In this rebuttal Trent critiques the claim that religious education of children is really abusive “indoctrination”.
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. In this episode, I’m going to be rebutting a video from Theramin Trees. It seems to be an atheist or at least a non-religious YouTube channel. In the video, the narrator, he makes an argument. It’s not against religion itself, but against something religious people often do, which should be teaching their children religious stories and values, or taking their children to religious ceremonies like receiving communion or baptism. It says this is abusive indoctrination.
Trent Horn:
So I’m going to show in this video why even an atheist should tolerate these behaviors he disagrees with even as someone like me, I tolerate an atheist raising his children with atheistic values. Parents teaching their children about religion is not an abusive kind of indoctrination. But before we do that though, don’t forget to like this video, subscribe so you don’t miss any more rebuttals, and definitely check us out at trenthornpodcast.com. So now without further ado, here is my rebuttal of Theramin Trees on the question of whether religious instruction is valuable education or abusive indoctrination.
Theramin Trees:
Thomas and the Ooma are lifelong supporters of a major political party in their country. After five years together, they have their first child, Ben. They invite their friends and family to a ceremony where the baby’s hand is painted in the party color and pressed against the ballot paper. The assemble company cheers his approval and the minister joyfully announces that their political party has just gained this newest member. There’s a photographic frenzy to capture this wonderful moment in Ben’s life.
Trent Horn:
This is supposed to parallel the excitement we feel at a baptism even though a child doesn’t know what he’s being signed up for. Of course, none of this makes sense for political parties where the entire point is to organize your vote. If you can’t legally vote, it doesn’t make sense to be in a political party, especially if you can’t vote because you don’t understand what you’re voting about if you’re a baby or a toddler.
Trent Horn:
But something like baptism, it’s not like signing up a child to be a member of a political party. Here’s a better analogy. Imagine there is a horrible disease sweeping the world. Well, that’s not too hard to imagine. But now imagine you have the opportunity to vaccinate your child from the disease or to give a medicine that cures them of the disease. You might want to celebrate this important milestone in your child’s life, even if they did not choose it.
Trent Horn:
And maybe when they get older, they’ll reject the vaccine or they’ll reject the drug that treats this disease and they’ll make another choice. Regardless, you can still celebrate what you did for your child, even if they don’t understand it at the time or if they grow up disagreeing with the choice because you made the best choice you could for him or her. Now, I agree we shouldn’t say a child is a Christian or an atheist or a Republican or a Democrat, if by those terms, we mean a person who embraces those concepts because small children can’t do that.
Trent Horn:
Really small children like infants don’t have any concepts at all in the sense of an abstract idea. That’s why I kind of cringe when I see YouTube videos of little kids making political talking points. Even if I agree with the talking points, I don’t like it because it’s not appropriate for them because they don’t really understand the issues that you’re talking about.
Trent Horn:
But if you believe as Catholics and many other Christians do that, baptism, it actually takes away sin, it actually changes our souls, then of course, it makes sense to celebrate that occasion just like you would celebrate being cured from a disease or vaccinated from it or whatever. Even if we’re talking about infant baptism that is not regenerative as some Christians believe or another kind of religious dedication. This is a public ceremony where you pledge to the community you will raise a child according to certain values. And that is still something that can be celebrated. It isn’t irrational.
Theramin Trees:
Year after year, Ben will be taken to weekly meetings in which will be made to listen to speeches and sing songs praising the party leadership. Each week, Ben will be made to join in with an election ritual, lining up at a booth and voting publicly for the party, then sipping celebrator champagne.
Theramin Trees:
The same messages will be drilled into Ben as facts over and over and over and over again. The party leader is always right. Those who rebel against the leader will suffer terrible consequences. Only devoted members will enjoy a good life. The messages will be further reinforced when Ben is sent to a conviction score with curriculums designed to keep the students’ political convictions in line with the party ideology.
Trent Horn:
This is creepy when it comes to voting and things that have nothing to do with adults. But we teach children lots of concepts related to morality and citizenship. They pledge allegiance to the flag. They play games and listen to stories that teach them good moral lessons. Frankly, a lot of stuff like this already happens with LGBT ideology in public schools. Though I wonder if TheraminTrees would call that indoctrination.
Trent Horn:
But the big problem with this argument is that it’s creepy to expect unconditional obedience to prudential political judgements. People can reasonably disagree with lots of political programs provided that they aren’t supporting something that violates another person’s basic rights. But religious people, they generally don’t teach that the human leaders of their religion are perfect. But if God exists, then God is perfect and he’s worth our complete obedience.
Trent Horn:
I’m sure TheraminTrees would say the same thing about truth or goodness. We should always believe what is true. We should always do what’s good. Where we disagree is on what is true and what is good and how truth and goodness are ultimately grounded in our universe. And I would say they’re grounded in that which just is truth and goodness itself, or God who is perfect, unlimited being itself.
Theramin Trees:
At school as with all other public spaces, he’ll be made to wear party colors. As his reasoning skills develop, some of what Ben hears about the leader will seem nonsensical, contradictory, even hypocritical. AT first, he’ll voice these problems unselfconsciously, but he’ll be reminded that the party is perfect. So his criticisms must be wrong. He’ll further be accused of sacrilege and warned of harsh consequences for such talk. Ben will feel guilty, scared, and isolated.
Theramin Trees:
Critical thoughts about his party will now arouse anxiety in him. He’ll learn to dismiss his misgivings as the product of his own ignorance. Before long, he learn to block them out altogether. Conversely, he’ll learn that compliance gets rewarded. When he does as he’s told, affirms his political loyalty, raises funds for the party and so on, he’ll be showered with approval and praise strongly encouraging more of the same behaviors and deepening his sense of identity as a party member.
