I’ve actually been getting a lot of ideas from the Atheist Experience TV show lately, which just goes to show that it’s an effective program. If it makes people think, whether they agree with what’s said or not, I consider it a rousing success. Great job to all of the people involved in the TV show!

This past week, they had author Dale McGowan on to talk about secular parenting. It’s a great topic, there are always lots of questions about how kids can be raised to be secular, free-thinking and rational and those are fantastic questions. However, while I welcome the discussion, I think Dale is doing it all wrong. The link to the audio podcast version is here, Dale is on right at the beginning of the show after announcements. They say that their YouTube channel is back up so if you want to watch it, it should be available soon.

Dale wrote a book called Parenting Beyond Belief. I’ll be honest, I haven’t read it and almost certainly wouldn’t, just because it no longer applies to me, I’ve already successfully raised two secular children and am not planning on doing it again. I just wanted to point out to people that it’s out there and if it sounds like something you’d like to check out, by all means, I encourage you to do so.

That said, I disagreed with just about everything he had to say in his phone call to TAE and, while I don’t want to put words into the mouths of Russell and Jen, there was a lot he said that they didn’t seem to agree with either. However, I’m not going to speak on their behalf, I’ll limit it to thinks that I had issues with.

To be honest, and this is just an impression I got, but a lot of what Dale said came off with a very accomodationist vibe. I’ve talked in the past about how much I dislike accomodationism, just as a philosophical position in *ANY* argument. It isn’t limited to religion, I don’t think that you should change your argument or moderate your stance because someone might get offended at what you say. That’s not to say you should be a dick, but your position is your position and you are entitled to your opinion, regardless of what anyone else thinks. You ought to stick to your guns if you feel strongly about your position, and if you don’t feel strongly about it, maybe you ought to rethink holding it in the first place.

So much of what Dale seemed to be saying is that the parents ought to be keeping their religious, or non-religious, views to themselves, lest they piss someone off. I think Russell had it right, they’re your kids, you get to choose how they’re raised. Religious family members might dislike what you’ve chosen to do, but they have no say in what you do. If they don’t like it, their one and only option is to accept it or to hit the road. From where I was sitting, it seems he wanted to put on a dog and pony show in front of kids to let them pick their beliefs from among a wide range of alternatives. That’s frankly stupid as far as I’m concerned. As atheists, and hopefully as rational atheists, we’re in no way obligated to present idiotic ideas to our children in the guise of being open minded. We’re not open minded and we shouldn’t be. All ideas are not created equal, all beliefs are not equally valid and just because people have stupid ideas doesn’t obligate us to put those ideas before our children. We don’t say “well, we taught you that 1+1=2, but some people believe 1+1=3, so let’s have them tell you why…” No, those people are objectively wrong, their reasoning has no place in a child’s education.

I think that some atheist parents get completely paranoid over the idea of “indoctrination”. Oh no, we can’t possibly indoctrinate our kids! They then go overboard the opposite direction, where they feel they cannot pass on facts to their offspring. It’s absurd. No matter what you do, you’re indoctrinating your kids, no matter what you teach them, you’re putting ideas into their heads that they are going to take seriously. It’s how a parent-child relationship works. They are going to look up to you to instruct them how to live their lives and if you refuse to do so, you’re performing an injustice.

If you want my opinion, as a parent of two very well-adjusted, intelligent atheist teenagers, here you go. Teach your kids from a very young age, not what to think, but how to think. Teach them how to question authority, how to examine propositions and how to make decisions based on evidence, logic and reason. Tell them they should never accept any proposition until they have checked it out on their own and verified it is factually true. If you do that, you’ve inoculated them against stupidity, both religious and otherwise. That is really all you can expect, but if done properly, if the lesson takes root, you have nothing to fear. I found it funny that they kept talking about hell and how traumatizing it is for children. No it’s not, not if you’ve done your job right. We never had to teach our kids that hell wasn’t real, we never had to teach them anything about Christianity or any other religion, we just taught them to think and they rejected it all on their own. If they come home with a false idea and seem interested in it, walk them through the logical steps. Why is this idea true? Where is the evidence? Why should they accept the idea as valid? Do this every single day with every single new idea. Make them justify these ideas. Point out the holes in their logic. It won’t be long until they are doing this automatically and I think you’ll find they make a lot fewer bad decisions.

I really don’t understand why so many atheist parents have so many problems just standing up for themselves. They’re your kids, they’re your responsibility, you have every right to teach them whatever values you hold and whatever beliefs you have. Do not ever allow a family member, any family member, to come between you and that extremely important fact. It’s better to eject a family member from your life than it is to let them poison the innocent minds of your kids. Raising your children to be productive, intelligent and rational members of society is your #1 job in life.

Don’t blow it.

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