by Matthew G.
The other day my consultation work brought me to a Christian daycare center. I was appalled by the amount of religious indoctrination that was occurring — all to children under the age of five.
Some of the things that I had to listen to that these children now believe to be facts were (in no specific order):
- Jesus came back from the dead.
- Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus.
- Halloween is evil (I have no idea how this came up)
There could have been more but I tried to tune out as much as possible. It was causing me distress to see such young children indoctrinated with a belief system based on events that did not occur.
At this age, children do not have the critical thinking and reasoning skills to be able to discern that what they are being told may not actually be true. The trust the adults in their lives and think they know everything and would never tell them something that is be untrue.
Thankfully, if I was able to overcome the brainwashing, these kids also have a chance. But it will take a lot of work for these kids to adopt a rational and skeptical mindset when from a very young age they are taught to believe in miracles.
The craziest part of the morning was when the teacher had the four year olds gather in a circle to play “Duck, Duck, Goose” — or so I thought. Instead the children had to yell: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Is Alive!”
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the insanity or cry for these kids.
What do you think — is this acceptable religious indoctrination or, as Dawkins might say, religious child abuse?
Matthew G. is a born again skeptic with a great ambition for helping others to think rationally.
I’d go along with calling it child abuse. I daresay these people sincerely believe that what they are telling the kids are true. They probably think they are saving them from hell. But they are causing harm nevertheless.
is this acceptable religious indoctrination or, as Dawkins might say, religious child abuse?
I think the answer is probably “a little bit of both”. There is nothing you have described that I think is particularily obnoxious (although there are hints of the self esteem manipulation at the core of christian dogma, which definitely slide into the abuse end of the spectrum). Personally, I don’t see too much of a problem with teaching children fairy stories about how the world came to be or presenting allegorical stories with moral lessons as true to a child who is too young to grasp what an allegory is. They might experience a bit of trauma when exposed to people who don’t accept that viewpoint (and hopefully they will before too long), but I don’t think that kind of preschool activity is necessarily damaging per se.
The really abusive parts are where children are taught that these beliefs are sacrosanct, and that they must shield themselves from any criticism. While this comes later, I think it will inevitably come for kids in that situation, and combined with deeply rooted irrational beliefs is pretty damaging for that persons outlook.
Anyway, children pick up a lot of ideas about the world at that age that are plain wrong, wherever they go to daycare. It’s a normal part of education to revise your understanding as you go along. I don’t rate what you’re told at daycare as particularily high on the list of influences on your worldview – what you’re told at school and what you’re told at home are much more important. Kids in that setting could happily grow up to be freethinkers (if their home life is open and they have good education), and kids in secular daycare can easily become indoctrinated by religious relatives and biased education further along the line.
You make some very good points. The next week I attended this daycare when the following occurred:
The kids were running around asking each other if they were “on the good side or the bad side.” I discovered from listening that the ‘good side = Jesus’ and ‘bad side = devil’ . They continued running around and grilling each other. At some point the preschool teacher overheard this and yelled out to the class:
“If you’re not with us, you are against us….the bible says so!”
Which made me wonder:
Why are kids at this age (or any age) being taught that if people have different beliefs than they do, that this means they are the enemy?
I’ve thought for a long time that the reason the fundamentalists go on and on about how Christians are persecuted is because they need to be. If they are doing what they believe is right, their beliefs teach them that Satan will be trying to attack them. If Satan isn’t attacking them, it’s because they are already on the wrong path, and he doesn’t want to shake them up and accidentally send them down the right path. So they *need* to believe that Satan is attacking them in order to believe they are “on the right path”, and therefore every time they can claim they’re being attacked, it reinforces their belief in their rightness…..
And the leadership uses the “us against them” mentality to keep the less fanatical from straying. Maybe you don’t think the people in your church are particularly kind, but how much worse would it be out in the secular world?
Soon enough people will see the error in their ways. Christianity is already on its last leg defense tactic of “anybody who disagrees with us is just temptation from the devil”. They have no logical recourse aside from that, they have nothing left but the bible to back up their claims.
On the other hand, every day science is advancing. Every day we gain more knowledge of our past and the way things work. We are advancing while christians are hiding in the dark. We are only gaining a firmer stance while the christians are loosing footing every day. Maybe years ago supernatural events had to be believed because we just didn’t have enough knowledge to think otherwise. Now we do have that knowledge. Now there is no reason to believe in the supernatural because we can explain away everything to have a natural cause.
Religion is silly. It is an old way of thinking. It is like the recording industry is to downloadable music, they keep pushing their same tired CDs on us when the technology is outdated. It starts with a few tech savvy people, it spreads to a niche group of people which becomes popularized and is eventually adapted by the bigger corporations and soon enough we have things like itunes. We have influential companies and people supporting the new way of doing things. The same will happen with religion. Right now, we may be that small group of people, but our views are becoming popularized and are already gaining influential people. Soon corporate america will adopt secularism as the new way of life, throw the old religious restrictions out the window and slowly but surely just phase religion out of the spot light. People will stop talking about it, stop thinking about it, and eventually, just like cassette tapes, only a small group of “collectors” will follow it, or even remember that it ever existed. It will just be that part of our past that we laugh at and guffaw and wonder ‘how did we ever go around listening to that shit? What were we thinking?’
Sorry this turned into a long ramble. I’m not going to proof read it, so I’ll just hope that it makes a lick of sense.
All of you who say that this Christian “indoctrination” is child abuse are not thinking very logically. You can go to any daycare in America and find that every single one of them is teaching some sort of doctrine. Whether its the golden rule, respect of others, or proper manners. Believe it or not those ideals are actually part of some sort of “doctrine.” But do you accuse them of abusing children? Of course you don’t (because that would be just plain stupid).
You need to understand that everyone has their own worldview, whether it be Christian, Islamic, or Atheist. And even daycare facilities subscribe to some sort of worldview. So to say that teaching kids a Christian worldview is child abuse is completely ridiculous. You have the right to disagree with a particular worldview, but don’t call it child abuse; have some intellectual integrity for pete’s sake.
If parents are sending their kids to a “Christian” daycare centre, I would imagine they’re probably teaching them much the same kinds of ideas at home. In which case the daycare centre is the least of their worries. Hopefully the smart kids will grow out of it.
I was raised in a totally non-religious home, but went to a Catholic school. In first grade everyone had to take religious education classes, where the Catholic kids and the “non-Catholic” kids were split into two streams, I suppose in order for the religious indoctrination to be tailored more effectively. After a particularly bizarre and confusing lesson about the holy trinity – God is his own dad and his son, and also did we mention a ghost? – I went home, pointed at the sky, and proclaimed to my mom that “my teacher says the sun is God!”. I wonder if my mother was upset that I was being indoctrinated by Aztecs.
lol
sun worshiping! Were you pointing to the origins of christian religion?
Not necessarily. Sometimes, it’s a matter of availability and economics.
To add another, sightly more serious anecdote – a good friend of mine sent her daughter to a Christian school in first grade, not realising that it was run by crazy fundies. She took her kid out of the school when it emerged that the teachers were telling them things like “The devil is an evil spirit that is always trying to get inside you to control you”. The kid was having violent nightmares and stomachaches that went away as soon as she changed schools. That, in my book, is religious child abuse. On the up side, the child – who is now 9 – now has a healthy skepticism of anything to do with religion, the Bible, or Christianity, which I’m sure will serve her well in the future.
I have the exact same anecdote in my past but with a different ending: The child, who is now 40, has never been able to forget those nightmares, is now a devout an tortured believer, and has taught all her fears to their children.
:(
Thank you for sharing your experience. I’m afraid such outcome tends to be more common outcome.
I’m pretty sure my lingering fear of the dark is from my idiot fundie of a father (whom I no longer speak to) telling me that satan would get me.
I’m convinced that many children, and even some adults, who are afraid of the dark and hate going to sleep are that way because they were taught that childhood prayer containing the line”…If I should die before I wake…”
Nice way to settle the kids for bedtime, putting the fear of death into them.
Not only death…but if you are not careful you will be tortured forever. Just dying seems pretty great next to that.
True, but that prayer is still pretty chilling. It goes something like (correct me if I’m wrong) this:
“If I should die before I wake,
pray the lord my soul to take.”
What I remember feeling was not especially fear that I would die, but rather the fact that it was all out of my hands. My parents were telling me that I might just die without warning and without being able to do anything about it, that someone would ‘take my soul’ (without ever really telling me what that meant) and that I’d better hope it was god. My parents were never of the fire-and-brimstone variety, but they made it clear that I would certainly not like the alternative.
This feeling of being powerless at the hands of these mysterious forces was the part I found most unsettling and may have sewn the seeds of my increasing distrust of religion as I grew.
It is child abuse. It may look like it is not so just because we are used to those stupidities. The only question is the depth of the abuse: Is the indoctrinations going to stop here? If it stops little harm is done (God will be just one of many childish fairy tales) but in most cases kids grow up, they start asking questions and the indoctrinators must keep up and start poisoning their minds with more complicated and subtle fables. To prevent kids from understanding the world as it is is child abuse. To alienate them from reality is child abuse. To stuff their minds with ancient superstitions is child abuse. To prevent them from acquiring the intellectual tools that will help them to build their personalities is child abuse.
There is also the issue of creating divisions between different faiths — how much easier it is demonise and project hatred for those of opposing faiths if they are separated both at home and at school. The troubles in Northern Ireland vividly demonstrated this.
I am a parent of two kids. My eldest (daughter) goes to a religous based day care because, at least around here, its either an at home day care or a day care out of a church. My son goes to an at home but the reason my daughter goes to the church based care is because she is diabetic and we couldn’t find anyone with space available who was willing to care for her needs. As a side note, I did agree to my wife before we were married that I would allow the children to be raised catholic (her somewhat practiced faith), because she agreed that they would hear my side of it as well.
With that being said, this post is very poignant to me because I have been having alot of the same thoughts regarding the early age at which she is being brainwashed. My wife has even started making comments about some things I say to the kids. But the problem is, my daughter doesnt fully understand what she’s learning, so what I say means absolutely nothing. I will say in the defense of the care she attends, they dont say that Halloween is evil (they actually celebrate it in the same way a public school would), its VERY basic stuff i.e. jesus loves me, he died for me, this candy is awesome, if i pray he listens, etc etc and most of the teaching is for school preperation than religion (and she does learn ALOT). But I still have a deepset problem because I realize that this is just basic indoctrination. I’m really unsure what to do about the situation because they do provide her with a great service, but I know its at a price. I just keep thinking that I will eventually be able to show her the other side, the rational side, and she can make a critically thoughtout choice for herself.
This has got to be incredibly difficult for you. The problem with teaching kids that basically anything is possible if god does it, is they are at an age where magical thinking is rampant and critical thinking is absent. When you teach a child that there is a place you will go to be tortured forever just because you didn’t love this specific god that is a HUGE issue in my book.
Some Christians try to make the point that everyone has a choice of what to believe it…but tell a child that they can either love jesus or be tortured forever. There’s no actual choice because they are at an age where they really believe a place like hell could exist. Of course they are going to choose the former. There’s no real choice to be made when you don’t know that what people are telling you might not be true.
Is it strange that I actually got a few tears in my eyes when I read this? I can’t imagine how amazingly confusing and upsetting it must be, feeling like you can’t figure out how to help your own daughter learn to think critically and understand your beliefs without going against the agreement with your wife to a degree. My heart goes out to you, man.
Well it is, IMHO, abuse.
I have been married twice, my first wife and I divorced when my oldest daughter was 5. While I was stationed overseas she re-married a fundie, became a fundie, changed her name to his and relocated. Long story short, I did not get to see my daughter until she was 22 years old, when we located each other through the web.
She was schooled and raised in the fundie world, and indoctrinated just as these little children are. She did not know or understand eveolution. She never had a halloween after her mother re-located. The horrors go on and on.
