MellowDem
MellowDem's JournalThere is little concious thought needed to switch from Christian to Christian...
from my experience, it's because people move and need to find a new church, and there is so very little difference overall between them. Even the Catholic switch is relatively minor. And as I said earlier, the heavy lifting of childhood indoctrination has been done. You already believe the Bible is the word of god, that god exists, etc. etc. The details mean little, and most people don't even know about or care about the details of their religion. It's more for the social aspect and tradition.
Really, anyone who believes religion of any sort after having been indoctrinated in one will have their parents' indoctrination to thank to at least some degree.
I don't think you'll see much of that...
Religion had something to do with it. Just like it had something to do with pro-slavery positions. The God of the Bible very clearly advocated and sanctioned slavery (and genocide, rape, torture, etc.).
Trying to sell Christianity as an anti-slavery religion still makes no real sense to this day. But anti-slavery resonated with logic, rationality, secular morals and enlightenment ideals, and consistency has never mattered much in religion anyways. A person takes what they like and ignores what they don't.
The real point is that a belief in supernatural beings is not necessary to be a good person, but it can lead otherwise rational, empathetic people to take very hateful and bigoted positions, like the continued bigotry against the GLBT community, even by some of the first anti-slavery churches. That's the danger of believing things not based on rationality, but on a book like the Bible.
No, at least 76% are the same religion as their parents, yea childhood indoctrination!
http://www.pewforum.org/Faith-in-Flux.aspx
I don't consider people who change from one Protestant denomination to another as changing religion, much less Catholic to Protestant. It's all Christianity. Just changing denominations. And considering 9% of the group in the 44% also could have been Catholics going to Protestants, the number is likely around 80% or so.
If changing from Lutheran to Episcopal then back means you aren't the same faith as your parents, that's just disingenuous.
It's obvious that but for their parents being Christians, the vast majority of people would not be.
What's more, for all those people who have turned "unaffiliated", the vast majority of them are probably on the official church roles of attendance, cause that's how childhood indoctrination and number inflation in the religious world works.
But I do love how people defending childhood indoctrination must resort to really terrible semantic arguments.
And this is the US. You should look at the numbers in places with much less opportunity for kids to break out of their indoctrination, like Iran. Hmm, wonder why everyone is the same religion as their parents?
At least in the US, anymore, religion is being challenged so that adults can eventually overcome their childhood indoctrination, but that's what still drives religion population growth, certainly not straight up conversion. All of the switching from one religion to another (even Muslim to Christian or vice versa) is not conversion from a lack of faith to faith. Childhood indoctrination has already laid the groundwork, it's just the little details that change. Both require belief in a supernatural being based on no evidence, for example. They're doing each other's work in that sense.
If a single belief system can mean many things to many people...
then it's not a belief sytem. Such a "belief system" would inherently be cognitively dissonant and intellectually dishonest.
Not to mention, most believers DO hold that certain beliefs of the belief system are "fundamental", meaning that without those beliefs, you aren't part of that belief system. Of course, just where they arbitrarily draw the line shows how intellectually bankrupt it all is.
I don't doubt that many people of faith ignore the actual definitions of words that are inconvenient to them. But that just means many people of faith have to engage in all sorts of terrible apologetics in order to make sense of their belief system.
Nuns that don't believe many tenets of the Catholic Church that are truly honest with themselves just drop their title and leave the church, maybe joining another one that actually matches their beliefs. Nuns that prefer other aspects of the church while not believing certain tents and choose to try and change it from the inside are content with intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance in exchange for those benefits, just like every other believer out there that says they believe one thing but really believes another.
It's still cognitive dissonance...
It's telling someone you take the whole cake while only taking a part of it. A Catholic who doesn't believe in Catholicism is by definition not a Catholic, if the word is to have any sort of meaning. If someone tells me they're a Catholic, but then denies the views of the belief system they just said they subscribed to, it's dishonest. I know why they do it, but it's not for good reasons at the foundation.
It depends on your preferences...
I prefer beliefs based on at least some good evidence over beliefs based on no evidence. I can predict things and make predictions off of evidence that will allow me to make better decisions to fulfill my preferences. I can't do the same with religion. That is why I believe that the position of a "lack of belief" is more valid than believing in "god". Also, depending on the god being described (like Zeus), I believe that there is evidence against them. If religion says a god throws lightning from the sky, then science shows that lightning is caused by a giant static buildup in clouds, that's evidence against a very specific god.
I don't doubt that intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance are far preferable than consistent belief in many religious doctrines, but that shows the problem of the religion. The "change" is really just a belief system adapting to survive. As I said before, the Mormon church's position on polygamy and black people are good modern examples of just that. But it's also an indication that the whole belief system is logically bankrupt.
