Spiritual Atheist: Faithless Children

There’s a lot of liberal hooraying when atheist parents are seen to be bringing up their children too in the atheist mould. It should be stressed that most such people take extra pains to raise the wards as well-educated, thoughtful, socially responsible, environmentally aware — perhaps even spiritualistic kids — yet still essentially godless. The question is: is it right? Or to move away from the rarefied abstract of ought, is it fair?

A lot of parents are notorious for using their children as a personal playground if not outright toys, albeit somewhat unconsciously. Meaning, almost anything they feel like imposing on them is imposed. It begins with their names where, although most parents are extremely careful about what they choose, there are a lot of times where the children grow up hating the monikers and end up changing them.

Then there’s religion. If the parents are Tibetan Buddhists, the kids are silently and subliminally tutored into it; if they are born-again Christians, the toddlers have little chance of being anything else; if they are Hindus, Muslims, Sikh, Jew or whatever, then so be it, their progeny almost invariably are indoctrinated into the same faith.

Funnily, liberals are not comfortable with this scenario. They say that when it comes to serious matters like this, it should be left up to the individual to grow up and decide what religion he or she chooses or, contrarily, does not choose and remains agnostic or atheistic. For, if it’s not fair to force a belief into kids, then it should be deemed equally unfair to empower them into unbelief.