Why religion needs indoctrination

Imagine two scenarios:

Scenario 1: All traces of religion have been removed from the Earth. That means that there are no places of worship, there are no religious texts, there are no religious pictures or videos, there are no artifacts or objects related to religion, there is nothing about religion stored on computers, and there is no memory of religion in anyone’s mind.

Scenario 2: All traces of science have been removed from the Earth. That means that there are no institutions or universities or laboratories to do with science, there are no papers or textbooks to do with science, there are no scientific pictures or videos, there are no measurements or discoveries that were made by science, there is nothing about science stored on computers, and there is no memory of science in anyone’s mind.

Note that the above scenarios are how it would have been at a reasonably recent point in the history of life on Earth, say somewhere between 20,000 to 100,000 years ago (or more).

Now, from those starting-point scenarios, fast-forward time as it would have happened for normal human development. By the time you get back to approximately our modern times (give or take) two outcomes would be true:

Outcome 1: There would definitely be religion, however not a single thing about the new religions would be the same as the religions that were forgotten. For sure, people would worship god(s) via various practices and for sure there would be texts to do with various religions, but none of those gods, practices or texts would be the same as those removed in scenario 1. Yes, there would still be people making money from religion and yes, there would be followers of those new religions.

Outcome 2: Every single thing to do with the “new” science would be the same as the science that was forgotten. Every mathematical theorem, every scientific observation, discovery and measurement, every single laboratory function, every paper and textbook, every piece of medicine, the syllabus of every university course – all would end up being the same. Obviously there might be some differences in the timeline of discovery, however in the end, things would be the same.

Think about that.

Those outcomes lead to two interesting conclusions. Firstly, that there is something inherently correct about the scientific approach, and secondly, that there is a need for the religious to indoctrinate the next generation (and as many other people as they can) into following current belief systems and practices. if they don’t, then there’s a real chance that support will drop below a critical mass and lead to the decline of their religion and practices. And that has already happened, e.g. how many people today still believe in zeus or thor or baal?

Have you been indoctrinated?

The problem with indoctrination is that it isn’t easy to tell if you have been indoctrinated, and it certainly isn’t easy to determine the extent to which you’ve been indoctrinated.

To help you detect if you have any level of indoctrination, here is a check list of Yes/No questions:

