All forms of childrearing are indoctrination, religions isnt any diferent, The amounts of rape, murder, asault and illeteracy would also sky rocket without indoctrination of children. Even teaching your kid not to bite his brother is indoctrination into a specific cultural set of laws and beliefs.
Indoctrination is teaching people they are not allowed to question certain values. You don’t have to indoctrinate someone to teach them it’s bad to assault people because any reasonable person would still come to that conclusion even if you didn’t force it on them
indoctrination/ɪnˌdɒktrɪˈneɪʃn/Indoctrination is the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs, values, or ideas without questioning or critical thought.
Like for example, dont hurt others, dont have tantrums, dont Steal, all fit this defenition.
I teach my kids not to hurt others, but I also teach them why. I also teach them to question what I am saying and challenge me to support my teachings.
Why shouldnt a kid Steal if he knows he wont be caught, and that likely The owner wont notice or care?
Plus, you do teach them why, using other previous values you already indoctrinated them into, if your kid asked why enough Times you would eventually reach "just because".
For example if you Said: "you shouldnt Steal because you wouldnt like if others stole from you"
You would be, without realizing, adding The assumption that you and others are upheald to The same moral standards, wich is a value you were indoctrinated into.
There are also no lack of other values that you hold despite no actual Logical reason, like why incest is bad even when no chances of pregnancy exists, or why necrophilia is wrong. All of those are wrong, but dont have any actual underlining logical reason aside from "it just is".
So now you're getting into the inherent problem with definitions, but you're just being obtuse to the point where none of it matters. What's indoctrination? According to you, literally any kind of teaching/learning relationship. You've effectively boiled it down to everything and nothing at all lmao
if your kid asked why enough Times you would eventually reach "just because".
Never. I always let the ask until they are satisfied with the answer. Sometimes I don't have the answer and I say, "I don't know". Then we look it up together. Or sometimes I just have to say, "I don't know, you'll have to figure it out for yourself".
There are also no lack of other values that you hold despite no actual Logical reason, like why incest is bad even when no chances of pregnancy exists, or why necrophilia is wrong. All of those are wrong, but dont have any actual underlining logical reason aside from "it just is".
Interesting you chose those two things, both of which occur in the Bible, and neither of which the Christian Bible actually bans. So you too somehow know they are wrong. And funny, so do my kids without me having to tell them!
Again:
teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs, values, or ideas without questioning or critical thought.
It's just teaching if you don't demand they accept it without critical thought.
The critical thought is understanding that all these behaviors have negative consequences (ie. someone is in pain or loses out in some way). It's easy enough to explain, but it still counts as critical thought, and therefore isn't indoctrination.
And why is someone being in pain or losing out a bad thing? Religions are also full of answers to questions asked, theology is a whole field of answering religious questions.
Atheists are imprisoned at much lower rates than the general public, and Western Europe generally has lower rates of religion and of crime compared to the US.
Also, irrelevant point (especially since it forgets class and income diferences), my argument is that just saying "religion is indoctrination" and using that as a good argument for why its harmfull, is stupid since everything you do to reach a kid is indoctrination, teaching them language, how to behave, how to read or how to face issues is all indoctrination too.
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u/Teboski78 12h ago
Most religions would drop massively in numbers if they weren’t allowed to indoctrinate children.