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And I fail to observe anything in that article that suggests Mendel's discoveries were in any way religiously inspired.
Man, that's just sophistry.
Seeing as that's not what he's saying at all, I'm not surprised. He's saying that religion is not necessarily a detriment to rational thought. It can be, but then again, so can any ideology.
Because 9% think it's too high, and shouldn't be cut! 9% of respondents could not fully
get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for, "I
have utterly no idea what you're talking about. Please, God, don't ask for my input."
Well not literally "fearing for their lives," but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone from the Renaissance or Enlightenment Age who was staunchly secular. It's a dubious correlation to suggest that they were critical minds because they were religious.
No, a lot (most?) were indeed devout christians. But back then the whole science/religion divide wasn't as pronounced. All kinds of scientists were researching and experimenting with things using the scientific method, and to them it was basically learning about gods creations and all that jazz. Even guys like Gallileo were religious, even thought the church didn't take kindly to what he had to say.
Religion is so very strange to me, its like dealing with aliens. It is fundamentally mysterious to me, when I was a kid I thought for a while that everyone was faking just to fit in, that nobody *really* deep down believed these things. And frankly, I still dont understand it.
Further to that, there's no real way the initial assertion can be adequately refuted, largely because nobody is capable of reading minds, especially those of the dead. Any claim that Pants Man can make regarding scientists who professed to follow a religion can just as easily be brushed aside by Glyph again using the same claim that they had to under pressure.
Ironic that someone attempting to attack religion should use an assertion which is not fundamentally disprovable, as an attack.
Oh, but you're willing to strawman my argument? I never said being brought up religious makes it absolutely impossible to be a rational human being. Just like being racist doesn't make it impossible to have progressive ideas. But in the same vein, it does make it more difficult because you're having to make compromises between a pre-packaged set of beliefs and your own individual circumstance.
Not so. All I'm suggesting is that people make compromises because to do otherwise would be maladaptive. Just as Pants made a compromise that the world wasn't created in a week, thinkers throughout history - religious though they might have been - compromised absolute faith when necessary to suit their respective fields. They didn't just drop every part of their faith because they didn't have all the answers, just as we still don't have all the answers.
But they knew enough to know that what the evidence was telling them contradicted what they were raised to believe. And they made a conscious choice to trust what was in front of them. If I were to suggest that being blind is detrimental to functioning in a society where most people aren't blind, am I saying it's impossible? No. I see religion the same way, except that instead of dealing with a physical impairment, you're dealing with an understanding of the world that you've been taught to believe since childhood.
Sure, I may be a bit paranoid for it, but I'm glad my parents thought teaching critical thinking was more important than bringing me up as their religion. It didn't hurt my moral character any, and if anything made me far more interested in the tenents of their faith than most of the children I knew who went to church because they were forced.
*He was annoyed that I started crying and wanted to go home, too. God I can't wait to have kids.
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Again, you're making an assertion which cannot be disproved. In this case, that the practitioners themselves even saw a contradiction between their beliefs and what they were observations of reality, whereby they had to make a break or "compromise" with their religion.
You say for example, that Pants man "makes a compromise" that the world wasn't created in a week. Even not being Christian myself, I can see how this is not inherently a compromise. It depends for example, on whether Pants Man takes the wording as literal or metaphorical, amongst other things. There is no inherent disjoint there. What's happening there is that the viewpoint of absolute literalist is being placed on Pants Man (and possibly being accepted as the only "legitimate" Christian viewpoint) and then being refuted as having to be compromised in order to accept current scientific thinking.
But what do we think of giving kids political books? Does that count as indoctrination? I read a bunch of those when I was a kid, without any prompting. It ranged from the Communist Manifesto to books about globalization, and I think I turned out ok. What do y'all think?
There's a huge difference between being allowed to read a lot of political stuff by free choice and living with, say, an outspoken hippy family who'd disown you for eating meat and voting republican. I definitely want my kids to know about religion, but that's a long way from teaching only one in any detail and insisting that its the only correct one.
