Is Religious Instruction Child Abuse? Is Religion the Greatest Social Evil?

That religious instruction constitutes child abuse is another theme of contemporary militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins and A. C. Grayling. Consider the competing 'truths' taught by different faith-based schools, e.g. that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is not, etc. Grayling complains that

. . . in schools all over the country these antipathetic 'truths' are being force-fed to different groups of pupils, none of whom is in a position to assess their credibility or worth. This is a serious form of child abuse. It sows the seeds of apartheids capable of resulting, in their logical conclusion, in murder and war, as history sickeningly and ceaselessly proves. There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity. Human credulity and superstition, and the need for comforting fables, will never be extirpated, so religion will always exist, at least among the uneducated. The only way to manage the dangers it presents is to confine it entirely to the private sphere, and for the public domain to be blind to it in all but one respect: that by law no one's private beliefs should be allowed to cause a nuisance or any injury to anyone else. For whenever and wherever religion manifests itself in the public arena as an organised phenomenon, it is the most Satanic of all things. (A. C. Grayling, Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, Oxford 2003, 34-35, emphasis added.)

Our dear atheists are certainly becoming militant these days, aren't they? What an intemperate and extreme statement by one who claims to be a philosopher!  Is he serious?  Is he just trying to sell books?

1. I don't think that Grayling would object to a certain amount of indoctrination in the schools, to the 'force-feeding' of historical and arithmetical truths even though the pupils are in no position to do historical research (How can one be quite sure that the Normans conquered England in 1066 and not in 1067?) or derive the truths of arithmetic from the Peano axioms and thus "assess their credibility or worth." His objection is to religious indoctrination, to the imparting of empirically unverifiable private beliefs that contradict other empirically unverifiable private beliefs and inspire contention and bloodshed. But if religion is problematic in this regard, why not also the genus of which it is a species, ideology in general?

For example, consider Grayling's belief that "There is no greater social evil than religion." This is one of Grayling's private beliefs, one so extreme that not even all militant atheists would want to maintain it in this undiluted form. Should it too be confined to the private sphere? Or does Grayling have a right to express this belief in public, in the classes he teaches and in the books and articles he writes? It is an empirically unverifiable value judgement and may cause contention and bloodshed. Is the average student capable of "assessing the credibility or worth" of this assertion? No, but Grayling has no problem with this sort of indoctrination. Why not? He might say that he can argue for his view. No doubt he can. But the theologians and philosophers of a given religion can also argue for their views, and I don't mean by citing scripture.

There appears to be a double standard at work here. Religion is to be confined to the private sphere, but ideology in general is not, even in those cases where non-religious ideology shares the very same obnoxious characteristics as religion such as empirical unverifiability and likelihood to inspire violent opposition. Communists murdered 100 million people in the 20th century.  So why do Dawkins, Grayling, and the rest single out religion as the source of social evils and not ideology in general?

Or consider any of the views Grayling expresses in the book cited, views on sex, war, guns, marriage, and numerous others. Should he be forced to keep his liberal views to himself lest he infect the minds of impressionable people? Suppose he were teaching in an elementary school and advocated some liberal idea, e.g., that a just tax code must redistribute wealth, or that there should be a ban on handguns. Should he be silenced? If not, why should those who promote religious views be silenced? Why are they not entitled to transmit their beliefs to coming generations in the same way that anarchists and socialists and communists and conservatives and whatnot are entitled to transmit their beliefs?

2. Grayling claims that the "logical conclusion" of religious instruction is "murder and war." This is a surprisingly sloppy and absurd thing for an academically trained philosopher to say, for what it comes to is the claim that religious indoctrination logically necessitates war and murder. Now that is obviously false. The most one could say is that certain forms of religious instruction, some Islamic instruction, for example, raises the probability of war and murder.

But again there is the problem of the double standard. Why focus on religion while excluding political ideology? If there is something wrong with a private school teaching Jewish beliefs, say, then why is there not something wrong with a private school teaching liberal or socialist beliefs? And what about ethical beliefs? They are empirically unverifiable and likely to cause contention. Should they too be confined to the private sphere?

