This post by Scot McKnight has got me churning. Scot is giving some critique of Dawkins’ God Delusion. He looks at chapter 7 in which Dawkins suggests that indoctrination of our children amounts to abuse – emotional and psychological. (more stuff on the book)Quote:
“But, this spills over into the inappropriateness of indoctrinating children into a faith. He enters into sexual abuse and then considers whether or not spiritual abuse is not even more deadly than physical, sexual abuse. Here’s his point: “as horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was [he’s talking about publicized abuse by priests in Ireland], the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place” (317). He writes about Keenan Roberts, in Colorado, and his houses of hell that are designed to scare young kids into conversion.
Dawkins broaches the necessity of the government stepping in: “Children, [he’s quoting Nicholas Humphrey], have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas” and these parents have “no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge” (326). The child has the right and privilege to make up their own mind.” (read the rest here)
It seems nonsensical to even start to think about asking the question out loud: Is it wrong for us to teach our children the ideas of faith?
If you are like me you quickly realize that you don’t have everything worked out in your faith yet we think we have enough to go on to teach it to our kids. But what if what we believe is wrong?
There are some people in my life right now that would suggest that we need to do a better job of indoctrinating our children ‘in the faith’. Give them a good foundation to build their live on.
Let me tell you I will be very disappointed if my children do not choose to honor a life perspective that acknowledges God. I am also very conscious of the fact that my perspectives are going to limit my children’s ability to interact fully with the truth (God). I’d like to believe that I am trying to teach my children how to think spiritually instead of just teaching them spiritual things but even in that I can’t help let my conviction seep through. I’m okay with that but it does make me pause to think that in some way I might be significantly affecting the direction of choice that my children will take in their faith journey.
4 comments:
The really ironic thing about Dawkins' views about 'limiting kids horizons' by indoctrinating them into religion is that he's advocating exactly the same thing. He's arguing that there are some things that kids just should not be allowed to consider (sounds somewhat limiting to me...). I would guess that in Dawkins' world kids would have at least one horizon sealed off from them - that of embracing a religious worldview. So it turns out that the only difference between the 'indoctrination' that Dawkins would like to eradicate and the one that he is implicitly advocating turns out to be the content.
"I’d like to believe that I am trying to teach my children how to think spiritually instead of just teaching them spiritual things but even in that I can’t help let my conviction seep through"
Nor should you attempt to avoid letting your conviction seep through. Richard Dawkins certainly isn't (or didn't). It's not as though, as parents, we have the option of raising our kids as completely neutral and objective "containers" which will subsequently be filled with the content of their choosing. All kids will have the imprint of their parents worldview on them in some form or other, whether it's Muslim, Hindu, Christian, or atheist.
I love how you worded the statement "teach my children how to think spiritually instead of teaching them spiritual things." This is a key point.
I'm with Ryan on this one when he says "Nor should you attempt to avoid letting your conviction seep through. Richard Dawkins certainly isn't (or didn't)." In every area of life we shape/influence the direction of our children either by what we do or what we fail to do. Not allowing children to consider things is as limiting and/or defining (if not more so) than engaging them in the consideration and teaching them to be critical thinkers.
I'm constantly amazed to see people apply "reasoning" to their arguments concerning faith which they themselves would consider abhorent if applied to other aspects of life. Would Dawkins advocate the same approach in all aspects of a childs education? Taken to it's logical conclusion, his 'argument' would have children placed in a void where no intentional education would occur on any level.
Teaching a child to accept the possibility of something is not a limiting influence. Teaching a child that something absolutely does not exist is limiting and assumes a level of knowledge we cannot profess. I will teach my children what I believe concerning God. I will teach them that my beliefs continue to be shaped and molded and I will teach them that at times I have been and am wrong about things (be they spiritual matters or temporal). I will endeavour to teach them to test things, to search for truth and to not accept statements as absolute without engaging those statement critically. (And if my relationship with my father is any indication that will at times serve to frustrate me to no end .... but I believe it will best prepare them to form their own opinions and own their own beliefs)
What is humbling for me is that I might influence my children in a wrong direction that could potentially affect not just one issue of doctrine or theology but any connected spiritual issues they encounter.
I think what you've brought (Ryan and Clinton) out is just how important it is to let our children know that we may be open to correction (even from them).
It's not that I am interested in walking away from my convictions...
My thoughts do wander onto the question of human choice and how that is affected by the conditioned indoctrination that parents naturally do. Do people really have an actual choice to make when they are conditioned in certain vein?
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