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Ruby and Wade Ridpath with their combat veteran dog, Carlos, who served five years as an explosive-detecting dog in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Ridpaths nominated Carlos for the American Humane Association Hero Dog Awards in the military dog category. by Erin Prater erin.prater@gazette.com – “Bring him home.” As Ruby Ridpath typed those words into an [...]
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Courtesy of the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo The Gazette – The most recognizable giraffe at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, known for her unique, nearly all-white coloring, died Tuesday morning due to complications of old age. Becky, a 32-year-old reticulated giraffe, had been on a “quality of life watch” for about a year and a half, the [...]
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by t.d. mobley-martinez tracy@coloradosprings.com – I love dogs. And I’m not alone. Which is probably why they have found themselves pictured or portrayed since men began to walk upright. Cave paintings and Egyptian murals. Those “Blue Dog” paintings. Tin Tin’s Snowy, L. Frank Baum’s Toto in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” Astro, Scooby Doo and [...]
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[...]The atheist plan for your children’s minds – The Broadside : Colorado Springs Gazette, CO[...]…
Bob: Your sarcasm is noted, and is in fact an important consideration.
This discussion was specifically about the law, not about social practice. It is absolutely true that one good way to diminish the effects of religious indoctrination on the youth is to expose the youth to other religious claims. In this Dennett is absolutely correct and quite canny in his plan.
If the desire is to indeed remove “toxic” elements of religion, which is not in and of itself necessarily a bad thing, then Dennett’s plan is a good one. But my article is not about the social aspects, it’s about the legal pitfalls of allowing government to engage in such behaviors.
We may agree that counter-indoctrination of students subjected to violent, radical religious indoctrination is a good thing in principle, but I argue that we must be very, very careful in allowing our government to engage in the sort of ad hoc inquiry that would be required to determine exactly what the definition of “violent, radical religious indoctrination” might be, and even more consideration must be given to allowing government to censor speech, religious or otherwise, prospectively.
One of our most closely-held beliefs about the First Amendment is that the government cannot be allowed to engage in prior restraint of speech. Rather, government is authorized to punish criminal acts, and even criminal speech (such as falsely shouting “FIRE” in a crowded theater), but only after the fact.
So, your sarcasm has a valuable place in this debate, and I thank you for your comment. I also thank you for your reference, I’m going to have to get a copy and study up before I take off on my international motorcycle tour.
As the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein said, (and I paraphrase) “When the natives rub blue mud in their belly-buttons, it’s only polite to rub blue mud in your own, and it might preserve your hair.”
I confess (is that a religious thing?) that I just skimmed this stuff really fast (some of us have a limited tolerance for editors’ and noters’ claims to be able to read other people’s minds – it’s not clear they can even read their own minds – though I admire the editor’s stamina to actually create a transcript of a YouTube video – definitely above and beyond). Anyhow, it seems to me that the original proposal is devilish, to say the least. Nothing could be more injurious to our fine and upstanding established institutions of religion than exposing innocent impressionable children to the facts of multiple religious beliefs and practices. But, if it becomes necessary to do it, then I recommend as one textbook, “How to Be a Perfect Stranger: A Guide to Etiquette in Other People’s Religious Ceremonies”, ed. by Arthur J. Magida.
Guffman: Thank you for the interesting discussion. I’ll make a couple of points and agree that we’ve explored the subject pretty well.
First, re: misinformation. Apology accepted. And I’ll apologize to Prof. Dennett should he decide to join the debate and defend his proposition and demonstrate that I’m wrong.
Re: dogmatic beliefs. Yes, we all have our biases and filters, even your Interlocutor.
Re: Toxic religion. I don’t disagree that there may be toxic sects of religion, but I absolutely believe that it is not with the government’s power to make such determinations, and that the slippery slope of trying to do so is far worse than simply reacting when toxic religion causes harm.
Thank you again for you salient comments, it’s been a pleasure discussing the issue with you, and I look forward to sparring with you in the future.
Seth, we both want to nurture honest, good-faith debate here. Please continue to call me on lapses such as loaded questions. I will continue to call you on unsupported assertions. No one else is going to referee, here.
