There's a big difference in toxic and antisocial.
I don't think it's really all that important to the point I was raising.
Now, a new can of worms which begs the question of what applies to antisocial and to what extent does a religion become anti-social.
The same things that make anything anti-social. Not that it matters to the point I was raising particularly.
Are home schooling parents anti-social?
It isn't a necessary conclusion, though any given parent might also be killing neighbourhood cats, intimidating immigrants, and deflating tyres.
What would be some examples of inordinant anti-social religious restriction?
You seem to be asking the wrong questions relative to the point I was raising. Let me try again with a concrete example.
If religious beliefs/practices/customs etc tend to get passed from parent to child
and
If children are particularly credulous
and
If one such practice was beheading those that have turned their back on the religion in question.
and
If that religious group and their teachings of other religions is the only exposure a person gets as a child.
Then that child is likely to grow up with the belief it is right to behead people for apostasy.
One solution proposed, is to provide a child with access to other religious views unbiased by ingroup thinking. Not to tell them what to believe, or even what not to believe, just to show them what it is others believe. To actually give them a choice in what they believe rather than have them indoctrinated by omission.
This act alone, goes the argument, will suffice to weaken the more extreme religious ideas that it seems to me
rely on telling untruths and witholding real information about other religions.
Time and again, you see Arab Muslims saying all kinds of crazy things about Western Christian life. It looks crazy because it is based on a two dimensional world of propaganda. The best way to fight propaganda is free information. It isn't perfect, unfortunately.
Unless you belong to a religion that cannot withstand its children being exposed to learning about the articles of Christian faith, the Pillars of Islam, the rituals of Judaism, the ideas of humanist philosophers, the Buddhist path etc etc from someone who isn't out to prove them all wrong - I certainly can't see a reason why anyone would object to that.
So if one's religion is mono-theistic, it would be anti-social to restrict one's young impressionable children from Muslim, Wicca and poly-theistic religions as well as vise versa?
That isn't what I'm saying, at least.
I am saying that if one's religion is one of those that tells biased stories about Islam, Wicca or Hinduism then your religion is probably one of the toxic ones.
And I'm saying that specifically preventing a child from accessing this information would be enforced ignorance. Enforced ignorance might be considered anti-social but that puts into a topic quite different than the one I was discussing.
It appears that you consider all religions anti-social, for example, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and others which discourages proselytation of other religions into their cultural circles.
I'm not talking about proselytation. I'm talking about acquiring factual information. Is your religion against a child learning
quote:
1. Life as we know it ultimately is or leads to suffering/uneasiness (dukkha) in one way or another.
2. Suffering is caused by craving. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or phenomena that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness. Craving also has its negative aspect, i.e. one craves that a certain state of affairs not exist.
3. Suffering ends when craving ends. This is achieved by eliminating delusion, thereby reaching a liberated state of Enlightenment (bodhi);
4. Reaching this liberated state is achieved by following the path laid out by the Buddha.
(courtesy of wiki)
Are the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.
Can you imagine the look on a fundamentalist (male) Muslim's face when he learns that his son had been reading about this stuff for the past three hours? Can you not foresee there maybe some conflict here?
And despite it being part of their holy scripture, many Muslim children are simply never exposed to the Gospel as understand by secular sources or by a Jesus-lensed Fundamentalist NT Christian! If more of them were, don't you think more of them would become Christians themselves? Even by your own definitions of what would be a toxic religion wouldn't you agree that if everyone was given a chance to read the gospel and to learn how Christians view it that would rid the world of some less savoury, primitive perhaps, religious viewpoints?
I'm just saying let's expose them to all the biggies, and give them hints about some of the smallies and then we give them the resources to explore all of mankind's ideas about cosmology and spirituality in their own time without worry of being told off, beaten, ostracized etc etc.
It's a kind of 'Educate them all and let the message that 'speaks to the heart' most sort them out." situation.
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