A Clash Of Indoctrinations

I awoke to a story on the morning news show about a man who erected a billboard reading "One Nation Under God" as his way of countering a nearby billboard, erected on behalf of an anti-religious sect, which had left the reference to a deity out of that section of the Pledge of Allegiance moving on to to the next line of the Pledge, "Indivisible".

In promoting the idea of "One Nation....Indivisible" the contemporary atheists, who fear religion as a knee-jerk reaction, sincerely intend to help society move toward what they see as a more rational worldview.

In conserving the idea that there is a higher power the "Under God" proponent seeks to re-establish the long held view that there is a God and we are beholden to him for our existence.

Both sides are right, according to the lessons they learned in their formative years. We are witnessing a clash of indoctrinations. Each side comes to their position as the result of their experience.

And, both are behind unproven concepts, science is not on either side of this debate. It can not be scientifically proven that their is or isn't a deity. Quantifying that proposition so far is beyond our abilities. But people are stubborn, and I say that in the the best sense of the word, they adhere to what they know first and accept change slowly. This type of stubbornness is not a bad thing, or a good thing, it is the way we are. There are reasons that change takes time, the primary one being that there are no timeouts in life when we can turn off events while we sort out new concepts. We learn early on and live out our lives according to those lessons until, or unless, we have the energy and insight to see a better way.

A religious belief, or disbelief, is an accepted life position. It is not the truth, except in that way that the truth is always that which we believe it to be. And, when one man's truth is contrary to the truth of another man it becomes a clash of indoctrinations. When either side can use the Scientific Method to quantify their position the clash can be resolved in favor of one position or the other. This is a rare happening, even Einstein's theories are only true until someone finds an error in his thinking. And it happens, even to the greatest minds of an age. The truth formulated by the greatest living scientist before Einstein is no longer the holder of that title because Einstein saw something truer. This world is complicated that way, stubbornly adhering to one's indoctrination is a good thing for a being with limited resources and a short amount of time to use them, but that stubbornness is not an intellectual proof.