Indoctrination

“ Do you not see, however, that this so-called education may stand squarely in the way?
Now, in the second place, I want to dwell a little on the difficulty of people's getting rid of a theory which possesses their minds, and substituting for it another theory. And I wish you to note that it is not a religious difficulty nor a theological difficulty nor a Baptist difficulty nor a Presbyterian difficulty: it is a human difficulty. There is no body of people on the face of the earth that is large enough to contain all the world's bigotry. It overflows all fences and gets into all enclosures. ”

“ Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?
And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. ”

“ Far be it from us to sit in judgment as to the good intentions of the champions of liberal science. We know very well that an education indifferent to religion, early habitual association with the ideas of a sceptical, naturalistic philosophy, the acquisition of prejudices and unsolved difficulties, a continuous stay in an intellectual atmosphere foreign and inimical to religious belief—all this, we well understand, will gradually rob the mind of all inclination and unbiassed judgment for religious truth, and thus make for apostasy from religion. ”

“ Man gets his authority from man, and is responsible only to man. I want to get theology out of politics. Our ancestors in 1776 retired God from politics, because of the jealousies among the churches, and the result has been splendid for mankind. I want to get theology out of education. Teach the children what somebody knows, not what somebody guesses. I want to get theology out of morality, and out of charity. ”

“ Lay hold on the myriads of juvenile spirits, before they have time to grow up through ignorance into a reckless hostility to social order; train them to sense and good morals: inculcate the principles of religion, simply and solemnly as religion, as a thing directly of divine dictation, and not as if its authority were chiefly in virtue of human institutions; let the higher orders generally make it evident to the multitude that they are desirous to raise them in value, and promote their happiness ”

“ If in old times a man who professed the doctrines taught by the Church could with a clear conscience take part in any political crime, and benefit by so doing, provided he complied with the external forms of his faith, men of the present day, who deny Christianity, and view the conduct of life from a secular and scientific standpoint, are every whit as sure of their own innocence, even of their lofty morality, when they participate in and benefit by the evil-doings of government. ”

“ I have no desire to join in the outcry against even the deliberate unbeliever in the Gospel, as if he must necessarily be a fiend. Profoundly loving and trusting Christianity myself, I yet feel indignant at the persecution which theology, policy, and law inflict on the many who, with undeniable exercise of conscientiousness and patience of research, are yet unable to satisfy themselves respecting its evidence. The very word ‘infidel,’ implying not simply an intellectual judgment, but bad moral qualities, conveys an unmerited insult, and ought to be repudiated by every generous disputant. ”

“ They must be prepared for it by instruction in the precepts of religion, by education, and by the reception of those principles of self- reliance, without which they have not the moral perception requisite to enable them to appreciate the blessings of freedom; and this very ignorance and obtuseness is one of the most telling arguments against the system which produces it. ”

“ Are our children to be taught religion according to the parliamentary doctrine of the Church of England, or the total depravity notions of the followers of Calvin; are they to be obliged to deny the divinity of Christ with the Unitarians, and eternal punishments with the Universalists? Are we, in fact, bringing children into the world to be liable any day to be indoctrinated into the vagaries of Methodism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Muggletonianism, Mormonism, or any other of the thousand “isms” born of that fruitful mother of dissent, the much vaunted Reformation? ”

“ The enemy which the state, which Catholics, and which Protestants have alike to resist and vanquish by education is the irreligion, pantheism, atheism, and immorality, disguised as secularism, or under the specious names of science, humanity, free-religion, and free-love, which not only strike at all Christian faith and Christian morals, but at the family, the state, and civilized society itself. ”

“ Theocracy must be the creed of one class, and atheism of the second. The advocates of good moral principles, such as truth, freedom of religion, knowledge, limitation of power and equal Fights, cannot be atheists; and the advocates of evil moral principles, such as fraud, force, ignorance, despotism and exclusive privileges, cannot be believers. ”

“ All which opinions are a contradiction to religion and scripture, an affront to common-sense, and utterly destructive of all civil and religious liberty, and of all human happiness: Nor would any of them, or any like them, have ever entered into the heart of any man, unless he were first deceived, or found his account in deceiving. ”

“ Are not the evils generated by education, in which hypocrisy and fraud are the chief ingredients—the vices—the crimes—the immoral and distracting systems of religion, which induce a general depravity of character, and the unnatural and iniquitous laws emanating from such a corrupt state of society, infinitely greater than the alleged advantages arising from this boasted civilisation? ”

“ We have, indeed, much to learn in this matter of religion from the race whose habits I have discovered and here describe. Nothing, perhaps, has done more to warp our own story than the hide-bound prejudice that a doctrine could not be both false and true at the same time, and the unreasoning certitude, inherited from the bad old days of clerical tyranny, that a thing either was or was not. ”

“ Every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern man, is rendered null and void by the law of God. In Wrong bias. ignorance of our God-given rights, we submit to unjust decrees, and the bias of education enforces this slavery. Be no more willing to suffer the illusion that you are sick, or that some disease is developing in the system, than you are to yield to a sinful temptation, on the ground that sin has its necessities. ”

