Religious parenting or abuse?

[marlena]

What we now refer to as morality can trace its origins back to self-preservation. All shoulders to the one wheel benefits everybody, protecting the individuals and strengthening the group.

 

Excellent points. Morality is a human construct, a set or rules, that was devised from as early as man began congregating into social groups, for the sole purpose of ensuring the survival of the species. All the rest is myth born out of the fear of death.

[JamesM]

Disgracian, I will refrain from following up with a refutation of your well thought out response. I am familiar with your line of reasoning, but it has its flaws, too.

 

After I posted those questions to Marlena, I realized that we could really derail this thread. So I figured I had better not follow her up with another response. And when I saw your response, I knew this could go way off...since I have experienced your good logic in the past. It WOULD be challenging to say the least.

 

So we will let this thread stay with religious parenting...and not spread into evolution of morality.

 

Maybe next week one of us will have the time to start a thread on this subject...again.

[theBrokenMuse]

It is Calvinism, but Calvinism is not a denomination.

Yup, you are right, it's a set of sub-beliefs within a belief system but I think it's more compatible with some denominations than others. In any case, I just was trying to shorten the post a bit which is why I just lumped it together with the different branches of Christianity for the sake of brevity but I'll refrain in the future.

 

But as an atheist, you must not believe in good or evil, because to believe in good or evil, one must have a measuring stick for that. And how is good or evil measured without God? So for you, I am guessing people are born as is, and choices are never good nor evil.

Well, it would be absurd to consider that non-theists are completely unable to make distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad. If this were so, you would expect that the more secular a nation was, the more crime and chaos you would see and that's simply proven not to be the case. In fact, the opposite is usually true.

 

It is my belief that we all use situational and subjective morality, including you. You may say that your morality comes from the Bible but you had to use your own moral compass to come to the determination that the Bible was moral to begin with.Even people who use the Bible as a guide will often try and add things to certain passages in order to make it palatable or have to add twenty qualifiers when answering questions.

 

For example, take the passage about the bears sent by God to maul children. I've seen apologists say that these children were part of a gang of thugs like what you see today in inner cities. Or that they were really grown men who were still on the cusp of being called young adults. None of this is actually stated in the Bible of course, but the idea of a bear being sent by God to harm young children would go against their own sense of morality.

 

First off, anyone who believes this has a distorted view of the Bible and God or you have distorted their view. Second, this is logically the wrong way to view it, because how does one know who is chosen and who is not? We could not. A Christian must tell everyone about God and through that teaching, this person may or may not be converted.

But I thought Calvinists don't believe that you can convert people. That you may worship God but that doesn't make you part of the elect. That God chooses who he wants to be a part of his club and not the other way around.

 

In any case, I have debated with a few Calvinists on different apologetics boards like CARM before that consider themselves to be part of the elect. I don't believe in any God, so I don't consider it to be possible for anyone to really be imparted with knowledge of being part of an elite group of chosen ones. I do however remember being told by two people about the holy spirit filling them with the knowledge that they had been chosen and one other claiming that he was given a divine revelation in a dream.

 

While it is true that someone who is saved is special in one sense, they themselves if truly humbled will not consider themselves special.

 

I don't think they actually are saved, of course. It seems quite likely that these people have pretty much talked themselves into thinking they are personally hand picked by God out of a need to feel special and it doesn't get much more special than to consider yourself to be one of the few that God pre-selected not to pile into a giant furnace like so much refuse.

 

Having known and been a part of Calvinistic denominations all of my life, I have never heard that "we are special, and they are worthless." If anything when compared to God, I have heard that "all men are worthless." The key phrase in that sentence is when compared to God. When compared to other men, we are all equal.

 

Yes, they often did consider all mankind to be worthless and wretched, except for themselves because they didn't think they were reprobates. Someone actually had the audacity to tell me in no uncertain terms that becoming the elect is a humanization process and unless I was to go through that process I wasn't even to be considered a person. In other words, they are a human and I'm not. I'm not saying that this is the attitude of all Calvinists but it's an example of the whole 'special' thing I was talking about in that particular person's instance.

 

And I have never heard taught or said that it is better to send babies to hell. I have heard that babies that died are in the hands of God. Where they are is not for us to decide. We may believe they are in Heaven, but in the Bible, there is no clear direction.

 

The age of accountability argument is one that I find particularly interesting. From what I have read on the subject, there is nothing that clearly states what happens to the babies of non-believers after they die. However, it seems safe to presume that if all reprobates go to hell and the children of unbelievers aren't part of the elect that hell is a distinct possibility. Most people would prefer to believe they are not in hell of course, because the idea of newborns being tortured in hell is almost unfathomable.

 

What I was trying to explain is that this belief that all people are worthless can cause some people to devalue human life to the point where they don't see anything particularly wrong with the notion of babies burning in hell. They think that babies deserve eternal torture for being born human. In my opinion people that agree with the notion that it's righteous to send babies to hell have been rendered morally bankrupt. To say that might equals right no matter how haphazardly that power is wielded leads me to believe that particular type of believer worships authority rather than a God.

 

And while this was not directed at me, I will direct it back at you. Your responses, questions, and posts bring up some very interesting points. And while I doubt I will convince you of my view, I do hope that something I say may give you a different perspective. Your posts have given me something to think about.

 

Thank you for the compliment James. I do enjoy reading what you have to say as well.

[kdad]

Religion can be a sensitive subject. I am learning everyday and will continue, so i am far from an expert, however it sounds to me that she may be misconstruing what the religion is all about. I am a big believer in self esteem and self worth. God wants you to love your neighbors as well as your enemies as you do yourself. If you can not even like yourself , you certainly are not going to be able to love anyone else in a healthy way. God is love and he wants you to love. God wants to live in us and he wants to use us to show others. I certainly don't know what her view is , but perhaps she is trying to convey that it's not about ourselves but for God, perhaps at the detriment of her child.I believe you can teach self esteem and self worth, however not to the extreme whereas they become narcisistic and self absorbed, but can you also live for God. I am bringing my kids up about the existence of God and what he means, but i will also promote self esteem. I don't feel they contradict each other.

[disgracian]

On the other hand, we're also told that we are all sinners deserving of eternal torment and suffering. We're told Jesus is wonderful and we're all rubbish by comparison.

 

In short, there's a lot of mixed messages and anyone can pick the bits they like, while claiming that those who gravitate to different messages are doing it all wrong and aren't True™ Believers.

 

Religion is only what you make of it, and has no inherent worth, just like every other manmade thing in existence.

 

Cheers,

D.

[chris250]

It is psychological abuse to teach your child that they are inherently evil and sinners. I would even say it's poisonous to the child's mind to teach them that they are born in sin.

 

Children should be kept far away from churches as much as possible. Most of the messages in the organized churchianity is poisonous to the mind.

 

I will teach children that they are inherently good. Since everyone is created in God's image and likeness we are born into this world inherently good & righteous. If you raise your kids to believe this then I doubt they would grow up to be criminals.

 

God's Spirit lives in all people. If God is love then that means at the core of your being you are also love.

[chris250]

God loves everyone unconditionally. That means you are loved APART from your works or faith.