The Creepyness of Religious Indoctrination

I've been less than motivated to post lately. I went on vacation Thursday through Sunday of last week, and that state of mind has basically continued since. I'm back now, hopefully.

On to the post.

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Ed Brayton has posted on a recent free speech case involving a 4th grade student handing out religious fliers at school. He and I agree on the outcome of the case that the student should have the right to hand out the fliers, but the article stood out at me for a different reason.

According to the family's 2004 lawsuit, Nicole Bloodgood tried three times to get permission for Michaela to pass out the homemade fliers to other students at Nate Perry Elementary School. The flier, about the size of a greeting card, started out: "Hi! My name is Michaela and I would like to tell you about my life and how Jesus Christ gave me a new one."

I think that is one of the creepiest things I have ever read. She is in the 4th grade. That is about 10 years old. How hard a life could a 10-year old have had, barring homelessness/poverty (which is not likely given that she has the time and resources to make the fliers), chronic disease (which the cynic in me knows would be mentioned in the story for the compassion factor), or a situation created by her parents?

This is a situation created by the parents. It is a situation that tells the child that they have no value as a person if they aren't connected with this invisible, intangible father figure. This a fundamental problem I have with religion; especially Christianity and Islam. They tell everyone, including children, that they are evil, immoral, horrible people that don't even deserve to be alive, but as long as they believe in the sky fairy, he'll have mercy on them and keep them safe from the horrible, eternal wrath and torture that was created by that very same loving father. That knowledge would most certainly create a bad life for a 10 year old who believed it. Control through fear is the mantra of western religion, and nowhere does it work better than against a child.

Childhood is not the age that we should be instilling dogmatic thinking. Instead, we should be encouraging the skills of logic and critical thinking. Armed with those skills, a person can approach any situation with a rational perspective and make decisions based on fact and reason, not dogma. We should be focusing on creating a generation of intelligent, skeptical leaders, not religious sheep.