For many religious people, raising their children in their faith is an important part of their religious practice. They might see getting their kids into heaven as one of the most important things they can do as parent. And certainly, adults should have the right to practice their religion freely, but children are impressionable and unlikely to realize that they are being indoctrinated into one religion out of the thousands that humans practice.
And many faith traditions have beliefs that are at odds with science or support bigoted worldviews. For example, a queer person being raised in the Catholic Church would be taught that they are inherently disordered and would likely be discouraged from being involved in LGBTQ support groups.
Where do you think the line is between practicing your own religion faithfully and unethically forcing your beliefs on someone else?
Imagine how different society would be if people weren’t introduced to religion until they were 18.
There probably wouldn’t be much religion, how nice that would be. Religion would mostly cease to exists if children were not indoctrinated before they developed critical thinking skills.
Religion relies on naive children being brought into the fold, and to a lesser degree damaged and desperate adults needing hope or something to believe in.
Same place america is with safe sex: it doesn’t solve any problems, just defers the issue of ignorance and learning until adulthood
What? Safe sex solves a significant amount of issues like sexually transmitted diseases and underage pregnancy. What In the world are you trying to say?
Yes, but people learn about it late (if at all), and we end up with lots of adolescents getting STIs/pregnant/etc.
America has a problem with sex ed because people don’t learn about safe sex; many still learn abstinence only. This doesn’t stop STIs nor teen pregnancies, it doesn’t stop SA, it doesn’t stop myths about men and womens reproductive systems from proliferating, it just defers the problem of educating people until later. Basically, America’s sex ed is to avoid teaching people about sex, then hope they suddenly know how to have safe sex when they’re 18 because they’re 18.
Likewise, deferring learning about cults until they’re 18 doesn’t stop people from getting indoctrinated, it just expects 18 year olds unfamiliar with cult tactics to suddenly be immune to cult tactics because they’re 18.
Are you really comparing learning about safe sex to indoctrination to cults?
No, i’m comparing learning about safe sex to learning about skepticism and critical thinking. Refusing firsthand experience with the cults that are ubiquitous won’t save people from those cults, it will just keep them from developing the skills necessary to cut thtough the bullshit until they’re suddenly thrown in the intellectual deep-end at 18.