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Whether an individual considers something negative or positive is not the issue.
People should be given the right to make informed decisions when they have reached the age of accountability, here that's 18. Baptism of people under the age of majority should be illegal in my opinion, they should have some life experience and some exposure to alternatives before they make such a major, in some cases, life-altering decision.
It should be a choice.
Parents should not make such an important decision for their children, each person is supposed to figure it out for themselves, guidence is permissable, but not brainwashing.

Fine, don't call it brainwashing then, call it "conditioning"
Does that sound more positive to you?
And it IS life-altering.
You want to argue that you would have lived your life exactly the same without religion?
And baptisms do matter, a person of one religion doesn't want to be baptised as another, the Mormon Church was forced to remove a number of baptisms of the dead they'd done for Jewish people. In U.S. we're supposed to have freedom of religion, freedom to be any religion and it isn't right to indoctrinate someone before they can fully understand, before they have access to other modes of thought. You don't have to teach your kid Judaism while you're Christian, but wait until the kid's able to read and research other religions.

Why do you believe in God? Because you do, because you think it's true with no proof whatsoever, and that's your decision. You're allowed to believe that, but there isn't logical basis for it.

Why shouldn't kids talk to strangers? Because they could be kidnapped, raped, murdered. This has happened before to many children and we have the mangled bodies to prove it.

You can't put those two things in the same category.

I mentioned Christianity as an example, I'm talking about ALL religions. Including the ones you mentioned while giving VERY good reasons NOT to indoctrinate children.

First and foremost, I would ask that you give me and the other debators here the basic respect of keeping your responses from being inflammatory and refrain from arguments that border on rude and ad hominem.


Now, to clear up an misunderstanding, I have only used christianity as an example of what I was positing, and I and the rest here have repeatedly generalized all of it to include any belief on the nature of the metaphysical. Religion specifically is a good example of the lowballing idea in that it is designed to survive generation to generation with as little change as possible.

If you find discussing your own religion in such a light uncomfortable, by all means use another group of metaphysical beliefs as your example in whatever contentions you put forward, since you inevitably believe at least one of such to be subject to objective observation in this regard through the beliefs of your own religion: christianity.


When Efstathios said that you would have lived your life differently, she meant exactly what she said. Had something so simple as who your parents were been different from what it was, your lifes outcome, even to the point of ninteen years, would be dramatically different. Every decision you made would have been passed through the filter of a different belief system, and every one of those decisions would have compounded to create a very different you. Think on what that means. No matter the inherent truth to either set of beliefs, only one thing was the deciding factor to what religion was the origin of your developing beliefs, and it was who your parents were.

The fact that a person's set of beliefs CAN change later in life does not change the possible immorality of how those origional beliefs came to be. The vast majority of people in the world believe in the same religion that their parents chose to teach them. Changing your religion from what you were origionally indoctrinated in is an exceedingly hard and trying experience, often ending in estrangement from families and/or resentments that are hard to heal. It takes a break of very circular thought patterns and a level of personal resilience to properly weather such a shift for many a person, depending on a number of variables. Its hard to change the thought patterns you were given as a child, and thats why the process I outlined in my origional post works so well, because more times than not it guarantees the survival of a specific set of beliefs, for good or for ill.

As for the positivity of the christian message, it is irrelevant. Plenty of religions have messages that people perceive as positive, and im sure there are plenty of people who would disagree with the effective positivity of christianity, just as your own perspective runs with the Radical Islamic "positivity", if in a different light. Yet again, don't infer incorrectly that I have something against christianity, you just have to understand that what you see as an unquestionable positive thing can be percieved as VERY different by any number of other people.
Then, on top of the relativity of it, the idea that one specific religion is positive doesn't change the flaw inherent in the idea that the end justifies the means, because thats just not how right and wrong work. Saying that because christianity has a positive message, the method of conversion doesn't matter is judging the morality of an action based upon a HUGELY subjective weighing of which deed outweighs the other, effectively, the good or the bad, and that is a game that could be very damaging to a child at the recieving end of these judgements.

