Saturday, 27 May 2017

WHY SHOULD CHILDREN SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR PARENTS?



I wonder what would have happened to me if my parents were Hindu! Or how my life would have been if my father was a Moslem? Would life be better if my mum was a Jew of Judaism? But fate made it that I was born to Christian parents of a different denomination from the one I was raised in. It was until late in my life that I started questioning the honesty in religious beliefs. How could God belong to all these religions? Obviously they cannot all be true. It would have been wiser if all religions claimed to point towards one deity; but worse still they sharply contradict and disagree with each other. If God was real he or she would not allow such confusion to infest humankind.
I think children have a right to be allowed to make a choice of which religion they would want to belong to. Just like in politics, many countries do not allow children less than eighteen years to vote or participate in partisan politics. The 16 years I spent in church under Christian dogma, I discovered that certain aspects of religion should not be taught to children. Things like hell fire burning the disobedient for eternity are horrific. Even the figure of Satan, the devil, painted to them is so horrifying. I do not think it is right to scare children into being good.
After years of indoctrination, fear, hatred and envy set in. I remember how I had developed deeper hatred towards people of other faiths who did not belong to my Pentecostal doctrine. Whenever I heard Moslem Imams calling out for Islamic prayers every hour, I was always moved with indignation. That is why I am not surprised when I hear that a suicide bomber blasted himself in a night club or church. It is simply a consequence of long religious indoctrination that causes good people become real dangerous fundamentalists.
Richard Dawkins a former Oxford professor was quoted by the Daily Mail in 2013 saying; 'There is a value in teaching children about religion. You cannot really appreciate a lot of literature without knowing about religion. But we must not indoctrinate our children…mental torment inflicted by the religion’s teachings is worse in the long-term than any sexual abuse carried out by priests.’See more here:
I hate it when I hear Bible thumpers saying that their God punished the entire human kind because their fore parents Adam and Eve disobeyed him and ate a forbidden apple. No legal court of our modern times can pass such a sentence for sure. So if a so-called just deity could come up with such a condemnation, it leaves me speechless.  Imagine theists who claim that God punishes children for the sins of their parents up to the fourth generation! Read it for yourself in Exodus 20:5. I call it child abuse and no one should take such a religion seriously.
Finally, a belief that celebrates child sacrifice because its deity sacrificed its only begotten son since someone ate a forbidden apple is ridiculous? Let us not indoctrinate our children with such stories; otherwise they will question our intellect when we are long gone. Give them a chance to explore all religions and choose for themselves to believe or not to believe. Say no child indoctrination.

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