do atheists indoctrinate their kids?
People say they raise their kids in values neutral environments so they themselves can appear to be reasonable and rational free-thinkers. Truth is, it’s absolutely impossible to raise kids that way and everyone knows it. Sure kids can grow up and decide what to believe once they are mature enough to do so but to say they haven’t been taught a specific ideology and that that ideology isn’t superior in the eyes of their parents is absolutely absurd.
The The Isaiah 53:5 Project has an interesting post encouraging parents to make sure their children know the correct opinion on everything from religion to global warming to happiness. Because apparently there is one definitive, correct opinion to have on every complex issue under the sun.
Luckily for me, I was raised a similar household. I knew the correct opinion on everything by the time I left home at 18. And if I wasn’t sure about any new topics, I knew I could pray for the correct answer to be magically beamed to me, or simply ask my parents.
However, now I’m a little bit older, I’m beginning to suspect there is a flaw in that approach:
- There is no correct opinion on anything. There are opinions. Opinions that hopefully are formed based on evidence, facts and careful analysis. Everyone, regardless of how clever they are, still comes to different conclusions.
- I don’t want my children to mindlessly parrot my opinions. I’m pleased that my daughter probes, questions and challenges what I say. She looks for reasons and answers.
- I’m already annoyed I have to put up with the traditional invisible creatures of our childhood culture, like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. Most kids also go through religious phases. I’m prepared for her to be interested in any traditional superstition that seems real to her. I’ll encourage her to question and investigate everything, and let her form her own opinions.
- I can’t even imagine telling a child what the ‘correct’ political opinion is on anything. Unbelievable. It’s one thing to believe your child will fry in everlasting torment if they don’t follow your belief system, but to think in this diverse, constantly changing world that one political system or outlook is correct?
- My children as they get older will be made aware of my opinions on everything from religion to climate change to happiness. The learning environment and associated discussions will not be neutral. But even at this pre-school age, I explain that every family is different, everyone has different beliefs and everyone has different opinions. And I ask what she thinks and why.
Arm your children with the ability to think through things by themselves. That doesn’t mean attempting to hide our opinions as parents. Only the truly insecure need to ‘teach’ their children to follow illogical fantasies and evidence-weak belief systems as ‘correct’ opinions.
What I find odd, is this notion, that we can somehow choose, or decide what to believe. How exactly does that happen? Some form of autosuggestion according to our preferances, perhaps? How does that relate to reality?
We are either compelled to belive something, or not. What compels us differs between the individuals. And there are different levels of confidence, based on either authoritarianistic demands and indoctrination, or in the other end of the scale as objective information as awailable to us.
But, we can learn ways to better evaluate what is actually true, to weight evidence and not to take anything at face value, that is, as religions demand blind faith in their particular cultural notions of gods.
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“What I find odd, is this notion, that we can somehow choose, or decide what to believe.” I’m having to think about this … do you mean that we believe what believe because it’s what we conclude is true? And that we don’t choose a belief based on wishful thinking?
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Yes, well you and I might believe what we believe because of what we conclude, regardless wether if we like it or not, but there seems to be an awfull lot of people who have been taught, to discern and evaluate some particular parts of reality according to their preferences rather than what they are able to observe. Of course our preferences affect how we percieve our observations and what conclusions we do draw from them, but one first has to be able to recognize such, before one can even start to awoid such mind traps.
If some religions had not evolved to snuff out critical thinking, there would not be such a number of for example Chrisitians offering the Pascal’s Wager as a reason to believe, would they? Blind faith and obidience are offered up as if they were virtues. Look at all these notions of Hell – it is not a sensible, fair, or logical form of punishment for any temporal transgressions – yet it persists in the minds of the religious. Why? Precisely because it is used to frighten kids to not think critically about the unobservable god entity. And as it is instigated in a tender and impressionable age, it affects even adults, who would otherwise laugh at such superstitious and nonsensical threats.
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Indeed. This is exactly what all religions, each and every one, ultimately demand of their adherents. On the sign of Victory Tabernacle Holiness Church “If ur’ faith is big enough facts dnt count”, it is just simply and for once openly admitted. And when it is, it sounds really, really, really stupid even by any intelligent religious person. That is why so many religions in the modern world and a number of individuals even throughout history have tried to rationalize faith – to make up seemingly rational reasons to believe what is allready believed instead of trying to evaluate these beliefs on any even remotely objective grounds. And of course, to justify the empty, but competingly horrid, threats for non-belief in their particular religion. As if believing in any particular gods was a conscious choise, people made of the top of their head and as if it was somehow possible to justify, for example, eternal punishments for any choises made with such little information as any gods have decided to grant us on even such a basic issue as their existance. Who can make such a choise? What people can choose, with their beloved free will, is to either research the truth value of the religious claims, or not to and simply have faith. How is it chosen to have faith in any particular religious tradition? Most often simply through cultural heritage, and indoctrination specifically intended to stop any doubt or questioning of the claims.
Should I make an aware choise to believe in the god of a particular sect of Islam, Christianity or any of the dozens and dozens of other religions? How am I to evaluate wich of them is true? By comparing the reliability of their claims, or their morals they offer? But all of their most important and central claims I have yet faced are according to their adherents to be taken at face value or presented with the most childish and fallacious illogical argumentation and all of their moral failings are explained away by their adherents by this quite immoral style of appealing to might makes right, when I am told I am not even supposed to understand what ultimately is good and moral as well as the god that alledgedly made, demanded, or simply allowed some very questionable acts. That is to take the morals of these gods at face value and by religious faith. But religious faith is not a virtue, if research for truth is, because these two are mutually contradictory. I have made the aware choise to research wich might be most likely truly virtuous of these two and have come to the conclusion, that the search for truth is virtuous, and if there, after all, be gods that want to punish me for that, at least I stand on the moral highground in comparrison to any such gods. Do I not?