Theramin Trees:
In his 13th year in a special public ceremony, Ben will confirm his lifelong commitment to the party leadership promising always the campaign and vote for the party and affirming that he makes these vows entirely of his own free will. Thomas and Ooma will look on with pride, thrilled that their son made the right choice.
Theramin Trees:
They will genuinely believe they gave their son a choice. I suspect very few of us would have any difficulty recognizing this hypothetical scenario as abusive. I suspect that if politicians try to encourage this kind of childhood induction into their parties, there would be huge public outrage. So why is it that many of us will accept all of the above abuse when it comes to religion?
Trent Horn:
Before I address his main argument, I will say that I agree with TheraminTrees a little bit. If we treat religion as something we can never question or think about, it becomes more likely a person, they’re going to reject the source of anxiety later in their life. One common element in children who remain religious as opposed to those who become nonreligious is the presence of open conversations about religion.
Trent Horn:
If a child feels like they can never ask hard questions about their religious identity, then they’re going to be more likely to reject that identity when they grow up. But in order to be able to have those conversations, you need to have a healthy relationship with your kids. Vern L. Bengtson studied religious families for nearly 30 years and he documented his findings in a book called Families and Faith, How Religion is Passed Down Across Generations.
Trent Horn:
He says, “The presence of these kinds of relationships are the number one predictor of whether a child will retain his faith into adulthood. He writes relationships with parents that are felt to be close, warm, and affirming are associated with higher religious transmission than are relationships perceived as cold, distant, or authoritarian, regardless of the level of parental piety. Moreover, this is particularly true for relations with fathers”.
Trent Horn:
Now, TheraminTrees main objection in this clip is that we can’t say a child freely chose his religion any more than we could say a child, in this example, freely chose his political beliefs. Then we shouldn’t teach these beliefs with such dogmatism. And I agree, but that only shows some beliefs like political ones or personal preferences shouldn’t be taught dogmatically, but foundational, empirical, moral, and religious beliefs should be taught with certainty and reinforced.
Trent Horn:
But other religious, moral, and civic beliefs should be taught with a higher level of certainty and a higher expectation of obedience because those beliefs, they form the foundation for all of our other beliefs and they contribute to our overall welfare as human beings. But as I said earlier, just because these truths should be taught and reinforced authoritatively, we shouldn’t teach them with harsh authoritarian ways of parenting.
Theramin Trees:
The induction of babies as party members, the manipulation of children through endlessly repeated promises, threats, rhetoric, and rituals they’re not equipped to evaluate or resist. The further encroachment on children through schools, which should be places of education, not proselytization.
Theramin Trees:
How is it possible to hold to such wildly conflicting sets of attitudes towards the same phenomenon of child indoctrination protective towards the child in regard to politics, protective towards the indoctrinators in regard to religion? Child religious indoctrination stands out as one of the most systematic, self-perpetuating forms of abuse humans perpetuate on others.
Trent Horn:
Everything I’ve said so far would also apply here. Now, TheraminTrees will try to answer the typical objections that are raised his position. So let’s see how he does.
Theramin Trees:
I want to go through some of the arguments put to me over the years by its defenders. With each one, I invite the viewer to reflect on how legitimate that argument would seem if it was submitted in support of Ben’s political indoctrination. I’ll also be presenting a thought experiment that might help bring the point home. Over the years, some apologists have argued that indoctrinate is just another word for teach.
Theramin Trees:
Well, open a dictionary and under indoctrinate, you’ll find the verb’s archaic definition of teach or instruct. But the modern usage means to teach someone to accept a set of beliefs uncritically, which is a very different business. And it’s the business religious indoctrinators are in where religious beliefs are taught to children as truth deeply coloring their view of reality and where reactions to criticism range from expressions of disapproval to physical punishment, to threats of eternal damnation.
Trent Horn:
First, well, some parents may tell their children not to question anything they’re told. That’s not an inherent feature of religion. At Catholic Answers Live, I’ve hosted several shows where we allow children to call the radio show and ask any question they want about the Catholic faith. Sometimes these kids, they ask questions that are tougher than what adults ask.
Trent Horn:
So while some religious parents, they might demand uncritical acceptance of what they teach, there are many non-religious people who have that attitude towards non-religious beliefs that they have. Likewise, there are religious people who encourage their children to ask questions about what they believe. And then the parents explain the reasons why their family believes what they do, which once again, you can do on any controversial issue.
Trent Horn:
I also find it weird when the narrator says religious beliefs are taught to children as truth. What does he expect religious people to do, teach them as if they aren’t really true? Religious people really do believe God exists, or that God loves us. We believe that’s true. And if TheraminTrees can’t produce an argument showing that’s false, why shouldn’t I tell these truths to my children, especially when I have good reasons to believe that they’re true.
Trent Horn:
Finally, everyone expects children to receive some truths without question, because as I said before, they are foundational truths. This can include foundational moral truths like you ought to be selfless and not selfish, even if you can get away with being selfish. You might even warn children about scary consequences of disobeying basic moral truths such as being socially ostracized or even legal punishment for serious infractions.
Trent Horn:
This isn’t just moral truths though. If a middle school student stubbornly refuse to believe the Holocaust happened, you might respond with expressions of disapproval. And if he committed an act of antisemitism thinking, there’s nothing wrong with such behavior, then you might punish him and say, this is a belief about the Holocaust and the dignity of Jewish people.