Re misinformation: Generally I assume that if someone CAN back up a statement with hard fact or sound inference, he will do so. Without that backup it’s hard for me to take the assertion at face value. After a few such assertions I start making inferences of my own. Sometimes I question people’s motives. It’s hard to know anyone’s motives, harder still via blog comments — or YouTube snippets.
So, to the extent I misjudged your motives, I humbly apologize and retract the allegation. Even so, I think you owe the same to Prof. Dennett.
On the parents vs. educators point, I don’t see a slam-dunk case on either side. Your reasoning is respectable but tortured. I think it is most likely Dennett’s statement about ‘honoring the principle of freedom of religion” was a reference to the establishment clause, because teachers, as public employees, are constantly in a position to violate it. Again, Dennett’s published version of the proposal likely would answer the question, and I will hold further comment on this point until I can go a-Googling for more info.
“Religious education is mostly what to believe and less how to perform the rituals in most lay cases”: Blurring further the definition(s) of “religious education” & blowing right by the distinction between teaching kids what to believe & teaching them about other belief systems. The distinction makes a difference.
“Remember, he’s blind to his own dogmatic beliefs”: Does this also apply to D’Souza, or to me, or to you for that matter — to anyone with dogmatic beliefs? If you’re singling Dennett out on this point, would you tell me again why he in particular is blind to his own dogmatic beliefs? I must have missed it.
On religious “toxicity”: “it’s not a premise that government can be involved with because it requires that government make value judgments about religion, which it’s forbidden to do. The value judgment is made merely by government presenting ‘neutral facts’ about religion in comparison to the presumptive desired default condition of atheism. How is government to determine what ‘facts’ are ‘non-controversial’ and thus appropriate for presentation except to examine each religion and select facts?” Legally, it’s a flaw in the proposal. History and anthropology can (theoretically) be taught without bias, and Dennett is touching on both fields in his curriculum — but government is not constitutionally banned from showing favoritism in those fields. His “neutral” topics — “history, creed, rituals, music, symbols, ethical commands and prohibitions” — look benign, but when lawyers from the ACLJ get through with them, it will look like Dennett is burning crosses in the shadows of every steeple in the land.
“Yes, it is a Machiavellian strategy. He lays it right out before us. He thinks religion is toxic. He says that only ‘some’ parts of religion are toxic, but I am not convinced that he’s telling us the truth. I think he’s simply trying to chip away at the edifice of religion by appearing to be supportive of the evolutionary benefits of religion (see his book ‘Breaking the Spell’) but he’s actually entirely irreligious and would very much like to see humanity evolve away from religion, and he’s willing to help evolution along by using the law to denigrate and extirpate religion”: Establishing that this is opinion only. Noted.
“He’s very, very careful not to say what he means by ‘toxic’ … because by being ambiguous, he both leaves it up to the imagination of the audience, so that they can replace the word ‘toxic’ with whatever they don’t like about any particular religion, and he avoids having to justify what and why he considers some tenet to be toxic. He’s quite canny in this regard, but he blows his cover with the ‘inoculate youth’ and ‘toxic religion’ comments, which make his intent perfectly clear…”: It’s certainly clear to you. To me, Dennett spelled out his argument soundly. This isn’t about toxic “tenets,” and your choice of words in that sentence is the kind of thing that could lead me to make inferences (wrong ones, of course) about your motives for twisting his words. For the record, here’s Dennett again, spelling out his argument, as quoted in your original piece:
“‘All religions have toxic versions. That is, there are anti-social fanatical elements in every major religion, in Hinduism and Islam and the various kinds of Christianity and so forth. … All toxic versions depend on the enforced ignorance of the young. It’s only by keeping your young people ignorant of other religions that you can preserve this. So my, my sort of public health measures say just don’t permit that enforced ignorance to go on. By informing the young we inoculate them against toxic forms of religion.’”
“… and perfectly unconstitutional”: We agree on this point, and as we’re beginning to repeat ourselves I suggest we leave it on that lone point of agreement.
Guffman:
“…yes, it’s provocative, but then you knew that coming in, and since it’s my purpose here, I see nothing wrong with stimulating the debate”: There is a line between provocation & misinformation, just as there is a line between assertion & argument.”
