Diversity of opinion for me increased after I left school, and that's when I became more critical of the beliefs I held as a child. It's for that reason I think libraries are better than social media - social media is not just the equivalent of a religious tract that insists it is true, it actively prevents you from finding and considering contrary views all by yourself.
On what basis can they do this? No human is born with a magical algorithm in their brain that can sort good ideas from bad. The only scalpels we have are those which we collect. Critical thinking must be bootstrapped. Mind viruses must be inoculated against. Just because you (eventually!) threw off your case of memetic measles, doesn't mean that everyone does. Some people die of it.
Because it's a work of fiction and since it's missionary, it is exactly the kind of work which aims to suppress critical thinking in order to lock the reader into a particular world view for the rest of their lives.
> aims to suppress critical thinking in order to lock the reader into a particular world view for the rest of their lives.
There are a myriad of books that present their POV as absolute truth. Some of them aren't even in the dreaded fiction section! Most books don't end every statement with, "I could be wrong though, do your own research."
I also did not find it prevented me from changing my World view as I grew up. I am not a practicing christian today, but I do think that many christian parables have helped make me a more rounded, generous and thoughtful human being. I am certainly quite likely more empathetic and loving than many others around me.
Read it as a work of fiction and don't be afraid of it "converting you" into a a robot remotely controlled by the pope. You might be surprised.
We can quibble about whether or not dogmatic interpretations are in the original work or were layered on top by the organized church, but at the root of both is the idea that some things must be believed without questioning.
Up and down this thread there are notes about people who were raised in a religious tradition and then branched out -- that's great, but you all are also the exceptions.
There are far more people who believe what they're told, as a consequence of religious indoctrination, until the day they die.
And because of that, on the whole, the Bible (as used in modern Christianity) is anti- free thought.
A bit off topic, but I find it interesting that the Christian Bible is always the example of a "bad" book, when there are other, very popular, religions whose books literally tell them that non-adherents are worthy only of a grisly death.
If it were a Venn Diagram, the circle of the people subject to the other 'big' religious books would have very little intersection with the set of the people who frequent this forum. It follows then that they would get far less criticism, since there's so much less exposure.
> A curious mind will develop critical thinking skills.
This is the linchpin of the debate.
What if the first book you read at a critical age insists that it alone is true, and that other books should be distrusted at risk of harms to yourself? Say, the Christian Bible.
It is absolutely possible -- unlikely, given the subjects of most books, but possible -- to have harmful information encoded in a book.
The question is then how to blunt those negative outcomes, at scale, democratically, without opening the door to arbitrary political interference of the day.