Fortunately there might be some argument to stubborness having a genetic component. As soon as she turned 18 she was out of there. Travelled across the country and landed in Berekley. She is now a Policitcally active neo-hippie in college.
This has really been a difficulty for her education. She consistantly runs into topics that all the other students are familier with, about which she has no information at all. Especially in history and science. See the early indoctrination is laying groundwork for further indoctrination, and still more indoctrination, and for most kids it sticks for life in some way.
Since we have found each other she has opened her mind even more and is in school and politically active, enjoiying life.
When I found out that they never let her have a single halloween, I was heartbroken. Halloween is a blast for kids, dress up like monsters and get candy. I wanted so much to kick her stepdad’s ass, but he had died. Her mother still attends services, but not at the fundie chirch, and is still a beliver despite the deprivation the church inflicted on our child.
So, yeah I think it is brainwashing children in order to brainwash teens in order to keep brainwashed adults. It is stalinesque. Yet even so, children can and do overcome this, so there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Dave…thanks for sharing this. I’m sorry to hear what your daughter went through, but it’s great that you were able to reconnect and discover that she had already begun the healing process of being able to think for herself.
Thanks. I’ll let everyone know she is doing great, but had to work twice as hard just to catch up her education.
Incidentally the reason her mother later gave me for not letting me know where they went was to avoid conflict between me and her new husband (now deceased). In other words she was quite willing to sacrifice my and my daughters relationship with each other in order to protect her christian family’s faith. Makes you think doesn’t it?
This story damn near mirrors mine, except I was the kid who was raised by a crazy bitch of a fundie mother. I like to tell people that if they want a glimpse into the world in which I was raised, watch the Jesus Camp documentary. I too have broken off contact with my mother and have a healthy relationship with my father, who actually is a sort of mildly practicing Christian that I wasn’t allowed to see as a child because he wasn’t a “true” believer in my mother’s eyes.
i think you missed the part where you walked into a Christian daycare. I mean, honestly – what do you expect them to teach the kids? We all may think Christianity is crap, but if a parent wants to raise a child as Christian, and the parents probably agree with what is going on at the daycare, I don’t see how this is a surprise to anyone….
I don’t think anyone is claiming to be surprised at the fact that the children are taught about Christianity – the surprise is more about how they are being taught, and about what exactly those Christian teachings entail. You wouldn’t be surprised to visit a boys’ school and find that all the pupils were male, but you would be surprised if they were being taught that women were agents of the devil. (Actually… on second thought… maybe that’s a bad example.)
However, your point does beg the question – if we’re going to argue that what happens at this particular preschool is abusive, do we then have to concede that all religious education is a form of abuse (as I think Dawkins would)? Or can we picture a religious-based school or daycare that we would be less disturbed by?
“Begging the question” is a logical fallacy that basically means “circular reasoning”. It is not a synonym for “raises the question”. Just FYI.
Doh! Thanks. :)
I don’t think that necessarily follows, but it is certainly worth asking what kind of religious teaching might reasonably be considered child abuse. I think there are two major aspects that are abusive (although this will probably do a spanish inquisition on me – three reasons….four reasons…..among the reasons are.. :)
1. The fear of god. Or of satan or whatever. I know adult atheists who still find the concept of the devil genuinely terrifying. I know someone (also an atheist) who asks herself “what would jesus do?” before almost everything she does, not because she admires Jesus’ morality or wishes to emulate him, but because she is scared of what might happen otherwise, even though in her rational moments she does not believe in god. The fear has become part of her personality. It’s baggage that she can’t drop and she is all the more frustrated with herself because of it. And remember that I’m talking about people who *don’t* believe in god. I’m sure we all know people who do believe in god and live every day in terror, guilt and repression. If that’s not child abuse, I don’t have the faintest idea what is.
2. Screwed up logic. We all know that the religious need to maintain partitions between different parts of their experience. They use different standards of evidence for god than they do for whether it’s safe to get on a plane. They use arguments they must – at some level – know are insane and which they wouldn’t accept about anything else. I think the earlier point about education fits in here or is closely related: the point is that teaching people that they have to believe insane, contradictory things with threat of violence deprives them of some of the skills they will need to prosper and be happy in later life.
In both cases, it’s obvious that the conditioning thankfully doesn’t always take hold, but I consider it abuse because there is a good chance it *will* take hold and because – even if the parents don’t view it in that way – it’s really the goal. I’m sure they don’t want to screw their kids up, but they do want them to believe in god and they believe these are some of the prerequisites.
So my initial thoughts on what religious teachings constitute abuse are that the ones resulting in 1 and 2 are abusive. However, I know this is in no way good enough. Does there have to be *intent* of harm? Clearly not always. Is it possible to link later neuroses to religious teaching? Clearly not always.
To be on the safe side, I tend to think of it like this: teaching people *what* to think is abusive. Teaching people *how* to think is not.
Audrey (below) has already made me remember that there’s a category 3, which I should have thought of myself.
3. Inciting people to do horrible things to others. If you encourage your children to follow rules that lead to oppression of sectors of society or individuals, then you are abusing both those children and the people they themselves abuse.
ok, well fair enough. But even so, even given the specific examples of the author, that doesn’t seem too far out of the normal. The first 2 examples in the list are basic Bible stories that are taught all the time to basically all Christian children. Yes, they’re logically impossible. Yes, they’re absurd stories. But they are par for the course for even the most mainstream Christian families. That halloween thing is not from the bible, but it not uncommon for a lot of churches. The “Jesus, Jesus, Is Alive”, well….. may be creepy as hell to us, but again, I wouldn’t think it is too far out of the norm.
Now, I would be a bit more concerned or take aback if they were going into even more controversial topics with 3-5 year olds, like anti gay, anti abortion, anti womens-rights, etc.
It was not that I was surprise that this was occurring in a Christian daycare Joe…but that I think this kind of conditioning of beliefs is inherently wrong. Teaching children anything not supported by evidence and claiming it to be true and without question to children unable of critical thought is what I have a problem with. Especially when the ideas being taught potentially can affect the rest of their lives in a very negative way.
Why do religious have to start teaching children at such a young age? If they truly believe that what they believe is the truth, why not wait until the child has grown enough mentally to teach them. Yes I agree that children are brainwashed at a young age. It is the best time to begin to train someone. I doubt many of the truly extreme religious came to their views during adulthood. Most of the more extreme issues were probably taught and instilled in them when they were under the age of 10 with reinforcing of them until they are 18 or so. They may leave their religion for a time or even many years but when they go back they go back to what they were taught in their youth.
I think it has more to do with teaching in general. You wouldn’t wait until someone was 10 to teach them to say “please” and “thank you.” As part of the language and social custom, parents tell any child old enough to talk to say “please” and “thank you” well before a child is capable of knowing what those words mean. Learning peekaboo and motor skills like stacking and rolling, how to count, the alphabet, and colors is primary education that’s necessary for the next steps. Religious primary education is story-telling, who and what is good or bad, and that there’s a god. The story-telling can be particularly scary, but if someone is religious, I don’t expect them to distinguish between innocuous stories of the secular sort and the biblical lessons they also consider fundamental. They “know” things, and teach their babies from the start just like any other type of knowledge. Religion isn’t an advanced subject that should wait until the child has practiced reasoning skills, I mean, I guess you have to look at it like you would regarding teaching children about anything you think or know is true. I don’t think that the intent is to brainwash children – they believe something is true and their child’s formation would be lacking if it were delayed, this isn’t a strategy.
So, Joe,
Do you think it is appropriate to have kids sing songs like “I’m in the Lord’s Army” while they learn about the Israelites marching around Jericho to make its walls fall down? As a young kid, that’s what we learned in vacation bible school. I later learned that the entire population of Jericho was slaughtered (including women and children) when I read the bible for myself.
I think a much better question to ask (which might be the question being asked here in a roundabout way):
Is it possible for religious parents to teach their own religion to their own children without it being considered “religious child abuse?”
I suspect that the ultimate answer from the author would be, “No.” Maybe I’m wrong, but I suspect not. To me, from my perspective, that’s absurd.
At this age, children do not have the critical thinking and reasoning skills to be able to discern that what they are being told may not actually be true. The trust the adults in their lives and think they know everything and would never tell them something that is be untrue.
So, let’s follow your logic to its absolute extreme in an attempt at being consistent. If we are going to prohibit parents from passing on their religious beliefs (or at best, argue that they shouldn’t) because children lack the cognitive capacity to critically engage such beliefs, then shouldn’t we prohibit the teaching of every topic that transcends their cognitive capacity?
For example, let’s take a topic like evolution (something I accept as scientific ‘truth’, to be clear).
I would argue that developmental psychology clearly demonstrates that elementary aged children do not have the cognitive capacity to critically engage a subject as complex as evolution any more than they do something as complex as religion.
So, if your argument is that they lack the cognitive capacity to process religious belief, then why wouldn’t you apply that same logical argument to the complexities of science as well?
From my perspective, it’s all a bit cloak and dagger. Your real problem is with religion, and you view passing on religious stories and tradition as brainwashing. Your argument for doing so is the cognitive capacity of the children. But ironically, you won’t apply the same logic when it comes to complex topics of which you approve.
Furthermore, what do you expect religious parents to do? Even if they didn’t initiate this kind of education, children inevitably reach the age where curiosity dominates their young thought processes. “Mommy, why do you go to church every week? Daddy, why do you pray before bed?” Inevitably, the children will initiate those questions. What would you have a religious parent do? Moreover, do you honestly expect us to believe that you won’t pass your skepticism and atheism on to your children? What gives you the right to pass your ideals on to your children but to question the rights of other parents to do the same? Isn’t that entirely hypocritical?
What I’m not saying: that I defend this preschool/daycare. I don’t know enough about it to defend or condemn it.
What I am saying: parents have the right to pass on the ideals they cherish to their children, even before they have to cognitive capacity to process it themselves. Moreover, they have the responsibility to engage their children as they do develop the capacity to think more critically and to lovingly support them regardless of what they choose in regard to religion.
Sure they do. But I do think there’s a difference between teaching kids that, for example, there’s a God who listens when you pray, and teaching them that they’ll burn in hell if they don’t love Jesus. I have a problem with threatening children with hellfire and brimstone the same way I would have a problem with teaching them that women are stupid, or that Struwelpeter will cut their thumbs off with scissors if they don’t behave, or any of a million other harmful beliefs – whether their parents share those beliefs or not.
What I would like to see, is a frank acknowledgment of the difference between reality and beliefs. When a child asks, “Mommy why do you go to church every week? Daddy, why do you pray before bed?”, the ideal answer, to me, would start with the phrase “because I believe ___________”. This presents it as what it is: an individual’s belief. When a parent says that the child must also believe it, that is where my line gets crossed. I don’t see it as hypocritical for a skeptic to raise skeptical children, and at the same time criticize religious indoctrination, because skepticism inherently means that as they grow up, the children will decide for themselves what to believe. Indoctrinated children are not allowed that opportunity, and that denial entirely warrants criticism.
So Cheryl,
You would say both of the following are acceptable:
“I believe there is a God, son.” “I don’t believe there is a God, son.”
Did I understand you right?
Now, based on your experience, how likely is it for those conversations to happen just like that?
Based on my experience with evangelical atheists (which is what this blog is all about) and evangelical Christians (what I grew up in), neither of them is going to use the “I believe” statements — even though I would agree with you. I think “I believe” is the way to go, and it’s how I describe my own faith.
I guess my point is that I suspect that the author of this post is (or will be) just as evangelical about his skepticism and atheism as the religious people he is criticizing. I’m obviously drawing from my own experience and extrapolating, so I could be wrong.
“I believe there is a Santa Claus, son.”
“I don’t believe there is a Santa Claus, son.”
I would say both of the preceding are not acceptable, but the fact that they are both asserting beliefs is not what the evaluation is based on.
evangelical atheism sounds like an oxymoron to me. I dont go around knocking on doors telling people to disbelieve or else. Can you give me more explantion of what you mean by that term please?
