It's kinda hard to indoctrinate a 10 year old. I came to Christ on my own after hearing the Gospel.
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The church has been practicing for 1000's of years the art of indoctrinating 10 year olds. How about we create a monster as scary as possible to a 10 year old, make him all red with horns living in a place full of fire, and tell the children that if they don't love Jesus and give him 10% of all the money they ever make that they will spend eternity in that hotplace.
Nah, they would never buy it.
Let's see. When you are between two and six years old, you learn that fire burns and hurts. You learn about authority, and punishment and reward. After your cute pet or dear grandma died, you've started to fear death. You also somehow happen to like candy and lack most of the knowledge of how the real world functions (lightning, rain, money etc...) Raise that knowledge (and lack of thereof) on the n-th degree and what do you get?
Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Monster in the Closet, The Boogeyman...
Not a big deal to add another imaginary friend to the list.
I've got you beat, kiddo! I accepted Jesus as my savior when I was FIVE YEARS OLD. Ha!
Well, and then summarily dismissed him as myth 12 years later, when I had slightly more reasoning faculties and able to sort what my parents taught me from what I read in the news and from scientific (and yes, even humorous) literature.
Marc: "Even then..."
Yeah, if you've been raised in the stuff and without much knowledge of the rest of the world's beliefs (something I'm just starting to gain at 27 with only now a few years not spent in church; it's what finally convinced me of something I suspected about myself), it's still hard to question even as a young adult. You're encouraged to question what the world tells you by your church, rather than ever using the ability in a more introspective way.
Oh, bullfuckingshit. By the time we were in the 5th grade, every kid in my school was well doctrinated that they wouldn't get in trouble for making my life a living Hell.
To the point that when I went back to VT in 03 for our reunion -- to prove that I was neither dead/in prison/in a mental hospital/living in a cardboard box in a back alley behind a liqior store -- and someone commented that they hadn't seen me around lately, I replied "Yeah, I moved to CO in 97."
Response: "Why would you want to ever leave VT?"
*Headdesk*
@Tolpuddle Martyr:
Of course, advertisers have always found ways around that, but still. I think most parents appreciate the thought.
It's kinda hard to indoctrinate a 10 year old.
You've been working on one, though, haven't you? Better let that one go, he's too smart for you.
Funny--at 20 years old, I was tricked into thinking I was in love with a manipulative, controlling young man. If you can send a 20-year-old into near-suicidal levels of delusion, then indoctrinating a 10-year-old doesn't seem like such a stretch.
It's easy. If you teach them a religion from birth, they'll grow up believing it to be a fact of life.
I'm still having issues getting some Catholic tendencies out of my system and I haven't considered myself to be Christian for a few years. I don't believe in it; old habits just die hard.
I wonder how old you are now, or how little you've matured, if you can't see how gullible you were at 10. When I look back on myself even a couple years ago, I can see how amazingly my ability for critical thinking has improved.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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