Why are theists so poor at making any arguments?

[Bruce Tuncks]

On another site, there are lots of discussions with theists. But they ( the theists ) seem to be poorly educated compared with the atheists.

Is this always true, or is the other site an anomaly?

[Old Koreelah]

Depends on what you consider education to be.

Many may be poorly educated by the standards of atheists, but the bible-thumpers would probably consider me poorly educated.

 

I have a family member who spent years studying that old book, but never went very far in secular education.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I reckon an educated person would read a bible fully, analyse it, and  reason it.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Ive gotta say that since I've got to know some old farmers, gosh I am impressed at how smart they are/were.

It was quite difficult to stay on the land with the awful prices in the 90's. As you imply, there is nothing much to do with formal education involved here.

I bet that Donald Trump had any university degrees he wanted bought for him. So much for formal education huh, although sometimes I detect an inverted snobbery where people think that they know more than they do, and that is more common among those without formal education.

Once, I had an argument ( I backed off real fast )  with a "self educated" maintenance guy about the meaning of the word "torque" and he was wrong but it didn't really matter. He knew how to use the wrenches. What annoyed me the most though was knowing that he would be considered right by the RAAus.

[onetrack]

And then there's the bottom line that Christianity has spread to almost every corner of the Earth and impacted many societies with its accent on love for your fellow man, and a guideline for acceptable human behaviour, in 12 short Commandments (10 via Moses, and 2 via Jesus Christ). Plus the foundation of our Western democracies and justice systems, are based on Christianity, and are still better than other systems that leave out God totally.

 

The simple problem with Christianity has been its incorrect interpretation by many men, and their desire to gain power and control from it. Not to mention the passing of many centuries and the loss of much relevant information that could have shed more light on various events and interpretations - as well as interpretations from original languages, to many other languages, and a loss of meaning in the interpretations. The fact that any part of the Bible survives at all, really is a miracle in itself.

 

I choose to worship a God who offers me a free invite, with no hidden catches, to a better place after I die. That to me, seems a better choice than the atheists view, that our lives are all for nothing, and there's absolutely nothing after we die.

 

The part that gets me is the more highly educated people become, the more they appear to totally reject any idea of an omnipotent God existing - yet, just examining a small number of the amazing complexities in human systems, in physics, in Nature in general, indicates to me that Evolution is an extremely poor explanation of how these incredibly complex systems originated and developed.

 

There are over 200 exceptionally-complex life-support systems in the human body - and the failure of any one of them means we either get very sick or even die.

Yet, Evolution and Atheists try to tell us these systems all developed by themselves - in the right order to sustain life! That's the equivalent likelihood of putting 200 numbered tokens in your pocket and reaching in and pulling out all 200 in exactly the correct numbered order!

 

Scientists today still find ever-increasing complexity in the things they research - whether it be viruses, diseases, physics laws and matter, the makeup of the Universe. To say there's no omnipotent Being behind all this, seems foolish to me.

The scientists spend billions on trying to find Life as we know it, elsewhere in the Universe.

 

The problem is, there is no Life as we know it, within reach of us. We are the utterly isolated Planet of the War between Good and Evil, and we were positioned here, so we can't infect other beings with our warring and regularly evil intent.

Our Planet is like a long-drawn out Western Movie, with the baddies and goodies fighting it out for superiority, and the Bible is the record that tells believers what the outcome will eventually be - and it isn't good news for the unbelievers, and the constantly evil humans who care nothing for others.

All that God asks of us is to believe in Him, everything else is secondary, including interpretations of what various Bible chapters spout. I believe a lot of the Bible wording is simply the opinion of those famous disciples. You place your own interpretation on what is being stated, and you alone wear your interpretation of those verses. I often wonder what Atheists have to look forward to, after death - not much, it seems. I look forward to a new and interesting experience, and I believe there'll be a decent sort of reckoning for everyone after death. It's only right  - surely the most evil people who ever existed on Earth, could avoid any kind of justice or punishment, by simply dying?

