The Economist has a review of The God Delusion up, and it concludes:
First, Mr Dawkins wants to subvert the mode of transmission between parent and child. He calls a religious upbringing a form of indoctrination and equates it to child abuse. He wants to encourage a change in the Zeitgeist, so that when people hear the words "a Catholic child", or "a Muslim child", they will wince, and ask how a child could already have formed independent opinions on transubstantiation or jihad.
When I reviewedThe God Delusion I said that I wasn't really going to address the issue of parent-child transmission. The reason is two fold: I hold the parent-child bond and relationship as extremely important, and only in cases of clear and present abuse am I willing to allow the state to intervene. I don't consider religion abuse. Second, and perhaps more importantly in the context of most of my posts: I believe that most humans are lost souls who are destined to live a life under the spell of demons in the night. Cognitive anthropology and psychology has convinced me that supernaturalism is a default human cognitive mode, it is not learned. Living among "New Age" types who are not religious (by their own assertion) but "spiritual," and often raised by parents who allowed them to "seek their own Truth," I have seen firsthand how ad hoc supernaturalistic worldviews can be generated from whole cloth within a generation without any strong outside suasion. In other words, if one prevented a child from being indoctrinated in Catholic teaching, or forced to recite the Koran, that does not imply they would become scientific materialists. Rather, they would probably generate their own supernaturalism de novo within their own peer groups. Of course not all supernaturalisms are created equal, so the key issue is not indoctrination in religion per se, but what religion. Dawkins', and my own, main problem is the aggressiveness of particular forms of monotheism, to the point of being a clear & present danger to the lives of unbelievers (in the case of most Muslims). Does that mean we should prevent Muslim children from being raised Muslim? A friend emailed me this in response to my post about the veil:
But I have always suspected from my own interactions with Muslims here and in India that observant Muslims are more terrified of fellow Muslims than they are of any outsider. More is the pity. I must add that when I lived in India, the atmosphere was quite different from what it is now, some twenty five years later. I have also observed with some bemusement, the increased radicalization / Arabization among my Pakistani and Bangladeshi American friends and acquaintances in the last decade.
The way the Islamic religion is interpreted by many believers is a problem for liberal democracy. So shall we block parent-child transmission? Frankly, I don't think anyone is ready to do that, as it would bring to mind the specter of the Inquisition and the centuries of crypto-Judaism in Spain. But, and I think this is crucial, the outside culture can demand, force and beat change into the culture of minorities. In The God Delusion Dawkins points out that Iqbal Sacranie, a prominent Muslim "community leader" in Britain, refused to point blank disavow the death penalty for apostates when Dawkins pressed him on this issue. ^1
This is inexecusable, and demands a kulturkampf
. Secular intellectuals need to take up the torch of anti-clericalism and reshape Islam as it is practiced in the West to be more congenial to the values of the West. This is not necessarily an easy task, but turning our backs on plural monoculturalism is a first step. I would argue that changing the culture or religion is far more plausible that simply demanding than children not be raised in the religion of their parents. 1 - Full disclosure, by the Islamic definition I'm an apostate and should suffer the death penalty unless I recant.