In judging the situation where this idea is taken to heart, you assumed that the child would be raised without morals untill they are "old enough to drive". The mistake made here is in assuming that all morals are tied solely to teaching a child your religion, or any religion for that matter. Morality isn't a concept that is only taught with some mythology, though mythology has for so long been used as a tool of conveying one value or another that for many the two concepts become inseparable in their minds; that the truth of such stories are the SOURCE of morality. If a child were not told a religion was specifically "theirs" before they could understand what that truly meant, its easily conceivable that they could be taught morality, simply given that you had a justifiable reason for what moral beliefs you share other than "God/Allah/YHWH/Buddah/Quetzalcoatl said so", and thats not really that hard, especially in a secular social system such as America.


And to wrap up, in terms of what to do instead of dictating our children's religion before they're ready, it wouldn't come in the form of not saying anything at all untill some preset age; yes that is rediculous. A better idea would simply be to inform about the nature of __ and justify while allowing other ideas to be aknowledged and explored without giving authoritarian facts where there really aren't any in the realm of the metaphysical. Besides, your not being able or willing to find a good alternative way of doing things is not in any way shape or form justification of the origional.

I want to see your reply to my last post in this thread...You gave me such a neat reply you practically gift-wrapped it.
Since you were responding to Buroabenteuer, I'll let him retort to most of this, but I had to say the governing values of your entire life is a little different from the finer points of anatomy, I'll also assume that you were taught that as a rhyme, like a mother goose story, not as absolute truth that will determine the rest of eternity for you.

(Also I don't think cripples get erections over legs anymore than anyone else, when was the last time you saw a deaf guy pitch a tent because he saw an ear?)

So then, as you touched on briefly, the core issue lies in that we disagree fundamentally. Your perspective is that religion being taught to a child is some form of brainwashing; mine is that it is as easy to change, once the child is more capable of making decisions regarding his own life, as it is your understanding of any other subject. You maintain that baptism could have some sort of negative effect on the person later in life somehow, I maintain that it would mean as little to a neophyte atheist as his ex-religion itself (or less). Both perspectives are obviously based on personal experience and, as I said, the way we both individually view religion in society.

I like how you just took a whole post to talk about how I am ignoring your points because I am trying to avoid them, ironic

"Thoroughly debunked"? I wasn't aware you even cited a single researched fact at this point let alone "thoroughly debunk" the statement that faith maintained in childhood does not affect the person's free choice of religion or denouncement thereof in adult life.

You seem to think I "summarized your position incorrectly" but yet instead of clarifying how you just make another exhaustingly long-winded claim of my ignorance regarding your position on the subject. The reality is I'm just simplifying the ideas that you delivered very extravagantly. If you aren't arguing that religion being taught at a young age is potentially damaging then I must have completely misunderstood everything you have said to this point. If that IS what you're arguing then my summation was accurate, so which is it...

Yes, you did "explicitly give an example" of how altering your religious beliefs can be hard, the problem is, exactly as I said, that's nothing but your own opinion.

Long story short, you don't want me "generalizing" your statements then why don't you get to the point? The subject is so simple and you're totally overanalyzing it.

Anyway, to answer the one point I CAN see that you tried to make, well logically there iss no motive for morality without religion. If you disagree then please explain how. That is all.

I never said that Muslims teaching their children to be Muslims is negative whatsoever; but strapping a bomb on them and hitting them with a stick until they agree to blow themselves up is not religion. And nor is contracting diseases from rats' nests. That is just insanity. I said radicals of Islam tell their children only what is convenient to them so that they can get their way any time they play the "Allah wants you to" card (such as when they feel like blowing people up), and that's just an example that goes for false followers of any religion. It isn't the religion that's harmful but the people.

As for morality without religion, I don't get it. Why wouldn't you just want to do whatever YOU want to do without worrying about other people? I mean you believe when you die that's it, you get one life to do whatever you want with it, shouldn't you just go out and do whatever's fun for you? Like I mean what's the big picture? You're going to die, everyone else is going to die, the world's gonna end and then what difference does it make what you did in life? No-one was watching you live your life, and writing down the good that you did, no-one who's still gonna be alive in 100 years to tell about it anyway. Selflessness is not logical if you believe there's no benefit in the end, isn't that right?