• Do you believe that there is a god?
• Do you believe that your god created part or all of the universe?
• Do you believe that your god affects aspects of your life?
• Do you believe that your god affects aspects of other peoples’ lives?
• Do you attempt to communicate with your god, e.g. by praying?
• Do you believe that communicating with your god (e.g. by praying) can alter events?
• Do you attend a location (e.g. a church) on a regular basis to practice aspects of your religion?
• Do you take seriously anyone who claims to have expertise in aspects of your religion?
• Do you attempt to explain aspects of your religion to others?
• Do you insist or encourage others to practice aspects of your religion?
• Do you regularly read from religious texts?
• Do you supply money, goods or your time to support your religion?
• Do you feel the need to have religious decoration or ornaments in you home, e.g. paintings, statues, etc.
• Do you believe that morals originate from your religious texts.
• Do you believe in the concept of sin?
• Do you believe in absolutes, e.g. that things are either good/bad or right/wrong?
• Do you accept what others in your religion tell you, e.g. without checking for yourself?
• Do you have any sort of separation between yourself and your family and/or friends because of your religion?
• Do you attempt to follow one or more practices of your religion as detailed by your religious texts?
• Do you try to restrict your dealings to members of your religion, e.g. in business or trade?
• Do you reject supernatural aspects of other religions yet accept supernatural aspects in your religion?
• Do you believe that problems in life can be solved by following the practices specified by your religious texts?
• Do you believe that the world would become significantly better if everyone were to follow the practices specified by your religious texts or leaders?
• Do you believe in the rules or practices mandated by your religious leaders/elders that are not present in your religious texts?
• Do you believe in the concept of being “born again”?
• Do you believe that people need to be baptized?
• Do you believe that everyone must be able to identify as one of only two genders?
• Do you believe that heterosexual relationships are the only permissible relationships?
• Do you believe that what consenting adults do in their own homes should be influenced by your religion?
• Do you believe that governments should make decisions in accordance with the rules arising from your religious texts or from the statements made by your religious leaders?
• Do you believe that statements by your religious leaders are automatically correct?
• Do you believe that any of the characters in your religious texts existed?
• Do you believe that any of the events in your religious texts happened?
• Do you believe that even a single prophecy specified in your religious texts has come true?
• Do you have trouble condemning the more extreme statements or actions from members of your own religion?
• Do you believe that your god is omniscient, omnipotent and/or perfect?
• Do you believe that there are no contradictions in your religious texts?
• Do you believe that there are no mistakes in your religious texts?
• Do you believe the miracles described by your religious texts?
• Do you find yourself inclined to excuse unconscionable behaviour in your religious texts, e.g. murder, genocide, bigotry, cruelty, misogyny and slavery?
• Do you believe that all of the rules and laws specified in your religious texts are applicable to modern society?
• Do you believe that “the ends justifies the means” is enough reason for the actions and statements by your religion?
• Do you believe that evolution is unscientific?
• Do you believe that society should fund some or all of your religion?
• Do you believe that your religion is the one true religion?
• Do you believe that your religion was the first religion?
• Do you find yourself supporting fringe or unscientific theories that result from your religious texts, e.g. that the Earth is flat or that all “kinds” of animals fit on a boat while the Earth flooded?
• Do you believe that people who identify as atheists are practicing a belief system?
• Do you believe in a place called heaven (or similar)?
• Do you believe in a place called hell (or similar)?
• Do you believe that there is such a thing as an afterlife?
• Do you believe that there is such a thing as eternal life?
• Do you believe in reincarnation?
• Do you believe that you have a soul?
• Do you believe that people will be punished (in an afterlife) for certain types of behavior in this life?
• Do you believe that you will be rewarded (in an afterlife) for certain types of behavior in this life?
• Do you believe that you will be able to meet up with family members and friends in an afterlife?
• Have you ever believed a date put forward by someone as a prediction for some sort of religious event, e.g. a rapture, or the start of the end times, or the arrival of one of the characters in your religion?
• Do you believe that there is a justifiable reason why an event prophesied by someone in your religion failed to happen?
• Have you ever secretly craved the end of the world? Come on now, be honest.

If you answered “yes” to even one of the above, then you have been indoctrinated – at least to some extent. The more of the above to which you answered “yes”, the more severe is your indoctrination.

That’s not to say that you are necessarily at fault for your beliefs because indoctrination is almost always the deliberate act by someone towards someone else. It is possible to self indoctrinate, however initial indoctrination usually requires the actions of other people, e.g. via verbal or text or audio-visual material.

How does religion indoctrinate?

Each religion has its own well-developed tactics about how to indoctrinate people. Specifics are covered elsewhere on this site, so the following is a summary of the playbook that various religions use to ensnare and keep their followers – generation after generation.

Indoctrinating children

Indoctrination starts with children and religions have a ready, willing, and unpaid workforce to help out. That workforce is called: parents.

Parents have been conditioned to pass on their own indoctrination to their children. That is done because of the belief that their children will miss out on something if they are not indoctrinated. Religious parents have been conditioned not to recognize their actions as indoctrination; instead, they see their actions as just passing on the good parts that they have been told are in their religion. Those “good” parts are thought to include the passing on of some sort of morals, and of the protection of something called the “soul”. There is also the added bonus of fulfilling people’s desire to take part in social and group events (that there religion is only too happy to provide).

