Atheism and Religious Education

Atheist Malcolm Knox takes issue with fellow atheists who campaign against children be subjected to religious indoctrination. He argues that religion is fundamental to a child’s development. He himself is married to a Catholic and has children baptised in the Catholic Church. He gives the following reasons as to why, as an atheist, he supports religious education:

1. There is no such thing as no decision.

Knox recalls Richard Dawkins’ open letter to his 10-year old daughter, Juliet, in which he counselled her against belief based on “tradition, authority or revelation.” He justifies this on the grounds that children are “suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them.” Dawkins seems to be blind to the hypocrisy implicit in this position. As Knox recognises:

If this is true, surely it applies to atheism as much as to belief. To keep my children out of church would be to impose my unbelief upon them by the exact mechanism that Dawkins warns against. The real question, then, is what should be the default position that better allows children to develop their own spiritual thinking? Church or no church?

2. So they know what those buildings are.

Knox asks us to imagine “growing up in a world where the most imposing monuments of architecture are unknown places.” He asks:

Do atheists really want their children to think of churches as fearsome compounds of weirdness? I wonder if the grown children of militant atheists eventually ask their parents, “Why did you never let us learn what happens in there?” “What were you scared of?” “Why couldn’t we make our own minds up?”

3. The stories are their birthright.

Here Knox is very forthright in declaring his atheistic stance:

I don’t believe Jesus raised Lazarus, or walked on water, or fed the masses with those loaves and fishes. I don’t believe in the seven-day Creation, the Flood, the burning bush or the parting of the Red Sea.

But Knox reasons:

Whatever the religion, it doesn’t make sense to blinker children to the formative stories and rituals of their world. You might as well, if you are strongly anti-war, stop them hearing about Gallipoli. My point is that these stories don’t belong to anyone, but to everyone, and censoring them is a mirror image of superstition.

4. So they will know what rules they are breaking.

Here the reasoning is simple: “When (not if) my children rebel, it would have more meaning if they knew what they were rebelling against.”

5. So they may come home with unanswerable questions.

Knox says:

I send my children to church not to find the answers – they won’t – but to come home with more questions. With unanswerable questions they can puncture the infantile myth of their father’s omniscience.

6. Good works.

Knox comments:

Yes, Mr Hitchens, the Catholic Church has wrought untold evil, but my children’s church, in Sydney in 2010, places a constant emphasis on giving practical help to less fortunate.

7. Without it, they can never be tolerant, only indifferent.

Knox reasons:

To profess a lack of interest in religion is not to tolerate it, or to live and let live. It is to allow religious debate to fall into the hands of the forcefully intolerant.

8. Religion is not synonymous with ethics.

Knox believes that “to substitute ethics for scripture is akin to replacing food with vitamin pills.” He reasons that while religions may or may not contain ethical lessons they are much else besidees.

9. Kids don’t get indoctrinated easily.

As Knox astutely observes:

If children’s minds were putty, they would emerge into adulthood caring for the underdog, sistrusting materialism, cherishing the environment and standing up against the corrupt. These (Judeo-Christian) precepts are embedded in pretty much all of the children’s film, television and literature I’ve ever seen. Do children grow up to embrace those beliefs? The evidence suggests otherwise.

10. Because I had to.

Knox reflects that he had to go to church every Sunday when he was a child. He reflects:

I understand what the 18th-century rationalist Edmund Burke meant when he said religion, not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition. Had I an atheistic upbringing, I may well have ended up, through a contrarian temperament, religious.

As a convert from atheism myself I appreciate all the more Knox’s helpful corrective to some of the unbalanced thinking that informs much diatribe against religion on the part of militant atheists. I pray that he may come in time to grasp the essential difference between Churchianity and True Christianity.

Source: “Alter egos. Religion is fundamental to a child’s development” in Sydney Morning Herald: News Review (Nov 6-7, 2010) 18.

Posted April 29, 2011

www.facetofaceintercultural.com.au

Upon clicking 'Buy now' you will be redirected to paypal.com where you can securely and quickly complete your purchase with a few clicks.

Immediately after payment at PayPal you will be redirected to a download page which provides you instant access to your purchase.