Trent Horn:
You just have to accept. Sorry. It’s true even if you disagree with it. TheraminTrees, now, he might object. We can prove the Holocaust happened but we can’t prove God exists. But now he’s just objecting to what children should be indoctrinated with, not whether they should be taught truths that they are expected to not reject because of how foundational they are.
Theramin Trees:
Religious indoctrination actively encourages ignorance unlike teaching, which encourages knowledge. For example, it discourages the investigation of competing religions. Some children are simply not told about their existence. Some will hear competing religions explicitly denounced as corrupt and will be forbidden to talk about them. Obviously, if children were taught without bias about all religions from the get-go, they might not be so easily herded into the one laid out for them.
Trent Horn:
I agree that Catholic parents should teach their children about non-Catholic religions, and a failure to do so, it could weaken the child’s faith when he grows up. But we aren’t obligated, as TheraminTrees would have us think, that the only truly educational way to do this would be to pretend that all of these religious systems are equally valid and so it doesn’t matter what religion a person chooses.
Trent Horn:
Parents should just tell children about what is true and good in other religions as well as what is false in other religions. To make an analogy, when we teach children about civil rights and the role of government, we might tell them about different kinds of governments like republics or democracies or dictatorships, but it wouldn’t follow that we had to pretend that all of these forms of government were equally valid.
Trent Horn:
We could rightly say things like dictatorships are corrupt. You should not support them. And tell our children they should prefer other forms of government, possibly the one that the country we live in. Likewise, we can say religions that deny Jesus as God, they’re false because they don’t accept the most important fact in human history that God became man.
Theramin Trees:
To those who want to characterize religious indoctrination as teaching, imagine a school where the drama teachers only ever discussed the works of Harold Pinter to the exclusion of all other playwrights, where the music teachers proclaim Sergei Prokofiev as the true composer dismissing any others as corrupt, where the math teachers threaten to behead students who draw cartoons of Blaise Pascal, would you call that teaching? More to the point, would you send your child there?
Trent Horn:
This analogy fails because there is no such thing as the true composer or the true playwright. That’s why we teach children about a variety of artists and we note their impact on history, but there is a true quadratic equation and a true first law of motion. We teach these things as facts and we say the opposite is just an error that you should reject and not accept.
Trent Horn:
Here’s another example, would I send my child to a school that says they’re not going to tell them two plus two definitely equals four. What if they said some people believe that it equals four, but other people say it equals five. We will let your child make up his own mind about the matter.
Trent Horn:
Now, that might sound silly, but in a previous episode of the podcast, I talked about modern educators who say, “The claim, math is objective, is racist.” And they say “Two plus two doesn’t always equal four.” I’ll put a description to that in the link below. But educators should expose children to what is appropriate for their development. But some things are just facts and they should be taught as facts.
Trent Horn:
We can talk about the virtues of different space programs, but that doesn’t refute the fact that the Soviet Union put the first human being an orbit and the United States put the first man on the moon. They’re facts. Similarly, it’s not indoctrination to teach about different religions while acknowledging that it is only Christianity that correctly teaches us about God’s existence, his nature, and his revelation to humanity through his son, Jesus Christ.
Theramin Trees:
Indoctrination does not just mean teach. Indoctrinators sometimes claim they’re performing a service for the child. I’ve had Christian apologists tell me they’re helping the child find his Christian identity. Paints a philanthropic picture, doesn’t it? It’s as if there’s some precious Christian identity hidden deep inside the child that it’ll struggle to find by itself. So the indoctrinator kindly steps in to offer assistance.
Theramin Trees:
But what would we think of political indoctrinators who claim they were helping the child find its Democrat identity or his conservative identity? Would it seem like they were doing the child a service or themselves? What if adults said they were helping the child find it’s accountant identity, it’s heterosexual identity, it’s violinist identity, it’s stamp collector identity?
Theramin Trees:
We don’t help children find their identity by imposing identities on them of our own choosing. We help by exposing them to the rich variation and complexity of human life, educating them about all their options and letting them discover their own identity. Indoctrination is not an act of philanthropy, neither is it an act of love.
Trent Horn:
I sort of agree with this objection and say religious instruction, it’s not about children finding out a part of their identity per se, it’s about helping them find out how the world works. And it’s not wrong to help a child do that even if it turns out that you are wrong about how the world works. After all, if every religious parent teaches his children religious truths, some of those truths will turn out to be errors.
Trent Horn:
Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Hindu parents, they can’t all be right about everything. And that’s okay because we live in a society where Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, we can get along in spite of our different beliefs. As long as what these parents teach isn’t so far outside the bounds of human decency that it prevents the child from functioning in society, then it’s not wrong for the parents to educate their child in what they sincerely believed to be true.
Theramin Trees:
On the 2nd of February, 2015, going home from school, a six-year-old boy from Missouri was reportedly coaxed into a pickup truck by a 23-year-old man. According to news accounts, the boy was then told he’d never see his family again and would be nailed to the wall of a shed and threatened with a gun when he wouldn’t stop crying. When they reached their destination, the boy was reportedly tied up, taken to a basement, partially stripped by a woman and told he could be sold into sex slavery.
Theramin Trees:
The twist, the woman was his aunt. The man was her coworker. Together with the boy’s mother and grandmother, they felt the boy was too trusting around strangers. So they staged the kidnapping to teach him not to talk to people he didn’t know. When the boy told a teacher about his experience, he was taken into protective custody. A lawyer representing the adults stated that their actions were born out of an intense and sincere love for the child and the desire to protect him from others by teaching him to protect himself.