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Only the truly insecure need to ‘teach’ their children to follow illogical fantasies and evidence-weak belief systems as ‘correct’ opinions.
Oh, I like that.
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It’s true, isn’t it? If Christians had faith in the truth of their religion, they would just teach their children to think and allow the ‘obvious’ conclusion to be reached.
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Indeed.
Hey, have you sen this? Gawd bless the Scots!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/viral-video/11878006/Bagpiper-drowns-out-hate-preacher-in-Fife-Scotland.html
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“It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists, and if religion were not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so.”
I don’t think that’s true. As adults they may well choose religion, and if there is none available, they might invent one.
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“As adults they may well choose religion, and if there is none available, they might invent one.” – I don’t that’s true either — 😉
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“…apparently there is one definitive, correct opinion to have on every complex issue under the sun.”
Don’t tell me, let me guess – that opinion just happens to be the one to which he, himself, adheres —
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Oh, that was clearly a lucky guess on your part! 😉
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Yeah, I’m lucky that way.
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One of the comments that got me banned over at the Isaiah Project was pointing out how he consistently and reliably substitutes descriptions of notions others might hold in order to grossly misrepresent non believers. He then uses this as a springboard to both vilify non believers and excuse his own reprehensible actions promoting his form of piety.
Note what he does here: first he substitutes the notion of teaching kids to think critically (as most non believers do) with the notion that this is supposedly value-neutral (which it isn’t and never was), on which he bases this new argument that such non believer parenting cannot be done.
Well, duh.
Secondly, he misrepresents this critical environment most non believing parents support at home to be the same as an ideology… which, oh by the way, is magically equivalent in principle to the intentional and directed and enforced religious indoctrination of children. Asking a child, “What do you think?” suddenly becomes equivalent to “You must believe in my god or you will spend eternity in Hell.”
See? They’re pretty much identical, right?
What we end up following Josh into the warren of his religious apologetics is a gross distortion of reality. Critical thinking is not the same as indoctrinated belief.
Whodathunkit?
This tactic Josh uses to ridiculous extremes is absolutely typical of religious promoters. It has been been widely used as a fundamental approach by the apologetic community and other faitheists who not only excuse them for what amounts to spreading lies but agrees to go along with it in order to smear and vilify New Atheists who dare to speak publicly and in a critical fashion about the pernicious effects that compound over time by distorting reality and calling it a virtue.
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James’ behaviour is just bizarre. The effort he goes to to maintain his cartoon of reality is astonishing.
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It’s interesting, he seems to have ‘blanks’ in his head in terms of thought. He can’t even imagine things differently. Like you say, there’s a big difference between teaching a child “what I say is correct”, and telling them your opinion and other opinions, or pointing them to places where they can read on subjects and make up their own minds.
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“There is no correct opinion on anything…”
Murder perhaps? Child sexual abuse? Meh, that’s not really rape, it’s just a difference of opinion….?
Whether you like it or not Violet, there is right and there is wrong. If you don’t teach your kids to discern the difference, you’re doing them a disservice.
“I don’t want my children to mindlessly parrot my opinions….”
Sure you do, when it comes to things like running out into the road. That’s why kids have parents in the first place, to shelter them from having to learn everything the hard way.
It’s interesting to me, I recognize the ideology and the indoctrination you are advocating and engaging in, but you can’t see it. Your disapproval reads loud and clear to me and your child will seek to please you. So when you say, “I’m already annoyed I have to put up with the traditional invisible creatures of our childhood culture,” and “to follow illogical fantasies and evidence-weak belief systems” you are indoctrinating her with your opinion of such things. She is not really free to believe in Christ, because she will feel torn between her loyalty towards you and her loyalty towards herself.
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Beautiful Ark, I’ve read that many times.
It is difficult however, for an arrow to be fired from that bow when it has been taught that it is delusional, crazy, suffering from a faulty belief system, existing in a world comprised of nothing but moral ambiguity, right and wrong being only a matter of opinion. How hard for that little arrow to fly when it must carry the weight of it’s parents own hatred and rebellion! Those arrows are heavily burdened by the unresolved issues of their own parents, by their complete denial and inability to even see what they do.
“I wish to follow the Prince of Peace” and Mama says, fine, betray me with “your illogical fantasies and evidence-weak belief systems.” THAT is called indoctrination.
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And let’s not forget slavery. Jesus didn’t denounce it, Paul encourages it, and your god, Yhwh, is 100% in favour of it.
Opinion?
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ARK?!!! You really know how to hurt a guy, Becky –!
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“‘I wish to follow the Prince of Peace’ and Mama says, fine, betray me with ‘your illogical fantasies and evidence-weak belief systems.’”
No, Mama says, “Could you show me the evidence you have for this ‘Prince of Peace’? Mark, Matthew, Luke and John? Are you aware that those books were written anonymously by authors who never met Yeshua and had no first-hand knowledge of what he did or said? Not very strong evidence, is it?”
(No betrayal accusations necessary – in fact, Christian parents are far more likely to play the ‘betrayal’ card with their atheist children – after all, Christians invented ‘shunning,’ not atheists)
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“There is no correct opinion on anything…”
Murder perhaps?
What about in war? Your country murdered over 500,000 innocent Iraqi’s last decade. Was that murder, or legally sanctioned killing? What about the killing had in WW2? Was that OK?
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“Whether you like it or not Violet, there is right and there is wrong. If you don’t teach your kids to discern the difference, you’re doing them a disservice.”
It’s difficult to discuss morality with someone who thinks our instincts are beamed magically down from invisible forces and that without a guidebook written by barbarians, no-one could work out that murder has more negative than positive consequences. But I suppose you make the point for me with your comment.
