Introduction

Indoctrination consists of teaching a person or a group of people a concept but the person or group should not test, check, or question what is being taught. The person being taught has to come to being convinced that what is being taught is an absolute truth that has been checked and proven by more knowledgeable and highly intelligent people.

Indoctrination is done in many environments such as family, race, tribe, government (including the military, the police, etc), etc. In our analysis, we will consider indoctrination in terms of religion. We will focus on Christian indoctrination but some time to time, we will mention Islam, that is, Islamic indoctrination.

Introductory Signs of Indoctrination

How do you know you were indoctrinated? How do you detect that someone was indoctrinated? Have you noticed a person who prays all the time? Do you know somebody who is always saying:

Indoctrinated people are asked to memorize some selected verses (and of course ignore and avoid many other verses) from their holy books. Have you noticed some Christians who quote the Bible all day long, whenever necessary, and wherever possible?

A person who is indoctrinated was taught to always thank his or her God (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) or Allah for everything, always praising the God of the Bible or Allah for anything, always crediting the God of the Bible or Allah for good things, even if the goodness is only apparent.

A person who has been indoctrinated is always ready to present and advertise the points of views of his or her supreme being (1 Peter 3:15), always ready to justify any wrongdoing or irrational behavior pointed out about his or her deity (such as all the colonization acts, wars, abd murders ordered by the God of the Bible (found in the book of Joshua and many other sections of the Bible)).

Introductory Process of Indoctrination

The people who indoctrinate use various techniques and tools, or they combine them.

When indoctrination starts, a person is presented with a claim as being true. Examples are:

Indoctrination is made in terms of claim made in the holy book of a religion. For example, in christian indoctrination, the subject is aked to accepts these claims:

These concepts are presented as absolute truths (Hebrews 11:1, 11:6). As the presentations (Bible studies, sermons, religious conferences) are made to adults, those adults try to understand. They tend to ask questions. In case there is a theory (such as prayers, meditations, suplications, etc), they may try to test it.

People asking (too many) questions could be a sign of hesitations and resistance. The indoctrinator must keep in mind that he or she may lack proofs of what he is teaching. As a matter of fact, he may not be prepared for (too many) questions. Therefore, questions are always unwelcome.

Introductory Techniques and Tools

To anticipate the probability of people asking for demonstrations and proofs, the indoctrinator must prepare and use various techniques and tools, usually combined, usually adapted to the audience.

The primary tool used in indoctrination is the position of authority (Ephesians 6:1) or the complex of superiority (Romans 13:1-3, 1 Timothy 2:1-3, Titus 3:1). In case it is not obvious or there is any doubt, the indoctrinator has to appear as more knowledgeable, more educated, wiser, more experienced, from a superior race, a mix or combination of those views.

If those aspects cannot be established or are not convincing, the indoctrinator has to appear in the position of authority. He or she can be a parent, a family head, a tribal chief, a military officer, a government authority, a pastor, a rabbi, an imam, etc.

If that position of authority doesn't work, the indoctrinator can use some tools, both mental (or psychological) and physical.

The psychological techniques used in Christianity are to show people that they have a supreme being somewhere, the God of the Bible or Allah, who created them, who loves them dearly, who is their father and friend. Then Christians are told that they are sinners, they offend the God of the Bible all the time. Then, Christians are told that they constantly need to repent and they need to be saved. And the God of the Bible is the only one who can save them.

Some adults have a tendency to analyse and sometimes question what they are taught, which can be annoying to those who are trying to indoctrinate them. Probably because of a lack of clear answers, those who indoctrinate adopt a different behavior. They start by becoming irrational. Then they become violent and can resort to using dangerous tools, including weapons. Both the western christian missionaries and muslims who went to African used violence to impose their religious views. Christian missionaries worked closely with the colonizers and participated in screnes of violence. They tortured, they misplaced people, and they killed for the sake of religion.

As soft tools, religious people created some words and concepts to demonstrate their rational. They used words such as blasphemy, heresy, apostasy. Consequently, they set up systems such that whoever was guilty of those concepts had to be punished, including the death penalty. They set up systems such that the local or national governments would support them. Consequently, the religious people would be justified or at least exempt of any wrongdoing since they would be executing the law. Many people were driven to embrace christianity and Islam. In turn, once those people became parents, they made their children christians or muslims and took over the process of indoctrination.

Get Them While They Are Young

Religious people, especially those who indoctrinate, lack answers to many questions, especially from reasoning or annoying adults. Sometimes it becomes difficult to keep justifying religious violence or "just war". They thought that a good way to indoctrinate was with fresh minds.

Children tend to listen quietly, especially when they are afraid of an adult figure. Besides, most societies are set up for children submission and prompt punishment for any questionable behavior. As a result, it is easy to indoctrinate children. And once a child has been indoctrinated, he is a "soldier" for life.

The early indoctrination process was made by western Christian missionaries and Middle East Muslims. Once people who had been indoctrinated grew old or became parent, they took over the process. This resulted in eternal or long-lasting indoctrination from a very oil machine.

This indoctrination process works very easily. It is very smooth and highly undetectable so that some people would find out very late in life that they have been indoctrinated and usually cannot get themselves out of it any more, because the subject of indoctrination is now part of their nature. In fact, while they exhibit all signs of indoctrination, they would vehemently deny being indoctrinated.

