Why making your children follow your religion truly is brainwashing

[MysticSang'ha]

They are brainwashed anyway, one way or another.

The truth and fact is that no one can say for sure what would happen after death. It's no wrong to get them prepared rather than to swallow a false delusion introduced by our secular education system. Inside this system, children are brainwashed to believe (with faith) that nothing will happen after death (a secular concept introduced by our education system without one's own consent).

I don't remember any education system that is secular ever teaching students that nothing happens after death. In fact, the topic I don't think has ever been brought up. Unless it's a college-level course in ethics, philosophy, critical thinking, or theology. That's not for children, however.

I know when one of my kids lost a friend in his classroom, and after a family member died the same year, he was able to discuss his feelings with the social worker and a couple of teachers and aides at his school. They offered him books on grief and remembering loved ones. But what happens after death was never discussed. They never even brought it up with me when I was informed that they were meeting with him.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

They are brainwashed anyway, one way or another.

The truth and fact is that no one can say for sure what would happen after death. It's no wrong to get them prepared rather than to swallow a false delusion introduced by our secular education system. Inside this system, children are brainwashed to believe (with faith) that nothing will happen after death (a secular concept introduced by our education system without one's own consent).

Yeah, last time I checked, the non-existence of any afterlife was not included in any secondary school curricula. Of course, they don't teach you about the existence of the afterlife, because such a thing is not included in any credible models or hypotheses of science, mathematics, or any other academic discipline, but that is not the same thing at all. As it turns out, you're comparing apples and oranges.

To simply put, all children are brainwashed (using your terms) either by a secular education system sub-consciously without one's own knowledge, or by their religious parents explicitly saying that it is a faith-based religion. The other side of the coin, that is the secular, is just yet another faith-based religion (hidden and less obvious though).

Not that it's really relevant, but the difference between, e.g. the teachings of Christianity and biology, or physics, is precisely that the former is faith-based, whereas the latter is well-corroborated by empirical evidence. Being based on faith and being corroborated by empirical evidence are sort of mutually exclusive. Oops.

 

[Me Myself]

Thanks. Now we have a similarity to offer.

Personally, I think this is much better than suggesting that teaching children how to say "please" and "thank you" is very much like teaching them that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light.

Well it depends on the angle.

People are arguing that anything that you teach your kid "uncritically".must be indoctrination and things like the ones you mention fit the bill IMHO.

Be a good person

You must have your room cleaned

You must be organized

Its wrong to hit your sister

Etc

Pretty much all morality will be taught uncritically. Also, emotions to which the kid will trust like "I will always love you" are things we cant know for facts. Technically speaking, there are parents who have ceased to love their kids or approve of them even after saying something such as this, so we have no rational basis for such a claim, yet no one would say "you must say "I believe I will always..." "

Morals are more important than religious teachings, and they will be taught uncritically, things like whether the father will always love e kid is way more important than how to pray and it will be taught incritically.

There is no reason to make a special case with religion and say we ought not to teach it without saying "this is what I believe" first.

 

[Magic Man]

No, that's rather the fallacy that "the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence".

That's not a fallacy, and what I said is indeed a reasonable assumption.

Everyone knows, anything religious in a sense will be removed from the system. Teachers will not teach God exists and so forth. That sub-consciously conveys the message that no god exists (as the other option gets expelled from the system).

1) This isn't what you said. You said the idea that nothing happens after death is taught in schools. That's not true, and what you provided here doesn't even attempt to support it.

2) You're correct that teachers in public schools will not teach God exists, because that has no place in a public school. They also don't teach that God doesn't exist, so your "subconscious conveyance that God doesn't exist" is nonsense.

 

[Magic Man]

Yes, I did.

What facts about the world was that memorization supposed to teach you?

 

[Magic Man]

Thats merely your opinion.

No, it really is a reasonable assumption based on the facts we have.

I see no reason to believe consciousness ends with the death of the biological body.

You mean aside from the facts we know that point to it?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

What facts about the world was that memorization supposed to teach you?

In one of the last lectures/talks I gave on the history of mental illness (both it's treatment and its conceptualization) I used Hamlet not simply as an illustration of Elizabethan conceptions of melancholia but as a better descriptor of depression than the DSM. When one of the greatest authors who ever lived holds a mirror up to nature, he tends to create an extremely good lens to use as a framework.

I memorized it because I liked it, the same reason I memorize (and memorized) poetry in general (that and I usually can't help memorizing things, whether it is Auden or digits of Pi or lines in movies). However, when you open up a book like Oxford Quotations you find that about half of the famous quotes and lines in the English language are from the Bible and another quarter are from Shakespeare. We have too many people who know who Oedipus is because of Freud rather than Sophocles, know the line The Sun Also Rises as the title of a book, believe that without religion the development of science is necessarily easier, and in general fail to understand their own worldviews because they were never taught the bases of these. Western culture is largely filled with those who live and breathe it but don't understand it because they weren't taught what its foundations are and thus (dangerously) make all kinds of wrong assumptions. This has become so bad it seems to have shaped the face of multiple scientific fields because it is assumed that student populations in the West can be used as exemplars of people in general when in fact cultural indoctrination has fundamentally shaped the way these populations think.

 

[Magic Man]

In one of the last lectures/talks I gave on the history of mental illness (both it's treatment and its conceptualization) I used Hamlet not simply as an illustration of Elizabethan conceptions of melancholia but as a better descriptor of depression than the DSM. When one of the greatest authors who ever lived holds a mirror up to nature, he tends to create an extremely good lens to use as a framework.