“you are indoctrinating her with your opinion of such things” Oh yes, of course, fly on my wall. If it makes you feel better to imagine that …
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James changed a comment I made on his 5 things post to make it say something didderent. And he posted his mugger article based on it.
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Really?
He’s editing and changing comments now??
I think he’s quite literally lost the plot.
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I will be clarifying later
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He sounds charming!
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Not charming. A liar
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He’s a frightened fool. To put it bluntly.
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I think you have nailed it John. I refuse to post on his site any more after he kept deleting comments of mine. Ark is currently his buddy boy, I suspect he is using Ark as a representative atheist for his target audience.
It is exactly this sort of behaviour, of deleting comments, that proves he does not represent the truth. The thing which is most deceitful is that James keeps implying that he doesn’t delete and heavily edit (except for rudeness he says). I can guarantee you not none of my deleted posts were in any way rude.
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He’s banned me, and I’ve never been rude. I called him out on this and… silence. It’s amusing, and pathetic.
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Ditto.
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“I suspect he is using Ark as a representative atheist for his target audience.” – Over the past month, Peter, I’m getting to say anything I like on Colorstorm’s blog, rather than have them deleted or die in moderation, and I know that’s EXACTLY why, but it gets my message across as well, so I’m just fine with that.
Now watch, I/B or little Wall-E will run and tattle on me, and the fun will be over —
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I suspect you are ColorStorm’s bête noire.
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Actually, I just posted three comments on CS’ site, in defense of John Zande, all three relating back to things I had previously said over a year ago that CS deleted – we’ll see if they get through this time.
I would post them here, just in case he deletes them there, but they’re too lengthy – far be it from me to fill up VW’s blog with my essays.
After all, I’m the good one.
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@x1
Your childish antics specializing in gobblety and garish gamesmanship of gossipry have earned you every right to post them here.
Sorry vwisp..
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“Only the truly insecure need to ‘teach’ their children to follow illogical fantasies and evidence-weak belief systems as ‘correct’ opinions.”
That certainly does explain my atheist parents! Actually, their indoctrination was based on knee jerk emotionalism, politics, and personal wounds and rebellion from their own past.
I can hear the same anger and hostility right here in this thread, it echos back to those days of indoctrination and you better believe your kids will sense it and come to know it well. It’s really an unpleasant form of psychological abuse. A child raised to believe they are being encouraged to think freely when they are clearly getting the message that to believe differently from their own parents is delusional, illogical, irrational, will at times come to doubt the very nature of reality itself.
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Well, an interesting twist as usual, Insanity. I don’t treat my daughter’s interest in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus as illogical and delusional. I don’t actively encourage and feed it, but it’s her opinion they exist based on the evidence she has available. I don’t see why I wouldn’t treat any future belief in other invisible creatures in the same way.
You don’t seem to be able to distinguish my disdain for the beliefs some internet Christians promote (campaigning against marriage equality, access to abortion etc) that have harmful consequences, and how day to day relations are with people who have generally unharmful religious beliefs.
But in any case you needn’t be concerned for my daughter’s ability to think for herself. There is no insecurity in our attachment, the love is unconditional. She flies confidently in the face of anything I say with her own reasoning. I think the problem you’re rightly criticising arises when parents tell children ‘we’ the collective believe something and if you even question it, parental love and support will be compromised. Can you think of any examples where parents commonly treat the family like this? 🙂
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@insanitybytes22, how have you tried to awoid the same sort of indoctrination your parents put you through? Have you encouraged your kids to explore views different to yours? Or if you think they are too young, how are you going to do this in the future? If your kids become to suspect your religious, or political beliefs and values, how are you going to react? What if they turn for example to Islam, or deconvert to atheism are you going to try to hide it from them, you think they are “delusional”? Or do you not care?
Or are you saying, that it is ok to indoctrinate your kids as long as you do not claim, that you are trying to teach them to think freely? Do you not try to teach your kids to think freely in these matters? Did your parents not succeed in teaching you to think freely (as they claimed it was their goal)? Have you not come to the conclusions you have about religions through a free thinking process? What about the most other religious people you know? Have they come to the religious beliefs through free thinking processes, or rather through absorbing their beliefs from, or being indoctrinated by, their parents? Do you know any religious people who were indoctrinated to their religous beliefs? If you do, was that a good, or bad thing?
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1) Everyone “indoctrinates” their children whether they know they are doing it or not. Parents set patterns deep in their kids brains, many of which are in fact contrary to the parents stated ideals. My impression of parents who are over-preachy to their kids about preferred ideology or religion or whatever is that they communicate something very different than what they want to: insecurity, fortress mentality, conditional love, any number of things.
2) People who say they don’t instill any religious values or ideologies because they want their kids to be free to chose are just not thinking very hard about the real messages they are giving.
3) A useful category might be “inculturation”: a culture isn’t ethnic food or funny clothes, but primarily a deep seated mental habit: a way of looking at the world, criteria of judging, etc. It takes a thousand different manifestations (stories, rituals, art, celebrations, schooling, etc) and is instilled in children in many different ways, some conscious some unconscious.
4) Getting paranoid and pissy about ordinary processes of inculturation, like teaching a two year old to say his prayers is, well, paranoid and pissy. The shrill objection is not to the fact of inculturation, but to the content. So it is wrong to call normal inculturation “indoctrination” in a pejorative sense.
5) Indoctrination in a pejorative sense would be something different. It would likely be marked by a refusal to let a kid encounter outside information past a certain age, shunning, thought-stopping tactics and the such. It would be an attempt to stunt the normal critical stages kids go through as they mature.
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3) A useful category might be “inculturation”: a culture isn’t ethnic food or funny clothes, but primarily a deep seated mental habit: a way of looking at the world, criteria of judging, etc.
