Currently there are folks who are promoting anti-indoctrination laws in several states. Apparently these are laws to make sure that the theory of evolution is not taught as if it were valid scientific theory (It is.) and it does not concern at all the various efforts of churches to indoctrinate the children of the church’s members.
Every church does this, that is they “teach” their doctrines to kids to young to understand them. No one waits for the age of consent or any point in time at all. It all begins at birth. In church nurseries for kids too young to attend services are kept in a nursery (and so their parents can attend services). These nurseries will have Noah’s Ark toys (stuffed animals, too, none of them being cute ones who got drowned) and age-appropriate children’s books full of Bible stories.
This came to mind as I was in a small shop where the proprietor was listening to a foreign language program (on a cell phone), a language I do not posses, and while I was doing my business a children’s choir broke out in “Jesus Loves Me” . . . in English. I found myself fully capable of mentally singing along with the children’s voices even though I have had a lifelong problem hearing and remembering song lyrics.
Here is a short version of that song’s lyrics (all repetitions left out):
Jesus loves me this I know
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to Him belong
They are weak but He is strong
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes Jesus loves me,
for the Bible tells me so
Jesus loves me still today,
Walking with me on my way
Wanting as a friend to give
Light and love to all who live
Now, if you were to give a devoted Bible reader a Bible and ask them to find where in the Bible this message is delivered, would they be able to find it? If you were to give a non-believer a Bible and asked them to read it, would they come to this conclusion?
This song essentially delivers a message, rather a conclusion, one might get from reading the Bible. These messages serve a number of functions, one of which is that it is not necessary to read the Bible, all of the important messages have been packaged for you and delivered before you have an IQ.
By associating such catchy tunes with the carefree state of childhood, one immediately taps into nostalgia and good feelings every time that message/song is replayed. For the few seconds I was singing along (in my head, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket out loud) I had very positive feelings and I am a confirmed atheist.
Get them young before they start thinking for themselves, then when they do argue against that practice vigorously. If that is not an indoctrination program, I don’t know what is. And, of course, anti-indoctrination laws are needed because . . . evolution. Sheesh!
Uncommon Sense 
Seriously, how annoying that money and time has to now be wasted fighting these idiots in the courts.
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Comment by john zande — April 21, 2019 @ 11:20 am |
Absolutely! And when you beat them, they just bring such things up again and you have to fight them all over again. This is like to fights over developing land which we do not want developed (native American sacred spaces, the Grand Canyon, etc.). If you win, you just have to fight again a while later. If you lose, you have lost for good because they will go ahead with the pipeline, oil wells, mines or housing projects and you have lost for good.
On Sun, Apr 21, 2019 at 11:20 AM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — April 21, 2019 @ 11:58 am |
New reader, and it may be too early to jump in with comments. I am finding a lot of what you say here very interesting and amusingly phrased!
I have to admit I am a little bothered about giving “sacred” anything too much consideration. For instance, in Berkeley, CA there is a parking lot. It has been a parking lot for decades. It is an ugly old school parking lot. No trees. Rather poorly paved. But, the argument is we cannot replace an oil-soaked piece of asphalt with (needed) housing because there MIGHT BE…yes MIGHT BE…a shell mound underneath. And this garbage pile is sacred. Or so say “representatives”, including people from tribes thousands of miles away.
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Comment by basenjibrian — April 29, 2019 @ 4:10 pm |
The SF bay Area is riddled with shell mounds which are, as you say, refuse heaps. How anyone could consider them sacred, except the descendants of the shellfish, is beyond me. And please comment away, it doesn’t stop any of us! (And I have never banned anyone due to their comments … doesn’t mean you can’t be the first! :o)
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Comment by Steve Ruis — April 30, 2019 @ 8:45 am |
I guess this is just another desperate effort by creationists to hang on to their myths by their fingernails as they are coming to realise their credibility is disappearing in society very quickly.
