To make logical extensions of someone else's claims, you have to have a firm handle on what that person's claim are. You don't have a firm handle on what my views are. That's the key problem here. You assume to much, and when I've tried to clarify the intended meaning of my original post, you just say I'm moving the goal posts. In other words, you are trying to tell me what my views are, and you refuse to accept my clarifications as to what my views are, classifying them as "revisions" (i.e., anything different from your assumptions about my views is a "revision"). This is just silly.

The issue over how to teach children religion is a very important one. I'm sure this will come up again. Informed consent is a central consideration. My definition of "moral and responsible" presentation of religion to a child is that which at least approximates those informed consent conditions (recognizing that no real situation will be perfect--I think it's fair to say any such proposal does not demand a template match between real circumstances and ideals, guidelines, but some reasonable approximation).

You are also confusing exposure with indoctrination, even though I distinguished between indoctrination and teaching about religions in my original post. You even go so far as to state "Being exposed to it by a parent is the same as being a member at such an age." No it doesn't. Children can be exposed to it without believing a word of it. It depends on which parts are presented, and how the religion is presented and framed. Is the religion mythology or is it to be believed as real, factually true? Is it to be followed or not? What are the consequences of declaring belief, indifference, or certain rejection of the religion? Parents should ensure they meet the requirements of informed consent; that's my opinion. Also, as an atheist, I've exposed myself to the complete Bible and complete Koran, to a considerable extent beyond that of most believers. It would be ludicrous to say I am indoctrinated. It would also be ludicrous to say those who leave the religion in disgust (as a result of reading more of the text (e.g., Bible, Koran) and finding out what's in there) are indoctrinated. More exposure, less indoctrination.

You also claim that I have a double-standard viz religion versus other types of belief systems and disciplines. Not so. The problem is that the religions in question are such egregiously immoral and absurd examples. As I said, totalitarian/tyrannical systems would generally not pass the (or at least, my) conditions of informed consent. To the extent that these systems demand unquestioning obedience, they run afoul of my conditions. I don't have any problem with a religion that can generally meet my conditions. Rather, what I've proposed is a stringent set of conditions that would put restrictions on the coercive impulses of those who attempt to impose acceptance of unfounded and immoral ideologies on vulnerable children. I don't oppose religion per se. My original post focussed on religion because that was the topic of this thread.

You also claimed that my proposal involved state-imposed conditions. That was news to me, because I did not make such a claim. What I'm proposing are essentially guidelines for parents.

You also make a number of unfounded assumptions and assertions about childrens' reasoning capabilities. I think you are overstating matters in claiming "NO child can reason at a young age." (You made a similar statement about childrens' knowledge base). A large body of developmental psychological research shows that young children do use reasoning. For example, 4-year-olds can at least do simple syllogistic reasoning. Reasoning develops; it's not simply a matter of having it or not. I am referring to the level of mastery attained; I'm not asking for it to be perfect. Even college students and adults often make various errors in reasoning. Religion must be presented in a manner that is appropriate to the child's developmental moral and intellectual age (chonological age is simply a convenient proxy for that; I do not think 16 is a magic number, it is just an approximation--see my phrasing "about 16").

Well, what more can you say? For one, as I already informed you, a response would be nice. You consistently tell me that I am responding to things you never said, but you have rarely actually corrected me on it. This is a very basic debating technique; you take the logic of the opponent and you apply to other, similar situations to show why it's incorrect. That is what I am doing; I am taking your logic (your original logic, not your constant revisions) about consent and religion and applying it to other studies in life. If I have done so incorrectly, it would be most beneficial to actually explain that, instead of giving a list of "That's not what I said". Bill Clinton never once said "I did not have sex with that woman", but if I were to claim he did in reference to when he said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman", would you tell me "No no, that's not what he said", as if it was completely different? I'd hope not. It would be meaningless if I only repeated what you said, as I attempting to show flawed logic, not flawed statements.

Of course, now that you are telling me that just a few short years before a child is free to do as he please anyway, that he should be given a choice, perhaps this is nothing left to say. As you just explicitely stated, forcing a kid to go to church and be indoctrinated (you say they can't be, but the child in your first paragraph IS being indoctrinated by definition; he is being forced to go through the rituals and learn the beliefs) up to a certain age, then should be given a choice. I agree. However, at 16, you only have 1 more year to go before you can be legally emancipated, so it's not much of a proposal. It's correct, but it's like taking a 5 mile short-cut on a cross-country road trip.

