Indoctrination is Determining
Right and Wrong Thinking

Our previous posts on indoctrination laid the groundwork to understand this one simple concept: Indoctrination is nothing more than instilling in people, especially children, the ethical morality of right and wrong! This foundation determines how one’s worldview is shaped which filters incoming data (facts) and structures analysis (thinking) into “acceptable” beliefs which determines future thoughts and actions. People usually do not arguing over facts. They argue to determine which matrix to use to “interpret” the facts. Fossils are facts. If one has an evolutionary matrix then fossils are used to support belief in evolution. If one has a creationist matrix then fossils are used to support belief in creationism. The fossils do not change but what one already believes, one’s worldview, determines how to “understand” the facts. Yet, there is one additional foundational layer that has to be addressed, “What is right and wrong, what is its source?”

At some point one must be able to state why something is right or wrong, moral or immoral. To state that there is neither right or wrong, moral or immoral, is to violate the Law of Excluded Middle (LEM). Everyone has a built in sense of right and wrong as evidenced by the fact that every country has a judicial system based on what the country has determined to be right and wrong with penalties assigned to those who do wrong. Down through history certain behaviors have always been labeled as wrong or immoral: lying, stealing, murder and so forth. The question that must be answered is, “Why are these behaviors considered wrong and what is the basis for this conclusion?”

Brian Cleeve wrote in his book, “1938: A World Vanishing,” the result of modern Western nations, especially Great Britain, abandoning the notion of morality which he believes occurred at the end of World War II. “In our modern eagerness to be tolerant,” Cleeve stated, “we have come to tolerate things which no society can tolerate and remain healthy. In our understandable anxiety not to set ourselves up as judges, we have come to believe that all judgements are wrong. In our revulsion against hypocrisy and false morality we have abandoned morality itself. And with modest hesitations but firm convictions I submit that this has not made us happier, but much unhappier. We are like men at sea without a compass.” (Vision Insights and New Horizons. Ethics & Morality. Right and Wrong. Fall 2000.) If he is correct then the abandonment of right and wrong, trying to take the path of the excluded middle that does not exist, leads to cultural destruction. However, this has a built in logical fallacy for it there is no morality and those in your midst insist on having a morality then they must be wrong; that is, you have abandon your indecisive position to declare people to be wrong when your basic tenet states there is no wrong! This is the fallacy that is frequently committed and tolerated. For example, a certain segment of our culture says one should not judge; however, if they think you judge then they judge you for judging! That is, they commit the very act that they claim to be wrong and then justify it on you having committed the act first! This basically becomes pragmatism, the ends justify the means. If you do wrong then they are excused for doing wrong so they can do right! I was taught that two wrongs do not make a right!

The major purpose of philosophy is to “discover”, or at least justify, what one wants to believe about right and wrong, moral and immoral. This has been an unflagging disaster since before the time of Socrates. A brief look at Ethics in Wikipedia is enough to leave one confused. There is meta-ethics, normative ethics, virtue ethics, pragmatic ethics, role ethics, postmodern ethics and so forth. Today we have medical ethics in order to justify when to turn off life support in order to conserve resources which begs another logical fallacy: zero sum fallacy. This fallacy states that there is a limited resource and when one person takes from this limited resource then they are depriving others, being unfair to others. The government healthcare program promotes this zero sum fallacy to limit care to those who require expensive care. Unfortunately, too many people have come to believe that this fallacy is a truism when it is a lie. Government regulation limits the amount of healthcare resources and then claims resources are limited and must be parceled (rationed) out based on need that it determines since it is paying the bill. Anyone see a conflict of interest in this circular lie? Could this be immoral?

Michael Shermer (publisher of “Skeptic” magazine) during an interview stated he believes that morality is based on one’s capacity to feel and suffer. He believes in natural rights but states that these rights are based on evolutionary science and not on God or any other religion which he equates with paganistic beliefs. Yet, he also begs the essential point, what is the source of right and wrong? Though he uses “science” to justify his reasoning, science can only deal with that which is repeatable and measurable whereas right and wrong are neither and therefore fall beyond the purview of science. Even a Newsweek article on “Learning Right from Wrong” cannot elucidate why people, especially children, learn right from wrong though it admits they do learn this from parents, friends school etc.

The Bible is the only source that discusses the source of Right and the cause of Wrong. God is Right and man, apart from God, is Wrong. Man and woman began as Right when they followed God but became Wrong when they departed from God — sin. Every person since has this innate sin nature within and unless a person repents, and is indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God based on Christ’s work on the cross, they remain Wrong.

The Bible also discusses that man rejects the knowledge of God and seeks to live in harmony with his sin nature and sinks to various levels of immorality as he further rejects the truth of God. God said that every person has this right and wrong imprinted in him, and her, by virtue of being made in His image (Ro 1:18-32). What are the guidelines of right and wrong? Is it the Law of Moses? No, the essence of right and wrong is commonly called the Ten Commandments (Ex 20:1-17). The Christian can point to book, chapter and verse to establish the basis for right and wrong, if one has taken the time to study the verses and understand what they actually mean. All other positions cannot define why they believe in right and wrong except by fallacious appeals to majority rule, popular opinion, laws of nature, and so forth. In essence, the lost people seek to “steal” the morality of the Bible, claim it for their own without a biblical basis and then attack the Christian for believing in the Bible! If the Christian seeks to explain about right and wrong based on “I think”, “I feel” or “I believe” then they have forsaken the security of the Scriptures and have no more basis for their answers than the lost person who appeals to science, public opinion or any other belief apart from the Bible. In reality, everybody’s sense of right and wrong comes from a belief system! Every belief system apart from the Gospel of the Bible is based on works, including many who call themselves Christians but are not; thus, they are based on religion (system of work’s righteousness)!