The problem is that as far as I can tell, nobody has an edge on how to figure out what that “absolute truth” is, let alone who’s closer or closest to it. So for someone to declare that they’re right and everyone else is wrong, but then go on to provide no good evidence for that opinion, is pretty arrogant.

For instance, most people agree that it’s impossible to logically prove or disprove the existence of god. For me to say, “There is no god, I know it absolutely, and everybody who believes in god is an idiot!” would be an arrogant statement. I can provide no good proof that god is nonexistent. Do you agree?

Yet god – if he exists – has proven so elusive that it is just as arrogant for you to say that you know there’s a god, in fact he’s the god that you worship, in fact he was revealed in Christ, in fact he’s told you exactly how to worship and in what church tradition to follow, and the millions of other people worshiping Jesus in other church traditions (not to mention people worshipping Allah, Yahweh, Krishna, and the millions who do not worship gods) are all wrong. Is that not also arrogant?

Your questions have the makings of a doctorate paper.

I agree that doctorates have been written – thousands of them probably – trying to answer those questions. However, they’ve been largely unsuccessful as far as I understand theology. I don’t find the free will argument convincing, for instance.

And this gets back to that pesky Occam’s Razor. Why does it take doctorates to answer what are really pretty straightforward and simple questions? There’s a simple answer but religious believers don’t want to consider it: There’s no god.

At a very basic level, this is true. Parents teach young children certain rules of behavior and they enforce those rules as needed, sometimes by brute force and little else. This is indoctrination. In my case, I started reinforcing rules with simple explanations about why I thought the rules were useful when my sons were still pre-schoolers. So, from a very early age, rather than continuing to appeal to brute force or authority, I started teaching them that there are reasons for doing things or refraining from some activities. Thus, the transition from parental indoctrination to education began early. Since parents generally want to produce independent adults, this is probably similarly true for many people.

The problem that I see with religion, generally speaking, is that many churches never seem to transition out of indoctrination to education. Instead, they spoon-feed their congregations from infancy through adulthood, telling them what they should believe, how they should interpret scriptures, how they should behave, what books they should read (or avoid), what movies they should see (or avoid), how to dress…. Some denominations are more extreme than others, but I think it’s something that underlies most, if not all, religions. Unlike parents, churches don’t particularly want their congregations to be independent. The church relies, to a great degree, on keeping people dependent upon, and financially supportive of, clerical authority.

And no, indoctrination is not unique to religion, but religious indoctrination is the most appropriate point of focus for this web site. We can talk about politics elsewhere.

whether indoctrination is practiced only by theistic religions.

I’d go so far as to say that indoctrination is practiced by nearly everyone to some extent. Left wingers tend to teach their kids that their beliefs (liberal politics) is THE TRUTH. Ditto religious and non-religious parents, conservative parents, flag-waving-pro-US parents, etc.

On the EOC and its intellectual bent;…

Yep. They are very intellectual. They are quite enamored of their heritage of great theological minds like Chrysostom, Climacus, Cyril of Syria, Methodius, Athanasius, and so on. And I must say that some of their contemporary thinkers (Timothy Ware, Anthony Bloom, Alexander Schmemann) are brilliant.

As mentioned about the RC, the EOC also has no trouble with evolutionary theory.

And nobody, …. nobody… knows history like the EOC.

The EOC does NOT demand a celibate priesthood. Priests may be married. Some priests chose not to marry, and bishops and above are not married. The former just ’cause they want it that way, and the latter because a bishop or above is just too dang busy to even be a decent husband/father.

The EOC does hold to male-only priesthood. They have some good reasons. Doesn’t mean you’ll agree, but they didn’t just pull the idea out of the air.

The EOC allows birth control.

There is no confirmation in the EOC. They baptize babies and serve communion to members from infancy. And as for any kind of religious indoctrination classes, it’s quite variable. I know of cradle O’s who are very knowledgeable about their church and others who are bogglingly ignorant about it.

Nevertheless, any religion that teaches about a supernatural sky-daddy that cares for individual believers, and who requires obedience and submission, is, at some point, irrational.

D’accord. Yet it seems that just that sort of thing is what most people say they believe.

Who says man is a rational animal?

I’m being too vague and it’s definitely killing me. Maybe it would be better for me to make a long post and really cover the subject. Your questions have the makings of a doctorate paper.

