impact of religion on child/personality development

[Editor]

Note from Editor 15/7/07
Credit is due to veiled child for starting this topic, which originally began with this post.  I have taken the liberty of merging this topic with an earlier of my own (re. Richard Dawkins, see below), .  My intention is to focus the discussion on Dawkins to his recent suggestion that religious indoctrination of children can be a form"child abuse" - which also has the advantage of continuing veiled child's topic.  Apologies for the clumsy rearrangment: posts are sorted by date.

On the 15/10 this review of The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, appeared in the San Fransisco Chronicle.  I am yet to read this book, though hope to eventually, but am familiar with much of Dawkins' work and the some of the ways people respond to it.  He is someone who sincerely views science and religion as an irreconcilable polarity.  He himself is an atheist, one passionately critical not only of religious moderates and fundamentalists alike, but also, most contraversially, of secular religous tolerance (at least as an intellectual stance).  His books had a huge impact on me as a high school student, and I continue to agree with everything he writes except, as someone who studies religion myself, his most abstract conclusions.  Regarding these, I feel simulaltneously defensive of both the author and the broader targets of his criticism. 
       
Here I would like to discuss both the treatment of Dawkins' thought in the S.F.C. review as well as the general implications of the ideas discussed.  If anyone here has in fact read the book in question they would obviously have much to contribute to this.

[Vir Lucis Ex Deus]

Having not read the book either, I will be approaching this from aspects of the article as well as what I know from other sources.  Having also been a fan of Dawkins during my early undergraduate years I must say that I was slightly disheartened to hear of the tone that he has taken with his most recent book - it really strikes me as an attempt to gain publicity and tap into the whole 'anti-fundamentalist' stance of the average person in the Western world today.

Firstly, I would agree with Dawkin's assertion that it should be okay to blatantly criticise another's religion.  I am a strong believer in freedom of speech, and I would take it further than most that I also do not believe that you should need to sugar coat your words or make them 'pc'.  However, I am not sure where the boundary lies between freedom of speech and incitement to violence (physical action against an idea has nothing to do with the freedom to disseminate ideas); it is an important issue and one that not many people are confident enough to deal with.  Furthermore, to criticise we must accept criticism - and it seems that between two 'believers' (whether they be religious or not) there is rarely much true dialogue.  Dialogue is the key to freedom of speech, not just who can yell the loudest...

Secondly, I would really like to see if Dawkin's has managed to proove using his seemingly sacred 'rationality' that God is a delusion.  Again, without reading the book I cannot tell, but as he is a staunch athiest I would personally classify him as a deeply religious person - it's just that his religion does not believe in 'God' (whatever that is exactly, I wonder if he defines it?).  Scientific Determinism has many flaws which have been well documented by others who also have many flaws...

Thirdly, I find it somewhat amusing that his 'sacred cow' - chemistry - from which he developed his notion of the 'selfish gene', developed directly out of a tradition in which religion and science were inseperable.  The distinction for the alchemists between the two just did not exist; which 'proves' then that great things (according to Dawkin's criteria) can come out of the religious viewpoint and that 'rationality' is not merely the realm of the non-religious scientist.

I cannot really comment more without reading the book, and I don't personally see my interests heading in that direction any time soon.  I commend him for taking a strong stance and I hope that he will have the courtesy to enter into dialogue with those who disagree with him.  As an individual who (as many may have noticed from my Katharsis writings) does have an intuitive connection to the Divine I do feel that somehow the attack is a personal one...but I must remember that without reading the book in its entirety I cannot react to strongly on its content!   

As a closing comment, based on the reviews I have read, it seems that Dawkin's book relies very heavily on a narrow concept of just what 'God' and 'religion' could be.  In the most typical fashion of the 'rationalist' he has chosen the terms of engagement and conditions of victory so it is not very surprising at all that, in his mind, he has won the war.