[old man emu]

The Torah and its derivative, the two-Testament Bible, have been great assets, to those who have access to them, in creating the secular Western society we live in, and are attempting to spread worldwide. I haven't read the book of the Islamists, so I can make no conclusions abouts its inputs. I've said before that the Torah is a compendium of Hebrew society, with history, common sense and spirituality collected together. I've also argued that the idea of gods in general appears to me to be a post-Ice Age conceit which replaced the animism of the people in areas we consider to be the cradles of civilisation.

 

After being educated under a biblically based system which promoted the existence of an Almighty God, but having been exposed to many other findings about Mankind, I now find that the most sensible approach to life is to live according to the secular developments and when caught between an atheist and a theist, claim agnosticism, because it really is the only honest respose to the question.   

 

[Marty_d]

There are smart religious people and stupid atheists.  It's not a given that there's a 1:1 correlation.

 

The only problem is that religion is somehow considered immune from logical reasoning.  It would be an interesting outcome If the intelligent believers objectively analysed their beliefs to the same standard as they objectively analyse anything else. 

 

I grew up in a religious household.  One of the main problems I could see is that believers don't like change.  They want the world to be the same as it was in <insert assumed golden era here> and never to change.  Hence they are generally speaking more conservative than progressive.  However everything on Earth changes or dies, with the possible exception of sharks and crocodiles, and even they aren't the apex predator any more.  So the problem with having these religious texts - bible, torah, koran, whatever - which don't change, and trying to continually apply them to a changing world, is an exercise in futility.

One example is the prohibition on certain types of food.  Neither the Jews nor Muslims are supposed to eat pork, and there's a few other things there (shellfish maybe?)  Now there may originally have been a good reason for this - AT THE TIME.  Maybe there was some kind of disease which swept across the pig population and sickened people who ate them.  The answer?  The priest sees it as a sign from god that eating pigs is wrong, makes a ruling about that, people don't eat pigs.  However these days the rest of us know that pigs are bloody delicious, but the poor old Jews and Muslims still don't get any.  

In other ways these books are just plain, factually, wrong.  Example - "The love of money is the root of all evil."  How many times have we heard that?  But think about all the different types of evil out there and then work out if they all have their basis in a love of money.  Child abuse?  Domestic violence?  Animal cruelty?  Rape?  Hurting or killing someone who doesn't believe the same things as you, or has a different sexuality, or is a different race?  There's a shedload of evil that doesn't have anything at all to do with money.

 

I don't particularly care if people want to believe something.  If you want to think there's life after death for you but not every other species on Earth (and not for members of your own species who don't believe in god), then you go for it.  My siblings all think that way.

Where I get upset with religious folks is when they try to change the world to fit their beliefs, and affect other people who don't share those beliefs.   Overturning Roe v Wade in the US means terrible outcomes for many women and a step backwards in them having agency over their own bodies.  Religious instruction in schools means that kids who don't share those beliefs are often just left in a library for that time instead of learning.  Tax breaks for religions means my tax dollars are helping fund things that should only be funded by their adherents.  These are reasonably minor examples - if you're gay in Uganda then you're stuffed.  If you're a young woman in Afghanistan then no education for you.  Real world impacts on people who don't deserve it.

 

 

 

[octave]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

Yet, Evolution and Atheists try to tell us these systems all developed by themselves - in the right order to sustain life!

Onetrack, forgive my quoting of your post. It just helps me remember the points I wish to make. 

 

 

 I don't think that is what the theory of evolution proposes.   Giraffes did not just develop long necks but because all giraffes are not identical some had slightly longer necks (due to errors in gene copying). If this provided a survival advantage then the slightly longer neck creatures will be more reproductively successful and are more likely to mate with other environmentally favoured individuals.

 

A straightforward example is the peppered moth. During the industrial revolution, trees became darkened by coal smoke.  This meant that the normally light-coloured moth became easier for birds to pick off.  Within the range of colours the darker moths were slightly more likely to avoid this fate thus the light-coloured pepper moth population began to darken due to natural selection.

 

Whilst the human body (and any animal really) is complaex it does have some shoddy engineering.  Most of us as men of a certain age are not impressed with the "designers"  decision to run the urethra through the prostate, an organ that is prone to enlarge and interrupt the flow in later life. Nice one. or perhaps the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve anyone? It can be explained by embryology but is hard to understand from an intentional design perspective.

