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{"id":2181,"date":"2012-03-14T17:46:31","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T21:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=2181"},"modified":"2012-12-10T13:31:26","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T18:31:26","slug":"wont-someone-think-of-the-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/03\/wont-someone-think-of-the-children.html","title":{"rendered":"Won’t Someone Think of the Children?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Remember you can vote once per day for the About.com Atheism Awards. \u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0one of five nominees for Best Atheist Blog<\/a>. \u00a0 More details here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n

I was talking about posthumous Mormon baptism\u00a0in an interfaith discussion group\u00a0<\/span>(I don\u2019t object to it, see here: \u201c The Mormons<\/a> Try for a Mitzvah<\/a>\u201c), and someone asked why many of us have a strong, knee-jerk objection to proxy baptism of the dead, but don\u2019t see anything odd about baptizing children.<\/p>\n

In both cases, you\u2019re inducting someone who cannot consent, and Christian baptism of the living (a sacrament of initiation that makes a seal that cannot be broken) is arguably a lot more intrusive than baptism of the dead (which is just supposed to allow them to convert in the afterlife, if they want to). At any rate, both involve trying to define someone\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n

For this reason, Richard Dawkins claims<\/a> it\u2019s abuse to raise children in a religion, or to talk about \u2018Catholic children\u2019 or \u2018Jewish children.\u2019 One should only say \u2018children raised by Catholics\u2019 until the kids are old enough to decide for themselves.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think this is a particularly useful framework. Parents can\u2019t (and shouldn\u2019t) raise children in a vacuum. Not just because they\u2019d suffocate, but because it\u2019s hard to teach anyone moral reasoning or epistemology totally in the abstract, divorced from its conclusions. \u00a0You can\u2019t \u00a0teach a way of reasoning or questioning without giving some examples of right answers and explaining how you recognize them as correct.<\/p>\n

The objection to baptism or religious education is just a particular case of the general objection to parents passing on false beliefs and biases to their children. And there\u2019s not a perfect solution to this<\/em> instantiation of problem any more than there\u2019s a good way to make sure that parents don\u2019t raise their children sexist. \u00a0Telling them not to ever talk about gender would not be a solution.<\/p>\n

You can put up some safeguards against\u00a0blatant\u00a0emotional abuse, but any restrictions (cultural or legal) strong enough to deter parents who are just miseducating<\/em> their kids with the best of intentions are going to completely undermine the institution of the family. \u00a0Parents should <\/em>want their kids to grow up loving the Good and the True. \u00a0It\u2019s not worth waging war on that expectation just because many parents have a skewed idea of how to get there.<\/p>\n

So my least-bad solution is still just public school. \u00a0I can\u2019t (and shouldn\u2019t) stop parents from having wrong beliefs they genuinely want to pass on, but I can try and make it possible for the kids to know that some people disagree early on and get a chance to get pitched by the other side before they start thinking of those incorrect beliefs as essential parts of their identity. \u00a0To do this properly, the public schools should do more problem-solving and critical thinking work and less NCLB-mandated testing drills, but now we\u2019re reforming education, not families.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"