Goodness DP, I actually agree with you on something. The US experience is very, very, very different from, say, the Australian experience where religion is expressly a private affair. You don’t “do religion” in public, you don’t speak about it to family or friends, and the quickest way for a politician to lose his/her seat is to bring it up. We had an atheist PM and not a word was said about it… Precisely as it as should be. In America, and on the Conservative side especially, you’d be crucified in the political arena if you didn’t sing the Creationist line.
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Doesn’t it feel nice to be right about something? Keep agreeing with me and the warm inner glow you feel will continue.
I wouldn’t take American political rhetoric very seriously. I hate hearing pols talk about their personal faith, it is simply not a public matter, but they usually don’t know what they are yapping about.
On the other hand in the US tradition the President is expected to invoke God on certain occasions: times of crisis or thanksgiving. I think that is healthy.
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Most of this is pretty much on the level, DP. I had to indoctrinate my kids early in case they supported Manchester United. Thank the gods I avoided that shame.
However, as kids are vulnerable what do you suggest to combat the insidious creationist beliefs foisted on children, especially when coupled with often crippling self- esteem religious ideology – born in sin, hell etc?
As an aside, I am mildly interested from whom you developed the habit of shooting squirrels?
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Yeah, sorry I don’t know how Calvinists raise their kids, ask someone else.
Hunting and fishing I always did with dad.
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So you weren’t completely immune to some bad habits. Aside for the religious ones, of course.
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Thanks for your comment dp. You make some good points.
indoctrinate: to teach (someone) to fully accept the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group and to not consider other ideas, opinions, and beliefs
How many Catholic families do you know that explore Protestantism or Buddhism with their children? Or openly talk about the possibility of life without belief? It’s just not something religious parents do. The kids get sent to religious lessons at least once a week, and prayer and talk about god is a daily part of their life. Nobody sends their kids to atheist lessons or has the need to ritualise and discuss their life without religion on a daily basis. Where’s the parallel?
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The deep mental patterns you set in your children are most often not explicit, nor even the ones you consciously want, that’s why I say everyone “indoctrinates” in a broad sense.
Let’s say a parent were to take a small child on a tour of world religions, here are your Catholics, here are your Jews, Muslims, animists, Santeria witch doctors, and here are us, who don’t do any of that. The parent might say they are educating so that the child is free to chose his own religion, but what is the real message the parent is sending?
I don’t know any families who discuss religion daily, sounds awfully tedious. Devout families I know just have a certain pattern of life and action. Obviously they don’t want to raise their kids as with only a shallow religious culture, they don’t want them to be religious barbarians, as it were.
It would have to be a pretty dumb child who would grow up not realizing that huge swaths of the world had differing opinions. The child will be exposed and will ask questions, and will be given age-appropriate answers.
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“I don’t know any families who discuss religion daily, sounds awfully tedious.”
Really? You don’t know any families who say ‘grace’ at meals?
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Prayer is an act, not a lecture.
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It’s lecturing by example, reinforcing by ritual.
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Yes, acts teach. Much better in fact than lectures. But the primary purpose of any act is not the lesson learned but the object: in case, giving gratitude and glory to God.
If you want to go about calling ordinary good deeds like this “indoctrination” I think you fall into the “paranoid and pissy” category mentioned above.
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Prissy? Group prayer as an ordinary good deed? Now, really.
How can you possibly rationalize a daily religious ritual as anything other than reinforced religious lecturing? Sure, the ritual itself as part of a routine can be considered an act but you conveniently and, I think, intentionally ignore the religious content (and what this CONTENT imposes on children) in order to deny it as a religious ‘lecture’. How convenient for you. By contrast – and aren’t we comparing and contrasting? – non believers obviously have nothing like this. And that’s the point you seem unwilling to grant. Why is this?
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Now you understand the definition of, “pull a Monahan” —
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Ah.
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“Prissy?”
No I said “pissy” as in wetting yourself.
“How can you possibly rationalize a daily religious ritual as anything other than reinforced religious lecturing? Sure, the ritual itself as part of a routine can be considered an act but you conveniently and, I think, intentionally ignore the religious content”
The example given, grace before meals, is an act of gratitude, which is a subset of the virtue of justice. Virtuous acts are “good deeds”.
Of course it has religious content, it is directed towards God. I would thank that is a given. It may have an educational aspect insofar as virtuous acts make one more virtuous, but the same is true of all good deeds.
What you are doing is taking an ordinary good deed – showing gratitude to one who deserves it – and making it into some kind of nefarious plot to corrupt children, which is paranoid and pissy.
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The example given, grace before meals, is an act of gratitude, which is a subset of the virtue of justice. Virtuous acts are “good deeds”.
No, dpmonahan… an act of gratitude is saying ‘Thank you’ to the agency responsible. Praying is not gratitude but an act of avoidance (and often desperation)… avoiding directing gratitude to where it properly belongs.
That you carefully craft your words to avoid what’s true (indoctrinating children through daily religious ritual to thank some supposedly real agency of Oogity Boogity for something others actually produced) in order to promote a distortion (giving thanks through prayer is synonymous with gratitude and therefore virtuous and ‘good’) undermines your claim to have anything other than disdain towards either respect either honesty or virtue. Your claim that avoiding properly directed gratitude is magically virtuous and by extension ‘good’ demonstrates your willingness to be disingenuous in the name of piety. To then extend this distortion as if it magically turns indoctrination into ‘education’ that is ‘ordinary’ is a ludicrous rationalization. And pointing out how you distort what’s true into this absurd rationalization you present is not paranoid, neither prissy nor pissy, and does indeed reveal how you rationalize religious indoctrination. I think this is child abuse but at the very least what you are doing is abusing the language we share, abusing what’s true by distorting it, and maligning the character of those who dare to point out your duplicity.
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Yeah – what he said!
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Subject gives thanks (direct object) to God (indirect object). What is the intention of the subject? To give God the gratitude which he believes God is owed.
