Indoctrination

A friend of mine was just recently introduced to the movie Jesus Camp in a class and it got me thinking about Childhood Indoctrination again – this is a topic that comes up from time to time but since I do not have children and I am not usually around children often the ideas tends to get forgotten. I am still always surprised when a child tells me that they know about Religion, and then even more surprised when they do not know much about the world around them.

(If you have not seen the documentary you can watch it here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/337498)

I would like to first say that this film scared the crap out of me the first time I saw it. I had to pause the movie and come back because I got so upset I had trouble watching the whole thing. Obviously I knew that Religious belief  starts at a young age, but I had not thought much about the kind of life that set up for the children. I was fortunate enough that while my mom was Religious she was not very outspoken about it, I went to Church and Sunday school but it was not until I was put in Catholic School in 7th grade did I really start to take a hard look at Religion. Up until that point I had assumed that everyone knew about Religion, and Church was not a bad place to go and have sleep-in retreats and activities but I never thought that anyone took it all seriously. For me God was like Santa and I assumed that everyone grew out of it. I learned very quickly that I had been wrong and I started asking a lot of questions and I began exploring and “trying out” various different religions. This did not endear me to my classmates and needless to say I was not very popular. When I finally reached college I took Religion classes right away – I had to learn more, there was and is something about Religious belief that fascinates me and I want to find out how people can believe. It was this desire to find out why and how people believe that I came to learn about Indoctrination.

As someone who likes to learn I was immediately concerned with the effects that only knowing one point of view could have. I did more research and started to get interested in the Evolution vs Creationism debate in schools. I should have at this point been beyond surprise but I was not – I was blown away that this debate was on going. Knowledge is the most important tool that anyone can have, and it still makes me sad that this is with held from so many children because it does not agree with Religion. How can we expect the future generations to do great things if many of them will not grow up understanding how the world works? They will grow up not learning to question and investigate and I think that is terrifying and dangerous. I want future world leaders to be smarter than me, smarter than everyone – not to lean on Belief but to rely on Proof. How else can they be expected to be efficient leaders?

As I moved through my college years I also became more active in politics and began to develop an interest there as well. I had not gone looking for Religion in Politics because I had been sure that Separation of Church and State was not an issue so I focused on other issues that interested me. Once again I was surprised, every issue seemed to have a Religious based debate – every candidate had to profess religious faith. Of course they usually profess the same faith – the dominant faith. I have found that of course this is the same with most adults. Every person that I have met who is extremely devout is the same faith that they were raised in and for the few that are not the same I have noticed a few things, either the family was not very Religious to begin with, the child has changed from very devout to a bit less so, or the change has come at great cost to the family and is often a point of stress. I have met people that hide what they believe from family members because they do not want to tear apart the family.

Part of me feels that this sort of change should not be hidden from your family, that the love of a family should be such that it is ok to be your own person and that instead of causing problems the family would just learn something new and move along. I do realize though that the way I think it should be is not the way that it often turns out. Somehow faith is so strong that it can over power the natural instincts of a family to love one another and to be happy. I think that in order to change Indoctrination and Religious fundamentalism the key lies here – this absolute strength has to be shaken and even Religion were to stick around the world would certainly be a better place if the certainty, hatred and fear were to be removed.

How would such a task be accomplished? This does not strike me as an individual issue – I think that this is a societal problem. Religious people expect everyone else to also feel the same way that they do. People are always surprised when they meet me and then later find out that I am an Atheist. However, this is exclusively a religious problem. Whenever a political topic or any topic of interest comes up most people tend to try and gauge where the other person stands before they get too into discussion. There is a caution that is taken because no one assumes that everyone will agree. I know many families that the children grew up to be a different political party, and while election time dinner conversations can get awkward no on is afraid of tearing the family apart. The special status of Religion to assume that everyone knows you are right, and the special exemption from discussion that these ideas try to hold is the first step in creating a more accepting system.

