Teach children about Jesus at a young age,

[Cyberman]

Indoctrination is a bad thing because it doesn't teach anything; it just dictates. You can indoctrinate a person into false things equally as much as true ones. You're not teaching a child how to process morality, you're enforcing a doctrine of obedience. The result may be a child who is good and kind and loving, but for all the wrong reasons. Later as the child grows up they may end up resenting their upbringing and estranging the parents who foisted it on them.

[Bob Kelso]

Indoctrination? please, Since when is teaching a child to love their fellow man indoctrination?

Matthew 22:36-40
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

The second commandment is like the first because in loving your neighbor, you love God.

Matthew 25:40
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

If everyone loved their neighbor as themselves we'd all be living in an utopia.

If "indoctrination" makes a child a good human being, how is that a bad thing?

---

As far as not eating unclean meats are concerned:

1 Timothy 4
1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
3 Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:
5 For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

You're being willfully dense, aren't you? 

[robvalue]

Showing children how to think properly helps them develop and come to their own conclusions in life.

Telling them what to think uncritically is abusing their dependence on you to program them.

(Some things must be presented "as fact" for their own good such as dangers around the home, but the very sound and demonstrable evidence can be presented later. No child needs to "know" about Jesus, Satan and Hell before the age of 7 to be able to function safely. If God is already chalking up black marks before that age, the cult is even worse than I thought.)

Showing children how to use their empathy helps them to develop their own morality.

Telling them how to act based on dogma gives them no understanding or room for growth.

[Huggy Bear]

You're being willfully dense, aren't you? 

Really?

If the ideology a person is being "indoctrinated" into results in that person being as Stimbo puts it, "good and kind and loving"... I don't have a problem with that, no matter what religion they belonged to.

If Nazi indoctrination resulted in "good and kind and loving" Nazi's, no one would've had a problem with them.

The fact that you guys turn being a "loving" person into a bad thing is what's telling about the atheist "doctrine".

[Joods]

So a person can't be loving without religion or god?

I'm not buying it.

[Cyberman]

Why did you miss out the "but for all the wrong reasons" part when you mined me? It's only the point I was making, after all.

[robvalue]

I have absolutely no problem encouraging children to be kind and loving. You can't "teach" or force it out of them, you need to nurture it. Children who are simply told how to behave without understanding why won't be able to adjust to different, more tricky situations.

All of this has nothing to do with a Jew on a stick™. That is entirely separate, and anyone who thinks they are somehow inherently linked is living in a fantasy world.

[Huggy Bear]

Why did you miss out the "but for all the wrong reasons" part when you mined me? It's only the point I was making, after all.

And my point was the REASONS for one being a "loving person" is irrelevant, the fact that they are a loving person is all that matters, hence the Nazi example.

It would be kinda like saying someone recycles for the wrong reason; so what.

 If one recycles only because they get a monetary kickback , and not because they have the welfare of the planet in mind; everyone still benefits.

[Cyberman]

The ends justify the means? Is that the message?

[Cyberman]

Oh, and your recycling analogy is flawed because recycling is hardly likely to be abused the way indoctrination can and often is.