There are many rituals involving children, and here is a brief summary of some of those (with links to Wikipedia articles):

• Infant baptism. A Christian sacramental practice in which young children are baptized to initiate them into a faith. It is a symbol of spiritual rebirth, cleansing from sin, and inclusion into the church community. A slightly wider parental sphere is created via the use of selected godparents who are expected to make vows (renouncing evil and professing their faith in god) on behalf of the unsuspecting baby. There are preparation classes for the adults involved and a post-event social gathering to celebrate the “milestone”. Disturbingly, some people believe that a child cannot be admitted to heaven if they have not been baptized.
• First Communion. A ceremony in some Christian traditions that typically occurs between the ages of seven and thirteen (the “age of reason”) in which a child receives the Eucharist (the symbolic “body” and “blood” of jesus) for the first time. It is predominantly practiced by Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran traditions. It can only happen after the baptism has occurred. Horrifically, it can only occur after the child has made their first confession. The ceremony involves much ritual in the forms of: a mass, a procession, certain attire, a subsequent feast, and gifts. These are designed to get the maximum number of people involved.
• Bar mitzvah. A Jewish coming-of-age ritual. Typically it occurs when boys turn 13 and girls turn 12 or 13 (depending on the flavor of the religion). It is considered an age at which a child is considered to be accountable for their own actions. That’s important for a less talked about reason, namely that the ceremony is actually designed for parents to offer thanks to their god that they are no longer punishable for what are then considered to be sins by their children. Nice! The ritual includes: lengthy preparatory study, special clothing, a synagogue service, a subsequent feast, and gifts.
• Bismillah. A cultural ceremony celebrated mostly by Muslims in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. It is practiced on boys and girls between the ages of four and five and involves them being made to recite the opening phrase of the qur’ran. It marks the start for a child in learning to recite the qur’ran. It involves special clothing and is followed by a grand feast with family and friends. In exchange for the food, guests are expected to provide hugs and gift.
• Circumcision (brit milah). A Jewish ritual practiced on eight-day-old boys during which the skin from the tip of the penis is removed. Of course, the event is accompanied by special clothing, paraphernalia, and a celebratory meal.
• Miyamairi. A Shinto rite of passage in Japan during which a baby (aged between one-month and 100 days) is brought to a shrine by their parents and grandparents to express gratitude to the deities, and for the shrine’s priest to pray for the child’s health and happiness.
• Nelu Bulanin. A Hindu ceremony held in Indonesia during which a baby (aged 105 days) is purified to keep its soul pure.
• Poy Sang Long. A rite of passage among the Shan people in Myanmar and Thailand. It is performed for boys aged between seven and fourteen and consists of taking novice monastic vows and briefly participating in monastery life.

All of the above have something in common: namely that the person at the center of attention in the ceremony or practice is the one who does not have a say in the proceedings. Children do not have the maturity to resist enforced practices or ceremonies that are dictated by the people they trust. What percentage of the children involved in rituals like the above would chose to later opt out if the opportunity for the ritual was delayed until they became an adult?

The practices involving babies and children are deliberate and sinister in nature because they have the goal of enforcing an inter-generational continuity in a society. It is obvious (from a logical and scientific perspective) that the practices achieve nothing that they are promoted to achieve. For example, they don’t protect a “soul”, they don’t statistically affect the child (in a positive way), and they don’t confer any sort of practical rite of passage. Those are all just inventions of religion that are designed to awe and mystify the participants.

There is the thought that the rituals cannot directly affect the baby or child because they are too young to properly remember the events. That’s true to some extent (if you don’t count circumcision), but remember that these days they will eventually be able to see photos and videos, and therefore become aware of what happened – thus cementing the ritual(s) in their own timeline of indoctrination.

Because practices and ceremonies are considered (mostly) harmless, why would parents risk community displeasure by not following them? However what the parents are doing is unwittingly implanting the seeds of indoctrination in their children. If it was just the continuation of superstitious practices (throughout generations) then that would be one thing, however the practices can lead to much more serious consequences in the lives of indoctrinated children (see below).

There are no religions that exclude children, however traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism avoid mandatory infant baptism or childhood initiation rites, preferring to delay practices until members are old enough to make a conscious and personal commitment. This site is not promoting either Buddhism or Jainism, however they bring to light something that is worth considering if you are a parent who is concerned about the effects of religious indoctrination on your child.

