Are there seriously people out there, besides, Dawkins, who
believe that indoctrinating a child in a religion is worse than sexual
abuse? We are not talking about radical
Islam here. “….horrible as sexual abuse
no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological
damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.” I am forcing myself to read the rest of this
book. I am not Catholic, but I find this
statement by Dawkins so offensive that I would put The God Delusion in the trash….but for the fact that the copy I’m
reading was borrowed from the library, and that I set my mind to reading the entire book as an exercise in intellectual honesty.
Dawkins suggests “…that the extreme horribleness of hell, as
portrayed by priests and nuns, is inflated to compensate for its implausibility. If hell were plausible, it would only have to
be moderately unpleasant in order to deter.
Given that it is so unlikely to be true, it has to be advertised as very
very scary indeed, to balance its implausibility and retain some deterrence
value.” I’m not sure I follow the logic
here. Deterrence has a great deal more
to do with likelihood of something happening than how horrible it is. It would be horrible to be in a fiery plane
or car crash, but most of us still chose to travel, because we don’t think the
odds of the disaster are all that good.
The horribleness of the event, if it were to happen, is not sufficient
deterrent.
Dawkins tells stories of a number of “conversions” from
Christianity to atheism. There are many
examples of conversion from varieties of unbelief to Christianity. His stories don’t prove anything.
Nicholas Humphrey is approvingly quoted as saying, “…children
have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense, and we as a society
have a duty to protect them from it. So
we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for
example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that the planets rule their
lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock
them in a dungeon.” He is essentially
wiping out the whole concept of parental rights! Dawkins acknowledges that what constitutes “nonsense”
may be open to debate, but extols the glories of science and teaching a child
how to think, rather than what to think.
He passes over the fact that “how to think” can also be a matter of
opinion. He also doesn’t take into
account that scientific knowledge changes over time. What was taught as truth 50 years ago, may
not be truth now.
Is he seriously suggesting that society should step in and
stop parents from teaching children their beliefs? This sounds like a repressive totalitarian
state! And it’s off the North Korea we
go!
One of the groups that comes under Dawkins’ criticism is the
Amish. “Even if the children had been
asked and had expressed a preference for the Amish religion, can we suppose
that they would have done so if they had been educated and informed about the
available alternatives?” I guess Dawkins
is not familiar with the fact that in their late teen years, Amish young people
are allowed a time of “wilding,” during which they can try out alternatives
before making a conscious decision to be baptized and stick with the Amish
faith.
After all of his ranting, he abruptly switches tones and
tacks on a section on the value of the Bible as literature. He acknowledges its influence on
conversational language and on other great literary works. He believes “We can give up belief in God
while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.” He is right about that, but it does reduce
what might have been belief to sentimentality.
Of course, if he agrees with introducing children to the
Bible as literature, he does run the risk of thoughtful children asking
questions such as: Is this true? Is there a God? Is this supposed to impact the way I think? And, some of them may come up with answers
Dawkins won’t like.
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