I had the pleasure of going to see Richard Dawkins last night at Cal. Although our fourth-row seating probably influenced my judgement, I must say he is a truly excellent speaker.
I finished his book, The God Delusion several months ago, and I had to agree with a friend who said he was a bit "heavy-handed" in the book. So when I went to see him in person, I expected much the same. I expected him to push me, to drive his point, to be a little bit too aggressive in his delivery. To the contrary though, he is a subtle, interesting, humble, and actually quite a funny speaker.
In his speech, he engaged in "consciousness raising", which he believes worked for feminism, and which he believes will work for religion. His example was that as a result of feminist consciousness raising, if I say: "All men are created equal", you might think: "Right, but what about the women?" He wants to apply this tool to religion, so if I say: "A Catholic child", you think: "Children aren't Catholics - They're too young to know where they stand on such issues."
He believes (and I must agree) that religion in the world has brought much violence and destruction, and that the whole thing could be cut off at the stem if we all realized that our children do not share our religion. I'm simplifying and combining several of his points, but that was really the thrust of his speech. If I am a catholic, that does not make my child a catholic; I a Muslim, does not make my child a Muslim. Etc.
To drive his point home, Dawkins showed a picture that he said he found on the Christmas cover of the UK's Telegraph Newspaper. In the picture, were three children sitting side by side in costume for some Christmas event (I think they were the three wise men or some such). The idea behind the picture was to depict religious harmony. To quote his book:
At Christmas-time one year my daily newspaper, the Independent, was looking for a seasonal image and found a heart-warmingly ecumenical one at a school nativity play. The Three Wise Men were played by, as the caption glowingly said, Shadbreet (a Sikh), Musharraf (a Muslim) and Adele (a Christian), all aged four. Charming? Heart-warming? No, it is not, it is neither; it is grotesque. [...] Imagine an identical photograph, with the caption changed as follows: “Shadbreet (a Keynesian), Musharaff (a Monetarist) and Adele (a Marxist), all aged four.” Wouldn’t this be a candidate for irate letters of protest? It certainly should be.
I can't say that I'm one to really get "irate" about such things, but he really does have a point. The number of people that grow up to be the same religion as their parents is astounding. How can it be that the religion of all peoples' parents around the world just happens to be the right one for their children? It defies logic.
So Dawkins believes that if we raise consciousness in a similar way to feminism, and find a way to allow children to be nontheists until they are old enough to make such decisions on their own, we might just be able to beat this religion thing. We might be able to curb religious violence by allowing children to make their own choices.
It could work, and I for one am officially convinced that I will not let people speak of religious children.
"So Dawkins believes that if we raise consciousness in a similar way to feminism, and find a way to allow children to be nontheists until they are old enough to make such decisions on their own, we might just be able to beat this religion thing. We might be able to curb religious violence by allowing children to make their own choices."
I think this is true. I also think that it is a pretty ludicrous idea. The memetic structure of (most) religion simply does NOT allow an individual to raise their child as a nontheist. Memes is memes, they're going to be propagated, and the most important route of propagation for memes/culture/values is that from parent to child.
Also, speaking from my own experience, I was raised with no expectation of faith or religion. I was brought to church, but was never expected or required to take any of it seriously. For most of my childhood, my worldview came from my scientifically minded father. That all changed when I went to youth group camp when I was 12, at a time in my life when I was pretty vulnerable, and (in the harsh light of hindsight) coerced into a choice that I shouldn't have been asked to make at the time. For the next 10 years I was a pretty fundamentalish Christian- as a direct result of being raised in the sort of memetic vacuum that I see in your post.
This is a pretty deep subject for blog comments- also something that you and I haven't discussed for a decade or so. I know you went through your own experience at Forest Home, and we never really talked about it. How does that inform your interpretation of Dawkins' argument?
A heavy blog comment indeed, and I apologize for my sluggishness in my reply, but now that you've let my stint as a "fundamentalish Christian" out of the bag, I had better say something.
Dawkins addresses the memes thing in his book, but I can't remember exactly what he said. I'll have to re-read it when I get home. You're right though, the parent to child flow of ideals is a very important thing, and I completely agree that this is a very fragile line that we're toeing.
Where does one draw the line when it comes to the things YOU teach YOUR child? What's OK to teach them in good conscience? If you are a believer in Christ our savior, then clearly you will have a strong desire to teach your child about it, especially if you believe that not doing so will spell fire and brimstone in their future.
For my part, I believe that it's fine (though dangerous) to be a theist of one kind or another, but when it comes to raising your child, it's important to have perspective, and to remember that it's YOUR belief, and that your child will one day be old enough to make their own decisions. Rather than saying, "Christ died for your sins," you might say something like, "Our congregation believes that Christ died for your sins". The important thing to remember is not exactly that it's important not to allow our ideas to flow to our children, but rather that our children do not have religion in their lives in the same way that we do, and are not religious in the same kind of sophisticated way that we are.
All that said, this is still a matter that I am thinking about, so I can't say I have a lot of sophisticated ideas on it just yet. I'm still sort of in the brainstorming stage.
Regarding Forst Home, that was a lot of fun, wasn't it? I definitely enjoyed myself, and I definitely thought about having religion in my life for a long time to come, but then, one day, it dawned on me that I was defrauding myself, and that I was lying. When it came to faith, I realized that I just couldn't believe in something for which there was no evidence, and which really just didn't seem to exist.
Since that point, my religion has been a lack of religion, and I have been becoming more and more nontheistic ever since. It took me a while to be able to say, "There is no god. I know it", but now that I'm at that point, I have to say, it's a comfy place to be.
In any case, we should talk Forest Home. It'd be a fruitful conversation, to say the least.
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