Indoctrinating adults

The practices of indoctrination always continue to adulthood. The religions know that the average adult isn’t going to read their underlying texts (and in many cases they hope that they don’t read them), so they employ many other techniques of indoctrination, such as:

• Psychological and emotional reinforcement
  • Existential security: by offering clear answers to life’s biggest questions, such as what happens in the afterlife.
  • Emotional anchoring: by linking rituals to deep emotional experiences such as joy, guilt or peace.
  • Fear of consequences: by warning of spiritual peril, divine punishment, guilt, or cosmic misfortune for questioning (and eventually abandoning) the religion.
  • Cognitive consistency: by encouraging a worldview where all personal successes are attributable to faith.
  • Environmental reminders: via the use of music, architecture, painting, stained glass, sculpture, scents, lighting, materials, etc.
• Social and community influences
  • In-group identity: by creating a strong sense of belonging and an “us versus them” dynamic.
  • Community rituals: via regular gatherings (e.g. weekly services) that reinforce shared beliefs in shared locations.
  • Milestone celebrations: like group recognition of marriages, births and funerals.
  • Peer monitoring: such as subtle social pressure from friends and family to conform. The religious community can be in a strong position to bombard someone (who might be wavering) with messages that range from encouragement to threats.
  • Isolation and creating silos: via the establishment of dedicated sources of information that only present views supportive of the religion. E.g. specific DVDs, podcasts, YouTube channels, and social-media groups. Investigation of sources outside of the isolated materials is always (eventually) discouraged.
  • Ostracism risk: via the explicit or implicit threat of losing family and social networks if one leaves the religion. The cutting off from social media and electronic communication is a very effective mechanism to influence and control someone. Groups like the Amish and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are particularly brutal when it comes to ostracism.
• Structural and institutional systems
  • Immersive education: via ongoing adult study groups, sermons, and literature that reinforce the doctrine.
  • Leadership authority: by establishing spiritual leaders as the ultimate source of truth and guidance.
  • Time commitment: by demanding high levels of volunteer time, which leaves less room for outside influences.
  • Government intrusion: via the injection of religion into entities controlled by the government. For example, injection into laws, displays of religious symbols or text in public locations, placement of religion into education, etc.
  • Commercial enterprises: via the creation of businesses that do not fundamentally need to have a religious foundation, e.g. hospitals, funeral homes, schools, nursing homes, etc.

The important thing to remember about organised religion is that none of the above is left to chance. There is always an organization behind the scenes that has written the rule book and that actively enforces that rule book.

If you think that any part of the above set of points has not been considered by your religion, then think again.

You might be enamored by that bumbling but lovable person out the front (e.g. the priest, rabbi, imam, etc.) but be aware that there is an enormous and highly-structured machine operating behind that person. That machine has given the script and behavior to the person that you know and love and therefore you have been turned into a tool of the machine, by proxy.

The job of the lovable person out the front is to make it seem that you are not a tool of the machine. On the contrary, you are probably not even aware of the machine operating in the background – if that lovable person out the front is doing their job properly.

Religion is not inherent in children

If you are a child (or still quite young) then perhaps you had no choice but to be indoctrinated by people that you depend upon and trust? No one is born with an inherent sense or knowledge of religion. There are those who (falsely) claim that children do naturally have a sense of a creator, however there is zero scientific evidence for that.

Think about it. How is it possible to find out if a baby has an inherent sense of a creator when they can’t communicate via words until they are about one year old? That means that a one-day-old baby can never objectively be tested to determine if it has an inherent sense of the concepts involved with religious belief. By the time that baby is old enough to be tested objectively, it is impossible to tell if it didn’t naturally pick up religious concepts via the words it heard from those around it while it was developing (in it’s first year or so).

A human fertilized egg (a zygote) is about the size of a grain of sand (about 0.1 mm) and can only properly be seen with a microscope. It looks like a single, translucent, spherical cell surrounded by a protective shell (zona pellucida), and features two small, circular nuclei:

All humans develop from such a single cell. Could anyone who believes that a baby has any sort of inherent knowledge about religion or a god please explain the mechanism that would support that based on the above image and the details that are known about the human zygote?

If anyone is suggesting that the concept of a god somehow whooshes into a baby at some time after it is born, could they please provide the evidence that they have, and the physical mechanism that is used to achieve that, e.g. the means of transmission and the means that a baby has to receive that transmission?