But no, you say, it isn’t really that. His real intention is to condition himself (and of course his poor children – think of the children!) to systematically deny gratitude to farmers and truckers and supermarket employees and logistics engineers, and we know this because we just know, much better than the man actually saying grace. It is nothing other than a vast plot to deny the the global supply chain its due!
And you are not paranoid.
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Maybe your Yeshua was just being paranoid —
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Subject gives thanks (direct object) to God (indirect object). What is the intention of the subject? To give God the gratitude which he believes God is owed.
To give God the gratitude which HE BELIEVES God is owed
There’s your indoctrination. Right. There. A faith-based belief taught and enforced by religious parents on vulnerable children… a faith-based belief that is not supported by any compelling evidence from reality but imposed on it as if a suitable pseudo-explanation that is not just true but descriptive of reality.
It’s not. It’s simply a religious belief.
There is no comparative equivalency by non believers: non believers have no similar form of daily, ritualized indoctrination. That’s the point you keep missing – and quite intentionally – in your quest to ‘normalize’ and make into a ‘virtue’ religious indoctrination as if it were a good thing similar to anything non believers might do.
Is this true?
No.
That equivalency is false in reality. It is wrong in reality. It is in error in reality. It is not true in reality. It is not the case in reality. You are assuming it is, believing it is, pretending it is, without a shred of compelling evidence from reality, and that faith-based belief is incorrect. Non believers do not indoctrinate their children with some pseudo-equivalency you imagine. That assumption distorts reality. And then you have the nerve to call this distortion ‘education’. No. Call it what it is: religious indoctrination intended to train children to believe as the parents believe: in agencies of Oogity Boogity capable of Poof!ism causing effect in this world for which you train them to be thankful rather than skeptical.
Your blithe faith-based beliefs – stated as if reasonable and true and benign – are anything but. They are a source of pernicious effect cloaked by empty claims of virtue, passed on from parent to child… as if ‘educating’ them with distortions, ignorance, arrogance, superstition, hubris, and stupidity had pedagogical benefits for the target audience: the children. That’s the southern product of a north facing male bovine.
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OK, so according to you the difference between “indoctrination” in a pejorative sense and education (or inculturation) is not the way the information and habits are given, but the content. If the content is wrong, it is indoctrination. To use the case at hand, the problem is not saying grace, the problem is that the objected of gratitude does not exist.
By that standard, would someone taught Keynesian economics be indoctrinated, but someone taught the Austrian school is educated? Or an ancient Greek taught the Ptolemaic model is indoctrinated but a modern taught the Copernican is educated? Or a Chinese learning about Chi is indoctrinated?
I grant that contemporary western atheism (as opposed to say, non-western state atheism) does not have a common ritual, but that is because it is not a community, just a bunch of self-righteous hecklers. It has no capacity to build a lasting culture.
But you can find individual atheists who engage in absurd rituals: organic foodism, veganism, individual recycling (a tremendous waste of time and energy with negligible environmental gains, more of a purification ritual than anything). Would you argue recylcers and organic foodies be kept from children? Think of the children!
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Once again, you are pretending that religious indoctrination inculcating a religious DOCTRINE is equivalent to acculturation. That’s not true: inculcating a doctrine is not the same as acculturation. If it were, the terms would be synonyms. They’re not, dpmonahan, and pretending they are in order to support your faith-based belief that such indoctrination is good and virtuous doesn’t make them so.
I’m glad you realize that non believers have no equivalent process as ritualized prayer and daily doctrinal teachings that religious believers exercise. That allows you to finally grasp that non believers do not indoctrinate their children with some imaginary atheist doctrine. That’s progress.
But to then muddy the waters with this bizarre criticism about a lack of some imaginary doctrinal community for non believers so far reveals the depth of your profound desire to believe otherwise, to rationalize it into existence only in your beliefs, and the resulting confusion as you attempt to continue to make the false equivalency between the practices of non believers and believers as if indoctrination was just another version of acculturation.
Again, they’re not the same and they’re not because religious indoctrination is not cultural. The clue you refuse to grasp is that the descriptive term ‘religious’ precedes the doctrinal teaching the rest of us recognize and appropriately call ‘indoctrination’. There is no equivalency in the atheist community because there’s no doctrine. Calling non believers names like ” a bunch of self-righteous hecklers” doesn’t help your case. It reveals not what you think but what you believe and you demonstrate in this thread just how wrong your beliefs can be, just how misguided and factually incorrect they are in this case.
How very terrible are those who dare criticize people like you who try to paint their abusive indoctrinating deeds with distortions and lies and call them “virtuous”, “good”, and “educational”. Yes, those who criticize child abuse deserve to be called ‘hecklers’, “pissy” and “paranoid” according to you only because you’ve twisted what’s true to rationalize your faitheist support. You care very much to support your beliefs; what you don’t care about nearly enough is the welfare of dependent children. It is they – without their permission or informed consent – who must then undergo and suffer the consequences of the pernicious practice of religious indoctrination. The problem here is that you are quite willing to sacrifice their critical development without question in order to justify your own religious practices and beliefs. What does that say about your character?
You might want to think on the truth of what answering that question honestly reveals about you before rejecting it on the mistaken notion of your self-sanctified religious beliefs that you know you cannot trust.
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OK, so, in your opinion the demarcation between “indoctrination” and incultruration is not 1) the way the ideas and habits are passed on, nor is it 2) whether or not the ideas and habits passed on are true or false, but rather whether the ideas and habits being passed on are religious or irreligious?
So it is one thing to beat false ideas into children all the live long day, say make them separate paper and plastics for the fictitious good of the earth with the threat of a spanking, but teaching by example to say grace before meals is a special and separate form of child abuse?
Why exactly?
