Bright Pride?

The Brights – a united community of non-believers – have arrived! But are they an equality movement, or something quite different indeed?

In 2003, Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell founded a new social movement intended at connecting and galvanising non-religious people into uniting the self-styled “community of reason”. Hoping to borrow from the successes of the Gay movement, Geisert decided to coin a new meaning to an existing word that could be used as an umbrella term to describe the entire community of unbelief: that word was ‘bright’. Thus, the Brights Movement was founded.

Before discussing this matter any further, it may be necessary to dispel a misconception about myself. Some bloggers, seeing the extent to which I am willing to defend Young Earth Creationists, assume some pro-religious or Christian evangelist agenda. To be sure, I am pro-religious, and indeed multi-religious (I identify five religions for myself), but the value that compels me to defend the Creationists is not religious solidarity but my firm commitment to freedom of belief. I may have few beliefs in common with the Brights Movement (or, for that matter, the Creationists) but I defend to the death their right to believe in whatever they choose to believe.

Indeed, if the Brights Movement were only concerned with “Athiest Pride”, I would have no issues with them whatsoever, and would be delighted to support them. I have long suggested that even if one does not believe in God, styling oneself as an atheist is choosing to identify by what one opposes, rather than what one supports, which in the game of identity politics is often asking for trouble. In this regard, I wholeheartedly support the Brights goal to “promote public understanding and acknowledgment of the naturalistic worldview, which is free of supernatural and mystical elements” – this shift away from non-believers identifying as “godless” and towards identifying as believers in a naturalistic or materialistic view of reality is, I believe, very healthy indeed.

So where is the problem? Well, an initial problem is that the choice of the word “Bright” as a label was either monstrously naïve or hopelessly arrogant, a point that forms part of a comprehensive critique about the choice of word by Chris Mooney, who in principle should fit snugly under the Bright umbrella. When atheists already have a PR problem in that some people (erroneously) perceive them as ‘all reason and no emotion’, styling oneself as “Bright” is a political own goal.

Perhaps a wider problem is the Brights movement use of evolutionary theoretician and anti-religious firebrand Richard Dawkins as a major spokesperson. I do not deny that with his personal fame and influence, Dawkins is a potential asset to the Brights, but remembering that a major goal of the movement is to “educate society toward accepting the full and equitable civic participation of all such people” a certain amount of caution is required in who you allow to publicly endorse your group. If you wish to be recognised as an equality movement, like the Gay movement the Brights founders sought to emulate, you cannot afford to be perceived as bigots, and having Dawkins in a prominent position invites this interpretation.

Since at this point we will be switching from examining the goals of the Brights movement to examining Dawkins’ personal agenda, I feel it is necessary to underline that the community of unbelief holds Dawkins in high esteem and has no reservations about being connected to him. Witness the recent decision by Doctor Who reviver Russell T. Davies to feature Dawkins on his show. Davies announced about Dawkins visit to the Doctor Who sets: “People were falling at his feet… We've had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping.” Furthermore, on the specific importance of Dawkins as a figure, Davies declared: “He has brought atheism proudly out of the closet!” As a prominent member of the Gay community, this claim by Davies can be seen as more than just an endorsement of Dawkins agenda, but also (perhaps) as a validation of the underlying claim of the Brights to be a liberation movement parallel to the earlier Gay movement.

Put another way, the fact that Davies makes a direct parallel between what it means to come out of the closet as a Gay person and what it means to come out of the closet as an atheist seems to reaffirm the need for an equality drive for non-believers. This is a rather extreme comparison, however, as the extent of persecution against the Gay community at the time the Gay movement accelerated (which is often credited to the Stonewall riots of 1969) was tangible – homosexuality was officially a mental illness, for instance, and many Gay people were beaten or even killed by homophobic bigots. It is considerably less clear that the modern atheist suffers so greatly, especially when one looks at the financial and social success of prominent atheists such as Davies (recent recipient of an OBE from the Queen) or Dawkins (who lives in palatial luxury at Oxford university, one of the most prestigious universities in the world).

Returning to the issue of the logic of unequivocally supporting Dawkins as a figurehead, let us take a brief aside to examine Dawkins personal agenda. Since 1976, Dawkins has published books which alongside perfectly reasonable scientific ideas include open prejudice against religion and religious practitioners. This is less evident in his middle work (the finest of his books, in my opinion), but it re-emerges on centre stage with the publication of The God Delusion in 2006. Even the title of this book encodes prejudice, inviting the interpretation that Dawkins believes all theists are deluded, but to remove any ambiguity here, Dawkins expressly develops this idea within his text, dressing up his bigotry as being scientifically validated.

