Diogenes wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 1:13 am
historia wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 6:08 pm
Right, so ideas that you like -- e.g., the belief that all people have equal moral worth under the law -- that have come down to us via "childhood indoctrination, not facts, logic" you are cool with.
While ideas that you
don't like -- e.g., the existence of angels -- that have come down to us via "childhood indoctrination, not facts, logic" you are
not cool with.
If we factor out the common denominator in those two cases, then your
actual argument here is simply that there are some ideas you like and some ideas you don't like.
How on Earth you connect "the belief that all people have equal moral worth" with fantastic beliefs like the notion that fairies, ghosts, gods, goblins, pixies and poltergeists exist is quite beyond me. Rather than your simplistic criterion that it's just what I "like," perhaps you should consider some basic epistemology, like the difference between what we can actually observe versus inventions of the imagination for which there is no evidence.
The belief that all people have equal moral worth under the law is not derived from observation. It cannot be "validated" by science.
You can invent
post-hoc rationalizations for it, to be sure. But the
real reason you and I think that idea is true is because we grew up in societies influenced by Christianity, were "indoctrinated" into that idea as children by our parents, and have had it reinforced by numerous social institutions.
If you have no objection to parents teaching their children the fundamental equality of all people, then your concerns here are not really about evidence or epistemology or when and how children learn ideas. The
real criterion for when you choose to object to parents teaching their children an idea or not -- the one that can be applied across
all cases, not just those that touch on science -- is whether you like or dislike the idea.
There's nothing wrong with that. But then your objection is really about the ideas themselves and has nothing to do with parenting.