“ You believe in a mere secular education, and proclaim your views with no uncertain voice. I, who am convinced that a mere secular education would ruin the country, had to oppose you, and had to deal with your personal attitude to the whole matter. ”

“ We behold the fearful harvest of evils which she is reaping from the ignorance of the masses, especially induced by the oppositions of sects, who preferred no education for the people to education without their own dogmas. ”

“ We publish it in order to show the utter fallacy of the infidel's claim that Christianity is necessarily in conflict with education; that Christians are necessarily bigots, narrow-minded men, dangerous to the liberty of man, woman and child. Read it, ye fault-finding skeptics and infidels, and save your claims against the Christian religion if you can. ”

“ As it is, however, we have at the basis of society an immense mass of very ignorant, and, therefore, bigoted people, who suspect and hate every expression even of our form of Christianity, and regard it as a teaching of heresy and a shibboleth of oppression. ”

“ And while every civilized community in the world is eagerly teaching their people, irrespective of religious creeds, the same bigots, civil and ecclesiastical, in our own country, have combined to resist the only system of education which can stem the tide of vice and crime which is desolating the land. ”

“ I might show how it has been denounced by the friends and agents of denominational colleges and in many sectarian journals, how the most preposterous charges have been made and believed by good men, how the epithets of "godless," "infidel," "irreligious," "unreligious," "atheistic," have been hurled against a body of Christian trustees, professors, and students, and with little practical result save arousing a suspicion in the minds of large bodies of thoughtful young men, that the churches dread scientific studies untrammeled by sectarianism. ”

“ Why do they not reduce them to practice? Because their temperament, their interest, and their habits do not accord with their sublime theories. The rigid principles of Christian morality, which many people regard as divine, have but little influence upon the conduct of those, who preach them to others. Do they not daily tell us, to do what they preach, and not what they practise?
The partisans of Religion often denote an infidel by the word libertine. It is possible that many unbelievers may have loose morals, which is owing to their temperament, and not to their opinions. ”

“ No longer as formerly, it is in newspapers and books that religion, morality, and the eternal principles of good order are attacked with the most deceitful and formidable weapon of a corrupt system of education. Under cover of an excellent object—and here is the great danger, for we are deluded by this pretext—under the pretext of spreading education and waging war against ignorance, infidelity is spread, war is waged against religion ”

“ The forcible exclusion from national education of all definiteness of religious creed, even if it could be conceived to be otherwise desirable, is essentially incompatible with liberal principle. And it is astonishing to try and follow the processes by which so-called "liberalism" has been seduced into the ways of extreme religious intolerance. ”

“ This total absence of religion, or rather of all religious belief, is spreading fast, and, no longer confined to young men of fashion as their exclusive prerogative, is descending to the lower classes of the community, who, discontented and repining, and debarred from all means of enlightenment, look upon the blended temporal and spiritual system of their Government with the same hostility and mistrust. ”

“ It is a conception quite unworthy of free men.” “Religion,” one of their leaders has asserted, “is an opiate of the people.” “Religion,” declares the text of their official publications, “is a brutalization of the people. Education must be so directed as to efface from the people’s minds this humiliation and this idiocy.” ”

“ In fine, if our teachers had not made it a duty to renounce common sense, and to close with notions that carry in their consequences the contradictory evidence of their premises, they would not refuse to avow that God would be the most unjust, the most unreasonable, the most cruel of tyrants, if he should punish beings whom he himself created imperfect, and possessed of a deficiency of reason and common sense. ”

“ But they, through their traditions, can judge every person but themselves: they can weigh every person in their scale of justice; but they never think of trying themselves. That proceeds from the force of education and false tradition upon their minds, and some still remain ignorant of many of the true principles of right and wrong, although they have embraced the Gospel. ”

“ They invent words from an inability to explain things, and they give the name of mysteries to what they comprehend no better than ourselves.
All the religions in the world are founded upon predestination, and all the pretended revelations among men, as has been already pointed out to you, inculcate this odious dogma, which makes Providence an unjust mother-in-law, who shows a blind preference for some of her children to the prejudice of all the others. ”

“ Dissent may be inseparable from religious freedom, as prejudice and error are congenital with the human mind. But the wanderers from our discipline and doctrine forget that they have voluntarily destroyed their identity with the flock ”

“ The real oppressor, enslaver and corrupter of the people is the Bible. That book is the chain that binds, the dungeon that holds the clergy. That book spreads the pall of superstition over the colleges and schools. That book puts out the eyes of science, and makes honest investigation a crime. That book unmans the politician and degrades the people. ”

“ The very question strikes them with horror, and it is owing to this prejudice so deeply implanted by education, and also strengthened by public sentiment, that so few are willing to give it a fair and impartial investigation,—knowing but too well that it casts a stigma and reproach upon any person bold enough to undertake the task, unless his previously known opinions are a guar­antee that his conclusions would be in accordance and harmony with the popular demand. ”

“ The great majority of the Christian and right-thinking people will soon see clearly what is now beginning to dawn upon many minds, namely: that anything short of Christian education, in the broadest and best sense of the term, and the exercise of justice and loving-mercy, only tends to increase the evil which it would destroy. ”