Author Archives: xamishatheist

Pascal’s Wager: Is God the Safe Bet?

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by in The Conversion, The Questioning

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When I was younger and just beginning to question the existence of God, one of the arguments that always seemed to sway me back to Christianity is one that was first developed by Blaise Pascal; a philosopher, mathematician, and physicist that lived in the 17th century. The argument is called “Pascal’s Wager” and it goes something like this;

If you’re not sure that God exists it is still better to believe and live your life as if he exists than to not do those things. If you believe in God and he turns out to be nonexistent, you’ve lost nothing. If you believe in God and he does exist, you get eternal life. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in God and he turns out to be real, you’ll burn in hell forever. Obviously, the rational bet is to believe in God.

When I was talking with my Christian girlfriend about God recently, she brought up this argument and I was reminded of the fact that I have also used it. I started wondering why it no longer seems like a rational bet to me.

Pascal’s wager only makes sense if there is some evidence of God’s existence. It is only convincing to those that believe the odds of God actually existing are about 50/50 or better. As adults, we aren’t “good” simply on the off chance that Santa really exists. In much the same way, an atheist or an agnostic thinks the Christian God is such a ridiculous idea that it doesn’t merit even the slightest change in behavior on the off chance that God exists and that you’ll be rewarded for your behavior.

The Arbitrariness of the Amish Ordnung

06 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in The Amish, The Questioning

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Back when I was still an Amish kid, I was often frustrated with the arbitrariness of the Amish Ordnung (their set of rules). For example, our church banned the smoking of cigarettes because the body is supposedly a temple of God and should be treated that way. On the other hand, eating potato chips was perfectly fine. Shouldn’t obese people be punished if smokers are?

You can’t live life without subjecting your body to harmful substances and situations. Even hard physical labor can be harmful to the body. Where do you draw the line, I wondered. How about leaving it up to the individuals to self-impose arbitrary rules? Anything else just causes discontent due to the restriction of personal freedom.

The Amish focus on the bad possibilities of technology (e.g. Oh no! You can watch porn on computers – computers must be banned!) while completely disregarding the vast good that technology can bring. With technology, the Amish mentality is to blame the gun instead of the person that pulled the trigger.

On the other hand, they are arbitrary even with that mentality – they don’t apply it to everything. When Amish church members are caught having sex with farm animals, no one blames it on the cow. No one says the cows are being too flirtatious – no one advocates banning cows.

Blogging Bananas Exist!

05 Saturday May 2012

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This blog is written and maintained by a banana. Blogging bananas exist!

Some people claim that God exists because the Bible says so. They also believe that the Bible is true because God wrote it.

To be honest… that’s just fu**ing stupid!

Why? Because it’s circular. If the Bible is your evidence for the existence of God, then you can’t validly use the claim that “God wrote it” as proof of the truth of the Bible.

I’m using the same logic when I say that, “This blog is written and maintained by a banana. Blogging bananas exist!”. Now, do you believe in blogging bananas?

Am I Unstable?

04 Friday May 2012

Posted by in The Amish

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During my 10-year transition from Christian to atheist, my belief system has undergone a number of significant changes. At first, I believed the Bible to be the inerrant and literal word of God. After discovering that some of the “facts” therein are just plain incompatible with reality as we know it, I transitioned to believing the Bible to be the metaphorical but divinely inspired word of God. Eventually I decided that the Bible is of little use and that God couldn’t possibly be like he is described therein. I started believing in a form of pantheism. Later I dropped that and became an agnostic – believing that there is not enough information to know whether God exists or not. Recently, I became an atheist – believing the complete lack of evidence for the existence of God does not justify being open to his existence any more than we should be open to the existence of Santa Claus – despite the possibility of the actual existence of God and Santa Claus.

Most Amish people would consider me unstable for changing my belief system so often. They’d use the word “unstable” in a manner that makes you think of a person with no mind of their own – extremely gullible and easily fooled by evil people. They use the word degradingly – as if speaking of an inferior person.

They warn people away from sites like this one in the fear that an “unstable” Christian reads it and becomes convinced that there is no God.