Indeed. Are you accusing me of misinforming people, or do you just disagree with me? If it’s the former, I’ll expect some authoritative evidence of that misinformation, with citations, or a retraction.
There is also a distinction between factual argument and opinion, and you would do well to remember this when making such accusations.
Guffman: ”Here’s his quote regarding prohibited religious instruction: ‘As long as you teach your children this curriculum you can teach them anything else you want. Anything else you want provided it doesn’t disable them from further informing themselves’”: Your argument that Dennett’s proposal will interfere with what parents teach their children seems rooted in the definition of “you” in that sentence. In context Dennett was talking about school curricula, not parents passing on their faiths to their children. I see no reason to assume that “you” referred to parents, much less church instruction.”
I disagree. First, his audience is not educators, it’s individuals. Second, his intent is to prevent children from being “disabled” from seeking other information. Since schools are already in the business of “enabling” children to seek information, to suggest that he was addressing this prohibition to schools is illogical.
Second, he specifically states “as long as you teach YOUR children this curriculum, YOU can teach them anything else YOU want.” followed by “So it honors the principle of freedom of religion.” (emphasis mine)
First, it’s pretty clear that the “you” he’s referring to is the parents of children. School teachers would have no reason to teach “anything else” related to religion that might breach the barrier Dennett propose to erect. Moreover, his comment that this plan “honors the principle of freedom of religion” clearly cannot be applied to teachers because teachers, as public employees, have no right to engage in free religious practices in their capacity as teachers. The only people that this “honoring” of freedom of religion could plausibly apply to are the students and their parents.
So, I think that you make a major error in interpretation in this regard.
Guffman: “… it’s the teaching of specific religious tenets and beliefs in a manner and in an atmosphere of authority that renders any one religion implicitly ‘equal’ to all other religions”: Here it’s a verb problem, not a pronoun problem. “Teaching” beliefs in shul or Sunday school or from any pulpit is and ought to be quite different from “teaching” about religions in K-12 schools. It’s the difference in teaching HOW TO believe vs. teaching WHAT OTHERS believe. Dennett makes a weak pass at making that point, which seems obvious to me but is central to your misunderstanding of his proposal.”
Again, I disagree. Religious education is mostly what to believe and less how to perform the rituals in most lay cases. Priests, or Rabbis on the other hand, having learned what, spend much time learning how.
Dennett’s plan is indeed to teach what, and to teach what others believe in a compulsory, authoritative, egalitarian manner specifically to highlight the differences and similarities between different belief systems, and in the process render government-determined moral judgment on which aspects of what religions are “toxic.” However rational this might sound, it’s just not something our government can do.
Guffman: “Interestingly, Dennett doesn’t talk about teaching kids about atheism & secularism in the YouTube clip. In the next segment D’Souza recommends adding them to the proposal. Dennett seems to think that’s a good idea, as do I.”
Yes, this is interesting, and significant. Remember, he’s blind to his own dogmatic beliefs. He assumes that atheism and secularism are, and ought to rightfully be the default condition of humanity. Also, if he mentioned them, this immediately brings up yet more constitutional issues, because it makes it clear that he is comparing atheism and religion as a part of compulsory education, and this, combined with his intent to “inoculate” youth demonstrates his intent to have government agents embroiling themselves in value judgments about religion, which the Lemon test prohibits.
Guffman: “It is not within the authority of government to declare religions or religious practices to be ‘toxic’ in the first place”: Straw man, as far as I can tell. Nowhere in Dennett’s proposal does anyone in government point at any religion and say, “toxic.” His premise is that facts about other faiths will help keep kids from, say, joining up with a heavily armed fanatic who thinks he has a hotline to Yahweh & a mission to kill all nonbelievers. Just taking a hypothetical extreme, there, for the sake of being provocative.”
Yes, that is his premise. Unfortunately, it’s not a premise that government can be involved with because it requires that government make value judgments about religion, which it’s forbidden to do. The value judgment is made merely by government presenting “neutral facts” about religion in comparison to the presumptive desired default condition of atheism. How is government to determine what “facts” are “non-controversial” and thus appropriate for presentation except to examine each religion and select facts?