The problem with The God Delusion is that it goes far beyond the remit of the equality movement the Brights aim to be, and tips over into intolerance. Dawkins claims the book contains four “consciousness raising” ideas. Two of these – that atheists can be happy, balanced, moral and intellectually fulfilled, and that atheists should be proud because atheism is evidence of a healthy independent mind – are more or less in line with the Brights movements hope of equality. A third idea, that theories of natural selection are superior to a “God hypothesis” in explaining the living world and the cosmos, badly confuses metaphysical issues and scientific issues, and falls into a classic teleological trap, but is somewhat beyond the scope of our discussion today. Suffice it to say that trying to apply God in a solely epistemological (knowledge-based) role not only misses what God means to most theists, it steps far beyond testable claims, and thus out of modern science entirely.

So the problem with Dawkins’ agenda (and thus with the Brights movement in so much as it shares this agenda to some unspecified extent) lies in his fourth “consciousness raising” idea, which is that Children should not be labeled by their parent’s religion, and that terms like “Catholic child” or “Muslim child” should make us flinch. This idea is developed ultimately into the principle that raising children in a religious tradition can be seen as a kind of ‘mental abuse’ – Dawkins attacks the Amish (who are greatly respected by many people as an example of a self-sufficient religious community) by claiming that society is in effect guilty of allowing the Amish to abuse their children. Dawkins argument is strident: “Isn’t it a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about?”

It is precisely in this attack on religious freedom that Dawkins goes too far, exceeding the boundaries of equality for atheists, and tipping into anti-religious bigotry. Usually when arguing against this thread, I take the impersonal moral high ground by pointing out that what Dawkins is proposing is widespread violation of human rights that the Western world usually enshrines as the very basis of the modern notion of freedom. An argument of this kind can be found in my piece on the Ethics of Metaphysics, which is recommended reading for exploring this issue more fully. In brief, our societies agreed after the terrible religious abuses conducted in World War II that we would honour and respect freedom of belief, and that parents would be allowed to choose how their children would be educated: any argument that runs contrary to this (such as the one advanced by Dawkins) is thus advocating human rights violations.

Today, however, I’d like to respond to this claim on a more personal level. Dawkins advocates, in effect, that children should be “protected” from religion until they are age eighteen, when they have the intellectual capacity to handle such issues. This is a viewpoint which is terribly seductive to people who do not belong to a religious tradition, or who have made a forcible break from one, and indeed I had at least one guest here on my blog who attempted to expand this thought in a reasonable and entirely unprejudiced fashion. The logic of this argument rests on the prioritising of personal autonomy – when one’s ethical values place individual freedom in especially high esteem, and one has little experience of religious traditions (or a confused idea about them), it seems logical to support Dawkins’ viewpoint that children should only be introduced to religion when they come of age.

To find what is wrong with this idea, it is necessary to actually appreciate what it means to be raised in a religious tradition. A parent – whatever their beliefs – teaches their children how to behave, which is to say, the parent passes their ethics on to the children. In terms of explaining those ethics, the parent will draw upon their own personal metaphysics (their untestable beliefs) – this is equally true for religious parents as for non-religious parents, since the justification of ethics cannot avoid a metaphysical component. Since the very essence of a religious tradition is its metaphysical and ethical beliefs, it is quite impossible for a parent to isolate their children from their own religion – the idea that this is possible comes from the non-believers misconception that religion is something that can be set aside, like a hobby that you never mention to your friends. But the devout religious parent can no more set aside their religion in raising their child than the atheist can set aside their disbelief in God: it is essential to their very identity.

This does not mean that religious parents cannot respect their children’s choice if they decide to break away from the family religion, nor that there are not parents on the fringes of religious practice who are able to compartmentalise their religious background. What I am expressly stating is that when a particular religious tradition constitutes a quintessential part of who you are, you cannot help but pass some part of this experience onto your children, and neither should you be expected to try to resist this outcome.

Dawkins tries to argue that religious identity should be like political identity – something that only comes into play in adulthood. But religious identity is far more like national identity – something that forms part of the unavoidable background of existence and which cannot be opted out of until maturity. Just as you cannot realistically set aside the fact that you were born in the USA, or the UK, or wherever, in terms of how this affects the sense of who you are as an American, or a Brit, or whatever (although you can in adulthood change this identity by emigrating), you cannot set aside the religion you were born into because your parents, as the people who most influence your upbringing, quite naturally pass aspects of their religious identity on to you just as they pass aspects of their national identity on to you. This is not ‘mental abuse’, as Dawkins contends, it is the very nature of parenting.