What the Amish call “unstable” is actually the result of “learning” and not of arbitrariness. Learning involves the acquisition of new information and the continual modification of one’s belief system based on the new information that is assimilated. To call a person “unstable” simply because they changed their belief system, is the equivalent of saying “learning is dumb”.

The Intelligence of Atheists

03 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in Early Life, The Questioning

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When I was a child (maybe 9 or 10 years old) my Dad while reading the newspaper stated matter-of-factly that, “There are no smart criminals.”

His reasoning was simply this; Criminals always go to jail. Nobody (not even criminals) wants to be in jail. Therefore, criminals are stupid.

Me, bright kid that I was, took that logic and applied it to atheists. My reasoning was this; Atheists go to hell, Nobody (not even atheists) wants to be in hell. Therefore, atheists are stupid.

However, it did not take me long to discard this as faulty logic when I discovered the disturbing fact that some very smart people are atheists. Einstein was a hero of mine and when I discovered that he didn’t believe in a personal God, it troubled me. Later, when I really started delving into the forbidden territories (e.g. learning about evolution) I realized that these people were very smart and they knew a lot more than I did.

Later, my Dad again made that same claim about there being no smart criminals. This time I disputed him. My reasoning was that some criminals plan and successfully commit intricate crimes and it would take a very smart person to plan such a thing and pull it off. He admitted that I could be right.

Before the Beginning of Time…

02 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy

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The word “before” is commonly defined something like this, “During the period of time preceding a particular event, date, or time”.

Let us consider, for a moment, the question; What was before the beginning of time? This question is relevant to many Christians because they believe that God existed before time and that God created time. Their answer to the question is, “Before time, there was God.”

Many Christians also believe that time will end and after that, the good people go to heaven and the bad people go to hell. It is the belief of many Christians that time itself is a small portion of eternity. They might imagine eternity as being a line that stretches infinitely in both directions and that time is only a small section of this line. A section that has beginning and end.

The Christian’s beliefs about time do not make sense and here’s why; Logically, you cannot refer to ‘before the beginning of time’ or ‘after the end of time’. Any statement that does this, is nonsensical – it’s logically senseless.

There cannot be a ‘before’ the beginning of time. The word “before” implies the passage of time but when used in reference to the beginning of time, we are basically asking, “What happened in that period of time before there were periods of time?” It’s a bit like asking, “What is north of the north pole?” or “What was I doing ten years before I was born?” The question is logically nonsensical – it is an example of an invalid question. For the same reason, there cannot be a ‘after’ the end of time.

The idea of eternity is also logically problematic for Christians. Most Christians believe there was a beginning of time, there will be an end of time, and there is eternity. It is however, logically impossible to have all three. You cannot have eternity if there is a beginning of time and an end of time.

It is not uncommon for people to ask what was before the beginning of time, or what was before the universe or the multiverse. It’s not that we don’t know the answer to the question, it’s simply that there is no answer. There cannot logically be a statement that truthfully answers that question, given our definitions of the terms used.

That doesn’t make us feel any better about it, of course, but there you have it.

Student Einstein Trumps Atheist Philosophy Professor

24 Tuesday Apr 2012

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There are quite a few variations of this story about Einstein beating his atheist philosophy professor in a philosophical argument. Here is one variation of the story. I’ll add my own thoughts after it. My commentary and counter arguments are rather extensive and I apologize for the length of this post. I do hope it clears up some of the myth surrounding this story.

