Many View Religion As A Productive As

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Throughout our lives we stand as the final legacy of our parents, representing their achievements and ability, carried on through our own success. We pass down their wisdom to the next generation in hopes that they will adopt it to make better of themselves, but what about the mistakes are parents made? Are they also a scare we must pass to ours? Religion is an ancient tradition of mankind, one marked with bloodshed and mistakes, yet it grabs a hold of those it possesses and instructs them to impart it upon impressionable minds. However the Indoctrination of religion onto our children only perpetuates the problems of our past. It is not uncommon to see phrases such as Jewish child, Hindu child, or Catholic child. The idea of labeling children with the religion of their parents is widely accepted both socially and legally. However I am determined to stay away from this trend and accurately say children of Christian parents rather than Christian children. The distinction is because children are too young to truly understand and believe in the religion. (Dawkins, 337) We do not develop abstract thinking skills such as those required for algebra or comprehension of intangible nouns until between the ages of ten and thirteen, so how could we expect that a ‘catholic child’ believes in the trinity and holy sacraments? The opposition related to the labeling of children by their parent’s religion is not only moral but practical, how many children have been killed in religious conflict because of their arbitrary association with the rival sect? If society as a whole could abandon the idea perhaps

less innocent blood would be spilled in religious conflict. The formation of one’s own identity, including religious identity, is a civil right of all people. According to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Children, Article 14 this right to freedom of religion fully extends to children. While religion is legally considered to be part of one’s identity from birth it’s influence on identity in entirely environmental unlike other birth attributes such as race or physical ability. Though it would be impossible for a child to form their identity entirely separate from parental influence, it is important for each individual to carve their own path as much as possible. Should parents definitively try to determine the religious identity of their children, or any other part of their identity? Religion, more than most facets of identity is extremely contingent upon the informed choice of the child because of the inherent necessity of belief by the child. (Scolnicov) The problem with parentally enforced incorporation of children into religious beliefs was deemed important enough to be heard by the U.S. Supreme court in Wisconsin vs. Yoder in 1972. The case involved Amish parents withdrawing their children from school before sixteen years of age to which Wisconsin law requires children be educated. The case sparked the argument as to whether or not parents have the right to limit the child’s right to an open future. It was argued that children have the autonomous rights to choose feely among various life styles especially aspects of life regarding occupation and philosophical beliefs. Looking around we see children

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begrudgingly dragged to churches and synagogues throughout their youth, my parent’ pastor even made the concession to my conformation class that she knew the only reason we were there was “because your parents made you.” The same admission was made by my Sunday school teacher the year previous. This observation is more than antidotal and has been concluded in more official forums. “Social Scientists who have studied the Amish doubt that most Amish children enjoy such ‘entirely free choice because Amish socialization funnels youth toward church membership’ by thorough immersion ‘in a total ethnic world with its own language symbols and world view’” (Prusak) The indoctrination of children is not only through forced participation in religious activities and lifestyles but parents are given the apparent right to put their children through incomplete, often inaccurate and, in the United States, mostly unregulated religious education. I have heard a firsthand account of someone homeschooled their entire lives with no science class, the omission of an entire field of study no doubt severely hinders ones options in higher education. Others, even at government approved religious schools in Britain instructors are permitted to teach things in science classes that are biblically based and have no conventional evidence. (Dawkins, 331) Some religious teaching methods even attempt to discredit the scientific method entirely by claiming that scientific evidence is entirely arbitrary. (Jesus camp