[Editor]

I still intend to continue this topic in proper detail.  In the meantime, here is another review of Dawkins' book which raises further points I hope to discuss:

Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching
Terry Eagleton, London Review of Books

This assertion by Eagleton caught my attention:
"God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing."

In an earlier book, River out of Eden, Dawkins specifically addresses the question of "why there is something over nothing".    Why should we assume, Dawkins asks, that anyone could possibly be qualified to answer this?  Or that this is even a meaningful question?   He sees it as the final cowardly retreat of the theologian, for when all verifiable arguments have failed.   Concepts such as "the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever" are already suspicious, never mind the Judeo-Christian God.

I can't help but agree with all this, but to me these arguments are quite compatible with religious views (if inadvertantly)  Daoism and Zen Buddhism come immediately to mind, but it applies to other traditions as well.

[veiled-child]

Religion has been and continues to be a complex and never-ending "concept" (for lack of a better word) for humans to understand and grapple with. However, I believe that religion is perhaps one of the strongest influences during early adolescence. When a child is faced with questions of how did I come to be, how did the sun come to be, etc., a child is given a multitude of different answers and explanations from different sources. This undoubtedly has an impact on the child's thought processes.
I am currently reading an article about the devleopment of a child and it illustrates how a child is susceptive to a difference in the parent's responses indicating a difference in beliefs (mother was athiest, father was not). Already the child was forced to witness different beliefs and choose his/her own. To deny one parent's belief then leads to a weakened authority. I pose that it may also lead to guilt therefore leading to anxiety. Constantly throughout the child's life, issues of rituals, death, morals, etc. will face the child. If the caregivers differ greatly in beliefs, to what extent does this impact a child? If a child is torn continuously, I believe that defenses will be developed to cope with this anxiety. Also, I will briefly mention how some parents may "force religion down a child's throat". How do you think this affects the child's view of religion? I think this happens a lot with children and I think it affects their personality in adulthood.   

[Vir Lucis Ex Deus]

Welcome to our forums Veiled-child!

Your post is an interesting one, and I think that the idea of having one very religious parent and one non/anti-religious parent is an area that is often overlooked when examining the influences that you talk about.  I would be very interested to hear more about what this book that you are reading says on the matter (could you give us the author/title, it would be great to know where to look if people wanted to follow it up).  I think it is inevitable that the cultural environment that a child develops in will greatly influence their subsequent personality and attitude towards metaphysical beliefs.  I agree that the situation you describe would lead to great strain on the child in question, particularly if there is no obvious dominant thought but rather a continuous struggle between the two parent's ideologies.  Whilst I don't believe it would ever be a good situation for a child to be torn between parents as such, it may at least grant the person the ability to see that there are different 'truths' out there at a younger age - in some circumstances this might lead to a particularly mature viewpoint, in others it could lead to great anxieties in adulthood and the inability to feel 'right' about anything.  I must admit however that I am not well versed enough in psychoanalytical theories surrounding this topic to make a solid judgment...

However, in relation to people I knew growing up and others that I have heard about (and in regards to the second question posed about parents 'forcing' religion on their kids) - in my experience they tended to accept the view of their parent's with great enthusiasm, but during the typical rebelous hormonal years of puberty began to reject these concepts.  This was probably because they were aware that it would be the most anti-authoritarian thing that they could do (beyond criminal behaviour of course) and would be something that would assert their own personality over those of the parents.  Added to this, highly religious children - unless they attend a similarly religious school - are generally mocked and shunned for their beliefs in early high school.  The pressure to fit into their peer group and become more 'normal' greatly effected two people that I knew personally and caused them to reject their previous fundamentalist approach to Christianity.

