Indoctrination: the act of indoctrinating, or teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view – Dictionary.com
I found this graphic on an Internet atheism community, so it’s probably aimed at people of faith. The inference is clear: believing in a loving creator is false, so the only way to make it acceptable is to brainwash young minds that don’t know any better.
If that’s true, then how does one explain Rosalind Picard? According to Wikipedia, she’s a professor of media arts and sciences at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Picard is also director and founder of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, co-director of the Things That Think Consortium, and chief scientist and co-founder of Affectiva, an emotion measurement technology company.
Here’s the kicker: Picard, 60, says she was raised an atheist, but converted to Christianity as a young adult. So is it fair to say she was indoctrinated to believe there is no God? And if that’s true, why did this brilliant scientific mind go in the opposite direction – and stay there?
Let’s be honest here: absolutely EVERYONE gets certain ideas hammered into their minds while they’re young and defenceless. Deny it if you want, but think hard about your life.
- If you live in a developed country, wasn’t it likely you were indoctrinated with the virtues of capitalism and democracy?
- If your father abandoned your mother at a very young age, isn’t it possible you were indoctrinated to believe that he (and often, by extension, all men) are self-centred and irresponsible?
- If you live in certain Middle Eastern countries, isn’t it quite feasible that you were indoctrinated to think of the United States — and by extension, the entire “west” — as immoral and evil?
In each of these cases, the truth didn’t matter very much. The world was seen through biased eyes, just as I believe the graphic that sparked this essay was created with a deep-seeded bias.
So, if you’ve given this some thought and realize you’ve had a long bias against following Jesus of Nazareth (who many people believe is the divine Son of God), then maybe this is the time to investigate this whole Jesus thing with an open mind.
Why Jesus and not other faiths? Consider these facts:
1. Eight hugely important predictions about Jesus, made in ancient documents, came true. Among these were where Jesus was born, the fact He would be betrayed by a friend, that He would be crucified and that He would be resurrected.
2. Jesus said that He alone was the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that no one can find God without Him. Nice claim, but what backs it up? Original-source documents about His physical life on earth detail all kinds of miracles performed by Jesus, including healing diseases, restoring sight, feeding thousands of people with just a few loaves of bread & fish and coming back from the dead.
3. As the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (www.carm.org) explains, “Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius and Krishna did not rise from the dead. Only Jesus has physically risen from the dead, walked on water, claimed to be God and raised others from the dead. Why trust anyone else?”
So what makes all this credible? Simply read about the life of one of Jesus’s most devoted followers, Paul of Tarsus. I write about him, and how he is a testament to Jesus’s reality, here: http://wp.me/p2wzRb-g3
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