Response to "Should You Teach Religion to Your Kids?"

A colleague of mine gave me some really thoughtful feedback on my recent post, Should You Teach Religion to Your Kids?  Please see below for part of our exchange (his comments are in blue).

“You draw a parallel between broadly-accepted high-risk behaviors (not wearing a seat belt, drinking battery acid, and accepting strangers' candy) and personally-perceived ones (specified in religion).

 “These fit nicely together as things-a-parent-feels-comfortable-advising-her-kids-against but they're considerably distinct in degree of likely-to-harm-you: most all battery acid is surely bad, while only some strangers' candy may have attendant risk, and wearing a seat belt is a smart bet to protect against winning a long shot with a big, sad jackpot. (And yes, I'm blending if-then positivism and statistical probability here.)”

So far I agree, while adding that parents are expected to protect their children from all of these high-risk behaviors, however much they differ in terms of the likelihood of actual ensuing harm. 

“That a parent believes ill will befall a child who doesn't participate in the same religious tradition as she does is justified quite differently, though, no? At some level, this extension of paternalism is rooted in a different logic: not protection from demonstrated harm, but protection from a believed harm.”

To some extent, I think you’re correct. Most religious parents, today, seek to protect their children from a harm that they only believe in.  However, as a “mystically-inclined” Christian (I am, after all, Eastern Orthodox), I do believe that it’s possible to know of the danger, albeit in a way that doesn't necessarily demonstrate this truth to others.  Of course, whether the truth of a particular harm can be demonstrated to others isn’t necessary to justify protecting one’s children from such harm.  I can legitimately use force to prevent my child from delivering the paper to a person who I know through first-hand experience is a child molester, even if I can’t, at least at that particular moment, demonstrate that truth to others.  I can’t demonstrate that organic food is healthier than non-organic food (at least as far as Wikipedia is concerned, the science hasn’t settled this issue), but most people would recognize my right to act on my strong belief that it is healthier when I make decisions for my children on what to eat.

“_If_ Dawkins is raising a concern that some religious traditions inflict some inordinate harm (mental anguish, corporal punishment, enforced sacrifice) on children, then the idea that parents ought not be given free rein to "indoctrinate" would seem an appropriate extension of paternal protection--if we extend the concept of 'paternal' beyond immediate families.”

I definitely agree, although he doesn't seem to be as discriminating as you fortunately are.  Especially in Chapter 8 of The God Delusion, he regularly implicates moderate religion in all sorts of abuses inspired by fundamentalist religion, as the very title of the chapter makes clear (entitled, “What’s Wrong with Religion? Why be So Hostile?).  

There are many goals to which parents should aspire, even though the means with which they attempt to accomplish those goals are often ineffective and even harmful to their children.  But I don’t think teaching religion is necessarily unique in this regard.  Let’s say that in my effort to protect my child from the pernicious consequences of obesity, I inadvertently cause her to become anorexic.  In such cases, I clearly shouldn't be given free rein to protect her from what is otherwise considered a noble goal.

 “… are there religious groups who feel so threatened by Dawkins or others that refuting their claims is important business?”

I think so.  But, for me, the threat is not so much that Dawkins and others will expose the perceived idiocy of religion, per se, but that they will convince others that fundamentalist religion is a redundancy.

Should You Teach Religion to Your Kids?

This essay was published in Ethika Politika.

Today, many atheists (not all, to be fair) have expressed the view that it’s wrong for parents to instill their religious beliefs in their children.  Chillingly, Richard Dawkins seems to go so far as to imply that the law should restrict parents from doing so:  “Maybe some children need to be protected from indoctrination by their own parents.”  This particular subset of the atheist community is quick to acknowledge our right to practice a religion - even if they find it silly or usually oppressive - while questioning our right to pass it on to our children.  However, only atheists who oppose both rights (or neither right) are being logically consistent, as I explain below.

One of our basic duties as parents is to protect our children from danger. We strive to ensure – through force, if necessary – that our children don’t ingest harmful substances, unbuckle their seatbelts while the car is moving, or take candy from strangers.  Although it would certainly be nice to persuade them through reason, alone, to avoid such dangerous acts, we wouldn’t hesitate to enforce our rules against their will if they found our rationale unconvincing, and no sane person would accuse us of “indoctrinating” or “forcing our beliefs” on them while doing so.  I can’t imagine being congratulated for my “tolerance” if I were to say, “You know, it’s a pity that my child doesn’t agree that unbuckling his seatbelt while I’m driving is dangerous, but it is a free country. Perhaps if we get in a wreck, he will conclude that I was right (assuming, of course, that he survives the experience of being hurled through the windshield and is capable of reflecting on the experience).”

If we assume, just for the sake of argument, that what our religion teaches is true, then we will recognize that the danger of not passing it on to our children may be incomparably greater than not teaching them to avoid taking candy from strangers.  What Dawkins and like-minded atheists suggest would make sense only if we assumed from the outset that our religious beliefs are false (which, of course, they do).  However, they claim to tolerate our right to assume the contrary, without realizing (or at least hoping that we won’t realize) that they contradict themselves by denying our right to instill these beliefs in our children - which most, if not all, religions, naturally require us to do. 

Of course, if your child showed interest in other religious traditions or even questioned God’s existence, then attempting to suppress his curiosity may only add to the allure of heterodox ideas, as we’re often drawn to that which is forbidden.  But the religious parent who values such inquiry for its own sake, as if the outcome were immaterial to the child’s spiritual well-being, is better described as logically inconsistent than “open-minded” – he behaves no less absurdly than a parent who encourages his child to seek a second opinion on whether it’s okay to accept candy from a stranger. 

It’s also worth addressing the claim that the very act of teaching religion to our children evidences our own uncertainty about what we believe. “If you’re so sure that your religion is true,” I’ve heard it asked, “then why bother teaching it to your children? Shouldn't reason, alone, enlighten them to the truth of your religion?”  This view betrays an unduly high level of faith in one’s ability to reason his way to truth.  Even the smartest of us have been convinced to do moronic things. It also assumes that there’s nothing at stake in whether or not a child chooses to embrace his parents’ religion.  This argument, as well, rests on the a priori assumption that religious beliefs are nonsense.  Once this assumption is discarded, it should be clear enough that the desire to transmit our faith to our children has nothing to do with  religious doubt, but is rather an expression of our concern for their entire well-being.

In the final analysis, the only religion these particular atheists claim to tolerate is, in fact, a secular worldview that usurps the name of one’s religion.  Let’s not be fooled.