   

[Editor]

I recently read this interview with Dawkins: The Infinite Wisdom of Richard Dawkins.  It is admittedly a fairly inconsequential interview, but I include it since we get to hear his reply to criticisms of his view that religious indoctrination (or even labelling) of children can be tantamount to child abuse.  Overall, I feel he comes across as a lot less militant than he is generally charged with being.  In many ways, I find his vision of a world free of 'religion' (and I mean those aspects of religion which Dawkins addresses), quite compelling.  I note also his rudimentary attempts at finding meaning in his particular vision of human life, a vision which, I believe, some religionists are too quick to label as "incomplete".  With veiled child's post in mind, I am inclined to attribute my view (in part) to family background and upbringing.  (Note the circular causation: such is DNA  )

At this point I would ask the reader to bear with me while I recount something of my own childhood   My aim is to explore this topic using myself as an example, since in many ways I had just such an 'atheist' upbringing as Dawkins proposes (though in some ways I did not, as I shall explain).  Please feel free to psycho-analyse me to your hearts' content - especially if it also helps with the discussion!

I know my father's mother was Presbyterian, but have no notion of her husband's denominational background except that, whatever it was, it was probably of little interest to him.  She was a fairly active church-goer, at least in the time I knew her, and was even a church elder.  She did not however seek to impose religion or church on her children, professing a belief more in good deeds and the humanitarian aspects of her faith, which she apparently held in conjunction with a certain socialist ethic.  Later in life, she became interested in Jungianism under the influence of the open-minded priest at her church.  My father had no great interest in church, though he did dabble with the left-wing student politics of the early 1970s and in part associates his mother's socialist ideals with this.  Also during this period he studied comparative religion at university, read the Bible, the Bhagavat-Gita, the Daodejing, the Sufi poets, as well as writers on Buddhism like Alan Watts and Christmas Humphreys.  He would probably say he had a deep appreciation of the theistic traditions as literary works of a deeply existential variety - in the sense of Kierkagaard's 'leap of faith' -  but his greatest respect seems to have been for Daoism and Buddhism - specifically Theravada and Zen Buddhism.  Overall, science would win out, but when it comes to noticing the subjectivity of truth, the ceaseless flux of matter, the essential meaninglessness of existence etc., he came to feel that the Eastern philosophies took a more psychologically healthy approach than the more histrionic western nihilism.         

My other grandmother (still alive) comes from a Catholic family.  Again, all I know re. my maternal grandfather's background  is that he was not a Catholic.  My grandmother I suppose could be called 'lapsed': does not attend church, and does not agree with church moral prohibitions (eg. pre-marital sex, contraception).  I have heard that she has at times enjoyed the Bible as a work of literature and respected aspects of her childhood denomination as a 'cultural Catholic' might, but does not believe in God or the afterlife.  I tend to associate both my maternal grandparents with a wholehearted embrace of the pleasures of this world, in a way that is quintessential to the immediate post-war period . . . they liked to party to rock'n'roll before it got all political in the 1960s.  My mother, like my father, was never sent to church, on the principle that she should decide for herself, and I think it is fair to say that she dismissed Christianity on largely feminist grounds.  In the 1970s she was fascinated by accounts of meditation and other 'altered states' in her psychology textbook, and admired the pacifism of Gandhi and the Dalai Lama.  The rock'n'roll that she and my father listened to was a lot more 'heady' than her parent's generation, which I think reflects a broader cultural shift among 20th C. 'athiests', from the this-worldly to the idealistic and even quasi-mystical.  Many of their peers, some no doubt a little fried in the brain by excessive experimentation, joined 'fringe' religious groups such as TM, or charismatic (and apocalyptic) Pentacostals.  My parents in contrast did not join groups and acknowledged no deity or supernatural force - except perhaps a vague Daoistic sense of the oneness of everything, as well as an implicit faith in morality and natural justice. 

