May, 2007:

My friend Nick Fox is also doing a series on Dawkins at his blog.

I am trying to read all 374 pages of The God Delusion and comment along the way; Nick is taking the easy way out and commenting on various interviews with Dawkins. (joking)

Teach Your Children Well

Dawkins hypothesis of why someone like me is of the same religion as my parents involves what he calls “childhood indoctrination.”

“If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam is false, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.”

I think this hypothesis is largely disproved by the significant growth of Christianity in non-Christian nations like India and China. Pretty close to none of the Christians in those countries were born into Christianity.

In assuming that all faith is blind faith he misses the fact that many Christians have struggled, as I have, long and hard to ensure the faith of their parents is a reasonable one. Dawkins impression of Christians as indoctrinated photocopies of their former generation is accurate in one sense – there are indeed many Christians who are just that – but to label all Christians mindless twits is a great error.

I can’t help thinking here of the useful practice of the Bruderhof Anabaptist sect that sends their young adults “into the world” for a minimum of one year before they are allowed to decide whether or not to become members of the community. I read of this practice some years ago in Time or Newsweek and it has remained in my memory as a unique, risky, and useful concept. I believe it would go a long way toward combating both nominalism and the type of blind faith that is likely to fall apart at the first sniff of a challenge.

Dawkins insists that there is no such thing as a Muslim child or a Christian child, but rather that these are children of Muslim parents or Christian parents. “Children are too young to know where they stand on such issues, just as they are too young to know where they stand on economics or politics.” This is a point of some shallowness in his thinking.

The reasoning on the part of many parents goes something like: “I’m not going to bias my kids with my beliefs. I’m going to let them figure that out for themselves.” To me this is a gross mismanagement of parenting responsibility. They will be influenced one way or another and all one is conveying with this “non-influence” stand is that all the searching in life has not led them to anything they want to pass on.

I do agree that children raised under a certain belief system having all other systems withheld will be ill prepared to face the world. My children will be exposed to many viewpoints but I will certainly be passing on to them what I’ve learned along the way. As a responsible parent can I really abandon them in their intellectually formative years to make an unaided decision?

That idea of an unaided decision is a fallacy anyway because children don’t make many unaided decisions – you will either primarily aid them or they will be aided by someone who is not you, and at that point what was the point of your parenting, or your lifetime of learning for that matter?

The Dawkins Challenge – “Hey you idiot – read my book!”

“If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down… Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature. Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid even opening a book like this, which is surely a work of Satan.”

Dawkins’ ego is obviously fully evolved. The above statement he describes as “presumptuous optimism”; I am more likely to describe it as “arrogant hyperbole”, but to each his own.

Must we resort immediately to name-calling? “Dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument”? Does Dawkins really expect those he berates to read his book? On one hand his greatest wish is for these “faith-heads” to pick up his book, read it, and then become Atheists. On the other hand, if you are a “faith-head” do you want to read much further? Its like he’s saying “Hey you idiot – read my book!”

Maybe I am in a unique case. I am a member of a large and rather conservative church, but I heard about this book because my Pastor quoted from it in a couple of his sermons and encouraged me to read it as well. He’s read the whole thing and wrestled with its claims – and he made it through without becoming an Atheist. Thank God for that.

Of course Dawkins probably feels largely justified in his approach because he has been approached by numerous Christians with the same attitude, trying to convert him. I have to say that he probably is justified in that sense, but two wrongs, as they say, do not make a right, and he comes off as a bit of a fanatic. We’ll see if this continues – if it does this could be a long read.

***To read earlier parts of this series go to the Richard Dawkins page***