Comments

[Tom Gilson]

A little empirical information goes a long way: http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=6192

[ocham]

While I was sympathetic to the other argument, I see very little that is philosophical here

>> . . . in schools all over the country these antipathetic 'truths' are being force-fed to different groups of pupils, none of whom is in a position to assess their credibility or worth.

None of them is likely to be in a position to assess the 'credibility or worth' of Shakespeare either. This statement is likely to appeal only to those who already accept the conclusion, and so is not logical.

>>This is a serious form of child abuse. It sows the seeds of apartheids capable of resulting, in their logical conclusion, in murder and war, as history sickeningly and ceaselessly proves.

'Citation needed'. The statement that it is 'a serious form of child abuse' is just ranting.

>>There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity.

More ranting.

>>Human credulity and superstition, and the need for comforting fables, will never be extirpated, so religion will always exist, at least among the uneducated.

My experience is that it is mostly among the educated that religion exists.

>>For whenever and wherever religion manifests itself in the public arena as an organised phenomenon, it is the most Satanic of all things. (A. C. Grayling, Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, Oxford 2003, 34-35, emphasis added.)

Ranting.

[Edward]

It seems as if atheists today, because of their purely scientific and materialistic worldview, have an overconfidence about their particular opinions. In other words, both theism and atheism accept the existence of the material world, so atheists attempt to place the burden of proof upon theists because they are asserting the existence of another, immaterial reality that is not sensibly apparent. Once the case is stated in this way, atheism seems to become, by default, the more reasonable and apparent position to take.

[Court]

Nice post. Militant atheists strike me as reverse dopplegangers of the militant religious types they supposedly oppose, with both being equally absurd.

In an ideal world, schools wouldn't teach any ideology at all - that would be the job of parents. But given that it's not, schools have to teach some form of "ideology". My proposal for the US would be that public schools stick to what's in the Constitution - and that would definitely exclude religion.

However, that's a fine line when it comes to teaching history - how to teach history without delving into the religious ideology that has played such a role in it?

For myself as a parent, I don't object to religious ideology being in schools to some extent (excluding outright indoctrination). My daughter will have been vaccinated against superstition long before any teacher gets a hold of her.

[Bill Vallicella]

Court,

"Reverse doppelgangers" is a nice way to put it.

A lot depends on what exactly we take ideology to be. I should post my definition. One thing is clear to me: there cannot such a thing as value-free education. After all, educational institutions by their very existence rest on the presupposition that knowledge is a value and ignorance a disvalue.

It would be interesting to hear your defense of the equation of religion with superstition.

[Court]

Oh, my. Well, since I'm going to be indoctrinating (as it were) my daughter with it, I might as well put my views to the test. I'll be brief.

Since we're talking about education / child-rearing here, I'll stick with the practical. In my view organized religion is the perpetuation of superstition; its adherents have no transmittable knowledge of what they believe, nor can they arrive at reasoned conclusions of such, or empirical ones. This does not address the truth-value of religious propositions (though I consider them dubious at best) nor the phenomenological status of believers (which is irrelevant here).

My Thai in-laws propitiate various tree and soil deities on a designated weekly day at the spirit house with incense and rice wine. We can readily see this as superstition. Not that big of a leap from there to a Catholic priest scenting his altar with incense. From tribal beliefs to the God of Aquinas, it's one long continuum, to be filed under "Interesting Legends."

Though evidently new discoveries indicate we may have a genetic predisposition to religious belief, my daughter at 18 months is more or less a tabula rasa. So while I'm all for filling her head with wonderful fanciful stories, tales of the Buddha and Christ and and Santa Claus and Cinderella and Momotaro and Phra Apai-manee, I'll not be teaching her that they're true. My hope is that by the time she hits kindergarten, she'll know the difference. Maybe too much to hope for. Guess we'll see.

