Is religion important when raising children to become good members of society?

“Religion is the most important key to raising children to be good members of society.â€

A discussion I and my class had to do in PR class after hearing the above quote, we spent the lesson looking at different religions such as Islam etc and how the people of that religion behave.
I sort of do and do not agree with the quote, religion can help teach children from right and wrong but it don’t mean there’ll grow up to be the golden apples of society and some children can be raised to behave properly without religion depending on the environment they grow up in.

Thoughts? Etc.
I’m sorry if this offends anybody? I don’t mean too. And sorry mods if this is in the wrong section/area, I was unsure of where to post it.

 

I grew up without such and I do believe I have turned out well. So, no, I do not believe it is needed.

I agree with you that it can be useful in raising a child, however. Just not needed or always so important. What's more important is what the child is raised around and what happens to him/her through out their life.

 

I know that some studies say groing up religious leads to better mental health etc,but im not religious and lots of my friends arent aswell,and were all happy and stuff. But one of my friends is Christian and...well shes grown up being afraid shes going to hell and that if she doesnt pray shes in trouble and stuff....i know that she is probebly the rare exception but....well shes one of my best friends,and being religious has scared her. I know that this doesnt happen to everyone,not at all,and i respect the fact that everyone can and should belive whatever they want,so im only remarking what has happened to her. Sorry for the kinda rant,and sorry if anything i said offened anyone x

 

I've been raised pretty much secular, and I think I turned out pretty well if I do say so myself.

The only downside I can clearly see about raising a child with the help of religion is that it may result in the kid growing up to be less tolerant or schooled about other religions and the people who practice them.

 

No its not, all you need to teach kids to be well in society is to teach them what is acceptable and what is not, you don't need to involve God or any other being in order to make your kids right.

 

religion is the cancer of society. to say that a person would need religion to become a good person is utter foolishness. You only need to teach what is socially acceptable and not much more when it comes to manners. religion has killed more people than any other thing in the world probably everything else combined. example: christianity, in their religion the good guy , God, has killed more people in a day than his supposed enemy, Lucifer, has ever done. last I checked that is a poor message at best so in short I HATE religion and i believe that it is a lazy and very poor substitute for teaching children at best

 

People may not believe in a God or have any religious beliefs but you have been brought up in a society with laws based on religious rules. And many folk with religious beliefs are good people, same with those without. It's extremists that make society difficult.

 

Your argument that 'religion is a poor substitute for teaching children' reminds of the modern debate about 'tv being a poor substitute for parenting'. Both statements are subjective, and context sensitive, you can't use such a broad statement on them. Your statements are in general broad, no detail or evidence behind them.

Religion is not the issue, but the people who distort it's meaning and message. That type of religion is wrong is the wrong type of belief. If people believe the best way to serve their god is by murder first and foremost then they are wrong. Those who use it as an excuse to raise status and gain power, using to take wealth from even the poorest, then they are wrong. That is not a religious follower, not any I've yet to learn about, purely a tyrant. Even the Satanist belief doesn't employ such ideals, and it's considered 'evil' by many.

But in the general mainstream religion isn't that extreme, hasn't been for Western countries for a good century or so. People at that time were far more interested in answering questions that religion wasn't been able to answer with up and coming research, and development. science was in it's ripe early age where every discover or proven theory was huge news. The double-helix, theory of dark matter, telephones, etc the 1900s brought forward loads of things. This made many people of a religious background further question if their religion is right or wrong. Here is when a crossroads seems to develop between the rights and wrong of religious views, of that which is true and false.

What religion teaches us on a moral ground is generally not wrong, it says respect family, elders, love and cherish each and life, obtain enlightenment in all it's forms, and so on. That's not wrong. Not in what I believe, anyway. That's how I see getting the best out of life. But saying that God created the universe, a God we don't know of, using powers beyond our comprehension? That's difficult to take in. I'm not rejecting the idea, heck I hope that it's all true but I very much doubt it as well.

In the end, it's all about how it's used. Religion can be a source of great good but also great evil. I can't blame religion, it simply is what it is. It is humans that need to decide how they will use it to teach themselves and others how to pursue a good life.

 

removed for future purposes

 

Before you read this, keep in mind that all facts stated here are made under the assumption that there is one god and that he/she/it happens to be the Christian/Jewish/Muslim god named Yahweh for Christians and Jews and Allah for Muslims.

