“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man”
That was the Jesuit motto attributed to Francis Xavier, the co-founder of the Jesuit order. The implication is that the best opportunity to indoctrinate a person into a lifetime of belief and devotion to religious dogma is when they are young.
This would of course work in the same way for any of the other multitudes of religions or cults throughout the world.
Personally, I believe that religious indoctrination, before the age of reason is (unfortunately for the child) a socially accepted form of child abuse.
Which religion you “choose” is usually not determined by reasoning or careful thought but are typically more a result of where you were born and the faith of your parents.
To put it another way, geography and indoctrination determine what religion you will claim is the “one true religion.” And that is absurd.
Should we be financing any one religious school with public funds? With so many choices, what are the criteria we should examine in order to determine which one?
Perhaps we should reconsider the public funding of any school which actively discourages critical thinking.
Here is an interesting quote.
“To assert that the Earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.”
Saint Robert Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621), at the trial of Galileo.
Ron Ryant
Dawson City