Observe carefully, this is what cultic indoctrination looks like: https://t.co/bQZRZ9Vz1w
— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) July 12, 2019
Sometimes, benighted folk say, “You can’t be indoctrinated into an atheistic or secular perspective because atheism is just the absence of theism or religion.”
That self-delusion is the first step toward indoctrination because once you convince yourself you cannot be indoctrinated into a particular perspective, you will no longer be looking for the processes of indoctrination into that perspective.
So, consider this “meme”: We are given two stark categories: “scientific people” and “religious people”. The “scientific person” is critical, open-minded, wise, and smart. The “religious person” is gullible, closeminded, fatuous, and ignorant.
Never mind that the division is borderline meaningless (or that to the extent where it is meaningful it is obviously false), the fact remains: pound those binary options into folks and then assimilate those people into your “scientific” (secular/atheistic/humanistic/non-religious) belief community and you can get them to believe and do all sorts of nonsense.
In a follow-up article, I’ll provide a specific example of the real-world consequences with believing this kind of indoctrinational claptrap.