Now at a deeply personal level, what offends me about Dawkins argument here is that by equating raising a child in a religious tradition to mental abuse, he is simultaneously insulting my childhood and the memory of my parents (something I expect other people from religious backgrounds to fully appreciate). He insults my parents by intimating they were bad people to not wait until adulthood to introduce me to their religion (putting aside the point that this would have been entirely impossible), yet sharing in the religious experiences of my parents was one of the most wonderful aspects of my youth. Even though I later drifted away from Christianity (only to later – and much to my surprise – drift back to it, as one religion among many that I identify for myself), I never resented my parents for sharing the foundations of their spirituality with me, because that experience gave me a tremendous head start on the road we all must walk to find our own personal spiritual identity. 

Furthermore, to suggest that religion was the primary source of abuse in my childhood is doubly insulting to me, since as a teenager I was bullied by atheist children (that is, children raised by atheist parents who naturally adopted some of their parent’s atheist beliefs) because of my Christian beliefs. This is the only aspect of growing up in a religious tradition which brings a negative slant to my experience, since my Christianity was a source of considerable personal and spiritual joy for me – and I never, under any circumstances, tried to push my religious beliefs onto other people, but simply tried to live up to the example set by Jesus to “love one another”.

Now of course, there is an irony here in that by admitting to this backstory I expose myself as a distorted mirror image of Dawkins, but since I contend that one cannot be expected to wholly eliminate metaphysical bias on subjects such as this, I hope that by exposing my bias it will allow for more fruitful debate. (I also wish to explain why previously it has been difficult for me to write about Dawkins’ anti-religious views without becoming angry). Despite having a pro-religious bias, I am thoroughly open to discussion on this subject, and also staunchly in support of the non-believers right to their unbelief.

Finally, when people such as Dawkins or, even more distressingly, my atheist friends, express a view that children should be isolated from religion until adulthood, I am personally horrified because this is a viewpoint that, seen from my perspective, effectively wishes that I did not exist. My Christian upbringing is a part of who I am – it is not something about which I have regrets, and I never did, even when in my late 20s I was as far from Christian metaphysics as any atheist. I am in fact tremendously touched by the extent with which my parents shared their spirituality with me: it helped make me the person I am today.

Dawkins says you should shudder at the idea of a ‘Muslim child’ or a ‘Christian child’ – well I was a Christian child, and I am horrified at the suggestion that you should have found me a source of disgust. Christianity was a wholly positive experience for me as a child – except in so much as it was a reason for other children to persecute me.

This, then, is the problem with the Brights movement unequivocal employment of Dawkins as a figurehead: along with his message of “Atheist Pride”, Dawkins also presents a rather horrifying anti-religious bigotry, something that Davies does nothing to dismiss in his newspaper interview regarding the Dawkins guest spot on Doctor Who, thus suggesting solidarity on this issue. But the Brights movement cannot be an equality movement if any part of its goals concerns denial of freedom of belief to others.

Part of the reason that atheism has acquired a bad name for itself is that the “New Atheist” movement of the 1990s and 2000s is far from the first time atheists have tried to unify, and non-believers have not demonstrated much of a willingness to address this historical source of anti-atheist sentiment. It is not early twentieth century atheists, such as Bertrand Russell, or Max Weber (who famously accused anyone who could maintain religious views of either naivety or intellectual dishonesty) that are the problem, nor the sad failure of the Humanist movements which followed, but totalitarian political systems such as Stalin’s interpretation of Marxism, which dominated certain countries in the wake of World War II.

By adopting and centralising a particular atheist belief, and using this as the basis to deny religious freedom and viciously abuse believers for decades, Marxist extremism savagely tarnished unbelief’s image. Atheist bigots such as Christopher Hitchens do nothing to aid this situation when they try to explain why the atheist Marxists don’t reflect badly on atheism since they were really a religion (at least in his view), instead of admitting to the fact that any belief system – religious or non-religious – becomes a horror when it tips into totalitarianism.

The Brights movement represents a minority, collecting together some 38,000 people from around 150 different nations. In so much as they represent an equality movement, striving towards equal treatment for the members of the community of unbelief, whether materialist, naturalist, atheist, or otherwise, they have my full support. But while it is not willing to take a stand against anti-religious bigotry, the Brights movement cannot honestly represent itself as an equality movement. Someone needs to stand up and say something along the lines of ‘we respect Dawkins for his vehement defence of our right to be atheists, but we don’t support his anti-religious sentiments’, and if (as seems to be the case) no-one is able to do this, the movement’s stated goals of equal treatment will likely remain frustratingly out of reach.

