BY DINESH D'SOUZA
This article is adapted from What's So Great About Christianity, which is just published by Regnery. Find out more at dineshdsouza.com.
It seems atheists have developed a comprehensive strategy to win the minds of the next generation. The strategy can be described simply: let the religious people breed them, and we will educate them to despise their parents' beliefs. Many people think that the secularization of the minds of our young people is the inevitable consequence of learning and maturing. In fact, it is to a large degree orchestrated by teachers and professors to promote anti-religious agendas.
Consider a timely example. In recent years some parents and school boards have asked that public schools teach alternatives to Darwinian evolution. These efforts sparked a powerful outcry from the scientific and non-believing community. Defenders of evolution accuse parents and school boards of retarding the acquisition of scientific knowledge in the name of religion. The Economist editorialized that "Darwinism has enemies mostly because it is not compatible with a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis."
This is indeed so, but doesn't Darwinism have friends and supporters mostly for the same reason? Consider the alternative: the Darwinists are merely standing up for science. But surveys show that the vast majority of young people in America today are scientifically illiterate, widely ignorant of all aspects of science. How many high school graduates could tell you the meaning of Einstein's famous equation? Lots of young people don't have a clue about photosynthesis or Boyle's Law. So why isn't there a political movement to fight for the teaching of photosynthesis? Why isn't the ACLU filing lawsuits on behalf of Boyle's Law?
The answer is clear. For the defenders of Darwinism, no less than for its critics, religion is the issue. Just as some people oppose the theory of evolution because they believe it to be anti-religious, many others support it for the very same reason. This is why we have Darwinism but not Kepplerism; we encounter Darwinists but no one describes himself as an Einsteinian. Darwinism has become an ideology.
The well-organized movement to promote Darwinism and exclude alternatives is part of a larger educational project in today's public schools. I'll let the champions of this project describe it in their own words. "Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate," writes Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. "Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness."
Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, writes, "How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith?" Religion, he charges, has "always hoped to practice upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young." He wistfully concludes, "If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world."
If religion is so bad, what should be done about it? It should be eradicated. According to Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, belief in Christianity is like belief in slavery. "I would be the first to admit that the prospects for eradicating religion in our time do not seem good. Still the same could have been said about efforts to abolish slavery at the end of the eighteenth century."
But how should religion be eliminated? Our atheist educators have a short answer: through the power of science. "I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I'm all for that," says physicist Steven Weinberg. If scientists can destroy the influence of religion on young people, "then I think it may be the most important contribution that we can make."
One way in which science can undermine the plausibility of religion, according to biologist E.O. Wilson, is by showing that the mind itself is the product of evolution and that free moral choice is an illusion. "If religion...can be systematically analyzed and explained as a product of the brain's evolution, its power as an external source of morality will be gone forever."
By abolishing all transcendent or supernatural truths, science can establish itself as the only source of truth, our only access to reality. The objective of science education, according to biologist Richard Lewontin, "is not to provide the public with knowledge of how far it is to the nearest star and what genes are made of." Rather, "the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, science, as the only begetter of truth."
What, then, happens to religion? Philosopher Daniel Dennett suggests that "our religious traditions should certainly be preserved, as should the languages, the art, the costumes, the rituals, the monuments. Zoos are now more or less seen as second class havens for endangered species, but at least they are havens, and what they preserve is irreplaceable."
How is all this to be achieved? The answer is simple: through indoctrination in the schools. In his book Breaking the Spell, Dennett urges that schools teach religion as a purely natural phenomenon. By this he means that religion should be taught as if it were untrue. Dennett argues that religion is like sports or cancer, "a human phenomenon composed of events, organisms, objects, structures, patterns." By studying religion on the premise that there is no supernatural truth underlying it, Dennett argues that young people will come to accept religion as a social creation pointing to nothing higher than human hopes and aspirations.
As for atheism, Sam Harris argues that it should be taught as a mere extension of science and logic. "Atheism is not a philosophy. It is not even a view of the world. It is simply an admission of the obvious....Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs."
Of course, parents-especially Christian parents-might want to say something about all this. That's why the atheist educators are now raising the question of whether parents should have control over what their children learn. Dawkins asks, "How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents? It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods? Isn't it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought out?"
Dennett remarks that "some children are raised in such an ideological prison that they willingly become their own jailers...forbidding themselves any contact with the liberating ideas that might well change their minds." The fault, he adds, lies with the parents who raised them. "Parents don't literally own their children the way slaveowners once owned slaves, but are, rather, their stewards and guardians and ought to be held accountable by outsiders for their guardianship, which does imply that outsiders have a right to interfere."
Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey argued in a recent lecture that just as Amnesty International works to liberate political prisoners around the world, secular teachers and professors should work to free children from the damaging influence of their parents' religious instruction. "Parents 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."
Philosopher Richard Rorty argued that secular professors in the universities ought "to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own." Rorty noted that students are fortunate to find themselves under the control "of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents." Indeed, parents who send their children to college should recognize that as professors "we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable."
This is how many secular teachers treat the traditional beliefs of students. The strategy is not to argue with religious views or to prove them wrong. Rather, it is to subject them to such scorn that they are pushed outside the bounds of acceptable debate. This strategy is effective because young people who go to good colleges are extremely eager to learn what it means to be an educated Harvard man or Stanford woman. Consequently their teachers can very easily steer them to think a certain way merely by making that point of view seem fashionable and enlightened. Similarly, teachers can pressure students to abandon what their parents taught them simply by labeling those positions as simplistic and unsophisticated.
Children spend the majority of their waking hours in school. Parents invest a good portion of their life savings in college education and entrust their offspring to people who are supposed to educate them. Isn't it wonderful that educators have figured out a way to make parents the instruments of their own undoing? Isn't it brilliant that they have persuaded Christian moms and dads to finance the destruction of their own beliefs and values? Who said atheists aren't clever?
Buy WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT CHRISTIANITY now!
Reader Comments ( Page 3 of 12)
31. What a wonderful world this might be if we had similarly anti-religious, secularist teachers "brainwashing" their students in places such as Pakistan, Iran, Saudia Arabia--not to mention Alabama and Mississippi--and teaching them things like science, reason, critical thinking, history, civics and so on. if Dinesh wants to teach his children religion or to be indoctrinated into his own particular cult, let him move to the side of the world where women are considered chattel and are stoned to death to preserve the family honor. Also, didn't this guy date Ann Coulter at one time??? Does he also think that Jews need to be "oerfected" and Moslems forcefully converted to Christianity. Are these his religious values?
Cristina Canziani at 9:26AM on Oct 16th 2007
32. COMING SOON "THE COLD CRUEL NIGHT"
...of a world where human life is cheap and the strong NO LONGER feel the need to protect those weaker...(even their own family members)
...and where people learn about life, moral values... through indoctrination...and marketing techniques.
Maybe some will call themselves atheists, agnostics.
Maybe others will have a FASHIONABLE little faith in some cutesy little belief system which makes no demands on them.
Oh, wait. Some will think I am describing some ofthe 20th century followers of Stalin, Hitler, Jim Jones...
COWARDS. Ridicule a student out of belief from your lofty platform. Because you're TOO AFRAID to use logic...to teach the naiive college freshman how to think for herself/himself.
vikingmother at 4:47PM on Oct 15th 2007
33. Comment from above"You can believe in a supreme being and still believe in Evolution."
Actually, in some schools, institutions, you CANNOT even bring up the "g" word orthe "d" word (i.e. god or design). See Ben Stein's upcoming movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed".
vikingmother at 4:58PM on Oct 15th 2007
34. Actually, vikingmother, I think you're talking about the indoctrination that all religions use (especailly teaching kids about whatever evil boogeyman said religion believes in), and how only those of that religion have any value. That all other people are worthless and should be killed.
That's what I see you talking about.
Knight_of_BAAWA at 4:59PM on Oct 15th 2007
35. "Expelled" is a bunch of lies.
Knight_of_BAAWA at 4:59PM on Oct 15th 2007
36. What poster #32 sees me as talking about concerning religion
"...That all other people are worthless and should be killed...
That's what I see you talking about."
---Logically speaking, you are making an assertion based on your feelings about organized religion.
Examination of my statements does not LOGICALLY bear up to your statement.
And WHY is logic important? Because GOD gave us brains & free will to decide who we will follow.
vikingmother at 5:04PM on Oct 15th 2007
37. Actually, logically speaking, I'm giving my conclusion based upon the facts of the matter.
And there's no free will with an omniscient creator being.
Knight_of_BAAWA at 5:10PM on Oct 15th 2007
38. "And there's no free will with an omniscient creator being."
Don't forget omnipotent!