Religion does lead to delusion

A 2014 study in the Cognitive Science journal titled “Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds” (PDF download) found the following:

• In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person.
• In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine intervention, claims about the status of the protagonist varied sharply with exposure to religion. Children who went to church or who were enrolled in a parochial school, or both, judged the protagonist in religious stories to be a real person, whereas secular children with no such exposure to religion judged the protagonist in religious stories to be fictional.
• In fantastical stories: Children’s upbringing was also related to their judgment about the protagonist in fantastical stories that included ordinarily impossible events whether brought about by magic (Study 1) or without reference to magic (Study 2). Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional.

The study concluded: The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children’s differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories.

So there you have it: children indoctrinated into religious beliefs have a harder time differentiating between fantasy and reality. Does that sound like a great way to start the educational life of a person? To religious parents: does it not worry you that your children may never recover from such cognitive dissonance and therefore carry a handicap for the rest of their lives? If they do, that’s down to you.

Religion can lead to child mental abuse

It gets worse because children are not equipped to process and handle the concepts inherent in most religions, for example when it comes to eternal punishment in an afterlife. Most adults have close to no idea about what their religious texts say about the nature of certain actions that result in certain punishments in certain eternal afterlives, so what chance do children have to figure it out? What children do have is a great capacity to soak up information that is presented to them, however they do not have the maturity to fairly process that information, nor to stop that information from deeply affecting them in terrible and tragic ways.

To religious parents: while you are sitting in church listening to someone out the front telling everyone about sin, and while you are attempting to figure out if that little bit of insider trading or adultery with which you have dabbled will land you in trouble in the afterlife, do you consider how the child sitting next to you is processing the nature and scale of “sin” and eternity in their own lives?

It is of constant amazement that some parents are comfortable to let children be made aware of the concept of eternal punishment and damnation for the “crime” of sinning. What does “sin” mean to a child? Is it the theft of a lolly? Is it not doing their homework properly or at all? Is it lying? How many lies does a child believe it can make until a tipping point is reached? Is it finding out about sexual concepts from friends at school? Is it thinking the “wrong” thought?

Making mistakes is a normal part of childhood development and the worry about the consequences of those mistakes can cause a child to try and cover up their mistake, i.e. via a lie. That’s not a “sin”; that’s something that is expected and should be discussed calmly and productively with a child. However, if left to fester and based on a religious upbringing, the perceived “sin” can cause a child to form the belief that they are a terrible person who is going to suffer eternal punishment and damnation. That’s cruel.

Most children get over that sort of thing, however some don’t. Some children take forward into life the tragic remnants of such worry and guilt, and therefore become primed to have a harder time conducting healthy relationships later in life. Some children never recover from the affects of religious indoctrination.

Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is classified as a set of symptoms, ranging in severity, experienced by those who have participated in or left behind authoritarian, dogmatic, and controlling religious groups and belief systems. RTS occurs in response to two-fold trauma: first the prolonged abuse of indoctrination by a controlling religious community, and second the act of leaving the controlling religious community. See the Wikipedia article Religious trauma syndrome for more details.

Religious indoctrination can also have harmful long-term effects due to the rejection of science and the rejection of the scientific approach. That is of course by design because religions cannot afford to have people thinking critically. Religion was invented as a means to control the masses and it continues in that goal in unfortunate ways in our modern society.

We are exposed to just about every concept imaginable in our everyday lives, so it is important that we have the tools to evaluate pros and cons. Unfortunately, the unscientific shackles applied by a religious upbringing can hinder a person’s ability to accurately consider all sides to presented issues.

Religious indoctrination can also lead to the hostility of other people and groups. That comes about due to experiencing an environment that promotes rigid “us versus them” narratives, often with increased prejudice against individuals with different worldviews or practices. That can be especially traumatic for a child who is personally experiencing different views or practices to those mandated by the people forcing a particular brand of religious indoctrination upon the child.

Religion can lead to child sexual and physical abuse

There is also the fact that the religious indoctrination of some parents causes them to perform physical acts on children such as the genital mutilation known as circumcision (of both sexes, depending on the society). If such a thing was unknown and someone tried it for the first time, they would be locked up – and rightly so. Yet because it is mentioned in texts that were written by superstitious and ignorant iron-age men, it is somehow considered okay? That’s bizarre.