Unsurprisingly, I had very little exposure to organised religion as a child.  I learnt early on that some people believed the world was created and controlled by a sort of enormous all-powerful person called God.  I was left with the impression that the belief was problematic - we couldn't see this person, nor did he appear to act on the world I saw.  There were other explanations for the origins of the planet and its creatures that accorded with observable phenomena.  The Big Bang, the dinosaurs who became birds, the apes who became humans - these were my earliest obsessions during primary school, and as foundation narratives I found them immensely satisfying, both intellectually and emotionally.  My parents made it clear I was free enough to choose belief in God, on the principle that you can't prove the non-existence of that which you can't see, but my verdict was something like "maybe God exists, but probably not."  They might not have been so happy if I had chosen to become a strict fundamentalist, or worse joined a cult, but that was never really an issue.  I was aware of the Jesus story popping up mysteriously at Christmas in the form of nativities etc., but it was little more to me than a fanciful history of the origin of presents.  (What is a newborn child expected to do with gold and incense?)   My first real encounter with Christianity was at seven years, when a boy at school was going around asking people if they believed in Heaven.  If you said "no", as I did, he would say "then you are going to Hell", which seemed to be the whole point of the exercise.  I didn't believe in Hell either.

The high school I attended was Anglican, which at times meant regular Bible reading, saying the Lord's Prayer with eyes cast downwards, singing of hymns, chapel services with bread and wine for some, while the rest of us hung back.  It was all so incredibly unfamiliar and foreign, and it took time and effort learning whatever new customs as politeness required of me. That most of my fellow students were already familiar with this array of ceremonies and exotic creeds, regardless of whether they believed them or not, was quite a revelation for me.  (I should note the school admitted students of all religions and none, and while confirmation within the Anglican church was encouraged, there was no great pressure exerted.)  At any rate I found this all interesting from (what I would now think of as) an anthropological perspective; moreover for me 'secular' interest in religion - and mythology for that matter - followed on naturally from a love of history (which in turn had developed subsequent to my ealier interest in prehistory).  I just didn't look to it for the sorts of answers it sought to offer - where do things come from, how should we behave etc. 

I had by this stage become aware of the basic creeds of other religions, and felt instinctively that either Daoism or Buddhism - which are typically presented, minus incense and idolatry, as the two 'athiest' religions - were in part compatible with my scientific heritage as well as moral outlook.  But I had no intention of renouncing the world for the bliss of oblivion, which seemed worthy enough but overly difficult intellectually and physically.   I certainly felt no moral imperative to change my ideas or behaviours, beyond a vague affirmation of previously held views. (By itself, the easier path of incense and gold statues looked decidedly unworthy.) 

I think this is more than enough info to begin addressing the topic!  My view on religion has taken some serious twists and turns since then, and  I intend to address the question of how my upbringing impacted my subsequent and current views in my next post.  For now, to breifly quote veiled child's questions:

. . . .  some parents may "force religion down a child's throat". How do you think this affects the child's view of religion? I think this happens a lot with children and I think it affects their personality in adulthood.

Clearly I did not have religion "forced down my throat", but I would like to return to this issue next time, in connection also to the contraversy surrounding Dawkins' view that religion shouldn't even be 'on the table' as it were.   Questions I hope to raise will be 'can secularism be forced down one's throat?', and furthermore "can a tolerant attitude towards all views be forced down one's throat?". 

 

I am currently reading an article about the devleopment of a child and it illustrates how a child is susceptive to a difference in the parent's responses indicating a difference in beliefs (mother was athiest, father was not). Already the child was forced to witness different beliefs and choose his/her own. To deny one parent's belief then leads to a weakened authority. I pose that it may also lead to guilt therefore leading to anxiety. Constantly throughout the child's life, issues of rituals, death, morals, etc. will face the child. If the caregivers differ greatly in beliefs, to what extent does this impact a child?

