure out what you think this addresses... In any case, there is no way to know in advance if faith will be rewarded if you happen not to live in a Disney movie. A better life-lesson would be to be proactive in achieving one's goals.

In Japan, in front of Shibuya Station, is the famous statue of Hachiko, a dog whom, after her master died, would return to the station every evening as she did when he was alive waiting for him. It was obviously a hopeless, futile effort. Perhaps if it was reversed, the master would be derided as a fool, perhaps not.

But it's worth noting that the nation of Japan celebrates that faith and loyalty in the face of repeated failures by a statue.

Which is not an argument for the value of faith so much as an observation that some people do value faith. Also, you just said, "faith taken to extremes is not [applauded]." And then give an example of extreme faith that is... which is it?

Also, I have to say, this story of yours takes the form of a tragedy. The dog in question is enduring perpetual suffering as a result of its 'faith,' and while we may in some sense admire the thing's devotion, it would unquestionably be better off without it. I use the scare quotes because, not being privy to the dogs inner-life, I'm not sure if we can say that this is faith; just as easy to say that we have bred the poor thing to be dependent and mentally ridged to the point of absurdity.

[Free Soviets]

not really, no. that's the thing about arguments.

if you accept the premise 'you should not force your religious beliefs on others', it directly follows that childhood indoctrination is wrong. now, you can reject that premise, but presumably you are going to want to be careful when doing so; you don't want to drop the whole thing on pain of sharia. but the premise you'd wind up with looks a hell of a lot like special pleading.
"i should get to force my religion on a particular subset of people, but not on others."
why?
"because my religion is right."
even if that were true - and we know it is not - then why shouldn't we force it on everyone? what do your kids have to do with anything?
"because tradition, that's why."
won't fly. tradition can never justify anything on its own. at best it can perhaps point to the existence of some other justification.
"because they are my kids and i can raise them however i want."
no, we've already rejected that on quite a broad scale, to the point of having legal sanctions against a large class of parental actions towards their children. and we can see that neo-nazi parents naming their kids adolf and teaching them hate are acting wrongly, even if they are within their legal rights.
"because there are some things that should be left to the choice of parents, and religious indoctrination is one of them."
but that's just begging the question.

Except there's a slight problem with your argument, I cannot force another adult to eat healthy, I can do so with my child.

sure you could. it just would be harder to do and of very dubious moral standing. but yes, we clearly do have some level of leeway on children as a special class. but it seems to me that this specialness is linked more to the relative ignorance and helplessness of kids. which, if anything, makes childhood religious indoctrination all the worse.

we can properly force kids to do things 'for their own good', by which we mean something like that which they would choose to do if they were thinking properly and functioning fully, with the right sort of values, etc. but religious indoctrination in the abstract is quite obviously not for their own good, nor necessarily what they would choose if they were thinking properly. see: all doomsday cults ever. and saying that your particular religion is actually for their own good is just even specialer pleading.

You're right, we have a number of things that we have stated are forbidden actions, but all of which are based upon the notion that such things harm the child in question, so far excepting rhetoric, we haven't seen proof of consistent harm.

I should be allowed to beat my children can be shown to be harmful in the bulk of cases. I should be allowed to instruct my children in my faith however is not. There are, of course examples of where it was harmful, but you're going to have a hard time showing that the bulk of the population is harmed by it.

harm is the one where we have put the law down. but do you really want to restrict the class of wrongs in child-rearing to harms? so, adopting the principle, 'it is morally permissible to raise my kid however i want, provided that doing so causes them no tangible harm.' this seems implausible - wouldn't you say that a parent that taught their child to be mean-spirited or restricted their ability to socialize was doing poorly by their child, even if no harm results? or are we taking 'harm' to be broad enough to cover such intangibles? because that's a dangerous road to take...

(also, my objection to childhood religious indoctrination isn't really harm-based at all, but that's neither here nor there right now)

basically, we've got what seems like an incompatibility between general liberal social norms and childhood religious indoctrination. and if we do, we have to give up one or the other if we care anything for intellectual consistency. now as a species, we're pretty good at holding wildly incoherent positions, so maybe we just don't care anything for intellectual consistency...but we should.

