I was recently talking to my dad (who is strictly Mormon) about the gay marriage stuff in New York. I said something around the lines of, "Why, if two people are in love, shouldn't they be able to get married unless you would like them to?"

He responded by saying, "Where do you draw the line? What's next, letting pedophiles marry kids?"

At that point, feeling a mixture of disgust and surprise, I came to the conclusion that he personally did not have an opinion about gay marriage, he was just repeating what had been told to him since he was a baby. If you aren't given the facts, how are you to know differently?

That is just an example, but what do you think about 'brainwashing' in religion? Shouldn't kids get the data, rather than just getting told what self-proclaimed prophets decide is right?

(And let's please not turn this into a Mormon thread.)

Yes, because kids love them some good ol' data!

The problem here is that there's no clear distinction between simply raising one's child and brainwashing them. Very young children are going to believe whatever you tell them. I don't see how religion is relevant to this discussion at all since a child could just as easily be swayed into becoming anti-religious as religious.

Brainwashing of adults does occur in some cults, but I feel like that's a special case.

Opinions are formulations based on a) experience b) personal cognitive judgments, often caused by human "defects" (like reaction formations, over generalization, misappropriation of availability heuristics, etc) and c) available data, personal and researched.

There is no opinion which is entirely the latter. That is called a fact. Even facts are relative to their frame of reference.

There is no opinion which is entirely the prior, that is called memory.

If an issue is an improvable opinion-based issue, like religion, then no matter which side you take you are being "brainwashed". All opinions a human has lead to the seeking of specific data which supports that opinion. Liberals are brainwashed, conservatives are brainwashed, religious congregations are brainwashed, atheistic anarchists are brainwashed. We do it to ourselves.

What we should probably do is base our personal opinions on whatever we want, but base our public discussion around data and logic. Instead of considering your father brainwashed, you could have tried to find the logical/data-based reason that it is invalid. Instead you assumed he is brainwashed and ignored his opinion. That is a form of brainwashing--humans often refuse to even engage information which they deem incorrect based on personal assumption or past experience.

I wouldn't call it brainwashing. I would just say that they have been taught that by their parents, and they think that their parents are right.

Like my Dad. My mum said his dad was racist, and I still have a memory from when he was calling the French dirty people. Anyways, so my dad always complains that he can't get a job because foreigners are coming over and taking all the jobs (And he hasn't had a stable job for 6 years.)
So, my 10 year old brother with the metal age of a 4 year old listens and one day says "I hate foreigners".
For a minute, I couldn't speak I was so disgusted. But my brother though he was right. Get what I mean?

I feel like brainwashing is a term only applicable to parents who teach their kids that their beliefs are completely static and true. For an instance of brainwashed religious kids, see WBC. If a parent raises their child to a religious without "shoving it down their throats," I think that's pretty okay as long as they leave room for their children to change their mind as they grow and mature. It's the difference between "this is what we believe" and "this is fact and anyone who disagrees is wrong."

I also feel that parents should not teach, even as a belief, moral codes which discriminate against others. Of course, most of those codes are backed by "this is fact and anyone who disagrees is wrong" thoughts, as people who hold those beliefs tend to be very close-minded as far as their discriminatory beliefs go.

Yes, but that's what I mean.

malteeeeeaser, your brother was doing what he thought was right.

What he thought was right was what his dad had taught was right, even though it isn't.




Haha, first, you don't need to give kids the "good ol' data", but you should teach them that their beliefs are not universally OR scientifically accepted, not just "our beliefs are right, there's are wrong".

And in my opinion, the distinction from "brainwashing a child" and "raising a child" comes when it is a matter of right or wrong, like gay rights. If you tell your child that gay people are bad, they could (and often do) go on believing that for their whole lives. These people go and vote, all based on what was drilled into their heads on their first day of Sunday School.


And Gorgon, I understand where you are coming from. My issue is that parents seem to not let kids make their own opinions. They get to them at an impressionable age, where they have no experience to draw from, and they haven't learned themselves.

We pass our genes on to our kids. We pass our wealth on to our kids. We pass or social status on to our kids. We often pass our skills on to our kids. It makes sense that we pass our opinions on to our kids, too. Adults have every right to investigate whether or not the opinions that they hold are valid (when kids grow up, they are adults and become responsible for the opinions they hold). Kids can't be kept from hearing opinions because just about everything is an opinion.

I can't remember my parents ever telling me a moralistic statement other than very basic ones: murder is wrong, theft is wrong, don't do unto others what you wouldn't want done unto yourself. Despite this, as an adult, my sense of morality is very similar to my father's (from what I gather. My father has told me so little about his personal sense of morality that I can't even make that statement with complete confidence). Until I was out of high school, I didn't know if my parents voted republican or democrat. My current stance is almost assuredly influenced by subtle indications I gathered from the very basic, nonverbal attitudes my parents displayed during my childhood. You can't keep people from expressing their opinions. Literally, even if they don't want to express their opinions they can't conceal it all of the time.

For the record, people who think homosexuality is wrong consider telling a child "homosexuality is okay" brainwashing. Which side is right depends on your opinion regarding the matter. Hence, people can hold whatever opinion they want, but serious political discussion should be heavily seeped in facts erring on the side of equality when an agreement cannot be reached.