I memorized it because I liked it, the same reason I memorize (and memorized) poetry in general (that and I usually can't help memorizing things, whether it is Auden or digits of Pi or lines in movies). However, when you open up a book like Oxford Quotations you find that about half of the famous quotes and lines in the English language are from the Bible and another quarter are from Shakespeare. We have too many people who know who Oedipus is because of Freud rather than Sophocles, know the line The Sun Also Rises as the title of a book, believe that without religion the development of science is necessarily easier, and in general fail to understand their own worldviews because they were never taught the bases of these. Western culture is largely filled with those who live and breathe it but don't understand it because they weren't taught what its foundations are and thus (dangerously) make all kinds of wrong assumptions. This has become so bad it seems to have shaped the face of multiple scientific fields because it is assumed that student populations in the West can be used as exemplars of people in general when in fact cultural indoctrination has fundamentally shaped the way these populations think.

OK, so your memorization of Shakespeare was never anything at all similar to the memorization of Bible verses by little children, as I suspected.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

OK, so your memorization of Shakespeare was never anything at all similar to the memorization of Bible verses by little children, as I suspected.

It was. I did it mainly on my own through activities I did because of my parents, such as going to church where I memorized the readings, responses, psalms, etc., because I was bored and doing the priests lines made it less boring and got me in trouble. Occasionally I would be asked to memorized lines like Psalm 23 or when my father printed out Mark Anthony's famous speech from Julius Caesar or when he told me he'd give me $10 if I could memorize the 70-odd lines from a poem (62) in Housman's Shropshire Lad (which was actually great, because I was in 6th grade at the time and it just so happened that we were covering poetry and everyone was assigned to memorize a poem, so I not only got $10 but got to "turn in" a poem that was about 7 times longer than anybody else's). When I was in Elementary school I had abbreviated and illustrated versions of Shakespeare's plays and two Children's Bibles (not to mention various illustrated collections of myths).

 

[Magic Man]

It was.

No, it wasn't. :sorry1:

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

No, it wasn't. :sorry1:

In grade school my father hung up Anthony's speech outside of the 2nd floor bathroom for us to memorize. He did the same with bible verses. We were little kids and although I was the only one who did the memorization assignments we all learned lines from the bible as well as lines from literature, both my parents were CCD teachers and we all went to CCD. We all knew lines and verses from poems and the bible before we could really even understand them and these were often substituted for bedtime stories. How wasn't it?

 

[Magic Man]

In grade school my father hung up Anthony's speech outside of the 2nd floor bathroom for us to memorize. He did the same with bible verses. We were little kids and although I was the only one who did the memorization assignments we all learned lines from the bible as well as lines from literature, both my parents were CCD teachers and we all went to CCD. We all knew lines and verses from poems and the bible before we could really even understand them and these were often substituted for bedtime stories. How wasn't it?

I already covered this. What was that memorization of Shakespeare supposed to teach you about the world? Was it part of your instruction in a worldview with a certain set of supposed facts?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I already covered this. What was that memorization of Shakespeare supposed to teach you about the world?

Lessons about reality and nature.

Was it part of your instruction in a worldview with a certain set of supposed facts?

Yes.

 

[Me Myself]

No, it really is a reasonable assumption based on the facts we have.

And that is merely your opinion.

 

[Magic Man]

Lessons about reality and nature.


Yes.

So, nothing equivalent to what is taught through memorization of the Bible, as I've pointed out.

 

[Magic Man]

And that is merely your opinion.

 

[Me Myself]

Where the evidence truly pointing that way it could be taught in a science classroom.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

So, nothing equivalent to what is taught through memorization of the Bible, as I've pointed out.

Not equivalent as it was stuff I was taught through memorization of the bible. I don't know what the hell you are talking about. We had to learn about the bible, memorize lines, and learn about what it said about life, nature, reality, etc., the same way we did with Shakespeare, mathematics, logic, poetry, even grammar. Apparently you have some singular idea of what it means to have to memorize bible versus (ever read Tom Sawyer?) that doesn't conform to what I had to memorize them for or others I know of personally or through literature or through studies. One wonders where you are getting your idea of what children are asked to memorize and why. Often, they are just required to memorize and aren't necessarily taught anything. Legions of children can recite the entire quran verbatim but can't tell you much of anything about it. Bible schools often require children to memorize psalms and verses like song lyrics without any explanation. Other times children are taught what certain lines or ideas mean usually independently of either memorization or even specific lines (the lines are used as examples of a concept that is presented first independently of them).

 

[Magic Man]

Where the evidence truly pointing that way it could be taught in a science classroom.

I think the first question is who advocated teaching this in science class.

 

[Magic Man]

Not equivalent as it was stuff I was taught through memorization of the bible. I don't know what the hell you are talking about. We had to learn about the bible, memorize lines, and learn about what it said about life, nature, reality, etc., the same way we did with Shakespeare, mathematics, logic, poetry, even grammar. Apparently you have some singular idea of what it means to have to memorize bible versus (ever read Tom Sawyer?) that doesn't conform to what I had to memorize them for or others I know of personally or through literature or through studies. One wonders where you are getting your idea of what children are asked to memorize and why. Often, they are just required to memorize and aren't necessarily taught anything. Legions of children can recite the entire quran verbatim but can't tell you much of anything about it. Bible schools often require children to memorize psalms and verses like song lyrics without any explanation. Other times children are taught what certain lines or ideas mean usually independently of either memorization or even specific lines (the lines are used as examples of a concept that is presented first independently of them).

Children are taught the Bible and sometimes taught to memorize it or some of it. It's part of their education in Christianity. It goes along with many other things like going to church and generally just learning religious beliefs as facts. Memorizing Shakespeare is in no way equivalent. Shakespeare is taught as literature, not as a worldview including facts. You weren't taught that Romeo and Juliet actually happened or that MacBeth was a real person. You were only memorizing it to inform you of literary culture.