[Richard Collins]

I usually agree with Grayling, but here I have to part ways. The issue is the rights of the child and the current practice of indoctrinating unwitting children is a serious travesty. To take advantage of a vulnerable person is universally seen as unethical in all our laws and ethics. We especially abhor men who club baby seals, because baby seals are innocent, vulnerable and endearingly trusting. Likewise shooting fish in a barrel or coercing sex with a minor are seen as reprehensible. The reason is that children cannot form desire or consent at the early age they are traditionally forced into faith. I will agree with A. C. that putting children in faith schools is asking for trouble in society down the road because of the inherently divisive nature of religious dogma. Furthermore, allowing children to be sequestered in sham home schools is an even bigger danger. In such a situation there is no counter balance to the insidious ideas they are force fed.

Parents make the absurd argument that they have to decide for their children because the children cannot form consent. This merely sidesteps without answering the open question we are trying to resolve: why is it ethical to force a child into a faith when they cannot consent?

Or they say, my bible tells me to raise my child in my religion. Well, yes, but don't you have to establish the bible is a valid guide to child raising first? There is a lot of hateful gruesome ideas in this book. Why should an objective observer just accept your claim?

The other point they raise is that they know in their heart that their religion is true and they believe it deeply so why wouldn't they "share" it with their children? Obviously it goes a lot deeper than just sharing. Leave aside the literally billions of other people on the planet that would take issue with their claim.

[Richard the Disambiguated]

Child abuse? If I am reading this correctly, when Messrs. Collins and Grayling state that they believe that teaching children religion is child abuse, they appear to be claiming that the state should take action to prevent it. Such a point of view is fundamentally illiberal, authoritarian, and ultimately tyrannical.

Collins and Grayling's justification for such a radical point of view essentially comes down to their belief that religion is not true, and that therefore parents who teach their children religion are doing real and tangible harm to the intellect of their children. But what is truth, and who is to judge what is true? Collins and Grayling think that they believe in the Truth, and are fully qualified to judge what is and is not True. This is a perfectly natural state of affairs. What is disturbing in men of such evident intellect is that they are so certain in the innate Truth of their beliefs that they have come to the conclusion that to spread opinions contrary to their beliefs poses a threat to society, and must therefore be stopped.

Messrs. Collins and Grayling obsess about the Truth and about rooting out its opponents, heretics, infidels and child abusers all. Opposing the Truth is unjustifiable and unacceptable; to spread ideas contrary to it is a threat to society; to teach one's children something different is child abuse; to champion a different Truth is fraud. They appear to believe, in short, that spreading false beliefs is so dangerous that it must be criminalized by the State. Theirs is a certainty that brooks no dissent. Deviation from or opposition to the Gospel according to Grayling or the Second Epistle of Collins is thus no longer an innocent difference of opinion but an evil that must be stamped out.

In their certainty Grayling and Collins thus reconceive the role of the State not as the guardian of liberty but as the guardian of Truth. Because spreading false beliefs is so dangerous to society, state intervention is necessary to prevent it. But then the State must decide what Truth to defend. Who is to make such momentous decisions? Why, Messrs. Grayling and Collins, of course!

Their arguments for tyranny is justified, as such arguments typically are, in the name of the children. The religious must be stopped from corrupting the youth, they cry! Bring forth the hemlock! To Messrs. Grayling and Collins, we are all children, in need of guidance by wise, benevolent adults--in short, by themselves.

Grayling and Collins do not believe in liberty. They believe in Truth. They are so certain in their Truth that they will do anything to preserve and extend it. It is their god, and they will not rest until it is a state religion protected by its very own Inquisition. All who truly believe in freedom and liberty, be they atheist or theist, Christian or Jew, Muslim or Hindu, rationalist or empiricist, conservative or liberal, have a duty to oppose such tyrannical, all-consuming Leviathan Truths, lest both truth and liberty perish.

[ECO]

[Grayling said] Human credulity and superstition, and the need for comforting fables, will never be extirpated, so religion will always exist

How would Grayling explain the "human credulity", "superstition" and malice behind the decades-long Eugenics movement, which was supported by biologists (mostly atheistic Darwinians) of the supposedly highest caliber? That wasn't a brainchild of religion, but of science, and explicitly naturalistic science at that. Isn't natualistic science the best kind of science, the kind that liberates from illusions? See here: http://www.inbredscience.co.cc/