Tem at 5:17PM on Oct 15th 2007
39. Mr. D'Souza - You cover two issues I will address -- teaching of evolution, and deliberate anti-religious indoctrination. Some teachers present their own view of a controversial issue as the only right idea (indoctrination), rather than doing real teaching by raising questions that challenge a class to think, & yes, to think beyond what their parents taught them; but good teaching is not indoctrinating students to hold one opinion. You are right to note that problem.
As to the issue you start off with, the use of the term "Darwinism" often includes a belief that "creationism" should be taught in addition to "Darwinism" or "evolution" as a legitimate scientific approach. I do not agree. What is called "creationism" is not science; it wants to to defend a literalist interpretation of the Bible, by expecting teachers to present some arguments that are not true science. Science is not religion. What is science? It is a process of examination of evidence IN OUR SURROUNDINGS, then discussing the data , interpreting it, and working it into a logical framework of explanation that makes sense in light of the evidence. Evolutionary theory grew to be accepted as the most credible explanation of the large body of evidence pointing to a slow growth over millions of years of plant and animal life on our planet. I would note that the word evolution also applies to scientific discussion of how to interpret evidence about the the development or evolution over an unimaginable amount of time of the stars and all else in the universe, plus evidence that the universe is still expanding (evolving), etc. When a large majority of world scientists concur in holding an explanation, it is called a "Theory" -- a "theory" in this sense is BASED ON A LARGE BODY OF EVIDENCE previously examined and discussed by many scientists. Occasionally using scientific reasoning to reexamine the evidence for a belief most scientists have accepted, someone moves the consensus of science in a new direction, either to reject or to refine a previously held theory. But to seek evidence while starting from a non-scientific source, be that from Hindu tales of creation or from the Book I myself was raised with, the Christian Bible, is not to do what science is about. This has nothing to do with lack of respect (even if some scientists personally show a lack respect for religion). It has to do with keeping clear about what science does. At its best, science is neutral as to religion, but science may follow a trail that leads to conclusions that some religious people do not agree with because of their belief that the Bible's presentation of a six-day Creation must be understood literally. Not all Christians agree that this literalism is necessary but many do insist on it.
Here is the problem for scientists. Scientists do not start by examining Biblical arguments and then seeking to buttress a literal interpretation of what is found in the Bible. They start by looking at what they find in the world, then looking for the most logical view that explains how all the pieces of evidence fit together.
I will say that for myself, I accept what the consensus of scientists say about evolution -- both of the universe and of our world gradually developing over millions of years. That does not stop me from being a Bible believer. If a Bible story seems to contradict what scientists find, I look for why that story is there, or what it teaches. The parables of Jesus are stories -- but not at all "just stories." No. A Biblical parable is not a "history" but something more important -- a story with something to say to the human heart. The Bible does teach. But not all Christians believe it is necessary to see the Bible as a science textbook. That does not diminish its value at all. What is more important than teaching the human heart?
I am sorry to be overly long in expressing my ideas. I hope they are of some value in exploring the issues raised by Mr. D'Souza.
HS Teacher at 5:47PM on Oct 15th 2007
40. SOMEONE NEEDS TO CLARIFY AND DIFFERENCIATE DIFFINATIVILY, ONCE AND FOR ALL, SO THERE IS NO MISAPOROPRIATION OF COMPREHENSION:
THESE ARE NOT ATHEISTS!
A TRUE A-THEIST HAS VERY LITTLE INTERST IN GOD OR RELIGION OTHER THAN AN ACADEMIC CURIOSITY.
THESE PEOPLE ARE:
'PSUEDO ATHEIST HUMANIST/SECULARIST-CORELIGIONIST'
AND THEY ARE PRACTICING A VERY ACTIVE AND PROFOUNG RELIGIOUS BELIEF SYSTEM!
NO TRUE ATHEIST WOULD EVER HAVE ANY CAUSE OR POINT ON WHICH TO ORGANIZE.
NEITHER IS THER A BELIEF SYSTEM TO PROCLAIM TO DEFEND OR UPON WHICH TO ARGUE.
THEY MAKE QUERIES AND PONDER ON OCCASION BUT NEVER SUCH BEHAVIOUR AS YOU SEE FROM THESE EVANGELICAL ACTIVISTS....
tHE MERE FACT THAT THEY EXPEND SUCH TIME AND ENERGY, EFFORT AND INCREDIBLE VENOM ATTEMPTING TO DENY THE REALITY OF gOD THEY ARE REALLY DOING TWO THINGS:
1.GRANDSTANDING THEIR OWN EGO'S BEFORE THE PUBLIC TO DEMONSTRATE THEIR SELF PERCEIVED WISDOM, KNOWLEDGE AND SUPERIORITY.