That's true. This is largely speculation regarding what must have been going through their minds. But if it weren't for contradictory evidence, what reason would they then have not to take the wording literally and at face value? The gradual shift from interpeting a religion's beliefs literally to metaphorically would seem in part dependent upon the available evidence to the contrary, as well as how that evidence is interpreted. But it seems reasonable to suggest that being raised with a certain set of presuppositions regarding how the world works makes judging that evidence objectively all but impossible.
edit: trimmed the tree
1) Leaving the church means losing your home and never speaking to your family ever again
2) The education and world experience of Amish children is such that if they tried to leave, there wouldn't be much they could do to make a living.
Doesn't sound to me like they've got a whole lot of real options.
Whose civil rights are we talking about here? The parents', or the childrens'?
Does a Christian Scientist have the right to deny their child proper medical care? I think the courts have ruled pretty decisively that they do not.
Does an African-born Muslim (well, strictly speaking, this doesn't apply just to Muslims or those from Africa, but anyway) have the right to mutilate their daughter's genitalia? Not under U.S. law.
Does a member of the LDS Reformed Church have the right to force 13-year-old girls to enter a polygamous marriage? Again, no.
These are all physical forms of child abuse, and as such they are prohibited by law, despite the fact that doing so is technically a restriction on religious freedom.
If, then, religious indoctrination could be shown to have a deleterious emotional effect on a child's psyche (emotional child abuse), then there is no reason why the same should not apply.
That said, I am under no illusions that it would be practical to try to enforce such a ruling.
Point being, childhood indoctrination won't necessarily destroy a person's rationality, but it can extinguish their will to use it.
Tricky thing with religion is that, much like we all don't want kids to be raised to be a bunch of bastards, these people genuinely believe that what they are teaching and expecting of their children is tantamount to their being good people. So it's not so much a "This is what I believe so SO MUST YOU" thing as much as it is them trying to raise their kids to be good and of sound character. Does that still fall under the umbrella of indoctrination even when applied to religion?
The road to hell is paved with... ________________
Fill in the blank!
A. Yellow bricks
B. gold
C. souls
D. good intentions
E. Good, good, good, good vibrations
Well yes but the crux of the question was whether teaching 'morals' also falls under ill-advised indoctrination. If no, does it fall under indoctrination when applied with a dose of religion.
No. But the dose of religion does.
It was hardly what I would call 'brainwashing'.
In fact, as long as I can remember I have always dreaded mass and have been skeptical of everything they taught me in Sunday school. I now only go to church on Easter and Christmas, and only then because it would be rude to the rest of my family not to.
I don't feel hatred towards my parents for trying to expose me to something positive growing up. Also, I think that children are smart enough to make their own decisions. To be honest I am thankful that I was exposed to religion, because it gave me a better understanding of a different way of looking at life.
In short, I can say from first-hand experience that the notion that indoctrination=child abuse is ludicrous. I also wonder if Richard Dawkins would accept it if his child decided to become a Christian.
Depends what kind of morals we're talking about here.
If we're talking about whether or not it's okay to kill people, or steal from them, then no.
If we're talking about rules about which consenting adults you're allowed to fuck, or what kind and cut of clothes you can wear, or other such idiocy that people typically talk about when they get all huffy about morals, then yes, I'd call that indoctrination.
And in either case, using religion to instill them is indoctrination... because you're using religion.
In any event, I don't really think 'You'll make God angry" is the best reason to give a six-year-old as to why they shouldn't punch their little sister.
But in that case you're still pretty much forcing on them a philosophy, instead of a religion. Since I'm pretty sure that's right, doesn't this whole argument pretty much reduce to,"Indoctrination is bad, except when it isn't"?
Parents are obligated to do what's best for their children to the best of their ability, and those in religious paradigms will probably want to impart that, while those who aren't, won't. That's a good thing. I wish public schools required courses on semantic logic as early as kids could grasp it, but not because I feel that children are particularly poisoned by holding any particular choice of unsubstantiated opinion regarding the existence or nature of a deity.
And that's why statutory rape is such a bogus offense.
However, religious ideas are irrational.
Uh, that's obviously a scam. There are some built in safeguards...
1. Having the kid until they're teenagers is more than enough time to indoctrinate.
2. Having no experience with modernity, newly "free" Amish tend to binge...and suffer the consequences.
3. Even if you really like the iPods, leaving an Amish community means you are gone. Goodbye friends! Goodbye family! How many people are going to do that when all it means is that you now have the chance to make it in the real world...a world you have no skills to survive in, no experience, no frame of reference.