Fact: Lucifer means Light.
Fact: The most common name for him, Satan, comes from a Hebrew word best translated as accuser, not opposer as most people think. Therefore, Satan/Lucifer/the Devil is not God's enemy.
Open Interpretation: He's more like a prosecutor in a trial where God's most logical position would be the judge and humanity the accused. Jesus and the Holy Spirit were and are most likely the defense attorneys. Satan is not God's enemy, but man's.
Fact: Yahweh (a name for God that comes from the Hebrew verb to be) only takes lives if it happens to be their time to be taken.
Open Interpretation: The lives that he allows to be taken by humans are only allowed because Satan, as humanity's prosecutor, is trying to prove that humans are not worthy of salvation.
Fact: Yahweh, being beyond human comprehension, may very well follow an orange/brown/blue morality as opposed to our black/grey/white morality. This means that instead of saying, "Killing is wrong except in self defense or for food," he might say, "Killing is wrong, but it is the choice of humans who I have given free will. They can do as they please, but may be subject to punishment later. Additionally, if I ever have to kill, I must be absolutely sure that it will benefit humanity in some way. Even though I am a fair judge, I still don't want to see them suffer without good reason and I certainly want things to go well for them as a whole until it is time for them to be punished if they are proven unworthy of salvation." Basically, God, being the one who planned everything out from the start, probably has a different and probably far more complex moral code given the nature of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.

Finally, even though you hate religion, do you still recognize that it is still a useful tool even if not necessary for moral development?

 

As a Christian, I do not believe religion is necessary for teaching children to be good members of society. More often than not, experience will do that, and good parenting always helps. Having a religion can help but honestly children will be the way that they want to be and nothing but a good parent who knows how to raise (and properly punish) their kids can change that. That being said...

You sound extremely ignorant. Religion is not "The cancer of society", in fact we probably never could have reached where we are if weren't for religion. Before the time when people were able to comfort themselves with the thoery of evolution, people NEEDED religion to be able to explain where they came from. Without it, they would have spent all their time pondering and we wouldn't have gotten anywhere.
Furthermore even though it's not necessary religion DOES in most cases help parents raise their kids. It makes it easier for them to establish a moral foundation and (best of all for the parents) makes the "But wrrrrry?" question much easier to answer. Your example of Satan killing less people is moot because Satan simply lacks the power to kill that much. All he can do it corrupt the world enough to make God need to take drastic measures to fix it, that's what happened with the Flood.

 

Or they would have gotten to the point of rational philosophy and scientific deduction much sooner. We'll never know, but I find it hard to believe that mankind would have just been sitting around twiddling thumbs.
Or it would have been given the necessary freedom to develop. The Greek ideas, for instance, were largely forgotten in Western Europe after the fall of Rome. They didn't resurface until the High Middle Ages. While these ideas and hypotheses weren't always correct, they did provide a basis for further research. It's likely that there would never have been such a gap if it wasn't for the ultraconservative Church of that time.
If anything, religion has been an obstacle to the dispersion of knowledge multiple times.
The historical role of religion has been inevitable, but not necessary. There is a fundamental difference between the two.

I'm not sure. Children probably see God as some kind of invisible, super-powerful and incredibly wise parent. (Come to think of it, perhaps not only children see him as such.) Perhaps the parents could extend that authority to themselves.
"You shouldn't steal because God will send you to hell."
could become
"You shouldn't steal because I'll cut both your hands off with a blunt meat cleaver."
or something along those lines.
Whatever God can punish or reward you with, parents can do too...in a manner of speaking.

 

I can only marvel at your employment of contradiction in that sentance.

Religion is a tricky subject, and not just because many people base their entireity of their lives around it. I have a kind of split-view on religion. You see, historically, Religion has been used as a control mechanism to make people conform or else bad things will happen to them. Whether or not there is any foundation in this punishment remains to be seen. Now, this can do wither one of two things to a person. Either, they become totally shut off from all other points of view, or they go along with it and remain normal people. The former is very damaging, but the latter it perfectly fine. A lot of religion is about common sense, you know, not stealing or killing, doing unto others etc, so teaching your child about the ethics of being a person and religion can often become one and the same. The difficulty arises from extremest groups such as the WBC (look them up). In addition, the blockage by religion of progress is also a total and utter sham, because while religion and science are often seen to be polar opposites, they can work i tandem perfectly well. I just don't see the point of 2000 year old ritual being used in modern day society when so much we stand by and have learned then has changed humanity's perspective. So you see, it's definately a tricky one ...

