Nick has written a post about a movie called Jesus Camp. I thought my comment was going to get too long, so I'm posting it here instead.
Where do you draw the line between education and indoctrination? Can you give children a choice without educating them about religion anyway? I was a Christian from a young age, but I don't think I was indoctrinated. Do you? I didn't have a full understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. I "asked Jesus into my heart" when I was about 3 or 4 (maybe older, I can't remember), but I didn't really know what it meant. I did it just after my bath - I thought he'd be able to get in more easily if I wasn't wearing any clothes! But just because I only had a child's understanding doesn't mean I was indoctrinated. It wasn't something I was forced to do. I wanted to do it, and my parents weren't even in the room at the time.
My understanding of Christianity grew gradually as I got older. I don't know exactly when I understood different things, but I remember trying to evangelise my friends when I was about 6 or 7 (I was a very cute little girl back then, by the way). I organised a group of my friends at school into a little singing group and we performed some Sunday School songs for the rest of the class (and we were invited next door to sing to the other class as well). I used to invite friends to Sunday School. No one told me to. I just wanted my friends to know what I knew about Jesus. Does this sound like indoctrination?
When I was 12 (only 2 years older than your cut-off of 10), at Easter time, it really hit me just how significant and important it was that Jesus died for me. I count this as the time that I made a real commitment to Christ, and took my parents' faith on for myself. But that doesn't mean that I didn't believe it before, or that I just believed because my parents did. If that was the case, I might not have stayed a Christian. No one would have forced me to. My parents might not have been happy, but I'm sure they would have respected my decision.
Yes, my parents "forced" me to go to Sunday School when I was a kid. Mostly I enjoyed it, but sometimes I wanted to sleep in on Sunday mornings. But they forced me to do a lot of other things too - eat vegetables, go to school, practise piano - I'm grateful for all of it. Except for the brussels sprouts.
I'm a Christian, and I consider that I have been one pretty much my whole life. Although my understanding has changed, there was never a time that I didn't believe in God or what he has done. But I've always had a choice. I've had plenty of chances to change my mind. I've had my faith and beliefs challenged. I haven't shied away from such challenges - I read books by authors such as Dawkins, and I get into debates with people like Peter Slezak. I am not a Christian out of ignorance. The more I read and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. This, I think, is what Dawkins just doesn't get. He seems to think that the only Christians who aren't ignorant, indoctrinated and blind are the ones whose beliefs hardly resemble Christianity any more. He's wrong.
8 comments:
Disclaimer: I don't know what's inside your head and you can't really give a definite answer to a counterfactual so everything that follows is me playing Devil's Advocate.
The fact that you failed to be pursuaded when confronted with atheist arguments at 18 years of age could just mean that it was too late for you. Who's to say whether you would have become a theist if Peter had got to you before Easter 1993? Before that time you had lived and breathed Christianity but how much had you heard of the arguments against God's existence?
Do you really think that it's a mere co-incidence that you chose the same religion as your parents? I put it to you that had your parents forced you to spend every Sunday learning about Ganesha you would have enjoyed it. At 3 or 4 you would have accepted Him into your heart after your bath. At 12 you would have made a more rational commitment to Ganesha and at 18, had Peter Slezak tried to convert you to the Baptist Church, you would have rebuffed him.
Where do you draw the line between education and indoctrination?
Not an easy question but I'll take a stab at it -
Had your parents sent you to a variety of different religious institutions you would have been educated without being indoctrinated. You could have learnt about a number of very different, mutually exclusive religious traditions. You might have even decided that one of them was clearly the only true one. That might have been Christianity, it might have been Hinduism or it might have been none of them.
Unless someone is exposed to a number of different opinions on the topic, with the arguments presented in their strongest form, before they make their decision, they're being indoctrinated. (I have to phrase it like that because I do remember discussing other religions once at my Sunday school. That is, why Christianity is better than all the rest. We were all more impressed by the fact that Buddhists stole the name of their heaven from Kurt Cobain's band!)
I do understand that this is simply not going to happen in any family where the parents have a strong faith, simply because they won't consider the possibility that they are wrong (or the possibility that their children might prefer a different style of worship). But that just goes to show that too many people are far too sure of themselves. I, for one, would try to have my children learn about as many religious traditions as possible because I am not entirely certain that I am right and, even if I am right, any children I might have will not be my private property.
I think the thing that keeps me in Christ day in day out Lara is that it makes sense - the way nothing else really does - when I examine everything else, and I talk to people of those faiths, I am more and more persuaded that God exists, that Christ exists, that real faith exists.
Love George
Nick: I'll get back to you...
George: Amen, sister!
Kadj: Thanks for your comments. I'm sorry to hear that you are struggling. When you say "these kinds of people" do you mean people like Dawkins who think that all Christians are ignorant, or people like McGrath and myself who brush the problem aside?
I personally haven't come across anyone who has discouraged me from seriously questioning or examining my faith. I have come across Christians who have a very simplistic faith (e.g. "the Bible says so, and that's enough) or who don't want to question what they believe in case they can't find the answers. I confess that I feel some degree of pity for such people, though I realise that not everybody has the capacity for deep consideration of the nuances of the Christian faith (and I'm just an intellectual snob!)
