Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Last week I read a story about Robert B., a young German who converted to Islam and took the name Abdul Hakiim. He and a buddy were arrested in July for trying to enter Britain with al-Qaida propaganda and bomb-making guides and essays by one Anwar al-Awlaki. Der Spiegel informs us that his "motivations remain a mystery."
The story is from the perspective of his mother, Marlies B. It's rather sad to read how she failed in her attempts to keep her son from radicalization after his father died young.
But there was one part of the story that I just didn't understand:
"He pretended to sleep in a small apartment his mother knew about, but in fact he lived in a mosque in a courtyard off Konrad Adenauer Street. "The people there are the only ones who reach paradise," he told his mother. This sentence shocked her, especially coming from her son Robert, whom she had not had baptized because she wanted him to have the freedom as an adult to decide his religion. Now that he'd decided, his mother was appalled."
I've heard more than a few people say this -- that they're not raising their child in any religion so that they'll have the freedom to decide as an adult. It makes no sense to me. I mean, I don't imagine that these people wait to inform their children about brushing their teeth or nutrition or learning math. Why would it be otherwise with religious belief? Are people who do this -- and I assume there are Ricochetistas who are among this group -- just making a statement about how unimportant religion is to them? Are they making a statement about how uncertain they are about their own religious views? Or what's the logic?
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Oct '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
The simple logic is, as you said, that they simply regard religion as unimportant... until, of course, little Bobby decides on Islam, or any other, pick your favorite, outlying religion. Seems as though it really was important, just not worth caring about when one leads a shallow and materialistic existence.
May '11
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Both of my children were born in Japan, their mother in Japanese, I'm Canadian. When we returned to Canada one summer and our girls were old enough to remember they were baptized. Here in Japan we went to the Shichi Go San ceremony (7-5-3) which is a Shinto ceremony to pray for continued good health for your kids. Being a Christian, I have done my best to show my kids by example how to live your life and I have talked and tried to teach about many ideas to do with right and wrong and other teachings from the bible. By showing my daughters both sides I hope that they will be able to make an informed decision on their own.
I too do not understand how you can teach nothing and expect children to have the base knowledge to make a decision. I guess this is more of the cultural relativism we read about, that our western Judeo-Christian culture is NOT in anyway better than any other culture out there. If you leave a vacuum in a child's life and education, something WILL come along and fill it.
Domo
May '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Many people see choosing a religion like picking out the clothes in the morning. They don't really believe any of it, so it doesn't make any difference what they believe...and they feel they would be repressing their child by enforcing that tepid belief on their spawn.
sad.
Jun '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
I always remember my Jewish friend telling me about how his uncle married a Catholic woman. He said, "They decided to let their children decide if they wanted to believe in the Jewish faith or the Catholic faith. Of course, in the end, they believed in neither."
Even John Cougar Mellencamp said in one of his songs, "You gotta stand for something, or you'll fall for anything."
I'm sure there will be comments coming that describe how the child beat the odds, but those aren't dice I'm willing to roll.
May '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
I'd imagine that an atheist couple would argue that the utility of brushing your teeth and learning math have all been demonstrated, whereas the utility of religious belief has not. I don't think this is an unusual or odd conviction, assuming that the parents are atheists.
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Michael Labeit
I'd imagine that an atheist couple would argue that the utility of brushing your teeth and learning math have all been demonstrated, whereas the utility of religious belief has not. I don't think this is an unusual or odd conviction, assuming that the parents are atheists. · Sep 5 at 8:47pm
Right. If they're atheists. But what I'm talking about is sort of analogous to an atheist couple raising their child in a faith because they want to give the child the opportunity to reject something as an adult.
Apr '11
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. Proverbs 22:6
Ignore at your own (and your childrens') peril.
May '11
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
The "let 'em decide when they're adults" approach is a shallow coverup for parental indolence. Religious study and practice require effort. Would you raise children without exposure to music, art, drama or literature on the grounds that "they can choose what they like when they're adults"?
Leaving the issue of personal faith aside, a thorough Jewish or Christian religious education is a critical part of Western cultural literacy. It also provides a sound moral philosophy for a young person to bring to the challenges of adulthood and mortality. Cults and religious extremists prey on ignorance and a good religious education is the best vaccine there is against them. Whether the child believes or disbelieves as an adult, or chooses an entirely different faith seems no more of a dilemma for those with a religious education than those without. Let's skip the "Christians killed lots of people in the crusades" speciousness: it's difficult to point to any movement or philosophy that hasn't had its monsters or cruelties.
Sad Marlies: she sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
Feb '11
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Mollie, thank you for the link.
It's a curious case. The boy's family was dysfunctional, but not terribly so. Hundreds of thousands of German boys grow up just the same -- without coming to believe that God delights in random mass murder. They muddle through, join a gang, or drink. What was different for this boy?
My guess? It was mostly just dumb luck, and a painful desire to belong, anywhere. It happened that Muslims, not Moonies, found him. Not just any Muslims, either. He fell in with a vile bunch. Again, bad luck.