But in doing so, government is making value judgments about which “facts” are relevant and non-controversial and which are “toxic” or controversial. Does government present “facts” about Islam such as the fact that Islam calls for killing unbelievers in Jihad? Does government choose the “fact” that sects of the Catholic church engaged in religious persecution? How about the “fact” that sects of Hinduism worship death-gods? What about the “facts” that Hedonists like to have sex a lot?
And once government is given authority to decide which “facts” about religion are appropriate for this program of indoctrination, who can prevent government from twisting or distorting those facts?
Do you see why it is that it’s impossible for government to select “facts” about religion without inherently entangling itself in the details of religious belief to an undesirable degree?
Guffman: “(D’Souza BTW ultimately says he has no objection to the general concepts of Dennett’s proposal, only to the fact that Dennett himself is laying out the curriculum.)”
Which just shows that DiSousa is no lawyer either. That’s what happens when you get philosophers talking at each other, they tend to go all abstract on each other and they forget that there are concrete legal reasons not to mix up government and religion.
Guffman: “He is constructing an edifice that places secularism and atheism in a preferred position by comparing the tenets and practices of all major religions specifically in order to implicitly point out the dichotomies and conflicts between different forms of belief”: That’s some kind of Machiavellian strategy he’s got there. Since as noted he wasn’t explicitly proposing to TEACH secularism or atheism, I’d say it’s baseless conjecture.”
Yes, it is a Machiavellian strategy. He lays it right out before us. He thinks religion is toxic. He says that only “some” parts of religion are toxic, but I am not convinced that he’s telling us the truth. I think he’s simply trying to chip away at the edifice of religion by appearing to be supportive of the evolutionary benefits of religion (see his book “Breaking the Spell”) but he’s actually entirely irreligious and would very much like to see humanity evolve away from religion, and he’s willing to help evolution along by using the law to denigrate and extirpate religion.
It is very significant that Dennett left out secularism and atheism in his list of religions. Don’t underestimate the power of implicitly denying that atheism is a religion by leaving it off the list. The practical effect of creating confusion and doubt in the minds of schoolchildren during the years when they are most susceptible to propaganda and indoctrination is enormous. Jesuit Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, put for this maxim: “Give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man.”
Dennett knows this maxim as well as the Jesuits, which is why he’s specifically proposing his compulsory religious education plan in grade school. He wants to replace, or at least blunt and denigrage religious indoctrination with atheist indoctrination at the critical stages of mental development.
Guffman: “The closest Dennett comes to expressing this intention is to show a slide of a building that started as a church, became a mosque and is now a museum, followed by a couple of “what-if” slides of Mecca and St. Peter’s Basilica. Maybe he spells it out in the book. Full-blown Atheists are rarely shy about stating frankly their belief that the world would be better off without religion, and across 15 YouTube clips of the full Dennett-D’Souza debate I didn’t hear him express that. Your assumption about his intent looks like just that: an assumption at best.”
I think it’s a well-founded assumption based on the fact that he states up front that he feels that all religions have “toxic versions.” He’s very, very careful not to say what he means by “toxic” either, because by being ambiguous, he both leaves it up to the imagination of the audience, so that they can replace the word “toxic” with whatever they don’t like about any particular religion, and he avoids having to justify what and why he considers some tenet to be toxic. He’s quite canny in this regard, but he blows his cover with the “inoculate youth” and “toxic religion” comments, which make his intent perfectly clear, and perfectly unconstitutional.
~
Following is a transcript of Daniel Dennett’s comments.
I transcribed the comments directly from the YouTube video link below. I have only transcribed the comments about his plan for compulsory religious education. I post it here for reference for those who might wish to join the conversation.
Daniel Dennett:
“This would be compulsory. And my idea is that it would cover history, creed, rituals, music, symbols, ethical commands and prohibitions. That’s it. Just raw, tested, non-controversial facts that everybody can agree to about the world’s religions and that should be a curriculum that starts in grade school goes into middle school and high school. Now, I believe as strongly as anybody in the principle freedom of religion, so notice that this in no way violates freedom of religion. As long as you teach your children this curriculum you can teach them anything else you want. Anything else you want provided it doesn’t disable them from further informing themselves. So it honors the principle of freedom of religion.
