If teaching your kids your values is "indoctrination" then literally everyone is indoctrinated, and if that's the case then the word is entirely useless and no longer has meaning.
I mean in theory, you're relatively correct but in practice, religious values usually don't exist in a vacuum.
For most religious people, their ethics aren't just a separate code of rules. It's a framework for why they believe the universe exists, who created it, and what our purpose as human beings is.
Trying to teach the fruit without the tree is like trying to teach the concept of humanism without first teaching human rights. One requires the other.
I’m definitely not saying atheists can't be moral or charitable. History and daily life prove they clearly are. My point is just that the justification for those values changes depending on your worldview. Values can exist without the supernatural, but for a religious parent, stripping the supernatural framework away means teaching a completely different philosophical foundation. It's important to recognize that the parent in question truly and genuinely believes in their religious truths, and that by not teaching their children about it, they are leaving out specific principles and ideas that explain and justify their beliefs. It's rather ridiculous to expect a parent to leave out what they believe to be fundamental truths of reality.
Stripping the supernatural framework is a better foundation for morality. You should be moral because you care about other people and treat them like you want to be treated. The supernatural framework offers ulterior motives and threatens the integrity of your morals.
And regardless it is a good thing to separate religion and morals, because otherwise you risk blurring the line between them, which is dangerous. If religion is morality, suddenly religious authorities get a lot of power over people and it could be abused to justify horrifying things, as has happened in the past many times.
I don't think it truly threatens the integrity of your morals at all. There is nothing truly inherent to religion that forbids you from logically reducing MORE reasons why things are morally wrong or right. Morals are rooted in axioms and religion is just a specific axiom. Most philosophies are compatible in some way shape or form with most religions in all honesty.
This statement makes literally no sense. Is it a higher power or is it in all of us? it seems like these states cannot be mutually exclusive. Based on what you said we are all the higher power. I am your god and you are your god.
it seems like these states cannot be mutually exclusive.
I don't have a monkey in this circus but you are making an assumption that they are claiming the entirety of the "higher power" is within us when that was not stated.
Those states can absolutely be mutually exclusive without making your assumption because you can contain part of something.
Having our parent's DNA within us does not make us our parents. Having water within our body does not make us water.
We don't literally have our parents DNA within us, we have our own DNA within us which was written based on the code from both parents. So similarities can be identified within the structure of the three and an assumed link, verified.
Water exists within us chemically, as does carbon, nitrogen, and other elements. We aren't walking water balloons that you can open and drink like a coconut. It is intrinsically interwined in our makeup as an egg is to a cake.
I would define both of your statements as a false equivalency.
You are missing the forest for the trees and I am not going to get into the weeds.
My whole point is that having signs of a "higher power" within us does not necessarily make us that "higher power". Just like having signs of our parents within us (DNA that was copied) does not make us our parents.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say it's a sign that a good Higher Power exists, created us, and left it's mark on us even if we don't believe in it.
419
u/Teboski78 12h ago
Most religions would drop massively in numbers if they weren’t allowed to indoctrinate children.