In response to your first question: Yes, you understood me correctly. It wouldn’t make much sense to think that parents who believe in God should tell their child they believe there isn’t one, or vice versa. I think that all children’s questions should be answered with honesty and personal integrity, but I also think that beliefs should be presented as exactly that: beliefs. Beliefs are like opinions, not facts.
To your second question: I realize it’s uncommon for people to be so objective about their beliefs. The likelihood, or unlikelihood, of my preferred response occurring does not change the fact that it is my most preferred response. But, it’s nice to know that you do use it at least! :)
At the end, you said your point was to convey suspicions about the blog author’s parenting? I really don’t have any interest in discussing personal speculations like that. Sorry.
“Is it possible for religious parents to teach their own religion to their own children without it being considered “religious child abuse?””
This is a very good question. I think the answer, based on my own upbringing, is yes.
I was raised Presbyterian by parents who believe faith is a fairly personal thing not to be imposed on others. They took me to church every week and taught me their religion, but they also taught me some very very valuable lessons to go along with that.
They taught me that other people believe things different than they do. They taught me that those people are entitled to their beliefs, and that different beliefs are not a reason to automatically dislike someone. They lived that lesson by having friends of many belief systems, who were regularly in our home. They taught me to question beliefs and decide for myself if they are true. They encouraged debate and discussion.
In the end those lessons led me to atheism. They may regret that outcome, but I think they made the right calls in deciding what lessons to teach me. Those are lessons I’ve tried to teach mty own kids as well.
Teaching religious lessons in and of itself is not abuse. Teaching not to question can be. Using religion to scare a child in to certain behaviors is.
I taught my children to think for themselves. I did not press my thoughts or beliefs on them, and I let them explore other peoples faiths. My oldest son often attends church, but is not a “believer”. He still has some “magical” thinking at 19, but I dont find that too uncommon. He is free to do as he pleases without my input unless it is asked for. I have found that by not pushing it, they ask for my input. My son in particular listens to everyone and is in a process of making up his own mind. My oldest daughter who was miseducated in a fundamental school system has become a bhuddist, which is technically a moral philosophy and not a religion. My youngest daughter lives in the now and is utterly unconcerned with anything religious. She celebrates christmas and easter, more for the sake of doting on my grandson than true worship, ie it’s easter bunnies and santa, not the birth and ressurection.
For myself, I celebrate the equinoxs and solsitces, which let my kids feel included (not deprived from the rest of american kids by my beliefs), without being overtly religious. I have a christmas tree, but not angels or nativity. I did not want my kids feeling deprived like stan in south park because he was different. It worked out well for me, as they got older and began to understand how thier friends celebrated such holidays, they asked questions as to why I did not celebrate as they did, but by then they were adolesants and more able to think.
The christian pre-schools I find abusive, but it is the parents perogitive to teach thier child as they see fit. What is more distressing is the lack of day care and the reality that many non religious people are forced by circumstance to place thier children into such environments in order to work and pay the bills. Christian and religious daycares seem to greatly outnumber secular ones in my area. Part of me wonders if this is an evangelical tactic to get them while they are young. I dont put anything beneath religious institutions.
As far as the evolution claims that you make….no I would not be discussing these with a four or five year old because they would not understand it either. What I am advocating is teaching people to think rationally and logically regardless of the subject. By teaching children that there is an invisible sky daddy who is convicting you of thought crimes and that they are worthless without this being and deserve to burn in hell forever because of how evil they inherently are…this is a problem!
You seem to make the claim that just because parents have different ideas about reality that they are all equally valid. This is completely missing the point…they are not equally valid and don’t deserve equal footing. We need to start advocating that people accept reality on reality’s terms…and not based on magical thinking.
But there’s a big difference between telling children that god is true and that evolution is true, which is that only one of them is true.
Because children are not always able to determine for themselves whether a claim is true, it’s important to tell them the truth as far as possible. You might dumb things down and you might entertain fictions like father christmas, but you don’t want to tell them that false things are true.
I don’t think the belief of the parents should have anything to do with it. Pretty much all believers admit (and I think it *is* an admission) that when push comes to shove, that they have no evidence for their religious beliefs and it’s all down to faith. Clearly the same is not true for evolution.
Is it *really* reasonable to expect your offspring to share that faith and to even persuade them to do so?
I’ve come to the position that children should not be taught religious beliefs until they’re old enough to understand what “religion” is. Once they can intellectually grasp the concept and understand that there are dozens (or hundreds?) of religions out there, then they can begin to learn about them.
Before that, it’s just brainwashing.
The sad thing is if any of us wanted to say open a daycare that taught Cthulhu, Dagon and other Great Old Ones we would be bombarded about the damage it is doing to the children. We’d have protesters claiming we work for the devil, etc, etc etc. It’s a bit sad that fundies never see the hypocrisy of their actions.
I’m sure most here have seen Jesus Camp, but I find it funny that in times like these where the fundie ultra-right wing right try claiming the Obama is turning us socialist, fascist, and making a new Hitler Youth that they’ve been doing it themselves for years now.
This post clearly demonstrates some ways that children of christian parents are being indoctrinated at a young age. I agree that it’s bordering on child abuse. Sadly, the level of indoctrination pales in comparison to that of children of Muslim parents in Islamic countries, which IMHO, is truly child abuse.
For most of my life, I was apathetic to religion, but my attitude has changed as I became more aware of the destructive nature of the dogmas that are drilled into children.
Been there, done that. I was raised in Christian daycare and attended Lutheran school from kindergarten to grade 7. It is brainwashing. I would not expose my child to this. Not that public school is better. Home schooling is best if you want a good all around child IMHO.
Great post! This is something that has been on my mind awhile; it concerns and frustrates me when children are put through this kind of conditioning, because it is something I experienced to a great degree in my own childhood. I was home-schooled, no Halloween, no “secular” music, church every Sunday, etc. I was a full-on “holy roller” by the time I was 17. Of course, after leaving home and doing a LOT of soul searching, my opinions about the world and religion changed a bit. :)
I blogged recently in the “Blog Against Theocracy” about something similar. I feel personally that teaching children about religion(s) is fine, but teaching them that all the facets of a particular religion are true can be damaging to a child. It invokes feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and fear in children that young. Then of course, there is the issue of ethics and morals. The hardcore Christians most often teach their children that they should be good because god wants them to – leaving out the fact that being good is a benefit to themselves and everyone around them.
I wrote in my blog entry that we aren’t taught to be moral without a god – we are taught to be moral because of god. Even as a young child, at the age of two or three, my parents told me that being naughty “made Jesus cry”. Wouldn’t have been as simple and effective to explain how being naughty might cause others to be sad? Instead, even at an early age, an omnipotent ruler was set into place in my mind, to force my tiny feet to walk the straight and narrow. I’ve seen a lot of parents choose this method of control, or teaching morals based on the fact that “god” wants us to be good – not being good for your own sake and the sake of others. Thus, as a majority, we grow up with an idea that god is there, watching us, even if it is nearly subconscious.
Some would ask why it is a bad thing, if it prevents people from being self-destructive, committing crimes, etc. I think the answer to that would be clear – to be good because we fear or want to avoid the disapproval of someone or something doesn’t seem like being “good” at all. Yes, the acts are the same, but the reasoning behind it is not as genuine. It’s almost like a less drastic version of what occurred in A Clockwork Orange. Alex did not cease to be violent because he wanted to, he did it because his conditioning allowed him no other option. When we are conditioned to believe we will gain an ultimate reward for doing good and will be eternally punished for doing bad, we cease to operate for the good of society as a whole or the good of others, and operate only to avoid repercussions. Granted, there are some people, generally with psychological disorders, that only refrain from doing heinous crime because they do not want to go to jail or face other punishments. These people often need medical and/or psychiatric treatment from an early age to help them become productive members of society – not dire warnings that god will smite them!
As my generation raises their own children, and the next generation raises theirs, I do think there will be an increase in people with an ability to be moral without a god. There are more atheists and agnostics in the world now than when I was born, and hopefully, more religious people with a less-than-literalistic view of the Bible. It will not happen in my lifetime, but maybe someday in the future, morality without god will not seem like such a far-fetched idea. Religious affiliation will be a non-issue from the family home to the federal government, and faith will be something we have in each other, instead of in an antiquated idea.
Maybe then, and probably only then, will children be able to grow up without the damaging effects of fanatical religious conditioning. When they gain the ability for critical thought, they can separate the fantasy from reality and live happy, productive lives free from the worry that they will make Jesus cry. :-)
While I have nothing against teaching religion, this level of indoctrination is a bit ridiculous. The “duck, duck, goose” thing strikes me as particularly scary because it’s completely unnecessary and shows how they put their subliminal propaganda in literally everything. Hitler did a similar thing where schools would have math problems like this one I found: “A modern bomber can carry 1800 incendiaries. How long is the path along which it can distribute these bombs if it drops a bomb every second at a speed of 250 kilometers per hour? How far apart are the craters?”
“What do you think — is this acceptable religious indoctrination”
The problem is thinking that any religions indoctrination is acceptable.
“I would argue that developmental psychology clearly demonstrates that elementary aged children do not have the cognitive capacity to critically engage a subject as complex as evolution any more than they do something as complex as religion.”
Just as you don’t try to teach our six year olds Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs for the existence of God in syllogistic form, so you don’t try to teach them the difference between genes and alleles. There are scientific and theological complexities, and there are scientific and theological simplicities. Nothing complex about telling children that there is a man living in the sky who loves them and wants to take care of them, and there is also a guy living down below who hates them and wants to torture them. An example of scientific simplicity would be to explain to children how bees take nectar from flowers and make honey. Then you would show them a bee going into a flower and afterward, take them to a bee farm and show them the honey. In the first instance, you are litterally trying to scare the Hell out of them by filling their heads with crap, while in the second instance, you are imparting knowledge of the real world to them.
It really would surprise me to discover that schools or parents were forcing their third graders to memorize passages from Origin Of Species.
This made me realize one of the major issues I have with the church – the near idle-like worship of the person (or the church’s version) of Jesus.
Whatever happened to the focus being on actually following Jesus’ teachings?
Look at all the examples listed on this page that are being taught: Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus. Jesus came back from the dead. Halloween is evil. Secular music is bad. Being naughty “makes Jesus cry.” God listens to you when you pray. Children questioning each other as to whether they are on the good side (Jesus) or evil side (devil).
Why not teach the children what Jesus taught? We should love everyone. All of humanity is our brotherhood. We should care for one another – welcome the alien, defend the widow, care for the sick. Clothe those who have none and feed those without food. Do justly. Love mercy. Love your neighbor as yourself. Bless those who persecute you. Love your enemy. Blessed are the meek. Every human life is precious, has value, and no life is beyond redemption. Even as an ex-christian, I hope to someday instill these important Biblical teachings in my children.
But I don’t want to teach them to believe. I want to tell them to be doers, not believers. The church has become a group of believers and not doers. Beliefs that can include “America is good” or “Muslims are evil.” Instead, I care about actions. Really, you can believe in the tooth fairy and flying spaghetti monster for all I care – as long as you are doing good in this world and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Belief is cheap – show me deeds.
This is merely a symptom of one of the church’s biggest issues – following Jesus’ teachings has been replaced by worshiping the church’s deformed charachture of Jesus.
Belief has become more important than action or deed.
Imagine a doctor travels to a remote, undiscovered tribe. The tribe is plagued by diseases and malady from unsanitary conditions. He teaches the tribe how to prevent the diseases with basic sanitation, and shows the tribe how to treat the diseases using plants easy found in their habitat. For a time, the tribe follows the doctors teachings – with much success – but soon they become obsessed with the doctor himself. They begin worshiping the doctor, offering him their prized possessions. The tribe stops teaching one another the doctor’s sanitation and medical techniques, and instead teach each other about the doctor himself, inventing incredible legends and stories about him. Soon the knowledge of the medicine is lost – and the diseases and maladies return – but the tribe is more interested in its new found religion – complete with sacraments, rituals, and punishment of nonbelievers.