And we turned into Vulcans when now?

never. but intellectual consistency is one of those trivially obvious goods. holding the opposite is basically to reduce all discourse to literal nonsense.

You just kinda blew past the argument there. Or to put it another way, please provide the independent arguments and justifications for instructing children that you speak of.

You have a lot of supposed to's and in principle's in there.

that's a whole other thread. but i'd do it in terms of human flourishing. there are other plausible justifications though. that's the thing - it's a fairly low bar to clear. religion just don't cut it.

[Distruzio]

I strongly, very strongly, vehemently, but respectably disagree.

Why?

I disagree b/c you are not merely saying that the parent needn't teach their child religion but that the parent shouldn't b/c doing so is somehow inherently valuable or unvaluable. I disagree so strongly b/c the "indoctrination" you and others fear holds no inherent value - the parent does. I disagree respectfully b/c I think a parent should teach their child religion b/c there is no way NOT to "indoctrinate" a child unless you cast it out as soon as it is born. Therefore, in order to teach the child to value the parent as an authority, the parent should teach the child everything that makes the parent valuable as an authority - that includes the faith of the parent.

If one disagrees that parents are valuable as authorities in a child's life, then I have no reason to converse with those individuals.

[Distruzio]

Why should you raise your child to be faithful? In what was does that help them?

In what way does it inhibit them? Recall that it was not irreligious men who paved the way for the scientific method so many elevate to the status of dogma to proliferate - it was the Catholic Church.

[Distruzio]

beliefs that are derived from legitimate methodologies do not vary by geography based on obvious historical contingencies of conquest. sometimes legitimately derived beliefs might be uniform, as in the case of science among the relevant experts. sometimes they are not uniform, but also show no particular relation to any indoctrinating historical contingencies, like various beliefs among philosophers. and sometimes they do show evidence of historical contingencies, but of the self-selecting type, like economics departments.

the distribution of religions is quite clearly based effectively entirely on what one's parents believed with no relation at all to truth. it is entirely explainable in terms of strict transmission via unquestioned authority, and not explainable in any other terms.

Wow... that ignores... a whole lot of history actually.

Exactly why I didn't bother responding and why I went back to edit my other response to him to say, "Doesn't matter."

[Distruzio]

No, they are. Again, it's the teaching of values and a lot of what we bring to the plate is based a great deal on who we are.

I read Winnie-the-Pooh to my sons, I'm sharing with them the values I grew up with that I feel should be passed on to them. My wife reads Anpanpan to our sons, she sharing those values, those very Japanese values that are somewhat at odds with my own at times, with them. Are we going out of our way to do this, no. I don't reach for The House at Pooh Corner because I'm thinking "Today I want my sons to be reminded of the western value of working hard and sacrifice" just as my wife (probably) doesn't equate reading Anpanman with "Today my sons MUST learn the value of sharing within the group and why one's 'face' should always be 'clean'".

Even if we do NOT go out of our way to share them, we share them. My sons were not instructed that they are in a culture where bowing is the social norm and must happen at various points in time, they just saw everyone around them doing that, and started bowing back to the newscasters on the TV. The same with Japanese table manners.

Which is all fine. The problem is where you somehow get from there, to 'therefore god'.

No. He gets to, 'therefore teach.' The 'God' bit is his, as he already explained, perspective alone, but the anti-'God' argument involved within the context of this thread starts with 'no God' and gets to, 'therefore coercion,' b/c a parent doing some teach happens to possess a favorable 'God' position.

[NERVUN]

Except there's a slight problem with your argument, I cannot force another adult to eat healthy, I can do so with my child.

sure you could. it just would be harder to do and of very dubious moral standing. but yes, we clearly do have some level of leeway on children as a special class. but it seems to me that this specialness is linked more to the relative ignorance and helplessness of kids. which, if anything, makes childhood religious indoctrination all the worse.

we can properly force kids to do things 'for their own good', by which we mean something like that which they would choose to do if they were thinking properly and functioning fully, with the right sort of values, etc. but religious indoctrination in the abstract is quite obviously not for their own good, nor necessarily what they would choose if they were thinking properly. see: all doomsday cults ever. and saying that your particular religion is actually for their own good is just even specialer pleading.

