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I Believe In Indoctrination (Drunk Ex-Pastors, Episode 13)

If you don't start with something that cannot be questioned, you're a bad parent. No; I will force them to memorize things; I will have them learn it and memorize that Catechism. And the saints. Kids need things like that. Like you need to wear bike helmets.

Christian at the end starts to make sense, because he's talking about "motives of credibility." But "question everything" is dumb. No one does that, and no one should.

Comments

Nathan said…
I think "question everything" can be meant in two different ways.

One way it may be meant is "reject everything you don't fully understand," and lends itself to stiff-necked cynicism. Such people see themselves as open-minded, but if so they have opened their minds so far they have become narrow, like a 350-degree angle.

Another more benevolent meaning is "never stop trying to understand deeper," and lends itself to insights. This simply means that even if I accept something on faith, I continue to seek the reasons it is true.

We should question everything. It is important to pair questioning with patience to wait for an answer and imagination to entertain an answer beyond what we were expecting.
Christian said…
How about "Question Anything" instead of "Question Everything?" Questioning everything would be an utter waste of time. Gotta pick your battles. :)

I think if we believe that something is true, we shouldn't be afraid of people questioning it. I wasn't afforded this luxury in the environment I was raised in, but I believe that it's by truly questioning and challenging things that we learn and either solidify our "truths" or abandon them.

P.S. I'm glad I started to make sense at some point! :)

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