Whatever your metaphysical background, please share your views on this issue in the comments.

Comments

[David]

I do agree that religious beliefs can be mentally abusive .Specially to young minds .All the stoning to death ,damnation and judgement ending in a lake of fire for those who dont tow the line .

Not likely to be very good for some childrens dreams at night in their lonely little wee beds now is it.

And coupled with any threats of seperation,excomunication or even infact shunning .Well look and see for yourself the longterm negative effects that can have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning on a persons life .

You have already suggested you are biased ,So i do have to doubt a little as to whether debate is infact worthwhile .

But i agree with what has been written in that wiki on shunning , and i suggest maybe not only can religion be said to be abusive it could also be suggested to contain methods of torture .

You suggest in your post of persecution by athiests children .Many claim religious persecution .But those who claim persecution need to be careful and atleast first considder whether infact there is any reason their beliefs could ever have become to be seen as abusive .If it has even been seen by the public that these beliefs abuse , then it is maybe not persecution but more dislike of the very same .And any athiest familys that might have had periods of this very abuse within their familys cannot be expected to be happy about religious people .

I think it all comes down to the fact that if religion is good then overall that is what it will produce and people are not likely to dislike good.A bit like a bar of chocolate if it tastes good people eat it, if its sour they want to spit it out .They might eat it even if its a bit sour if it has health benifits .But if its psychological torment chocolate then they are not likely to keep wanting it for ever .

Putting aside your personal wonderful experience with religion and thinking more of the overall picture .Looking around the world today can you honestly say that religion has made a very positive influence on the world today .

Claims of persecution need to be earnt , otherwise we would have rapists claiming persecution for peoples dislike of their personal belief that they have the freedom to rape .Its not persecution we have a right to dislike rape ,to claim persecution christians first need to prove their beliefs have no reason for dislike .

[Peter Crowther]

Yeesh. Given the content of the blog post, and the first comment, I'm not even sure I want to comment here... it's pretty heavily shelled ground!

Chris - I'm not sure if you're going rather too far on the guilt by association of the Brights with Dawkins? In particular, it may be worth examining how long the association has been in place. If it was in place before some of his more strident comments (I don't know), he may be an embarassment to them now. I certainly find some of his comments offensive.

David - I'm going to sidestep some of the really inflammatory parts of that and concentrate on Looking around the world today can you honestly say that religion has made a very positive influence on the world today. I can't answer that question. We're looking at one example of a world. If you can find some alternatives that were without religion (and preferably some alternatives with religion), then it's possible to have the discussion. Without that, it's all speculation.

(As Chris knows, but David may not, I self-identify as an atheist by the way)

[Max Campbell]

Being a new visitor to this page, I am pleasantly surprised to see an issue close to my heart raised so quickly after my advent.

The first time I read The God Delusion, I found I agreed with almost everything Dawkins said. My second reading enlightened me somewhat to the shortcomings of his style; informative and persuasive yes, but also incendiary and dangerous as well. I agree with Chris that there is a clear signifier of potential bigotry that permeates Dawkins' narrative, but I would propose that this is not dissimilar to that portrayed by the more ardent Christians. Their assertions that non-believers are misguided, blinkered, and that they will go to hell seems just as damaging if not more than Dawkins' claims of child abuse by Christian parents.

I do need to take issue with Chris' claim that Dawkins' antagonism towards child indoctrination wishes that he did not exist; Dawkins merely hopes that Chris' upbringing was not dominated by religious and spiritualistic imagery, and that he was more free to make his own decisions. Equally, the issue of ethics is irrelevant; it is rather self-important of Christianity to claim that it is the reason why proper ethics are in existence today. Any meagre study of ancient Greek or Roman history should hopefully show that the basics of ethics were in place long before the advent of Christianity.

[zeech]

I'm not sure Chris should be using his childhood example like that. He was picked on for being Christian. I was picked on for being Asian (although I was learning martial arts at the time so I quickly put a stop to it ;) We picked on another kid because he smelled funny at some point and wasnt sociable or clever enough to escape that stigma later on.

I think the only inference you can draw from those experiences is that *children are assholes and will bully anyone for any reason they can find*.

I dont think it's valid to bring that example into a discussion of religion, bigotry, freedom etc.

-----------------

As I said in the metaphysics thread, if we really want to protect freedom of belief, then this applies to all individuals, not just groups.

There's a clear difference in degree between preventing parents from teaching their religion to their children, versus preventing parents from restricting their children's access to conflicting information.