 

Whilst this may seem too incredible is it really more incredible than an infinite supreme being who can create the whole universe and everything in it and yet require acknowledgment and gratitude? 

 

The notion of everlasting life is a little harder to comprehend in my opinion.   The term "afterlife" is always left vague.   The proposition seems that you must acknowledge god in order to secure everlasting life.     Presumably, this rules out slugs and dogs etc.   A quick Google tells me that, it is thought the old testament was written between 1200 and 165 BC.  Modern Homo Sapiens date back to about 160000 years.  These early humans would not have access to the bible and therefore would not have the opportunity to understand the deal being offered. Other early hominids perhaps did not even have the intellectual capacity to understand the concept of a supreme being.

 

A genuine question for people who believe in an afterlife (and I have no problem with people believing that), what is this afterlife supposed to be like?    I know different people have ideas.  Some believe in the idea of being reunited with previous deceased loved ones.  The last time I visited my grandmother about 20-something years ago in aged care she believed my young son was me and she thought I was a stranger.  This was because her brain had changed due to dementia.   If we were to be reunited (I guess I would have to praise the big fella for this to happen) then will she be  Grandma 2000 edition or 1970 edition?  My consciousness seems to be a manifestation of the billions of neurons in my brain which have been modified through experiences.  If I have a stroke then who I am may be very different than who I was pre-stroke. 

 

I am reminded of Clive Wearing a British musicologist and conductor who contracted a disease that damaged his hippocampus.  This man is famous for not being able to store short-term memories, every 20 seconds or so it is as if his memory is rebooted.  I wonder if this would be a problem in the afterlife. I suppose he would not have the capacity to accept a god anyway, perhaps there is a clause to cover this.

 

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

And then there's the bottom line that Christianity has spread to almost every corner of the Earth

 

According to the internets there are 2.2 billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims and 1.1 Non religous people.  I guess we could say that out of all religions, Christians are ahead although if you add up Muslims and Non-religious then you could say that most of the people of Earth are not Christians.  

 

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

The scientists spend billions on trying to find Life as we know it, elsewhere in the Universe.

And yet some people believe we are regularly visited by aliens.

 

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

I choose to worship a God who offers me a free invite, with no hidden catches, to a better place after I die. That to me, seems a better choice than the atheists view, that our lives are all for nothing, and there's absolutely nothing after we die.

And I have no problem with people's personal philosophies.    I do not think that not believing in an afterlife equates with nothing to look forward to.   For me the fact that life or conciseness is finite makes me appreciate the one life I have.  The notion of being conscious for eternity seems horrific to me.  I am OK with not existing, it is nothing new.   I was in a state of nonexistence from 1962 going back approximately 13.77 Billion years.  Not existing is hard for my human brain to imagine however the time between my birth and the beginning of the universe is no more perplexing than the time between my death and the end of the universe. Does eternal life continue after the demise of the universe?

 

As an atheist who believes life is finite like the universe itself, my life is precious and must be enjoyed as much as possible.   Indeed to me, it is the fact that my life will end one day that makes me strive to enjoy my existence.

 

Earlier in my life I was probably more willing to argue. These days I am pretty mellow really although I do object a little to some of the ideas that not being a believer leads to some kind of barren joyless life. 

 

If there is a great creator and an afterlife then there are a few options.   I could die and the great creator says "Well you did not believe in me despite the vague clues, but I am not a petty vengeful god, so in you come"  or there is a great creator and an afterlife and I will miss out but luckily will not be conscious to be aware of my loss.

 

I suppose there is the burning pit of hell option but it seems unlikely. 

 

 

 

 

[pmccarthy]

It's funny to be afraid of death because you will not know about it. It is the process of dying that bothers people. And you can be sure the world will get by without you. I have always been comfortable with my age and wouldn't change it. That doesn't mean I don't wish I had done things differently when younger, but I don't want to BE younger. Religion has no appeal, extension of life by new science has no great appeal. just enjoy it while you can.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I defer to greater minds when discussing religion - in fact, I grew up in. largely non-religious household - not baptised, christened, or any of the other myriad of rituals designed to allow a rite of passage. In fact, most of what I know about religion has been on these forums. My kids went to a Christian school and we never said they had to or had not to believe anything - I would answer or research anything, but kids are smart and even they couldn't reconcile what was being taught to them in religious education versus science. 

