On not being at sea about indoctrination—A response to thiessen

There is much in Elmer Thiessen's article with which I agree, though I also am rather firmly of the opinion that he does not come to grips with the really fundamental questions that emerge about indoctrination in general and religious indoctrination in particular. I further believe that his philosophical methodology is badly conceived. So that we can move with dispatch to the central issues without confusion, I shall first make clear where I agree (though I shall not give the rationale for my agreement). I shall then point to where I think the lacunae lie and try to get to the heart of the matter. I agree that it is "unfair to single out religion as uniquely susceptible to the problem of indoctrination" though I wonder if any even remotely important thinker ever thought that. I also agree that we should be cautious in charging someone with indoctrination in any area. It is like the charge of being ideological. One must be very careful that one does not have a mote in one's own eye. Not infrequently, a would-be unmasquer is himself unwittingly wearing a masque. 1 We must learn to be very self-conscious about how we may be, unwittingly, indoctrinating or ideological. But we must not take "indoctrination" in such a wide sense that any socialization, which perforce must often use non-rational (not irrational) methods, will count as indoctrination. Thiessen is right in pointing out that the teaching of science, just as the teaching of religion, can proceed in an indoctrinating manner. Moreover, what Jurgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School have well called scientism often functions as an ideology in contemporary culture, though, again, we must not forget that science is one thing and scientism (an ideology about science) is another. What science, the ideology goes, cannot tell us, mankind cannot know. "Epistemology," Quine remarks, with an incredibly persuasive and implicit defimtion, "is concerned with the foundations of science" (1969, p. 69). Often this scientistic attitude is promoted by people who are so innocent that they are not at all aware that they are involved in indoctrination. Scientism is one oftbe dominant ideologies of our culture, though it is seldom seen as such, and it is often indoctrinated in us in the way that religion is. But this is not a necessary feature of science. Nor is it necessarily a part of the scientific attitude. Similarly, Thiessen argues, defending religion, or even the teaching of religion, need not be by way of indoctrination. We cannot, where we generally speak of religion, say that it falls prey to the charge of indoctrination, let alone claim that it must do so, while science does not, though I would add, in a way Thiessen does not, that religion is more indoctrination-prone than is science. Why then do I think that Thiessen has not got at the heart of the matter