Now I’ve been discussing this proposal since I put it in my book, for a year and a half now and I’ve had the support actually of a lot of even right wing Christian leaders. They say “this is great, this is great, yeah, we’re all for it.” But Dinesh is on record as opposing it. Here’s what he has to say, “Daniel Dennett urges that the schools teach religion as a purely natural phenomenon.” And then he goes on to say, “By this he means that religion should be taught as if it were untrue.”
That’s not what it means and I’ve never said that. And this is simply a misrepresentation by Dinesh. I expanded on my point on the blog on faith, which some of you may have seen, and I though that it was such an obvious implication that I put it in parentheses. I said, “Notice that the truth or falsity of any religious doctrines would not be included in the curriculum since not a single point of religious doctrine is agreed upon as straightforward fact by the world community.”
So Dinesh has misrepresented my position. And maybe that’s why he is opposed to it. I don’t know, maybe now that he understands it better he’ll be in agreement with it. We’ll see.
Now, my reason for this is not the reason he suggests, he thinks I’m trying to wipe out religion. On the contrary, it’s my recommendation for how to preserve the best in religion and get rid of just the stuff that we all want to get rid of, the toxic stuff.
And it’s a rather simple argument. All religions have toxic versions. That is there are anti-social fanatical elements in every major religion, in Hinduism and Islam and the various kinds of Christianity and so forth. And as near as I can see, this isn’t a careful claim, I haven’t done direct research on it but combing the literature it seems to me pretty clear. All toxic versions depend on the enforced ignorance of the young. It’s only by keeping your young people ignorant of other religions that you can preserve this. So my, my sort of public health measures say just don’t permit that enforced ignorance to go on. By informing the young we inoculate them against toxic forms of religion.
And my understanding of this is as follows. A religion that can survive under this sort of free information deserves to survive, it’s a benign form of religion, let it flourish. And a religion that can’t survive without the enforced ignorance of the young deserves to go extinct. But I don’t know, maybe Dines disagrees with that, we’ll see.
He quotes me. This is something Dinesh does in his book. He quotes in a context of disparagement but you’re never quite sure if he agrees with what he’s quoting or not. “Parents,” He’s quoting me now, “Parents don’t literally own their children the way slave owners once owned slaves, but are, rather, their stewards and guardians and ought to be held accountable by outsiders for their guardianship, which does imply that outsiders have a right to interfere.”
I stick by that, I think that’s true. And I want to know, does he dissent from this statement. He presents it as if he disagrees, I’d like to know, does he actually dissent from this statement.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oG605U19fE
Seth,
“…yes, it’s provocative, but then you knew that coming in, and since it’s my purpose here, I see nothing wrong with stimulating the debate”: There is a line between provocation & misinformation, just as there is a line between assertion & argument.
“His statement that ‘the truth or falsity of any religious doctrines would not be included’ is a smokescreen”: Assertion. “He makes a number of self-serving attempts to minimize his ultimate objective, which is the gradual extirpation of religion through secular indoctrination of youth”: Assertion. “…it’s a thinly-veiled attempt to inject atheism and secularism into the classroom”: Assertion….
Et cetera.
In terms of actual, debatable, evidence-based argument:
“”Here’s his quote regarding prohibited religious instruction: ‘As long as you teach your children this curriculum you can teach them anything else you want. Anything else you want provided it doesn’t disable them from further informing themselves’”: Your argument that Dennett’s proposal will interfere with what parents teach their children seems rooted in the definition of “you” in that sentence. In context Dennett was talking about school curricula, not parents passing on their faiths to their children. I see no reason to assume that “you” referred to parents, much less church instruction.
(Yes, he would include the “fourth R” in homeschool curricula. You’re welcome to argue that there should be NO compulsory curricula in homeschooling. It seems like a different topic to me.)
Dennett’s not a fireball debater, clearly, and as he enunciated the proposal in a book I’d be interested in seeing it in his own words, on the page.