The church is that tribe.
Exactly. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, “the raft is not the shore”.
Who is Thich Nhat Hanh?
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/Thich-Nhat-Hanh.html
I’m all for those teachings, but what do they have to do with Jesus? Why not teach all our kids that YOU said these things, because you both have precisely the same moral authority. In fact, you have more because we can be reasonably sure that you exist.
Or better still, why not teach them that it has nothing to do with an individual – divine or otherwise?
This is a very good question. I think it is abuse, but the definition of abuse might not be so simple. If we call it abuse simply because children are being indoctrinated with things that aren’t true, we must also eschew virtually *any* untrue thing we teach children. Is it abuse to say that “Grandpa has gone to sleep” instead of saying that he’s dead and won’t ever come back? If not (and I’m inclined to think not) then we need to refine the definition.
Ugh, Daniel FYI … while writing this comment, the web page keeps refreshing and scrolling all the way back up to the top. It’s really irritating!
@Daniel, im having the same problem. It even lost a post in refreshing.
Is it still doing it? I turned off the post preview for now, I think that is what was causing it.
@daniel, not having that issue this morning, but its saturday morning before 9 Am so. . .?
LOL @myself, been gere for a hour and didnt notice, its actually before 10 ROFLMAO
Damn it, I just lost a post too :/
I usually use a clipping tool to prevent losing text I send via a browser, but it broke too. God must really dislike me, so pay attention to my comments ;)
“Grandpa has gone to sleep” and “you might suffer and burn for eternity” are not equally traumatic ideas, nor are they equally false.
“Grandpa has gone to Disney Land” would be a more apt analogy.
There is a difference between telling a lie and telling a blunted truth.
No one is calling it abuse simply because it’s not true.
By calling these practices “child abuse” I take it that you believe these children should be removed from the custody of their parents. That in itself is fairly traumatic. Do you really think that saying “Jesus, Jesus is alive” instead of “Duck, duck, goose” will harm these children more than being forcibly taken from their parents? As vile and loathsome as some of these Christian parents undoubtedly are, do you really think their kids will receive more attention and affection in a state-sponsored foster care facility?
Oh don’t be silly. There are obviously degrees of abuse. A responsible society doesn’t remove children from parents unless they are in immediate danger. This is the most flamable straw man I’ve seen in some time.
The legal definition of “child abuse” varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in every state in the U.S. it constitutes grounds for loss of custody. If you are calling something “child abuse,” then you are by definition asserting that it is grounds for loss of custody.
> A responsible society doesn’t remove children from parents unless they are in immediate danger.
Responsible societies don’t do a lot of things (like torture), but government agencies in the U.S. (especially enforcement agencies) do many repugnant things. If you’ve been fortunate enough always to enjoy a middle class life, the loss of child custody over trivial matters may seem unrealistic. The further you go down the economic scale, however, the more realistic it becomes. For many of America’s poorest families, this is a very frightening and very real possibility. According to a study published in Child Abuse & Neglect (Vol. 31, No. 5, May 2007), family poverty, not evidence of physical abuse, is the biggest predictor of whether child protective services will follow up a referral.
Who should not have had children because without government funding, they are unable to provide properly for them.
Hence poverty being a bigger factor in whether or not children are taken to a place where they are given 3 meals a day, clothes to wear, and a roof over their heads.
How is it repugnant that these children be looked after before those who have a better chance of surviving as a victim of physical abuse?
So, what was the relevance of your statistics?
Perhaps I ought to remind you that there are other places in the world than the US and they have different legal systems. But that’s beside the point. Legal definitions are not the only ones. Clearly it is possible to be abusive to a child without it necessarily being classified legally as child abuse by any given legal system. Some of these abuses are more serious than others. Some are not grounds (in a given legal system) for removing children from their parents.
Personally, I think that certain kinds of religious indoctrination are child abuse, but I’m not convinced society should remove those children from their parents, other than in extreme circumstances.
Your point is an illuminating one, however. Here in the UK people get quite annoyed when Dawkins calls religious indoctrination child abuse, but I’ve seen people in the US go *ballistic*. Perhaps this is why: the term ‘child abuse’ is more closely associated with removal of children from their parents than it is in the UK?
Yes Latsot, I think you may be on to something. Here in the US…abuse is generally tied into child removal. That is not what I was advocating in this article (removal)…but that the practice of indoctrination itself is abusive to the developing mind of a young child.
This type of teaching is nothing more than fear mongering. I was taught from the time I was born that Jonah disobey and this happened, and humans disobeyed so the flood happened and Lot’s wife disobeyed so she was turned to salt, all to ingrain in me not to question and to obey.
I stop short of calling it flat out child abuse but I do feel that this brand of one sided teaching stifles the mind and “dumbs down” the next generation.
Yes I agree. I was taught the Noah story as a child. They told us that this is what happens to disobedient people. Then they told us that god would not end the world again that way because of the rainbow. Still, stories about satan scared me. I’m still a little afraid of the dark today (I know… irrational) because of the satan stories that were told to me as a child.
That’s why the concept of Santa Claus is great – once they’ve found out about his true nature, children learn not to believe what adults are telling them.
Maybe that’s why those x-ians don’t like halloween?
Abuse.
I would have to say that you and Mr. Dawkins are correct in this matter. Religious indoctrination to children is common place today, and I believe over done to say the least. This is exactly what happened to me, and my parents wonder why I failed biology my sophomore year. I can’t help believe that I would have done more, if I didn’t have the world outlook that was indoctrinated n me so young.
at least they clear up the debate over duck, duck, goose vs. duck, duck, grey duck. jesus, jesus, is alive is much more silly and a perfect way for children to learn to associate jesus with chasing someone in an attempt to slap them.
I used to teach in a Christian preschool – that meant we said a prayer before snack, I put the crib set in dramatic play at Christmas, and we had to put everything away on Friday for Sunday school, so it wasn’t a problem. However, I recently heard two stories that worried me:
I was at a class for teachers and someone shared that a discipline in her class was a heart drawn on a whiteboard. When a child sinned (hit, tore a paper or wouldn’t get in line) they had to draw the sin in the heart and the teacher said something about how sins hurt Jesus. Another was in a class of preschoolers with disabilities a child was having behavior problems. After getting her to a safe calm-down spot, the teacher said under her breath for the demon to leave the child, and the child calmed right down.
Educational practice says that young children act up because of an unmet need, frustration, lack of ability to communicate, lack of impulse control, etc. and you work to meet their needs and give them the tools for internal control, etc. So if teachers believe that sin or demons are the cause of misbehavior, that leads to very different and I think inappropriate actions on the part of the teacher. Do lawyers get to blame original sin for their clients actions? Do doctors get to cast out demons for epilepsy? It worries me that in the professional field of teaching this was going on.
Forcing a children to adopt a particular (not basic, like it’s ‘bad to steal’) ideology, or philosophy, before they can even understand it, is not only abuse. It’s manifestation of a belief that parents have a right to give any shape they want to their child’s world-view. And this is utter objectification.
How ironic.
The people who say each child has the right to be conceived in a ‘dignified’ (no IVF), and struggle to protect sovereignty of 8-cell fetuses have no problem letting parents treat born children as their property. Not to mention the ‘free will’ thing.
Bottom line:
Religious indoctrination is abuse.
Religious indoctrination involving lies about human sexuality is sexual abuse, period. We need to speak up.
I have a crazy struggle that mirrors what you saw in that day care. I am a divorced mom of two small girls. I am also an atheist. My former husband says he is a “christian” and before I had decision making authority in our custody battle, he enrolled the girls in a private christian school. Now, I have custody and authority to remove them from the school, but it’s been 5 years and they are settled in to the school with their friends and classmates and they cry when I bring up the idea of other schools.
I’m the mom and in then end I’m the one who chooses where they go to school. They are being brainwashed and indoctrinated and I counter it vigorously at home, but I am confounded on what to do.
Is it better to traumatize them by pulling them out of school, *note that the christians they’ve discussed this with tell them their mother is trying to make them give up their faith and they believe it of course.* or to leave them in this school to continue to be brainwashed? Which is worse?
Tez…I’m so sorry to hear that this is happening….yet another example of christianity pulling families apart. I guess the decision is whether is it more traumatic to continue to be indoctrinated and brainwashed by the religious establishment in place or move them to a school that would encourage rational thought (hopefully), which could initially be upsetting because they would have to make new friends.
In my opinion I think the argument is in favor of moving them to a new school. While initially this could be hard…I think you have to look at what they are being taught and the lifelong effects of this. The people they currently call their friends are claiming that you are the bad guy here. That seems somewhat scary in my opinion.
Do they have any non-christian friends? Are they involved in any activities or groups that would provide them with a different way of thinking or looking at the world?
It surely is more logical to pull them out of there. If they only or mostly have fundie friends you may soon find yourself unable to ‘conter’ that brainwashing anymore.
In a healthy environment, no matter how upset they’ll initially be, they might kind of de-convert (at least a bit) by interacting with normal people and be alright after all. And even if this doesn’t help, at least you’ll know you prevented more damage.
Also, read what Red Dave wrote about his experiences above.
Unfortunately this brainwashing doesn’t stop at daycare. I’m in New Zealand and have brought my two daughters up as atheists (with a touch of wonder at the natural world). My eldest is 15 and has for the last year had a fundie boyfriend. For a while he as starting to have questions about his faith. Out of respect for his family we gave him the space to experience an atheist family without shoving texts into his hands. At school my daughter’s art teacher has become a close friend. She also runs the local fundie church youth group. I trusted my daughter’s independence and intellect to find her own way. Now I find that the boyfriends family have been feeding her conversion books (which she has been hiding from us) and that she had a ‘revelation’ 6 weeks ago. Of course neither the boyfriends family nor her teacher thought it appropriate to include us, her parents, in this process.
Now I have a deeply distressed teen on my hands, whose romantic love has become intractibly entwined with her ‘religious awakening’. Her teacher has been taking her to a youth group that uses classic brainwashing techniques (heart rate paced music, evangelising singing, hypnotic trances, small group interrogations) along with some fun (emotional lollies). She is torn between her new found regiosity and her family. She now feels she can’t achieve academically without the influence and constant presence of her boyfriend and her teacher. She won’t discuss things with us – just yells at us that we don’t respect her relationship with god and jesus. She is afraid of us.
I’m desolate that these people have managed to create such a division in what was a very close and loving family group. And I’m not sure exactly what do do about it…..
So it can happen at any age – not just preschool.
That must be spectacularly frustrating.
A-C: Wow, that’s really rough. I wouldn’t worry too much your daughter is still at a transitional phase. She will most likely grow out of it. I grew up in the church and have had trouble with my “faith” over the past years. I went to a church that did alot of that “brainwashing” with music and hype. I regret alot of the time I lost on account of it. My father had died about 4 years ago and I regret spending so much time in the church and not with him. In all honesty it’s best for your daughter to get away from this type of group, if she wishes to be religous that’s her choice but I would recommend a church that’s more down to earth allowing her to think and experience “jesus” or religion not manipulation. In the end this kind of hype and manipulation only leads to a feeling of lose or regret. I did all that and it’s so sad when you realize it was only that “hype” and that “jesus” isn’t going to make life “great”. I put all of myself into my faith- I haven’t arrived at a conclusion that God doesn’t exist but I do believe christianity is flawed. The “church” promises good outcomes and than when things go bad for someone like me for example they blame it on the person. Christianity is unrealistic and a a lie. The bible itself is a compilation of books- only revalation possibly God inspired. I don’t mean to ramble. But I do hope things work out with you and your daughter and that she doesn’t experience this sense of lose that I have on account of religiosity.