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Comment by sklyjd — April 21, 2019 @ 7:53 pm |
Wow. You drug up some very old memories with that song. Just another reason I quit church forever way back. As to any indoctrination, that is what organized religion does. When I took chemistry in high school and later at community college before I got my edumication for ‘reals’ when I transferred to the University of Science, Music, and Culture (USMC). Now I will grant you that USMC does do indoctrination, big time, but not in the nasty way organized religion does. You can trust most every other member of USMC when things get nasty. My personal experience over now 71+ years is that organized religion does not practice what they preach.
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Comment by Walter Kronkat — April 22, 2019 @ 1:34 am |
But the USMC only accepts volunteers who are adults and rejects many as being unqualified. USMC recruits have some idea of what they are getting in to and why they are doing it. Religious indoctrination is like bad education, it is something done to you without your permission.
And not only do they not practice what they preach, they make up a great deal of what they preach out of whole cloth, and so are preaching what is convenient and seemly in their minds (e.g. the Catholics and their ongoing sex scandals).
On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 1:34 AM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — April 22, 2019 @ 7:55 am |
Nobody, well not when I went to that ‘university’ was really prepared for our first 48 hours once on campus. True, any way that we all did volunteer to try and make it at that school. We were 18, 17 if you got a parent to sign. Oh, we had to be 18 to be in a war zone, but 21 to vote and buy beer legally in the states.
Oh boy, do religions make up stuff from nothing! I think that is what the priests go to priest school to learn how to do. Yeah, whole cloth as you said.
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Comment by Walter Kronkat — April 22, 2019 @ 12:12 pm |
I am not a fan of the trite phrase of “thank you for your service” but I am grateful to all of the soldiers who willingly allow themselves to be put in harm’s way for our protection, so Thank you! I am not as big a fan of the political idiots who seem oh so eager to put soldiers in that position for dubious reasons. This is one of the reasons why I think we need to elect more women. It is not that they cannot be as blood thirsty as men, but they seem to be that way only when they are trying to establish their bone fides with a male audience. If the bulk of our leaders were women, maybe we would see more compassion and less warfare, certainly less warfare to secure economic benefits for the oil corporations (or banana (United fruit) or pinapple (the assholes that overthrew the Hawaiian rulers), etc.)
On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 12:12 PM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — April 22, 2019 @ 12:53 pm |
I might agree with you about this, Steve.
Please tell me how the Theory of Evolution should be taught as a valid scientific theory. I’m not looking for a whole series of lesson. A definition of the Theory of Evolution will be sufficient.
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Comment by John Branyan — April 22, 2019 @ 11:18 am |
The theory of evolution does not have a definition (words and phrases do, theories do not). As to how it should be taught, there are many approaches that can be used depending on which massive trove of evidence one wants to emphasize: the geological record, the genetic record, the taxonomic record, etc.
On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 11:18 AM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — April 22, 2019 @ 11:34 am |
“Apparently these are laws to make sure that the theory of evolution is not taught as if it were valid scientific theory (It is).”
What are these laws preventing from being taught?
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Comment by John Branyan — April 22, 2019 @ 11:44 am |
These laws were designed to get Intelligent Design taught in schools. Since teaching ID, which is not a valid theory, alongside valid theories weakens the understanding what a theory is and why one would accept it.
On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 11:44 AM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — April 22, 2019 @ 11:49 am |
You said the laws were designed to prevent evolution from being taught…
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Comment by John Branyan — April 22, 2019 @ 11:53 am |
If you’re changing your thesis to, “Intelligent Design theory should not be taught in schools.”, I may still agree with you.
Since theories don’t have definitions, how do you know Intelligent Design doesn’t qualify as a scientific theory?
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Comment by John Branyan — April 22, 2019 @ 12:10 pm |
Because I compared it to the structure of recognize theories. For example, a good theory makes predictions about future events and those future events are confirmed. ID has never made a single prediction.