2.TO RELIEVE THEMSELVES OF A SENSE OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO A HIGHER SOURCE FOR THEIR BEHAVIOUR AND THEIR LIFESTYLES.
IT'S EASIER TO DENY GOD NOW THAN TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONE'S BEHAVIOUR AS IF ONE CAN MAKE REALITY GO AWAY. IF THEY TRULY DID NOT BELIEVE IN A HIGHER POWER OR WERE UNCONCERNED WITH OR UNTHREATENED AT ALL, THEY WOULD BE OUT FISHING OR GOLFING AND WOULD GIVE IT A SECOND THOUGHT AS A TRUE ATHEIST WOULD DO.
KrautKnabe at 5:46PM on Oct 15th 2007
41. Mr. Dinesh, with people like you and Ann Coulter around athiests don't need a recriuting stratagy. You almost make it too easy. I'm sure after Ann Coulter or you come out with a new book, athiests will have more people then they know what to do with. They might even start tossing the stupid ones back your way. So while I am not an athiest myself, I would like to thank you on their behalf.
David at 5:46PM on Oct 15th 2007
42. I'm sorry, I meant to write Mr. D'Souza.
David at 5:53PM on Oct 15th 2007
43. The reason that we don't have the ACLU filing suits on behalf of Boyle's Law or the Theory of Gravitation is that we don't have fundamentalist peasants trying to substitute their own ignorance for theorems in those venues (although there are still a few flat-earthers out there; some people will believe *anything*).
As usual, D'Souza ignores anything he doesn't want to address, such as Sam Harris's lovely observation that you should try replacing the word "God" or "Jesus" with "Apollo" or "Thor" or "Odin" or whomever whenever you heard someone attributing something to God: "With Apollo on our side, we will win the war in Iraq." "I want to thank the rest of my team and Loki for winning the Superbowl!" "His condition was critical, but thank Thor he's going to pull through."
Dinesh is particularly obnoxious because, like so many American Christians who think you spell God "G.O.P.," he also believes that Christianity is the only religion in the US or perhaps the only religion that matters. Why all the push for Christianity, Dinesh? Misery loves company? Validating your decision on your own? Dumped by an atheist chick as suggested earlier? It all smacks of doubt in your decisions.
So, Dinesh, what's so great about Christianity? It's, uh... hang on... ummm... you can... Okay, so here's what's great: it's... uh... YOU CAN WRITE BOOKS ABOUT IT, OKAY????
JohnHedtke at 6:04PM on Oct 15th 2007
44. KrautKnabe:
"A TRUE A-THEIST HAS VERY LITTLE INTERST IN GOD OR RELIGION OTHER THAN AN ACADEMIC CURIOSITY."
I agree (although not in caps) to an extent. I think all religions are interesting. Things become more than just an academic curiosity when they impact my way of life.
"NO TRUE ATHEIST WOULD EVER HAVE ANY CAUSE OR POINT ON WHICH TO ORGANIZE."
I disagree. When religious people make blanket statements attacking all atheists or atheists in general, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a point on which to organize.
"tHE MERE FACT THAT THEY EXPEND SUCH TIME AND ENERGY, EFFORT AND INCREDIBLE VENOM ATTEMPTING TO DENY THE REALITY OF gOD THEY ARE REALLY DOING TWO THINGS:"
So basically, you're making the argument that religious people have a right to expend time and energy to share their feelings about the nature of the universe but when atheists do it, they have some hidden motive? It doesn't work that way.
Tem at 6:01PM on Oct 15th 2007
45. Nice strawman. The ACLU isn't fighting for photosynthesis because the Religious Right isn't pushing for "a fifth-dimensional angry teenager programmed it to be so" alternative to photosynthesis. Creationists (including the ID movement) do just that with respect to alternatives to evolution.
And, honestly, if you are worried that children can be turned from The Faith, then either you are not teaching The Faith well enough, or The Faith does not stand up well to reality.
Methinks the latter.
Lightning bolts are not the spears of Zeus or the impact of Mjollnir against giants' heads; the earth is not flat, nor revolved about by the sun-chariot of Ra; and water is at no risk of spontaneously becoming wine, blood, or an albatross as you try to drink it.
Atheists and Christians could quite get along if Christians (especially the conservatives) would not toss science where its findings are distasteful.
sandslice at 6:18PM on Oct 15th 2007