Professor : You are a Christian, aren’t you, son ?
Student : Yes, sir.
Professor: So, you believe in GOD ?
Student : Absolutely, sir.
Professor : Is GOD good ?
Student : Sure.
Professor: Is GOD all powerful ?
Student : Yes.
Professor: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to GOD to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But GOD didn’t. How is this GOD good then? Hmm?
(Student was silent.)
Professor: You can’t answer, can you ? Let’s start again, young fella. Is GOD good?
Student : Yes.
Professor: Is satan good ?
Student : No.
Professor: Where does satan come from ?
Student : From … GOD …
Professor: That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student : Yes.
Professor: Evil is everywhere, isn’t it ? And GOD did make everything. Correct?
Student : Yes.
Professor: So who created evil ?
(Student did not answer.)
Professor: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don’t they?
Student : Yes, sir.
Professor: So, who created them ?
(Student had no answer.)
Professor: Science says you have 5 Senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son, have you ever seen GOD?
Student : No, sir.
Professor: Tell us if you have ever heard your GOD?
Student : No , sir.
Professor: Have you ever felt your GOD, tasted your GOD, smelt your GOD? Have you ever had any sensory perception of GOD for that matter?
Student : No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t.
Professor: Yet you still believe in Him?
Student : Yes.
Professor : According to Empirical, Testable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says your GOD doesn’t exist. What do you say to that, son?
Student : Nothing. I only have my faith.
Professor: Yes, faith. And that is the problem Science has.
Student : Professor, is there such a thing as heat?
Professor: Yes.
Student : And is there such a thing as cold?
Professor: Yes.
Student : No, sir. There isn’t.
(The lecture theater became very quiet with this turn of events.)
Student : Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.
(There was pin-drop silence in the lecture theater.)
Student : What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?
Professor: Yes. What is night if there isn’t darkness?
Student : You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light. But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and its called darkness, isn’t it? In reality, darkness isn’t. If it is, well you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?
Professor: So what is the point you are making, young man ?
Student : Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.
Professor: Flawed ? Can you explain how?
Student : Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good GOD and a bad GOD. You are viewing the concept of GOD as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, Science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing.
Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it. Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?
Professor: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.
Student : Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?
(The Professor shook his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument was going.)
Student : Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor. Are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher?
(The class was in uproar.)
Student : Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor’s brain?
(The class broke out into laughter. )
Student : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor’s brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established Rules of Empirical, Stable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?
(The room was silent. The Professor stared at the student, his face unfathomable.)
Professor: I guess you’ll have to take them on faith, son.
Student : That is it sir … Exactly ! The link between man & GOD is FAITH. That is all that keeps things alive and moving.
By the way, that student was EINSTEIN.

I have a lot of things to say about this tale, so many, in fact, that I’m going to break it up into parts and sub-parts. First, I’m going to critique the presentation, and then I’ll critique the philosophical arguments.

The Presentation

Historically False

This was not Einstein, that’s a myth. This is a tale that has been making its rounds on the internet for quite a few years. Over the years, parts of it change but the overall idea is still the same – Einstein trumps an atheist professor’s philosophical argument for disproof of God.

See: http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp

There is another historically false claim – that Einstein was a Christian. That is just wishful thinking.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_religious_views

Fallacious Appeals to Authority

Whoever invented this tale used Einstein’s name in an attempt to add intellectual authority to the tale. An appeal to authority can be a valid argument tactic but in this case it is fallacious because a consensus does not exist among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion. Even if the story actually was true (it has been established that it is not) this appeal to authority would be a fallacious tactic.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

The appeal to authority that I’m referring to above is the idea that Einstein would endorse the specific arguments put forth in the tale. There is also another implicit appeal to authority – that Einstein endorsed Christianity. This is fallacious for the simple reason that it is historically false as has been established earlier.

Psychological Manipulation Tactics

This tale portrays the atheist philosophy professor as being ignorant and easy to trap in philosophical arguments. No professor of philosophy (atheist or Christian) is as dumb as the one portrayed here.

The tale-writer is a psychological manipulator that utilizes the human tendency for conformity (See Bandwagon effect). Notice how the tale-writer has included an entire group of people (a classroom) and notice their reactions during the dialogue between student and professor;

  • “The lecture theater became very quiet with this turn of events.”
  • “There was pin-drop silence in the lecture theater.”
  • “The class was in uproar.”
  • “The class broke out into laughter.”
  • “The room was silent…”

It is obvious that the tale-writer used the “crowd” as a conformity tactic. I mean, who doesn’t want to agree with the majority?