I think there does need to be more encouragement for serious examination and engagement not just with Christian thinking, but also secular attacks on Christianity. That's why groups such as CASE are so important.
Nick: One thing I will say for the moment is that I did hear arguments against God before 1993 and I had to deal with challenges to my faith (although they were generally screaming matches in the school playground: "God just doesn't exist, OK?" "Yes, he does!") I started debating evolution with my science teacher in year 7, although I was a young-earth creationist back then...
Disclaimer : I am in about the same boat as Lara here. But I love to play devils advocate...
nick : I like what you say, but I wan't to use a word other than indoctrination. The reason being that indoctrination has taken on a much narrower meaning in this day and age than it's actual definition. (I take it back, it's actual definition is actually narrower than the way it is used now, at least according to wikipedia Let's use Predispose which has a more mild meaning, but I think conveys the point we are after... And lets take it that there are levels of predisposition, its not a binary state.
Our parents do Predispose us to speak english, brush our teath, eat our vegies. Noone considers this wrong because they agree with the "Predisposeition" being applied. Its only when it comes to a more complex area. Sexuality. Religion. Life/Choice. An area more generally up for debate, that this Predisposition is considered an indoctrination by objectors.
Realistically, I think we are always predisposed. But even if we sit down and try to evaluate things completly fairly, we are going to read about one option first, see one option enacted by our parents, our carers, or our childhood friends first. After that whatever we look at next will be considered in light of that first predisposition. No child would be capable of remaining unpredisposed (heh) long enough to have the facilities to make a rational choice.
This is turning into an essay... who wants the soapbox next?
I’ll have a go, though I fear I won’t be nearly as eloquent as what is written above.
On a (religious) retreat I went on recently, someone mentioned a quote which I can’t remember exactly and not sure who it was by (dalai lama maybe?) but it basically said you don’t need to leave the religion you were brought up in. The more I talk to people, of various faiths, the more I see the sense in this. At the end of the day, most religions have a spectrum of believers that ranges from the hard core fundamentalists all the way through to the thinkers and those that question and re-evaluate as they go. I’ve seen many people reject what they were taught when they grew up and try out other religions (Buddhism seems to be the popular one to try out) only to eventually find that what they were looking for was right there in their first religion. And most of these people agree that they are thankful they had that religious upbringing when they were young so as to give them a base to go back to in the future. And when they go back, they don’t go back to exactly what they were taught, but to something that they’ve really thought out for themselves.
Kat
Good on you for debating and getting out there :)
I can't claim to have read many arguments for or against Christianity, but I can claim to have experienced many alternative points of view, and considered them as best I could. There's nothing quite like doing intensive study on mythologies to see that we have the dying god and resurrected son, the old man and the spirit of wisdom for our Trinity, and that many of the aspects of our faith can be looked at through the lenses of such beliefs, even argued for or against from them. However, what we can also claim...we who have formed what in 'Christian' terms can be called a personal faith...is that the very thing we cling to has been made our own, through something more akin to thoughtful consideration than indoctrination in nearly all cases. Your post has given me something to think about explicating more thoroughly over the next little while. Thanks!
Kadj: I agree that Lara is no indoctrinated fool. She is a highly intelligent person whose indoctrination has, lucky, not stifled her intellectual honesty as it has for those Christians who believe on faith alone. Nevertheless, the philosophical justifications she gives for her religious beliefs are post hoc arguments to justify what she already believes.
Georgina: If you really have considered all the alternatives with an open mind then you can be proud of your choice. But, I have to ask, did you at any stage think that those alternatives were live options? If so, good for you! Your choice was a real one and not a mere product of indoctrination.
Lara: How did you receive those challenges to your faith? Did you put your beliefs aside for a while to examine them a little more critically? Or did you follow Deuteronomy 13? I certainly followed the Deuteronomy attitude as a child, the first time I ever seriously questioned my beliefs was at 18 years old; that's the normal thing for indoctrinated people to do.
ChinDoGu: Thanks for the link, it helps me clarify what I was trying to say. The first definition is a bit too broad - 'instruction in the fundamentals of a system of belief (such as a philosophy or religion)' - I'd call that "enculturation". But the Princeton Cognitive Science WordNet definition cited - 'teaching someone to accept doctrines uncritically' - seems to be the sort of definition that we can work with. I think it would be accurate to say that all of orthodox Christianity fits this definition. That is, Christians believe the Bible to be divinely inspired and, even if one takes a less literalistic reading, it still can't be challenged directly. So I will continue to claim that a religious upbringing is something far stronger than predisposing or even enculturation. I almost agree with you that 'No child would be capable of remaining unpredisposed long enough to have the facilities to make a rational choice' in that I agree that it would be very difficult in practice. My point was that religious parents rarely even attempt to help their children take a critical look at religions. (This is probably more common in mixed-faith families but, overall, still very rare.)
Kat: I have heard that argument before from the Dalai Lama and also from John Shelby Spong. It sounds a lot like what ChinDoGu was saying about enculturation. The argument works very well if no religion has an exclusive claim on Truth. But if that's what you're saying then you're agreeing with people like Dawkins who say that the only intelligent Christians are the ultra-liberals. I think it's fair to say that religious relativism is a heterodox opinion in the west. (Indeed, Lara uses stronger language, she likes to describe Spong as a "heretic".)
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