“… it’s the teaching of specific religious tenets and beliefs in a manner and in an atmosphere of authority that renders any one religion implicitly ‘equal’ to all other religions”: Here it’s a verb problem, not a pronoun problem. “Teaching” beliefs in shul or Sunday school or from any pulpit is and ought to be quite different from “teaching” about religions in K-12 schools. It’s the difference in teaching HOW TO believe vs. teaching WHAT OTHERS believe. Dennett makes a weak pass at making that point, which seems obvious to me but is central to your misunderstanding of his proposal.
(I suspect it’s also a distinction complex enough to sink the proposal in a Constitutionality test.)
“…remember that both atheism and secularism are considered ‘religions’ for First Amendment purposes. They are NOT common ground. If the material is presented in a manner which elevates atheism over religion, that too is prohibited”: Interestingly, Dennett doesn’t talk about teaching kids about atheism & secularism in the YouTube clip. In the next segment D’Souza recommends adding them to the proposal. Dennett seems to think that’s a good idea, as do I.
(D’Souza BTW ultimately says he has no objection to the general concepts of Dennett’s proposal, only to the fact that Dennett himself is laying out the curriculum.)
“It is not within the authority of government to declare religions or religious practices to be ‘toxic’ in the first place”: Straw man, as far as I can tell. Nowhere in Dennett’s proposal does anyone in government point at any religion and say, “toxic.” His premise is that facts about other faiths will help keep kids from, say, joining up with a heavily armed fanatic who thinks he has a hotline to Yahweh & a mission to kill all nonbelievers. Just taking a hypothetical extreme, there, for the sake of being provocative.
“He is constructing an edifice that places secularism and atheism in a preferred position by comparing the tenets and practices of all major religions specifically in order to implicitly point out the dichotomies and conflicts between different forms of belief”: That’s some kind of Machiavellian strategy he’s got there. Since as noted he wasn’t explicitly proposing to TEACH secularism or atheism, I’d say it’s baseless conjecture.
“Enforced ignorance of all other theistic claims reinforces the specific beliefs a child is raised with”: Very effective rewriting of Dennett’s point, which was about reinforcing the vicious, blinkered, dangerous, destructive & toxic religious subcultures. You know, the ones that kill people.
“Of course, he doesn’t identify what’s toxic and what’s not, and if left up to him, or other secularists and atheists, ALL religious beliefs would be labeled as toxic and prohibited teaching. That’s the slippery slope he’s concocting, and he knows full well what’s likely to happen. It’s his intended result in fact”: The closest Dennett comes to expressing this intention is to show a slide of a building that started as a church, became a mosque and is now a museum, followed by a couple of “what-if” slides of Mecca and St. Peter’s Basilica. Maybe he spells it out in the book. Full-blown Atheists are rarely shy about stating frankly their belief that the world would be better off without religion, and across 15 YouTube clips of the full Dennett-D’Souza debate I didn’t hear him express that. Your assumption about his intent looks like just that: an assumption at best.
His intentions however seem moot. Any suggestions on how to foster greater understanding between faiths are welcome on this end, no matter how implausible.
Guffman:
Re Dennett’s “untranscribed” comments. I did transcribe them and I’ll post the complete transcript in another message.
His statement that “the truth or falsity of any religious doctrines would not be included” is a smokescreen. His intent, as he stated, is to “inoculate youth” against “toxic” religion. He makes a number of self-serving attempts to minimize his ultimate objective, which is the gradual extirpation of religion through secular indoctrination of youth. One need look no further than his statement about what can and cannot be taught to children BY THEIR PARENTS to see this. He will only allow such religion as he, or the government, feels is “benign” and will prohibit teaching children anything that obstructs their ability to reason that all religious claims are equal.
Here’s his quote regarding prohibited religious instruction: “As long as you teach your children this curriculum you can teach them anything else you want. Anything else you want provided it doesn’t disable them from further informing themselves.”
Note the second sentence, beginning with the word “provided.” The inference is absolutely clear. If you, as a parent, choose to teach your children things that “disable” them from further informing themselves, this would be prohibited. The only possible mechanism for regulating such proscribed education is the law, and the law cannot go there.