These psychological manipulation tactics employed by the tale-writer are intended to persuade a reader to take the side of the student. Such persuasion tactics go beyond that which an objective presenter of the philosophical arguments would use. The tale-writer did not present the philosophical arguments in an objective manner, but rather, lies about the origin of the tale, makes fallacious appeals to authority, and attempts to psychologically manipulate the reader.

The Philosophical Arguments

The major points of this tale are its two philosophical claims;

  • Evil was not so much created by God as it is an example of an absence of God
  • Even scientists have faith

Unjustified Claim: Evil is the Absence of God

On the surface, the argument that evil is just the absence of God seems to be compelling based on the given analogies. However, let us look closer…

Arguing that cold is just the absence of heat, and darkness is just the absence of light, is an argument of semantics. It is not how we think of our world in our day to day lives.

When we think about temperature, we think of a spectrum ranging from low temperature (cold) to high temperature (hot). To argue that heat is just the absence of cold is to disregard the definition of the two as they are used in natural language.

When we think about light, we think of a spectrum ranging from bright light (light) to low light (dark). To argue that darkness is just the absence of light is to disregard the definition of the two as they are used in natural language.

Despite the two arguments about cold/heat and light/darkness being just arguments of semantics – they are logically valid if we all agree to constrain our normal definitions of the terms.

They are valid because temperature and light are physical, quantifiable, phenomena in our universe. Temperature is a quantifiable property of matter that can be precisely measured with scientific instruments. Light is electromagnetic radiation that can be detected with scientific instruments, and many of its properties can be measured with precision. The point is – these are real, physical, and measurable phenomena of our universe.

Good and evil are not. Good and evil cannot be detected with scientific instruments. Good and evil cannot be quantified with scientific instruments.

It is my counter claim that good and evil are not physical phenomena. Rather, they are our subjective assessments of the effects of certain events. It makes no more sense to claim that evil is the absence of good than it does to make the claim that good is the absence of evil.

Overall, this is a specious argument that benefits neither side of the debate.

Unjustified Claim: Everybody has Faith

Here I will not attempt to disprove the existence of God but merely to demonstrate the difference between religious faith and rationally justified beliefs, thereby showing the final claim of this tale to be unjustified as well.

To make the claim that religious faith has the same epistemological value as rationally justified beliefs demonstrates a complete ignorance of the scientific method.

The belief that persons have brains is supported by the following scientific evidence:

1) The fact that every person that has ever been scientifically examined in the necessary manner has been found to have a brain.

2) The brain is the only known object that can cause the complex behavior of persons.

3) There is no evidence to suggest that there are persons with no brains.

While these facts do not deductively prove that any specific person (that has not been scientifically examined) does have a brain, it does constitute a rationally justified belief that is fully supported by Occam’s razor.

Religious faith, on the other hand, is a set of beliefs that is not supported by scientific evidence.

To equate religious faith with scientific beliefs is to blatantly redefine our commonly accepted definitions of these terms and it is an insult to intelligent beings everywhere.

“Pulling” Bellyaches: An Amish Medical Superstition

22 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in The Amish

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There is a notion among some Amish that bellyaches (abdominal pain) can be “pulled” from another person. The notion is that, coming into physical contact with a person suffering from a bellyache will cause the bellyache to transfer to the new person.

In a show of empathy and altruism, a grown person will attempt to pull a bellyache from a suffering child or baby. Some Amish parents go so far as to judge the health of their babies by whether or not the parent gets a bellyache while holding the child.

I don’t think this medical superstition is widespread among the Amish, and it is also possible that it’s not restricted to the Amish. It’s just that on the few occasions I ever heard about it, it’s been an Amish person that has told me.

The Amish Ordnung: High and Low

20 Friday Apr 2012

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Each Amish church generally has its own Ordnung, or set of rules, which dictates the dress code, behavioral rules, and accepted technologies for that church and its members. Among the Amish, when it comes to comparing the Ordnungs of different churches, there is a concept of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’. A relatively conservative Ordnung or church is said to be “low” and a relatively liberal Ordnung or church is said to be “high”.

