Throughout The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins argues that not only is religious faith a delusion, but that it is downright horrific, and a danger to the civilized world. At the end of his chapter 8, Dawkins says things like:
“Christianity…teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue. You don’t have to make the case for what you believe. If somebody announces that it is part of his faith, the rest of society, whether of the same faith or another, or of none, is obliged, by ingrained custom, to ‘respect’ it without question; respect it until the day it manifests itself in a horrible massacre like the destruction of the World Trade Center, or the London or Madrid bombings.” (346)
“More generally…what is really pernicious is the practice of teaching children that faith itself is a virtue. Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument. Teaching children that unquestioned faith is a virtue primes them…to grow up into potentially lethal weapons for future jihads or crusades.” (348)
“If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers.” (348)
According to Dawkins, “faith” = blind adherence to claims you can’t prove. According to Dawkins faith is evil because it leads to suicide bombers.
The problem, of course, is none of that is correct. Dawkins very definition of faith is wrong. Whereas it is true that many religious people hold to some sort of blind indoctrination, but that kind of blind indoctrination is simply not the biblical or Christian understanding of faith. Faith cannot be caricatured as something akin to: “mental adherence to claims about the natural world that I can’t prove.” That is not biblical faith; that is stupidity and ignorance. When Dawkins laments that Christian children are not taught to question and think through their beliefs, he is ignoring, quite literally, 2,000 years of Church history that produced some of the most brilliant minds that has shaped the world.
Sure, Dawkins is right to criticize the specific instances of ignorance, stupidity, and violence, but his attempt to use those instances to condemn 2,000 years of a faith that has produced the likes of Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Galileo, Copernicus, Bach, Handel, etc. (and the list can go on and on)…is just irresponsible and, well, quite unenlightened.
In Any Case, Let’s Talk About Child Abuse!
So that is how Dawkins ended his chapter 8. Those comments act as a springboard for what he discusses in chapter 9, aptly entitled, Childhood, Abuse and the Escape from Religion. The title alone tells you one thing: the chapter is going to be a doozy.
The way Dawkins decides to argue that religion is a form of child abuse is to go to where most militant atheist go whenever they want to disparage Christianity: the inquisition. During that time in Italy, Dawkins tells us, there was a young six year old Jewish boy who was baptized by a young Catholic girl, and once the Catholic Church found out that he was baptized, he was taken away from his Jewish parents and forced to live with a Catholic family. Why? Because the Catholic authorities wrongly believed that because his parents were Jewish, that his soul would have been in danger.
Now let’s be clear, such kind of medieval antisemitism is truly heinous—Dawkins calls it heinous, because it is. The problem, though, is from that one example, Dawkins proceeds to take an incredible jump to the conclusion that all religion for all time is evil. He writes:
“This story of the Italian Inquisition and its attitude to children is particularly revealing of the religious mind, and the evils that arise specifically because it is religious.” (351)
Needless to say, there have been many, many black marks on the Church throughout history, and I will in no way excuse them. But as a Christian, neither will I conclude that all Christianity for all time is utterly evil based on a handful of black marks throughout Church history. But, apparently, that’s exactly what Dawkins does! In fact, he essentially says that those black marks that are often thrown up as charges against the Church aren’t even the worst ones. Take for instance, the recent sex scandals in the Catholic Church:
“…horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.” (356)
Please think about what Dawkins has just said. In Dawkins’ view, simply teaching Catholic doctrine is worse than priests molesting and raping children. For Dawkins, growing up Catholic is more psychologically damaging than child molestation and rape. If you really think that, I don’t know what to say, other than that is insane.
And You Thought That Was Bad…
But the thing is, Dawkins doesn’t find it so insane. In fact, he finds it so sane that he approvingly includes part of a speech by psychologist Nicholas Humphrey given at an Amnesty International meeting. When asked if Amnesty International should go after those who say truly offensive and abusive things, Humphrey answered with a resounding “No!” “Freedom of speech is too precious a freedom to be meddled with,” he said…but there was one exception:
“…moral and religious education, and especially the education a child receives at home, where parents are allowed—even expected—to determine for their children what counts as truth and falsehood, right and wrong. Children, I’ll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas—no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no God-given license to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.
“In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense, and we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.” (366-367)
Humphrey believes that parents have no rights to teach their children their religious beliefs and that society has a duty to protect children from the “moral and religious education” they might receive from their parents at home! He equates teaching children the Bible with locking children in a dungeon. To be fair to Dawkins, he does state that “such a strong statement needs qualification,” but it’s quite clear that Dawkins concurs with Humphrey’s sentiments.
Let’s be clear: these comments should be utterly chilling to anyone who knows about 20th century Communism, for this very sentiment is at the core of the Communist ideology and plan to eradicate religion from human society. This is a historical fact. Atheist Communist leaders declared the teaching of religion as a form of child abuse. Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor who suffered under both Hitler and Stalin, and who wrote the famous book, Tortured for Christ, tells us that it was Communist policy that parents were forbidden to teach their children their religious beliefs because it was considered “child abuse.” If parents were caught teaching their children about Jesus, they were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Now I doubt very much that Dawkins would ever openly advocate something like that, but let’s use his own line of argument here. If religious teachings—even in moderate form—are evil because they open the door to “religious extremism,” (and Dawkins clearly believes this), then what are we to conclude regarding statements like Humphrey’s and Dawkins’?
Logically, what should a society do to parents who “abuse” their kids? Arrest them! Logically, if teaching the Bible to one’s children is the equivalent of knocking children’s teeth out or locking them in dungeons, and knocking children’s teeth out and locking them in dungeons are considered child abuse that warrants the arrest of the parents, then what should be the punishment for teaching the Bible to one’s children? That’s right, arrest them!
I will say it again, Dawkins comments about religion are not only false, his analysis of religion as “evil” and a form of child abuse is utterly irresponsible, inflammatory and utterly dangerous. Based on Dawkins’ own words, a logical conclusion would be to arrest and imprison parents for teaching their children the Bible. Welcome to the USSR, Mr. Dawkins. Enjoy your time in Mao’s Red China. Would you like to take a tour of the Gulag, where millions of Christians were brutally killed for the crime of teaching their children about Christ?
