freetaught Says:
May 17, 2008 - Definition: Religious Indoctrination: Religious indoctrination refers to customary rites of passage for the indoctrination of persons into a particular religion and its extended community.
rudyhenkel Says:
May 17, 2008 - After watching several of your videos, I finally figured out what sounded off to me about your speaking. You hardly use contractions! Not that that is wrong, or anything =D On topic, I'm very much agreement with your opinion here. Indoctrination is harmful, but it is neither helpful nor accurate to classify it all as abuse.
rudyhenkel Says:
May 17, 2008 - One could claim that teaching children ethical systems and teaching them to share, etc., is another form of indoctrination. It becomes very difficult to determine what forms of indoctrination are harmful, and which are not.
rudyhenkel Says:
May 17, 2008 - Bah! I meant to say, in my first comment, that indoctrination *can* be harmful.
thinkmorepink Says:
May 17, 2008 - How does one classify abuse anyway? Where does one draw the line? I suppose it's all relative, and depending on how aggressively one forces the doctrine. It seems as if everything is child abuse these days. Good video.
Felecia187 Says:
May 17, 2008 - get some balls and get involved , my son needs your help.
onlywhenprovoked Says:
May 17, 2008 - you did just say some of your indoctrination was harmful so i guess your position is that causing your child harm is not abuse? i am not trying to be a smart ass, just as honest observation/question
freetaught Says:
May 17, 2008 - LOL.. Why would you assume that I think you to be a smart ass? Your a good dude and a rational thinker! I believe that many loving parents make decisions with the intention of removing their children from harm's way; sometimes they succeed and other times they may put them in harm's way; sometimes physically, and other times emotionally! I did not perceive your question to be anything less than honest! Thanks for sharing! Peace!
freetaught Says:
May 17, 2008 - Thank you for your comment! This comment captures precisely how complicated this issue is. I'm uploading my final video on the matter now. I'm ready to put this baby to bed!
freetaught Says:
May 17, 2008 - I think that we are in complete agreeance here!
freetaught Says:
May 17, 2008 - Thanks! You sir are getting a shoutout in the video that I'm uploading!
NLPNVC Says:
May 17, 2008 - Interesting topic Free. What fascinates me most about this conditioning are the consequences for us as a global community. Even if we decide to not believe in a god all the other beliefs which come with this conditioning are alive inside of our psyche. Often we are not conscious of the beliefs and subconsciously not only do we accept them as being real and true, we live as if they are real. I see this everywhere specially in the language we speak. I know that this is a contributor to violence.
FaithIsImaginary Says:
May 17, 2008 - In my opinion the way to view Child Indoctrination as Child Abuse is that children have a right to be taught how to think, not what to think. In the case of religion, it is clear that the vast majority of such indoctrination must be false, because religions are contradictory. Because nobody can know which(if any) view is correct, it is clearly unhealthy to firebrand kids with an emotional investment in what is most likely lies. Just this should be enough to protect kids from religion by law
FaithIsImaginary Says:
May 17, 2008 - "One could claim that teaching children ethical systems and teaching them to share, etc., is another form of indoctrination." As long as they're based on humanistic values, the golden rule etc you can't go wrong. It's easy to leave political/economic issues out of "child-ethics". The only harmful part of religious indoctrination is that children are taught a worldview that in most cases is provably false along with meme protection mechanisms like Hell which tends to destroy them for life.
rudyhenkel Says:
May 17, 2008 - I don't disagree with what you're saying. I was only trying to point out that not *all* forms of indoctrination are harmful.
freetaught Says:
May 18, 2008 - What you said about no being aware of all of our conditioning is so true! Are you aware that even the acceptable speaking distance varies from culture to culture?
freetaught Says:
May 18, 2008 - While I agree that some indoctrination may be harmful, I believe that parents should have the constitional right to teach religion to their children! You should check out firefly515's original video for additional info; it deals explicitly with what you said!
freetaught Says:
May 18, 2008 - Agreed!
pchannell Says:
May 17, 2008 - Definition: indoctrination: to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., esp. to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view.