Richard Dawkins: Forcing Religion on Children Is Child Abuse
Another (in)famous pop scientist says parents must not teach children what religion to believe. “That’s child abuse,” says evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins.
“What a child should be taught is that religion exists; that some people believe this and some people believe that,” he told an audience on Sunday.
“Forcing a religion on your children is as bad as child abuse,” he said.
“There is a value in teaching children about religion. You cannot really appreciate a lot of literature without knowing about religion,” he went on to say. “But we must not indoctrinate our children.”
So says the same man who believes “Every child should begin to be taught the basics of evolution when they are as young as five,” and who also wrote a book about evolution “aimed at children,” according to Dawkins’ own web site.
So what Dawkins obviously believes is that it is child abuse when you teach your children to believe God, but it is not child abuse when he teaches your children his belief that there is no God.
Commenting on this article, AIG President Ken Ham said:
Actually, the ultimate “child abuse” really comes from these intolerant God haters… who want children to be indoctrinated in atheism so they will reject the truth of God’s Word and the gospel—and thus be separated from God forever. ‘It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones’ (Luke 17:2).
Dawkins also recently stated in an interview that teaching your children about hell is worse than sexually abusing them:
“It seems to me that telling children that they really, really believe that people who sin are going to go to Hell and roast forever… it seems to me to be intuitively entirely reasonable that that is a worse form of child abuse [than sexual abuse], that will give more nightmares, that will give more genuine distress because they really believe.”
NOTE: The links above may open web sites outside of www.heritagedefense.org, where you will encounter content and images which may be inappropriate and which are not endorsed by Heritage Defense.
Help us find important news! If you see a story relevant to the mission of Heritage Defense, please go to our contact page and send us a link. Thanks!