I don't belong to any belief system with a heirarchy, or any belief system at all. I subscribe to various tenets of various ideologies, some more than others. DU is not a belief system. Neither are Democrats, nor professional organizations. DU is a discussion forum. Democrats are a political party. Neither require that you subscribe to their opinions or ideology wholesale to be a part of them. But then again, they aren't belief systems advocating supposedly objective morals, so that makes sense (the Republican Party, on the other hand, sometimes seems like a religion anymore, with how much they appeal to it, and also shows the failures of religion even more clearly).
I never said it's up for me to decide what is best for others, but I'm certainly motivated to try and convince others of what is right according to my preferences. I feel an obligation and duty to do so according to my ideology. I don't view it as "conversion" in religion, which at least in the religious context will always involve unsubstantiated claims.
Then words mean nothing to you...
What you see it as is irrelevant, they fit the definition of cognitive dissonance and intellectual dishonesty. You certainly haven't shown that they don't. You seem to be trying to deflect from that point.
If a person subscribes to a religious belief system, but doesn't actually believe much of it (or any of it) but is only doing it for the social/community function of a church that they personally like, that is cognitive dissonance and intellectual dishonesty.
If a person wants to avoid cognitive dissonance and intellectual dishonesty, they actually have to believe the belief system they tell you they subscribe to. It's pretty simple.
Lots of religious people realize this, and some are being more honest by describing themselves as merely spiritual. Their beliefs are very simple, such as a belief in a higher power, and that's it. It's hard to contradict such a vague and broad belief, and it may not even really be a belief system. But most believers subscribe to very very specific belief systems, that have something to say on most everything.
Scientific ethics may say that lying or cheating about your results is indisputably bad, according to scientific ethics. But what makes scientific ethics indisputable? Morals/ethics are by their nature subjective. They're always disputable. There are no objective morals. There's plenty of good reasons to follow certain morals and ethics depending on one's preferences, and thankfully people's prefereneces, on a basic level, are very similar indeed. It's how we've survived as a species.
I think that conservatives must engage in indoctrination in order to push their ideology. It's why they're so opposed to critical thinking in schools and why many so fear education and try to paint education as merely another form of indoctrination. They think they're entitled, even required, to indoctrinate their children because their ideology celebrates and encourages authoritarianism (if you are in the right gender/class position) and subordination (if you are not). School is just another indoctrinator out there to compete with them in their minds. It's no surprise that fundamentalists of religion overwhelmingly identify with conservatives.
It was the impersonal "your"...
and here's the quote:
Basically, your position on god is no more credible than the hateful bigot's position on god.
Sorry for the confusion, it was just pointing out that one theist's position on god is no more credible than another's. Which is why the details of the position were left out. They're irrelevant to the point.
Yes, intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance are human nature, but they are generally symptoms of something not good when people resort to them, IMHO. The fact that it's so rampant on the topic of religion in the developed world, whereas with any other topic people would easily point it out, makes it all the more potentially harmful since religion is given a pass by many when it comes to logic and reasoning. Intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance are the primary defenses of people and society to the many failings of religion, if they have decided to keep religion around (of course, the main defense would be just dropping it altogether).
If I tell you I subscribe to a belief system that has a heirarchy that decides these beliefs and very clearly laid out beliefs, and then I tell you that I don't believe some of those clearly laid out beliefs, that's cognitive dissonance right there. What do you think makes it not? How is it not intellectually dishonest? Especially all the poor reasoning used to try to explain away the contradictions in one's own thought process. They go hand in hand with each other.
My goal is to advocate for a healthy way of thinking and against a harmful one. No more, no less.
It's easy to "prove" intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance...
for belief systems, and, as one example, the statistic on how many US Catholics use contraceptives (and think they're morally OK) is indeed proof of just that.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154799/americans-including-catholics-say-birth-control-morally.aspx
The Catholic Church bans contraception as immoral. Self-identified Catholics use it and believe it is moral. This, by definition, is intellectually dishonest and cognitive dissonance. You say you're a Catholic, so you say you believe contraception is immoral, then you say contraception is moral. It's cognitive dissonance. It's intellectually dishonest. There's no way around it. That's just one of many, many examples. Many Catholics may then say that just because they identify as Catholic they don't believe everything the Catholic Church says. This is rather silly and intellectually dishonest then. It's like saying just because I tell you I subscribe to a belief system doesn't mean I believe it. I mean, that makes sense if I assume you are being intellectually dishonest, which seems to be what they're trying to say.
You seem to agree with me on indoctrination and are for education in its place from how you described it.
As for raising your children to be liberal democrats, yeah, that's indoctrination (at least in the way you seem to be describing it). There are no values/ethics which are indisputable. Telling children that there are is a form of indoctrination. It's presenting your opinion as fact.
You can still raise your children in a way that educates them on your opinion of morals and ethics (and the other side), without portraying it as anything more than your (and other's) opinion, and that's the best way to go about it. Simply dropping that they're "indisputable" won't lead your children to embracing conservatism, and as long as you educate them and expose them on the reasoning behind different moral views, I would say the vast majority of children would go on to choose being a liberal, since facts, logical reasoning, etc. all lead towards the vast majority of liberal positions.
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