Welcome snehal 27 to his first debate & good luck
Welcome to snehal27 and good luck.
Nicholas Humphrey
I will cut straight to the chase and begin with the words of Nicholas Humphrey.
Children, I'll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's bad ideas
Teachers & Education
There can be little doubt that a humans perceptions of religion begin forming by indoctrination from their peers, which include school teachers.
Santa Claus
A child usually begins becoming indocrinated before they are old enough to be able to doubt what they are being taught. A child is usually seven or eight by the time they are old enough to question the existence of Santa Claus, but by this time they have already mostly been baptised, awarded a denomination and are singing hymns and saying prayers in school assembly.
"And as the capacity for believing is strongest in childhood, special care is taken to make sure of this tender age. This has much more to do with the doctrines of belief taking root than threats and reports of miracles. If, in early childhood, certain fundamental views and doctrines are paraded with unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnestness never before visible in anything else; if, at the same time, the possibility of a doubt about them be completely passed over, or touched upon only to indicate that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition, the resulting impression will be so deep that, as a rule, that is, in almost every case, doubt about them will be almost as impossible as doubt about one's own existence."
— Arthur Schopenhauer, On Religion: A Dialogue
Richard Dawkins
Let me allow Richard Dawkins to explain it.
Dawkins proposes that religion is a by-product arising from other features of the human species that are adaptive.
[10] One such feature is the tendency of children to "believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you" (Dawkins, 2006, p. 174).
Child abuse
According to Wikipedia, several authors have argued that religious indoctrination of children amounts to child abuse.
All born Atheist
I would actually not agree with the claim from Professor Grayling that children are born Atheist however. An infant simply has not been met with the argument yet and has yet to form an opinion on the subject and indoctrinating a young child to believe they are an atheist is yet another liberty.
Professor Grayling argues that 'we are all born atheists...
What I would agree with
What I would agree with is that we are not born Christians, Catholic, Islamic, Jewish or other, and those are all man made doctrines which continue to seperate and divide us. However a child is awarded with their denomination and taught the core aspects of this denomination before they are old enough to decide for themselves.
Richard Dawkins
Perhaps Richard Dawkins says it best.
Dawkins states that he is angered by the labels "Muslim child" or "Catholic child". He asks how a young child can be considered intellectually mature enough to have such independent views on the cosmos and humanity's place within it. By contrast, Dawkins points out, no reasonable person would speak of a "
Marxist child"
[a] or a "
Tory child."
[11]
Infant baptism
If we are going to teach children that have already been baptised about religion, are we also going to teach them about the religious controversies surrounding infant baptism?
Snopes
pouring water over a baby's head is not unheard of within the Greek Orthodox Church.
Is This Video of a Baby Being Violently Dunked in Water Real? Mixture
Paranoia about Satan
Are we going to make children aware of all the paranoia they are being subjected to regarding Satan?
'Priest from hell' violently baptises screaming baby because 'Satan is in her'
WARNING - DISTRESSING CONTENT: The naked two-year-old screams as she is repeatedly pushed hard under the water in the church font in Russia
Sadist priest
Are we going to keep terrorising children, or are we going to teach children not to submit their own children to the terror they themselves were submitted to?
Mum stops ‘sadist’ priest at baby son’s baptism
Why are we even baptising children, let alone hurting them. Is it lack of education?
Greek Orthodox Priest is Accused of Injuring Baby During Baptism
Baby suffers cardiac arrest after three submissions in holy water
Orthodox Church under fire in Romania after baby dies following baptism
This article is more than 2 months old
Six-week-old suffered cardiac arrest during ceremony, which involves three immersions in holy water
Infant Baptism is enforced membership
Mary McAleese argues that Infant Baptism is enforced membership of the Catholic Church.
One could argue that it is enforced membership to any Christian denomination which practises this ancient and barbaric ritual.
Infant Baptism is enforced membership of the Catholic Church, says Mary McAleese
What is baptism anyway?
What is baptism anyway? and does anyone that baptises their baby actually believe that by having their baby baptized they will belong to God's covenant?
According to certain paedobaptists baptism is the Christian equivalent of circumcision.
Reformed paedobaptists frequently cite Col 2:11–12 as evidence that baptism replaces circumcision as the covenant sign signifying the same realities. For example, question 74 in theHeidelberg Catechism asks,Q. Should infants, too, be baptized?A. Yes. For they as well as adults belong to God’s covenant and community (Gen. 17:7)and no less than adults are promised forgiveness of sin through Christ’s blood (Matt.19:14) and the Holy Spirit, who produces faith (Ps. 22:10; Is. 44:1–3; Luke 1:15; Acts2:39; 16:31).
Anti-evolution
If we are going to teach children about religion, why do we not teach them about the dangers of creationism seeping in to Science classes throughout the world, which totally undermine the more Scientific evolution theory?
In some parts of the world, such as countries in northeastern Asia, evolution has had a relatively solid toehold in curricula for decades. But even in the U.K. the rise of publicly funded free schools allow alternatives to state-approved science curricula. And in some Muslim-majority countries, such as Pakistan, many teachers tell students to disregard the evolution unit entirely because the theory is incorrect.
Child marraige
Mary was supposedly a virgin that gave birth to Jesus at twelve years of age.
One of the wives of Muhammad was only six when she became married to the prophet.
At about the same time Muhammad contracted an engagement with
'A'ishah, the six-year-old daughter of
Abu Bakr,
10 year old files for divorce
1400+ year old documents are just not compatible with modern society and children should not be getting taught religions which are clearly draconian by todays standards. Today we no longer accept that it is ok for adults to have sexual relations with juveniles., yet children are taught about Jesus born to a virgin as part of their most basic religious education. Yet the education that the children are receiving should surely come with a warning.