When it comes to accepted technologies, some Amish churches allow electricity in the home and others don’t. When it comes to dress code, some Amish churches require the ladies to wear brown and black, while other churches allow them to wear brighter colors. When it comes to behavioral rules, all Amish churches ban divorce, abortion, and military service. Most of them ban civil lawsuits, birth control, and higher education.

An Amish church that does not allow indoor hot water plumbing may decide to put that technology up to vote. If they decide to accept the technology then the church has gone ‘higher’. While it does happen that an Amish church goes ‘lower’ it is more common for them to go higher.

We can think of it as a vertical scale with a dress code on one side of the scale and the accepted technologies on the other side. We can ignore the behavioral rules in this case because they are fairly uniform among the Amish. Some technologies and dress codes are traditionally higher on this scale than others. For example, an Amish church is more likely to approve the use of cellular phones than to approve the use of computers so in this case the computer would be higher on the scale.

The line between Old Order Amish and New Order Amish, and the line between New Order Amish and Mennonite aren’t really clear cut. While the image below is not completely accurate, it gives you a reasonable idea of the technological differences between New Order and Old Order Amish, and the relative position of the various technologies on the scale.

Technology Acceptance Among the Amish

A church that bans indoor hot water plumbing is considered to be fairly ‘low’. A church that allows the women to wear bright clothing and allows church members to have electricity in the home is considered a pretty ‘high’ church. This same implicit scale is often used to distinguish Old Order Amish from New Order Amish from Conservative Mennonites. The line between Old Order and New Order is somewhere between bicycles and home phones and the line between New Order Amish and Mennonites is somewhere between electricity and cars.

Non-Amish are commonly known as the “English” but they’re also called “hoch” (high, singular) and “hoch-ee” (plural).

The Amish position on dress code and acceptance of technology is based primarily on two Biblical virtues – modesty and non-worldliness. Since the Bible does not specify exactly the dress code, or how one should be different from the world, each Amish church decides what is an acceptable dress code and which technologies are to be used and which are to be shunned. That’s why you have higher (more liberal) churches and lower (more conservative) churches among the Amish

While the higher Amish might tend to think the lower Amish are making things unnecessarily hard on themselves, and the lower Amish might tend to think the higher Amish are slipping off the right path, the terms ‘high’ and ‘low’  themselves are generally not used in a derogatory manner. Wow that was a long sentence. I added these last two sentences only because apparently a single sentence does not a paragraph make.

The Obduracy of Religious Belief

19 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in My Philosophy, Religion

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The Christian belief in the Bible is quite unlike, for example, my current belief in “The Blind Watchmaker” by Richard Dawkins. Back when I believed in the Bible, I thought of it as “truth”. I also believed other books but I would think of them as good stories or as helpful information.

Why the big difference? Why did I consider one ancient text as pure truth and all other ancient texts as just stories? Why did I consider the Bible to be pure truth but other books, that I also believed to be nonfiction, were just informationally helpful?

In the Bible, fantastical stories such as a person living briefly inside of a whale, a virgin giving birth, a snake talking to people, were perfectly acceptable. Why were those fanciful stories acceptable but similar stories in other books were dismissed as myths? If I had read a story in The Blind Watchmaker that claimed a person had lived and survived inside of a dinosaur for three days, I would have been extremely skeptical. I would have asked for some serious evidence to back up this extraordinary claim. Why then, was it perfectly alright for a similar story to be in the Bible?

Some atheists will arrogantly state that they became atheist as a child when they first read the Bible. These people relate the story of how upon reading fantastical stories about talking snakes and virgin births that of course they had to discard the whole thing as mythical… as if the rest of us are just too stupid to get it.

I have a brain capable of critical analysis and I made full use of this skill when reading all but one book. Why did it take so long for me to become skeptical of the Bible? The answer to this can soon be reached once we understand that the Bible is a very significant part of a huge set of beliefs called “Christianity”.

The answers to all of these questions, I believe, can be answered by understanding what religion is and understanding how and when it is taught to a person. But first, check out this post I wrote about belief systems because I’ll be talking a lot about beliefs and belief systems for the rest of this post.

