Current Events – Richard Dawkins on Attack

Renowned evolutionary biologist and atheist, Dawkins has called on schools to protect children from being indoctrinated by their religious parents.

In an interview with The Irish Times, February 25, 2015, before a talk at Trinity College, Dublin, he said,

“Children need to be protected” from religious parents.

He argued that parents were given too much leeway over their children’s education, and that it was time to give more rights back to the individuals themselves.

“There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children and I think the balance has swung too far towards parents,” he said.

“Children do need to be protected so that they can have a proper education and not be indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in.”

Physicist Lawrence Krauss, who also took part in the interview, agreed that the state had an obligation to properly educating its children.

“That means parents have a limited – it seems to be – limited rights in determining what the curriculum is,” Krauss said.

“The state is providing the education, it’s trying to make sure all children have equal opportunity.

“And parents of course have concerns and a say, but they don’t have the right to shield their children from knowledge. That’s not a right any more than they have the right to shield their children from health care or medicine. And those parents that do that are often tried and imprisoned when they refuse to allow their children to get blood transfusions or whatever is necessary for their health. And this is necessary for their mental health.”

It comes after a writer on the website of Richard Dawkins’ foundation claimed this new scientific theory could answer the question of how life began – and throw out the need for God.

www.salon.com/2015/02/25/richard_dawkins_children_do_need_to_be_protected_from_religious_parents/

How different from God’s ideal for his children.

“To parents is committed the great work of educating and training their children for the future, immortal life. Many fathers and mothers seem to think that if they feed and clothe their little ones, and educate them according to the standard of the world, they have done their duty. They are too much occupied with business or pleasure to make the education of their children the study of their lives. They do not seek to train them so that they will employ their talents for the honor of their Redeemer. Solomon did not say, ‘Tell a child the way he should go’ … but, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it’ (Proverbs 22:6).” Child Guidance, 39.