Miller

Because I was sent to Catholic school for two years, then my dad lost his job so they switched me to public school.

If a stranger came up to me and told me I should accept Jesus or burn in Hell, I don't feel threatened. But if he approached my five-year-old child, I would be concerned. I think that when religion gets extreme enough to be popularly considered abusive, the government currently does intervene, and I think that this is the right course of action. I think that religion commonly does leave "longer term consequences" for people, although most of the time, those consequences are not socially debilitating or overly psychologically dangerous, per se. I think any faith is somewhat harmful to the mind, but it wouldn't be justice for the government to prohibit it. To measure intent as the standard is like using Kant's categorical imperative. When I see this ( http://barenakedislam.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/ashura2.jpg ), regardless of whether the parents find it noble/holy, regardless of whether the parents are inflicting the wounds or the children have been taught to do it to themselves... I think it is wrong, and it is highly disturbing. Such practice is physical abuse when applied to others--but a person is free to harm himself. The question is, if you convince your children that this is right, isn't it a form of PSYCHOLOGICAL abuse that manifests itself physically? Even self-inflicted, I would not want to see this sort of thing happening in any community in any part of the States (or the world, for that matter)--but is it not simply religious expression? My parents would've chosen a Catholic school because they're Catholic and they would've wanted me to be raised Catholic as well. Sorry about the analogy--it was just something that occurred to me--a means of which one can delude children into thinking a criminal act is a holy one would be easy. In this case, the priest knows better--but even parents with good intentions can be doing much harm to children.

In retrospect, I can see that I am doing a very poor job at making my argument, so let me start over. If a man holds a gun to your head and orders you to do something, you have two options: (1) you can comply with his demands, or (2) you can risk being killed. You, the "Victim," perceive it as a life or death situation. This may not actually be the case--the gun could be unloaded, for example. The man with the gun, who I will call the "Instigator," may not even know that the gun is unloaded. It doesn't matter what he thinks he knows or believes. The Victim is being threatened, be the threat a guarantee of death or a bluff. It makes no difference because, without knowing whether the threat is real or not, you cannot know the best course of action. If a policeman happens to drive by and notice, I believe that the Instigator ought to be arrested and charged with a crime, whether the gun was loaded or not. Whether he harmed the Victim or threatened to harm the Victim makes little difference--he compelled you to act by means of physical force. An unreal threat of force is like fraud, which is still immoral and ought to be illegal. If a man tells his daughter that if she ever shows her skin in public, she will be damned to an eternity in Hell, the threat is not real--but if the daughter has been coaxed and conditioned and brainwashed into believing such a preposterous thing since infancy, then the threat is real to her--and, to the believer, this thought is more frightening than a gun to the head. When a child asks her parents about the world around her, naive or not, she expects honesty--and so a little girl is just as likely to believe in Heaven and Hell as she is to believe in Santa Claus--more so, because her parents more genuinely express their own faith in their daily lives. It doesn't matter if the father claims to be God or just a humble interpreter of his holy text--to order someone to obey or suffer is a threat regardless of context. To go back to the first example, if the Instigator merely threatens you by saying that a sniper has you in his sights and will shoot if you do not comply and you have "reason" (whether that "reasoning" is objectively based or rooted in a religious upbringing) to believe this--then he is just as guilty as if he were holding the gun himself. All religions are contradictory to reality--which means, all religions are anti-life, because survival requires the use of reason in one's environment. If a man tells a child that he was born with original sin--or that he is the devil's seed because he can't help being homosexual--or that he must wholeheartedly believe every ridiculous, logic-defying, physically impossible, hypocritical story in a holy text--or that he must starve in order to feed his neighbors--or that he must fellate his priest in order to achieve a holy communion with God--or that he should castrate himself in order to be free of temptation--or that he should crash a plane into a building in order to go to Heaven--or that he must beat himself bloody to humiliate himself before his Lord-- it is child abuse.

