The Catholic Church is attempting to recover from (another) one of its horrific child sexual abuse scandals. This is only the last of a series of similar outrages to have surfaced in recent months. Pope Francis made headlines earlier this year in South America, when he questioned the victims’ version of events and denied the alleged guilt of the priests involved. He has since recanted.
In the wake of this latest child abuse scandal, the prospect of a future where human children are raised free of restrictive and dogmatic education and free to explore the intellectual landscape is ever more appealing.
How is it that children grow up to become religious? The answer might seem obvious. Let me rephrase: Why is it that nearly all children born in India are often Hindu, those born in Afghanistan are Muslim, and those in the United States are Christian?
For most, religious belief is directly a result of parental religious belief. It does not come from spontaneous conversions or sudden revelations. Just like our genes, it is a gift from our biological “aboves.”
Children would benefit greatly if they were spared induction into the dogmas of his parents. Let me be clear: I am not advocating that you raise your child an atheist, force-reading them Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins before bed, or responding to their inquiries about the world in strict materialistic terms. I am simply saying that the world might be less tribal if its future inhabitants could grow up free of the dogmatic indoctrination parents are often prisoners of, and encouraged to reach their own conclusions about religion, politics, or spiritually.
Dogma is defined as “a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.” Contrary to an ethical framework instilled by parents, dogma is not something that necessitates skepticism or curiosity. It is a list of orders read down with no intention of having any productive conversation. This is why it necessitates an authoritative figure that can’t be questioned and an influenceable ear ready to drink it all in. This is a deadly recipe.
Children are a constant question mark: How? Why? Where? Who? Anybody who has ever met a child knows that their default starting position is ultimate openness to all ideas. Famed astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson refers to children as “full time scientists,” in constant “discovery mode” turning over rocks and questioning life’s quirks and trivialities.
To say that curiosity and skepticism are valuable tools to carry over to adulthood is an understatement. Healthy skepticism and raw inquisitiveness are exactly what we aim to nurture children and respect in adults. But too often, after years of programming in a particular dogma, religious or otherwise, this openness narrows under the weight of simplistic parental or cultural answers that don’t satisfy children’s thirst for knowledge, but are drilled in through repetition and cultural brainwashing until they stick.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that children, upon reaching adolescence, discover God on their own and embrace a newly-found faith. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, since the decision was made with their own cognitive toolkit, and not as a result of coercion. If religious belief is truly paramount, it doesn’t need to be fed in a steady dogmatic diet.
There is no reason to think that children would lose an important part of their upbringing if spared a dogmatic education; there is, however, a lot to be gained.
Everything about raising a child remains the same. Instilling morality through education cannot be framed by fear of punishment (as in hell) or quest for reward (as in heaven) in the first place, but by an expectation of reciprocity of goodwill and want for successful social cooperation. The idea that without a religious upbringing, kids would have no ethical framework is wrong and a disrespectful to the human intellect. Would we all really be raping and killing each other if we hadn’t been sent by our parents to Sunday School? We see today in the Catholic Church where the more ardent believers in religious dogmas operate on the moral landscape — is that what we want for our children ?
Similarly, the attainment of shared family values can easily be obtained without shared myth-making. Families develop bonds through emotion and experience, not through adherence to the same set of ideas. On the contrary, conflicting views and opinions, expressed in good faith, is a much more enriching and productive experience than intellectual homogeneity.
Children’s constant need for awe and wonder is likewise spared through usual storytelling, but this does not require belief that these stories are actually real. A little boy playing with toy soldiers doesn’t think the figurines are real humans, and that takes nothing away from the fun of it.
Children don’t need any such dogma to develop socially. They are quite content to discover the world without ideological conformity. It is up to parents to teach their children to develop an ethical framework without trying to force carbon copies of their belief systems on to them. This is in no doubt a constant challenge, and requires parents to be less self-centered and more open to ideas other than their own and requiring their children to decide for themselves.
Furthermore, a dogmatic upbringing plays into the nativist aspect of our nature and can designate enemies we only have because of such dogma. Almost all fundamentalist Muslims who are filled with a virulent hate for Jews, and orthodox Christians who believe gay people are immoral, are victims of corrosive dogmatic education.
Today, we have Muslim reformers in the likes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Majiid Nawaz who recognize and fight against these anti-Semitic educations, and a number of churches in the West taking steps to change mindsets on homosexuality. They are fighting an uphill battle in trying to excerpt from the heads of millions of people bad ideas that have been carefully implemented since birth. A dogmatic upbringing can pollute a brain for life.
Dogma, whether it be religious, political, or ideological, is bad news because it restricts reality and stimulates the anti-rational and reactionary aspects of our brains. Dogma in children is even worse because it infects the infant brain at a moment when it is incapable of exploring or discovering alternatives.
If the goal of a parent is to raise a child with the potential to be an independent thinker who is open to different ideas and people, then dogma simply cannot be a part of the education equation in any way.
Louis Sarkozy is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a student in philosophy and religion at New York University. He is the youngest son of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
