Indoctrination

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoctrination

Finn & Sythe says that my Christianity is embedded in me because of indoctrination. This is somewhat true - because I grew up in a Christian home with Christian morals and values. Over time my family divorced and the morals were lost. So i was "free" for almost 2-3 years (because the word jesus wasn't even mentioned). Then I realized I missed it. I missed not having Christianity in my life.

Discuss whether you think I chose this on free will, to resort back to Christianity as something to hold my head up. Give a good reason. I don't want people to say; "No, it's indoctrination" just because you don't believe in Christianity.

 

Why did you miss Christianity?

 

It was a comfort in my life. There was a gap that it filled.. A feeling of loneliness. Not a gap for Christianity itself, but Christianity filled that gap.

BTW guys I don't want you to think that I'm some "Jesus Freak". I'll never preach to you or tell you that you're going to hell.

I fucking cuss, I've stolen, I fuck girls and i'm not even married.

 

So basically it's out of loneliness. Would it be discomforting for you to think that when we die, there is no heaven or hell? We all just die and rot.

 

I feel scared because obviously SOMETHING has to happen. We weren't created to just die; that's not even biblical.

 

So because it's not biblical, it couldn't be true?

 

To him it is his right to believe that there is more than just a meaningless death. However if one looks at it in an atheistic view it would be nonsense, again that is a choice he/she makes.

 

I see your point but even most atheist know that there's SOMETHING. Nobody can honestly believe there's nothing else. How would you sleep at night knowing that when you die, your "spirit" goes nowhere?

 

I go in the same direction as you, except I've been a church going man for my whole life, so thinking otherwise would make my life here a large waste of time. I myself think about death/afterlife all the time and I firmly believe that there is something else. There are philosophers that believe in a God and those who don't, some even believe there is a God, but think they don't care about us and this world as if it did, the world would be a better place.

Bottom line is its nearly impossible to argue who is right and who is wrong. Though I certainly hope there is an afterlife

 

That is, at best, an assumption. Who is to say that the something is eternal bliss, torment, or nothingness. You're relying on Pascal's Wager, stop that.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_ignorantium

 

So what's wrong with that?

But the thing is, it will never be proved true OR false until you're dead.

 

The "2-3 years you were free" were not freedom at all. Even if you didn't hear the word Jesus in that time, you were still brought up to view the world through a lens of Christianity. That is, you may not have been taught anything explicitly, but you already had formed certain beliefs and values that persisted in the way you viewed/understood the world on a daily basis.

Periodic validation is simply part of internalization. If the beliefs you were taught no longer received the same support after the divorce, then they may have been threatened, necessitating either reinforcement or re-evaluation. Your choice was not necessarily the better or more fulfilling one: it was simply resistance to changing your beliefs.

 

Kind of hypocritical to call yourself a Christian when you do things specifically prohibited in the bible, dontcha think?

 

Perhaps not. So why believe in one particular God? Children are born scientists and broken into religious slaves from a young age. As Sythe has said, the only way that someone could consistently hold the belief that a magical man in the sky makes everything work is if they were mentally abused / indoctrinated from a young age. Otherwise, the logic processing part of the brain just rejects something so obviously false.

 

I understand that, because any "magic man in the sky" cannot be physically or scientifically proved. I don't have much more to say on whether he's real or not because that's not an argument i'm going to win since you guys only look for the physical proof.

Not everyone's perfect. I'm the first to admit my human desires are much stronger than they should be. I'm not perfect.

I don't have much to say because this is a good explanation of what could have been the cause too.

In all guys; when it comes down to the proof of whether God is real or not (since this subject has been brought up so much). It's true. I won't try because i cannot prove that God or any "magic man in the sky" is physically real. There's no scientific proof.

Romans 10:17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. (The bible). It's your choice whether or not to try it out for yourself. Me, I was just born with the automatic indoctrination.

 

"That can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" - Christopher Hitchens

I'm curious why you chose this faith instead of following: Thor, Mithras, Zeus, Allah, Poseidon, Atlas, Baal, or any other god from the thousands (http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_myth_gods_index.htm). It's because you were, in fact, indoctrinated by an early Christian setting.

 

Well, in the strictest sense of the word, it was due to childhood indoctrination. All of us were indoctrinated in one way or another as a child, to think murder is evil, to think certain things are good/bad. But the fact that you went on hiatus for 2-3 years from your religious beliefs does not make it free will but the return does not make it the cause of indoctrination.

When you broke away from your religion, there were other factors to the break as Sin has pointed out. But, underlying factors behind a result do not mean they are the only catalysts. Is it impossible that you gained some freedom from your childhood indoctrination? Of course, it would be wrong to say it is impossible since we cannot dig into your brain and discover what happened that day.

Now, when you broke the hiatus and went back to Christianity, this was an act of necessity if I understand correctly. You felt empty without it, you felt incomplete (correct me if I'm wrong). This emptiness was a result of indoctrination. The idea that you always need God, or Jesus, or whatever omnipotent being you choose to follow, was put into your head as a child in subtle or obvious ways. Once again, this is not to say that you have no power to break the bond from your religion, it is to say that the idea was placed into your mind that you always need to fill that gap with something.

So, to sum things up, I believe that the need to fill up the hole in your life was a result of that gap being put there by your parents or whomever took care of you as a child. This gap was caused by indoctrination so, in my opinion, it is not DIRECTLY linked to indoctrination but it is close enough to blame it for the return. As for when you broke off is a harder situation to determine. As i have said, it is impossible to discover what was going through your head those days, but most likely doubt and sadness filled your mind. Doubt over whether or not God truly loves your perhaps, or some other religious contradiction in this divorce. But I believe that if you were truly indoctrinated into your religion, the break would not have been caused.

The indoctrination when you were a child was minor, thus the break in your beliefs. But, it was strong enough to maintain a gap that needs to be filled, thus tying you to religion or another belief.

 

There's only one type of proof. If I say I have a baseball, and you ask for proof, I show the baseball that I have as proof. What is 'physical proof'?

No, you were born a Scientist and Atheist until you were indoctrinated by society and your family into Christianity. If you had not been swarmed by the fear of the magic man in the sky and the relentless bible lessons and church visits, you would not have even known about Christianity. You would have dismissed Jesus with the logic-processing part of your brain just as the logic-processing part of your brain dismisses Allah, Thor, Vishnu, or any of the other false Gods (that is to say, all of them.)

However, as you were born into that one Religion, you ignore the fallacies of Christianity while acknowledging the fallacies of all others.

 

I believe he means physical proof as compared to spiritual or truth based on faith. Physical proof would be defined as per your example, tangible evidence that clearly proves the statement true or false. Spiritual or truth based on faith proof would be evidence that is supported by a religion's beliefs and values. Now, you would most likely not accept this as proof but the religious would so there are always two sides to the argument.

I agree that we are all born scientists, seeking the fascinating and wanting to discover every facet of life. But, we are not born Atheists. Atheism is a belief, as a child we have no belief until we are taught one. We simply know we are on this earth and live as such. So, for a baby/child to be an Atheist he would have to be taught about the denial of the existence of a God because said child does not even know of this mystical being names God yet. Thus, a child cannot have a belief to start with without being taught what to believe because beliefs are based off of knowledge which are given to children.