Theramin Trees:
The adults were charged with various offenses, including abuse of a child, kidnapping, and felonious restraint. Some apologists cite their personal fear for their child’s soul as a justification for inspiring anxiety and terror in their children with threats of exclusion from paradise and banishment to a realm of unending torture.
Theramin Trees:
Both the Missouri abduction defense and this religious indoctrination defense show how over-protective feelings can easily lead to destructive actions when individuals become so fixated on averting some perceived danger that they don’t consider what damage they themselves might be doing in the process. It’s not a loving act to hold a child so tight, you crush its bone.
Trent Horn:
Clearly, this is insane. But just because there is an abusive way to teach children the truth that some strangers are not nice and should not be trusted, that doesn’t mean there is not a non-abusive way to teach them this truth. The same is true of religious beliefs, including beliefs about things like sin and hell, which involves serious, sometimes scary consequences.
Trent Horn:
Once again, it’s not the subject matter TheraminTrees is critiquing, but the methods used to communicate it since I’m sure he would be fine with age appropriate stranger danger safety indoctrination, that should not be questioned for the child’s own good.
Theramin Trees:
In the case of both the Missouri abduction and religious indoctrination, alternative non-abusive courses of action exist. The Missouri abductors could have used role-play games, getting the boy to fend off various approaches by strangers. They could have taught him a code word only given to trusted strangers. They could have asked for advice from teachers, psychologists, child protection agencies, even the police. A range of non-abusive options were available.
Trent Horn:
But notice that in this education, the child must accept without question that bad people exist and he must take certain courses of action, because if he doesn’t, the bad people might harm him. If you took out the word stranger and put in the word demon and kept the role-playing and added other practical advice like don’t play with Weegee boards instead of don’t talk to strangers, you better believe TheraminTrees would call that indoctrination. So once again, he doesn’t disagree with the method. He just disagrees with the content of the message.
Theramin Trees:
Likewise, indoctrination isn’t the only option available if you want to convince your child of your religious beliefs. A non-abusive alternative is simple argumentation. Let your child learn about all religions and the option of choosing none. Teach it without preference. Take it to a range of services conducted by different religions. Take it to a humanist assembly to show that fellowship isn’t the exclusive province of religions.
Theramin Trees:
Let your child learn about logic and logical fallacies, about syllogistic reasoning, about soundness and validity. Give it practice to build it’s competence and confidence in legitimate argumentation. Let your child learn about manipulation through emotional appeals and displays of raw conviction so that it learns to see through to the substance of the underlying claims.
Theramin Trees:
Teach it about all the psychological biases we humans possess that can affect the way we process information and ideas. In short, do everything you can to help equip your child with critical thinking skills and immunize it against exploitation. Then make your case for your religion. Have an honest exchange with your child, presenting all the reasons you think it should believe what you believe.
Theramin Trees:
And now comes the important part, let your child think for itself. Those who are confident they have good reasons for their religious beliefs should have no problem using argumentation instead of indoctrination. Those who are not competent they have good reasons shouldn’t be contemplating indoctrination or argumentation. Their best plan is to try and figure out why they themselves hold beliefs they can’t substantiate.
Trent Horn:
I actually think this is good advice. We should teach children to think critically and provide good reasons for what we believe. But TheraminTrees is contradicting himself a little here when he says, let your child learn about all religions and the option of choosing none. Teach it without preference. Take it or him to a range of services conducted by different religions.
Trent Horn:
This isn’t educating a child in my religion if I pretend they all have equal validity or they’re equally true. I will say our religion is true and others are false. But as my child grows older, I know he has the right to choose what he’s going to believe. No one can control what their child believes. All we can do is give them good reasons and an authentic lived experience to show we really do believe this and we rejoice in it.
Trent Horn:
And this is sometimes even better than just a bunch of arguments. If we love our faith, our children, they’ll see there’s something special there and that it’s not just a fallacious appeal to emotion or fear. So just as it’s fair to use non-abusive means to teach children about physical dangers like criminals, it’s fair to use non abusive means to teach children about spiritual dangers, and every parent should do that.
Theramin Trees:
Many argue that religious indoctrination teaches the child moral values. This instantly falls flat on its face when we ask can children be taught moral values without indoctrination? The answer is yes.
Trent Horn:
Now, listen carefully to his explanation because at this point, he is going to contradict himself.
Theramin Trees:
To justify indoctrination as an acceptable method of teaching moral values, the apologist would have to show that the invasive and coercive tactics used in indoctrination were necessary to get the job done. The fact that these tactics are not necessary makes them excessive.
Trent Horn:
So the argument seems to be that moral instruction is not indoctrination because it doesn’t follow the same formula religious people use when they teach their children about religion. But many moral truths are taught to children this way.
Trent Horn:
Think about parents who teach their children that abortion is a woman’s right once they’re old enough to understand pregnancy and childbirth or parents who praise children for putting on rainbow face paint at a pride parade, or what about parents that encourage little boys to identify as girls and praise them when they act like girls because the parents are convinced they are transgender?
Trent Horn:
So even when it comes to basic moral truths like don’t steal, parents still use the same tactics they use in religious instruction, like repetition and threats of punishment about what will happen if they don’t accept the truth and live in contradiction to it.
Trent Horn:
In fact, the main problem with this video is that there is no way you can consistently say it is wrong for parents to teach their children religious truths that people disagree about, but it’s not wrong to teach their children moral truths people disagree about. Either both of them are instruction or both are indoctrination.
