I often ponder over religion with a scientific context. I suppose that’s expected, given the scientific way in which I live my life. However, a recent tweet by Richard Dawkins prompted me to think about religion and religious indoctrination from an evolutionary perspective. Granted, this is not a traditional evolutionary perspective, but it intrigued me so I thought I would share:
If we think of religion as its own species, rather than a trait of our own species, what would the natural environmental hazards be for religion? All of the following come to mind:
education, knowledge, intelligence, logic
So, from an evolutionary perspective, any given religion would be more likely to survive “as a species” if it had a way to nullify or reduce the impact of these hazards. That’s where the tweet comes into play:
Why can’t you just let your kids discover their own world view?
The answer to this question is obvious enough, although I don’t think we take it seriously enough. Indoctrination brings me to anger as fast or faster than most other offensive things I can imagine. What could possibly be worse than stripping a child of their ability to think, learn and grow? To quote a sign from a protester: “We should teach children to think – not what to think.”
It seems to me that in the context of our analogy, indoctrination is an advantageous trait for a religion, to ensure its survival. It supplants education and knowledge with willful ignorance and falsehoods, and taints a child’s intelligence and logic with faith. In other words, indoctrination eliminates or impairs the environmental hazards that endanger religion.
I would encourage everyone in our community to consider indoctrination as one of, if not the most important foe we face in our effort to stifle religion’s influence on our world. I believe public education is our best weapon against indoctrination, and supporting the separation of church and state is paramount to making education an indoctrination-free environment.
Here are some organizations that are fighting for this cause daily, that could use your support:
- The American Civil Liberties Union
- The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
- The National Center for Science Education
Richard Dawkins has also recently released an excellent paper book and interactive iPad book that you may be interested in providing to children that are a part of your lives:
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