The notion that evidence is scientifically elitist is mildly absurd, despite what some may claim we all rely on evidence in our daily lives. All thinking animals including humans have an ingrained ability to use evidence; any time you learn from experience you are essentially applying the scientific method. A pet dog for instance may have the notion that because they can see through a glass door they can run through it; this is the equivalent of a scientific hypothesis, it is based on valid observation and can be disproved. The dog may then proceed to attempt running through the glass door only to discover they cannot, this process may be repeated until the dog is fairly sure running through a glass door is not possible. The second part signifies the experiment and theory formation aspects of the scientific method. Silly as this example may be it shows the pure and irrefutable nature of the scientific method. Skills in scientific thinking are not only relevant to scientific career choices but are pertinent to almost any professional career. Let us assume in our dog example that the dog were to sometimes go through the glass. Scientific thinking would say that we must modify our theory which states that the glass is impassible. The willingness to change is so essential to the scientific method, in the field of physics even the most important thinkers such as Newton and Einstein must be corrected when their ideas have been shown incorrect. The religious frame of mind is a stark contrast, in the pseudo-scientific field of creationism the reasons are drawn from the ‘theory’ that god created the universe and mankind as they are while simply denying the validity of contradictory evidence. The equivalent in

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our dog example would be like saying, “The dog must bounce off the glass because we know the dog cannot go through glass, the time when dog went through the glass was an illusion.” Rather than, “The dog keeps bouncing off the door, it appears impassible. Oh, look it can go through, maybe we were not 100% correct.” Once again the example may not be a real life situation but the points of view applies are constant. Giving children a religious education instills the idea that the world is a fixed and unchangeable place where three thousand year old books cannot be proven wrong by observation, and that the observations must be faulty. If logical thought is applied most people see an obvious double standard involving evidence and The Bible, however religion often discourages thinking for oneself and the biblical standard can be applied elsewhere.

The religiously zealous who do not privately educate and deprive their children of essential knowledge are known for trying to force together church and state in the public schools. There are the well known cases from Kansas where parents insisted that public schools teach creationism. More recently the target of those who wish to indoctrinate the world into their religion has been the discussion of gay equality. The parents insisted that the teaching of tolerance towards others including those who have a different sexual identity. This shows not only an attempt to omit relevant information from

their children’s education, but an attempt to indoctrinate hate. After the First Circuit Court of Appeals dropped the case parents seek a Supreme Court ruling that potentially offensive religious material be selectively omitted from public education because exposure to specific ideas may interfere with their religious guidance. (Schools) Parents have even insisted that directly religious values be taught in public schools because of an apparent belief that morals could only be derived from god. They insisted that without public perpetuation of specifically religious values students would have a distorted view of reality. But Supreme Court rulings against publicly sponsored religious instruction and the inevitability of religious preference being shown given the cornucopia of different specific value sets ensured protection from the evangelical movement. It can also be said that there is no unanimity about the origin of human morality even among religions sharing basic moral similarities.(Van Dale,13-19) Many view religion as a productive aspect of society which enables the otherwise immoral and vacuous to find purpose through a sense of obedience. To give the otherwise lost something that they need to answer too, other than themselves. I will confess that this enables a percent of the population to do good through submission. However the inertness of submission in religion is absolute so much that the word Islam means the total surrender of oneself to God. The problem arises only when this is taught

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as a virtue to young, impressionable minds. It has been found that children of religious orthodox parents show a moral tendency to the idea of obedience over autonomy and thinking for oneself. The study asked children to prioritize a list of statements, among them “to obey” and “to think for him or herself”, as expected when the results were sorted by their parent’s level of religious orthodoxy, the children of orthodox parents held obedience as more important than independent thought. The orthodox parents were those who held specific beliefs about the nature of god, Christ, and the concepts of heaven/hell. It is also note worthy that more children of evangelical and non-denominational children responded positively to obedience as a virtue than any other group. Some may say that there is no problem with this and that children should be obedient to their parents. However, it is widely recognized in the field of child development that an authoritative style of parenting, where autonomy and reasoning is encouraged, is more effective at producing well rounded and mentally stable adults. As compared to an authoritarian style of parenting where the child is expected to obey and not ask questions. There are an increasing percent of Evangelical and nondenominational Christian in America producing children who are less likely to think for themselves. It may not be entirely unreasonable to suggest that part of the reason our children’s test scores in science (a field which when studied properly relies heavily on critical thinking) is the rise of the rise of