The assertion that this one form of mental habit transmitted myriad ways is unspeakably wicked compared to all manner of other equally contingent and unscientific cultural baggage needs some kind of explanation, doncha think?
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I presume you get joy from being obtuse so I’ll play a little longer. Respecting reality is a rather important lesson not just for children but for deluded adults, too. Is reality a ‘doctrine’? Is respecting its power to arbitrate our beliefs about it a doctrine, an ideology, a part of one’s culture?
Come on, dpmonohan. Stop your rationalizing and start thinking critically… if you can.
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Tildeb, why don’t you give poor old DP a chance to catch his breath, and pop over to https://yourphariseefriend.wordpress.com/ where Ark and I currently are. Things are getting interesting.
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Hmm… reality? Critical thought? What on earth does that mean?
Oh, wait, I get it. “Reality” means what I can perceive with my senses – the physical world – and the limited information I can deduce from experimentation – physics. All else is woo, Obitgy Goobity, and Giant Flying Spaghetti Monsters. There is no question of “meaning” or origins of being. Those pesky Aristotelian formal and final causes are nothing other than woo.
The elated feeling I get listening to Bach or watching the sun come up is not a reaction to some objective “beauty” in the thing, that is Obity Goobity. It is a chemical reaction triggered by my brain’s over-evolved capacity to recognize patterns. Really, entertaining myself with patterns in Bach is on the same plane as entertaining myself with hardcore porn: just fiddling with chemicals. Concepts like “love” “nobility” and “goodness” are the more of same.
What I took for moral law, like “Thou shalt not smack around little girls” or “infanticide is wicked” or “it is bad to let people starve in the street” are not material or physical realities at all, just more Giant Flying Spaghetti monsters. At best they are local social constructs that help some apes be somewhat more co-operative in mid-sized family groups. It serves a purpose, but since it has no reference beyond the groups’ convenience, it can be dispensed with or changed. In fact, while it is good for most humans, those of us who see through it have no reason not to use it to manipulate others: sociopaths have an evolutionary advantage so long as they stay under a certain percentage of a community, like wolves among the sheeple. Eat away, just not too many or you’ll get caught.
Perhaps I shall use my new wisdom to write a series of children’s books to free them from the horrors of learning about Jesus. The first shall be about the meaning of life, entitled “Eat, Fuck, and Die”. The second will be about about ecology called “Nuke the Whales Cause We’re All Going Extinct Anyway”. My sex ed book will be called “Bobby is an Afghan Sex Slave And All Morals Are Woo”. Perhaps one on social studies “Selling Whiskey to Indians: Social Darwinism for Fun and Profit”
But then I realized that I have no duty to the truth: what is duty? Can I touch it or see it? Nope. Just more Obiigty Goobity. So instead of telling truth to children I’ll just use my new-found reptilian personality stripped of all humanity to make a career in advertising where I’ll make lots of money telling lies.
I’d thank you, but gratitude is just more woo.
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“It is a chemical reaction triggered by my brain’s over-evolved capacity to recognize patterns.” – By George, I think he’s got it!
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Yes, free from transcendent notions of truth beauty and goodness and the reciprocal actions they demand on my part, I am enjoying my new reptilian lifestyle. I’m now working at an ad agency as executive vice president of sex in advertising. I figure out new ways to make women feel bad about their bodies to sell them unsafe diet pills smuggled up from Mexico. Anorexia is up 5% in my district!
And you’d be amazed what these underage Eastern European waifs will do for a modeling gig.
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Now, now Dpmonahan, aren’t you aware of the GIANT strawman you are attempting to build here? Are you not trying to imply, that us atheists who have allready realized the beauty of the material universe, without any gods or other unnatural imaginary entities and other “oogity boogity” are immoral? That we are here just pretending to be moral, but actually secretly enjoying similar “reptilian” lifestyles you describe, you would succumb to, if you were ever to give up your indoctrination in believing in authoritarian moralist “laws” by unobservable entities?
What might be wrong about specifically you, that realizing the reality is material, would make you affraid you would abandon morality and the sensation of the beauty of reality? How does realizing such sensations as love, art, beauty, justice and conscience are the results of electrochemical events in the physical brains, make these any less? How would that make appreciation of nature in all it’s glory any less? What is that “reptilian”, you refer to, within you, that is only kept in cheque by the notion of a particular god and arbitrary rules alledgedly, yet remaining unproven, as set up said god? Are you a sociopath? Do not worry, even if you are, you can imitate the social morals of the populace not to get into trouble and fit in nicely. It is not unheard of…
Ever wonder why your god created sociopaths though? Or could it actually be more likely that it is a natural phenomenon, rather than a purposefully achieved cruelty by a deity responsible for everything?
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“Are you a sociopath? Do not worry, even if you are, you can imitate the social morals of the populace not to get into trouble and fit in nicely. It is not unheard of…”
Dick Cheney has pulled it off somewhat successfully, except for that whole face-shooting thing —
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Oh no, I’m perfectly aware that there are many atheists who refuse to think critically and join the reality based community, and continue to believe in things like human rights, vegetarianism, goodness, beauty, chiropractors, liberal arts, the moral arc of the Universe, animal rights, progress, yoga, liberty, personal responsibility, justice, organic food, human solidarity, feng shui, love, and all manner of Woo, Oogity Boogity and Giant Flying Spaghetti Monsters, none of which have any justification in physics.
By all means, continue to cling to these touching irrational beliefs, I won’t get upset. Indoctrinate your children in all that hocus pocus, you have no moral obligation to tell them the truth, “obligations” don’t exist. Besides, the more gullible people around, the more money I make in my advertising gig.
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@Dpmonahan, haven’t you now confused a great many things? Nobody really believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or do you honestly know anyone who does? It is an example of an unnatural entity that has no base in reality, physics nor the material observable universe, other than as an imaginary product of our physical minds, exactly like all the other gods.