 

As far as I can tell, religion works by saying of its theology, well you can't disprove it, therefor it must be true. 

 

As I said, I defer to much brighter minds than I on religion, and this one came up about our all omnipotent and loving god:

 

And this is anothere favourite of mine... Apparently, the bible is not all loving:

 

I don't attribute a secular society on christianity - in fact, quite the opposite - Didn't Copernicus request his studies not be published until after his death as it would was so repugnant to the Lutheran faith, they would have killed him? I would argue a more secular society has been with the progress ion knowledge followed by widespread education.. Sadly, looking at the world today, the pendulum is swinging back to religion as one weapon in the arsenal for vested interests in society to maintain control.

 

[edit]

I absolutely respect peoples' right to spiritual belief - just don't force it on me or weaponise it to gain control of society.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Jerry_Atrick

[old man emu]

4 hours ago, Marty_d said:

Neither the Jews nor Muslims are supposed to eat pork, and there's a few other things there (shellfish maybe?) 

The reason that the Hebrews first began to prohibit the eating of pig meat could have been a means to distinguish themselves from other neighbouring groups. A bit like Vegans distinguishing themselves for the rest of us omnivores. Another thing about Hebrew dietary laws is that you have to consider where they are written in the Torah.  n Leviticus, God tells the Israelites and their priests, Aaron and his sons, how to make offerings in the Tabernacle and how to conduct themselves while camped around the holy tent sanctuary. The Tribe of Levi is traditionally descended from Levi, son of Jacob. The descendants of Aaron, who was the first kohen gadol (high priest) of Israel, were designated as the priestly class, the Kohanim. The instructions of Leviticus emphasize ritual, legal, and moral practices rather than beliefs, so you could consider it to be a Procedures Manual for running the religion.

 

Thinking about that prohibition makes me wonder why there were pigs for the Prodigal Son to tend. To summarize the tale, the youngest of the two sons demands his share of his father’s estate which the father gives him. Shortly after being given his inheritance, he runs off and squanders the wealth “in wild living”. Finding himself destitute and in the midst of a severe famine in the land, he hires himself out to a pig farmer. However, the parable doesn't explain if the pig farmer was a Hebrew as well. Maybe Christ used a contemporary situation existing in Judea due to the arrival of the Romans, who did eat pork and who would want a supply of it. Oy-vey, business is businees.

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

I knew a guy who was a vegan, and he was crazy!  BUT i also knew him before he was a vegan and he was crazy then too... bugger, this proves nothing.

[Old Koreelah]

9 hours ago, onetrack said:

And then there's the bottom line that Christianity has spread to almost every corner of the Earth and impacted many societies with its accent on love for your fellow man, and a guideline for acceptable human behaviour, in 12 short Commandments (10 via Moses, and 2 via Jesus Christ).

Christianity has no monopoly on teaching good behaviour; it could be argued that, compared to many other religions, the Bible’s Ten Commandments are quite deficient in this regard. Most of those ten rules are about a jealous god.

9 hours ago, onetrack said:

The part that gets me is the more highly educated people become, the more they appear to totally reject any idea of an omnipotent God existing - yet, just examining a small number of the amazing complexities in human systems, in physics, in Nature in general, indicates to me that Evolution is an extremely poor explanation of how these incredibly complex systems originated and developed.

That line of reasoning is core to the Intelligent Design philosophy, but contains a monumental flaw.

Modern life forms sure are incredibly complex and impressive, but why did it take the great creator so long?

The fossil record shows numerous design dead-ends. We probably find only a tiny fraction of the prototypes that were discarded. In our own species, the great creator made lots of design errors, which modern medicine is still battling to overcome.

 

By way of comparison, our own humble species took only half a century to develop fragile box kites into supersonic jet planes. A couple of decades to go from room-sized computers to iPhones. 
 

Many doubters seem to have no idea of the unimaginably long time frame over which life has been evolving. The mechanisms are mostly understood. Indeed, science is often surprised at how quickly life forms evolve to cope with changing environments.

 

Evolution has not been a steady, gradual progression towards more complex species; life on Earth has been all but wiped out a number of times. Life has bounced back, evolving fast enough to rebuild whole new classes of life forms in just a few million years.