I would note the effect of such 'mongrel' pairings, in the case of my parents and grandparents, as being a general drift towards agnosticism and atheism.  Both cases involved either different levels of religiosity or else different denominations, which suggests these things could not have been so important as to preclude their marriages.  This is borne out by the fact they did not seek to impose on my parents' beliefs.  My parents began essentially as athiests, but with room for mystical speculations which did not feature in their upbringing.  (Although ,my grandmother's later interest in Jung is an interesting convergence with my parents' worldview.  I have a lot more to say about Jung in relation to all this, actually, but I better save it for next time ) 

[veiled-child]

I want to thank you for sharing your personal experiences and influences regarding religion and childhood/development.  Several things you mentioned seemed interesting to me as well. The fact that the time periods should be taken into account as they can influence our beliefs.  The wars, political movements, cultural changes, etc. have impacted the field of psychology itself but also greatly impacts the beliefs of humans and most certainly- religious beliefs.  Also, I enjoyed your reading about your experience "first real encounter with christianity" when the child who approaches everyone in the class and asks if they believe in heaven, if not- they would go to hell. That same kid went to my school! The thing is is that some children do take religion from home or church and bring it to school which may introduce others to a completely different way of thinking about God, death, and creation.  Your personal account of your early influences illustrate a development in itself. With many of the posts and articles within your publication, I need to digest, reflect and sort my thoughts to produce a more thoughtful post but I wanted to reply immediately in appreciation to your personal account.

[Editor]

Good to see you here again, veiled child.

Before I post the second part of my "autobiography of an atheist child', some timely reading from the 19th century:

'Religion - a Dialogue' by Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by T. Bailey Saunders)

It strikes me that much of our present-day debate over religion (and its impact on child development) is foreshadowed in the arguments of Schopenhauer's fictional protagonists; and might even be enriched - on all sides - by pondering their final consensus.  Enjoy!


Arthur Schopenhauer 1788-1860

[Editor]

Let me begin by saying that my autobiography of an 'atheist' child was wholly mythical in nature – a hagiography for a certain sect of post-Christian-nontheism, into which I was born.  I think Jung once said something about the need for the adult psyche to integrate with the images of its childhood religion (VLED – does this ring a bell? can you confirm citation?)  Anyway, if I were to label my background according to some broad church, I’m a sort of atheist.  I think this explains why Dawkins doesn’t irritate me like he does so many who believe in a religious dimension to life.

To be honest, though, this word ‘atheist’ says nothing about me.  It says nothing of the child, bored with play, who tried and failed to imagine infinity, tried and failed to imagine nothingness, wondered if unperceived things really happen, wondered if perceived things really happen.  A child who could never tell, even after close and repeated observation, whether he was was an individual being with free will  - or whether he was a predetermined part of a larger whole.  Don’t call him an “atheist”, until you can give him a full account of his existence as an ontological entity, please!  I refer jokingly to Dawkins’ claim that the labelling by parents of their children ‘Catholic’ ‘Hindu’ etc. is an abusive limiting of their development.  He’s right, of course, but only in the weak sense that all parental interference (and non-interference) can be construed as ‘abuse’.

Dawkins has argued that existential questions of the kind I mention above are “vacuous” and not worthy of consideration.  He cites the old favourite,  “why is there something rather than nothing?” and asks why we should even expect that any answer exists which experts might be qualified to uncover.  Humans have evolved to seek purpose, he argues, through encounters with other humans and their artefacts; but we inappropriatedly ask it of the natural universe.  We shouldn’t be surprised that there is something rather than nothing because, were it otherwise, we would not be there to question it.  “This is it” [his italics] and “this” is enough without needing a further “it” behind it. 

I’m sure there are a lot of good arguments against his view – not least of all the disrespect he pays to the occupation of philosophers.  But that is not my concern here, which is instead to point out that Dawkins himself is actually providing answers (even as he dismisses their possibility).  He is in fact making metaphysical statements when he says that the ultimate conditions of being are beyond human enquiry, or in his rejection of dualisms such as appearance/reality or cause/effect when accounting for “this” mysterious “something”.  There are religious people out there who build entire theologies around ideas not dissimilar to  “this is it”.  Anyone who doesn't believe that has obviosuly never heard the old Hindu saying, Tat Tvam Asi.