And the question is not whether it is a “problem” for children to further inform themselves at all. It’s a big problem if GOVERNMENT gets involved in telling parents what they can and cannot teach their children, particularly when it comes to religious education. The First Amendment simply prohibits government from doing so, period.
Regarding his propagandizing youth by presenting supposedly neutral information: You are correct in saying that the only lawful way for schools to teach religion is to teach ABOUT religion, in a neutral manner. But in Dennett’s plan, it’s not like current survey courses in world religion, which are usually a small part of a general civics course taught once or twice to older students, from which parents can, if they choose, elect to remove their children during such courses. Dennett’s plan is to teach this “neutral” information every year, from grade school through high school, as a compulsory class, for all children. Although he does not specify this, my inference is that this would be compulsory even in religious schools.
Moreover, it’s not just a survey of religions of the world describing their historical context, it’s the teaching of specific religious tenets and beliefs in a manner and in an atmosphere of authority that renders any one religion implicitly “equal” to all other religions.
The teaching of “non-controversial facts” might be reasonable for high school or college students, as a part of an elective course in comparative religion, but the court will look at the overall scheme and intent of the proponents, just as it did in the Kitzmiller case, where the court found that the defendants, the Dover school board, came to the table with dirty hands and a sub-rosa attempt to inject creationism into the classroom. In this case, it’s a thinly-veiled attempt to inject atheism and secularism into the classroom, which is no more legal than injecting creationism. The court will also look at the ages of the children involved to determine the purpose, intent, and potential harm of the curriculum.
Regarding the Establishment clause, remember that both atheism and secularism are considered “religions” for First Amendment purposes. They are NOT common ground. If the material is presented in a manner which elevates atheism over religion, that too is prohibited, just as elevating one religion over another would be prohibited. Government has to stay OUT of the religion business as much as possible, and when it does get involved, it must do so with great care.
As for “secular legislative purpose”, the plan has nothing BUT religious legislative purpose. It has no secular purpose at all. Dennett’s specific, admitted goal is to “inoculate youth” against “toxic” religion. That is not a secular purpose. It is not within the authority of government to declare religions or religious practices to be “toxic” in the first place. The Establishment clause forbids this because if one religion, or one aspect of religion can be declared “toxic” and thus forbidden teaching or practice, there is literally no end to what the government can define as “toxic” about religion.
This is one of Dennett’s most masterful obfuscations. He says, “Now, my reason for this is not the reason he [DiSousa] suggests, he thinks I’m trying to wipe out religion. On the contrary, it’s my recommendation for how to preserve the best in religion and get rid of just the stuff that we all want to get rid of, the toxic stuff.”
But Dennett’s plan is exactly to wipe out religion, notwithstanding his pandering to religionists and attempts to persuade them that he’s only interested in “improving” religion. Thing is, religion is not something that can be dictated by government committee, nor does the government have any power to improve religion, no matter how silly, illogical or toxic it may be.
But whatever his stated intent, or his unstated intent, his plan is flatly unconstitutional.
Regarding the teaching of “facts,” again, you have to look at the overall scheme, not just what he claims. He is constructing an edifice that places secularism and atheism in a preferred position by comparing the tenets and practices of all major religions specifically in order to implicitly point out the dichotomies and conflicts between different forms of belief.
The best way to teach children that religious claims are illogical and ridiculous is to present them all side by side and allow the children to see the inherent conflict, which raises questions about the validity of their own faith and interferes with the parent’s right to raise their children in their faith.
Dennett knows this full well. It’s his thesis in fact. Enforced ignorance of all other theistic claims reinforces the specific beliefs a child is raised with. This is absolutely true, and Dennett finds this to be reprehensible and wants to prevent it from happening. His plan is to deliberately have school teachers, who are authority figures for students who are compelled by law to be present, interfere with the religious education of children in hopes of dispelling the myths of religion, but only just the “toxic” forms. Of course, he doesn’t identify what’s toxic and what’s not, and if left up to him, or other secularists and atheists, ALL religious beliefs would be labeled as toxic and prohibited teaching. That’s the slippery slope he’s concocting, and he knows full well what’s likely to happen. It’s his intended result in fact.