 

It was figure of speech. Point still stands.

Maybe so, but that's not what history has been showing us. So far, religion has blocked progress. I even gave examples in my post above.

I agree with you there.

 

People always prosecute religion as blocking progress.
It's true, but every other collation of ideas blocks progress.
Science has blocked progress, the economy has blocked progress, farming has blocked progress, having dinner blocks process. The list goes on.

 

I don't quite follow how science has blocked progress ... surely the point of science is the advancement and betterment of the world, not just humanity, rather than hindering it, which would be counter productive.

 

I disagree. My psych. teacher, who is a full-blown atheist, was talking to us the other day about how humans have NEEDED religion to stay sane. The one thing humans can't stand is chaos. When something horrible happens, like a child dying, people need there to be some reason for it or it'll drive them crazy. Religion has served this purpose for generations until modern day evolutionary theory.

But like you said, we really will never know

Not really, though. Not to sound like a finger-poking nun, but nothing will ever sound more terrible or horrifying than an eternity burning in Hell.

 

Maybe if we spent less time trying to learn new things, we'd have more time come up with ways to use what we already know. At this point in time, engineering is far more important than science. Science hinders progress because science is dedicated to learning rather than applying. Take string theory for example. Yeah, sure, all particles are made of smaller particles called strings. These strings release a large enough amount of energy to cause a new big bang and probably destroy earth if even two of them touch. I believe this. But I don't try to prove it because THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO WITH THIS THEORY. I think we need to simply stop sciencing for a few years and figure out everything that we can do with everything that we already know. This is how science is a hindrance and how this hindrance can be fixed.

 

Before we answer the titular question, I think it's important to ask, "What is religion in the context of upbringing?" and further, "What is religion?" For the sake of convenience, let's forgo the latter for a moment and address the former, using a labyrinth of pretty syntax in an effort--a likely futile effort--to reconcile opposing peanut galleries both present and absent.

In an architectural analogy, the religious construct could be a lot of things to a lot of people: It could be the foundation, the construction workers, the materials used to create the building... I like to see it as the scaffolding. Religion instills in people certain societal norms and values which are otherwise difficult to communicate and empower without some manner of unifying force, much like a scaffolding supports the workers and materials going into construction. The scaffolding must be able to support construction efforts from start to finish; likewise, religion is often integral at every stage of development, regardless of purpose.

Now here's where the analogy gets tricky. A building--that is, the sort we build all the time--has a clear stopping point. There is often a blueprint made beforehand, and when the building matches the blueprint, you stop building; the scaffolding is no longer needed, and it is gradually taken down. Even then, sometimes buildings are added onto or refurbished, and the scaffolding is needed again. But do we as a species ever stop building? Is there ever a time where we cannot add onto, adjust, or repair society and/or the people whom it encompasses?

Religion is often treated as an end in itself, which I feel may be an over-inflation of its value; the beliefs, morals, norms and values gathered under the label of "religion" may be found in non-religious communities/persons, up to and including belief in spiritual entities or elements. Regardless, religion serves a vital role in society, and especially in raising children, which is otherwise difficult to fill. I would have it that such constructs are not needed one day, but that is an ideal which may never be reached. And in the interim, I would not have lost many of the values bound almost without exception to religion and religious belief/practice, e.g. spirituality.

...Well, I suppose I didn't really ignore either question. I tend to do that. Anyway, in the interest of a short answer: I think "religion" is far too misunderstood to use it without clarifying its meaning, but by my meaning, yes, I think it is important in raising a child...or, at the very least, the values it encompasses. It's a very positive thing when you use it just right.

 

I'm glad you said that.
Yeah that's the point of science, it's also the point of everything science finds itself at odds with...
How isn't religion about advancement and betterment of the world? Christianity for instance, gives the concept that humans were made to rule and tend to all the animals and plants at the very start of its holy book. Doesn't this encourage the betterment of the world regardless of humanity?
Regardless, there are claims that thinking the whole point of man's existance is to be rulers and tenders just because the origin of the belief is religious, is counter-productive. By stating that something is counter-productive, the thing is discouraged and sometimes abandoned. Which leads to no further development, thus no progress in that area.
That is one of the few examples of how science blocks progress.