Sonny Tufts
Member

I never suggested that. In the original post I simply asked, "At what point do parents' rights to raise their kids cross the line and become child endangerment?" No one seems to want to answer that, although Merkelstan's post lays out the knee-jerk viewpoints of both extremes. Forget it.

That was my question in the OP. So far no one's really answered, although there are strong suggestions that most folks think the answer is "None", regardless of how abusive the parent's behavior is.

Not really. It's a matter of degree, not of kind. It's one thing to say that a kid has allergies to a vaccine. It's quite another to base an objection on the unverified claims of a quack or some other crackpot notion. Yes, there's a difference between (a) refusing to let a child be vaxxed and running the risk he'll get measles or whooping cough, and (b) refusing conventional medical treatment for a child with treatable cancer and relying instead on prayer or voodoo rites (I am not equating these two alternative treatments, btw). Maybe the unvaxxed kid won't get measles or if he does, maybe he won't infect anyone else. Maybe the kid with cancer will undergo spontaneous remission, even though every doctor who's seen him says he'll die without conventional treatment. My only point is that parents shouldn't have carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want to regarding their kids, and I'd be surprised if most people on this forum wouldn't agree. But so far, that's seems to be the only response I've received: "The kid belongs to the parents, and who is the government or anyone else to ever question a parent's decision?"

Funny...a lot of people conveniently forgot about this during the Elian Gonzalez affair.

No, I'm saying it's sometimes a very hard line to draw and that I don't think it's a good idea to allow parents to abuse their kids.

So are you saying that under no circumstances should a parent be held accountable for injuries to or death of a child so long as he can say he was just exercising his parental rights?

At what point do parents' rights to raise their kids cross the line and become child endangerment? One parent thinks vaccines are dangerous and is willing to run the risk that the child comes down with measles, whooping cough, or some other disease. Another believes modern medicine is wrong and is willing to treat a child's with . Another believes that it's perfectly OK to discipline a child by whipping its butt raw, chaining it to the wall of an unlit tool shed, and feeding it only bread and water for a week. How far does this go?

He's also too ignorant or pigheaded to admit his inconsistencies.

In criticizing me, you are criticizing God -- after all, according to you He ordained and predestined my actions. You've got some nerve, don't you?

Nonsense. Rationality and logic predate Christianity by centuries. Try reading Aristotle's Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics.

Consider the possibility that the Scriptures were written by different men at different times and that you are just rationalizing their inconsistencies. Maybe reading them with your preconceived notion that they are the inerrant Word of God whose interpretations need to be twisted to eliminate the contradictions rather than letting their inconsistencies speak for themselves.

Your hopelessly inconsistent positions continue. If, as you claim, man is inherently sinful it follows that no man can ever have perfect righteousness because he will always have at least one sin on his record. It then follows that all men will be cast out, thereby making the entire concept of The Elect nonsense because no one will be saved.

19. It has always puzzled me that so many religious people have taken it for granted that God favors those who believe in him. Isn’t it possible that the actual God is a scientific God who has little patience with beliefs founded on faith rather than evidence? 21. A delightful counterexample to the attitude described in §19 is that of a Protestant minister I once knew who said to me, “Why is it that the best people I know are atheists?” “How do you expect to convert them that way?” I asked. “Convert them?” he replied. “Who wants to convert them? Raymond Smullyan, 5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies (1983)