evangelical Christians touting the “evolution is pollution” campaign filled with scientifically inaccurate information. According to a recent poll “36% of Americans believe that the Bible is the word of God and is to be taken literally.” (TIME/CNN Poll) This number is one of the highest in industrialized countries, and shows a frankly disturbing lack of scientific literacy due to the large number of biblical contradictions. The ability of religion to affect our minds is like none other in all of human history. It denounces a method that has enabled virtually every major development in the past two centuries. It is too important to let one more child be indoctrinated and would it would only bring our world closer to self destruction. (Dennet) Some may make the assertion that religions are only harmless words and ideas, that it is not the religions that cause harm but how people interpret them. But it is the words of the religion that inspire the evil deeds, they require no interpretation. If you are born in a religious household and are told the stories and promises from your holy book repeatedly from a young age, every authority figure in your life you will truly believe those words. And when enough people are brought up hearing words that promise eternal life for flying a plane into a building or words that say women are property or that there is a place of eternal suffering, they become more than just words. Enough people holding an idea strong enough can change the world for better or worse. Perhaps it is time we indoctrinate children with the golden rule and tell them moral stories of Greek literature rather than convince them that god flooded the earth to

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punish mankind. The oppression and brain washing in North Korea is likely one of the worst violations of human rights in history. Tales from the country eerily remind one of the dystopian future predicted in Orwell’s famous 1984. However what most people do not acknowledge is the methods through which the regime maintains their hold on the people, in fact the religious like worship of Jong Il family is accomplished through the same principals as the Abrahamic religions. Many of the ‘Ten Principles of Life’ bear a striking resemblance to common religious doctrine. “All societies must be governed by the great Leader’s ideologies” -1st Principle of Life The religious use of this idea is very evident in the Judeo-Christian texts in which God commands his people to continually convert or kill those of rival religions within their promise land. The Islamic call for global jihad is also easy to relate to this tenant of Korean ideology. “The Great Leader Must be revered and adored. The authority of the Great Leader is Absolute.” -2nd and 3rd Principals of Life. “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me” – 1st of the Ten Commandments

Here we see the insistence of absolute in fallible authority given to the subject of worship. The North Korean doctrine goes on to say that all should be willing to sacrifice their lives for the Great Leader and that in giving up your life for the causes of the Great Leader one can obtain eternal life. These principals are nearly identical to those of major religions which also mandate the complete devotion of your life to the deity. North Korea can be looked at as a case study of what would happen if every person was strictly indoctrinated into religious fanaticism. Some may view these as only the most extreme of religious doctrine and tout moral teachings of the bible including but not limited to the more reasonable of the Ten Commandments including the rule against murder. My initial question would be, “You would kill, cheat and steal but you are afraid of God?” The obvious answer to mentally healthy individuals is “no.” That is because we have morals independent of religion. Actually when highly indoctrinated members of a religious state do derive their morals from religion the results can be quite disturbing, and I am not talking about North Korea, I am talking about our strong ally Israel. Psychologist George Tamarin of Israel conducted an experiment in the seventies to measure the in-group modification of moral standards in children ages 8-14. He presented the children with the following text from Joshua 6:16-17, 19, 21, 24:

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“Joshua said to the people, "Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction ... But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD." ... Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword ... And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.” The children were then prompted to answer the question, "Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not?" The available answers were: total approval, partial approval/disapproval or total disapproval. From a varied sample of 1066 children 66% responded with total approval. The reasons given with the answers indicated approval because of god’s commandment of genocide, the ‘right’ that the Israelites had to the land or the unclean and evil nature of the Arabs. Of the 26% of respondents who disapproved not all of them showed an aversion to genocide, some only opposed to entering an unclean city. (Hartung) I am even more chilled by this tale of moral atrocities when I realize that the children who took part in this study are now old enough to be influential in a nuclear armed religious state. The indoctrination of children appears to increase the levels of hatred between Israel and the rest of the

Middle East. How can ever expect a peaceful resolution when children are trained for unconditional hatred? Indoctrinating children into religion is one of the greatest disrespects we can do them; it hinders their ability to think which leads to cascading problems in our world. I can only hope that one day out children will choose to rub away the lines in the sand we have drawn for them, start thinking for themselves and stop killing each other based on archaic traditions.

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Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Jesus Camp. Dir. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. DVD. 2006.