Ultimately, as a society we collectively decide what is and isnt safe for children to know.

It's child abuse to expose your children to something that's not safe for them to know.

I think it's also child abuse to deny them access to things that -are- safe for them to know.

If some parents forbid their children from attending geography classes, carefully censor what TV shows they watch, and so forth, all to ensure that the children never learn of the existence of other countries, wouldnt we call that child abuse?

If some parents deny their daughters access to high school education, and carefully indoctrinate them in values of being a subservient housewife, and forbid them from reading books or playing sports, wouldnt we call that child abuse?

So yes, Richard Dawkins, when he suggests restricting children's access to religion, he himself is advocating child abuse.

But to battle that thinking, we shouldnt defend parent's rights to raise children in their own religion. That's merely taking the opposite extreme, like being a feminist to battle inequality.

We should defend children's rights to learn everything and anything that's safe for them, if they desire it. This includes their home religion, other religions, atheism, and heck, even the unholy black art of Integral Calculus. (yes, I went there.)

We want to defend freedom of belief. We're shouldnt be defending parents' rights to restrict their children's freedom of belief. Because that's an entirely different thing.

(oh, and lol @ "The Brights" ... unbelievers are often a skeptical bunch, I cant see them wanting to associate with such a, pardon my prejudiced slang, GAY SOUNDING name for a group. ;)

[zenBen]

'If you think equality is the goal, your standards are too low' Barbara Ehrenreich (2004).

As usual, I think this debate could do with a healthy dose of extra definition. For instance, are we considering religion and spirituality to be the same thing? Are we considering atheism and a-spirituality to be the same?

The pertinence of this comes from the fact that in the religious vs anti-religious groundwar (and the Christian vs Muslim conflict, and all the conflicts of belief that preceded), all sides seem to perpetually identify entire swathes of 'the other side' with limited numbers of 'the other side'. If you want to argue against atheists, mention Dawkins or Marxism. If you want to argue against religion, mention Jerry Falwell or Northern Ireland (!).

I'm an atheist, because I don't believe in the Creator God (as explemified by the Abrahamic faiths). Yet I'm not a-spiritual, I'm keeping an open mind. And I have very mixed feelings on the benefits or not of religion, because that's a social experiment that has no clear hypothesis and no conclusions.
Who should represent me? Who's example should be cited in an attack on my position? Certainly not Dawkins - but that doesn't mean I'd intentionally distance myself from the Brights. As Chris said in many more words, just because Dawkins is a bigot doesn't mean he's wrong on all points. So who says that association with the general area of his position means that I have to assume responsibility for all of his excesses?
To clarify - the fact that Chris is a Christian does not mean that I can blame him for the Pope's position that prophylactics are a sin (a viewpoint which many claim is hugely criminally neglectful in light of the AIDS epidemic).

To sum up, a lot of the links in this article between the Bright movement as a whole and one facet of Dawkins' ethos, seem a trumped up hyperbole riffing on the fact that said facet of said ethos is so extreme, and thus easily attacked!

As David says (sort of), an eye for an eye can turn into an eye for that guy's eye over there, once identification through belief system comes into play.

[Peter Crowther]

Zeech - We should defend children's rights to learn everything and anything that's safe for them, if they desire it.

Again with the absolutes :-). Who defines "safe"? Also, what do you think should happen about a child who learns something that's "safe" for them, but destabilising for the society of which they're a member? Should that society refrain from making it "unsafe" for them to learn that? Take, as an example, learning to aim and fire a gun at human targets. It's safe for the shooter...

[Sirc]

As has been stated by just about everyone, the main problem is extremism and the inability to accept other beliefs. It is true that all sides suffer from this to various extents, and certainly keeping a child from learning about religion isn't very practical or even desirable. Ideally, the child should be made aware of different beliefs and taught that there is no one true belief system (at least, not that we can be sure of).

The problem is that some religions... and I'm gonna take christianity as the example here... it holds as one of its core tenants that it is the one true religion, that it worships the one true god, that all other beliefs are false and to even entertain them is to doom yourself to an eternity of fire and brimstone. What this means is that, if you are christian, your very religion essentially forces you to not only shun other beliefs but even actively avoid them to prevent any risks that you could be indoctrinated by them. The shunning wiki article provided by David gives some examples of passages that command christians to avoid other beliefs. "I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them." etc.

Yes, I know, a lot of people nowadays don't follow everything a religion dictates. They have their own interpretations. Still, since we're currently tackling this subject in such a personal way, let me tell you a little story.

