Propagating religion

There is an argument made by some opponents (or those who just disagree) of religion that parents or other guardians teaching their children about God is wrong since it is essentially a form of indoctrination - eg a 5 year old is likely to accept what their parents tell them and by the age of 15 they'll likely be fully signed up.

The thurst being that there are no christian, muslim, hindu etc children, just children of christian, muslim or hindu parents.

Any views on this one? And what it means for the nature of relgious belief and the continued survival/existence of world religions?

Obviously it's nothing but indoctrination and programming. The same's often true with political ideologies being passed down generation to generation, and really any imaginable number of other things.

It's never going to stop.

It is difficult to think of a way around this problem other than ensuring that every child has a decent, and completely secular, education.

In my observation, kids whose parents deny them any form of spirituality tend to become druggies or Moonies or Hare Krishnas. They need something to fill what they perceive as a vacuum, and they'll go to the opposite extreme to find it.

Religion, for most people, though, is more about belonging than about spirituality. The individual child's level of need for that belonging varies depending on innate personality and the environment they grow up in.

Well indeed because while it is perfectly natural for paretns to want to teach their children what they believe, it does raise the awkward question of whether their children believe what they believe because they've been told to or because of some independent-genuine factor.

Depends on the kid, IMO. Adolescence has a tendency to make some of them step back and say "WTF???"

Anyway, is there ever really such a thing as an independent-genuine factor...outside of basic premises like, say, gravity? We all start out as the product of our indoctrination, whatever that indoctrination happens to be. Some of us just accept without question, others don't. It's the actor, not the act, I'd submit, that makes the difference.

When you are raised in a religious but not indoctrined household you get a fresher perspective about religion/God/spirituality. Both my parents are Muslim, so am I, so is my wife and her parents.

However, me myself wise, my mother is much more religious than my father is, she follows the Five Pillars and other religious stuff herself but she never tries to force, indoctrine or even forcefully discuss any religious things with others. She herself gave me the 'required' Islamiat Teachings (something that's encouraged in Muslim families) from a young age up to my early teens, but after that she just 'let me be'... made it very clear that she did her Muslim-mother duty of teaching her son the 'ways' of Islam, but now (back then) I was free to choose my own religious or non-religious path.

To this day she has not raised any voice regarding my religious 'duties' nor has she ever asked me anything about them. I AM a Muslim and follow/believe the Islamic version as the 'correct' version of the Abrahamic faith following, though I respect and understand other versions of the teachings as well (Christianity, Judaism).

During my early teen years of course I was not.... well... religiously inclined, if you get the drift. I still am not in certain ways. And I did 'question' about the existence of God over and over, the "what its all about" etc etc. But then some deeply personal and ...visually stunning...things... happened which were too much 'solidly' proven right before my very own eyes to ignore or brush aside as just 'coincidences'. Things that are explainable yet unexplainable, quantifiable yet non-quantifiable, justifiable yet unjustifiable that, by the time of my late teens, it just literally knocked me back into the belief in the Almighty and the One and Only God

No, I wasn't tripping on acid or any form of drugs.

So there. I wasn't indoctrined into any religious factors nor was I ever 'forced' into any form of religious belief.

So that's why we're all still worshiping the sun, eh?

Huh. So last week's sun-worshiper becomes this week's Christian? Not buying it.

What changes the stimuli?

Not real fascinated by the topic except to say that ALL children are indoctrinated, by definition. Teaching them to be skeptics is as much a form of indoctrination as teaching them faith.

If this was such a danger, Catholic schools wouldn't be cranking out nearly as many atheists as they do, and people like me wouldn't have just decided on our own when we got older that the whole organized religion thing wasn't really for us.

Some the more devout atheists on WF attended Catholic school. Most of them seem to be quite well versed in all things religious so if they weren't indoctrinated they must have sought out religion on their own which ironically negates the whole indoctrination thing.

Anecdotally amusing though that you are a Muslim and didn't become a Sikh, for example.

That assumes you would teach them to be sceptics. Just teach them nothing about it until they ask. I won't be telling my child that there's no God in a proactive way but when she asks I would tell her what I believe. That is very different to taking a child to church from 6 months or whatever and it just becoming what you do.

It doesn't negate anything. It indicates that not everyone buys what their parents are selling and that not all parents sell it hard enough. And I never said that this was a full proof deal (ie that if as a christian you have kids then they will slavishly believe in God).

But the telling thing for me is how many children born in Texas to Christian parents become Muslim or Hindu or whatever and how many children born in Tehran to Muslim parents become Christian, Sikh whatever. And the answer is many fewer than end up following their parent's religion. Coincidence?

PGT, you've always given me the impression that you look down on religious folks, this thread is more of the same. Why don't we just ramp up the hyperbole now? I'll even write your side of the discussion:

• Religion is child abuse!
• Nobody would believe if they weren't indoctrinated!
• We need to break the cycle!

Okay, now you do the second part!

Don't engage with it if you don't want to.

^Poor sport. Just trying to jump to inevitable ridiculousness. And I didn't exactly hear you disagree with anything I posted.

Okay, I'll flat out ask:

• Do you think religion is a form of child abuse?
• Do you believe most wouldn't adhere to a religion if they weren't indoctrinated as a child?
• Does society need to break the cycle?

Child absue is a very emotive term so, no, I don't think it is.

I think the facts suggest a very, very strong correlation between parental belief and the religious belief of offspring. As far as I can see it doesn't prove that those children wouldn't have grown up to be christian etc anyway but the odds are pretty long.

That depends on whether you think religion is a great evil or not. POersonally I can see a lot of problems directly caused by religious belief. Equally the more anodyne forms of it are responsible for a lot of good.

Wouldn't mind hearing your answer.

Your logic extends to one brought up in a deeply atheistic culture as well.

I can introduce you to hundreds of pagans who grew up in more "traditional" faiths, as well as a significant number who grew up in agnostic/atheist homes.

Using your own age bench marks, at 5 our family went to church occasionally and I watched Davey & Goliath. By 15, I'd read a bunch of the NT, gone regularly to chapel at the res school, and had gotten disillusioned enough to figure it was all bullshit and embraced atheism.

After 5-7 years of that, I started to dabble with Gaia theory, which led to exploring pre-Xian concepts with a hint of ancestoral reverence. That brought me to the faith of my very past forebears... I explored ideas on that, both historic and reconstructionist-found the things I liked and disliked, got my own spiritual sense started, literally an ocean away from what I'd been brought up in.*

Added contemporary ideas like Wicca to it of my own volition. Found a way it worked, pursued it.

So nope, myself and most of my co-religionists are walking proof that the faith of the childhood home is not indoctrination.

That said, public education should be completely secularized. Religion belongs in the home and at it's place of worship only, it is not the purpose of a government to promote any form of faith in the modern era. (That said, I have no objection to historic/traditional references-i.e.; Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms starting with "Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:" This is historic context, nothing more to me)


*A friend has often said that the opposite of love isn't hate, but apathy. I think that applies here as I grew up in a home that was on pretty friendly terms with Jesus - I was an opponent of that for quite some time - now it is irrelevant to me. They have their beliefs, I have mine... the two are incompatible, so why force them?


Going back to the OP, that this is the argument of anti-theists, rather than atheists even, sort of nets the same credibility as stating that without faith one cannot be moral. The premise that a child is indoctrinated to the parents religion and/or devoutness is demonstratabley false due to the existence not only of those who have chosen varying different paths than their family, but also those who have rejected all paths.

If atheists exist, then they could not have been indoctrinated into anything unless they grew up in an atheist home