This Has to Stop

[Angrboda]

Meh.  Parents pass on their beliefs to their children under conditions in which it is unlikely for the child to doubt.  If you want to call that indoctrination, then yes, I believe parents have the right to indoctrinate their children into their religious beliefs.  Somewhere along the line you have to make the case that having religious beliefs is an evil unto itself in order to make the case that transmitting their religious beliefs in this manner is immoral.  Parents "indoctrinate" their children into a lot of beliefs.  I don't think it makes sense to interfere with the process by which we transmit our culture to our children.  What are you suggesting?  Criminal penalties if "teaching" passes over into "indoctrination"?  I don't personally believe that the way a family transmits its culture to its children can be characterized that simply.  Children are taught the concepts of religion.  That's more than half the battle toward getting them to believe.  Is that indoctrination?  I don't think so.

I'm talking about assholes like Ken Ham who deliberately lie to children about science and whatnot to push a specific agenda, not just Xtian shit but HIS version of YEC, when he's been called out repeatedly for these falsehoods and is not being charged with fraud and allowed to continue to do what he's doing to those kids with impunity. Complete biasing of facts and setting them up for utter denial of reality without their knowledge or consent, not even to consider the possibility that they could ever be wrong about it, THAT is the kind of shit that should not be tolerated. Not the passive read-them-heavily-edited-snippets before bedtime thing you see on TV and movies, and telling them 'I don't know' instead of 'gawd' as answers where appropriate. Things a reasonable, sane person would do. Someone like CL apparently doesn't give herself enough credit to think of herself as different from those other a-holes, or she just wasn't listening to the multiple attempts I tried at differentiating brainwashing/indoctrination from simple instruction or storytelling. Of course if it's the latter then maybe she's a bit more like Ken Ham than we might have hoped. The whole fingers-in-the-ears going 'la la la' thing isn't fashionable.

Ken Ham is certainly biased. Does that means he is being dishonest? That's an inference you're making. Whenever people of radically different beliefs clash, the tendency is for each side to attribute the actions of the other party to dishonesty, madness, or incompetence. I don't think matters are that simple. I think it's possible to be sufficiently biased not to notice the discrepancies you're claiming Ken Ham is guilty of. And again, you haven't shown that the beliefs themselves are wrong and evil. I truly think it's possible for two such radically polarized people as yourself and Ham to simply disagree.