The Early Indoctrination Process

Children indoctrination is a careful, meticulous, and smooth process. Some steps vary depending on the religion and sometimes some influences the parents had experienced previously.

Obviously a child is born first. If it's a boy, he gets circumcised. With Christians, it is usually before the boy passes the age of two. As soon as the child starts speaking, the parents and other close people (family members, grand-parents, friends of the family, etc) start teaching him or her to worship the God of the Bible or Allah. The name of that deity is constantly said and it becomes part of the vocabulary of the child.

The child starts learning about a supreme being, Jehovah, God, or Allah who loves everyday, loves him or her, and has blessed the family exceedingly. The parents start taking the child to their place of worship every weekend, depending on the religion and the denomination.

In Christianity, sooner or later but early enough, the child is baptized (although the majority of children cry during baptism, the majority of parents don't care and are not concerned). Christians agree neither on the role, the importance, the necessity, nor the age of baptism. Everything depends on the christian doctrine (catholic or protestant), the denomination, the parents personal opinion, the circumstances, etc.

Many christian denominations baptize children, of course without the consent of children, of course without asking the child (who is a person) whether he or she accepts Jesus Christ as his or her savior. Parents who don't baptize their child are viewed as not concerned with the child's salvation, as not following the church's wonderful teachings, and especially as not obeying the Lord.

Besides being baptized early, children must attend Sunday school (and sometimes Bible study) every week. In the room set up for Sunday school, the walls display images (some are drawings), pictures of actors who have wonderfully portrayed the lord, a blonde hair, blue eye Jesus. They present the perfection of human anatomy, the only being worthy of worship, and the unique savior of the world. Wooden crosses and pictures of beautiful churches displayed on walls.

On the images on the walls, Jesus is seen carrying children (all from the wonderful race), feeding 5000 or 4000 people, raising Lazarus from the day, sitting on a donkey on the way to Jerusalem, and pitifully hung on the cross to save humanity.

The walls are further decorated with:

During the Sunday school sessions, children learn to memorize and recite the Lord's Prayer (nothing in the Lord's Prayer is explained to the children and there is no concern whether the children understand any part of it). The goal is that the Lord's Prayer, just like many concepts, must be inserted and glued to the children's mind for eternity.

Attack to Self-Esteem

One of the goals of indoctrination is to make people feel useless, powerless, confused, and lost; in which case they would need a savior. Both the Bible and the Qur'an are filled with the right verses to accomplish the purpose of introduction, as long as the indoctrinated person is daily bombarded with the religious narrative.

The Results of Indoctrination

One of biggest goals of indoctrination is that the subject must think that he or she was not indoctrinated but only received godly information. The subject has to feel good about himself or herself, knowing that he or she was chosen by God Almighty or Allah to be saved, and this is a privilege that is not granted to everyone, only a selected few.

Indoctrinated Christians have come to believe that even the faith they have is a privilege that the God of the Bible gives to people he carefully selected. Indoctrinated christians have to be convinced that only they are saved, and those who are not saved will spend eternity in hell "weeping and gnashing" their teeth.

The signs of religious indoctrination are numerous but may depend on some factors such as the level of indoctrination, the environment, the type of religion, and the denomination.

Indoctrination creates some habits. For example, the subject has to thank the deity and praise it all the time. Expressions such as "God is great", "Allahu Akbar", "Glory be to God " are heard all the time, in every occasion, including negative occurrences. For example, a Christian would say something like:

Indoctrinated people are irrational. They have learned to defend anything from their religion. When a questionable situation is presented about their religion, they use every word in the vocabulary to justify their belief; if the same argument is presented about another religion, they criticize it. For example, Muslims claim that Allah (or God's angels) dictated the entire Qur'an to an illiterate Mohammed (which makes Mohammed the only source of the Qur'an) but the same Muslims cannot accept that all christian "scripture is God breathed".

Both the Bible (Exodus 21, Leviticus 25) and the Qur'an (therefore Christianity and Islam) support slavery (and colonization) but the indoctrinated members of each region would go to any extent to justify slavery and its practices in their holy books.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Indoctrination

If there is any advantage to indoctrination, it is to teach people to be passionate about an issue. This could probably help students or researchers in some areas of science, civil rights, etc.

The disadvantages of indoctrination are numerous. Indoctrination teaches people to stop thinking and to stop working hard to succeed because the God of the Bible will take care of them:

Infant indoctrination is done before a subject has been exposed to complex situations that would have allowed him or her to consider alternatives. As a result, a religious indoctrinated person has learned to consider any teaching of his or her religion or denomination as being the ultimate truth. Anything contrary is false teaching or from the devil. In fact, religiously indoctrinated people can't understand that there are views different or opposite theirs.

Because religious indoctrination attacks and dimishes (and can destroy) people's self esteem, the effect is felt in other areas of their lives. People are taught to not trust themselves, to feel worthless, to know they are sinful, and to become desperate. Then they are taught to repent all the time (to constantly ask the God of the Bible or Allah to forgive them). Indoctrinated Christians are asked to beg for forgiveness even for sins they have never committed, such as murder; indoctrinated African Christians are asked to ask for forgiveness for having participated (or being accomplices) in the crucifixion of Jesus-Christ).

Since indoctrinated religious people are taught to only rely on their deity, they must pray all the time and trust that the God of the Bible or Allah would produce miracles. They are taught to always "Trust and obey, for there's no other way".

THINK!!!
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