Again, you are claiming I said things that I didn't say. Again, you accuse me of saying religion should not be taught, whereas my proposal was about how religion should be taught. The proposed age restriction refers to indoctrination and membership, not to exposure to the ideas of the religion. To give you a concrete example, I know someone, who was raised by fundamentalist Christian parents, who as a child was obligated to go to church. The parents were of the attitude that he should be exposed to the Christian religion (Sunday school, Bible reading), but on their understanding of Christianity the choice to become a Christian must be made freely. So they let him decide. By about 14 or 15 years of age the father asked the boy/youth about his decision, the youth said he did not believe in Christianity and was not going to be a Christian. (In this case, consent to membership would have been indicated by something along the lines of "I accept Christ into my heart as the Lord and saviour," etc.). In response to the son's decision not to be a Christian, the father said "You've made the wrong choice." And that was that. They did not have any further argument over it, the parents did not pressure him further, and he did not have to go to church. They weren't happy about it, but they got past it and went on with life. And that is about as good as it can be. And as far as I'm concerned, that fits pretty well with my initial proposal.

In my own case, I was heavily indoctrinated at the age of 11 at an intensive 2-week "Bible camp". I came out firmly believing all the horror stories that were emphasized over and over about the book of Revelation were going to come true very soon. The "counsellors" were fervent believers and were convinced that the second coming was going to happen "within the next couple of years." (That was decades ago). Looking back, I'm embarrassed to admit how easily I'd been indoctrinated (and as an 11-year-old scared out of his mind I had consented to membership, without having the requirements of informed consent even remotely met). I had gone in as a mild believer, assuming God existed but not really thinking much about it, and came out a paranoid fundamentalist convinced the world was going to end soon. Fortunately, the indoctrination wore off within about 2 months of being back in my regular environment. Obviously, in my own case, the conditions of informed consent were violated. Cult indoctrination of children is unacceptable.

As for failing a child who does not demonstrate the necessary understanding of geography or other subject, I don't think that's undue coercion. How you could have arrived at that conclusion based on my initial post, I do not know. But wouldn't it be better to ask me what I consider to be "undue coercion" before running away with such wild assumptions?

As for other points, I've read your whole post, and it seems to me you are persisting in attacking views which I do not recognize as my own. I've made efforts to clarify my views in additional posts, because of the potential confusion that could have arose due to an incomplete reading of my initial post. As far as this discussion goes, I'm at the point where I'm thinking "What more can I say?" and "Would it make a difference if I said it?"

About teaching other topics; no, you did make that point. You gave requirments for informed consent, and many of these are NOT met for 99.5% of children when they are taught certain things. 1a, 1b, 3, and 4 on your list, if modified for other studies, are not met. If you refuse to recongnize "3" as following "2", you get an F in school. You don't understand numbers, perhaps, and you definately lack any sort of reasoning faculty beyond the basic, but you are expected to learn this fact. Now, you were specifically applying it to religion, but giving religion different standards is, quite literally, a double standard.

Politics and religion; no, that's not quite right. Religion is a belief. Political persuasion is a belief. Voting is not similar to merely being a christian. Now, we hope that one's politics is more grounded in facts and logic, but there is no rule for that.

I'm kind of confused as to your responses from this point on. I didn't meant to make you angry, but you seem overly defensive at me trying to use your logic in other areas. If I am incorrect, please feel free to correct me, but "That's not what I said" over and over is not correcting anything. Of course it's not what you said, but I am questioning your logic BECAUSE of it's applications to other areas than religion, even though you only SPOKE of them in relation to religion. Informed consent is impossible with a child, according to the outline you gave. It appears to me that you have altered them since you posted them; you speak of parent's presenting it morally and responsibly as the main requirement, but that's not what you said before. If I am making mistakes because you changed your requirements, please do not blame me. Let me restate your requirements in short again;

