The other day I noted Richard Dawkins' complaisant usage of a standard piece of contemporary anti-Jewish mythology. In the same article from which that came, however, I somehow contrived to miss this statement:
What did he hope an atheist bloc in the US might achieve? "I would free children from being indoctrinated with the religion of their parents or their community..."This is either hot air or it's something worse than that. Let's begin with the more charitable interpretation: hot air. If Dawkins really thinks that setting up an organization of atheists is going to have a big effect in deterring the religious from imparting their beliefs to their children, he's deluded. It may have an influence at the margins, but that's something else than 'freeing children... etc.'
Or could he in fact mean something worse - that freeing children from religious 'indoctrination' should become a matter of public policy? Apart from the fact that this has been tried, somewhere, without terribly good results, one might have thought that a secular rationalist would be unwilling to entertain such a notion. In any case, it isn't compatible with democratic liberalism to turn atheism into an official truth.
Then there's also this:
I think... I would like to see people encouraged to rejoice in the world in which they find themselves, the universe in which they have been born, to take full advantage of the tiny slice of eternity they have been granted.My, oh my, but whatever does that remind you of? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for rejoicing in the world and even the universe, why not? But give us a break. People find their way to it, and in this they are helped by others, practitioners of one human enterprise or another in which some part of the beauty of things is transmitted. What they don't necessarily need is an organization that encourages them to 'rejoice'. (Thanks: JM.)