While the boy shares some small measure of guilt, as do his parents, it's his Wahhabi mentors who deserves the millstones about their necks. Offenses must come, but woe to the men by whom the offense comes.
German state, too, stands condemned: for thirty years now, the E.U. has been a cesspool of Muslim terrorists. Perhaps it's time they recognized that some religious ideologies can have no place in a civil society. (Same goes for the U.S.)
Edited on September 6, 2011 at 7:49amOct '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
I don't think the problem is so much the lack of upbringing in a religion so much as the refusal to replace it with an alternative. If you uproot a tree without planting anything in its place, you get a patch of weeds. Even principled atheism--simply the religion of "Nogod", hallowed be its name--is superior to cultural relativism.
Religion has always provided a readymade set of transcendental values for humanity. These values guided human beings as they struggled to imbue their actions with meaning. The great question for modernity is this: what values can replace those once provided by religion? What values can shape the human animal into greatness?
Political ideology and consumerism have risen to fill the void, and, predictably, created monsters. Art breathes ever slower; philosophy appeals only to the few. If people aren't prepared to supply an answer to that great question of how to render life meaningful, they may as well choose one of those templates from the past.
I suspect humanity will eventually find another way, though we won't be around to see it.
Nov '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Religious beliefs are not empirical facts. They are acts of faith.
Believing that a man who died 2000 years ago is still alive is not the same thing as believing that sugar rots teeth.
To tell children that religious beliefs are facts is to indoctrinate, not educate.
But I suspect that many parents, confident about their religious beliefs, and convinced of their moral nobility, would ultimately defend the practice of indoctrination.
After all, what is indoctrination but the initiation of children into a doctrine, firmly held to be true?
One might, of course, hope that those parents' religious beliefs are in fact true, lest metaphysical error arise.
Indeed, given the range of mutually incompatible religious beliefs, metaphysical error must be rife, however earnestly those beliefs are held.
But does metaphysical error matter as long as virtue is promoted?
If a placebo cures a patient, why criticize its chemical inertness? If the square root of minus one facilitates otherwise intractable mathematical calculations, why get hung up about its imaginary nature?
Indeed, perhaps indoctrination is essential. Doubting the potency of sugar pills, or the possibility of negative roots, leaves us worse off. So too might doubting religious beliefs. Caveat non credens!
Edited on September 6, 2011 at 9:56amJun '11
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Aodhan: Religious beliefs are not empirical facts. They are acts of faith.
Believing that a man who died 2000 years ago is still alive is not the same thing as believing that sugar rots teeth.
I disagree. If I did not hold the resurrection of Jesus as an empirical fact I would hold to no religion. At least in my corner of Christianity (Lutheran), we do not define faith at all as you seem to suggest. For us, faith is not believing the history, it is believing the effects of the history. That is to say, it's not believing that Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross and rose again that makes one a Christian, but what that means for God and man.
I wonder if parents who don't raise their children in a religious faith because they want the children to decide as adults take the same approach with their political views. (That's meant honestly, not sarcastically.)
Edited on September 6, 2011 at 12:19pmJun '11
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
I suppose you'd have to be certain what virtue is, informed only by natural law. And with that comes the assertion that, if one is to be judged at all, it is entirely on works (how virtuous one was). Either way, you have a metaphysical assertion: there is no judgment, or it is based on your performance according to a standard.
Dec '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Faith divorced from facts isn't faith(at least in Christianity). My faith in the Christian interpretation of historical facts is no different than my faith the free-market interpretation(as oppose to Keynesian) of historical facts.
Because many many Christians were not given a reason for their religious beliefs. Their parents explained them why brushing their teeth was important, the evidence of the rule of nutrition, and the advantages of learning math, but when it came to religion they received no intellectual reasons for their faith.
Imagine growing up like that. Imagine having a solid rational reason for everything you did and why you believed those things to be correct except your religion. Imagine whenever you tried to stray from your religious upbringing you were assaulted by guilt or fear even though you could think of no rational reason for those feelings other than a life time of indoctrination. If you grew up like that would you really want to do the same thing to your own child?
Nov '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Dear Christopher,
Are you saying that you believe in Christianity on empirical grounds, and that everyone else should too, on pain of irrationality?
(By way of comparison, I do believe that sugar rots teeth on empirical grounds, and that everyone else should too, on pain of irrationality.)
But metaphysical beliefs strike me as a little more, well, controversial.
I mean, if someone told me that they regularly communicated a man called Brian who died 2000 years ago, I would be skeptical.
If he further told me he had informed his children that Brianism was factually true--as true as the causal link between sugar and tooth decay--I might even disapprove.
Belief in Brianism requires an act of faith; the belief that sugar causes tooth decay doesn't.
As with Brianism, so with Christianity.
Christopher Esget
Aodhan: Religious beliefs are not empirical facts. They are acts of faith.
