Nov 01 2009
Sunday Sacrilege: Planting Seeds in Innocent Minds
Many parents drag their children to church every Sunday. As I was. Poor kids. What a waste of the precious, long hours of youth.
While I don’t believe this practice is tantamount to child abuse, I would prefer to live in a world where children were first taught critical thinking skills before being exposed to such important, world-view shaping ideas.
This definition of “cult” from the Online Etymology Dictionary is relevant, I think:
1617, “worship,” also “a particular form of worship,” from Fr. culte, from L. cultus “care, cultivation, worship,” originally “tended, cultivated,” pp. of colere “to till”
The child’s mind is nearly virgin soil. Care should be paid to what is encouraged to grow there.
Fortunately, as we age, genes matter more than environment in terms of behaviour, so, those of us predisposed to being non-spiritual can remove ourselves from the realm of the religious.
That being said, I still see a problem with being indoctrinated at a young age. As most national surveys will attest, the majority of people are of the spiritual variety. As such, they are very likely to subscribe to a religion or belief system at some point in their lives. Personally, I dislike the fact that their choices are usually limited to those of their parents’ (seeing how they’ve been exposed to only one flavour of spiritual expression since the beginning of their lives). In most cases, these choices revolve around the Judeo-Christian belief system, which, in my opinion… stinks. There are better ways for spiritual people to manifest their needs than vengeance/punishment-based religions. Buddhism and a handful of new age belief systems come to mind, neither of which are a possibility if one is raised to believe Jesus is Lord.
I am atheist not because I was raised that way. I am atheist because my personality traits prohibit me from being otherwise, and in spite of having been raised among religious people. Had I been born with a different set of traits, I too would be subscribing to some kind of mind bending religion by now. It bothers me to think that my only choice would have been Orthodox Christianity.
Good points. True, our individual physiological make-up exerts a very significant influence on if we believe and perhaps even what we believe (within constraints, the “what” is more likely socially/culturally determined.)
Many people present their beliefs as exclusively the product of reason or logic or rationality or even common sense. Whether the beliefs be religious or political. But I think, as it seems so do you, that that claim is both mistaken and perhaps even counter-productive.
When we recognize what goes into the belief-formation and adherence process we are likely more free to examine and criticize all. And hopefully embrace the better, within constraints.
As for what is better . . . that’s a whole ‘nother complicated issue.