Notes on religious indoctrination and the clinging to childhood beliefs

The Question of the existence of God and our immature beliefs that persist

These notes refer to my own upbringing as a Catholic. My experience is all I can write about and no one else’s.

As I matured my understanding of all things changed and still continues to change with education both formal and self actuated, with development of relationships and with experience in the world.

Can I safely say that most of what I learned as a child got proven wrong or turned topsy-turvy? I’m not sure. I know that many things have changed as a result of my maturation. Sometimes beliefs have grown even deeper and fuller with maturation. Other times fully rejected and replaced by other understanding. In the complete life of a human being, one who is thoughtful, who has imagination to absorb and process information and compare and contrast it to whatever was there before is able to synthesize it into a world view (weltanschauung). Pieces of previous views may fall away while others deepen as I’ve just said. However, the brain can’t maintain thoughts in the manner of say computerized transactional processing, where one can look at one transaction and see it replaced by another transaction and so on. If transaction records are kept properly then you can see transaction A, transaction B etc. And even if combined A & B will = C, you can still examine the first two and see the difference. Given this example the brain doesn’t do that. The brain can only comprehend and process Transaction C. It no longer cares about the two that preceded it.

But what happens if we don’t understand where Transaction C arises and evolves? This is where my critical notes regarding religion and belief of any kind actually comes about. As a child I was taught early about God. Religious training must begin early. I still recall being taught to bless myself by my Mother’s Mother who was Catholic. “In the name of the Father and of the Son (that’s me) and I’m afraid of the Holy Ghost.” I would say, kidding around with Grandmother who was always amused by my antics except when I pissed her off. She’d laugh and tell my Mother who did not think along the same lines.

What was happening to me at the age of three or four was an introduction to God as the Father (all seeing all powerful all knowing being as far as I was concerned in my dealings with my father who was male role model and final authority on everything). I was also being introduced to Jesus Christ, the son, who I identified with immediately because I was the son. And also I learned about the Holy Spirit or Ghost, that mysterious invisible force that I was frightened of especially when it was dark. I had an image of this white spooky presence that would intentionally scare me.

Of course what could be my understanding? Did I know what it meant? I don’t believe so. At the time I only thought I did. I can’t see transaction A. Because I was innocent of any kind of ideology it was clear to my innocent mind. Yet theologians can’t explain the three persons in God that Catholics believe in. They would fall upon the sword of mysticism if forced for an explanation. They would claim these are matters which can not be explained rationally only felt, only seen with the eye of religious fervor. And they would further claim God loves you. He would not trick you into some falsehood. Only Satan would trick you into believing something that wasn’t and manipulate you into a false thing to worship.

If one has a questioning mind, if one likes to take things apart to see how they work, if one only believes what one hears and sees this concept, three persons in God, creates a problem as the brain matures. Say we started out as fully formed adults with all concomitant experiences we would easily dismiss this doctrine as we do advertisement (in most cases). But they get us early. And they make it part of us. And we are frightened. The transactions which process into the final transactions can’t be seen. That early training worms its way in. We say our prayers as a child because we were told to. In that moment we discover comfort at first because God is listening to us (and 7 billion others in hundreds of languages I might add) We believe as children that all will be right. We are comfortable. We confess our sins with the same relief because we were told to. And these little bits like tiny atoms and molecules cling to other thoughts with maturation and we look for relief and comfort in what amounts to not prayer but a form of meditation. Yet this we don’t know unless of course we examine what we are doing. But minds that do not evolve with deeper thoughts still believe in those childhood prayers. It is a superior brainwashing system for children.

And once brainwashed we carry it into our adult way of thinking but that teaching when we were between ages of 3 and 8 doesn’t change. It can’t. It’s comfortable. It’s easy. It’s relief. That’s why we go there. But if we ever doubt we’ll still cling to it because it is part of our bodies . It’s a piece of our brain we can’t cut out because we don’t know where it is in the final transaction. It is an inherent part of our body, our existence our childhood, our love of the people who formed us. That is the life of a Catholic.

If I had been born a Jew this would all be different. Jews have a different kind of connection to religious belief. It is tied in with everything cultural and racial among Jews. It is the DNA of their being. There can be no such thing as a lapsed Jew only a secular Jew, but Jewish all the same. A Christian can lapse because it is not part of the DNA. But because it is not, it is a far more frightening a thing to lose. This sounds contradictory. But that is the crux. The belief in Catholic Orthodoxy is tenuous mainly because it is an intellectual pursuit, a psychological pursuit, a forced belief and if we lose it there is nothing. And “Nothing is greater than God.” (Read that any way you would like.)