Dawkins in Time Magazine: Stop indoctrinating children with religion

March 1, 2015 • 3:20 pm

This piece by Richard Dawkins appeared in the online Time Magazine ten days ago, and I think it’s a great sign that a mainline media venue, one not known for criticizing religion, publishes something so “strident.”

The essay, appearing in the “Religion” section, is called “Dawkins: Don’t force your religious opinions on your children.” If you’ve read Richard’s other pieces, or just The God Delusion, you’ll know of his view that forcing religion down the throats of children constitutes child abuse. In general I agree, although the word “abuse” might be misleading, since not all such brainwashing produces serious harm. But all such brainwashing certainly weakens the organs of reason. On this ground he objects to using terms like “Muslim child” or “Jewish child,” for children are forced to bear those labels and didn’t chose their beliefs.

Just a quote or two for the uninitiated:

Would you ever speak of a four-year-old’s political beliefs? Hannah is a socialist four-year-old, Mark a conservative. Who would ever dream of saying such a thing? What would you say if you read a demographic article which said something like this: “One in every three children born today is a Kantian Neo-platonist child. If the birth rate trends continue, Existentialist Positivists will be outnumbered by 2030.” Never mind the nonsensical names of philosophical schools of thought I just invented. I deliberately chose surreal names so as not to distract from the real point. Religion is the one exception we all make to the rule: don’t label children with the opinions of their parents.

And if you want to make an exception for the opinions we call religious, and claim that it is any less preposterous to speak of “Christian children” or “Muslim children”, you’d better have a good argument up your sleeve.

After raising this rhetorical—and deeply meaningful—question, Dawkins bats away several potential objections, including these: “But we label children by their nationality, don’t we?” And “Religious labeling children is good because it helps us identify their culture.”  I’ll let you read Dawkins’s answers for yourself.

At the end, he analogizes recognizing the invidious nature of religious labels with feminists’ recognition and identification of demeaning sexist labels:

Feminists have successfully raised our consciousness about sex-biased language. Nobody nowadays talks about “one man one vote,” or “the rights of man.” The use of “man” in such a context raises immediate hackles. Even those who use sexist language know they are doing it, may even do it deliberately to annoy. The point is that our consciousness has been raised. Our language has changed because we have become aware of hidden assumptions that we previously overlooked.

Let us all raise our consciousness, and the consciousness of society, about the religious labeling of children. Let’s all mind our religious language just as we have learned to over sexist language. “Catholic child,” “Muslim child,” “Hindu child,” “Mormon child” — all such phrases should make us cringe. Whenever you hear somebody speak of a “Catholic child,” stop them in their tracks: There’s no such thing as a Catholic child. Would you speak of a “Postmodernist child” or a “States Rights child”? What you meant to say was “child of Catholic parents.” And the same for “Muslim” child etc.

44 thoughts on “Dawkins in Time Magazine: Stop indoctrinating children with religion”

  2. I hope this article starts a movement and people become aware that this is a problem. It’s not always direct abuse, but it is brainwashing when a child is brought up worshipping something or someone they cannot understand. Worse, it teaches them to not think for themselves in certain circumstances, and to automatically accept the Argument from Authority.

    1. In the view of some of my in-laws, kids have no business thinking for themselves.

  3. Remember hearing Richard Dawkins talk about this before and it is good that he does. It wakes us up to the fact the majority of humans get their religion automatically, almost like getting your social security card.

    The indoctrination at the earliest possible age is the life blood of religion. Brainwashed early and often is the program. Baptize before they can walk or even crawl. And nobody thinks this is a little odd or strange – not for religion.

  6. A point well made.
    I can remember some time ago in Australia about a similar unwarranted and unjustified branding; the ‘disabled’. A comprehensive community awareness and public education campaign sought to get people to focus on the ‘person’ first and the ‘disability’ second. They were ‘people with a disability’ and not simply ‘the disabled’. He/She was a ‘person’ with a disability not simply a ‘disabled person’.

    I have to say the strategy was largely successful in bringing to the forefront of people’s consciousness and awareness of the implications of this atrocious, indifferent labelling.