Among the things that you list are human rights, goodness, beauty, liberty, personal responsibility, justice, love, animal rights and human solidarity wich are issues, that are very firmly based in the material physical universe and are observable in reality. Prayer and other contacts to gods as in ancient mythological scriblings in contradiction to those previously listed are not based on reality. Not at least at all the way the religious adherents expect them to be. They surmount to wishfull thinking – within the physical brain and a human cultural community. That is, praying has as much effect on the reality as not doing anything. Did you not know about this difference? That is the distinction between reality and “hocus pocus”. Ancient books serve equally unplausible as any sort of revelations from these gods beyond the real and observable space-time, because the supernatural stories in them are unverifiable, but their obvious human making is not. Their obsolete fairy tale explanations to the nature serve as obvious proof they are infact products of the innovative, but physical human mind.
What “obligates” you to be moral? Some particular god from the abundance of human mythology, or rather the reality you live in, where immoral acts would be harmfull to yourself and others? But you see there is no “obligation” in morals, to be moral is a choise. Is it not? But there are valid reasons to choose to not do harmfull things to yourself or others. Are there not? Is your god bound by this same moral logic, or any moral logic? Or is this god of yours illogical? If a god could be bound by logic to make moral, or immoral choises, then why would that same logic not apply to us all? Then objective morals is not determined by arbitrary rules from any particular superstition, but by the very reality around us.
Since you claim to know atheists are capable of making moral choises without any gods, why would you not be able to the same, but you fear you would succumb to the “reptilian” lifestyle you describe?
Why did your god alledgedly create sociopaths? Was that not the most unnecessarily cruel act imaginable? Or could it be, that their existance reveals, that we are infact products of natural processes, rather than some benevolent engineer making selfies? Are the sociopaths “created in the image of” this particular god?
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Well, perhaps ol Dickey-boy is simply a somewhat highly functioning sociopath. His own admitted Christianity has not restricted him much, nor many other examples, from living out the type of “reptilian” lifestyle Dpmonahan is describing he himself in turn would only succumb to at the moment, if he ever began to investigate wether or not his “inculturation” to a specific imaginary god is actually even true on any even remotely objective level of human understanding.
It however is the case, that the Christians are no less “reptilian” than the rest of us. Why is that, when they alledgedly follow the arbitrary rules (though for obscure reasons no longer the ones about slavery, mixed fabrics and pork) as alledgedly set by the creator entity, who has alledgedly (though as of yet totally unverified in any sense) made everything from all the galaxies, to blades of grass and tiny things that creep therein and to even polio?
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So either I accept your definition, or I’m “paranoid and pissy” – sounds like you’re trying to pull a Monahan.
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They are infested woth creationist idiots over there. I had one stupid dipshit tell me that Intelligent Design was science.
I can’t be doing with such moronic arseholes, and the only time I can pretty much guarantee a comment will be printed these days is if I begin a thread by telling James to fuck off. 🙂 I find it too funny.
He has a habit of cherry picking on other occasions but drop an ”F” bomb and, wham! there’s the comment.
I think he gets a rise from the ”bad language”.
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Actually, I’m amazed that Fred is letting us get away with what we are – especially YOU!
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Turns out I am the good one after all!
In your face, you old fossil!
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After the language you’re using over there? In your DREAMS! Wanna take a vote?
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What the frak are you talking about?
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I don’t have time to waste my morning going over there to copy the language you used! It doesn’t bother me in the least, I’m just surprised Fred let you get away with it.
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What? I only seriously swear at James. And he loves it because it winds up some of those creationist half wits that follow him.
I drop no F bombs at Fred’s spot. The worst I said was shit.
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Is this the part where I relinquish the title and admit you’re the good one because you only said “shit”?
(Ain’t gonna happen!)
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Naturellment! Surely you must be tired of all the schmoozing with the fundies by now?
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I know it will be hard for you to understand this, but I simply don’t rant – unlike you, it’s not in my nature, hence, ‘the good one’ –.
And it’s not ‘schmoozing,’ it’s a verbal chess game.
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Verbal chess game! lol
So, actually you are being a crafty, scheming prig?
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Pretty much.
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Good one, my achin’ asteroid –!
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You satisfy his cartoon atheist understanding. Especially when you swear.
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And rant.
(“Good one” – it is to laugh! Ha!)
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Nice photo by the way.
Common Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus)
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Or it could be an Orb spider?
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Don’t tell Sonel, but I don’t really like spiders. So I didn’t enjoy googling to check, but I still have no idea. Kind of looks like both.
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I thought so to. It is the banded markings on the leg.
It’s warming up out here and the Crab Spiders and Rain Spiders are showing up once more.
The more you interact the more your fear will lessen.
There are so few spiders one has to be cautious about, especially in your neck of the woods.
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Here in Finland we call those (Araneus diadematus) the Cross Spiders. I thought there was some intentional message to use it in this particular post. Was there not? What a disappointment. 😉 It is hard to tell what it is from the belly side. But a nice picture, none the less.
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“Here in Finland we call those (Araneus diadematus) the Cross Spiders.”
In my house, we call those ‘Los Muertos‘ – ‘the dead ones’ —
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Don’t kill them… Just shoo them away.
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“Don’t kill them… Just shoo them away.” – Yeah, John, I’ll do that in the middle of the night, when they silently slide down a web and onto my hair – Shoo or squish – what to do, what to do –? I know, SQUISH!
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Princess, get back to me after you’ve encountered an adult huntsman 😉
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Like Monahan?
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Who’s that?
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Friggin’ 8-legged Ninjas, is what they are! “Shoo!” – yeah, that’ll work!
