[asa] Dawkins, religion, and children

Pim,

I’ve gone hunting at sites both left and right, in terms of the “culture wars,” and here are those which seem most germane to the “child abuse” thing. IMO, the “virus” thing needs no further documentation–he says this in one of his books, as I indicated earlier. IMO, there’s enough smoke here to say there’s a fire underneath it. The petition seems pretty damning to me. Yes, he tried some damage control and apologized, but I think one could very reasonably interpret this as backtracking after criticism from fellow atheists. Even the part he still defends is more than enough to justify putting Dawkins in the extremist category when it comes to religion. He obviously just flat hates it, and wants in all possible ways to get rid of it, and to restrict the rights of religious parents. A lot of left-leaning sources agree with this. I’m not making it up, or giving too much credence to the other side. Why do you keep trying to defend him?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48252

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6210151
Here’s the NPR interview, with comments on “child abuse” that are milder than those below

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/print.html
(he tries to qualify his comments about “child abuse”, and confirms the “virus” part.

http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_atheismandchildabuse.htm
(The op-ed piece that is quoted here, from “Free Inquiry,” is apparently not available online)

http://telicthoughts.com/richard-dawkins-and-child-abuse/
and
http://telicthoughts.com/uk-petition-against-religious-upbringing/

The apparently definitive one:
http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/search/label/Richard%20Dawkins
Note, however, that Dawkins still agrees, apparently, with this part:
I signed it having read only the main petition: "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make it illegal to indoctrinate or define children by religion before the age of 16."
That’s less explicit than the rest of the petition, but I can imagine what Dawkins might include under the verb, “indoctrinate.” Don’t you think, Pim, that it would in his view constitute “indoctrination” for me to tell my daughter that God will judge her for her sins? I must admit, I agree with those commentators who see this as “Orwellian.” Don’t you, Pim? Something tells me that he would not limit this to telling children that they ought to strap explosives onto their backs and blow themselves up for Allah.

http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/search/label/Richard%20Dawkins
        
The DNA of Religious Faith
By DAVID P. BARASH
From “The Chronicle of Higher Education,” April 20, 2007
<Big Snip>
For Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) as well as Daniel C. Dennett (Breaking the Spell), religion is primarily the misbegotten offspring of memes that promote themselves in human minds: essentially, religion as mental virus, thus something adaptive for “itself” and not for its “victims.” Or it could be a nonadaptive byproduct of something adaptive in its own right. For example, children seem hard-wired to accept parental teaching, since such advice is likely to be fitness-enhancing ("This is good to eat,” “Don’t pet the saber-tooth"). In turn, this makes children vulnerable to whatever else they are taught ("Respect the Sabbath,” “Cover your hair") as well as downright needy when it comes to parentlike beings, leading especially to the patriarchal sky god of the Abrahamic faiths.
For Dawkins in particular, not only is religious belief maladaptive — and unjustified — but, given the susceptibility of young children to adult indoctrination, the very teaching of religion to defenseless children is a form of child abuse.

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Received on Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:19:45 -0400