    1. I have to say that I dislike this sort of thing. Replacing “disabled” with “person with a disability” is fine if you want to do it, but there’s an implied moral argument that you MUST do it or be considered impolite or even bigoted. I also find it condescending to the disabled, and overly euphemistic.

    2. I have often found that kind of example a form of correct-speak. When a pressure group starts pushing a socially coerced language change, it does NOT change underlying perceptions, just the word acquires the same meaning as the old word. It’s just a semantic (and frequently annoying) game of cards. You need to use the correct term du jour.

      I’m not talking about trying to eliminate actual offensive terms but terms that are legitimate but have lost their social correctness

      [I am reminded of a line from the satire cartoon ‘King of the Hill’ where the boy tries to pretend to be mentally disabled to get easier classes. His mother declares ‘I don’t care how special Bobby is, I’ll love him anyway.’]

      1. If it’s true the underlying perception is not changed, I think there is value in the civility of correct speak. And I don’t think the effort is without effect on consciousness: I do think the label “African-American” changed the way I think, immediately, when I first heard it twenty-odd years ago. Everyone’s mileage is going to vary, I suppose, but I think awareness of one’s privilege, and the elevation of the standing of members of a given class or minority group, can only be positive.

        1. Artificial manipulation of language is close to a joke. It says much more about the speaker identifying with a political/social circle than anything real.

          ‘African American’ as a phrase has done nothing to change reality. To the bigot, the new word carries the same imagery as the old word, to anyone else it’s just status issue. It also basically euphemistic in nature because a white person, or Arab from Africa is not classified as ‘African American’ but a black person from the Caribbean is.

          You don’t elevate people by creating euphemistic terminology. That is really a form of condescension.

          [I’ve heard ‘white privilege’ referred to as the secular ‘original sin’. You’re born with it, you cannot change it, but you need to be always agonizing and repenting for it.]

          1. Maybe so. Shall we not dispense with epithets then? Or dispense entirely with race or ethnicity (or gender sexual orientation or physical ability etc.) as a part of identity? I’m not sure where the line is, or what the ethical strategy would be, if “African-American” or “Arab-American” are inadequate. Does marginalizing the use of the “n-word” have no value, for example, if doing so doesn’t “change perceptions,” even if it is superficially polite or respectful?

          3. In graduate school, someone scratched out the “colored paper” sign on a recycling bin and wrote “paper of color.” It says something about the late 80’s/early 90’s that I couldn’t be sure whether that was a joke – though of course I assume it was. For 25 years, I have been reminded of that moment every time I see or hear “colored paper.”

            Some of the early attempts at PCization were clumsy and did not stick: “otherly-,” “differently-” and “-challenged” are relics for good reason.

  7. When I first read about this issue in “The God Delusion” a number of years back, I was struck how my consciousness was not elevated to pay attention to the problem. Since then I cringe whenever I hear a child labeled with a religion, though I’ve only encountered it in the media, never in a personal experience. I’m pleased that Time felt it important enough to publish. Having the essay appear in the religious section is really important since I imagine most people who read that section are indeed religious. Go get ’em Dr. Dawkins!!!

  8. I applaud Richard Dawkins and what he doing
    But it’s part of all religions modus operandi as to the brainwashing of children it’s not just something that they do on a whim it’s something that’s mandated by the leaders of the church. You go to any church in this country and they have daycares,
    and all kinds of rituals to welcome the new fetus into the religion. Baptism comes to mind, no child has a choice in whether not he or she is baptized, why not move the baptism ritual to the age of 18?
    .when the children are four or five years old they have special Sunday classes where they hand them comic books and coloring books with all the religious heroes.and you’ve all probably noticed now that the church organist has now been replaced with a hip rock ‘n roll band singing Christian rock songs, which is to appeal to the preteen and teenagers of the congregation.
    I think Jerry has pointed out that once kids leave the house and go to college a lot of them stop practicing their parents religion which we know is a good thing. They start to think for themselves. But to counter this phenomenon, we see that the religions now have private Christian schools all the way through college. Where Jerry has pointed out in those schools they don’t teach evolution at all.
    (Sam Harris has pointed out that there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim math -but you would not know that if you get all your science from just Christian teachers who are paid by a church to teach) )but if your parents only give you the choice of going to a private Christian school you are not going to learn about evolution and you certainly won’t hear any lectures by Jerry. legally there is nothing we can do about this but be aware of it.
    I can’t remember where I’ve heard this from but I read that religious indoctrination of children should be categorized as a sort of thought crime , and that children should not be even exposed to religion until age 13 or later and have had a chance to understand it to look at all the different types of religions and to see what it’s like not to have any religion and then make a choice based on their thoughts
    But that would require a law from Congress and we know this Congress can’t agree on if the earth is 6000 years old or if our ancestors Played with dinosaurs, and that the universe was created by a invisible man in the sky in seven days.
    I do not see the religious indoctrination of children stopping anytime soon.