I don’t really blame Dawkins for not seeing this point, by the way, because he sees so much else: this is after all the man who gave us the wonderful word “meme” – a concept so insightful and versatatile that it has proliferated, like its namesake, throughout academia and popular culture.  My own journey towards understanding what I think of as the ‘language’ of religion was (and is) a hard-fought struggle, over which I’ve had little direct control: much less could it be controlled by my parents or by societal pressures!   I will not burden the reader with my manifesto – suffice to say my earlier existential doubt came to be resolved in a way I did not expect.  At first it was a private experience of truth which seemed to surpass everything I had ever garnered from religion or science.  Assuming that this said more about limits in my past perspective than it did about the uniqueness of my new one, I embarked upon a re-examination of religious traditions.  I was suddenly wanting to meditate a lot, if only to enjoy this truth all the more by relishing in it completely: this among other things led me initially to look into Buddhism.  Therein I found a store of newly-useful words, proclaiming a way "to place upright what was overturned, to reveal what was hidden, to show the way to one who was lost, or to carry a lamp into the dark so that those with eyes could see forms"¹.  An appreciation followed for the teachings of other traditions as well, from Daoism to Hermetic alchemy, from Christianity to shamanism and of course a host of others, famous and not-so-famous.  I will not go into such things here   Later I even had to have something of a rapprochement with science and atheism (by which I mean also adharmism and adaoism  ), and came to the conclusion that the underlying principles behind empiricism could conceivably form the basis of an emerging religion.  The sort of undivided attention associated with meditation, devotional prayer and ritual is used to great effect in the sciences.  In my opinion, to withhold judgement until the conclusion of a lab experiment is indeed a nobler example of faith in God’s revelation than, say, a firm conviction that the universe is 6000 years old.  That may have been a straw man I just burnt, but a lingering one nonetheless.
 
So in the end my main difference to Dawkins is that I have evolved a religious worldview, and have greater respect for those which differ from my own.  I nevertheless value Dawkins’ criticisms because they keep us religionists in check: for we are inevitably prone to wooly-headedness, given the all-embracing nature of our pursuit. To me, the best commentary on our present-day debate on so-called fundamentalist atheism vs. religious tolerance was made in the nineteenth century, by Schopenhauer’s Demopheles:

“Let us rather admit that religion . . . like the Brahman god of death, Yama, has two faces, and like him, one friendly, the other sullen. Each of us has kept his eye fixed on one alone.”

NOTE:

Most contemporary readers will of course find some of the grounds for Demopheles’ religious tolerance distastefully condenscending, for example:

Where you have masses of people of crude susceptibilities and clumsy intelligence, sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery, religion provides the only means of proclaiming and making them feel the high import of life.  [….]  Don’t take offense at its unkempt, grotesque and apparently absurd form; for with your education and learning, you have no idea of the roundabout ways by which people in their crude state have to receive their knowledge of deep truths.

If we look past the 'political incorrectness', we should be able to acknowledge the very real relationship between a global education and the extent to which one’s beliefs appear absurd or sophisticated to a global audience.  (And no, I am not just being a cultural relativist). Actually, I tend to think we are all more or less in this “crude state” and “sunk in drudgery” and that all paths to deep truth are necessarily roundabout.  Which is perhaps why my response to veiled-child's post has been so roundabout, even resorting to myth and occasional evasiveness . . . 


Further reading:G.L.P. Buddhism & Hinduism board

[Editor]

Erasmus Root on contemporary athiesm:

"Although I am not an atheist myself, I too share this repugnance to the use of faith as an instrument of political and ideological megalomania. And although I believe in God and revelation, I have a philosopher’s respect for good critical arguments, and I have always enjoyed the pugnacious style of fervent infidels such as Voltaire, Nietzsche and Mencken. Hence, a certain thrill of excitement and anticipation ran through me as I picked up my copies of Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins. What arguments would I encounter? What thunderous barrage of critical discourse would wake me, to use Kant’s phrase, from my “dogmatic slumber?” Would my faith be shaken by these reputable and bestselling authors?"

Go here to read the article.