Are you people taking crazy pills? Are you blind to the fact that we all teach our kids SOME sort of belief system, whether it involves God or not? Now I agree that some of the methods employed by the daycare mentioned in this post (and some of the methods mentioned in the subsequent comments) are a bit ridiculous. If that is your point, then I concur wholeheartedly. But the problem I have with what most of you are saying is that your problem isn’t with HOW they are teaching but WHAT they are teaching. Most of you contend that it is brainwashing simply because what is being taught is Christianity.
The reality is that no matter who you are, you teach your kids your own belief system – like it or not. The funny thing is that y’all are so blind to your arrogance because you have the same confidence in your own beliefs that Christians have in theirs, and somehow because your beliefs are better (according to YOUR own judgment), you’re NOT guilty of brainwashing your kids but the Christians somehow are. Don’t you realize how dumb that is? Or are you naive enough to think that you are raising your kids with a blank slate so they can make up their own minds when they get older. Guess what – in that case you’re only “brainwashing” your kids into thinking that it doesn’t matter what you believe.
I have a suggestion for everyone. Take your knowledge and experience, decide what you believe is true about the world, and lovingly TEACH that to your kids. Hopefully you’ll be teaching them more truth than error, but you probably won’t know for sure until you die.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Faith is belief without evidence or in the face of contrary evidence.
Lack of belief in gods is not the same as faith in Christianity.
Confidence is not the same as arrogance.
“Faith is belief without evidence or in the face of contrary evidence.”
What you believe is faith too. Unless you can give me conclusive evidence that God does NOT exist?
“Lack of belief in gods is not the same as faith in Christianity.”
You’re right. They are very different truth claims. But is lack of belief in gods the same as believing that God does not exist? Isn’t that a claim you make on faith as well?
“Confidence is not the same as arrogance.”
Again, you’re right. Confidence becomes arrogance when it leads you to put down others who believe differently than you do, which is what this post and most of its comments aim to do. I may believe in God wholeheartedly (which by the way, I have proof for the existence of God if you’d ever like to hear it), but I’m not going to ridicule you or anyone else who doesn’t. I’m not going to accuse you of “brainwashing” because you are teaching your kids something different that I’m teaching mine. I can still have confidence that I am right and you are wrong, and we can have healthy debate about it, because I’m not going to attack you. In fact, I’m open to being shown that I am completely wrong about God. Ultimately I don’t have an agenda other than wanting to know the truth. If I’m wasting my life living for a deity that doesn’t exist, I’d LOVE to know that now rather than 30 years from now.
I can give you evidence that God’s existence is extraordinarily improbable. No one can give you conclusive evidence that God does or does not exist. No one can give you conclusive evidence that the Tooth Fairy does or does not exist. What I believe is not faith. I defined faith quite clearly. I have faith in nothing.
I believe that God does not exist. This is belief is based on evidence, not faith. Do you have faith that Santa Claus does not exist? Faith that Zeus does not exist? Of course not.
Check out God is Imaginary, read all the “proofs”. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s a good start.
I think religion is the primary cause of war, suffering, and hatred; and the primary obstacle to an alliance of humanity. I think that in this century, humanity will either unite or destroy itself. In short, I think religion is evil. I think religion is wrong. Is this arrogant of me?
I’d love to. That would be wonderful.
There are an infinite number of things for which you can’t prove non-existence.
If I said there is a tiny china teapot in orbit around the Sun, too far and too small for telescopes to see, you’d call me crazy, right? But you can’t prove there is no teapot.
But what if lots of people believe in the teapot? The teapot is described in ancient books, young children are taught about the teapot in day-care, teapot songs have been written and sung for generations, universities offer doctorates in teapotology, and so on. Then the people who deny the existence of the teapot get called crazy.
eagle:
There’s a world of difference between teaching your kids how to recognise and use evidence and teaching them to accept some random dogma or other. One equips them to understand the world, the other equips them for nothing of value, as far as I can tell.
Do you really think that teaching your children to understand and evaluate evidence properly is a form of brainwashing?
Can you really not see the difference between teaching that and teaching contradictory nonsense written in a bronze age book?
eagle:
This is tiresome. Nobody needs to provide evidence that god doesn’t exist for the same reason they don’t need to provide evidence that the tooth fairy, that zeus, pink unicorns or any other random imaginary thing does not exist.
It doesn’t take faith to believe that something doesn’t exist if there is no evidence for it. Belief doesn’t necessarily equal faith.
Personally, I don’t believe that god exists because there is no evidence whatever to suggest he does. Can’t you see that this is a very different thing to believing god does exist, given the same complete lack of evidence?
By all means, bring it on. But before you do, can I ask you to clarify what you mean by ‘proof’? For example, does your ‘proof’ rely on scripture? Does it rely on proper evidence? What satisfies you as proof of god’s existence?
Looks like a started a bona-fide debate! I love it! I don’t have the time right now to respond to all of the specific comments that have been directed to me, but I’ll say this…
1) Rodney, you contradicted yourself. In one breath you say, “No one can give you conclusive evidence that God does or does not exist.“ In the next you say, “I believe that God does not exist. This is belief is based on evidence, not faith.” So which is it? Please at least be intellectually honest and say that there is an element of faith in saying God does not exist. Let’s leave Christianity out of this for now…I’m just talking about God. An intelligent creator.
2) So you want some evidence for the existence of God? Read up on the Intelligent Design Theory, which is at least as compelling as your Evolutionary THEORY. Yes I said theory (which by definition necessitates faith in order to believe that it is fact)… evolution is not proven, in fact the more we learn about the amazing complexity of life the more foolish random mutations and natural selection over time looks. And all the fuss over that new skeleton that is being hyped now only proves how desperate evolutionary scientists are to find any sort of “missing link.” Calm down people…it is just a lemur!
3) By the way, here is a great link. Read it with an open mind please, although that might be impossible for those who have been “brainwashed” into believing that evolution is a FACT: http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php
4) Statements like this only prove my original point about the arrogance that you guys are bringing to the table:
You assume that one who believes in God has no capacity to evaluate evidence properly. Can you at least show a LITTLE humility and admit that people a LOT smarter than all of us, who have lots of letters and degrees after their name, BOTH believe in God and reject God? Can’t we avoid insinuating that the other side of the debate is stupid? I’m a pretty well-read college grad and I assume the same for you.
Intelligent Design, eagles1405?
Do you mean the “theory” whose proponents didn’t even have the guts to defend it under oath in court? Yeah, that’s a credible one, right there….
If you have time, try to look up the decision from Dover v. Kitzmiller, or read about the trial on-line. Great stuff.
On the other hand, I’d love to know your thoughts about how a worm that can only live in the human eye was intelligently designed by an all-god, all-loving god who is proactively concerned with human affairs.
For me, your ideas about ID boil down to a consistent pattern of untenable absurdities, whether on a scientific or a theological level.
I assume no such thing, please try to concentrate. I said that there is a difference between teaching your kids to evaluate evidence and teaching them dogma. I quite clearlt *didn’t* say that people who believe in god have no capacity to evaluate evidence properly. You just made that up.
Sure. But it has no bearing on whether god does or doesn’t exist, so I’ve no idea why you’ve brought it up.
I choose my words carefully. I believe God does not exist. This belief is based on evidence that God is extraordinarily improbable, not evidence that God is impossible, or no evidence. I do not require absolute proof that God does not exist in order to disbelieve in his existence, as you do not require absolute proof that the Easter Bunny does not exist in order to disbelieve in its existence.
You are treating the word “theory” as if it has the vernacular English meaning, which implies a guess or doubt. Theory of gravitation. Germ theory. In science, a theory is an interrelated network of ideas that can be used as a model for testing and prediction. “Theory” is the gold-standard of certainty in science, there is no official term for something more certain. Evolution is a fact. It’s as much a fact as that the earth revolves around the sun or that water is composed of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Humans definitely evolved from ape-like ancestors, the question is exactly how.
I’m sure you have been told that Intelligent Design is compelling, but it is not. In the US:
“Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts against a public school district that required the presentation of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. [...] On December 20, 2005 Judge Jones issued his 139-page findings of fact and decision, ruling that the Dover mandate was unconstitutional, and barring intelligent design from being taught in Pennsylvania’s Middle District public school science classrooms.”
In Europe: “In June 2007 the Council of Europe’s “Committee on Culture, Science and Education” issued a report, The dangers of creationism in education, which states “Creationism in any of its forms, such as ‘intelligent design’, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are pathetically inadequate for science classes.”"
A key strategy of the intelligent design movement is convincing the general public that there is a debate among scientists about whether life evolved. The intelligent design movement creates this controversy in order to convince the public, politicians and cultural leaders that schools should “Teach the Controversy”. But in fact, there is no such controversy in the scientific community; the scientific consensus is that life evolved.
The evidence indicates there is no God. No assumption required.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact
Good read, especially the Predictive Power part. The theory of evolution has, in fact, made successful and startling predictions.
Sigh. How many times have we heard this? Anyone want to bet that eagle will be back again and again but still mysteriously won’t have time to answer the questions he/she finds too hard?
And let’s consider what eagle is saying here: he/she has ACTUAL PROOF of the existence of god, but DOESN’T HAVE TIME to tell anyone what it is. It would be the single most important thing that could ever be said by any human being at any time, past, present or future, but unfortunately we’ll never know about it because eagle is a bit busy. Not too busy to say idiotic things about intelligent design or to put words in other people’s mouths, you understand, just too busy to enlighten all of mankind about the unassailable proof of the existence of god.
He said he is genuinely interested in a case for the non-existence of God. I believe it.
Perhaps he is. But that doesn’t make me wrong. As we’ve seen (further down in the comments) Eagle has spent considerable time and effort addressing a couple of points, but very notably not providing the proof of the existence of god he claims to have.
He’s too busy to enlighten all of humanity with proof of the existence of an almighty creator, but not to re-make points that have already been refuted on this thread (and countless others) about how not believing in something is faith too.
This is what I predicted would happen. Hopefully, he’ll prove me wrong in the fullness of time.
I really hope eagle came here to learn, time will tell. I’ve seen dozens of people claim proof of god on internet forums and it has always ended the same way, with some nauseatingly familiar and easily refuted arguments that wouldn’t constitute proof by anyone’s definition anyway, followed by much quoting of scripture, gnashing of teeth and appeals to faith. I hope it’s different this time.
Do you still believe it?
And by the way, you didn’t answer the question. Why not?
I should clarify my point here, I think. My original question was:
You replied with:
Which does not at all seem to answer the question. I have no complaint if you choose to ignore questions you are asked by strangers, but I find it weird that you take time to respond to one without even remotely answering it.
That was my point here: not a demand you answer my question, but bewilderment that you responded without answering.
I’ve got dinner with the family then time with the kids before bed, plus I’ll need a little time to read over the links you sent. I promise, I’ll be back! I love conversation like this. I honestly do want to seek truth with you guys.
Alright here’s my problem – there’s one of me and a bunch of you, and I can’t quite keep up without spending more time than I have. So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll restate my beliefs as clearly as I can, and from there I can address one thing at a time, with whomever responds first. If someone else want’s to jump in then fine, but obviously I’m outnumbered here so I have to pick my battles. Make sense?
My overall belief is this – while I respect those who believe in the Theory of Evolution, I believe that there is another valid alternative out there which is known as the Theory of Intelligent Design. That theory, in its simplest form, says that unintelligent processes are not capable of doing all the work of creation, of forming the simplest creatures to the most complex. In other words, the immense complexity of living creatures points to an intelligent creator. Even beyond that, the intelligibility of the universe itself requires explanation. I have a great respect for science because I feel like the more I learn, and the more we learn as a race, the more amazed I am at God.
It seems to me that an intellectually honest individual would have to at least ADMIT that intelligent design is a possibility. In fact, the only reason one wouldn’t admit this, is because they’ve already brought to the table an existing belief that dismisses even the possibility of God. So for that person (which seems you be all of you), intelligent design is impossible, not based on its own merits, but based on your preexisting rejection of the existence of God. I am not bringing that to the table. Yes, I believe in God. But I am also open to the charge that God does not exist.