1a) The child has sufficient knowledge (which is impossible for almost ANY subject at very young ages)
1b) The child has ability to reason (they can't at a young age)
1c) The child is not punished for questioning (this is understandable and I agree)
2) No deception (okay, that is somewhat subjective, but I can agree)
3) Coercion ot undue influence (to a degree, this works. But, not really; if you refuse to accept that the earth is round, you fail geography. This is coercion, so can we not teach that the earth is round?)
4) The child can freely change their mind (this works in some things)
5) Basically 1c again

So, for an adult, this is acceptable. But not a child. NO child can reason at a young age. NO child has a knowledge base at a young age. There are things that we have to merely dictate to our children, period, and there are other things that might be best if we could wait to tell them, but since politics pervades our world today, as does religion, it is only rational to begin teaching them at a very young age, younger than the point at which they can question, because if we don't, someone else will.

Again, this whole "it's okay if parent's are responsible" is something that was not in your original guidelines, which were what I was critisizing. I merely think that children at young ages are indeed sponges and the world is filled with information; ALL children who live normal lives are going to develop beliefs that were not submitted to criticism. Thus, parent's have the duty to tell their kids what THEY believe is true (as we all would) and to disprove what the kids hear that is false, to try and keep the kid in the right. I agree that alot of religion is not good, but to the adherents it is, and even if we are talking legislation, it's a double standard to freely teach our children tolerance and our views of the world and expect other families, because of their religion, to abstain from it.

http://www.evilbible.com/

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/index.htm

I didn't say that children shouldn't be exposed to religion, I said it should be taught responsibly. I do think certain parts of the doctrine should not be presented to children (see my immediately above post). I can see where the confusion might have arose, but if you read my first post in this thread completely you'll see what I was concluding. As for exposing children to the absurdities of a religion, I'm all for it. I would certainly teach my own children to think critically.

There are actually many childrens' books written from an atheist/agnostic/freethinkers' perspective that deal precisely with the issues we're discussing. These books tend to encourage a healthy skepticism without totally trashing religion.

My view is that neither the Bible nor the Koran should be taught to children until those who follow the religion agree to remove all the parts advocating rape, incest, pedophilia, cannibalism, mass slaughter, execution for blasphemy, execution of children for disobedience, eternal torture in hell-fire, etc., but, alas, I am realistic that the members of these religions will not excise these verses. In the meantime, there are the guidelines that I hope people would follow. It's worth a try.

One thing that I want to clear up right away is that I am not proposing legislation. I already made that point. These are informal guidelines which people generally respect and adhere to in everyday life in free democratic societies. The problem is that the teaching of religion (and certain non-religious rigid ideologies) often violates these guidelines.

You start out saying you don’t like the guidelines for informed consent, then conclude by saying the guidelines “would be nice,” and in between you accuse me of making all kinds of claims that I did not make. I don’t like to depart too much from Adam’s initial thread, but I find I must respond to correct a number of claims you’ve made about my posts.

“A child cannot understand religion, politics, science, history, money…so do we just not teach them any of this?”

You are attacking a claim that I did not make. I did talk about an age limit (my aopologies if that led to any confusion), but if you read the whole post, you’ll see at the “bottom line” part that I was referring to an age limit on the request for membership in the religion (i.e., indoctrination; accepting the religion as to be believed and followed). I have no problem with children learning about religion, but they need parental guidance, and hopefully responsible parental guidance that respects some reasonable version of informed consent. I was talking about how religion should be taught to children. (If you know the Old Testament, and the Koran, you’ll know why I recommend parental guidance—-some of it truly should not be exposed to a young child—-and in accordance with informed consent). My point was simply that teaching of religion should meet the basic requirements of informed consent, standards which are usually met when children are taught any other subject. This ensures that a choice to be a member of a religion is an informed and free one.
As for criticism of a religion, like Richard Dawkins, I believe religion should be open to the same scrutiny and be subject to the same standard of criticism as other areas of knowledge such as politics, sports, etc…no sacred cows.

“I have very strong political beliefs; can I not teach these to any kid I may one day have until a certain age?”

This isn’t what I said. I said teach, but responsibly (or my conception of what is responsible, which fits with standard definitions of informed consent), respecting that a child is a developing person who must ultimately make up his/her own mind about what to believe and should not be unduly influenced. The child must be taught the tools of reasoning. These are not subjective but are based on common sense, science, and logic.