There is also the very real link between religion and child sexual abuse.

While the vast majority of children raised in a faith do not obtain positions of power within religious institutions (simply because there are few leadership positions available), the reverse is demonstrably true: the vast majority of religious leaders are drawn from the pool of children raised in that faith. It is worth considering therefore whether religious indoctrination of children can lead to the sexual abuse of children. Consider the following two points.

Point 1: Surveys of men being ordained as Catholic priests in the U.S. consistently show that over 90% were baptized as infants and over 80% had two Catholic parents. Over 80% to 90% of the rabbinate are composed of those raised in the Jewish faith. In Protestant circles, early faith formation is a key predictor of future leadership. About 50% of evangelical adults – a group that produces the majority of pastors – commit to their faith between the ages of 5 and 12. Many pastors report identifying their “calling” to ministry as early as age 16. In many Islamic communities, the path to becoming an Imam involves rigorous religious education (madrasa) that typically runs parallel to or replaces secular schooling from a young age. Studies suggest that religious education within the family is a significant predictor of the “religious discipline” required for such a path.

Indoctrination of children in a religion therefore makes them more likely to achieve positions of power within an associated religious organization when they become adults.

Point 2: The 2017 Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (link to a government web site) found that over 4,000 survivors reported being abused in religious institutions, which accounted for more reports than any other management type. The Commission examined various secular and government settings (e.g., Scouts, YMCA, dance clubs), but received disproportionately higher numbers of allegations regarding religious organizations.

That’s horrendous because it means the abuse didn’t happen just because they were vulnerable children. It happened because of the type of people who took advantage of the vulnerable children.

It is left to the reader to consider the correlation between points 1 and 2 above. Of course it won’t be your (religiously-indoctrinated) child who will be statistically more likely to abuse other children when obtaining a position of authority? Will it? What steps are you (as a parent) taking to ensure that your child (brought up in a religious environment) is not going to be one of the statistically-more likely people to practice the sexual and physical abuse of other people?

In case you’ve not been exposed to the extent of the depravity of the sexual abuse of children by the religious, here is a link (to a Wikipedia article) about the sexual abuses practiced by the Catholic church (country by country). It is an atrociously long article, but remember that it is only a summary. It contains links to other main articles on many of the instances it describes.

The sexual abuse of children by religious personnel is bad enough, but part of the horrific story is the inevitable attempts by the hierarchy of the religious institutions involved to cover up the abuses. That cover-up is not only a result of cowardice by those involved, it also happens because religion causes people to suspend decency due to an underlying belief that the ends justify the means. Because religious people have been led to believe (indoctrinated) that they have special insight into a bigger (eternal) picture, they therefore allow that belief to translate into actions that would otherwise be unconscionable.

Advice to parents

It’s interesting that most societies have age limits under which children are restricted from experiencing things like alcohol, sex, marriage, drugs, fireworks, pornography, and even social media, however there is no restriction on them being told that they have sinned and might spend all eternity suffering horrific punishment. Weird, right?

Of course restrictions on the religious indoctrination of children can’t effectively be controlled by society so it is up to parents to (hopefully) realize just how dangerous it is to introduce children at a young age to religious concepts (see above).

Keep in mind that actions that you (as parents) take over children will likely last their entire lives, and therefore long after you are gone. Has there ever been an adult who has complained to their parents: “Geez, I really wish you had indoctrinated me in <insert religion here> as a child“?

Here’s a suggestion: omit the religious “instruction” and the inevitable indoctrination of children. Let children decide what is correct for themselves when they become mature enough to cope with the full range of issues that religion inevitably exposes. Your god will understand; they might not.

Recovering from indoctrination

This is the big one, and it’s the most important topic for those wanting to escape from religion.

It’s such a big topic that this site has devoted a page to the issue of How to Quit Religion.

Please see that page for details about the benefits of getting out of religion. You’ll find many suggestions and tips on that page about how to accomplish that.