What I feel like you all aren’t seeing, or won’t admit to, is that your belief system requires a measure of faith, just like mine does. You cannot be absolutely scientifically certain that God does not exist, just as I cannot be absolutely scientifically certain that he does. Each of us employs faith to get to our respective final conclusions. Please show me that I’m wrong…
It seems to me that an intellectually honest individual would have to at least ADMIT that intelligent design is a possibility.
Yes, anything is possible. But let’s not abuse the word, yes? Prior probabilities can be attached to the various possibilities based on evidence. Then, we engage in abductive reasoning (that is, inference to the best explanation) to arrive at the best explanation that explains the constellation of evidence.
In fact, the only reason one wouldn’t admit this, is because they’ve already brought to the table an existing belief that dismisses even the possibility of God.
Well, no. Going off the first point, if a person adjudges that one of a series of possibilities is wildly less probably the correct explanation than the others, they generally do not treat the possibility as a live one. This is perfectly reasonable in pretty much every area of life. It’s possible (in the bare sense) that my pet cats will start speaking English. It’s so vanishingly improbable, knowing what I know about the capacities and behavior of cats, that I consider it a functional impossibility; a dead hypothesis. So a person may admit the bare possibility and still laugh at it because of its *probability*.
When it comes to the actual nuts and bolts of Intelligent Design, it fails miserably. Its claims (such as irreducible complexity) are demonstrably false, and further, it fails the bare test of a scientific theory that it make predictions (it makes none). Putting the word ‘theory’ in front of it makes it no more a scientific theory than putting ‘sir’ in front of my name would make me a knight. They are treated on an unequal playing field because they, epistemologically, are on an unequal playing field.
Ok I misspoke. You don’t dismiss the possibility of God, you just consider that possibility functionally impossible and write it off as a dead hypothesis.
Ummm, yeah…how is that different than what I said?
You can hide behind official definitions of what exactly is science and what is not, but Intelligent Design does not fail miserably at what it aims to do, that is, explain the origins of life. It is a perfectly logical way of interpreting the data/evidence. And it isn’t as if evolutionary theory is bulletproof. Macro-evolution, the change of one species to another by the processes of random chance and natural selection has not been observed or duplicated. It cannot be proven scientifically in that sense, but that doesn’t stop you from claiming it as fact. But, I will admit, that just like Intelligent Design, it is a logical way of interpreting the data/evidence. I just believe it is the wrong interpretation.
No, you misunderstood. I was saying that *Intelligent Design*, though possible, is wildly improbable and thus dismissed. I said nothing about the probability of the mere existence of a deity, which is an entirely different issue. But it doesn’t matter, because it isn’t even necessary; advanced extraterrestrial intelligence could substitute for God in any Intelligent Design argument. Doesn’t make the argument better or more probable, but does remove its dependency on God which you are arguing is what we all are getting hung up on.
You can hide behind official definitions of what exactly is science and what is not, but Intelligent Design does not fail miserably at what it aims to do, that is, explain the origins of life.
It is not hiding to hew to the actual definitions of a thing. Intelligent design claims to be science. To support that claim, it must meet scientific criteria. If it does not, it is not science.
Absent the claim to science, it is simply *an* explanation. That is, a narrative to explain observations. Everyone can do that, just by making up a story. What is special about science is its rigor; the ability to test, quantify, and objectively evaluate evidence. A scientific narrative has high epistemic hurdles it must clear that other types of explanations do not.
What science is:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/
Sure. Of course, there’s no reason you should feel compelled to answer random questions by strangers on an internet board anyway :)
Having said that, reboots like this can have the unintended consequence of sweeping previous statements under the carpet. In the interest of avoiding this, I’d like to suggest we get back to your claim to have proof of the existence of god. You offered to tell us what it is and two people took you up on that offer, so I’d enjoy it if we could get back to that topic at some point.
Thanks
As others have said, there’s a difference between a ‘theory’ and a ‘scientific theory’. The latter are based on well-formulated hypotheses supported by lots of evidence. In other words, they rely on asking questions in such a way that we know unambiguously when they have been answered. It’s not a matter of judgement or what seems right or common sense, it’s a matter of working out in advance what data would constitute evidence to support the hypothesis, then setting out to find it. In practice, of course, it’s not quite as neat as that and there are arguments, but this doesn’t actually matter for the sake of the discussion.
This is because ID is not a scientific theory: it doesn’t have a well-formulated hypothesis. It doesn’t say what data would constitute evidence for its hypothesis other than a vague idea that something be irriducibly complex.
For this reason, it is just not the same kind of thing as the theory of evolution and cannot be considered an acceptable alternative. It just doesn’t explain what we can see around us as well as ToE does. This doesn’t mean that nobody will ever come up with a valid alternative, it’s just that ID isn’t such a thing.
Precisely so: it just ‘says’ it, without any good reason. If we formulate this as a hypothesis, then we need to understand what data would suffice as evidence for irriducible complexity (for example). Can you explain what that evidence would look like? Can anyone? If they can’t, then we don’t have a well-formed hypothesis and we don’t have a proper scientific theory, so ID is not a valid alternative to ToE.
Again, this is just an assertion with (as far as I know) no observation behind it and (as far as I know) no evidence to support it.
I don’t know what that means. If we couldn’t understand much about the universe would we be claiming that its unintelligibility requires explanation?
I – and I suspect most scientists – share the same sentiment, but see no need to bring god into it. Keats was wrong to suggest that understanding a rainbow somehow makes it less beautiful. As we understand more, we can just appreciate its beauty on more levels. But to trot out a Douglas Adams quote (and apologies if everyone is sick of it), “isn’t it enough to see that the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are faries at the bottom of it too?”
The sense of wonder is what we have in common. We just attribute it to different things.
Agreed, but this is an unhelpful argument. We can argue that all kinds of things are possible, but we are talking here about a specific thing. The task is not to decide that it is possible, but that it is likely. Imagining a possibility does not take us down that route to the slightest degree.
There are other reasons. You mention the idea of possibility. I want to put this on a firmer footing by talking about the related concept of probability. Very few atheists say that there is no possibility that god exists. They say instead that it is highly improbable. As you said earlier, we need to choose our battles as a matter of simple practicality.
Should we accept every single possibility as as equally valid or should we focus on the ones most likely to be true? If we have a systematic technique we could use to determine what is more likely, then it would be madness to treat vaguely possible things in the same way we treat very probable things. We have such a technique. It’s called science.
I don’t argue that ID is impossible and I argue against it on its own lack of merit. Neither do I reject the existence of god: I can simply find no evidence for it and some evidence against it.
You’ll probably find that most people on this board are similarly inclined (in the opposite direction). From what I can tell, it seems that most of us are technically agnostic and would be convinced god exists if enough evidence turned up.
I think we’ve done a good job of showing you this already. I can only speak for myself, but I strongly suspect that most of us conclude god doesn’t exist due to lack of evidence that he does.
This view isn’t based on faith because if evidence appeared to show that we were wrong, we would change our minds.
In other words, we believe things are true because of what evidence tells us and as evidence changes we modify our belief of what is true.
Does this really require faith?
It doesn’t even require faith in evidence, since we expect evidence to be overturned constantly. If anything, it requires faith that evidence is a good way of deciding what’s true and since that is endlessly demonstrable, I’m not sure it is appropriate to call it faith. It is certainly very different to faith in a magical all-powerful entity that makes everything happen and then fakes the evidence.
And about macro-evolution…?
“Macro-evolution” (which is properly just evolution) is about speciation. Once two populations of related creatures drift enough genetically, they’ll no longer be able to breed together (either producing sterile offspring or no offspring at all). Think donkey/horse/mule, or great dane/tea cup chihuahua. Here is a more detailed survey of the concept of speciation:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/species/
Macro-evolution is simply micro-evolution (which has been observed, countless times) over long enough time-lines to produce irrevocable divergence. One would expect to see vestigial traces of such processes at the genetic level, and lo!, when we look at human chromosome 2, for example, evidence of fusion of separate chromosomes that have similar functional genes in closely related species (e.g. bonobos) is present in one human chromosome, such as internal telomeres and the vestiges of a second centromere (both predicted by evolutionary theory, and subsequently found).
Defining macroevolution away from its micro roots is simply a sorities problem, and a solvable one for most cases.
The seizing on the idea of micro/macro evolution by ID supporters betrays some ignorance about what species are and how speciation occurs. Their version of micro/macro evolution assumes some kind of barrier beteween species where in fact none exist: that is, that there is some fundamental difference between members of one species and members of another and that evolution can’t jump over this barrier. From this perspective, it is superficially reasonable to demand an explanation of how a species could possibly evolve from another.
However, this assumption is wrong. The term ‘species’ is something humans invented because it is immensely useful. There’s nothing fundamental about it, it’s just a useful grouping. In fact, there is some (minor) argument amongst biologists about what does and doesn’t denote a species, both in principle and in reference to particular groups of organisms (is it a species or a sub-species or what?)
The point is that for the purposes of discussing evolution, it doesn’t really matter. As others have said, speciation (very roughly synonomous for most ID supporters with macro evolution) is just accumulated micro evolution, plus genetic isolation from the to-be parent species. It’s what you’d expect to happen unless there really is some mysterious barrier that prevents one kind of thing evolving into another. What is that barrier, exactly? ID proponents never say.
I’m aware that I’m not explaining this well, so I’ll quit while I’m only a little way behind. My point is that ID claims of macro evolution never having been observed are both largely irrelevant to the question of whether evolution is true or not and based on a profound misunderstanding of what micro- and macro-evolution are.
The theory of evolution predicts speciation and when we look at the fossil and genetic evidence, that’s exactly what we see. ID predicts no speciation so we suddenly have to find a way to explain away all the evidence that speciation has happened.
latsot, you make an interesting point about speciation being a human invented category. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the massive amounts of accumulated mutations that are necessary to account for the differences in even the closest related species, let alone all of the species in the world, is statistically improbable. Evolutionists only “predict” speciation, but haven’t observed or proven it. The only real evidence that Evolutionists have to illustrate the thousands of mutations necessary is a fossil record that shows woeful gaps and very few, if any, true transitional species. Even in the case of similarly structured animals, such as humans and apes, the fossil record can just as easily be understood as underscoring common design. In other words, if we ARE created by God, one would expect to see shared design characteristics. You might even say that one could “predict” them.
And since it has been requested, let’s get back to my proof in the existence of God. Let’s be clear though – NONE of us has proof beyond a shadow of a doubt. That has been my point all along, that BOTH positions require faith. And to clarify even more, I’m not saying that your non-belief in God requires faith. I am saying that you positive belief in naturalism and evolution requires faith.
So the proof – I alluded to it before but didn’t really get into it other than encouraging you to read up on intelligent design theory. I’m talking mainly about irreducible complexity. Yes I know you will all jump on me and say (as a couple already have) that irreducible complexity is false, but you are mistaken. It is still a HUGE hurdle for evolutionists. What has been debunked is a straw man version of irreducible complexity. Basically Evolutionists content that if you can show that the individual parts of an irreducibly complex system can be used for other purposes, then that cuts the legs out of IC. But IC does not contend that the parts of an IC system can’t be used for other purposes.
The funny thing is, I bet none of us, including me, have actually read Darwin’s Black Box (the book that IC comes from). We just know the arguments, and we know the rebuttals. Most times, the conversation stays there, with both sides just butting heads. But there is head butting going on at a much higher level than this forum, and so I’ll just direct you to Michael Behe’s (the author’s) response to his critics. He can explain things much better than I ever could:
http://www.discovery.org/a/1831
In fact, here’s whole series of articles written by Behe, many in response to his Evolutionist critics. If you really want to be challenged, read him, not me. I’m just Joe Christian, and I think I’m way outnumbered in this forum!
