Religious Indoctrination
Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2026 10:57 pm
For a little over two decades, since I first considered myself an atheist, I've taken a pretty dim view of religion. While I think it was important in helping early civilizations stay together, that time has long passed and now I think it's more of a detriment for humanity than a positive thing. Suffice it to say that this is a controversial stance that hasn't always endeared me to my to fellow atheists, let alone theists.
One particularly controversial claim is that religious services - which very young children are taken to - are a form of childhood indoctrination where the group's religious beliefs are impressed on children, often with a heaping helping of emotional manipulation, usually in the form of fear and shame. This claim has received a huge amount of pushback from religious people who don't consider educating/training their children in their faith to be a negative thing. In fact, they often consider it a moral duty to raise a child to "believe the right things" and yes, sometimes, people go overboard on the fire and brimstone and don't emphasize the more positive aspects of their religion and of people leading a morally-upright religious life, but overall, it's quite positive.
Well, allow me a rebuttal:
(trigger warning) Kentucky pastor defends viral video showing mock firing squad in front of children
Friendly Atheist blog post about it
I never thought I'd have to give a trigger warning for a video of a church service, but here we are. Seriously, don't watch it if you're distressed by someone being dragged through and out a church by what appear to be armed and masked men in a mock execution with the crowd - including children - chanting for violence. It's not pretty.
While this is obviously extreme and not all religious services are exactly like this, this guy has been doing similar stuff for the past 30 years by his own admission and he's far from alone. If you take the Man From Mars approach and take in the sights as a space alien would, this is not okay and lots of religion is also not okay, just to a lesser degree.
And it kinda proves my point that the religious people engaged in this stuff doubled down and don't see anything wrong with this, no matter the criticism coming their way, and have no plans on changing anything. No self-awareness, no self-correction, no apology, no accountability. Religion in a nutshell.
One particularly controversial claim is that religious services - which very young children are taken to - are a form of childhood indoctrination where the group's religious beliefs are impressed on children, often with a heaping helping of emotional manipulation, usually in the form of fear and shame. This claim has received a huge amount of pushback from religious people who don't consider educating/training their children in their faith to be a negative thing. In fact, they often consider it a moral duty to raise a child to "believe the right things" and yes, sometimes, people go overboard on the fire and brimstone and don't emphasize the more positive aspects of their religion and of people leading a morally-upright religious life, but overall, it's quite positive.
Well, allow me a rebuttal:
(trigger warning) Kentucky pastor defends viral video showing mock firing squad in front of children
Friendly Atheist blog post about it
I never thought I'd have to give a trigger warning for a video of a church service, but here we are. Seriously, don't watch it if you're distressed by someone being dragged through and out a church by what appear to be armed and masked men in a mock execution with the crowd - including children - chanting for violence. It's not pretty.
While this is obviously extreme and not all religious services are exactly like this, this guy has been doing similar stuff for the past 30 years by his own admission and he's far from alone. If you take the Man From Mars approach and take in the sights as a space alien would, this is not okay and lots of religion is also not okay, just to a lesser degree.
And it kinda proves my point that the religious people engaged in this stuff doubled down and don't see anything wrong with this, no matter the criticism coming their way, and have no plans on changing anything. No self-awareness, no self-correction, no apology, no accountability. Religion in a nutshell.