[Marty_d]

In terms of the ID crowd arguing that complex systems like the eye could not come from evolution, the following essay is reasonably good.

(Apart from the last paragraph where the author obviously felt the need to throw a sop to the believers.)

 

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/index.html

[old man emu]

An organism has one goal to meet during its lifetime - to survive, and if that goal is achieved, the reward is to be able to reproduce. Evolution is the process whereby an species is able to modify its physiology and organs to better survive. Those modifications begin as alterations to genes here and there in its chromosomal strands. Those alterations occur randomly within a population of a species. Their effects range from the fatal, through the inconvenient to the enhancing. The non-fatal alterations become the starting points for the next round of potential alterations in the next generation.

 

The speed with which an alteration results in significant changes from the original species depends on the both the length of time it takes for an individual to reach reproductive age; the number of potential offspring per reproductive event, and the number of reproductive events the individual can have before dying. We can see the results of a short time to reproductive age plus high numbers of potential offspring per reproductive event in the response to insects to insecticidal chemicals, and in mammals such as rabbits to diseases caused by bacteria.

 

This explanation should be acceptable to rational theists, atheists and agnostics alike. However, it leaves the door wide open to the question, "What caused the molecules in the primordial soup to come together to form the specific amino acid templates to make proteins to make the enzymes necessary to the chemicals to make the organism?" A subsequent question is "What caused the resultant thing to reproduce itself?"

 

And, to mouth the words from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1, ay, there's the rub.

 

 

[nomadpete]

At first I was happy to sit on the sidelines for this thread. It covers a lot of old ground that our forum has already debated. Most of us are aware of each other's views on theology. I am happy that we collectively respect each other's belief structures, etc.

 

But the thread asks "Why are theists so poor at making any arguments?"

 

I think that is an unfair question.

 

As an athiest, I admit that I am "....... so poor at making any argument". Theological leanings have little to do with argument ability. Maybe argument could be added to the school syllabus.

 

Lots of people have difficulty making a good argument (argument = debate).

 

Further, as a survivor of several divorces, one might expect experience has given me expertise in the field of aguments.

 

But I won't argue about theist's arguments. Nor atheist's arguments, nor about theories of theology, nor theory of evolution.

 

P.S.

"Experience" is now called "learning opportunities" in newspeak. In oldspeak it was called "school of hard knocks"

Edited August 12, 2023 by nomadpete

[Old Koreelah]

Some encouraging news: schools are finally challenging the undue power of religious groups.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-sydney-high-schools-where-scripture-enrolments-fall-below-15-per-cent-20230802-p5dt95.html

 

[Marty_d]

About time too. If parents want to give their children religious education they should do it outside of school hours. 

[old man emu]

I seem to remember a furore some time ago about the teaching of Ethics in public schools. In NSW the Education Act 1990 states 'in every government school, time is to be allowed for the religious education of children of any religious persuasion'. Special education in ethics (SEE) can be offered as a secular alternative to special religious education (SRE). Special education in ethics (SEE) is a program in ethical decision making, action and reflection within a secular framework. Afterall, don't we agree that whichever Religion a society adheres to, a product of the applications of the tenets of the Religion set its secular ethical framework?

 

Also I wonder how many periods during the school week are allocated to religious education in the public school system. I went to a church school. One period each day was allocated to religious instruction, BUT, to do that the school day was lengthened by one period so that we meet the rules for hours of instruction set by the Education Act. The school was able to do that because being a private employer, it could set the work hours for the staff. Trying to add an hour to teh day of public school teachers would result in a walk-out (and I wouldn't blame them since they aren't getting paid well enough now).

 

[nomadpete]

OME, I am concerned  by the broadly accepted assumption that religion = ethics.

 

As you point out above, ethics is sometimes connected with religion.

 

However, in view of the questionable ethics surrounding the rampant child abuse by numerous religious institutions (and questionable financial systems, and numerous ethnic persecutions, and wars over the centuries), I cannot see any  confirmation of the widely held view that religion is the source of good ethics. Quite the opposite.

