RE: How seculars are exploiting the youth
December 27, 2011 at 12:14 am
(December 26, 2011 at 5:36 pm)amkerman Wrote: If atheism were the dominant belief though, the case would be the same I think. Most of the atheists I know, and the majority on this forum I have conversed with, believe that their lack of faith stems from logic and is true. As such, I expect most atheists raise their children teaching them not to "believe in fairy tales" like "God". It's still indoctrination.
A few things:
1) Atheism isn't a belief.
2) Atheism can be a result of any process that produces the end result. That doesn't mean that only one process is required to produce that end result. You can be an atheist for completely illogical reasons and still be an atheist. You can also be an atheist because you've never been exposed to religious belief (such as with very young children) or you don't have the capacity to believe (such as with very young chidlren).
3) Indoctrination is defined (by dictionary.com) as the act of indoctrinating, or teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view. Since atheism is not an ideaology but rather a rejection of another ideaology, it is not indonctrination to tell your kids not to have imaginary friends.
(December 26, 2011 at 5:36 pm)amkerman Wrote: Indoctrination is used on all children by their parents to teach them behavior.
That's not indoctrination - that's just teaching children manners and etiquette or educating children teaches them about the world around them.
I stated what indoctrination is above, so I won't repeat it here.
(December 26, 2011 at 5:36 pm)amkerman Wrote: Which is why I don't blame religion for anything. I don't blame ideologies. I blame people. I blame parents. I blame failure of America to educate the masses.
You can't say that religion doesn't play a part in people's decision-making abilities when those of religious faith take that faith and make it such an intergal part of their lives that their very personhood can be defined by their beliefs in a particular faith.
Look at the westboro baptist church. Look at all the legislation and interest groups rallying against teachng evolution in the classroom. Look at Christian Americas war on science and their persecution complex and willingness to blame the liberal media or the intellectual elite or whathaveyou for all their perceived problems.
When you get a group of people and teach them that facts are the problem and that their ignorant and delusional beliefs is the rule of reality, then you get a group of ill-informed people who make everyday decisions based not only on things that aren't true but the result of which can seriously damage everything around them because they're too ignorant to know better.
The end result of which is the Kansas goverment funded creationist museum, massive campaigns against climate science, outright vitriol and bile against homosexual individuals (regardless of what they've done for society), and legislating women's wombs and what women can and cannot do with their own bodies.
The very essence of what people do is based on what they believe to be true.
The difference of which can result in rocket flight (because you're a rocket scientist) or drowning your children to save them from the devil (because you believe that your children are in legitimate danger from the grandest evil on Earth and eteral bliss with god is clearly the better option.)
(December 26, 2011 at 5:36 pm)amkerman Wrote: (kinda went off on a rant there, I forgot what my point was. I think it's that religion isn't bad, and that religion really has little to do with belief in God as it does with behavior)
My point being that the two go hand-in-hand.
I fully acknowledge that most people are sensible about their beliefs and don't go around murdering their children or preaching that god makes earthquakes to kill the gays, but most people either don't know a lot about their own religion, don't care, or only take what they want from their religion and ignore the rest.
I'm saying that you should fault religion for being an ideaology that essentially is so badly written and thought out that not only can you interpret it any way you want, but it essentially gives you permission to treat specific groups of people, or 'outsiders', as being anything other than humans and essentially giving their own congregation full authority to tell them that it's okay to hate and hurt others.
For example, chrisitans hating gays, people who like rock music, hallwoween, people who say 'happy holidays' instead of 'merry christimas', people of other religions, colored people of non-christian religions, christians of other christian sects who have a wierd interpretation of the bible, anyone deemed to be the antichrist, atheists, agnostics, people who enjoy sex too much, women who have had an too many male lovers, anyone who has had sex before marriage, and so forth...
Everyone listed above has been persecuted at some point in time by christians - sometimes fatally.
You can't tell me that religion is harmless.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
