IT IS ABUSE TO GIVE GOD TO CHILDREN

WHEN YOU KNOW THAT CHILDREN ARE

EAGER FOR FANTASY FRIENDS

To encourage a child to have God when you know they are prone to fantasy friends is wrong.  It is abuse.  Let your child be a child.

HARMFUL IDEA THAT WE MUST LOVE GOD ABOVE ALL
 
The doctrine that God comes first which was taught by Jesus (and which is still taught by the Church) urges you to do what you find harmful as long as God commands it for God knows best.
 
If I avoid my father who wants to convert me to paganism so that my faith in God is safe from him then I am doing this for my faith and am trusting in God. But what if there is no God? Is it right to hurt and disown my father over a collection of beliefs? Of course not. Children are hurt and damaged merely by being taught that God exists. The doctrine that God comes first means that you have to enshrine God’s laws in the law of the land so it is undoubtedly true that religion is a threat to freedom.
 
Even a child finds out easily that there are as many views of God as there are people. The Church wants the child to accept its view and its interpretation of what God wants which really means that the child is being encouraged to let the Church think for her. This can cause a grave defect in self-confidence and indeed is meant to so that the child becomes a mind-slave of the Church. Whether you like the beliefs or not you have to accept them and beliefs are valued above people.
 
When you say with Christianity and Islam that God comes first what you mean is belief in God comes first and matters more than human beings. You are saying that what the leaders say about God matters and is the truth. It is really man's ideas about God that are being put first - God is another matter. You are saying that we must bring in rules from another world that sees a purpose in them that we can never understand on earth when we are deciding about right and wrong. A nasty universe means God's plan simply has to be nasty too in many respects. This can be used as an excuse for bringing in bad rules. Rules like this are the reason we have seen women dying because those who they depended on did not give them an abortion to save their lives because God had forbidden it.
 
In religious faith, you are to believe that goodness is not just an abstract but is God. That means that God must come first. That means that if you have a doubt or even disbelieve you are committing a grave wrong and doing harm. As a child I had doubts and I was persecuted by the very concept of God a concept that incites to prejudice and discrimination against atheist and agnostic people and often doubters as well.
 
HIDDEN DOCTRINES
 
There are lots of little evil things in Church teachings they prefer to say nothing about. For example they approve of God making the Virgin Mary pregnant when she was almost a child herself and childbirth was horrendous for girls her age due not only to age factors but also to the malnourished state of poor women in general. They approve of and recognise the Virgin’s marriage in childhood to Joseph so they condone paedophilia. Marriage is for sexual rights and Joseph by marrying Mary even if he never slept with her was still declaring that it was his right to do so. The Church however praises them for allegedly not having sex which means basically that their wedding was a lie.
 
The people are never properly informed about problems about the philosophical, ethical, scriptural and historical accuracy of the religion. The clergy lies. They censor books to ensure the faithful only read what they want them to read.

DOCTRINES HARMFUL TO CHILDREN
 
If a doctrine is harmful, it is empowered by being made non-testable or if it is rigged so that if the victim sees through it she will not have the confidence to trust her judgement. A non-testable doctrine is harmful in itself for it disrespects your right to look at the evidence and be confident in the truth.
 
An example is how you are told that certain prayers always make you a better person. If they don't work you are accused of failing to see that they have. You are told that God has a plan and is working for good and if you can't see it then God works in ways we cannot understand. Or you are accused of not really being sincere.
 
There is no concern for young people who may find out that their religion is man-made and not from God or that their saviour did not save anybody and how they may end up feeling like they have been hugely betrayed and unable to trust anybody ever again. They feel betrayed at how they were given a best friend such as God or Jesus or a saint who turned out to be anything but friends.
 
The fundamental Christian doctrines that Jesus died to pay for our sins to let us off with our sins and rose from the dead to verify this doctrine accuses the child of killing Jesus by being a sinner and the Hell doctrine is terrifying for obvious reasons.
 
The Eucharist or Mass depends on the notion that Jesus died for sins so it is bad for children.
 
A child sees things in a very concrete way and it is not right to make a child feel she has engaged in cannibalism by eating Jesus' body and drinking his blood.
 
People should do good because they want to and not to avoid the everlasting tormenting punishment of Hell so Hell is a corrupting doctrine. A child will do good to avoid Hell which will cause the child to see morality as something scary and freedom and something bad and that he or she has no right to. Hell implies you have the right to accuse yourself of being bad enough to stay in a place of torment forever. You do not have the right to demean yourself like that and it will impact on other people too for you are not an island. Innocent until proven guilty. And you hypothetically judge others - "If you commit certain sins and die you will suffer Hell forever and it is all your fault." The if does not make it non-judgemental. I
 
These doctrines scare children and are cruel for that reason. They are child abuse.
 
A child does not know the way the world and universe works. Thus the child is prone to thinking she sees people and entities that are in fact not there. The child lives in a world of miracle and magic. Suppose a child reads the Bible which speaks of people going into furnaces and not getting burned. What if the child risks putting her hand in the fire? It is natural for a child to feel magic is true, but that does not mean you must encourage that feeling. Religion does and takes no responsibility for the potential damage.
  
ASKED TO ACCEPT YOUR DEATH
 
In religious faith, you are taught to accept your death as your due at the hands of God and to trust him. No being however great has the right to ask you to trust him that far.  The message this gives is that when you can encourage your own death by accepting it from God then murdering a person because your faith tells you to cannot be wrong either.

 
NEVER ALONE
 
A young child thinks in very literal ways. A child can be freaked out by the thought that God sees her or him going to the toilet. We all need to be alone. Sometimes we want to feel totally responsible for what decision we are going to make. We want to be literally on our own. A child might want to be totally alone and unwatched and telling him or her that there is a God who is everywhere and who sees all and who keeps all things in existence is robbing the child of that.
 
God judges a nice person as fit for everlasting torment on the basis of one or two "sinful" acts. For example, you go to Hell no matter how much charity work you are doing if you have sex with somebody else's spouse. To tell a child to befriend a God like that is child abuse pure and simple.
 
FINALLY

The potential harm and the actual harm to children done through religious education is real though it can be hard to pin down.  All of us have been damaged which is why religious damage gets lost in the confusion.  But read.  Read things like page.  Don't filter your words.  Challenge for the sake of children.