In an article written last week for Time Magazine, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins started his piece by saying something he has become known for repeating,

We wouldn’t claim our young kids are liberals or Libertarian, so why are we saddling them with our religious labels?

This sentiment has become well known and used by atheist, secularists and humanists all over, and I even used a similar argument in my book Parenting Without God, which talks a lot about giving the tools so that children can label themselves and come to their own conclusions and beliefs.

The article itself is centered around a report that a,

local government council of the London borough of Islington was reported in the Islington Gazette as having banned pork products from primary school dinners.

And while the actual reasoning is unclear, Dawkins reports that,

The underlying point was clarified by another spokesman from the council, as quoted in the Gazette and requoted in The Independent,one of Britain’s most respected national newspapers: “Young children, some as young as four-years-old, of different religious and ethnic backgrounds may not know which foods contain pork, or may not realise the importance of avoiding it due to their culture or beliefs.”

And there is the problem Dawkins sees glaring right at him; “their beliefs”.

“Would you ever speak of a four-year-old’s political beliefs? Hannah is a socialist four-year-old, Mark a conservative,” Dawkins asks.

Of course not, because we all understand that children are too naive and young to understand the complicated world of politics. Dawkins argues you better have a good argument for believing that labeling a child by their parents religion is justified, but both he and myself cannot think of one.

But Dawkins does however give a little room for tradition,

But there really is an important difference between including your children in harmless traditions, and forcing on them un-evidenced opinions about the nature of life or the cosmos. Tradition is fine where it amounts to songs or literature, styles of dress or architecture. But tradition is a terrible basis for ethics, or beliefs about the origin of the universe or the evolution of life.

He continues,

Indoctrinating your opinions into the vulnerable minds of your children is bad enough. Perhaps worse is the defeatist assumption, almost universally made by society at large, including secular society, that children as a matter of fact do automatically inherit the beliefs of their parents and our language should reflect this. Non-religious as well as religious people buy into the notion that children should be labeled with one religious name or another.

And here Dawkins makes a pretty good assumption that I feel is often overlooked in polls about religious grown and decline, stating that many of these projections only work on the assumption that children growing up in these countries continue their parents religious tradition.

Finally Dawkins uses feminism as a great example of how as a society our consciousness has been raised about how we word such statements,

Feminists have successfully raised our consciousness about sex-biased language. Nobody nowadays talks about “one man one vote,” or “the rights of man.” The use of “man” in such a context raises immediate hackles. Even those who use sexist language know they are doing it, may even do it deliberately to annoy. The point is that our consciousness has been raised. Our language has changed because we have become aware of hidden assumptions that we previously overlooked.

He is more than correct here as generations grow and take over we see certain traditions and social norms change with time and heightened awareness. It is time as Dawkins says in closing that we ought to,

[…] raise our consciousness, and the consciousness of society, about the religious labeling of children. Let’s all mind our religious language just as we have learned to over sexist language. “Catholic child,” “Muslim child,” “Hindu child,” “Mormon child” — all such phrases should make us cringe. Whenever you hear somebody speak of a “Catholic child,” stop them in their tracks: There’s no such thing as a Catholic child.

Let’s let children be children and stop burdening them with our labels and forcing them to conform to a belief system they have no say in joining. I believe this is both a religious and non-religious issue and it is time we change this social norm once and for all.