You've presumed that science and consensus are better bases for truth than whatever other beliefs they have. Not everyone would agree with that presumption.

True, no matter what you do, your parents' opinions are passed on (to a degree). Your parents' opinions help shape you and who you are.

But flat out telling your child that "gay people are an abomination" (which is what I was told growing up), or "all atheists are going to hell, because they have no morals" (also told growing up) is, in my opinion, wrong.

And yes, I guess telling a child "homosexuality is okay" would be wrong too. Saying "homosexuality is a personal choice that some adults choose to make" would not be wrong.





Perhaps I mis-worded my previous statement. What I was trying to suggest is that kids should know that there are other opinions than the ones that their parents have.

Can you demonstrate scientifically that homosexuality isn't an abomination (which, in the original writing of the Bible, meant "against the accepted norms") or that all atheists aren't going to Hell? The prior maybe, depending on your interpretation of scripture, rhetoric, and data on the nature of homosexuality.

The latter, however, you definitely can't prove. Your opinion that those people are not going to Hell is just just as presumptuous as the opinion that they are going to Hell. Why should parents be unable to say something which they believe to be right that you can't disprove?

Apathy is acceptance. If you don't tell you child something is wrong, it is typically assumed that it is fine; just like if you don't call the cops when you see somebody breaking into a car, you are making the judgment that it bad enough to warrant police involvement. So asking somebody to NOT make a statement to their children regarding something they believe to be morally wrong is asking them to encourage immoral activities in their own children. That's not a precedent I'm comfortable with forcing on people.

They can't prove its right either. That's what makes it an opinion.

But like you said, opinions are based on
a)experience
b)personal cognitive judgments

During childhood, you have limited of both.

You completely ignored the other two important qualifiers in my argument:

Parents have the right to pass on opinions (and cannot refrain from doing so even if they want to).
Being morally apathetic to immoral behavior is acceptance of that behavior.

As for "Children have limited experience," that is exactly what parents are for. Parents give children advice, make rules, and teach children as a method of passing on experience and lessons learned from experience. Don't put your hand on the stove. Don't go with strangers. And, in some cases, don't be atheist. If that is what experience has (even incorrectly) taught the parent, then the parent should be able to pass on what they consider valuable to his or her child. If you can disprove it, then do so. If you can't, then you can't determine the validity of its interpreted value as a lesson for the child.

Even the framework we use to prove/disprove most things is imparted to us primarily through our interactions with people.

People's opinions are based upon their upbringing and socialization, therefore there will always be differing opinions and we should all just accept people and give their thoughts validity- even if they seem misguided to us. But then again, that's just my opinion.

That's pretty much what I think. For the record, my whole family is Mormon. I don't think religion and brainwashing are really related. Maybe there are some extreme religions out there that do brainwash people, but they are not too common. As for Parents brainwashing children, it's not brainwashing. As parents they have a responsibility to teach their kids what is right or wrong, and the kids should learn basic stuff, but whatever else the parents believe, they will teach their kids. They only teach them what they think is right. When the kid gets old enough, they can choose for themselves, they don't have to believe exactly the same thing as their parents and they usually don't.

The logic behind teaching your child what you think is right could be applied to something entirely unrelated to religion but still entirely related to this topic right?

For instance, if a parent taught their children to grow up and murder people, you could sort of categorize that in the same place as teaching your children religion, but only in the aspect that it's the parent teaching their children what they believe to be correct.

In the society we live in, raising someone to grow up and murder people would without a doubt be considered unacceptable. Would that be considered brainwashing? If so, then in the sense that parents teach their children their religion wouldn't THAT be brainwashing?

It's true that we take on our beliefs from outside sources, but I think there's a line between being told something and then having it asserted to be true, or being told something and then making the decision yourself whether to believe it.

If you tried to convince a mentally stable 20 year old man to go outside and just stab someone with a knife it would be highly unlikely to occur because he's already put that outside his area of morality. However, if you assert that the right thing to do is grow up and go outside and stab people to a 6 year old, it would be difficult for them to make the decision on whether or not that is correct or incorrect.

I think the actual topic shouldn't be specifically focused on brainwashing in terms of religion because brainwashing used in that context could really be applied to anything and everything... Society brainwashes us, in fact, to conform to social norms.

As for parents' role in the development of their child, if they were never arrested for a string of murders and they killed people they believed needed to be killed, then there isn't really a way other than your own internal conscience to disprove the fact that it isn't somehow beneficial or "correct". And your own conscience isn't really a factual way to disprove anything at all.

Did I totally get off track or did I cover the topic at least somewhat?

I think that's an extreme, but I do understand your point, extreme arguments CAN be relevant, but I fear in this case it isn't. "Murder" is an action, religion is often imparting morals and beliefs that may CAUSE action, but it is not teaching your child direct action.

That's why I said they are only similar in the fact that it is a belief that the parents support and want to pass on, and not very similar in actual content.

The thread itself isn't about justifying teaching religion, it's about where the line crosses between teaching religion and brainwashing people with it. From what I posted before, I believe that everything is really just brainwashing to separate degrees.

Not every act of convincing someone is brainwashing, even to a small degree. "Brainwashing" is a very specific term.
Most religious teaching does not employ such coercion. The word "teach" would be better applied to what people usually do when they spread their religion.

Ah so in that sense brainwashing would really only hold through for assimilation.