To answer your question, no, I am not a lawyer, but I challenge you to find flaws in my legal reasoning.
And to conclude, Dennett’s plan is not as harmless as you might think. In his speech he says, “had the support actually of a lot of even right wing Christian leaders. They say “this is great, this is great, yeah, we’re all for it.”
This is because at first blush, teaching “facts” about religion seems like a good idea. It’s not until you look at the intended consequences and test the plan against the Constitution that the flaws and dangers to religious freedom come to light.
That he can hornswoggle religious leaders into acceptance indicates a need for someone, in this case me, to point out the true intentions and legal weaknesses of his plan, just so that everyone will know about it should it be proposed in their neighborhood schools.
And yes, it’s provocative, but then you knew that coming in, and since it’s my purpose here, I see nothing wrong with stimulating the debate.
Seth,
Your presentation of Dennett’s proposal is nonsense on so many levels that I will have to watch all 11 segments of the debate with Dinesh D’Souza from which your snippet is taken AND digest the subtleties of Lemon v. Kurtzman to grasp it fully. Thanks for killing my weekend
Just picking some low-hanging fruit:
- “In his plan, government is authorized to both compel education that disparages individual religious beliefs…”: “Disparage”? Nonsense. From some remarks of Dennett’s which you didn’t choose to transcribe:
“Notice that the truth or falsity of any religious doctrines would not be included in the curriculum, since not a single point of religious doctrine is agreed upon as straightforward fact by the world community.”
- “… and to monitor and prohibit the teaching of any religious belief that ‘disables [children] from further informing themselves’, even in one’s own home or church”: Numero uno, where did “even in one’s own home or church” come from? Chapter and verse, please. Numero two-o, why is it a problem for children to further inform themselves, about ANYTHING?
- “His propagandizing of youth by presenting supposedly ‘neutral’ information is actually presenting it in a manner that suggests that no one belief system is any more truthful or rational than the next”: This would seem to be the only way to present religion in public schools in a manner that would pass the establishment clause. Correct me if I’m wrong.
- “It is a purposeful attempt to prohibit the teaching of, and to disparage the understanding of religion”: Um, yeah, I guess this gets us back to the establishment clause again, and I must say I’m glad to see you’re such a fan of it. If your teaching favors one religion over the others, you’re in blatant violation of the establishment clause. If you present religions in an anthropological, facts-only way, you’re not. This seems pretty straightforward.
- “Aside from not being a secular legislative purpose…”: Not secular? How? “…it also violates the third prong of the Lemon test because it requires excessive government entanglement in religion because it requires that government examine all religions to determine which of them, or which components of them are to be deemed ‘toxic’ by the government and are thus proscribed teachings”: Not a bit. This is a straw man on stilts. As you yourself noted, Dennett points out that ALL faiths have their toxic elements. Presenting socially accepted FACTS about all faiths drains the toxicity from them all.
- “When teachers suggest that all competing religions are equally true…” Which is NOT done in Dennett’s concept, as noted above… “…they are in fact suggesting that any one religion that holds itself out as the ‘One True Faith’ is lying about it…”: Nonsense, once again; the existence of many religions is FACT and Dennett is all about teaching FACT and any suggestions beyond that require some pretty serious work on your part to convince me, Seth…: “…and the inference to be drawn is that atheism is the only true belief”: …If you infer what Dennett didn’t imply, it’s not Dennettt’s fault.
- “Dennett may be a notable atheist and author, but he’s a lousy lawyer”: As it happens, Dennett isn’t a lawyer at all. Nor am I. Nor, I suspect, are you. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
- “…it’s important to know it’s being proposed, so that when secularists try to sneak it in under the radar, as they will, people will know what the true agenda is”: Just as he’s not a lawyer, Dennett is not King Of The Atheists, Secularists And Other Communists. The proposal has no legs, no supporters, no vote of “secularists” to back it, no hope of becoming law. It does however have a slim chance of provoking a colorful & typical Internet argument about atheism v. belief. So good luck with that part.