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

But even if you didn't find out from the Bible, that doesn't mean it doesn't coincide with it. Think of it this way. Stealing is wrong no matter what. The Bible says that stealing is wrong. That doesn't mean that stealing is wrong because the Bible says so. It means that by total coincidence, you hold a moral value that is one of the values in Christianity. You hold a Christian belief, even though that belief is not exclusive to Christianity.

 

Er, true, but I don' t quite get what' s your point here.
The Harry Potter books also state that stealing is bad. Should we start using the Potter books to raise children ?
It' s the parents job to transmit morals and values, not a book' s job. Ultimately the only morals and values that a he' ll hold onto are the ones he knows to be true from experience, unless you do a good job turning him into a robot who doesn' t question anything he' s learned whatsoever. If you want to raise your child in religion then by all means knock yourselves out, just don' t kid yourselves in thinking that' ll teach him morals and values or make him a good citizen (as my personal experience or the document I linked in my previous post points out), the only thing it could teach him that he wouldn' t have found out otherwise (living with his parents and going to school) is faith.

 

I have two problems with this. Why is the belief a "Christian belief?" It's not exclusive to Christianity, nor is Christianity the source of the belief, nor is it the reason we hold that belief. So can't it just be we hold a belief that stealing is wrong instead of we hold a belief we got from somewhere else but also happened to be stated in the bible?

And I don't see "It's wrong to steal" as a Christian belief, just a moral one. I see "It's a sin to steal/God says don't steal" as a Christian belief. The Christian belief has the religious undertone while the original one just has the moral one.