Religious Indoctrination

We often overlook how much damage indoctrination can do to the young and growing minds. And of course religious indoctrination is one of those major issues not because there is something inherently wrong in religion any more than other replaceable ideologies but because it snatches away the freedom of a person that God has trusted every human being with.

Any religion essentially teaches us to ponder over the universe and look for answers on our own. And a dogmatic approach towards religion and God inhibits our ability to appreciate the concept of God in the truest sense. To wrest our power and somehow limit that freedom is a great disservice to the very idea of God that we try to propagate.

The greatest threat in such an approach is that the person loses his own identity and he pins his whole self on the indoctrinated concept and devotes his whole life to something which he never chose for himself.

And conversely, a person who thinks for himself is not only comfortable in his own deductions but is more tolerant. He develops a resistance to take attacks on an ideology/religion personally.

The thing is we only have to defend things that we deep down feel doubtful about. No one has ever had to defend the mathematical truths. So when a person reaches a deduction logically and experimentally he is not threatened by a question. He can’t be for he has exhausted every possible question.

Yet another realization is that we are constantly on a journey we can’t be defined by a state because that would mean the living death. So the dynamic approach where we constantly question the popular opinions is the only way to grow and reach the (subjective) truth.

I personally believe in the abstract concept of God in a way inspired by Einstien’s understanding of God- The entity which made the universe comprehensible through simple and beautiful mathematical truths.

Again I can’t force anyone to see it all the same because our individual experience with truth, which is famously depicted by the five blind men and an elephant story, is different. And that’s the beauty of free-will.