Indoctrination and “losing the faith”

One of the things that was drilled into me as a child was that I needed to attend church frequently so that I would not fall away from the faith.   I was warned vividly (and often) that every member of the body of Christ was in danger of giving in to the “wisdom of the world” and succumbing to their evil human nature.  Frequent reaffirmation of my belief, I was told, was the only way I could hope to keep my dark side at bay.

Now that I’m on the other side, this seems very strange to me.  I have learned how science works, and more importantly, how evidence and “facts” work.  (I use scare quotes when speaking of facts for the scientifically minded readers who will balk at its use in this context.)  In this instance, the most important quality of knowledge is that it does not require reinforcement.  Take algebra, for instance.  When I learned how to do algebra, I saw that it worked, and that it was true.  Since then, I have not had to go to algebra seminars to remind myself that it works.  When I went to college, I learned that it was part of the foundation for calculus and physics and any number of advanced subjects which, when learned properly, help us to build bridges and buildings, and to send unmanned spacecraft to Saturn.

Since learning the truth of algebra, I have never once wavered in my conviction that it is a real, true part of the universe.  Since learning that I must pay taxes each year, I have never once had to go to an IRS meeting to reaffirm my belief in taxes.  When I was married, I didn’t have to attend weekly services to continually remind me that I loved my wife and she loved me.  Since studying evolutionary psychology, I have not had to continually remind myself that human morality is innate and evolutionary.

Why, then, do Christians need to continually reaffirm their faith?  The Christian answer to this is that man is inherently evil, and that the wisdom of the world is a lie.  The true answer is that without continual reaffirmation, the faithful are likely to lose their blinders and see the world as it really is.  Brainwashing is powerful, but it is not so powerful that it cannot be reversed.  (Obviously, since there are atheists who used to be theists.)

We can look at this from another point of view to see the truth of it.  If what the church says is true, shouldn’t we be able to look at the world around us and see the evidence?  Shouldn’t everyone who is not a regular churchgoer be a degenerate?  Shouldn’t primarily secular nations be addled with social dysfunction?  Shouldn’t the prevalence of alcoholism, divorce, depression, STDs, abortions, and other social ills outside of the faithful make it patently obvious that it’s really important to go to church regularly?

Here, we can begin to see the whole thing start to crash down upon itself.  The world is not as we would expect.  Secular nations are remarkably dysfunction free.  Atheist marriages are the ones most likely to last.  Those who do not attend church show no particular predilection towards evil.  In short, there seems to be no particular empirical evidence that church attendance does anything to alter our supposed evil nature.  For that matter, there is ample evidence that human kindness runs rampant among the unfaithful.  Some of the most generous philanthropists in the world are atheists.  People are good to each other in Japan, where atheism is the norm.

Now, we can start to see what is really going on.  Frequent church attendance is not necessary to keep our dark sides at bay.  It isn’t necessary for moral strength.  In fact, we really see only one significant difference between frequent church goers and those who have stopped going  to church:

People who stop going to church frequently lose their faith.

So, the house of cards falls.  All those ominous warnings when I was a kid weren’t about keeping me from becoming evil.  They were about keeping me from losing faith.  Where does this leave us?  Well, it leaves us right where we started, only with a slightly different attitude.  It’s true what they say — if you don’t keep going to church, you are likely to lose your faith, but not because you are inherently evil.  Rather, leaving the church gives you a chance to see the world as it is and to learn the truths that don’t require reinforcement — the ones that stay with you precisely because they are true.  To put it another way, one never needs to brainwash someone into believing the truth.