Theramin Trees:
Now, that’s all I actually need to say to debunk this defense, but like indoctrination, I’m going to be excessive. I want to take a deeper look at this claim of teaching moral values. The stamp of divine authorship often gets tacked on to precepts like don’t lie, don’t steal, treat others as we’d be treated, but all these rules of thumb have secular roots. They work because they offer ideas on personal boundaries and personal bonding that helps social creatures coexist.
Trent Horn:
Actually, the catechism agrees in part when it says this, the precepts of the Decalogue lay the foundations for the vocation of man fashioned in the image of God. They prohibit what is contrary to the love of God and neighbor and prescribe what is essential to it. The Decalogue is a light offered to the conscience of every man to make God’s call and ways known to him and to protect him against evil. The catechism then quotes St. Augustin, who said, “God wrote on the tables of the law what men did not read in their hearts.”
Trent Horn:
So don’t steal, don’t kill are known in people’s hearts even if they aren’t religious. So they are secular in that sense, or in the sense you don’t have to belong to a religion to know them. But ultimately these rules are a universally binding thing, and that makes them religious in nature, not secular.
Trent Horn:
And children still have to be taught these truths repeatedly and sometimes with threats of punishment because lying and stealing, they’re common temptations lots of people justify. However, if using repetition or punishment to instill fundamental moral truths is education, then the same is true for using those same tactics to teach fundamental religious truths to children.
Trent Horn:
Notice also that TheraminTrees tries to make a distinction between moral truths and religious truths by saying it’s okay to basically engage in moral indoctrination because morality works but religion, you can’t prove it works in the same way. But this itself, this position about morality is controversial. And so if TheraminTrees thinks it’s okay to dogmatically teach his controversial view that morality is just what works, then he’s still endorsing a view of indoctrination.
Theramin Trees:
I call them rules of thumb, not moral absolutes as dogmatic religions like to present them because the fact is they shouldn’t always be followed. Lying can be a moral act where it protects people from persecution. Even the golden rule doesn’t always hold. If I enjoy confrontations, it doesn’t mean I should go around treating others in a confrontational way.
Trent Horn:
So what’s interesting is that TheraminTrees hasn’t given us any ultimate purpose for morality. Apparently, we can break any rule we want even the most basic because… reasons. I imagine it might be something like you can break a rule if it will do more good overall than not breaking the rule.
Trent Horn:
But this leads to just nightmarish, consequences that always pop up when you endorse something like utilitarianism. Under that view, you could commit any evil, even heinous acts like rape or torturing children if it produced more good overall. So don’t let this poorly defined ethical system fool you into thinking it’s superior to religious ones.
Theramin Trees:
Religions are not the source of any moral value, but frequently the source of immoral ones. In Christianity’s Bible, we find the Christian creator God, Yahweh, depicted ordering execution for picking up sticks on the wrong day and for sons who resist their parents. Humans are instructed to burn to death any priest’s daughter who becomes a sex worker and to stone to death any woman who shall not to be a Virgin on her wedding night.
Trent Horn:
I have a whole chapter in my book on the Bible about these punishments, many of which represent maximums that were probably never carried out. When you hear about someone being fined $250,000 and put in prison for five years for illegally copying the VHS edition of Caddyshack at Blockbuster or something. But in any case, many people would agree with moral norms that say children should respect their parents or prostitution is wrong.
Trent Horn:
Where we might disagree is on when certain punishments are appropriate or not. In the ancient world, punishments were often harsh because prisons didn’t exist and it’s social cohesion broke down or social discord could easily lead to disasters like famine or being conquered by other opposing tribes.
Trent Horn:
But as society changes, certain punishments are no longer necessary to secure the public order. But as I said, there is some debate about how often or whether some of these punishments were ever actually carried out. So if you want to learn more about that, definitely check out my book, Hard Sayings, A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties.
Theramin Trees:
Biblical punishments ranged from the overblown, to the inadequate, to the bizarre, such as stoning and ox to death for goring a human. Throughout history, humans are being killed in excessively sadistic ways by groups ranging from drug cartels, to religious communities, to governments as a warning to others. But what can the stoning of an ox teach the ox community? This is blood lust, a very human phenomenon, a very biblical phenomenon, but not a moral one.
Trent Horn:
Actually, in many jurisdictions of an animal like a dog is dangerous and causes harm to people, the dog will be euthanized. In this case and with the biblical oxen, the punishment is not meant to teach the animals a lesson. Instead, it teaches the owners a lesson about restraining their animals and it also keeps the community safe from a dangerous thing within it.
Trent Horn:
Now, you might disagree with modern animal euthanasia laws as well, but don’t act like what the Bible says about regulating the welfare of humans and livestock is somehow grossly out of step with normal human reasoning when that still happens in modern countries today.
Theramin Trees:
It’s been put to me that belief in gods is in itself a moral value because it adds the weight of supernatural authority to moral instruction, helping to ensure the individual’s moral compliance. But belief in gods adds weight to any instruction, moral or immoral. Instructions to withhold medical treatment from children, instructions to mutilate their genitals. Beliefs that help to ensure compliance to any instruction have no intrinsic moral value.
Trent Horn:
Just because some people mistakenly attribute immoral acts to the will of God, that doesn’t mean God’s will or his character or nature is not the foundation for morality. This kind of reasoning would lead to moral skepticism, an unlivable kind. I mean, mistaken individual and cultural beliefs have justify all kinds of evils throughout history. Even atheists have done this.
