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0 pointsprogramjames1y ago0 comments

Do you think there are many religious parents who choose homeschooling because it lets them reinforce their worldview? GP says he was raised in such a household, I have friends who were homeschooled for that reason. There are probably many religious people who just find public schools uncouth, but I think there are more who homeschool primarily for easier indoctrination. I don't think GP is automatically assuming anything about individuals, they're just pointing out that a significant fraction of the homeschooling population will come from Evangelical Young Earth Creationists.

Based on your comment, I would assume you are religious. Quite frankly, religious doctrines are anti-science, or more accurately anti-epistemology. The Young Earth Creationists are a dim example of this, but even your generic Christian believes in lichs based on two-thousand-year-old hearsay. You say this

> is a very outdated and frankly wrong stereotype

but why? It seems more true than any religion. I think you could make an argument that it's impossible to convince people they're wrong, so to avoid fighting you should avoid making such comments, but that's empirically not true.

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aliasxneo1y ago

I was being absolute in my language because I was trying to understand the extent of GP's views on this subject. Sure, it's entirely possible that it didn't translate across and that we're talking about a "significant fraction" of religious people raising scientifically ignorant kids. Even then, it's almost impossible to prove because we're not operating with a well-defined meaning for "scientifically ignorant."

However, you've now moved the goalpost by stating that "religious doctrines" are anti-science. That wasn't the original argument. We're talking about whether or not religious people, who homeschool, will necessarily produce scientifically ignorant children.

Nonetheless, the more I think about this, the more the conversation is pointless because we'd spend an eternity working out what scientifically ignorant looks like. A person may agree with 80% of the scientific theories in the world and disagree on 20% and someone might say that makes them "scientifically ignorant." Which I find amusing, considering the amount of fraud going on in modern scientific journals.

programjamesOP1y ago

I want to make it clear that the main issue is anti-epistemology. Trusting authority figures on "the science" isn't much different than trusting authority figures on "the gods", but there is a big difference between how the two schools of thought investigate new ideas. Religions take their axioms as inviolable, while science usually treats them as convenient beliefs until better ones come along.

I'm less worried about people being scientifically ignorant than people who lack the ability to think through ideas (specifically, most religions have built-in thought-stoppers such as "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith"). For example, Socrates was a great thinker, and even though he was terribly ignorant by today's standards, I wouldn't be worried if our society was composed of people like him. I am worried about people who have literally been indoctrinated out of the capacity for reason.

aliasxneo1y ago

Well, regarding that concern, we are in total agreement. However, I have many religious friends, and none of them have demonstrated being indoctrinated out of a capacity to reason (and yes, a few were homeschooled).

I'm not suggesting these individuals do not exist, but I find it very troubling to make blanket statements like the GP's. As I said, it's a stereotype I often see on HN, and I think it's very distasteful as it eliminates an entire group of people from the conversation because "they can't reason."

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0 pointsprogramjames1y ago0 comments

> is a very outdated and frankly wrong stereotype

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aliasxneo1y ago

programjamesOP1y ago

aliasxneo1y ago

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