Scientific theories have attributes that allow them to be recognized as being valid. Possibly this is what you are referring to as a definition. Making predictions is one of those attributes. This is one reason why Biblical apologists focus a great deal of attention on prophecies. Knowledge of future happenings is powerful support for the source of the predictions.
On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 12:10 PM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — April 22, 2019 @ 12:48 pm |
So are you suggesting that theories DO have definitions now? You seem to be flip-flopping a bit.
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Comment by John Branyan — April 22, 2019 @ 12:51 pm |
No, not definitions. List of attributes.
On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 12:51 PM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — April 22, 2019 @ 12:54 pm |
LOL! Okay.
What is the list of attributes that renders ID unscientific? (Attributes are not negatives.)
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Comment by John Branyan — April 22, 2019 @ 12:57 pm |
I gave you one. There is no structure there to make predictions of future findings. Actually there is no structure there at all. Some of the ideas surrounding “information” as in the information in DNA has merit but not in the way they are choosing to use it.
Mostly they just throw stones (pebbles actually) at evolution and say that it can’t be real. So, another attribute is that a successful theory does not conflict with other accepted theories. If they do, scientists start scurrying (yes, we do scurry) to find out which of the conflicting theories is wrong and why. When Darwin first published his ideas (evolution had already been established as a thing but there was no particular mechanism as to why it should be so or at all) the science of genetics had not yet been created (although ideas had floated around for centuries), the existence of DNA had not been discovered. Radioactive decay dating procedures had yet to be invented. And a great many fossils were as yet undiscovered. As new fossils turned up they fit in (even the transitional fossils that were requested turned up (hundreds of them). Every step of the way, the theory of evolution did not conflict with these new discovers and these new discovers were used to test the theories predictions, none of which turned out to be false.
The theory is still under active development but we are not looking at major issues anymore, we are just tying up lose ends. The theory is also being applied to areas formerly unsuspected as the field of evolutionary psychology shows.
I am not an expert on this topic. I am a chemist, an inorganic chemist at that, so you would be better off consulting better sources should you wish further details.
On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 12:57 PM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — April 22, 2019 @ 1:09 pm
This is why I asked for a definition at the beginning. That would have avoided the conjecture and personal opinions. I would like to see something from the official “list of attributes” published by Discovery Institute that renders ID theory unscientific.
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Comment by John Branyan — April 22, 2019 @ 1:16 pm
From Wikipedia: Discovery Institute advocates the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design.
Also from Wikipedia: Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual, but are incompatible with the scientific method.
The definitions in an of themselves render ID theory unscientific.
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Comment by Nan — April 22, 2019 @ 1:23 pm
Wikipedia does not qualify as an official statement from the Discovery Institute. Did you know that anybody can write anything on Wikipedia?
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Comment by John Branyan — April 22, 2019 @ 2:52 pm
I’m aware. But they tend to be a pretty darn good source of information. If they weren’t, I doubt they would have retained their reputation as a bonafide source of reference. Besides, I’ve read what’s on the Discovery Institute’s website and, well, I tend to agree with Wikipedia.
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Comment by Nan — April 22, 2019 @ 2:56 pm
Cool.
Just post something from the Discover Institute that invalidates ID as a scientific theory. That’s what I asked for in the first place.
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Comment by John Branyan — April 22, 2019 @ 2:58 pm
There will be nothing from the Discovery Institute’s website that invalidates ID as a scientific theory … for the simple fact that is the core basis for their belief. What? You think they’re stupid?
Besides, John. You and I both know “intelligent design” is founded on the idea that an unseen supernatural entity created all there is. Which, of course, leads to the never-ending debate between believers and non-believers. “Nuf said.
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Comment by Nan — April 22, 2019 @ 3:11 pm
LOL!
You’ve certainly made your case!
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Comment by John Branyan — April 22, 2019 @ 3:19 pm