Trent Horn:
Look at the killing fields of Cambodia or Stalin Soviet Union, but it wouldn’t follow from the mistakes these individuals and cultures made that were never right about morality. So we can’t trust our moral intuitions. Human beings may be wrong sometimes about what God wants them to do in a given situation, but that doesn’t disprove the truth that God is the ultimate foundation of what is right and wrong because he just is perfect goodness himself and he gave us the deposit of faith to guide us in understanding the moral law.
Theramin Trees:
In defending indoctrination. Some people cite the sincerity of their beliefs. The argument poses that if someone believes something sincerely, then they should be free to act in accordance with that belief. For those who don’t quite grasp it, let’s see the principle in action. Vivian gets a job at a bank. On her first day, she refuses to serve Asian customers.
Theramin Trees:
When they complained to her manager that they want her sacked, Vivian reveals that she believes Asians are an inferior slave race who don’t deserve money. Her manager is outraged. But then Vivian tells him her beliefs are sincere and have been held by her family for generations. Hearing this, he suddenly realizes there’s no problem after all. Vivian keeps her job and her manager puts up a sign by her desk saying, “No Asians” so she’ll never be put in this awkward position again. Makes sense now?
Theramin Trees:
This is the kind of convoluted nonsense you get into when beliefs are indulged on the basis of sincerity rather than content. Sincerely held beliefs has become a buzz phrase in religious discourse designed to bypass objections to unreasonable, selfish, and abusive behaviors, but it has no more substance than the plea of the child who complains to his parent, but I really want it.
Trent Horn:
In order for someone to be free to follow a belief that others must accommodate, one of the prerequisites is that it’s sincerely held. For example, schools in the U.S. and Canada allow students of the Sikh religion to bring a Kirpan to school. It’s a small ceremonial blade, and it’s an important part of the practice of their faith. However, the blade must remain sheathed and kept under the students’ clothes.
Trent Horn:
This is different than a student who just makes up a religion that has no tradition to it in order to justify bringing any weapon he wants to school in order to threaten others. To give another example of how religious liberty is important, in 2007, a non-denominational school in England prohibited a Catholic from wearing a crucifix to school saying that she should wear a lapel with a simple cross on it instead.
Trent Horn:
But while a belief being sincere may be a necessary condition for it to have reasonable accommodations, it’s not sufficient. I agree that sincerity alone doesn’t justify every behavior. This actually came up in the 19th century when Mormons wanted to practice their sincerely held belief in polygamy. The United States Supreme Court said in reply, this could not be tolerated, and that religious freedom has limits.
Trent Horn:
Here’s what the court said. “Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect, to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.” The Supreme Court also ruled in Prince versus Massachusetts in 1944, that a child’s right to life and good health, it supersedes his parent’s right to practice their religion.
Trent Horn:
The court said, “The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death.” So while it may be hard to draw the lines between sincere beliefs we can and cannot accommodate, TheraminTrees has not shown in any way that parents simply teaching their children about God and how God revealed himself constitutes that form of an intolerable indoctrination that we just can’t allow.
Theramin Trees:
Some apologists claim indoctrinated children remain free to think. Some of them reject the power of indoctrination altogether, suggesting children will grow up to believe whatever they want anyway. How disingenuous can you get? Indoctrinators know full well that if they succeed in dominating the child’s mind in the first few years, there’s every chance the beliefs they implant will stick.
Theramin Trees:
It’s spelled out in the familiar vow attributed to both Aristotle and Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.” This statement shows a clear understanding that these first few years offer an opportunity like no other. In these early years, children are developing their conceptual models of how the world works. If ideas are injected at this stage, they’ll stand a great chance of becoming an essential part of how the individual views reality.
Trent Horn:
I’m not sure what the point is of this objection. The claim, it doesn’t matter what children are taught when they are young because they’ll believe whatever they want as adults, it doesn’t sound like something a sincerely religious person would say about his children. It sounds more like something a non-religious ally of TheraminTrees would say. You’d expect an atheist to say, “Hey, TheraminTrees, relax.
Trent Horn:
These kids will just grow up to reject all this silly stuff anyways.” To which I would agree with him in saying that the early years of a child’s life are quite formative, but all the parents who have known children who’ve left the faith as teens or adults, they know that formation, it’s not a permanent imprint on a child’s mind. The main point I’d agree with is that parents alone should have the authority within reason to decide how their child is brought up in these matters.
Trent Horn:
So if an atheist wants to raise a child to be an atheist, they should have the right to do that. In fact, following St. Thomas Aquinas, the church recognizes that a child falls under the authority of his parents. So the church won’t baptize children, at least those who are not in danger of death, who seek baptism against their parents’ wishes. Ironically, TheraminTrees might disagree here and defend baptizing children in this case. I don’t know.
Trent Horn:
But if he did say that this would also reveal he has a mistaken view about children. Children are not little adults that parents exist to serve. Children live under the authority of parents who should treat them justly, fairly, and lovingly, but ultimately they decide what isn’t appropriate for their child. We might disagree with what standards certain parents set, but as long as those standards don’t cross over into abuse or neglect, then we have to respect a parent’s right to do that because parents are the ones who have the responsibility to raise and form the child that is in their care.
Theramin Trees:
injecting ideas in a child’s mind is child’s play. All kinds of outlandish stories can be presented as facts by adults and there’ll be believed with the total trust typical of infancy. Freedom to think requires the ability to think, to appraise what you’re told. Very young children are incapable of this. Evidence that they’re later becoming capable comes when they start asking awkward questions, showing they’re not merely swallowing what they’re being handed, but beginning to process the material critically, but as I’ve already noted, indoctrination demands uncritical acceptance.
Theramin Trees:
These questions are not welcome. And indoctrinators use of range of power based manipulations and punitive measures to silence them, including warnings about blasphemy. These induce guilt and anxiety in the child, and very effectively stop thought. So much for being free to think.
