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Forced participation in religious activities to be classified as child abuse in Japan (www.straitstimes.com)

submitted 23 hours ago by VetOfTheSeas@discuss.online to c/atheism@lemmy.world

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[–] antonim@lemmy.world 9 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

This is a good comment and it forced me to really think about this. So here's my try:

Firstly, regarding the "social" position of different beliefs. The danger of playing on the road is as close to objective and universally accepted as it gets (that's why the state made laws against playing on the road); the belief of going to hell for whatever is usually instilled by a particular institution/community, which is aware that their belief is not accepted as true or relevant by many, including the state (otherwise, the state would make laws in accordance with that belief).

Secondly, the parent might also have delusions and hallucinate nonexistent dangers, thereby harming the child similarly as the religious cases, just limited to an individual situation. In such cases the parent is also completely convinced of the danger, just like how a religious parent is convinced of the danger of hell and practically everyone of the danger of playing on the road. But the state can't view all these beliefs as the same. In the case of insanity, it would be expected for the parent to lose custody of the child, so it seems logical to punish the same outcome with different motivation, i.e. religious. Or do we permit ridiculous and possibly harmful belief as long as it is religious, i.e. communal?

I do however agree that the religious limiting of career paths shouldn't be focused on. I think that a law against such limiting should be general, assumimg it is tenable at all. I am not aware of the exact situation in Japan, how the Unification Church affects people's beliefs regarding career paths, which that might help understand this law better.

[–] PlzGibHugs@piefed.ca 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

so it seems logical to punish the same outcome with different motivation

In that case, shouldn't the law be against causing children significant and unnessasary distress/anxiety/fear? Like, if I were to start the Church of Street Safety and say that running into oncoming traffic might get you sent to Traffic Hell, which is "bad", should that be considered child psychological abuse? Like you said, the motivations aren't the important part, the actions/outcome are, so the religion (or lack thereof for that matter) shouldn't be the deciding factor, the damage caused by the parents should be.

[–] antonim@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

I think so, yes, that sounds like a better approach.

I guess the problem in Japan's case is that there's a particular cult that's been causing a whole lot of harm, so through the law they're aiming at that type of organisations specifically.