Edited August 13, 2023 by nomadpete
post posting proofreading

[Marty_d]

I would much rather my children be taught philosophy and critical thinking.  The point of the article was that only 15% on average are actually attending RE.  So with 6 out of 7 kids not attending these classes it seems obvious that state laws should be changed to remove the requirement for schools to offer RE.

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, nomadpete said:

I cannot see any  confirmation of the widely held view that religion is the source of good ethics. Quite the opposite.

I can only count that by quoting the old bushfire warning message: Fire is a good servant, but a bad Master. You are confusing the tenets of a religion with the acts of individuals associated with the organizations that blossom form the seed of a religion's philosophy. I think you should consider paraphrasing Blackstone's ratio so that reads, "It is better that ten innocent persons are emulated than that one guilty person stereotypes the group."

 

Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. 

 

Often, religion and ethics are treated as the same thing, with various religions making claims about their belief systems being the best way for people to live. All religious traditions believe that their faith represents a path to enlightenment and salvation. By contrast, ethics are universal decision-making tools that may be used by a person of any religious persuasion, including atheists. Ethics are based on logic and reason rather than tradition or injunction.

 

One could make the analogy with species evolution that Religion and Ethics are similar species not long divergent from a common ancestor.

[old man emu]

9 minutes ago, Marty_d said:

So with 6 out of 7 kids not attending these classes it seems obvious that state laws should be changed to remove the requirement for schools to offer RE.

There is a lot of sense in that statement. However, should we tell Octave that since not all school children study music, and I will include all the Performing Arts as well, music education must be deleted from the list of available courses to make way for more of the 3 Rs, or some other even some esoteric discipline?

[octave]

3 minutes ago, old man emu said:

However, should we tell Octave that since not all school children study music, and I will include all the Performing Arts as well, music education must be deleted from the list of available courses to make way for more of the 3 Rs, or some other even some esoteric discipline?

 

As far as I am aware some level of music is taught to all primary school children.  People do not really opt out. By this, I mean learning some music not necessarily learning an instrument or playing in a school band. In high school, I think it is more of a choice. When I was in my first year of high school I had to do music and a language. In the second year, you could choose either a language or music.  Of course, I would say that being exposed to music education to a small degree is good however I don't believe every student should be forced to learn an instrument.

 

We are not really talking about 3 or 4 students leaving class to do music so it is not exactly the same as RI. By the way, I have absolutely no problem with students doing RI if that is their choice. I would say the same with music. I used to go into schools and teach instruments. This did involve students leaving class.   I think that is fine but I would not expect lessons for the rest of the class to be affected and I think that should be the case for RI.   

 

 

When it comes to the 3Rs, how much time is needed to teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division?   Arithmetic and maths are not exactly the same thing.   I used to have an  American friend who spent a few years in Australia working for CSIRO.   He is now a professor at Arizona State University.  I once had a friendly dig at him when he didn't calculate the bill splitting in a restaurant ( he has a couple of PhDs in mathematics.)  As he pointed out to me,  a mathematician is not someone who knows their times tables or is great at long division. The skill is taking a problem and working out equations to solve it.   Want to send a probe past Pluto?  How long do I fire the engine? What path will it result in?        

 

 

I am not discounting basic literacy and numeracy however as the world changes new skills are also required.  I would argue that computer literacy is a basic skill that just about everybody will need in their work life.

 

 

 

  

[nomadpete]

1 hour ago, old man emu said:

There is a lot of sense in that statement. However, should we tell Octave that since not all school children study music, and I will include all the Performing Arts as well, music education must be deleted from the list of available courses to make way for more of the 3 Rs, or some other even some esoteric discipline?

Not a fair parallel re ethics, OME

 

Because for instance, although the performing arts are very beneficial to human wellbeing, they do not define the cultural behaviour of the population. Music can have very diverse styles and followers without detriment to the whole (as long as it's not played too loud)

 

Ethics need to be relatively consistent among the majority of population, to be beneficial to all.

 

And that is where RE can cause unintended rifts in ethics. Followers of some religions condone acts that I consider unethical.

So, teaching all flavours of religion in schools is condoning double ethical standards in some areas.

 

I do not approve of alloting precious school education time to religion. Religion relies on early indoctrination. Doing it in schools is as unethical as allowing one bank to hand out moneyboxes and bank accounts in schools.

Edited August 13, 2023 by nomadpete