Okay, guys. We’re going to visit indoctrination one… last… time. My previous posts about talking with kids about religion from a relatively neutral perspective so they are capable of making up their own minds about what to believe is still getting some of my fellow bloggers here at Patheos bent out of shape. The most recent: Daniel Fincke of Camels with Hammers, who has spent most of the week slamming me for my views. But another is Khaveh Mousavi of On the Margin of Error who has written about the subject both here and here.

First, let’s start with the points on which we all seem to agree:

1. Science is true. Telling children what we know to be true from science is important.

2. Children should learn about religion (if for no other reason than its cultural value).

3. We all want to raise critical thinkers — kids who can analyze a situation for themselves, who have strong bullshit detectors, and who question authority.

4. We all share a similar worldview: That is, we do not personally believe in God, heaven, hell, miracles, prophets or supernatural events.

5. We all think it’s important to share our own worldviews with our children.

What we disagree on is whether atheists are right to indoctrinate their children into atheism (that is, leave them no real choice but to disbelieve), and whether religion should be dismissed as fairytales/nonsense/boogieman stuff when talking to our kids.

I am clearly in the “No” camp on both these points. And I’m not alone. The vast majority of the nonreligious parents I’ve interviewed or surveyed agree with me on this one. Here’s why:

1. We want our kids to make up their own minds. As Dale McGowan, of The Secular Spectrum eloquently stated in a post Wednesday, raising freethinkers means letting kids explore reality for themselves and come up with a belief system that makes sense to them. When you tell kids that God is a myth, and a pretty dumb one at that, you aren’t letting kids reach their own conclusions. And you are shutting the door on a perfect opportunity to hone their critical thinking skills.

2. We know religion is important. It just is. The most tiresome argument anti-theists make is likening religion or God to Bigfoot or Astrology or UFOs. Hey, I get it. I, too, believe in God at the same level as I believe in Bigfoot; and that level is zero. But that doesn’t make it a fair argument. Why? Because billions of people don’t hold countless holidays celebrating Bigfoot. Because hundreds of thousands of individuals haven’t dedicated years of their lives exploring Tarot cards. Because my kid isn’t likely to be threatened with eternal damnation for saying she doesn’t believe in UFOs. You, as a person, can believe religion doesn’t matter. But you, as a parent, are misrepresenting reality if you tell your kids that.

3. We want our children to be kind. Kindness is what allows our kids to make friends and develop meaningful relationships. It makes the world a more pleasant place and life a more pleasant experience. And, when used as a benchmark, kindness has the ability to guide our ethics in some very concrete ways. Building up our children’s compassion for people who “aren’t like them” is part of that. Listen, this isn’t all about religion; it’s about diversity. It’s about treating people like three-dimensional human beings and acknowledging that most of them, while flawed, probably have wonderful things to offer the world.

4. Being right is not as important as being nice. An atheist kicks my grandpa in the nuts. A devout Muslim helps my grandpa cross the street. I’m not in the atheist’s corner just because he’s the one who shares my perspective on faith. I’m with the Muslim because he shares my perspective on human decency. I feel exactly the same way about my kid. I don’t care what she believes; what matters is what she does in life, what she brings to the world, and how she treats her fellow human beings along the way.

5. We want our kids to be able to separate bad religious ideas from good religious people. Okay, so there are a lot of things to complain about when it comes to religion. But you know what? A whole lot of religious people think so, too. That’s one of the reasons we need to be careful not to stereotype and generalize about religions. It’s true that some religious people, like some atheists, can be rigid, close-minded egomaniacs. But most people (even those who have truly wackadoo beliefs) are really nice, happy and well-adjusted human being worth getting to know. So we have to watch our language around kids. Making grand generalizations about “religion” or stereotyping “believers” sends a clear message to kids that all religions do [X] and all believers believe [Y]. And that is a myth. A whole stack of philosophy degrees doesn’t make that not a myth.

Now, anticipating more debate on this in the future, I’d ask my fellow Patheos bloggers to try to, in the future, understand my position before attacking it.

Fincke, for example, wrote here that I and others like me are giving our kids “only two main choices–either join in in the ‘indoctrinating’ into your own ‘beliefs’ (even if they’re actually atheistic ones) or be completely neutral.” He goes on to represent my position as saying all religious beliefs are just a matter of personal opinion and no one can be right so the only good solution is to treat all religions as equal and be tolerant of everything.

You don’t have to treat all beliefs as equally valid. You can tell them, matter-of-factly, with no threats of hell or disownment involved, that some ideas are most likely false… There’s no reason to talk as though ‘other people believe this to be true’ makes it a valid opinion. You can be matter-of-fact. There is no heaven. There are no angels. There’s no evidence anyone has psychic powers. The earth was not created in 7 days. Humans evolved. There is no hell.

These are straw man arguments. I’ve never made any statements like the one he is attacking here. I’ve never said that just because people believe something, their opinion is correct or valid. I have never argued that parents should be completely neutral about all religious beliefs.

My position is that atheist parents should take an active role in guiding their children’s exposure to the panoply of belief systems around them in a way that promotes freethinking. As I have said (again and again and again), tell kids the truth. Tell them the facts, and don’t be shy about it. My point is that by presenting “the other side” — that is, anything you don’t believe but that lots of other people do — as dispassionately and neutrally as possible, then you allow your kids to look at the facts and look at the beliefs and decide for themselves what to make of all of it.

[Point of clarity for parents: If the concept you are explaining to your kid is one that is harmful — whether it be sexism, homophobia or terrorism — it should not be treated dispassionately. Those are bad, immoral, degrading actions that may or may not relate to religion. Part of teaching kids to be kind is teaching them what’s not.]

We do not face the black-or-white choice of either indoctrinating our kids into our “correct” beliefs or trashing all religion for being wrong. Neither do we face the other black-and-white choice of trashing all religions or ignoring religion (and instead sending them off to Bible camp to, um, I don’t know, make wooden crosses?) This is not a black-or-white issue. There are so many more nuanced options available for nonreligious parents to talk to their kids about religion — and every one of them is better than the ones Fincke named.

But this was the statement that had me shaking my head. Fincke wrote:

No, I wouldn’t disown my kids if they adopted a faith-based, supernaturalistic, and/or authoritarian religion despite all my efforts to see through the flaws in such bankrupt institutions and ideas. I think that in such a case my kids would be at serious risk of suffering intellectually and with respect to their values because surrendering their autonomy to arbitrary authorities like that is unduly constraining of their options and their ability to discern what is true from what is false and what is good from what is bad.

Holy Christ, Dan. There are so many glaring generalizations, not to mention logical fallacies, in that one statement I don’t even know where to begin. But, hey, at least you wouldn’t disown your child for believing things you don’t. That’s so noble!

I do hope that this was just an exercise—an off-the cuff exploration of your feelings and something that you’ll re-read when you’re a parent and dismiss as being naive, ill-thought-out and misguided. Because, Dan (and others like Dan), presenting the complicated and diverse phenomenon we know as “religion” as nonsense that only dumb people believe is not going to turn your kids into logical, freethinking philosophers.

It’s going to turn them into dicks.