Sarah found this interesting article in the times which offers a critique of the British Humanist Association's current poster campaign.
Interesting stuff whether you look at from a religious or a secular perspective:
...If you believe something important to be true, then you shouldn’t pretend it is an open question. This goes for secular humanists as much as for religious believers. If, for example, you are a convinced atheist, and you think that belief in God is false at an intellectual level and damaging through its distorting effects on morality, then of course you would want to share this conviction with your children. It would be unjust to keep it from them. Similarly, if you believe in God, and you believe that this faith is not just a lifestyle choice or a cultural imperative but an objective truth with profound implications for human existence, how could you not share this conviction with your children?...
...It’s a fantasy to imagine that children can be raised in a philosophically neutral environment without some dominant world-view. Theism – as much as atheism, materialism, or secular humanism (these terms are not synonomous) – provides a particular understanding of the meaning of the world and of human life, which will help structure a child’s understanding and values. But if you try to bring your children up in an environment which is indifferent to questions of ultimate meaning, then your purported neutrality will already have been lost. If, in effect, you say to your children, “I don’t care enough about these values or convictions to share them with you”, or “they are important to me but not important in themselves”, then you are presenting them with a very particular world-view...
8 comments:
Thanks for posting this on the blog Jacob and well spotted Sarah - I totally agree that we do our children no favours by acting as though there is such a thing as neutral ground.
When it comes to the evidence of what we have hung our own world view upon - our children will eventually expect nothing less than a sound explanation for what we have tied their conscience to. Given the impressionability of young minds what we believe and teach them is an awesome responsibility.
"It is common sense to put the seal to the wax while it is soft." Arthur Jackson.
"It is little hope of children who have been educated wickedly. If the dye have been in the wool, it is is hard to get it out of the cloth." Jeremiah Burroughs
Big Kev with Love
The quotation from Arthur Jackson reminds me of the Jesuit maxim: "Give me the child until the age of seven and I will give you the man".
I'm not convinced by the idea that just because you can influence a young mind, you should imbue them with the certainties you believe yourself. Much better, surely, to equip them with the tools they will need to find out for themselves..?
Jake I guess you may be suggesting that a reliable "toolkit" exists with which to sort out the trash from the truth in this scrapyard we call human history. Such a "toolkit" as a worldview is seductive in that it suggests a neutrality. The neutrality which the article itself says is doomed and dangerous. Love Big Kev
I suspect we might be arriving at one of our usual impasses Dad!
I guess that from your point of view even the most innocent of children themselves can't be said to be neutral. Whereas I would maintain that - in terms of worldview - children are as Tabula Rasa.
For some reason I keep thinking of a shopping trolly with a stuck wheel. I guess that in the christian world view children might be like that: you have to keep pushing them to the side in order to keep a straight path.
In my view (and discounting genetic factors) children don't have this kind of innate bias so it's enough to simply refrain from imposing one or another view - or at least giving one view precedence over another.
Of course that's pretty theoretical. In practical terms we won't be able to avoid sharing our worldview with Alex - but we would resist the urge to expect anything of him. We can tell him we want him to make his own choices when he's ready because our view doesn't require exclusivity. Yes, that's a viewpoint, but it doesn't exclude the possibility of other viewpoints.
Yes Jake you will inevitably come face to face with the tension that exists between what is already in Alex's nature and what you would like to see in his nature. But as you know I genuinely love and praise you for wanting to believe the best of Alex and wanting him to believe what is best for the sake of the human race. Psalm 139 reminds me of how it is possible to rejoice in the Creator's point of view "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. ... All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." v 13- 16. Love Big Kev
Lizzie here...
Caleb helped me put the marzipan on the christmas cake today and asked me if it was his birthday cake. I told him it was Jesus' birthday cake....later when I was wrapping up Christmas presents, he asked if he could 'open it' and I said no, that it wasn't for him. He said 'Jesus' present?'
What we live and stand for - whether it is Jesus or an absence
of Jesus, it will certainly impact our children.
(This is Lizzie by the way)
By the way I have seen an article which points out these two kids from a Christian family used in the poster!
I saw that Dad. here's a response.
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