I see, so a bad example makes a bad bunch. So you won't mind my forbidding you from breeding, ever, as obviously a number of philosophical schools have been bad.

I also enjoy your arrogance is assuming that someone who is "thinking properly" is someone who happens to agree with your point of view.

You're right, we have a number of things that we have stated are forbidden actions, but all of which are based upon the notion that such things harm the child in question, so far excepting rhetoric, we haven't seen proof of consistent harm.

I should be allowed to beat my children can be shown to be harmful in the bulk of cases. I should be allowed to instruct my children in my faith however is not. There are, of course examples of where it was harmful, but you're going to have a hard time showing that the bulk of the population is harmed by it.

harm is the one where we have put the law down. but do you really want to restrict the class of wrongs in child-rearing to harms? so, adopting the principle, 'it is morally permissible to raise my kid however i want, provided that doing so causes them no tangible harm.' this seems implausible - wouldn't you say that a parent that taught their child to be mean-spirited or restricted their ability to socialize was doing poorly by their child, even if no harm results? or are we taking 'harm' to be broad enough to cover such intangibles? because that's a dangerous road to take...

Wait, wait. So we're going to go with it's wrong to teach children a religious faith, but we shouldn't take such dangerous roads? Just what are you attempting to argue here?

(also, my objection to childhood religious indoctrination isn't really harm-based at all, but that's neither here nor there right now)

I noticed, you already stated your hope is that religion will die out.

And we turned into Vulcans when now?

never. but intellectual consistency is one of those trivially obvious goods. holding the opposite is basically to reduce all discourse to literal nonsense.

You must have one hell of a time talking to anyone who is not a computer then.

You just kinda blew past the argument there. Or to put it another way, please provide the independent arguments and justifications for instructing children that you speak of.

You have a lot of supposed to's and in principle's in there.

that's a whole other thread. but i'd do it in terms of human flourishing. there are other plausible justifications though. that's the thing - it's a fairly low bar to clear. religion just don't cut it.

Uh-huh... I see, so it's all about humans flourishing...

So you mean for the last few million years, or whatever it is, that humanity has religion, we HAVEN'T been?

[Distruzio]

I probably would too, if I understood what Halli was saying there.

But just to cover my bases (in a Missile Command way rather than a Baseball way) I'll say that I disagree with you, too.

If by some Atheist Miracle there had never been any religion, there would still be culture. There would still be heredity of beliefs. And it would still have perils of wrong belief.

That is what I more or less was saying, that culture doesn't imperatively need religion.

Not imperatively. Which is true. But that doesn't mean that religion inhibits a child's ability to think critically any more than atheism would encourage it.

[Distruzio]

Religion is child abuse.

Care to explain how?

[NERVUN]

Ok, that's a result, why is it good?

So that they can have a property of their own, attract a mate, and perpetuate their gene.

I don't know any girl who likes a guy who lives in their mom's basement.

There are cultures where this does not hold true at all. Why is this way better, especially given the current economy?

[AbH Belxjander Draconis Serechai]

I've snipped out my quotations, as this is somewhat of a public reply...

Well, hello.
First time I've ever seen your name, and I hit Quote after reading just that.

Its one of my legal names (I have three legally binding names)

I'd be talking about "learning habits of thought" but yes to what you said too.

There are memories preceding a method of thought, and methods of thought preceding the memories they formed (a very gnarly bootstrap situation) but broadly "what we remember is what we understood".

Memories aren't video. Memories are at least partially constructed

Yes... entirely true for this. I am somewhat aware of how I remember things which kind of feels odd as well.

I'm glad I chose to reply to your post.
I'm nodding my head in real life. Like some kind of long-necked wading bird trying to swallow a big fish it caught.

Is this a yes or no style nodding of your head? I'm aware of pelicans doing a "yes" vertical nodding and I am also aware that up/down nodding and left/right swaying of the head can be reversed in particular circumstances...

Now I'm torn. I want to encourage you to hang around NSG. But that seems selfish of me: your time is better spent with children.

No need to be torn about it... I'm not torn away from them to be here on NSG (a naturally fast reading speed definitely helps with that... along with a high-rate but short attention span.