Religion is a set of beliefs that is pretty comprehensive – it pretends to explain everything from ‘why are there mountains’ to ‘how should I live my life’. Therefore, for a religious person, the set of beliefs that is his religion is almost inextricably meshed with the rest of the person’s belief system. Even changing one little belief is difficult to do because it would have ramifications for many of the other beliefs that it is intertwined with. A religion generally forms a large fraction of a person’s belief system.

Secondly, religion includes metaphysical beliefs. Metaphysical beliefs are beliefs that have to do with being and existence, and concepts such as cause and effect. Religion provides answers to such metaphysical questions as ‘why is there something rather than nothing’, ‘what was the first cause’, ‘where did we come from’, and ‘why are we here’. As such, religious beliefs become foundational to the person’s overall belief system. Individual religious beliefs become the axioms upon which the rest of the person’s belief system happily rests. To change these beliefs is almost as hard as tearing the foundation of a house out from underneath the house without disturbing the rest of the house.

The religious person suffers less from existential angst than the non-religious person because his metaphysical questions are answered. If a religious person starts questioning his own beliefs these metaphysical questions pop up and he wonders ‘well, why are we here then’. The existential angst that would be caused by unanswering these metaphysical questions is often on its own, enough of an incentive to stay with religion.

Religion is also a self-supporting set of beliefs. When questioned on one belief, the religious person can always bring out another belief that supports the first one. In this way, everything backs itself up. In logic, this is known as “circular reasoning” and it is a fallacy. In a small syllogism, circular reasoning is easy to identify and to recognize as fallacious but in a very large set of beliefs like religion, it is so easy to miss it.

Children will happily believe in Santa Claus but after learning that Santa doesn’t really exist, it is much easier for them to accept it and move on than it is for anybody to accept that their religion may not be true. Why is there such a difference? I believe it is because of the reasons I listed above. Believing in Santa is only a small set of beliefs, and it answers only one metaphysical question – ‘why should I be good’, whereas a religion is a huge set of beliefs and it answers pretty much all of the metaphysical questions.

It could also be that a child finds it easier to revise beliefs and possibly even to completely rebuild their belief system. After all, their brains are still developing and they are in the perfect stage to absorb massive amounts of information and to incorporate a massive number of beliefs.

In the previous paragraphs I explored several of the qualities of religious belief which have a direct effect on its obduracy. Now it is time to examine the methods that are used to deliver these beliefs to a person’s mind and how these methods also have an effect on its obduracy.

A baby starts off with basically an empty mind when it comes to beliefs about the nature of things. If you start with an essentially empty mind, the mind will accept the first thing that comes to it because there are no pre-existing beliefs to contradict the incoming information. For that reason, it is easy instill any kind of belief system in a child.

It is generally easier to dismiss new information than it is to revise existing beliefs so once a belief system has been established, it is very difficult to remove it even if it blatantly contradicts reality.

Most religious parents teach their children the religion starting at the youngest possible age. Long before the child learns that different people have different ideas about how things really are, long before the child learns that there are many different religions, and long before the child learns anything about critical thinking, the child is taught that its parents’ religion is the only possible truth.

Can you blame a child for rejecting other viewpoints? As the child matures, and if the parents continue to reinforce the same belief system, the belief system becomes more and more difficult to change.

The installation of a religious belief system is quite different from the installation of a secular belief system. With religion, the child is taught that not only is the religion pure truth – it is unquestionable truth. Any question that the child has that could undermine their belief system is quickly rebutted by the parents with reproachful assertions that it is evil to ask those questions. The child is admonished and sometimes physically abused simply for asking the unwanted questions.

Can you blame the person when years later he is still unable to honestly question his belief system when the mere occurrence of such a question feels treasonous and blasphemous?

To educate someone is to provide information, to provide explanations, to provide instruction. To indoctrinate someone is to provide information, to provide explanations, to provide instruction. The difference is, when someone is indoctrinated they are not expected to question what they are learning and in many cases they are not allowed to question or to critically examine what they are being taught. Someone who is being indoctrinated is not given the choice to believe or disbelieve.

Religious parents do not educate their children about religion – they indoctrinate them.