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... continue to indoctrinate children with rubbish like Intelligent Design/Creationism when they have been presented, repeatedly, with hard evidence for the rea
by bluekeybox 15y ago
... continue to indoctrinate children with rubbish like Intelligent Design/Creationism when they have been presented, repeatedly, with hard evidence for the reality of evolution and the fact that it does not require a guiding force.
Thinking about this used to make me angry, but I am glad it doesn't anymore since anger is a negative emotion and is not productive. What I realized is that people who "willfully indoctrinate" their children into a religion often do so not out of hubris ("I am smarter than those godless atheists") and not out of ignorance ("I don't care what others have to say"), but out of the following: "I have no idea how to raise children properly, therefore I will raise them to be religious because from among the people I know, most 'good, proper' people are religious, and because if you follow the ten commandments/whatever you cannot really be bad".
So ultimately the indoctrination of children into a religion is no so much something particularly malicious (hubris/ignorance), but more an admission of defeat (i.e. "I have no idea how to teach children morals if I don't tell them the story of Jesus"). People are scared that their children will turn into anti-social monsters if they are not indoctrinated. They see sensational stories on TV of parents being murdered by their own children and they think that if they raise the children to be religious, something similar will never happen. Fear is a powerful force.
Perhaps someone should come up with a popular atheist's guide to how to raise children, and a part of that religious indoctrination will go away. Unfortunately, if you look around, most of the people publishing such books are religious zealots and most of the outspoken atheists are busy attacking the zealots instead of being occupied with something more productive.