1. "Your comparison between being sexually abused and being told that homosexuality is wrong is absurd." It's hardly a comparison. I was relating something that I experienced in which I thought religion was an injustice to me mentally. I do not claim to be sexually abused. 2. "Your 'anecdote' is a fabrication. There's nothing in religion to suggest that kids should have sex with priests." An advantage of speaking philosophy is that you can invent hypothetical situations. The reason I didn't cite any news articles is because I know that this is not the common tactic of a child molester--that in no way implies that such a situation is absurd or impossible. The advantage of a molester over a malleable child is that he can make up whatever he wishes and can easily convince a child to interpret religion in whatever way he pleases. This is why I am more inclined to use the word "if" over the word "when." 3. "I was also going to give some reasons as to why sexual abuse and being told that homosexuality is wrong are different. ..." I didn't imply that sexual abuse and being told homosexuality is wrong have anything in common. The point I was trying to get across is that being told that something is okay or not okay based on a fantasy book is detrimental to a person's health, especially at a young age. 4. I am not actually advocating the public school system, which I believe I mentioned. In fact, I also believe I mentioned that I have no solution. In the event that there hadn't been any public schools, my parents would have sent me to a Catholic school. This is simply what I think would have been the case. This does not mean I am for a tax-funded education program.

*** Mod's note: Merged with an earlier thread on the same topic. - sN *** I'd like to present this little anecdote: I think most people would agree with me when I say that, even if the boy allows the priest to exploit him, that, regardless, a nine-year-old is incapable of consent. He is not at the level at which he can truly understand the gravity of the situation. But the ramifications of this situation are greater. Even if the boy is not permanently physically scarred by the incident, the psychological effects of sexual exploitation in young children, particularly those that are repeated, can result in long-lasting trauma in one variation or another. Why is it that you hear occasionally on the news that an adult in his/her 30s or 40s comes forward and accuses a priest from his/her childhood of sexual abuse? If it happened so long ago, why bring it up now? The encounter may have made the child uncomfortable, even if he consented. So why would he do it? Because it is "God's will." He consents to the situation because he has been brainwashed into thinking that it is the right situation to make. For the same reason, he does not tell his parents or friends for fear of being banished to Hell for disobeying the God that speaks through the priest. A child shouldn't have to be a victim of sexual abuse to be, regardless, a victim of religious abuse. If a father repeatedly warns his daughter that disobedience of his coveted holy text is an irrevocable ticket to eternal damnation, it's no different than if the father outright threatens to beat, rape, or murder the child if she does not comply. And yet, is this not what Catholics teach their children? As a child raised Catholic, I was absolutely terrified when I came to terms with the fact that I was a homosexual. I had been taught that even having mere thoughts of a heretic nature was blasphemy. Not only had I original sin, but I was possessed with Satan's evil as well. What if I wasn't strong enough to fight against these tempting thoughts? Would I be damned? I wanted to kill myself. I know another gay man who was born in Libya and spent most of his life in Egypt, raised by radical Islamists. He attempted suicide and is currently undergoing therapy. To be honest, I see little difference between beating a child and conditioning a child into believing that self-torture is the moral, righteous course of action. A young child is mentally and ethically malleable--his moral basis defaults first on what his parents teach him. In some cultures, that teaching is inescapable. I am fortunate to have been born in the States, where I was exposed to secular education before the damage was too permanent. I recently read in an issue of The Objective Standard a powerful argument against public education. To give the state the power of instituting compulsory and heavily regulated education is indeed dangerous--and integral in establishing a brainwashed public, as Nazi Germany was. I don't pretend to have my own solution. But does giving that power to parents--the power to cripple young, manipulable minds--much better? Society as a whole will advance, but no doubt some children--those with the same rights as any other--would be subject to more thoroughly psychological--perhaps philosophical--abuse than they are today. At least today, the fact that many children attend public, secular schools permits them a chance to get exposure to the world beyond their backwards, masochistic communities in which they are raised, before they are beyond help. One thing I can never be sure of is whether or not I would have been able to free myself from such a community were I raised in one without the help of public education--and I am mostly certain that I would never have read Atlas Shrugged were it not for the public high school library. I might not have even survived to high school. Thoughts?

*** Mod's note: Merged with an earlier thread. -sN *** — Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness I am having some difficulty with refuting David Hume's is-ought dichotomy. I am arguing with another individual (one who advocates anarchy). To summarize his argument: I am not exactly sure how to approach this argument effectively. Above all, it is a challenge for me to defend the ethics of my philosophy as truly objective. I have read The Virtue of Selfishness (Ayn Rand) and Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It (Craig Biddle) and both have helped me to get this far into the defense of Objectivist ethics. But I am, effectively, stumped. If for my own intellect above all, I hope you can help me to resolve this and refute my opponent's perspective. Could someone help me to understand the objectivity and factual basis of ethics in Objectivism? Thank you; I look forward to your response.