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=31&isFellow=true
It isn’t statistically improbable. I think a more thorough understanding of ToE would explain why, but it would be tedious of me to write one here and I’m far from the best person to explain it. I’m sure you know where to look if you want to learn more. I recommend any of Dawkins’ books. The heart of the argument is that mutations can accumulate because you don’t have to start from scratch each time. Think of it like a ratchet: when a new mutation appears in a gene pool, if it happens to be useful then by definition natural selection will tend to mean that it spreads throughout that gene pool. When a deletorious gene appears, it will not tend to spread. Then the same with each successive mutation: it builds on what is already there. I’m aware that this isn’t much of an answer: I can go into it in more detail if it wouldn’t bore everyone, or I can dig out some specific references, which will probably be better.
If you understood what I wrote earlier, you’ll understand that speciation isn’t something you can ‘observe’ as a moment in time. One species doesn’t suddenly give birth to an individual belonging to another species. Expecting an observation of that kind would be wrong. Think about how we would go about observing a speciation ‘event’: it would take many, many generations before we could determine with any reliability that two populations had differed to the extent that we could call them different species. And even then the decision might be open to argument.
And yet if we had somehow had the almost infinite funding needed to observe the populations throughout this whole time, we couldn’t deny that they had changed a lot and now differ significantly. All we’d be arguing about is the semantics of what constitutes speciation.
The claim that there are no (or few) transitional fossils doesn’t really deserve a reply. There are many, many many and google will tell you about them. All fossils are in a sense transitional and there are vast numbers that show characteristics common to (for example) mamals and reptiles or monkeys and apes. The oponents of ToE just define away the many transitional fossils or just lie about their existence.
Fossil evidence is certainly not all we have. Even if there were no fossils at all, molecular evidence would overwhelmingly support evolution. Besides, holes in the fossil record don’t equate to holes in ToE. Wherever there’s a gap, the theory predicts a fossil might be found to fill it. This has happened time and time and time and time again, which is very strong evidence for the theory.
Not quite. You don’t get to observe stuff and make up explanations while missing out the whole stage of hypothesis and collecting evidence. Or rather, you can do that if you want, but the result will not hold water. It won’t hold water regardless of whether it is true, because it would be a just-so story: a made-up explanation with no evidence to support it. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of evidence and will not result in a scientific theory; will not be a contender to ToE.
But you said you did. That’s what proof is afterall.
And you still avoid stating what your ‘proof’ of god is. Why? Let’s see it.
Putting the word ‘positive’ in your final point is a rhetorical device and nothing more. Lots of us have said that we base our decisions about what is and isn’t probably true on evidence and that we use a method to determine what constitutes evidence that has stood the test of time. It has been tested very harshly and demonstrated to work again and again and again.
If you really want to claim that we have ‘faith’ in science, then go ahead. The problem is that this kind of faith is not at all comparable with faith in god. We all know that science works: we get on planes and we drive cars and we use computers and we don’t die from as many diseases as we used to. We all know that throughout its history, religion of any kind has failed to produce any kind of evidence for its validity.
I ask again: given this, can you really not see the difference between ‘faith’ in science and faith in religion?
Oh puh-lease. I think we all know about ID here.
Very well then. Give me one example of irriducible complexity. ONE
*tumbleweed*
Your argument doesn’t make sense. I don’t think you understand the ‘evolutionist’ objection to it. Half a wing is no use for flying, but it might be useful for something else. Once the half-wing exists, it may convey any number of benefits. It would hardly be surprising if natural selection acted on any or all of these.
In other words, considering an adaptation according to how it may have developed really does kick the legs out from under IC. To demonstrate IC, you’d have to show that there was no feasible way in which a trait could have evolved gradually. Nobody has managed to do this for a single trait yet.
I have, to my lasting regret. Behe has been made to look an idiot in very public places indeed. Do I really need to post links?
I’m afraid that nobody will find Behe’s ditzy ramblings remotely challenging. They are nothing more than wishfull thinking dressed up in pseudo-scientific language. They are the very definition of quackery and bullshit.
lasnot, I’d really love it if you could help me with an addition objections to the theory of evolution. You talked about probability in a previous post, and honestly that’s a huge hurdle for me. It just seems to me that the possibility of life evolving to where it is today from lifeless matter is a statistical improbability. The magic element that evolutionists insert into the equation is time and space…lots and lots of it. So in essence they say it had to happen sometime, somewhere. If not in this time, then sometime. If not on this planet, then on some planet in the immense universe. And the proof? Well we’re here, so it must have happened. But that seems weak to me…
Is there other information you can point me to on this subject?
And this is where you go wrong. It doesn’t matter in the slightest how it seems to you or how it seems to me or how it seems to anyone else. The whole point of science is that over time it corrects for bias. There are some things we can know with varying degrees of confidence, without requiring faith of the same type as religious faith. The scientific method can even tell us how much confidence we should have in most things. Religious faith does not.
Neither of us get to decide what we’d like to be true. Scientists tend to rely on evidence, some people tend to rely on wishful tinkerbell thinking. Either way, it doesn’t change what actually happens to be true, but science won this argument gradually and increasingly over the last few thousand years.
You are talking about the anthropic principle and if you are capable of posting here, you are capable of googling it yourself. You don’t need me to do that for you.
OK, way to forget to close tags, latsot. Apologies.
Great. So can you tell me unambigiously (not based on definition, based on empirical evidence) which things are alive and what are not? If you could come up with such a definition, it would be nearly as amazing as your previous (shown to be entirely incorrect) claim that you had proof of god.
Hey I’m reading all of the homework you guys are giving me. You can’t find time to read through some of Behe’s current work? Not even a couple of articles?
Irreducibly complexity systems proves the existence of a designer. Are we using the same definition of proof? I guess not, but that’s all the proof you’re gonna get from me. So if that’s not enough I guess you can walk away with your head held high that you beat down another Christian with your superior logic. Unfortunately nothing you’ve said has changed my mind, or proven to me that there is no God, so we’re at an impasse.
When Behe is ready to testify about his ideas under oath, then I’ll listen to him.
We’ve already read them. Well, I have and I suspect many here also have. I’m sure many of us are familiar with Behe and the things he says.
How? How does it prove the existence of a designer? How would it prove the existence of a designer if something were to be found to be irreducibly complex? How does it prove the existence of a designer given that nothing ever has been found to be irreducibly complex?
Do you remember that you are the one who brought this issue up? You began with claims that you had proof of god’s existence which became increasingly watered down as you realised you couldn’t answer even the simplest questions put to you?
Do you remember that you are making claims about IC that you demonstrably cannot provide evidence for?
Take your bat in if you like. Tell everyone that atheists are intolerant and run off crying. Alternitively, take the hits, stick around, demonstrate some character and be prepared to learn something as others, including me, are ready to learn something from you. You just haven’t said anything very smart yet. This is a shame because you are obviously interested in what you’re talking about, clearly passionate on your subject and you’ve done a bit of reading.
Don’t use the argument that we’re not familiar with Behe’s nonsense: for the most part, we probably are. Certainly don’t use that as an excuse to avoid asking direct questions, which were only levelled at you because of your own claims.
Come on, stop sulking and stick around. You said you wanted debate, right?
answering, not asking
latsot, I’m not sulking at all, just realizing that this is fairly fruitless. Allow me to adapt a fairly common philosophical analogy typically used to describe the multiple perspectives of different religions. The story goes that their are four blind men who discover an elephant. Since the men have never encountered an elephant, they grope about, seeking to understand and describe this new phenomenon. One grasps the trunk and concludes it is a snake. Another explores one of the elephant’s legs and describes it as a tree. A third finds the elephant’s tail and announces that it is a rope. And the fourth blind man, after discovering the elephant’s side, concludes that it is, after all, a wall.
This analogy is far from perfect, but I do see it speaking into our conversation on a few levels. First, none of us see the whole picture. If we were to quantify what is known and compare it to what is unknown, we would see that we aren’t even talking about a trunk, a leg, or a tail…our knowledge is more like a pimple on the elephant’s back.
Second, we’re obviously not getting anywhere here because we are different people who are bringing different worldviews to the table. So while we aren’t exactly arguing about tails and legs, we’re more accurately arguing about the same leg. You’re calling it a tree, and I’m calling it a pole. Neither of us is going to budge because you don’t really like poles and I don’t really like trees.
What I’m trying to say here, admittedly not very well, is that no matter how eloquent your arguments or refutations are, I’m unlikely to budge (and vice versa) because we fundamentally see and interpret the world in completely different ways. You may feel as if your way of interpreting is superior, and that is certainly your prerogative, but that doesn’t mean it is.
Heck, there is a guy out there named Christopher Langan who is among the smartest men in the world if you go by IQ testing, and he’s come up with an entire Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe that gives me headaches even thinking about because it is so over my head. He believes he can prove the existence of God. I’m not saying I even understand him, let alone agree with him or his method, I’m just using him as an example to communicate that we all don’t think or understand reality in exactly the same ways. We have different worldviews and that makes conversations like the one we’ve been having fairly fruitless. (By the way, his site is http://www.ctmu.org/ and there is a REALLY interesting article linked on the front page called “Cheating the Millennium: The Mounting Explanatory Debts of Scientific Naturalism” You’d probably enjoy reading it.)
So it’s getting late and my ramblings are getting increasingly less coherent. I guess what I’m trying to say with all of this is this – Thanks guys…it’s been fun, but I’m moving on in the interest of finding more fruitful uses of my time. And I don’t mean to imply that our conversation has been fruitless. I think it has been good, but at this point, for me at least, all the juice has been squeezed out of this orange.
God bless!
It’s only fruitless if worldviews can’t change. I think this is kind of a cop-out.
I agree. Disappointingly, the exchange went more or less as they always seem to: grandiose claims followed by frantic clambering-down followed by refusal to answer even simple, polite questions followed by a hasty departure, unconvincingly rationalised.
It’s amazing, isn’t it, how these people are always so gung-ho for debate when they think they have their opponents over a barrel? The instant they learn that nobody is flummoxed by the likes of Behe and his juvenile arguments, off they crawl into the woodwork they emerged from.
“This analogy is far from perfect, but I do see it speaking into our conversation on a few levels.”
I find it an apt description of how religion treats the real world. Each of the blind men touch the animal once and then pontificate endlessly on what they discovered. Never testing their conclusions.
Pardon me but there was no hasty departure on my end. I believe I’ve stuck this out for a while, and showed all of you respect in this exchange.
The real problem here, which you’ve just so well illustrated, is that I’m up against arrogance and closed mindedness. The fact that you would call Behe’s arguments “juvenile” betrays your contempt for anyone, including me, who would make any claims about the existence of God. You can write your arrogance off as confidence, and my being out-gunned as being wrong – that’s your prerogative and exactly what I’m sure you’ll do. But the reality is that Intelligent Design has substance to it, and your stubborn refusal to acknowledge that (which you CAN do without agreeing with ID) simply shows me that not only do you not believe in God, you hate even the idea of God.
I feel compassion for you, I really do. I hope that doesn’t come off as condescending, but it’s the truth. I hope one day you soften your stance a bit, because I think in opening yourself up to the possibility of God, you’ll find that there are pieces in your soul that can come alive which you never knew existed. But of course you don’t believe in the soul so why am I even trying…
I’ll make ONE more request of you, if you’re up for the challenge. The website http://www.discovery.org has tons of information, of a scientific nature, for any devout evolutionist to wrestle with for a good bit of time. It says things far better than I ever could, so I won’t really make any more feeble attempts. My challenge to you, as someone who is so convinced in your position, is to bookmark that site and every once in a while pick an article to read. If you do this, one of two positive outcomes is CERTAIN to result:
1) You’ll be that much more equipped to intelligently counteract the grandiose, juvenile arguments of people like me when we pop our heads into your favorite blogs.
OR
2) You’ll soften to the idea of God, and maybe even find yourself one day BEING the guy who pops his head into blogs like this one, making grandiose and juvenile arguments. Except I’m sure from our interactions that you’ll be more better equipped than I am to do so!
