Indoctrination

On the Harun Yahya thread, I found this remark: On the Faith Healing thread, there was this: These two little gems, combined with Jaderis’s recent thread’s OP (as well as many other threads and posts here at EvC) have gotten me thinking about the way we teach and learn things, and how we discern “truth” from “untruth.”Indoctrination is something we evolutionists like to spit at creationists and religious fundamentalists quite often: I’ve encountered it at least a couple dozen times since I started here two months ago (I’ve even used it myself once or twice). I wonder how prevalent the practice of indoctrination actually is, and what sorts of teachings and teaching methods would be considered indoctrination.As I understand it, indoctrination is either "exclusive rights to conducting somebody else's education" or "manipulating somebody into subscribing to your opinion" (or even "teaching only one side of a conflict"). I believe it happens quite often (I think it has even happened to me), and that much of what we are taught and how we are taught in church is indoctrination. Consider the following:

• "You must be saved/baptized/etc., or you cannot go to heaven."
• "True happiness only comes through faith on Jesus Christ."
• "Man cannot find the truth on his own: he needs God for everything."

I would also argue that telling children what is right and wrong (or true and false, etc.) without providing a reason is indoctrination. So, telling my son, while he is young and believes everything I say, that Jesus died for his sins, I am technically indoctrinating him (i.e. I am not giving him any alternatives).What are everybody else’s thoughts? Is indoctrination as widespread/common as some of us non-theists think? Who does it? How do you draw the line between “education” and “indoctrination?”

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Darwin loves you.

Thread copied to the Indoctrination thread in the Faith and Belief forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.