Without child indoctrination religion would perish
Anyone who has been brought up in a religion has experienced childhood indoctrination. How else have religions survived for so long?
Religion is first and foremost a business and all businesses need customers. The most valuable type of customers are those who stay with a company (or in this case a religion) for their entire lives. So how do you achieve that? A good dose of child indoctrination (i.e. brainwashing). You teach the children to love your brand of religion and tell them that it is correct and everyone else is wrong. Most people will hold onto those ideas driven into them in childhood throughout their adult life.
In Christianity, we can see that adult conversions just aren’t filling the pews. Go to most Christian churches and you will see mostly elderly believers waiting for their (very soon) trip to heaven to see Jesus in person. This leaves the churches in a dilemma because who will replace them? Traditionally, this was done by indoctrinating young children into the faith. Fortunately, most modern parents tend to baulk at the idea of brainwashing their children, no matter their own beliefs.
How do religions indoctrinate children?
It doesn’t matter what religion you look at indoctrination is always the same. It will centre around “sacred texts” and tell children stories about the faith. So instead of watching cartoons or kids’ movies, children in religious families are exposed to books, television and classes that focus solely on the beliefs of the religion. They are generally taught to pray in a certain way and in the case of Christianity to thank Jesus for everything in their life (even though it isn’t provided by Jesus).
The goal is to make children mentally reliant on religion and replace the child’s thoughts with that of religion. This is why so many children from religious backgrounds have mental health issues as they grow older. They will have constant conflict in their mind between reality and what their family’s religion has taught them is comparable to military training. You delete the old personality and attempt to replace it with a new one. A religious identity.
Overcoming indoctrination
The worst thing you can replace religion with is more religion so it’s important when overcoming religious indoctrination to accept the fact that it happened. You have a chance to move forward but I don’t think you can ever truly “move on” from the mental programming that religion entails. Unfortunately, many people end up with mental health problems due to the indoctrination process carried out on them as a child.
The difficulty in overcoming indoctrination is that it often forms the basis of our personal and cultural beliefs. Removing or ignoring that indoctrination process would mean erasing a part of ourselves. Fortunately, we live in the modern world and we now have access to a range of mental health professionals that can help move past some of the more horrific beliefs we end up with because of religious indoctrination. Beliefs like eternal damnation.
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”
Matthew 23:33
Can faith exist without indoctrination
The church is guilty of perpetuating religious nonsense in the minds of children. However, it also creates a basis of community among fellow believers. Indoctrination is a way of entering your children into this community of believers. As humans we share stories and it just so happens that religious stories are common to all cultures across Earth. I guess it is how we teach children about their family’s faith that crosses the line from instruction to indoctrination.
However, it will depend on your point of view as to where the line to indoctrination begins. For some ALL religious instruction is indoctrination (and they are probably right to some degree). For others, religion is something that should be embedded in the way we govern and essentially control the lives of believers and non-believers. Indoctrination will, however, exist even if faith ceases to be. Organised religious faith, on the other hand, cannot continue to enjoy so many adherents without some form of basic indoctrination process.
Should we intervene to protect children from religion?
Again, I think that there is a line between basic religious instruction and indoctrination. It is the how that matters. How are you teaching your children about religion? How do others teach your child about religion? Is it forced on them, or do they want to be involved? These are all questions we need to ask of religion and religious groups.
There should always be room for dissenters within modern religions, so let’s hope young people who don’t believe as their parents do are not punished for it. Just as a child of faith shouldn’t be punished for their belief. However, whatever you believe, you can agree that religions can’t survive without teaching children about faith from a young age. Call it indoctrination or call it instruction.