Trent Horn:
I agree very young children two year like 2-year-olds will believe almost anything you tell them. But even by the time a child is five, six or seven years old, they start to figure out more about how the world works and they start to see mom and dad aren’t infallible. But once again, what does all this prove? Any adult could exploit a child’s trusting nature, even if, and especially if the state were responsible for raising children instead of parents.
Trent Horn:
There are parents who convince their kids a boy can become a girl, which is absurd, but that doesn’t mean parents in general don’t have a right to educate their children about their own beliefs that other people might find to be absurd once again, provided that this education doesn’t cross over into physical or emotional abuse. So I would say parents should not lose custody of their kids because they share transgender ideology with them anymore than parents did not lose custody of their kids because an agent of the state disagrees with their view that God made us male and female.
Trent Horn:
I don’t think if a parent marries their 10 year old off in a religious ceremony, or if a parent puts a child through mutilating gender assignment surgery, I don’t think those people should be allowed to have custody over their children because what they’re doing is child abuse. And through no part of this video has TheraminTrees shown that the average religious beliefs most Christians share with their children rise to these levels of abusive behaviors.
Theramin Trees:
Having groomed the child’s mind to accept the religious ideology, the indoctrinator can now exploit a well-documented human quirk. The desire for consistency. I explore this phenomenon in depth in my video, Bending Truth. Humans have a powerful aversion to contradictions. When we experience two conflicting beliefs or ideas, one will have to be distorted or denied in some way to resolve that complex. And unfortunately, research shows that the outcome has little to do with a concern for truth.
Theramin Trees:
What we strive for is consistency. And when we have a heavy personal investment in one of the contradictory ideas, the outcome is loaded from the start. The police knock on Karen’s door. They’ve come to arrest her son on several counts of murder. Karen is faced with two contradictory tears. Her son’s alleged guilt and her belief in his innocence. We could think of these ideas like boxes. Karen has a ton of investment in the innocent box. Years of complex memories and experiences and intense feelings of love and protectiveness.
Theramin Trees:
In contrast, she has no investment in the guilty box. Karen doesn’t know any details yet, but dismiss the whole thing as police incompetence. She knows her son. Karen is sure she can provide an alibi, but when she locks through her calendar, she sees her son was out on hunting trips with a friend on all of the murder dates. She puts it down to coincidence. In court, a victim who got away identifies her son as his attacker, but she knows the man is lying or mistaken.
Theramin Trees:
She knows her son. There is videos are found on her son’s computer in which he appears with his hunting body who’s seen torturing and killing animals. Karen is shocked, but it’s obviously all down to her son’s friend. Then more videos are found. Both boys are clearly seen torturing and killing the murder victims and laughing at their work.
Theramin Trees:
Karen can’t make sense of what she’s seeing, but she knows there must be some explanation. She knows her son. When we become heavily invested in a belief, we don’t just happily give it up when we are faced with inconsistent facts. We’re much more likely to reject the facts to preserve our belief, hence the Jesuit’s confident assertion.
Trent Horn:
This is called confirmation bias and it affects everybody, religious and nonreligious. We tend to accept evidence that confirms our previous beliefs and we downplay or ignore evidence that disconfirms those beliefs. So for example, if an atheist believes God is as silly as Santa Claus, he’ll poke fun at weak arguments for the existence of God but oftentimes, I’ve seen atheists ignore strong arguments that are put forward by professional philosophers, not all atheists, but many when they’re confronted with them.
Trent Horn:
Or they’ll call them word salad and say that’s enough to refute them. See my video on the channel that addresses that objection. So I agree with TheraminTrees that both religious and non-religious people should overcome their confirmation bias and try to reason to the truth about God and his revelation to mankind. As Isaiah 1:8 says, “Come let us reason together.”
Theramin Trees:
Indoctrination installs an ideology in the child’s brain with muscular connections to major areas of its life, including its sense of identity at every level, self, family, community, for some, nationality. The child will then automatically defend this ideology against any conflicting ideas without even knowing why. In fact, indoctrination conditions the child with a gamut of reflex responses, automatic knee jerk emotions, attitudes, and behaviors that aren’t even consciously processed.
Theramin Trees:
Responses like automatic compliance, denial, anxiety, guilt, fear, judgments about other groups. An indoctrinated child is no more free to think than a child whose parents have convinced it that there are invisible monsters waiting for it outside the house is free to walk out the front door. Some of us do manage to break the psychological hold of the ideologies thrust on us in childhood often because some conflicting idea has somehow manage to work its way through our defenses and like a pebble in a shoe, we can’t quite shake it loose.
Theramin Trees:
When we look to our ideology for answers, we start noticing flaws we never spotted before. They begin to multiply. Before we know it, the ideology is cracking apart, then flying apart. In regard to my own experience of this, I’ve often said it was like throwing a rock through a spider’s web. The foundations of reality were ripped apart, leaving me in a state of limbo.
Theramin Trees:
It can take time to recover from such all-encompassing disillusionment, but when eventually we feel ready to face the task of rebuilding our world piece by piece, there are consolations. We get the chance to lay better foundations, replacing dogmatic certainty, mindless compliance, and emotional thinking with honest doubt, mindful resistance, and critical thinking. Some of us will even get to see our own children grow up unshackled by indoctrination, leaving them genuinely free to think.
Trent Horn:
Once again, TheraminTrees’ argument is not against teaching children foundational beliefs about reality. It’s about which foundational beliefs we ought to teach them.
