If a dog has been trained to attack and kill children all of its life, what do you do? Can you retrain the dog? Very unlikely.

You have to put the dog down or keep it in a cage.

In your metaphor, are you actually comparing religious people to dogs that have been trained to kill children?

Not just religious people who have radical and dysfunctional beliefs, but also people who are raised or indoctrinated all their lives towards hatred of blacks or Jews.

People taught to believe that they should fight and kill in the name of some God or some cause, or some country are similar to dogs that are trained to kill children.

How much programming or deprogramming can a brain go through and what would it take for a person to change a strongly held belief?

If our brains are just computers that can be programmed, (and some people believe they are) then where is the real person? Where is free will? Where is the spiritual essence of a human being?

We are not simply robots or computers that follow programming. We are conscious thinking centers.

Only if they are a danger to themselves or others.

If a religious fanatic believes that they should burn witches and if they think that a tarot card reader is a witch, then they should be locked up if they attempt to carry out that belief.

I know people in the town I live in who believe this and if it were not for the fact that it is actually against the law to burn witches they would probably do it.

Is raising one's child in a particular religious tradition abusive?

For now, forget all about religion. Suppose that a couple decides to raise their child as sort of a prolonged experiment in child development. Make them a pair of unethical child psychologists if you like. They deliberately teach their child a bunch of nonsense (e.g., incorrect names for all the colors, incorrect terms for basic words, strange magical notions, etc.). They homeschool their child until high school, carefully controlling all the child's interactions and media exposure to make sure that their teachings go unchallenged. They then send their child off to high school and monitor the consequences.

Is this abusive? I suspect most of us would agree that it is. The parents are deliberately providing inaccurate information without correction, setting the child up for what will surely be a devastating trauma.

Time for another example, one which is much more realistic and unfortunately common. A racist couple who belong to the Klan and various other white supremacist groups are firmly committed to raising their child to have similar beliefs. If you've seen any of the documentaries on hate groups on the History Channel or other cable networks, you've seen this. Disturbing images of babies in Klan garb or with little swastikas. Makes you sick, doesn't it? Basically, these parents raise their child from birth to hate everyone who they hate. And yet, when you see their toddler, you recognize that this is not a racist child but a child raised by racist parents.

Is this abusive? I suspect that most of us would agree that it is, however, I'd argue that this case actually goes beyond child abuse. How? In addition to damaging the child, these parents are raising a child who is likely to be a potential threat to the rest of us. If you are going to stand by the "I have the right to raise my child however I see fit" claim, note that this is exactly what these parents typically say.

Now look at the parents who raise their child in a particular religious tradition. Like the first example, they end up teaching their child a bunch of nonsense, ranging from incorrect information about the natural world to magical (i.e., supernatural) rubbish. But like the second example, they do this because they genuinely believe it to be true. Worse, like the second couple, they teach hatred and exclusion. "But Christianity/Islam/Judaism is about love!" How is fostering an us-and-them mentality where children are taught that they are members of a "chosen" group - an island of good surrounded by evil - who must adhere to ancient superstition or risk the hell to which all the nonbelievers are condemned, about love?

Is this abusive? In other words, is raising a child to value irrationality (i.e., faith) over reason and to accept an inherently divisive belief system a form of abuse?

So you trivialize the seriousness of Autism and schizophrenia in order to insult a man with whom you disagree and label a large number of the people in the world mentally ill? Stay classy Redykeulous.

So you trivialize the seriousness of Autism and schizophrenia in order to insult a man with whom you disagree and label a large number of the people in the world mentally ill? Stay classy Redykeulous.

For once, I'm with Spider on this one.

For once, I'm with Spider on this one.

There has been a corresponding drop in church involvement. According to Rainer Research, approximately 70 percent of American youth drop out of church between the age of 18 and 22. The Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the church will be "disengaged" by the time they are 29. Barna Group president David Kinnaman described the reality in stark terms: