rcrocket wrote:marg wrote:
It seems to me that "early training of the young" into the mythical belief system of a religious organization is a rather unethical practice.
"Unethical" implies a standard of ethics to which people understand a need to adhere. Since virtually every monotheistic and polythestic religion, and many political parties, inculcate their young, I wonder which system of ethics you have reference to? Is it in the Bible? Where might I read your system of ethics?
rcrocket
With regards to your first sentence ""Unethical" implies a standard of ethics to which people understand a need to adhere." I disagree. I look upon ethics as a soft science. An individual or group of people might believe their choice or behavior is moral but that is irrelevant to the impact their decision/behavior actually has on others. When decisions and behaviors are critically assessed and by that I include objectively assessed, independent to those with vested personal interest and it is determined that those choices or behaviors impacted negatively on a particular group other than themselves, in this case a vulnerable group children and the overall negative impact outweighs the positive impact I consider it unethical. The same could be argued for institutionalized polygamy. Young girls are vulnerable and not in a position economically and mentally to make decisions which are in their best interest.
I consider people who have learned at a young age that mythical stories are truths in the sense of really actually happening, to be a negative impact on that individual. For whatever reason the human brain when young accepts with little question what authority tells them, no matter how outrageous the mythical story. And at a young age when later told that same belief wasn't really true i.e. Santa Clause, they without any problem can discard the belief.
For some reason when children continue holding mythical beliefs into adulthood they have a difficult time assessing how and why they acquired those beliefs. Many people never even think to question. And what occurs is that rational people will hold extremely irrational ideas if they've acquired them as children. It seems to be a phenomena of the human brain being able to compartmentalize experiences, beliefs from their rational thinking processes.
When reading RFM, as I have done I will often come across posts by individuals who are completely baffled as to how as adults they could ever have believed some of their religious irrational beliefs. Rightly so, some are angered or annoyed they were ever indoctrinated with them at a young age in the first place.
It is no mere coincedience that religious organizations start teaching/training the young with mythical religious beliefs, rather than waiting until they are young adults.