    1. I argued this point with a believer once, and it’s interesting that she as much as said it, yet was unable to appreciate its implication: “But if you don’t give children faith before a certain age, they’ll never get it!” To which I replied “Exactly!”

      Children are credulous, programmed by our evolution to trust adults. And they love to play pretend, which is super useful in faith: I happened upon a person reading the the bible at a bus stop, by the looks of it somewhere in the middle of the Old Testament. Who knows what she was thinking or getting out of it – perhaps she was an atheist arming herself as so many of us do – but I was reminded that there is just no way a believing person gets the value out of that book they pretend to do: the writing is dense and obtuse, and the stories lack the structure required to deliver the moral or lesson. When the clothes have no emperor, you have to know someone is faking it, and likely doesn’t know everyone else is faking it, too.

      1. Christians of the species ‘Anabaptist’ require their young adherents to be ‘re-baptized’ as adults, the idea being that they will be better able to understand the tenets of Anabaptist faith and the nature of their commitment to it. This practice at least gives a person with developed reason a chance to say ‘no.’

        1. I wonder how many Anabaptists “choose” to become Aintnobaptist? I doubt it’s any more or less than do among Justabaptist and Plainolebaptist folk.

  9. KJV Proverbs 13:24

    “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”

    Encouraging parents to beat their children? Sounds abusive to me.

    In the catholic neighborhood I grew up in, all the parents beat their kids. It was institutional, pervasive abuse, verbal and physical.

    And the whole “god reads your mind” attempt at thought control I find quite sinister. Talking to a kid about how they will go to hell is just cruel. There’s no excuse for this as far as I’m concerned.

  10. I often adopt an opposite point of view: to be a Catholic (or a Muslim, etc.) you kinda have to be a child.

  12. I am in three minds.
    1. This is obviously right, and seems like it might actually persuade those who are are “moderate” on religion.
    2. This has no chance. Parents are way way way too committed to passing on the virus. Religions are successful viruses because they protect the vector at all times.
    3 It’s kinda useful to have a label for the virus one suffers from.

    1. Regarding #2: no one would expect a mass ‘conversion’ of social habits here, but the important thing is to get the idea out in the mainstream media and try to keep it going. There are going go be a few who will listen immediately, and more who might start talking about it, and eventually the idea could gain traction.

  13. Yep. A certainty that apparently scares the (devil?) out of religionists is that they all realize that if they postponed trying to indoctrinate their kiddies until they were 21, in a generation everyone would be atheists.

  14. I often think it’s comical
    How Nature always does contrive
    That every boy and every gal
    That’s born into the world alive
    Is either a little Liberal
    Or else a little Conservative!

    W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe

  15. I went to Catholic school for 8rys and religion was in the classroom and on Sunday morning.I never remember one time at lunch or recess talking about God Or Mary or anything else like it.Now this was catholic school.Don’t know about other Christian religions maybe they brought God up all the time think they may have.Well i never felt any harm mostly just boredom.

    1. I was sent to Catholic schools from Grade 2 to Grade 13 (Ontario, mid-70s to early 80s). There was a crucifix with a bleeding Christ in every classroom, every day began with a prayer over the PA system, we had theology classes, attendance at school masses was mandatory and we had yearly “retreats” where the entire class was forced to go to a monastery and do god stuff all day.

