If a child and his parents are happy believing in nonsense and hurt no-one, what's the obvious harm?
So if harm is not 'obvious' it is ok? Of course, I admit that my opinion is from my persepective. Who's isn't?
Surely you're not saying you'd make them into atheists if you could? To accept intellectually a completely new, and by comparison cold and stark, reality would be unlikely to make them happier. I'm also sure you're not proposing that society dictate what people should be allowed to teach their children to believe.
No...that is not what I'm saying, I don't want to make people anything, that is religions role. I'm not proposing that society dictate what individual people should be allowed to teach children. I am appealing to parents to stop dictating to children what to believe (with no evidence). And only giving them half the story. The belief half. That is all. Allow them to figure it out for themselves...and make their own choices. Not take on your unfounded superstitions blindly.
It is religion that dictates what to believe and how...I am simply opposing THEM dictating to children who are suceptable to believing everything their parents and religious leaders and religious schools teach them. If their parents teach them that the earth is 3,000 years old...then is that ok? I don't think we should walk into their homes and tell them it isn't. But I don't believe schools (in a postition of authority) should be allowed to teach children this is a fact, as though it is the truth when it has been proven to be incorrect and untrue. Or..that religious schools should be telling children it is a FACT that god is real. I was taught that as a child...and I resent the fact that it has taken me 45 years to discover that ALL those adults were lying to me and left me wide open to any and all other ridiculous religious ideas and cults because they implanted the notion that god was real. Because...if you teach/indoctrinate a child to believe it is true and real how do they know it isn't? How do they know to even question it? And once they discover that their religion is a fraud...they keep searching for a god elsewhere...we set them up to fail and to be sucked in, we make them vulnerable to every god selling fraudster.
I hold religion responsible for wasting my life on their bullshit...BECAUSE they ALL taught me lies. This wasn't 'obvious' harm...but I personally consider that it has caused me harm...and endless grief in many many ways.
Society already does dictate what children believe...and religion is the culprit. I am simply saying that it is harmful. Even if, on the surface, it seems innocent.
To accept intellectually a completely new, and by comparison cold and stark, reality would be unlikely to make them happier.
LOL...Ironically...you are one of the people who really helped me to see the cold, starck reality (as you put it)...and I am happier...a LOT happier. I don't see reality as either cold or stark. I see it as beautiful and awe inspiring. Far more amazing that I ever did when I believed in a god.