Believing that a man who died 2000 years ago is still alive is not the same thing as believing that sugar rots teeth.
I disagree. If I did not hold the resurrection of Jesus as an empirical fact I would hold to no religion.
Edited on Sep 06 at 03:19 am
Nov '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Dear Nyadnar17,
I don't need any faith to believe that sugar causes tooth decay. This is because it is an empirical fact.
Mollie originally said: "I don't imagine that these people wait to inform their children about brushing their teeth or nutrition or learning math. Why would it be otherwise with religious belief?"
She compares the teaching of empirical facts with the teaching of a religious doctrines, and wonders why, if one does the former, one shouldn't do the latter.
Well, the reason is simple: the former aren't controversial whereas the latter definitely are. To believe them, I submit, an act of faith is required. Moreover, given the epistemological difficulties that bedevil metaphysical assertions, a large act of faith is required.
In the terrestrial realm, one can believe hypotheses that are not yet factually established. But this merely requires an act of judgment, not of faith.
Nyadnar17
Faith divorced from facts isn't faith(at least in Christianity). My faith in the Christian interpretation of historical facts is no different than my faith the free-market interpretation(as oppose to Keynesian) of historical facts.
Oct '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
That Christ lived and was crucified is a factual statement having more extra-biblical contemporaneous evidence than the life of Plato or Aristotle. That Christ died for the remission of the sins of man, as stated in the Bible is where the faith comes in.
In the Old Testament we are told to "taste and see that the Lord is good". It is that tasting, the exercise of faith in the Biblical account, that is Christianity. It is the basis upon which the Western world has been built. Take the "faith" part out of your life, and you have an ethical system lacking the power of God. To believe in a Creator infers that there is a Being Who has intentions, and we are accountable to Him. Biblical Christianity lays these FACTS out as no other religion has ever done, and most do not even claim to do.
That is something to take seriously enough to believe that your child's eternity is at stake in your decision to teach, not indoctrinate, him what you believe.
Apr '11
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Aodhan:
But metaphysical beliefs strike me as a little more, well, controversial.
Why? Could it be because you don't understand Metaphysics or Metaphysical proof? Consider Geometry. A Theorem is considered proved by making a series of statements. If each argument is Valid, then the conclusion is Necessarily True. It's the same for Metaphysics - Aquinas' 5 Proofs for the existence of God, for example. If you wish to disprove him you must find a flaw in his chain of argument, not simply complain about something like the design of a panda's thumb.
And if you say you only believe in material things that you can perceive through the five senses, consider numbers: they have no material existence but it remains the fact that even if the Cosmos suffered the Heat Death tomorrow, the proposition that 2+2 = 4 remains true even if there is no one left to know it. (Though some would say there's always one intellect remaining.)
Metaphysical Argumentation has been denigrated since the Enlightenment but the technique has not been disproved. You cannot expect children to make their own choices if you deny them the tools of understanding and knowledge.
Edited on September 6, 2011 at 3:22pmNov '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Dear Raycon,
So you believe that an act of faith is required to believe that Christ died for the remission of the sins of man, and so forth?
If so, then we agree that religious belief is not purely an empirical matter.
But if it is not purely an empirical matter, then how is teaching it--that is, informing a child that this is the truth, despite the evidence for it not being conclusive in its own right--not indoctrination?
Or would you advocate teaching only the content of Christian doctrine, and not that the doctrine is true? If so, that would be education, not indoctrination. So would recommending that children believe it, while mentioning alternatives.
raycon: That Christ lived and was crucified is a factual statement having more extra-biblical contemporaneous evidence than the life of Plato or Aristotle. That Christ died for the remission of the sins of man, as stated in the Bible is where the faith comes in.
[...]
That is something to take seriously enough to believe that your child's eternity is at stake in your decision to teach, not indoctrinate, him what you believe. · Sep 6 at 6:09am
Nov '10
Re: Teach Your Kids Nothing And They'll Believe Anything
Dear Herkybird,
I do not denigrate metaphysics wholesale. Rather, I modestly claim that:
(a) metaphysical beliefs are controversial;
(b) metaphysical beliefs are relatively more controversial than empirical facts; and
(c) parents might consequently be relatively less willing to teach children that metaphysical beliefs are true than that empirical facts are true.
I do hope that does not make me ontologically obtuse.
Herkybird
Aodhan
But metaphysical beliefs strike me as a little more, well, controversial.
Why? Could it be because you don't understand Metaphysics or Metaphysical proof? Consider Geometry. A Theorem is considered proved by making a series of statements. If each argument is Valid, then the conclusion is Necessarily True. It's the same for Metaphysics - Aquinas' 5 Proofs for the existence of God, for example. If you wish to disprove him you must find a flaw in his chain of argument [...]
Metaphysical Argumentation has been denigrated since the Enlightenment but the technique has not been disproved. You cannot expect children to make their own choices if you deny them the tools of understanding and knowledge. · Sep 6 at 6:20am
Edited on Sep 06 at 06:22 am