Knowledge is the little hammer that chips away at the religious worldview
There’s a reason religious folks try to keep their kids away from pop culture, whether it’s music, video games, the internet, movies, books or tv. Getting children to buy in to a religious worldview requires creating the illusion that a particular way of thinking is the right way. Repetition and authority help indoctrinate kids, and you don’t want anything that contradicts or interrupts your message getting through. The differing lifestyles and opinions presented by pop culture compete with the dogma you’re marketing.
Say you’re selling a Christian mythology and its proscribed moral code as the one true system. It doesn’t do you any good to have Harry Potter poking his wand in there and telling kids there’s magic and it’s fun. Neither do you want Hannah Montana jiggling her milkshakes and suggesting there’s sex and it’s fun. You certainly don’t need science being taught to your kids, with its sticky attachments to falsifiability, reasoning, and critical thinking.
Every piece of knowledge kids are exposed to is a little bit of evidence on the pile that says ‘Hey, my parent’s “truth” isn’t the only one out there’. The smarter kids will follow that up with ‘What does that mean?’
That’s why the Golden Compass gets panned as atheist (it totally is) and Narnia gets the moral thumbs up for Aslan the Christ. Speaking of that, did you know Twilight is a Mormon sexual frustration fantasty? Abstinence message approved!
Everywhere in the nonbelieving universe, the religious worldview paint is cracking and peeling. Two to ponder:
1) New Scientist recently wrestled over whether 2009 - the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the telescope, and the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth - should celebrate the original recanter or the original speciator? Who rocked the religious worldview the most? Galileo let us in on the fact that the earth isn’t the centre of, well, anything. Darwin shed light on the fact that we’re freakin’ animals, about which many of us conclude God’s image is a pretty confusing likeness in which to be made. Both of these contributions are wonderful examples of the fallout of science’s quest for truth melting the bomb shelters of religion.
2) Friendly Atheist hosted a passionate discussion about what to do if an in-law starts getting their Christianity all over your kids. A number of comments suggested exposing the kid in question to even more fables and mythologies from other religions, thereby showing this one worldview in the context of many other equally fantastic ones. It will occur that there is no more proof or reason to believe one idea over any other, and the effect of the attempted inculcation will be diminished, if not nullified.
In sociology, the accepted norms and ‘common sense’ that makes up your world is called the nomos.
In order to be at its most effective the nomos must be taken for granted. The structure of the world which has been created by human and social activity is treated, not as contingent, but as self-evident. ‘Whenever the socially established nomos attains the quality of being taken for granted, there occurs a merging of its meanings with what are considered to be the fundamental meanings inherent in the universe.’
You can only take your worldview for granted if you’re not exposed to anything else. That’s the methodology of religion: to keep you in the dark. You’re meant to think the Bible contains all you need to know.
Worldviews can be cracked. Knowledge is the little hammer that chips away at ignorance. Read, travel, and teach children how to reason. And if your worldview needs a little shaking up, blow your mind with this.
“You can only take your worldview for granted if you’re not exposed to anything else.”
That’s really the key. As the parent of several young children, I’ve been thining about how to approach the subject when it will be brought up.
In fact one time I had a copy of Christopher Hitchens book “God is Not Great” in my lap while taking a break from reading, and my oldest son, who is 6, looked over and exclaimed in a surprised voice “God is Not Great?!” I didnt know what to say, and just said “it’s just the name of the book”, without getting further into it.
I think that the idea of exposing them to other creation stories and othe Gods will help them understadn that it’s just another fairy tale, like the ones I read to them at bed time.
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