Sunday, December 23, 2007

The innocence of habit is inevitably solidified by the malice of the law.

Carlos Fuentes Terra Nostra

This is somehow related to Dawkin's ideas regarding the malice of indoctrinating children into religious belief. Perhaps the malice of the law in such a case being the unwritten societal law that all children are in fact indoctrinated into the hocus pocus of their parents.

Children are taught to believe the backward cult traditions of their parents, such is the malice of the law. An eight year old child can be programmed to hate Jews and aspire to martyrdom, a 10 year old can be taught to carry a sign in the street opposing abortion but do either of these traditions consider simply teaching a child how to think logically and then allowing that child to come to an independent conclusion?

The Amish turn their children loose at a certain age, allow them to experiment with sex, drugs, and the modern world for years. The vast majority of those children return to their Amish communities. I would postulate two hypotheses to explain this.

1) The Amish way of life is the true and only way of life.

2) By the time these children are set free in the world it is far to late for them to think independently.

Dawkins states that only one in 12 children break with the religious traditions of their parents. If the parents have differing beliefs from one another then the child by definition must break with one to join the other. Or is this lucky one in 12 children breaking with the traditions of both parents?

I am especially intrigued with Dawkins idea that indoctrination of children is a form of child abuse. We are all appalled at the sight of the 6 year old child aspiring to be a suicide bomber but is this not simply the idea of indoctrination in its most pure and therefore obscene form? Would that Orwell were alive to write a brilliant exposition of the hypocrisy of this judgment by those who would have children of the same age condemn all who differ from them in belief to eternal torture.



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