The more accurate analogy between politics and religion in this case, in terms of what I was talking about, would be voting, or party membership. Would you let a 10-year-old child vote for a political party? A 12-year-old? Do you see what I’m getting at?

“Furthermore, even though I prefer this, still, the school system for most kids is not so careful. Are we to tell parent's that they can't teach their own kids what they will, but schools are free to teach them what they consider to be lies and fallacies as they wish? I think such restrictions are the flip side of the same coin as fundamentalists; they want it so that religion MUST be taught to kids, and this proposal SEEMS (excuse me if it's not) to say that religion is not ALLOWED to be taught.”

That isn’t what I said.

“Both of these ideas are trying ot use the power of the state to push their agendas.”

I’m not; what I said doesn't.

“I have a cousin who is alot younger than I am, and right now, I am watching his religion and his mother's tear the family apart. I hate it. But I certainly would feel that it's completely wrong to punish my aunt because she has certain religious beliefs and that she says that certain rules must be followed as long as he lives off of her paycheck.”

Punish? Who said punish? Are her rules fair? If you think something’s wrong, step in and tell her (your aunt) what you think, if you believe you have a moral responsibility to do so.

“But can we say that a child is any more capable of determining a political ideology? Can democrats not teach their children? Can republicans be fined for daring to teach their kids their views?”

I didn’t say they couldn't. (This is getting repetitious).

“And are you not supporting non-religion over religion with this requirement?”

What requirement? That teaching of religion should conform to principles of informed consent? If that’s what you mean, then I favour that which fits with informed consent. Bad and immoral ideas and practices, religious or not, will fail.

“I think we agree that a child is no more capable of rejecting taoism for jainism (sp?) than he is for rejecting theism as a whole, yet you are saying that we must raise all kids atheist until a given age?”

I’m not saying that. (I should become a politician. I can address the press all day saying “I didn’t say that.”)

“Now, yes, religion is USUALLY different (talk to a militant Marxist before you say it's the sole exception to the rule),”

I didn’t say religion was the sole exception to the rule. See “totalitarian/dictatorial ideologies.” I’ve talked to Marxists. I was even stuck with a few as professors when I was an undergrad. I think they violate informed consent, to be frank.

“So, in reality, I will teach him or her, whenever I have a kid, my view and my study while they learn the commonly accepted version at school. He or she will certainly not be capable of evaluating these views fairly, but given time and the knowledge base he has, he will eventually be able to. It is not for the state, or my neighbor, to decide these things.”

The state and other people will have an influence on your child. This is a fact. Certainly, the parent must be the primary guide, but the parent must be guided by moral principles. Those informed consent guidelines are merely a small subset of guidelines that arise out of deeper moral principles.

“Summary; your guidelines would be nice, there is no doubt, but it's not fair to parent's who really, truly believe in one God or another to be forbidden”

I didn’t say they were forbidden from teaching their faith. I said it should be done in a responsible way, and the child’s vulnerability and innocence should not be exploited. There are contents of the scripture (Bible, Koran, certainly) that a child should not be exposed to (rapes, mass slaughter, decapitations, cannibalism, threats of eternal hell-fire, etc.), but that’s a slightly different issue—-one would not show a child non-religious books or movies with such content either.

“by the threat of losing their kids or something form teaching their faith,”

I didn’t say that.

“even if I too think that religion is generally negative.”

If you have a defensible position, why not say it to the child? If the Bible or Koran contains negative things, what do you say? Appeal to relativism, all beliefs and ideas are equal? Nonsense. A responsible parent has to be very careful as to how Christianity, Judaism, or Islam are presented to a child. That's putting it mildly. Why parents would even think it's appropriate to teach religions that divinely approve rape, mass murder, and eternal torture of innocent people is difficult to explain, but I suppose if people actually followed the principles of informed consent this wouldn't happen.

I do want to chime and say that I do not think religion is always a bad thing. It's not the best way, but it is a good enough way to teach kids morality in a very basic model. I was raised that way, as I suspect many here were; that God said this and that is wrong, but this is right, and so you should do what God says was right. And it is a source of comfort for kids. So, theistic parents shouldn't feel bad about spreading their faith, because most Christians, at least in the US I know, are open-minded and supportive regardless of faith, so if a child later leaves, no big deal. It IS good for kids, if not the only good option.