So your being raised as a christian was a source of joy for you, Chris, was it? That's nice. I was also raised as a christian, you know. But for me, it was a time of fear and repression.

I never liked going to church, but I had to, because god would send me to hell if I didn't.

I had to pray every night, or I would be doomed to an eternity of torment.

I was commanded to convert other children to my religion, lest heaven be forbidden to me. This was an especial source of anxiety for me, as I was timid, but also couldn't think of any rational arguments I could use to persuade others, and didn't have enough charisma to convert others the way religious leaders do.

I was forbidden from playing games that were deemed diabolical by the church. Playing Diablo, Warcraft, Pokemon... all these were considered sins. It didn't matter that I found nothing wrong with them. All that mattered was that god would curse my immortal soul to an eternity of fire if I looked in their general direction.

Same goes for TV shows and cartoons. And books. I remember reading the first Harry Potter book long before it became popular. But once it did, it was also forbidden. Nothing but witchcraft and heresy written by satan himself. This was all just part of the same objective: the restriction of information so childrens' (and even adults') faith wouldn't be shaken.

Things such as buddhism or atheism were seen as manifestations of the devil, and to even try to learn about them was a sin. I didn't know anything about buddhism as a child other than it was something to be hated, scorned, and ridiculed.

Even sarcasm and saying things you didn't actually mean was forbidden, as it was believed that satan would hear and make it come true. Swearing, as in, "I swear I didn't kill that man" was considered a terrible sin, and something that should never be done. Even sinful thoughts were things to be feared.

Haha, I remember something funny. When a christian leader was performing miracles and supposedly curing incurable diseases somewhere and whatnot, say, for example, a blind person wanting to see again, if his blindness didn't disappear, it wasn't the leader's fault. It wasn't god's fault. No, it was the blind man's fault. People who weren't granted a miracle were told "You didn't get healed because you didn't believe hard enough. Also you're probably going to hell because of that." Then they were ridiculed in front of the audience. Ok, I guess that's not very funny. It's more disgusting, really.

In any case, I couldn't fight any of this as a child. I truly believed that everything the church said was the absolute truth, because it was all I ever knew. It was hammered into my mind from the moment I had the use of reason. Maybe before that.

I'm not christian anymore.

Anyway I could go on with more examples, but I've made this series of anecdotes long enough. Yeah, I know, this is just my experience, but hey, I wasn't the first one who made this personal. Besides, I'm not an isolated case. There were many like me, and probably still are. I know any belief system has the potential to become like this, but from what it looks like to me, religions such as christianity tend more towards this extremism than, say, atheism.

[Deirdra Kiai]

Chris: I resonated very much with your post, particularly given that my experiences with religion have been more similar to yours than to those of people who cite abuse. Yes, it breaks my heart to hear those abuse stories, and I'm happy to see people having the strength to surmount them in some form; it's just that (like probably every other religious person and their dog would say) such abuse doesn't appear to me as a direct byproduct of revelation, but as human corruption thereof. I'm not trying to convince the atheists that they're wrong (and who can, really?) so much as expressing the way I see it from my own biased perspective, so take it as you will.

I also take issue with the very impression that there are subjects that children are "too young to think about"... but then, when I was a child, I was very curious and precocious, and did in fact ask the adults I knew a lot of challenging questions about religion, among other topics. (Oddly enough, said adults always enjoyed said questions, and were more than happy to engage me in discussion.)

Zeech: "That's merely taking the opposite extreme, like being a feminist to battle inequality." This throwaway comment makes me sad. Why are people so afraid of feminism, anyway?

Though come to think of it, automatically assuming a bra-burning butch dyke separatist interpretation of feminism is a lot like automatically assuming a fire-and-brimstone interpretation of religion, wouldn't you say? (Not that I have anything against those adorable bra-burning butch dyke separatists, of course.)

[RodeoClown]

A big problem with the idea of being religion-neutral, is that nobody is (sorry Chris, not even you ;))

There is no-one who can accurately say 'this is child abuse' or not.

Chris honestly believes there are multiple paths to 'god'.

I believe there is a single path to God (and when I say 'God', I mean Jesus/Yahweh, not some impersonal force/nature/the universe).

David and Peter don't believe there is a 'god' at all.

All three of these are mutually incompatible. We can still get along, and even be friends, but if David is right, then I am wrong, and if I am right then Chris is wrong and so on.

If I am right in my beliefs, (which I think I am - otherwise why would I hold them), then I must teach them to my kids.

