Indoctrinating Children Into Personal-God Theology. Does It Foster Safer Societies?

 A Christian fundamentalist asked:

"Isn't that what we have in public schools now, which is leading to violence among school children? What do you think is responsible for school violence nowadays, after we have sent God out of school curriculum?
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My thoughts on this:

Many bullies come from religious homes.

Many school-shooters are also religious.

In fact, most adults who go to prison for violent crimes in America are religious.

Even churches sometimes get mass-shooters.

In America, church-shooters were usually raised in the church they shoot.  

In some countries, church-shooters usually represent rival Christian factions. 

Theism (in general) is obviously not the reason why shooters shoot people.
But it's not an effective deterrent either.

Personal-god theism is different than deism or agnostic theism.

Vague notions of a creator-entity are harmless.

Many forms of spirituality are (arguably) harmless too;
such as Native American spiritualities.

But I think "personal God" theism have made the problem worse; especially the Abrahamic varieties.

And yet,
even if we wanted to go back to teaching "God" to kids in public school systems, ...

Which "God" would we teach them?

Which version of an All-powerful Santa Clause shall we lie to them about?

He's making a list.
He's checking it twice.
He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice.

Santa (God) is coming to town.

He knows when you are sleeping.
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good.
So be good for goodness sake.




What else shall we lie to them about?

Which more specific Santa-God shall we dog-leash them to?

Which more specific Santa-God shall we mentally enslave them to?

Which more specific Santa-God shall we use, to ensure they never go through the dangerous process of maturing 'too far' into adulthood?

Shall we mire an entire generation
into a mindset where they are helpless children who always need a hover-parenting "Father"?

Through US,
"He" will give them rules.

But who are WE to speak for any "God" over others?

Surely, we are not qualified to do a deity's job.

Surely, we are not qualified to speak any "perfect" truth to power.

Any perfect message we could be given
would be instantly corrupted in our heads, on our lips, and in other people's ears. 

Too much would get "lost in translation". 

Just as crucially,
humans should never have such easily corruptible and tempting powers over others.

Any "God" who puts humans in that position
would be automatically guilty of leading those humans into temptation and corruption.

We can't handle having that degree of power.

 
And yet,
we should rush back into ancient mistakes? 

Should we again attempt to speak for a "God"?

If we do, then we set in motion of a series of problems we can't avoid. 

It would again obligate us to gaslight the innocent. 

For example,
we would need to say something like 
"The commands of this GOD totally aren't rules.
A relationship with Santa-God isn't about following rules. It's only about believing what we tell you about him. 
HOWEVER, ...
you better follow our list of "totally not rules" OR ELSE ... Santa-God might hurt you".

So then, we must ask:

Which Santa-God shall we hand them over to?

Because whichever one we choose for them
will shape their views, values, and identity.

It will also keep them divided from
everyone who isn't in their "one true faith".
 
Perhaps we think the way to heal a fractured world is to polarize and divide it even further?



 They will look down on everyone else; with fear, pity, and disdain.

After all, if YOU were not already feeling those sorts of ways about everyone who doesn't believe in your "God",
then you wouldn't be arguing that everyone needs to believe in such a "God" in order for society to be safe and well.

The less similar an "other" is,
the worse the "other" will be treated.



Modern secular values 
teach that we are one. 

Modern secular values
teach that all differences should be respected and celebrated 
EXCEPT for the attitudes, preachments, and behaviors that promote rationalized harm (out of ignorance-driven fear). 

Modern secular values
teach that the solution to harmful attitudes, preachments, and behaviors ... is to nurture the ill, the uninformed, and the wrongly-informed;
into health and understanding.

Having some catchy slogans like "love thine enemy" isn't going to nullify the harm done
by calling innocent people "enemies" in the first place.

From there, human psychology will do
what human psychology is wired to do. 

And that problem will be compounded by fear of afterlife consequences. 

Augustine, for example, reasoned that the best way to LOVE heretics (enemies of the religious State; guilty of wrong-think) ... is to hunt, torture, and kill them;
in order to protect society and to purify the guilty before sending them unto The Lord. 

Science explains it.
History affirms it.
Abrahamic theocracies CAN'T be benevolent.
 
That much power corrupts humans.
 And it's is made worse by the unhealthy ideals found in Abrahamic faiths. 

So this choice really matters.

Which Santa-God will we use
to subvert helpless children's' right to self-determination?

Whichever one we choose, we will then obligate ourselves AGAIN to gaslight our victims about what we're doing to them. 

 We would have to claim we are protecting their right to self-determination; as a smokescreen for how directly we are trying to deny them that right "for their own good". 

Which Santa-God will we use
to DEPRIVE them of their right to self-determination, 
just to satisfy our FEAR of how they might abuse that freedom?

Which one?
Because whichever one we choose for them
comes with human overlords.

We won't just be giving them over to a conceptualization of "God".

We'll be selling them into mental slavery to mere mortal men; who will exploit them for gross personal benefits.
--

Prepping them for their masters;
by mentally installing a durable slave-yolk.

It will work as intended, on most of those poor kids. 

It will foster unhealthy psychologies.

It will create more narcissists.

It will train people to emulate narcissist-vs-supply social dichotomies;
just as it always has.  

It will make them highly, favorably receptive to cult-personalities and authoritarian power structures.

This is exactly how Christianity created monsters Stalin, and Hitler, and Augustine. 



It's also how they created the societies who saw such personalities as "the answer" to their hopes and fears. 

On a larger scale,
an invasive, colonizing species of authoritarian predators
would be allowed to proliferate so much that they ultimately dominate entire sociopolitical ecosystems.

It would fast-track us into a theocratic, totalitarian regime. 

Whichever "righteous" biases help define the "God" we are forcing them to believe in
will determine which demographics of innocent humans eventually get demonized, hunted, and killed as "enemies of the State".

We would absolutely be setting up a system of dominos.


So we better choose carefully.

Which flavor of dystopia shall we cook this next generation into?

The Catholic Santa-God?

The Mainstream Protestant Santa-God?

The Muslim Santa-God?

Which Krampus shall we scare little kids with?

Which Celestial King Pin 
shall we mob-rule in the name of?

Should we create a new one?

 I hear "Hank's" ass could use some kissing.



Or should we just recycle one that some ancient cultists created?

Whichever one you were manipulated into 
is the one you'd choose for everyone else.

But if you are CORRECT that we need to do this, then that means "Free Will" has nothing do with your God's reasons for allowing this world to get so bad in the first place.
 
After all, it wouldn't make any sense to claim this is all about allowing Free Will 
but then say that same god sent out armies of Christian soldiers to help him stomp out free will out of fear that people might abuse it. 

Meanwhile, millions of people who do NOT believe in a personal "God"-judge
behave very well on their own.

Shouldn't we be trying to figure out why they behave so well, so that we can reproduce that effect in future generations?

 Maybe we already know why.

Maybe you just need to learn about how that works?