  16. I don’t think Dawkins’s analogy tracks. I don’t think it tracks because he has failed to understand the nature of many people’s religious beliefs. Most people understand that their political opinion exists along a spectrum of different-by-degree beliefs. In a word, they actually recognize that it is an opinion, and that it is in large measure a product of their experience. Their religious beliefs, on the other hand, are considered to be a description of reality. If given their standards of evidence, one could almost call it a scientific description. Why would they not tell their children that God exists, if they really think he does? That is, if they think a description of reality would be incomplete without Him? We should expect them to tell their children that fire is hot–and that hell is too, if it’s just as real.

    Please note, I think Dawkins is wrong in a strategic sense. That is, I don’t think it will make much secular headway to liken religious beliefs to political ones. He is, of course, right to notice that these are, after all, just ideas, and rather terrible ones at that.

    1. The nature of people’s religious beliefs aren’t different from the nature of political beliefs. Your distinction doesn’t wash, because political beliefs are often considered to be a description of reality, albeit in the future and with some assumptions unstated. Republicans mostly have a different view of human nature than Democrats, and the whole point of proposing different political systems is because you’ll think they work better than the alternatives, or are more morally justified.

      Conversely, a lot of religious people consider their views as opinions based on personal experience, and not just in the “I had a revelation” sense. And when you get down to it, political beliefs and religious beliefs aren’t treated any differently by the brain.

      I think comparing political and religious beliefs is a strong tactic, simply because they have a huge amount in common. Both concern weighty matters of ethics, human nature, and social organization, both are complex cultural constructs designed to make sense of the world and guide large-scale social actions in it, both inspire strong emotion and commitment among believers, both are based on beliefs that are often poorly supported by evidence or observation (sometimes because of practical problems studying them scientifically), and both of them have descriptive and prescriptive elements, which is why they overlap so much. It’s as apt a comparison as comparing religion with quack medicine or superstitions.

  17. If only the delusional didn’t believe that lack of belief meant an eternity in hell-fire. They must feel compelled to protect their children from that, by whatever means their parents used to protect them. They can’t learn otherwise. It’s not allowed. It would risk an eternity in hell-fire.

    But, kids do reach an age when they’ll listen better to anyone who isn’t their parent, and that’s where this will really help.

  18. “Nobody nowadays talks about… “the rights of man.””

    Unless you are a Scientologist. As recently as this week they ran an advert in the UK weekly magazine the New Statesman with exactly this type of wording.

  19. if you want to make an exception for the opinions we call religious, and claim that it is any less preposterous to speak of “Christian children” or “Muslim children”, you’d better have a good argument up your sleeve.

    Sadly, I think Dawkins is wrong here – at least when we’re talking 3+ year old children (I would probably agree that it makes no sense to label the 0-2 year olds religious). The reason religious labeling is more apt than political labeling is because (some) people heavily indoctrinate their children in ther religious ideology to the point where that child can honestly be labeled a believer; it is very rare for people to do a similar thing with politics. A four year old in a religious family will likely have attended sunday school every week since they could walk and talk. They will know who Jesus and God is, and a bunch of stories about them, and they will tell you they believe. Unless you want to claim such a person can’t believe what they say they believe because of (im)maturity, then I think it’s pretty honest to label them a believer.

    The fact that religious labels are often more appropriate for children than political labels is something that should make us stop, think, and possibly stop indorctrinating our children. If you think it would be immoral to force your kid to learn and repeat either communist or capitalist economic principles as an hour-long weekly exercise (with shorter daily reinforcements of the same), then you shouldn’t be doing a similar indoctrination for religious principles either.

    1. Yes, but starting real indoctrination at such an early age is rather exceptional in modern societies where education is predominantly secular. It takes real effort to turn an atheist child into a religious child, it’s not just a matter of ticking a box on the birth registration form.

  20. “Let us all raise our consciousness, and the consciousness of society, about the religious labeling of children”

    Is this labeling the problem or religious indoctrination? And what’s the point of this awareness?

    This looks like some political correctness (censorship). I don’t like it.

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