I'm not going to prevent them learning about other belief systems, as they live in a world with more than one, but I'm not going to give other views equal time or status at home. I'm happy to investigate them with my kids, and help them evaluate them, but it comes from a view that they are incorrect.

I think we should tolerate each others beliefs, but that doesn't mean we need to say they are all equal - of the three I've given, only zero or one can be correct.

I'll keep teaching my kids about Christ, and you can teach yours whatever you like.
I won't agree with what you teach them, but I'm not going to try and stop you teaching them.

[zenBen]

This all raises an interesting point for me - the world of the child is not that of the adult. Most experience is new, and in a way that doesn't hold for adults. Most of life is more intense, important events happen more regularly and their consequences can seem far more terrible and absolute.

An obvious implication of this is that absolutes should be 'toned down' somehow when teaching them to kids. However that may only seem obvious under my belief system :)

Still, perhaps instead of trying to judge what should and shouldn't be taught to kids by content, it might be possible to more objectively assess the potential level of effect of a didactic.

On the other hand, parents are generally held as free to teach their kids what they want. If certain teachings inevitably lead to mental imbalance or complete psychosis, who has the right to a priori deny that right, until causation is shown (which it probably never could be)?

Or, perhaps with the steady advancement of human self-awareness (I won't say enlightenment), some measure of sense will prevail.

[Patrick]

What's really funny is that their symbol, the rising sun, is luciferian going back since before Christianity, back when lucifer was generally more tolerated. Same with the Obama insignia.

[Peter Crowther]

zenBen: If certain teachings inevitably lead to mental imbalance or complete psychosis

Ah, but psychoses are societally defined. If I lose touch with my surrounding societally-defined reality sufficiently to believe that there is no god, should I not be removed from that society (for my own good and theirs), forcibly medicated and educated until my psychosis is treated successfully? If not, why not?

(I know that's not quite the point you were making, but it's too good to miss ;-) )

Dear all,

As expected, some pretty lively viewpoints! I want to be clear about why I choose to present my positive childhood experience of religion, which was: in the usual way this debate is conducted, positive experiences of religion tend to be ignored. Which is unfortunate, since any honest study of religion will tell you (contrary to popular belief on the internet) most people's experience of religion is not expressly negative, although I do accept that the situation in parts of the world can be very different indeed, and I would never claim that the world of religion is all sunshine and lollipops.

Reading Sirc's account of his childhood is depressing, and it's easy to understand that when one is brought up in such draconian conditions you need to make a clean break with it. I find these distortions of Christianity (recognising that this relies on my subjective interpretation) to be abhorrent. But it also seems to me harder and harder for these versions of Christianity to survive as the political and social climate changes and also - and more critically - Christianity is not the paradigm case for religion. Although it is the most popular religion in the world, it is very different from the other belief systems that are practiced in a great many different ways.

Trying to treat the issue of religion as if it were a referendum on Christianity is culturally naive. I've seen religious practice now on most of the continents of the world (still missing South America and Antarctica!) and the worst excesses of distorted Christianity (the kind Sirc accounts) are extremely unrepresentative of global religious practice in general. That doesn't make the abusive cases any less distressing, but we have to be careful not to further polarise an already contentious subject.

Let's pick up a few loose points.

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David: I never said I was persecuted, I said I was *bullied*. And as was noted by other people this is a common childhood experience for any number of reasons. I'm not trying to claim special status, just debunking the "religion = bad, atheist = freedom" polemic. The real situation 'on the ground' is far more complex than this!

I'm afraid I find your concept of 'good' to be woefully underdeveloped: you make assumptions that assume some objective criteria for good, and then seem to want to dispose of religion because you can relate it to things which are not good. To make a comparison: are we to condemn all videogames because a few people have died as a consequence of them? (I hope the thrust of this argument is clear). I'm convinced you can do better than this if you take the time to study religion a little more closely.

Like many cultural features, religions cannot be wholesale praised or condemned without grossly simplifying the facts of the matter.

"Looking around the world today can you honestly say that religion has made a very positive influence on the world today."

Absolutely. And that position is not inconsistent with the many horrors that also result from religious roots. That you cannot see the positive affects of religion suggests to me that you have not investigated the issue very closely.

Peter: "Chris - I'm not sure if you're going rather too far on the guilt by association of the Brights with Dawkins?"

Well the point I am making is that the Brights have an agenda and that agenda is hindered by unqualified endorsement of Dawkins, of the kind offered by Davies. If they want to succeed in their goals, they have to grasp this nettle some day.

Max: "Dawkins merely hopes that Chris' upbringing was not dominated by religious and spiritualistic imagery, and that he was more free to make his own decisions."

