Doubt is a Higher Calling

I ran across an interesting discussion at Michael Krahn’s blog on the God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. (Krahn did a ping on my piece of religion below.) The God Delusion has created quite a stir, and Dawkins comes under legitimate fire for minimizing the complexity of the religious experience and failing to give proper creds to smart people who are also religious. But he makes one salient point that I pressed Krahn on – he’s dealt with it somewhat, but not thoroughly. It has to do with indoctrination of youth.

That’s where I become a passenger on Dawkins’ train. When I was a kid my head was filled with stories of demons and angels. I thought I was being followed around by an angel, and was asked to give him a name. (Norman, OK?) My every thought was monitored, every activity recorded for later review. This became especially troublesome as I entered my teen years. My normal drives were considered sinful, and I spent a number of years guilt-ridden and estranged from “Holy Mother Church” for perfectly normal behavior.

It’s a question of power. I was a kid with a blank slate. They had the obligation to nurture me, to feed my brain, and instead they chose to use that power to control my thoughts, to make me one of them. I was never given a choice on the matter of religious faith. Dawkins considers this a form a child abuse. I mildly agree, as my case was not the norm, and most kids were not treated in such an extreme manner. Just the Catholics and the fundamentalists.

Here’s Krahn on the subject:

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?

Touchy area, I confess. I spent my kids’ early years exposing them to the Catholic faith, as I was programmed to do. But when the bolt of lightening knocked me off my horse, when I stopped attending Church, my kids followed. Theirs was an ideal situation – they were free to choose. They had seen both, and chose the non-religious path.

But influence them I did. I could not help it. I was their Dad, they looked to me for guidance. When they saw it was OK to doubt, their own doubt shone forth.

What would have happened had I continued to insist that they follow the Catholic faith? I don’t know. I suppose they would be conflicted. I hope they would be thoughtful.

What’s the ideal here? Krahn pretty much admits he’s going to teach his kids Christianity as a default belief system. He’s afraid that if he is not their primary influence, them someone else will be. That’s the Catch 22 – kids are susceptible to manipulation. If a parent simply steps back, God only knows who will step in. One of my daughters flirted, along with some of her friends, with an influential pastor of an evangelical church. I was worried – faith was one thing, fundamentalism another. I regard it as a form of mental illness. I contacted the pastor, we discussed his behavior, my daughter was aware of my contact, he backed off, my daughter escaped.

That’s how I remember it. She might tell me different.

Here’s a proposal I regard as reasonable: Step back. Teach comparative belief systems, which would include agnosticism and atheism alongside the major faiths. People regard atheists as morally deficient – we’ve had many holding public office, perhaps even the one holding the highest office right now. But they cannot be so publicly. An atheist cannot be elected to high office. If we get ‘em when they are young, help them understand that non-belief and doubt are honest and honorable life paths, perhaps religion will lose some of its swagger.

As it is now, religion is confounded with good. Christopher Hitchens made the statement, which I cannot cite, that he had little respect for people who proudly called themselves sheep. Religion is not a good commodity by definition. Much of what it does for the human condition is positive. I know people whose lives have been turned around by a religious experience. Where before they were lacking direction and self destructive, religion put them on a different path, made them annoying, but better overall. Religion is not without merit.

But children should know all of it, the good and the bad together. If Dawkins is right, we are genetically bred to obey higher authorities – it’s how we survived. He’s preaching against himself. Kids are going to follow something. Regarding religion, it is better to give them the high view, to let them see all of it, and to expose them to those of us who believe in being good for its own sake, and not for some eternal reward.

And introduce them to the power of doubt. It’s been a major force in human advancement.