The warning for children receiving an Islamic religious education should be that some scholars of Islam still allow for child marraige to older men.
As lunchtime arrived and the crowds of noisy men and women cleared away, a curious judge asked her what she was doing sitting alone on a bench.
“I came to get a divorce,” 10-year-old Nujood Ali told the jurist.
Yemeni child bride dies
(CNN) -- A 12-year-old Yemeni bride died of internal bleeding following intercourse three days after she was married off to an older man, the United Nations Children's Fund said.
More than half of Yemeni girls are married off before aged 18
Children's rights group draws attention to plight of child brides in Yemen
- 12-year-old Yemeni girl Fawziya Ammodi died after painful three-day labor
- Fawziya left school and was forced to marry a 24-year-old man in 2008
- More than half of all young Yemeni girls are married off before the age of 18
Mormonism still allows for child plural marraiges
Even today in the United States fundamentalist branches of mormonism still allows for child plural marraiges.
Child Brides, Inegalitarianism, and the Fundamentalist Polygamous Family in the United States
My argument
We "should not" be teaching in our schools anything that when taken to the most fundamental includes marraige between children and adults. Either that or the teachings should come with a "warning".
Medical care
The teachings of Jesus include all kinds of uncorroborated stories such as miracles and acts of faith healing.
Yet, I do not require to provide a source to corroborate the fact that when taken to the most fundamental extreme, stories like this have certain religious groups eschew medical care including vaccinations and blood transfusions in favour of faith healing, exorcisms and other forms of quackery.
We are quite literally teaching children to become conspiracy theorists.
Some religions treat illness, both mental and physical, in a manner that does not heal, and in some cases exacerbates the problem. Specific examples include
faith healing of certain Christian sects, denominations which eschew medical care including vaccinations or
blood transfusions, and
exorcisms.
[23][24]
8 year old boy died in the .U.S after exorcism
Here is just one example of the abuse that religion imposes upon children.
An autistic eight-year-old boy has died during a prayer service held to supposedly cure him of the evil spirits blamed for causing his condition.
Power of prayer
We have all been taught about the power of prayer. But has believing in the power of prayer killed more than it has cured? Why then do we make school children say prayers?
A detailed study in 1998 found 140 instances of deaths of children due to religion-based
medical neglect. Most of these cases involved religious parents relying on prayer to cure the child's disease, and withholding medical care.
[28]
Religion in Israeli schools
Now religion being taught in schools pertains to schools throughout the world. Not only schools in the .U.S or UK, and in Israel religious education is mandatory.
The State of
Israel recognizes all
religious schools, at every level, whether they are publicly funded or
privatized. The state has taken on a "melting pot" mentality to
education in Israel, meaning they back all
religious schools and teachings of religions as long as they follow the mandated structure set by the
Ministry of education. Religion plays a large role in the education of all students in Israel.
[5]
Armageddon
Now, why is it beyond preposterous that Israel backs religious education in its schools so strongly? Well, taken to its most fundamental abrahamic religion teaches that there will be a war between the East and West called armageddon, and here we are in Israel with Jewish children and Arabic children literally being taught to oppose eachother as part of their school curriculum. How insane is this, given the already fragile relationship between Palestine and Israel? Teaching an Arabic pupil about Allah and a Jewish pupil about Yahweh "is not" the best way to resolve the situation in the middle east.
This becomes more complicated when trying to compare students from schools that teach different religious historical backgrounds (i.e. Arab schools and Jewish schools.) Furthermore, a recent study found that the rising budget cuts to state secular and state religious schools drove up the number of students who attended private institutions for religious or academic studies, and critics argue that this creates a bigger divide among the wealthier and lower classes, primarily the Muslim and Jewish populations. Critics argue that a bigger wedge between varying religions cause further divide among the different ethnicities within the state, causing long term tension.
[13]
Worship in schools
In England and Wales it is mandatory under the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 for pupils to take part in a daily act of Collective Worship. Though parents can remove their children from acts of daily worship, and sixth formers are allowed to decide for themselves.
Parents have the right to withdraw their child from the daily act of collective worship if they wish.
Sixth-formers can decide for themselves whether or not to attend, without giving a reason for doing so.
What is being worshipped?
But what is being worshipped here? Not only is it a God which science has yet to find evidence for, but also a God which opposes the God of those from the same classroom worshipping a different God.
This is not the best way to defeat racism and bigotry. This is teaching seperationalism and then expecting children to accept multi-culturalism all of a sudden when they leave school.
Guidance from the
Department for Education (DfE) defines worship in this context as "reverence or veneration paid to a divine being or power."
[5]
School prayer
There is an argument that I brought up earlier, that prayer may have killed more people than it has cured, and it is Scientifically objectionable that prayer has the power to heal, yet allowing religion in to schools also comes with the school prayer which is simply encouraging impressionable children to submit to peer pressure and become part of the majority. It is not teaching them to think for themselves.
On the opposing side, others have argued that prayer has no place in a classroom where impressionable students are continually subject to influence by the majority.
[3]
Thank you, I will now pass this over to snehal 27. All the best.
I'm cool with that
I am not disclosing what the arguments might be in the comment section
So how are these arguments against religion?
Well I was certainly taught the basics about God and Jesus, aswell as the main biblical stories including creation. The exodus et cetera. And I seem to remember sitting in assembly saying prayers and singing hymns.
What arguments do you believe are being taught?
In general I support teaching all religions in RE/RS type subjects. However, scientology, Satanism and Jehovah's Wintess as well as others may not be worth teaching to general school populations so I'd end up in a tough spot on this debate.
tbh gugigor I have mentioned that the same burden of proof applies to me also in my defence
you can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that no good arguments exist for anything.
Unless Con proves that Religious schools are so important that they must continue existing...