I have just recently (in the last few years) become aware of another problem with Indoctrination. I learned about hell and sin as a young adult and since I had nothing to base these ideas on I was not affected. I never worried about upsetting God or getting sent to Hell. I did not have to learn the terrible stories of the Bible until I was in High School. It seems to me that Indoctrinating children places a terrible burden on them. They have to worry about pleasing parents and not straying from the path which can inspire fear and guilt. However, greater than that is the fear of upsetting God and going to hell. There is a scene in Jesus Camp where the children are asked if they are doubters at school or if they do bad things when no one is around and they children are told that God is always around. Many of the children start crying, one boy in the film cries often because he says he has a hard time with faith. Children have enough to deal with just learning how to navigate life and who they are – it is too much to try and ask them to also navigate this mess of belief and faith that they can’t possibly understand.

Now, to make it clear I am not advocating that children be brought up Atheist, I think that they should be allowed to decide for themselves. Talk to our children about what you believe and sure take them to Church but do not make them pray or recite or fear. Let them learn that other Religions exist and if they want to explore that they should be allowed. Answer the questions that they have instead of getting upset. Then when they get old enough they can decide it they want to join the faith or not. I must have tried on 5 different Religions before I finally settled on none. My mom was not the happiest (especially in my Wiccan phase) but she let me explore and she tried to support me that is the greatest gift I could have asked for. I got to learn about people and the world in my own way.

Children do not need to grow up with guilt and shame. They do not need fear to keep them in line, Children should be proud of who they are becoming and look at all the options they have with excitement. Children do not need to be saved or born again (they were just born not all that long ago after all) they have not even begun to do bad things or good things yet and the children that do begin to become bad or good should do so because that is who they are and not because they are afraid. “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.” Steven Weinberg

Strength in Disbelief.

I am always amused when I tell someone that I am an Atheist and they immediately ask if I am sad that this life is all we get and if I am not strong enough to handle the truth of God. To this I always laugh, because I believe the opposite.

That is not to say that I am not sad or afraid about death, of course I am. Only an Atheist can grasp the true terror that is death, the knowledge that there is nothing and this beautiful gift of consciousness and experience will be gone and unless you do something truly great (or horrible) in a short time there will be no memory of you, no impact, nothing. Thinking about this too long is utterly terrifying but at the same time it can be inspirational. If no one else will remember you and there will be little impact then there is all the more reason to make your experiences count and to impact those around you while you can so that in some way there will be a lingering effect. (This also plays a part in my feelings about Atheist morality and where that comes from, but that is another post.)

As for this disbelief and fear playing into being not strong enough to handle God, well this is what really makes me laugh. It is clear that religions originally came about to explain things that people did not understand. It was common for people to attribute everything like the sun and rain to deities and to try to influence the out come by praying or offering. As people moved on and learned about the world around them these beliefs fell away and were replaced by knowledge and new belief systems emerged. However still, there is no explanation or comfort for the idea of death (and I think that this is because there isn’t one) so modern religions remain. A good look at Judea-Christian religions will reveal an absolute obsession with death. In fact the entire belief is the way you should get through life in order to get to a good death and afterlife. The emphasis and rules for living is only so that there can be an even bigger emphasis on dying. Christianity even takes this a step further and worships death in the story of Jesus. To me this shows that those who cling so strongly to faith, even when there is so much evidence against it, are clinging because they are afraid of what life without it would mean. Many believers will say that they feel sorry for an Atheist because the life “must be so empty and sad” and for me this shows that they are unable to grasp what it means to face the harsh and frightening realities so they cling to the comfort of faith.

Now in the theme of my blog, while I think that clinging to something that is false just for comfort is silly I also have a deeper problem with this. Many believers are convinced that Jesus is going to return while they are alive and so they have very little concern about what this world looks like and what the current generations will be leaving to the future. If the focus is on struggle and getting to the next life then there is no reason to have real world concerns that will have any impact on things like medicine or the environment and this is very scary to consider when reasoning non believers try to improve the state of the world against the inaction of those that are waiting for the next world.