Thumpalumpacus wrote:
Yes, I read all that. The problem with your logic is that pedagogy is necessarily programmatic to a certain extent, but that once a mind has been formed, smacking it over the head with an injection is a violation of its freedom.
The same amount of energy may be expended in tapping in 500 tacks and bashing in the piece of wood. It's not just the quantity of energy expended, it's how it's expended.
Having been raised a Southern Baptist, but not in a heavy-handed manner, I was drip-fed the faith. In that same time, my own skepticism grew as well ... even as early as six or seven. There was much that was unusual about my youth, but the existence of my skepticism wasn't, I don't think.
I'm fine with disagreement on this issue, because I understand that my experiences aren't regnant. My main objection is the misplaced comparison between religion and addictive drugs. I've never buried anyone whose heart was stopped by a religious overdose. I've buried two friends from heroin overdoses. Equivocating the two, without acknowledging that religion may be the expression of a deeper issue, is, in essence, a form of post hoc, because you cannot say that the religion is not merely an expression of craziness that would otherwise find another avenue of expression.
It's a fair comment, but it rests on the word addiction only having that very specific meaning.
Words mean what we mean, when we use them. If a meaning is widely used and accepted, then that's what the word means. That's a fact about language.
Gay used to mean brightly coloured, cheerful. Now it means homosexual as well.
People say they are addicted to soccer. To chocolate. To sex. To flattery. To Shakespeare. To too much salt. (in my case)
To having babies. To surfing. To fishing, To hunting. The list is endless. People will say that they, or others, are addicted.
So that's what addicted means. As WELL as substance addiction.
And the other thing about addiction is that people often don't even know that they're addicted. Other people know, but they don't.
I'm addicted to cigars. I hardly ever smoke them, but I never stop wanting one. I class that as addicted, because I'm not in control of what I want. And it's certainly a loss of freedom, because I would like to be free of that craving for a cigar.
You can be a little bit addicted, because that is how the word is widely used.
As far as religious indoctrination goes, I think the reason that many people don't see it as a loss of freedom, is that it's so "normal". Nearly everyone does it, and nearly everyone has had it done to them.
So people have a hard job seeing how different it is from other "normal" things that children are taught.
If it wasn't "normal", people would see it straight away.
Imagine a planet where NOBODY EVER had a religion. Kids were just taught facts.
If your neighbour went mad, and started seeing fairies, and began to indoctrinate his kids about fairies, and the kids grew up to be the only people on the planet believing in fairies, it would be easy to see that he had taken away by indoctrination, their ability to see the truth. And yet this is what is happening to most kids, every day.
It's just so fucking "normal" that nobody can see it.
