1. If free will is a gift from god, how come parents of faith don't have enough faith in it?
As far as indoctrination, I can see where it comes from... to a point. If you believe something is important to know, you want to teach your children. You want them to know the alphabet, their colors and shapes, how to count to 20+, how to dress themselves, how to use the toilet, how to eat with a fork, simple manners, and all that stuff about god is true and important to them as all of that other stuff, so it would naturally fit into the regular development of a child as he or she grows, from that perspective. Since many of you grew up in such a household and look back at the harm of it, it seems simple enough to let a child learn about it and decide for themselves. I think if one believes it to be true, it is hard to convince them that it's a philosophy their child may not share if they learned outside of that framework, which I don't understand why they don't expose their children (I can't bunch all Christians in with this tendency, but you know what I mean) to the rest of the world. Is the intention to get them so full of god to prepare them to battle the rest of reality when they're older, or is it to shield them from reality because it might be appealing to them, and they're too young to sort it out? Or both? Or is that two ways of saying the same thing?
What I don't really understand - how parents of faith regard things like the free will. I wasn't brought up in it, and I honestly have never had a face-to-face discussion where I felt someone directly trying to give me the good news. I have seen assertions and rebuttals on it here and some other online sites. Very few people know I'm an atheist in my real life, and I don't know what they are either. Most people here grew up in it and/or live or have lived in places with more explicit expectations of faith, and some demand for you to explain yourself if you do not have any.
What I have seen here and other places online are parents fretful their child may be doubting or atheistic, practically forbidding it. This is where I don't understand "free will," what I do get is that it implies there is a heaven, but you have free will to choose against it (and go to hell), which the argument goes, isn't really free will. When I think of free will, I guess it is in some other sense, that I have the option to believe in god or not, for starters. But not only does god give you free will, parents tend not to accept that you are using it. Family members will shun and avoid you in many cases if you act on the free will they believe in. Is free will the freedom to do immoral things, which gets you to hell, or is free will the freedom to deny there's a god? Is free will to sin, or is free will actually a sin? I don't really get how this is laid out or why parents take authority over the god they believe in in this matter, literally forbidding their children from using their god-given option. I am talking about children old enough to think this through maturely or a grown adult. Why can't they go to hell if they want to?
If anyone ever gets me to discuss this in person to the point where they ask me if I want to be saved, I'm going to say, "no, not really," instead of telling them I don't believe in it and why. I don't know, they think we are satanists already. Why the fuck do I have so many questions?