Here’s one article to start you off, if you so choose: http://www.discovery.org/a/9941
It is called “AN ANALYSIS OF THE EXPERT TESTIMONY OF PROF. DAVID HILLIS BEFORE THE TEXAS STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION ON JANUARY 21, 2009″ which I think you’ll agree is both recent and relevant.
Sadly my guess is that you’ll write this final request off as a waste of your time. I hope you don’t. But if it matters to you, I’ll incentivize (is that a word? haha) your task by agreeing to a similar counter challenge by you if you’d like to give one. Name the site and I’ll definitely keep up with it…
No you haven’t. You haven’t bothered to answer any of the questions we’ve asked you. You don’t even seem to recognise that they need to be answered.
You’re absolutely right. Afterall, I’ve done my best to explain the circumstances under which I would change my mind about what I believe. I can’t think of anything more arrogant and closed minded, can you? Obviously you are less arrogant and more open minded since you have repeatedly stated that you will not change your mind under any circumstances.
No, it betrays my contempt for Behe. He is demonstrably an idiot. I’ve offered to to send you links pointing to that very demonstration.
Does it? Will you explain how?
As a matter of fact, I do have that site bookmarked and I regularly look at it. My guess is that I’ve been up for that ‘challenge’ since before you were born.
How about I “make ONE more request of you, if you’re up for the challenge”?
Simply read what people have written here. Try to understand it. Nobody really cares much if you disagree, but we care if you ignore the things we’ve said, the questions we’ve asked and the arguments we’ve made. I think the community here has left none of your arguments un-contended (correct me if I’m wrong). You have quite obviously ignored most of our arguments.
Well…OK, but why? We’re not talking about different religions. We’re talking about all religions vs no religion. You’ve made it clear that you think lack of religion requires faith, some of us have argued otherwise. You haven’t really replied to those arguments.
Indeed. For one thing, a scientist would hypothesise that what she was feeling was a snake. She would feel the trunk, notice it was snake-like and tick off some evidence that it was a snake. But then she’d look harder and realise that it did not contain many characteristics of snakes. She’d conclude that the hypothesis was false and that it wasn’t a snake. For one thing, it’s attached at one end to a bloody great hulking beast. An adherent of religion would have been told in advance that it was a snake and even if he felt the elephant’s side, he would somehow still conclude that it was a snake.
The scientist wouldn’t be happy with feeling the elephant all over. She’d want to know how it interacted with its environment and with other members of its species. She’d want to know how the elephant was related to other things. She’d want to know what would happen to the population of elephants if the environment changed. And so on. All that time, the religious feeler would be worshiping the snake.
You are describing a discussion. All discussions worth having involve people with different views. That’s the entire purpose in having a discussion, isn’t it?
Really, that isn’t how it is. The scientifically-inspired are really quite happy to change their views if you present a convincing argument. However, that argument must be based on evidence. Flaccid arm-waving of the type Behe is fond of won’t cut it, for reasons that have already been explained in this thread.
Perhaps this is where the misaprehension has arisen. The truth has nothing to do with eloquent arguments, just evidence. I’ll certainly budge if the evidence requires it. I certainly won’t based solely on rhetoric. The difference between us is that you won’t budge at all.
Agreed. My feelings don’t have any bearing on the matter at all. However, the success of science at describing the world stands by itself. It works extraordinarily well as previously explained. By contrast, religion endlessly parrots some bronze age writing that has received creepily-undeserved attention for a few thousand years. I feel that science is superior, but that doesn’t make it so. The fact that it is objectively superior at describing the world certainly does make it so (at describing the world). And if we’re to continue in this idiotic vein that ID is somehow a contender to ToE, then what we’re talking about is describing the real world.
I can see the headlines now:
Internet user loses eyes in blinding flash of the obvious.
Discussion is only fruitful if you are willing to change your mind. To do that, you probably need to know what it would take to change your mind. If your answer is ‘nothing’ then shame on you, it’s masturbation rather than discussion. If your answer is ‘I don’t know’ then there is hope that we might have something to discuss.
latsot, my analogy of the elephant is typically used to speak of religion, but as I said, I was adapting it. I was simply illustrating the obvious truth that there is much knowledge about the universe out there that we do not know, don’t yet have the capacity to know, and likely will never know. In that sense, all of our finite knowledge as humans is interpreted differently, according to the worldviews we’ve become convinced of. So if you understood my analogy the way it was intended, the rest of the elephant is outside of our capacity to analyze, rendering your comments irrelevant to my point.
As for who’s unwilling to budge…you may be right about me, I don’t know. I’d like to think that I’d be open to proof that God doesn’t exist, but I know one thing – evolution isn’t it. As for you, and I may be wrong about this, I’m guessing that you’re a lot less likely to budge than you’re letting on. You say that you’d change your mind in the face of evidence, but your worldview, and your specific understanding of what science is and is not, eliminates even the possibility of the supernatural, and by connection any evidence of the supernatural. So for example, if I were to point you to a miracle, your would reject the possibility that it is a miracle because you don’t believe in miracles because they can’t be tested by science. And then you would go about finding a natural way of explaining away the miracle, which you may or may not be successful at doing. But even if you can’t explain the miracle, your assumption would still be that there is a natural explanation for it, you just don’t know it yet.
Time magazine moderated a debate of sorts a little while back between Richard Dawkins, who I’m sure you know well, and Francis Collins, a Christian geneticist who mapped the human genome (who is also an evolutionist). It is a great example of what I’m talking about when I speak of our worldviews effecting out interpretation of knowledge. If you’re interested, you can find it here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132,00.html
As you might predict, no one budged. And as you could have predicted in our conversation, no one budged. :)
One more thought, which may be my final thought, but something just occurred to me. You may be hearing what I’m saying as an either/or thing. Either God or Evolution. Either Faith or Science. Just to be clear, embracing God does not mean rejecting evolution. And opening yourself up to faith does not mean closing yourself down to science. If you’ve heard me imply otherwise, I apologize.
And yet here we are analysing elephants. For tiresomeness’ sake, I know that you aren’t talking about actual elephants. Neither am I. I just don’t understand why blindness – metaphorical or otherwise – necessarily compromises our ingenuity. I’d argue the reverse: our blindness feeds our curiosity. I certainly can’t conclude from the elephant story that there are some things we simply can’t understand. There might turn out to be things we can’t understand but the elephant story does nothing to illustrate this.
I’m not sure what you mean about questions left unanswered, but I’ve done my best to keep up with our exchange at the very least. Like I said, I’m a bit outgunned here. If there is any specific question that you’d still like me to answer, please restate it for me and I’ll give it a whirl.
Oh, my mistake. I’m sorry to be so ambiguous. What I was referring to was the various questions people in this thread have asked you which you quite obviously have not answered.
Sorry if this is a difficult concept. If you want to see such questions, simply read this thread. There are lots of them.
Oh, and I will absolutely bookmark this site and read it often. I might even chime in here and there, if I’m in the mood to get roughed up a little. It’s good for me intellectually.
The funny thing is I only got here in the first place because I was doing research on Christian daycare centers. I’d say we’ve drifted a little bit off of that topic! lol.
Let’s just start with the question you feel is most important…
If we’re going to be completely arbitrary about it, why not go through them in order?
“Let’s just start with the question you feel is most important…”
It’s a trick. Get an Axe. – Ash
Eagle:
I had a spare couple of minutes so I went through the thread and picked out the following questions that you didn’t answer. As I suggested, if you want to answer them, why not take them in order? In some cases you’ll need to look up the post.
* Unless you can give me conclusive evidence that God does NOT exist?
* But is lack of belief in gods the same as believing that God does not exist?
* Isn’t that a claim you make on faith as well?
* Do you have faith that Santa Claus does not exist?
* Faith that Zeus does not exist?
* I think religion is wrong. Is this arrogant of me?
* If I said there is a tiny china teapot in orbit around the Sun, too far and too small for telescopes to see, you’d call me crazy, right?
* But what if lots of people believe in the teapot?
* Do you really think that teaching your children to understand and evaluate evidence properly is a form of brainwashing?
* Can you really not see the difference between teaching that and teaching contradictory nonsense written in a bronze age book?
* Does your ‘proof’ [of god] rely on scripture?
* Does it rely on proper evidence?
* What satisfies you as proof of god’s existence?
* On the other hand, I’d love to know your thoughts about how a worm that can only live in the human eye was intelligently designed by an all-god, all-loving god who is proactively concerned with human affairs.
* Sure. But it has no bearing on whether god does or doesn’t exist, so I’ve no idea why you’ve brought it up [the implication being please explain].
* Does this [believing in things because there's evidence] really require faith?
* I ask again: given this, can you really not see the difference between ‘faith’ in science and faith in religion?
* Very well then. Give me one example of irriducible complexity. ONE
I suspect you’ll be tempted to ‘answer’ all these questions in one go, which will amount to dismissing them in a cloud of rhetoric. I urge you not to do that. Why not answer the questions one at a time?
I have a one year old son. I am completely agnostic and my wife is strongly Catholic. She wants to raise him under the impression that everything the Catholic faith teaches is absolute fact.
The posting here worries me that my son will encounter influences outside of my control, as he will most likely attend a Catholic grammar school. I am going to try to break whatever cycle of influence he might be exposed to so that he can maintain an open mind until his ability to reason is matured.
This might cause rift between my wife and me, but honestly, anything is better than raising delusional, brainwashed children.
Hi Gerald,
I’m the world’s worst agony aunt so take what I say with a pinch of something. Having said that, I tend to deal with conflict head on. You speak about your son’s impending catholic education like it’s already decided. Is this because religion trumps secularism in your family? Does your wife get more votes about how the kid is raised just because she happens to be religious? Is there pressure from your various families?
Don’t be afraid of conflict when it comes to how your son is raised, but don’t be adverse to compromise either.
Let me put it another way: decide what you are and are not prepared to compromise on when it comes to your bairn and make sure your wife understands this. She will have to do the same thing and she doesn’t get to cite religion as an excuse not to do so.
So I posted a while back and got hammered by all you athiests (latsot you were relentless!) but that’s ok I enjoyed the conversation. Gerald, your concerns touched on one of my original points that I think is valid here. You don’t want your son exposed to influences outside of your control. I’m very curious about your family dynamic…you said your wife is strongly Catholic. My assumption is that if that is the case, she regularly goes to church. How do you handle that? Do you go with her?
So ultimately I guess what I’m getting at is this – if it is important to you to keep your kids away from religious influences, why did you marry a strong Catholic? I would ask her the same question. If she is so set on having her son go to Catholic school, and being subject to strong religious influence, why did she marry you? The answer to these questions must be that both of your personal convictions weren’t SOOO strong such that you felt it neccessary to discriminate in your choice of a spouse based on them (unless one of you had some sort of conversion experience after you got married).
So if you were ok with your wife being Catholic, shouldn’t you also be ok with your son being Catholic? And conversely if your wife give you a hard time about sending your son to a public school, you could always say the same thing to her. “If you were ok with me being an athiest, shouldn’t you be ok with our son being an athiest?”
“(latsot you were relentless!)”
awesome.
I would ask you what is “acceptable religious indoctrination”? Who will decide, someone like Dawkins? Perhaps he could be a zar to the “president” on the topic. No doubt that will come if we get someone like Obama in the white house in 2012. I can hear it now, “the religious child abuse must stop”, “remove the children from the parents that teach gods character is seen throughout the creation”.The state will do a better job every time to indoctrinate.
Wow, you hit the trifecta of stupid teabagger bullshit! Complaining about a “zar” (btw, it’s tsar, or czar, learn to spell n00b), putting the word president in scare/legitimacy quotes, and ranting about a perceived socialist “state”. Congratulations.
I really hope you’re a poe and not ACTUALLY that dumb, but I’m not holding my breath.
I’m betting he is. Drive by troll or one we can poke with a stick for a while, that is the only question.