Children shouldn't be pressured or forced to accept their parents' religion

I disagree with your very first statement. Protestants may see Christianity as a personal relationship with God, but over half the Christians, the Roman Catholics, see it as a religion. This is obvious to me because I went to a Catholic School for eight years and continue to go (against my will of course) to Catholic mass every Sunday. There is never a word spoken about a personal relationship with God. Then you go and change the subject and talk about assuming that I mean children living in a doctrine. You then talk about religions forcing children in the religion to do things. This was not what I was talking about at all as should be abundantly clear from my first post. I was strictly talking about parents' influence over their children's' religious choices in the home. Jesus gave his life apparently so that those who believe in him could be saved. Not those who are forced to believe and don't know anything else. Just the other day I asked one of my friends whether he had ever looked into any other religion than Lutheran denomination's beliefs he had been spoonfed his whole life. He said "Other religions don't make any sense, the Muslims are terrorists and I don't want to be a monk in China or whatever. " This shows all the propaganda and biased Christian influence over him. He knows nothing about other religions other than what he has seen on the news and has no interest in improving his knowledge. I told him how remarkably similar the teaching of kindness and virtue of the Muslims and he wouldn't believe it in the face of strong evidence. This is almost the exact definition of delusion. He is being deluded by the Christian Church. Then my opponent gives an irrelevant example of an amazing secular school program that does not teach morals. This is the exact opposite of what public schools really do. Public secular schools have classes on ethics, morality, and making good choices. They get to see that making good ethical choices don't have to have anything to do with religion and can see they are necessary regardless. Then my opponent assumes my resolution means that I believe religion is horrible and should have no place in the world. I never said this once. I said that they should get to choose which religion they wish to participate in and find their own moral compass. I agree with my opponent that religious and moral values must be taught. But they need to be taught in a way that doesn't force the values on them. They need to be taught the values of every major religion and decide for themselves which makes the most sense, if any at all. Children are not a direct product of what they have been taught. There has been a lot of research saying that the neighborhood and peers have much more effect on a child than the family and family setting. Check out these sources for more info on that: The Nurture Assumption by Judith Harris The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell . http://en.wikipedia.org... I know plenty of things I wasn't taught. I have looked them up myself and I'm glad as hell that I did. Now I have some perspective instead of the brainwash presented to me by the Christians.