Ah, now that I will argue with. Rules are part of the stable environment which is good for children, I agree. But those rules should be tailored to children (and a parent's rules should be particularly well tailored to their child: schools need more general rules both for student-to-student and year-to-year equity ... though they can still be tailored somewhat).

Religious rules which you say are "abstractions" are not tailored to children. In fact, it's hard to escape the impression that religious rules are what escaped the practical criticism of adults (yeah, you say I shouldn't eat anything but manna from heaven, but dude! I'm hungry and that fish smells good!) and the ability of sketical adults to refute them. If they're too hard for adults over generations to disprove, then they're not suitable fare for a child's mind to test its curiosity on.

(If it's not obvious: I'm an "I can't prove it" atheist. A non-believer. I have, if you will, my own kind of faith that Gods do not exist. Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, but it's pretty damn persuasive to me.)

Which is where I was coming from FOR making that statement... the thing I have found with children is to give them boundaries that they *will* question eventually
But also showing a benefit to them as well in adherence certainly helps.

I've deliberately role-played being bullied from several students and then asked them ...
"What would *you* feel from hearing such things?"
It turned out quite effective as an anti-bullying exercise and then we brainstormed some ideas about how to deal with a bully effectively.
I let them pick my brain and tried to keep things within what they understood but also letting them expand on it as well.
Each time certainly came up with some effective personalized strategies that generally worked.

Coming up with lesson plans that don't become a set of rote dead-end answers and making it interesting everytime...that is truly a challenge on the order of developing a large Operating System in programming, squared!

This is where my own interest in computer programming and dealing with problems sideways or outside-the-box can sometimes help with dealing effectively *inside* the classroom.
The questions I generally ask myself is "What are we dealing with *now*?"

Have the global/broader scope but select pieces out within the local/narrow scope towards letting the student take steps ... one at a time at their own pace where possible, don't let them get too comfortable or they will start to lapse and forget... getting this balanced right needs multiple conflicting approaches.

That absolutely is the question. "Oh well, it just is, and no point in asking why" is the worst form of Faith. But "I won't believe it until it's proven to my satisfaction, and I'm so smart I doubt everything" may be almost as crippling. To self-actuation, to useful thinking (which advances the interests either of the individual or of others, or even just facilitates the communications of others), and indeed to original science.

and this is absolutely the dichotomy to which I was referring...between faith and science, sometimes the conflict is true and othertimes false...
How to present this in a cohesive manner where the child/student is able to deal with it in their own way and later expand as their awareness does?

Yes. We are small minds in a huge complicated world. To keep a healthy mind we must have both wonder and certainty.
There's a quote from Bernard Shaw. You know the one.

Actually I don't but I am not worried whether I know it or not.

Like the phrase "Food, Glorious Food!" followed up with "Where did THAT come from again?"

I don't really expect you to follow my train of thought... but feel free to ask me more about it if you like

-Out-of-band-Secondary-Reply-
And FYI I am now *becoming* a first time parent (my son is still yet to actually be born but his mother and I are definitely both agreed to do everything we can *together*) and I am looking forward to the day when he starts yelling and screaming at me

My own viewpoint is definitely antithetical to my own father (he was more the "kids are quiet until spoken too" style!), gimme a yelling with joy/pain/sorrow/madness kid any day of the week!
I'll try and talk calmly with them and see what can be done and letting them get on with making the situation better for them without hurting anyone else.

as for my own religious beliefs, my own parents are christian biased, my own bias is different, and I'm somewhat following my own path at this point.

I'm also had several people push me with trying to trick me so they can state I have "faith X" the same as their own... when I don't and this is one of the few things where I will "bare fangs" and verbally strike to kill.

I'm just hoping I can remain rational more than irrational (everyone has a different balance between the two extremes I am fully aware of)

Is "faith" in anything rational? no, is being irrational a disease? yes+no, each irrationality needs to be taken on its own merits...

I personally favor towards meritocratic selection of irrationalities, would the person who holds the belief survive in conditions hostile to that belief?
How much "neuro-plasticity" is present in the individual concerned?
I would favor the more neuro-plastic individuals allowing themselves to change their beliefs based on learning and experience against those who would choose limitations and becoming stagnant.