Religious Indoctrination and the Infinite Universe of Children

There is something profoundly wrong about the religious indoctrination of children. 

It is theft and I will tell you why. When a child is born they are born free from everything, they are born as empty slates, clear minds. As they grow they turn into little scientists; watch any child play and soon you will realise that it is not idle play, they are constantly conducting experiments; what happens if I put this ball in this cup? What happens why I put it in that cup? If I throw sand in the air, what happens? If I make annoying sounds, how long will it be before daddy gets mad? How much does this weigh? Why can I not reach that? Everything interaction is an experiment, every event studied intently to learn more about it, every sound listened to, every taste savoured and every touched sends a spike of inquisitiveness to the infant mind. They are adventurers with infinite imagination on a never ending quest for new knowledge. Their world is one full of wonder and discovery every day. This constant questioning and discovery is made possible because they are not limited in the scope of their understanding; their universe is as it should be to them (and likely how it is in reality) – infinite.

When all questions are reduced to one simple answer there ceases to be great moments of discovery; Why has the giraffe got such a long neck? God. Where did the world come from? God. Why are some stars brighter than others? God. Where once there was a rich and colourful gallery of explanations there is not one plain answer to everything – God. For adults this can be rationalised but to reduce everything to just God in a child’s mind is stealing that discovery and wonder from them. It limits their once infinite scope to the boundaries of God. It squashes their naturally inquisitive minds; it removes the adventure and wonder because now it can all be explained so easily, it is all reduced to God.

Imagine a library. Maybe situated in a fantastically interesting old building, a maze of wood panelled rooms and heavy oak doorways inside of which sit towering bookshelves brimming with thousands of books by thousands of authors. Walking through it you notice all the different books on different subjects; factual books, fictional books, comedy, satire, reference, children’s stories, history, academic journals maybe. You notice how they are all bound differently in different colours. The library is a canvas of colours and titles stretching on forever, covering every subject known to humanity, every thought, every invention, every event in every language. The shelves bow under the weight of the work of thousands of years of discovery and imagination. You can smell it in the air, that wonderful papery smell of books – the smell of knowledge and understanding.

Now remove all those books, sweep them off of the shelves and into some abyss never to be seen again. Take all the knowledge and imagination and cast it away. In its place, amongst the empty shelves where only the dust outlines of the spines remain, place on a table a single religious tome. This is now your library. This is maximum scope of understanding and imagination available to you – your library has been reduced to God.

There is no denying that religious texts are indeed useful and should have a place in every library both figurative and real. They are useful because they provide insight into human history; those people who put together Genesis, for instance, tried to figure out the world was made. After all, they didn’t have much later scientific advances to rely on, so they did their best. Later stories were added to try and form some sort of treatise on morals and human interaction and through hundreds of years these religious texts began to take shape. However, as time advanced there became a following, a stoic and dogmatic following of these texts. They became preached pieces that were no longer about explaining the world but were about political means and ends and financial gain, they were, and still are, about control. Take the Bible for instance, it features the ten ‘commandments’, not ‘the ten suggestions’ or ‘the ten good ideas that you might want to use’ they are commands. More and more organised religion became about them and us, being either with it or against it. It became narrow minded and has stayed that way ever since.

Children do not need narrow minded thought being introduced to their infinite universes. They do not need to be told everything they are going to burn in hell for or how God will hate them if they do this, that or something else and they do not need a warped version of emotional blackmail masquerading as morality. They need morality and ethics based on real human interactions not ancient doctrines that condone rape, murder, discrimination and hatred as long as God says it is alright. What children need is encouragement in the things they are good at and a free world to explore and discover with no limitations imposed on their imaginations by anyone, imaginary or not.

Children only need the limits of their own imagination and inquisitiveness, their desire for adventure and knowledge. 

They deserve to be shown that the world is even more fascinating and amazing than they could imagine; they deserve better than to have their infinite universes reduced to God. 

#LogicShotgun 
A.R. Bell 2015
Twitter: @ARB_itrary