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Doesn’t always work
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That’s THEM! Those are the spiders that live in my house! “Let the squashing begin!” – there’s something comforting in that thought —
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Pingback: ways to indoctrinate our children | violetwisp
Yo, Ark – when are you coming back to Fred’s site to help me out with ‘Consoled Reader’? I thought surely you’d have trotted out your info on how even Israeli Rabbis no longer insist that Moses and his Exodus is true – you have far more of that sort of data than I do.
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The squirrel shooter —
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That somehow wound up in the wrong place, it was supposed to be under the John Zande comment, “Who’s that?” Damned WordPress!
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Why oh why do I waste my time trying to speak to men who are afraid of spiders and squirrels?
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Apparently, you don’t – you stopped letting any of my comments through on your site, remember?
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Hey, Insanitybytes22, since I am not affraid of spiders, nor squirrels, 😉 would you mind answering my question abowe about how do you try to awoid similar method of indoctrination on your own children, as the one you describe your parents put you through? I am honestly interrested.
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rautakyy, all my kids are afraid of spiders, so my attempts to indoctrinate them there, have been an epic failure.
I think the best way to avoid indoctrinating kids is to heal your own issues, so you are not projecting our own past wounds onto your kids. Kids are their own people, not instruments we should be using to attempt to seek psychological or emotional revenge against the world. It is important to know where we end and they begin, so we can love them somewhat sacrificially, putting their needs first. They are their own people, not extensions of ourselves.
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So, I/B, you never took them to church or taught them “Jesus Loves Me“?
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Arch, if you miss them whilst they are young there is always….
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I’ve never heard that one, Peter – but then I’ve lived a rather sheltered life.
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The folks at the aged care home loved it.
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@Insanitybytes22, I agree on your assesment of trying to “heal” our own issues and especially your view, that the children are their own people. And that they should not be used as instruments of anything, especially not revenges. If parents provide children with the tools of critical thinking skills, they should be able to find out the best they can about what might be true and what is not. That is indeed putting their needs first.
It is curious though, how easily the fear of spiders is learned by kids from someone in their environment, despite the best efforts of parents. I guess, that just goes to show, how though we could say nurture vs. nature consists of observable facts, that does not make the nurturing any more simple issue at all. 😉
Having experienced both the negative atheistic family of your very own parents and wider religious culture with all those doctrine and rituals, what would be your honest assesment on wether if atheists are as likely as religious folk to actually use methods of indoctrination on their offspring?
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Thought some of you might enjoy this —
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Romans 13:1-6 is a very inconvenient text for Christians. I suspect most prefer to quote Acts 5:29 (to obey God not man), but that just highlights the tension in the Bible that allows cherry picking of verses.
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Interesting article, if there’s any truth to it: “Ancient Confession Found: ‘We Invented Jesus Christ’“
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Hi violet-
Hope all is well with you.
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He must want something —
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Thank you ColorStorm. All well, just busy. Hope all is well with you.
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Hi Violet,
Haven’t heard much from you lately and I’m hoping you are well, just busy!
I thought I’d put this link on this post, as I can’t remember which thread we were discussing the asshat from Biblical Gender Roles (please don’t check out his misogynistic blog and give him any more attention – it’s what the narcissist is after) but there’s an article that’s come out lately which suggests he’s a complete fake – he’s been discussed on a number of blogs I frequent.
IB, you and others have been feeding his trolling, btw. I think you should reconsider kissing his arse.
You might want to check it out:
http://unsettledchristianity.com/a-word-of-caution-on-biblical-gender-roles/
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Hi Carmen, thanks very much for this link, very interesting! I knew there was something desperately attention seeking about the blog but he was quite convincing. I’ll post the link on my post about that blog in case anyone stumbles on it. And yes, just busy, sigh, keep thinking there’s light at the end of the tunnel but don’t get there …
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Glad to hear from you, Violet! 🙂 John Z. was asking if anyone had heard from you, on another blog, so I know I wasn’t the only one wondering. . . busy is GOOD!! (but sometimes exhausting – particularly when there’s small children involved)
Honestly, I looked at his latest post – he’s positively GIDDY with the attention he’s received from a couple of articles. . . the guy is a sick . . .well . . you know. I suspect he’s getting off on the attention he’s getting from the women who are commenting. . . it’s vomit-inducing shit.
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I agree. I stopped looking because he was clearly getting a high from the attention and publishing ever more ridiculous nonsense as a result. Maybe he’s SOM’s other project …
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I don’t know about you, Violet, but from my read-through of a couple of the posts, it seemed to me that it was fundie porn . . .they’re all so clearly titillated by the idea of marital rape — it’s perverted.
Clearly, they’re all getting off on it. Gag.
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Violet,
I’ve communicated with someone at unsettled christianity (the site that is reporting that BGR is a troll) and he’s given me an address to report this fellow. It’s https://en.wordpress.com/abuse/ and you must type in biblicalgenderroles.wordpress.com as the address or it won’t work. As he says, the site promotes rape and domestic abuse and it’s against the law. I hope if enough of us report him, he’ll get shut down. Thanks!
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Thanks for the link Carmen, I’ll try and do a post on this if I get some time.
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Well, WELL! Guess what IB’s doing for ‘Larry’?? (it’s a pseudonym, btw) Praying for him! Yes, indeed. IB, Colorstorm, and Wally, all united in a group “Please Jesus, show your mercy and bring this poor sod around!”
It figures – the christian response so they don’t have to do anything. Like reporting the scum to WordPress for encouraging abuse against women.
I don’t know if it’s dawned on you, IB, but you are being victimized in this charade as well. The guy’s an MRA, it’s as obvious as a bleeding Jesus hanging on a cross. Everything that comes out of his mouth denigrates, insults, and belittles women. He’s found a little haven (heaven?) with fundamentalist men and women . . . no surprise there.
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Just lurking round Insanity’s place, in her latest post she reveals she’s been banned by him, so obviously he got a bit too silly even by her willing submission standards.
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