Pushing Christianity Onto Children is Emotional Child Abuse

If abuse is abuse, intended or not, then it's a scary world we live in. No matter how well-intentioned I am to raise my kids unabusively, there is always the looming possibility that I have abused them, or so you say. I think that well-intentioned parents would at least end up abusing their kids less than the parents who are out to punish their kids. I think if a parent intends to avoid abuse, they are going to try as hard as they can to avoid it whether they are Christian or not. --- There is free will in Christianity; you get a choice - Heaven or Hell. Your life is not planned out, and it's up to you to write the final chapter (clouds or fire) based on your actions as you willfully perform them. --- I am in agreement with you that atheism supplies no meaning to one's life. However, it forces a person to find their own meaning. I will forgive you for not noticing this point in round 2. And of course, if you can find meaning in your life without God, then abandoning one's faith need not leave an emotional void. --- Claiming that most people don"t leave Christianity or escape the "brainwashing" is a steep claim. With the rise of atheism in the past decade or so, and the epidemic of "empty pew syndrome", I am not confident to state whether the majority or minority of children raised Christian have reversed the brainwashing or not. I would like to see some sort of public statistical count before either of us uses this to support our arguments. --- No one is teaching children that Hell is inescapable. Baptism, the cleansing of original sin, happens before an infant even grows out of childhood amnesia. The earliest memory a child will have will be from a time in their life after they have already had their original sin removed. From the child's point of view, they are on the path to heaven from the earliest moment they can remember, and all they have to do to maintain this path is to be a good person who accepts that Jesus sacrificed himself for original sin. Hell is never inescapable. We aren't debating over whether or not Hell is a reward or a threat. Hell is a threat and a punishment, period, we agree on this. However it's not a concern for someone who lives a life believing in Christianity and following it as best they can (according to Christianity). That's what I'm getting at; we aren't disputing the nature of Hell. It's avoidable in the same way all dangers are. --- Even if children are competing with Jesus for their parents" love, that actually supports my main argument about the need to make children independent thinkers. This sort of contradiction forces a child to ask questions. A child knows that they love their mother and their father and vice versa, but why should either of them love an invisible man even more? The invisible man hasn't done anything measurably, physically or practically helpful for the child (unlike the parents who fill the child's basic needs), so it makes no sense that the child should love the invisible man more than their parents. And likewise the child would be prompted to ask "Do you love Jesus more than you love me?". This kind of confusion could lead a child to question Christianity, which is the first step in losing faith.