The future is a bright?

[j4]

This has just irritated me mightily.


After the first paragraph, I was already gritting my teeth. The first flakes of enamel started fluttering down like dental dandruff onto my keyboard as I reached the third or fourth. By the time I got to "Children are too young to know their religious opinions" (ascribing a religion to a child is "child abuse", whereas writing them off as too immature to have an opinion is somehow not?) I was gnawing the table-edge and muttering "sorrel, sorrel" under my breath.

Despite the damage to my dental regions, I did manage to read as far as the point where Dawkins kindly decides to inform the "gay" community what connotations "gay", "homosexual", and "queer" have. No, I'm not about to be drawn into the deadly dance of self-identification; my objection is nothing to do with obsessive people-pigeonholing, much less poof-specific pedantry. (After all, I suppose it is understandable that he has failed to notice the Queer Rights movement, and thus still regards "queer" as unquestionably an "insult".) But to blithely limit the meaning of one set of words (and, like it or not, identities) while claiming to liberate his own smug subculture from the tyranny of being called a spade... well, I wonder what the current meaning of "double standards" is in Dawkins' ideolect?

Perhaps he is right, and "I am a bright" really does sound "too unfamiliar to be arrogant". Perhaps it really is "puzzling, enigmatic, tantalising", and will revolutionise the world with its daring and memetic (natch) approach to (a lack of) religion. Fortunately, his real message comes out wholly untainted (and unredeemed) by his religious bias, with the resounding familiarity of the shit hitting the bowl: "I am a self-satisfied waste of the planet's vital resources".

Comments

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Tough.

The potential for emotional upset is precisely why one should think twice before assuming that children will follow the faith of their parents, which is a point Dawkins often makes.

Life is complicated. Data do not fit our assumptions. We do the best we can with working models of morality and psychology.

The belief system of several million people was lost when communism collapsed. Tough. Why the fuck should we pussyfoot around religion?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Dear me, I expected better reading comprehension from you! Of course, while atheism may not "count" as a "religion", it has just as much power to make its adherents lose their intellectual faculties.

Quick recap. for the sor(r)el(l)y challenged:

Ganesh said (and I paraphrase) "Bringing kids up religious isn't a problem because adults can just forget about all that religious nonsense when they grow up."

I argued that this reasoning was flawed; that imposing faith on people affects them deeply, even if (perhaps especially if?) they later reject that faith, and that therefore imposing one's faith on one's offspring (or students, etc.) was potentially "a problem", and was to be avoided.

You, apparently, agree that it's a bad idea to assume that children will follow the faith of the parents.

... You know, if you want to pick a fight with somebody on usenet^H^H^H^H^H^Hlivejournal, it works better if you can choose something where you disagree with them.

* * *

Ultimately, though, yes, it's "tough" if people are emotionally scarred by their parents' (or schools', or whatever's) misguided attempts to bring them up in a faith (or indeed absence of faith) which they later resent and/or reject. (They may not mean to, etc.) Worse things, as they say, happen at sea.

Clearly we need to strike at the root of the problem: accordingly, I propose that we move to legislate against "promoting" emotions in schools.

[hsenag.livejournal.com]

Ganesh said (and I paraphrase) "Bringing kids up religious isn't a problem because adults can just forget about all that religious nonsense when they grow up."

You paraphrase badly. What I said was that religiously symbolic acts (baptism, confirmation etc) are generally of no relevance to an unbeliever. I never suggested that the transition from believer to unbeliever was easy.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Ah, gotcha.

I propose that we move to legislate against "promoting" emotions in schools.

Is that satire? Because I think it's a bloody good idea.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I don't think emotions should be "promoted" any more than homosexuality. Does that answer your question? (Look at it this way: if everybody gets irrationally weepy over Judy Garland, we'll all drown.)