Btw, for someone to say they’re right and millions of others are wrong doesn’t make the person arrogant. It also doesn’t mean the one person is right, but he could be closer to the truth than the millions. Only in a world where there are no absolute truths and the man is speaking for himself is that one man arrogant. “If” he’s right then he’s not arrogant at all but he’s someone others should have listened to. . .but they were too arrogant to listen.

That’s okay, Terry. The great thing about this place is that we can all learn from our discussions. I definitely choose my words much more carefully than I used to since I started participating in online forums.

Because I lack a love for tradition and am untrusting of interpretations I check it with the Bible always. If it doesn’t line up or kind of lines up but kind of doesn’t then I don’t accept it. The thing that also makes me different than most Christians is I actually know that everything doesn’t need to be interpreted.

I’m not sure what you mean here – are you saying that you take the literal words of the bible at face value? It seems to me that nearly everything in a text from a pre-scientific era has to be examined in terms of its context, various translations and paraphrases, and through the cultural lens of the time. The problem, for me, is that nearly any group can and does take the bible and read into it just about any interpretation possible: Liberal, conservative, literal, metaphoric, revelatory, historical and on and on.

There are scholars who do higher criticism. There’s the Jesus Seminar. There are conservative religious scholars. All of them have claims to validity. It’s impossible for me to tell what the original authors meant 2,500 years ago in a time and place that are completely foreign to me and everyone else alive today. This is why I don’t have much use for the bible except as a historical and literary document.

I’ve met so many (and I do mean many) who are members of a church yet they do not even believe the Bible (they’re not Christians). Probably nearly every church out there doesn’t even ask the a single question to try to determine if a person’s salvation was geniune or not. As long as they walked down the isle and repeat a few words after someone then it must be geniune, right? Not at all! What happens when a church is supposed to led by the Spirit but too many of its members aren’t even Christians? You get the idea.

It sounds to me like you’re excusing the problems of the Christian church by saying that most people who claim to be Christians really aren’t “true Christians.” That’s a pretty powerful and rather arrogant statement (if you’ll excuse me for saying so) – kind of along the lines of saying that you know the Real Jesus and most/many other Christians do not.

It also seems like a convenient excuse to grab onto because it’s difficult to find an explanation for the failure of the holy spirit to do what he is promised to do in the New Testament – i.e. lead and guide the church.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of an argument called “Occam’s Razor,” which basically states that “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.” This was a powerful argument for me when I first heard it a few years ago:

Which is the simpler explanation, that millions and millions of people are faking the claim to be Christians, praying, going to church, tithing, devoting their lives to their beliefs in god, Jesus, heaven, hell, etc so that the holy spirit can’t really work in their lives to supernaturally transform their behavior? or that the holy spirit doesn’t show the expected results in the church because he simply isn’t there?

I say all this simply to explain where I have come from, in terms of my examinations of these issues. And rest assured, I have come a long, long way. I was a devoted, full-out, born again, bible-studying Christian for 30 years before my deconversion.

But, as a parent (or spiritual leader) to teach them they are inertly “bad” unless they are “saved”? and control them by fear? And tell them they can’t do anything good or right or prosper unless it’s YOUR way (or your view of “God’s way”)? And that it is “BAD” to question these beliefs? That IS indoctrination, and yes it IS wrong.

Young children believe what their parents teach them. What is “right” is at their parent’s discretion. HOPEFULLY, eventually, they start to question those views… and form their own opinions. Parents should encourage those questions, not prohibit them. However, some parents instill fear and beliefs from so early on, so deeply, that is cab be awfully hard to break out of that mind set. And, then the cycle continues.

Racism is taught. Prejudice is taught. Violence can be taught. Believing that suicide and being a martyr heroic can be taught. Believing that you are going to hell… or that everyone else that doesn’t believe what you are is also taught. Is it the child’s fault they believe what their parents teach them or act out in ways their parents encourage them? A child seeks to gain their parents approval. Their own existence depends on it.… of course they will believe them.

I do believe being brought up as religious as I was, was a form of mental abuse. And, I know I wasn’t alone. And it was not just by my mother (although if not for her I wouldn’t have been subjected to (and also believed) the others). Intentional or not… done with good intentions or not… it’s abuse.

I feel bad for all the kids today still going thru life with these fundamental Christian parents.

In a more secular vein, I also believe that parents who tell children things like, “If you [fill in transgression of your choice], I’ll call the police and they’ll put you in jail,” are abusive. Abuse takes many forms and is by no means confined to religious contexts.