Are you sure you can speak for Dawkins on this point? ;)

Since my childhood wasn't dominated by these things - if anything, my childhood was dominated by my own absorption in scientific reading and the play of videogames and role-playing games - why advocate "protecting" children from religion wholesale? If there's a squeaky wheel here, let's address the actual problem, and not try and blame religion in some blanket accusation.

"Equally, the issue of ethics is irrelevant; it is rather self-important of Christianity to claim that it is the reason why proper ethics are in existence today. Any meagre study of ancient Greek or Roman history should hopefully show that the basics of ethics were in place long before the advent of Christianity."

I agree that when Christianity claims to be the sole source of ethics it wildly oversteps the mark, but your statement here seems to push too far in the opposite direction by assuming that there have not been ethical changes in the last two millenia. Let's not forget that the Greek ethics allowed for slavery, for a start. I suggest we return to this point later when I get to the serial on Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age" later this year, as we can do it better justice by looking at it in its own context.

zeech: "I think the only inference you can draw from those experiences is that *children are assholes and will bully anyone for any reason they can find*. I dont think it's valid to bring that example into a discussion of religion, bigotry, freedom etc."

I agree with your inference, but I still think it is relevant for me to present my perspective because it *seems* that many people have an impression, like David's, that religion is clearly bad and nothing good comes from it. That certainly wasn't the case for me, nor for many people I have met and spoken to about their beliefs, and I wanted to make that explicit by using myself as an example.

In effect, I want to counter Dawkins rather lacklustre example of "religious abuse" in his childhood with one of my own, since we both grew up in the same country and Dawkins account leaves off my side of the coin entirely.

So I feel my example is relevant, just as I feel Sirc's example is relevant. The picture is complex, as is any philosophical point on proper examination.

zenBen: "For instance, are we considering religion and spirituality to be the same thing? Are we considering atheism and a-spirituality to be the same?"

Definitely not! I don't even consider atheism and a-religion to be the same, since there are many atheist religions. I would never jump to such a crude conclusion.

"...does not mean that I can blame him for the Pope's position that prophylactics are a sin (a viewpoint which many claim is hugely criminally neglectful in light of the AIDS epidemic)."

I'd like to observe at this point that 75% of Catholics in the US disagree with the Pope's position on contraception. It's an aside, but since it came up. ;)

Sirc: Thank you for sharing your account here - I am horrified by some of the things that are practiced under the claim of it being Christianity, especially in parts of the US, and you have every right to be angry about this - far more of a right than Dawkins, in my estimation. In fact, your account makes Dawkins whinging about his vicar seem positively pathetic.

I would like to oppose this kind of distortion of Christianity, but I don't think removing the parent's right to freedom of religion is the way to approach it.

I suppose there is a split here between Kierkegaard's response to this perversion of Jesus' teachings (to recover the central message) and Nietzsche's (to condemn and abandon Christianity altogether): perhaps because of our different childhood experiences, you feel closer to Nietzsche's stance and I feel closer to Kierkegaard's, but alas no time to expand this point here.

"Besides, I'm not an isolated case. There were many like me, and probably still are."

Yes, this is certainly so. But fortunately cases like this are still a minority when considered in the context of the world stage - the situation is not as bad as it might at first seem. That doesn't mean that there aren't issues to address, however.

"I know any belief system has the potential to become like this, but from what it looks like to me, religions such as christianity tend more towards this extremism than, say, atheism."

Sure, I can see why it would seem this way. But ask someone from a former Soviet nation who has returned to religion after the fall of the iron curtain, or for that matter a religious practitioner who has been imprisoned (or worse) for their beliefs in China under Marxism and you will get a completely opposite side of the coin.

On careful examination of all the situations in the world, I have not been able to ascertain any pattern in which belief systems push more easily into extremism, but it is certainly not the case that atheism can't "pull it's weight" on the abuses front.

All belief systems are open to corruption and horror: don't let the manifest problems with corrupted Christianity in the United States blinker your perspective in this regard.

Thank you so much for sharing your perspective here - I'm sure you have no use for my sympathy, but I greatly feel for what you had to go through which was clearly far, far, worse than anything Dawkins and I can account.

Deirdra: thank you so much for this comment! The responses I tend to receive on this kind of topic tend to come heavily from the non-religious parties, and so I often feel quite isolated: I appreciate support from the people willing to speak up from the other side of this story.

"...it's just that (like probably every other religious person and their dog would say) such abuse doesn't appear to me as a direct byproduct of revelation, but as human corruption thereof."

Yes, sadly this is a view that