relda,
An interesting link. It indeed speaks for itself. It says
(a) that the author is a bright young man whom the Baptist school failed to “indoctrinate” into uncritical thinking (if indeed that was their aim) but also possibly failed to make him understand that feature of the Christian message that goes beyond the “love your neighbour”;
(b) that he had very incompetent religious educators, who were not only poor at teaching but also at grasping what Christianity is all about themselves. (The only explanation would be that they forgot they were in the 21st century.) He called this deficiency “indoctrination” because that has become a fashionable word for it.

The consequence of being exposed to such RE teachers is often the “loss of faith” or even aversion to any religion (see e.g. the above posts by AL Philips). To become a religious fanatic you need to be brain-washed either at a later age as well or within a society that is very different from ours.

There are also many bad maths teachers who reduce maths to mechanical drill, to external formalities without conveying to the student what mathematics is all about, and how to understand it (except that we do not call it indoctrination). The outcome are many otherwise intelligent adults who have problems with, or even aversion to, any non-trivial mathematics. Similarly with incompetent language or music teachers.

Irrespective of this, I still maintain that if you want your child to be instructed and feel at home with the world-view his/her parents adhere to - and this should be the right of every parent - the sooner you and/or the school start, the easier it is for the child. (Again, the same holds for learning to swim, playing a musical instrument, speaking a foreign language.) Of course, you can err by choosing the wrong school, or the school (the Church) by hiring the wrong teacher, but this does not justify the sweeping statement that exposing a child to ANY RE at an early age prevents it from learning to think critically at a later age.

George wrote:

>>she is uncontaminated by Christianity<<
I would not call contamination any extra knowledge, insights or skills I gained, even if it was against my or my parents' wishes. The same analogy: I had to learn Russian, everybody had to, but now I have the extra skill of enjoying e.g Lermontov's poetry in its original instead of relying on translations, which with poetry (as with religion) is never the same.

Dear George,

I would not call contamination any extra knowledge, insights or skills either. She probably knows more about Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism than most Australians. She is uncontaminated by religious belief. In my opinion religious belief usually but not always deadens the critical facilities.

There are cases where religious belief has not deadened the critical facilities. http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/ is the website of Bishop John Shelby Spong of the Anglican church. Bishop Spong is capable of looking at his own tradition, maintaining his Christian belief, maintaining his critical facilities and expressing a warm humanity. That is not possible for most religious believers. Many Christians who are aware of his views are most upset by them.

EVO,
It was certainly a lack of imagination the churchmen involved in the 1616 ban on Copernicanism, who believed that Copernicus's theory was contrary to common sense, would never be proved. They were disinclined to allow research on a theory that they found "false and absurd in philosophy" and "contrary to [the] Scripture" which they felt the Church alone had the right to interpret. Darwin, through imaginative process, broke free of the accepted way of 'doing the science' urged by Francis Bacon two centuries earlier. He (Darwin) followed to a large extent the so-called ‘hypothetico-deductive’ method, as is now used in much of modern science. Darwin’s fellow scientists wanted proof - not a process which involved a crucially the well-informed imagination creating a hypothesis and then deducing the tests of its validity.

Logical positivism, with its analytic/synthetic distinction and the verification principle has been rigorously challenged and found wanting. This once fashionable epistemic view in its demand for ‘proof’ sidelines much of the metaphysics, ethics and theology now prevalent. It is a distinct lack of imagination which fails to see the vital connection between the tradition of Hermetic ‘magic’ in the Renaissance and the emergence of early modern science.

George,
I agree there should be a distinction made between ‘brain-washing’ and ‘indoctrination’. The latter is perhaps more a professional methodology where one is imbued with learning. In attending university, for the purpose of learning a particular ‘discipline’, I must accept (even if not always uncritically) a partisan viewpoint. This distinction is perhaps not clearly understood - people generally relate, whether instinctively, intuitively or consciously, to the views of another and ‘choose’ to follow them. The psychology, as applied by the perhaps well meaning Baptists, is more akin to brainwashing (mistakenly called indoctrination) - a dismally inept technique if any ‘true conversion’ is to occur.

Bushbasher
I know ultrarationalists exist because in my brave scientific atheist career I was one of them. There are also quite a few scientific colleagues that fit the bill. Christianity is more about seeing the world in a way that is at first counterintuitive. We have to be taught that we are miserable sinners; that are a realization that is not ready to hand because we will always make excuses for the evil that we do. This is not groveling before the deity but a realization of the truth, that the good that we would do we do not. This is fundamental to the promise that we might escape from the cage of the self. This does not mean that we live more righteous lives than non believers. Indeed the ultrarationalists are far more concerned with keeping the rules that I will ever be.

The early Christians were accused of antinomianism because they did not see the law as a way to a righteousness that penetrated to the heart. I have never said that Christians were necessarily more moral than others. If we have any advantage it is that we see the world and us in it in a more truthful light.

George made a good point a few posts ago when he talked about what the existence of God means. For too long the existence of God has been tied up with what happened in the 17th century when theology and physics were mixed and God became an actor in the universe. Much of the debate at the time was about the body of God, its ubiquity and how it fitted into space. But whether God exists or not is related to whether the truth of our existence is revealed in the history of Israel and in the man Jesus. If Christianity is not a truthful story that reveals who we are then it can be rightly said that God does not exist.

Peter Sellick

Sells, you were never one of "them".

Peter says:- "If Christianity is not a truthful story that reveals who we are then it can be rightly said that God does not exist."

Now first of all Peter I would like to assure you I'm not one of those atheists that argues that god does not exist, however what has always bothered me about most of your posts is that you have "hung your hat" so to speak, on the Gospels as a "revealed" truth.
You have never explained to us (as far as I know) whether you are a Literalist (100% of the NT is true) or a quasi Rationalist (some of it is true but some is not to be taken literally), or a Psychic Gnostic ( the NT contains an unfathomable high level spiritual "truth" without needing to be literally true in any respect).
From what you have said you seem to fit into category 1. i.e. a Literalist but on the other hand your somewhat reasoned approach to many topics suggests that you are more of a free thinker than a red-necked born again Creationist and you could be category 2. (a Uniting Church stance) or even 3. (a follower of the real Paul).
I really wish you would drop the intellectual stuff and simply tell us where you stand. I know Jesus spoke in riddles but do you actually have to follow suit?