Theramin Trees:
When assessing whether an activity is abusive or not, it’s sometimes difficult to get outside our habitual ways of thinking. Sometimes an abuse has become so normalized that even if part of us understands intellectually the injustice of what’s being described, somehow we just can’t get worked up about it. Certain thought experiments can sometimes give us an insight into our rationalizations even if only a brief glimpse.
Theramin Trees:
One of them is the veil of ignorance proposed by moral and political philosopher, John Rawls. He suggested a hypothetical scenario where we exist outside of our society and have to decide what kind of governing principles we’d be prepared to accept. These might focus on divisions of labor, allocation of resources, the granting of rights. The catch is we don’t know what attributes we’ll have when we enter the society.
Theramin Trees:
What sex, skin color, nationality, natural abilities, inherited wealth, and so on. They’re hidden behind the veil of ignorance. What this does is remove our self-interest. Any personal meaning we might have attached to these features is stripped away. Rules suggested that a just society was one we’d be prepared to enter at random.
Trent Horn:
This is also called the original position. And Rawls’ argument challenges us to judge a society not by how it benefits us or a certain group we belong to, but how it benefits everyone. And in that respect, it’s a good principle, especially when it justifies making sure everyone has equal opportunities.
Trent Horn:
The veil becomes very problematic though when it’s used to say people should have equal outcomes or that no one has a right to things they’ve earned through their hard work or their own choices, but that’s a subject for another time. So let’s continue with the thought experiment.
Theramin Trees:
I invite the viewer to imagine the following two societies, Society A and Society B each contain the same range of religions. There are Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhist, Wiccans, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and so on. There are the same denominations we see in our world today from moderate to fundamentalists. Christian could mean Amish, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and so on. Society A runs on childhood indoctrination. Here, children are considered members of their parents’ religion at birth.
Theramin Trees:
They’re taught to accept this religion as the truth, which in the overwhelming majority of cases, will result a lifelong allegiance. Meanwhile, Society B runs on childhood education. Here, Children are informed about all religions without preference or manipulation and left to decide which, if any, they wish to join. In which of these two societies would you be more comfortable being randomly born to parents of any religious group? The veil of ignorance removes self-interest.
Theramin Trees:
It actually does so simply by reminding us of how every single one of us came into this world. We didn’t choose characteristics like our sex, skin color, nationality. Something else we didn’t choose was our religion. But unlike the characteristics I’ve just mentioned, we should have had control of this one, but that control gets taken away from us when we’re assigned the religion of our parents at birth and taught to accept its ideology as truth.
Theramin Trees:
We then develop a deep familiarity, connection, and loyalty to that religion and we forget how utterly arbitrary it was that we happen to be born to parents of this religion. We may even think how lucky we were to be born to parents of the true religion and not to parents of any of those other false religions.
Trent Horn:
This reminds me of the claim that you’re only Christian because you were born to Christian parents, but that doesn’t change the truth of Christianity any more than saying you only believe in democracy because you’re born in America or you only believe the earth is round because you weren’t born thousands of years ago somehow makes it subjective what kind of government is good or at least not terrible or unjust, or it doesn’t make the shape of the earth subjective.
Trent Horn:
Some people might be born further away from the truth, but that doesn’t mean there is no objective truth for them to later discover. Moreover, this doesn’t show parents should not teach what they believe to be true even though they might be wrong. After all, as I’ve said, atheists should be able to teach their beliefs about religion to their children, even though they’re wrong.
Trent Horn:
Also, if people have no control over believing the religion of their youth, then why would atheists even bother making videos to try to get people to deconvert? The reality is that people do have control over maintaining or rejecting moral and religious beliefs they learned as a child. So it generally isn’t wrong to teach these kind is a beliefs to a child provided that they’re reasonable and they’re not abusive. Second, TheraminTrees, he makes it seem like we would be more comfortable learning about religion from society than from our own parents.
Trent Horn:
But Society B, it’s not truly neutral when it comes to religious questions. In order for everyone to merely educate children about religions, we would all have to agree that there is no objective religious truth. In Society B, the choice of one’s religion is on par with the choice of one’s favorite sports team. And atheism is really the default position in Society B since there is an assumption, no religion is true or that all of them are essentially false.
Theramin Trees:
Child indoctrination is an act of subjugation, colonizing a human brain in its most impressionable state with an ideology it’s simply not equipped to process, an ideology that will extend a far reach over the child’s life, even down to choice of life partner.
Theramin Trees:
Signing up to such ideologies needs to be a matter of informed consent, not power-based child coercion that bypasses consent generation after generation. We wouldn’t abide it in politics, we shouldn’t abide it in religion. We need to put an end to this inexcusable practice of grooming minds.
Trent Horn:
So I’ve shown that TheraminTrees’ arguments do not show that general religious instruction that millions of children receive is some kind of abusive indoctrination. In fact, I think there are many nonreligious people who teach about things related to gender theory or other things like that, that actually do rise possibly to abusive levels, or at least are disordered and problematic and would fall under TheraminTrees’ definition of indoctrination.
Trent Horn:
So his argument doesn’t refute religious education, and it actually sort of undermines itself because he does believe parents should educate their children about morality, but he tries to make this false dichotomy between teaching children religion and teaching them morality, trying to say that one is genuine education and the other is abusive indoctrination.
Trent Horn:
And I showed that doesn’t work. So in any case, I hope that this episode was helpful for you all. Thank you guys much for listening. And if you want to keep supporting what we’re doing here on the channel to make more rebuttal videos like this, be sure to go to trenthornpodcast.com. Thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
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