The Amish are nice and all, but it's definitely not an open society.
Man, your experience was just like mine- very mild religious upbringing. But our experiences are not particularly relevant, since there are millions of children raised with much, much more severe indoctrination that certainly does seem to be child abuse. Dawkins is talking about that kind- his own upbringing was very mildly religious and he doesn't contend religion was forced down his throat. His point is simple, and has already been made, and I'm so astounded this his hard to grasp. Telling a young child that they will suffer for eternity or that their friends will suffer for eternity, if they do any one of a thousand arbitrary things, is abusive. To take a child too young to think on their own and program them to hate, to fear, to feel guilt, to be intolerant for irrational, wrong reasons and so on...is wrong. Dawkins doesn't care if the parents do things like, "Well, I believe in God, but you'll have to decide on your own, son!" he only cares if they're sending their kids to Jesus Camp.
How do you explain rational people holding singular irrational beliefs? If a person is educated and sharp enough to apply Occam's Razor to every other odd idea (invisible elephants, teapots, what have you), why won't they apply it to a religious idea? It seems strange.
<3 <3 <3 <3
Continuum-of-rationality. Everyone has some things they aren't rational about. I like movies with Pirates in them even if they aren't very good movies, just because...hey...pirates.
There's also force of habit, the desire to be a part of a wider community, personal pleasure derived from faith, etc...
No!
...Yes.
Really, all you need is Pirates. All other pirate porn just pales in comparison.
I consider myself a pretty rational person and I have no doubt that I hold an enormous number of irrational, often utterly stupid beliefs. For example, I'm terrified of insects (I scream). For the longest time I pronounced Sigmund Freud's name like "Frood," and I even argued with people that that was the right way to pronounce it instead of Froid and I heard it in some scholarly source somewhere (which turned out to be Bill and Ted).
Raising a child in a religion is psychological conditioning. There is a rational choice element to it, but it's easy to underestimate the non-rational, psychological aspect of the belief, and the strength that aspect has. Being smart and self-aware does not mean you magically have the capacity—or simply, in many cases, the time—to examine all of your beliefs, especially ones that involve psychological conditioning.
But those are questions of subjective opinion, which - at best - are based on a tremendous mishmash of prior personal experiences, but at least they're justified. Religious belief doesn't seem to be justified, and it's not typically a subjective claim. People seem to really believe this, in a way that implies they really looked at whether their belief was justified or not, and concluded that it was. The latter reasons are good reasons for claiming the belief, but not good reasons for believing it.
Here's the point where I state that I am one of them, so as to not be a troll...why do you think I don't get the obvious?
Really, there's a huge number of reasons why an intelligent person could convince himself or herself to believe in Christianity (or whatever crazy moon religion you happen to believe in
Of course, what you're really asking is "why do you guys think I disagree with your conclusion about religion?" Ultimately, the person who knows best why you disagree with us is you. So why don't you tell us?
This baffles me as well. Applying Occam's Razor myself, I'd blame... indoctrination?
Well, when you make it obvious. As in, when a religious person reads the core atheist argument and says, 'no, I don't buy that...' and proceeds to level a criticism at one tenet or another. The thing is, you recognize something about your irrational beliefs - that they aren't justified. This means you've applied some rational fire to them and know where they sit in your mind. You wouldn't weigh your fear of spiders rationally against other things in your life, but the religious can and do weigh God against participating in certain behaviors.
I understand quite a bit about psychological conditioning, but assuming I can rationally evaluate my own faith by using the tools I use on everything else, what does it entail if I don't find that belief lacking? I think there are many people in this situation, and I never understood why atheist thinkers didn't find it at least passing strange.
Well, you may be exaggerating the degree of rational evaluation you are capable of. I like to think that my atheism is contingent on evidence, but who knows? Maybe I couldn't bring myself to believe in God even if I had compelling reason to do so.
You may also be ignorant of evidence, arguments for or against, etc- i.e., you're correctly and rationally evaluating the situation, but with imperfect information.
(Generic "you", not you, mind)
You're right, sorry for belaboring, I was more interested in your perception than in talking about the argument (which has been done on the boards a bit before). It's this:
We can talk about this if you want, but I think the general point is a bit more thread-relevant, being that occasionally theists are using rational arguments to find their way instead of being dumbly led into their decision when they are young and helpless.