Reality and “Religion’s Real Child Abuse”
I'll compose replies to some of the o/s posts from here later when I have a chance. In the meantime, I believe recent conversations make this a relevant place to post this:
5:45 am Filed under: Origins and Science
Tags: Richard Dawkins, Science "Journalism"
Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion that religion is a dangerous form of child abuse, a claim he reiterated in an online essay titled “Religion’s Real Child Abuse.” He explicitly says that while sexual abuse by priests may be bad, what’s worse is raising children to think of themselves as members of one religion or another, or saddling them with the fear of hell.
In response to that I wrote an article for our local newspaper, republished in BreakPoint Online in early 2007, showing that this is not just a religious/theoretical claim, but it has distinct scientific implications. Psychologists and sociologists have worked out a clear, empirically-based picture of how abuse affects children. If religion is a form of abuse, it should have some of the same identifiable negative effects on children that abuse has. Research shows, however, its effects are generally quite the opposite: as I wrote then, according to the National Study of Youth and Religion, American youth who are devoted to religion (predominantly Christians in this study) come out better than non-religious youth in every one of the 99 life-outcome dimensions that were measured.
Dawkins is a zoologist by professional training, but he has become much more than that. At the time he wrote these things he was the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. By holding that position, and by his prominence in the media, he has been for many “the voice of science” in the English-speaking world. He has consistently staked out a position as one who speaks for reason, rationality, evidence, and empiricism. When Christian thinkers took him to task for writing on a topic, religion, on which he has done astonishingly little actual research, he responded, “Why bother? What need is there to dig into a topic that’s so obviously irrational?” While there are serious weaknesses with that answer, my attention here is on something even more fundamentally, obviously amiss: as a scientist, a spokesman for science, he persistently and publicly contradicts what science has to say about this topic.
This seems strange to me. Stranger still is that in over two years since then, to my knowledge no scientist and no other journalist has called him to account for it.
I suppose some would say that if Dawkins’s thesis had been presented in a journal rather than a popular publication, it would have been flagged down by peer-reviewers and never published. Or if somehow it had been published, it would have been quickly and decisively answered. The same should not be expected of a popular publication, some might say.
That would be a fair answer to give in many cases, but I think Dawkins’s case is different. In becoming the public face of science, he took on an especially high level of accountability for how he treats science. He ought not to be contradicting scientific findings so cavalierly as he has done with this topic. Those who care about the integrity of science ought not to be letting him get away with it—even in a popular publication; rather, especially in a popular publication, where many, many thousands are supposedly being shown what real science is.
But as far as I’ve been able to observe, no one has raised a word of scientific objection on this point. That raises questions in my mind, which I will leave for discussion here:
• Has there actually been some response that I’ve missed, some scientific or journalistic call to accountability?
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• If not, what does this say about the consistent application of self-correction in science? Why is it not being applied in this case?
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• What’s really going on? How do we explain Dawkins’s anti-scientific stance on this issue, and the lack of response from the scientific/journalistic world on it?
thinkingchristian.net
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If religious training is thought to be child abuse, an obvious scientific hypothesis follows: Children with religious upbringings should show some of the symptoms that are typical of abused children.
These symptoms are well known. They include fear, panic attacks, eating disorders, depression, low self-confidence, irritability, difficulty relating with others, substance abuse, and so on.
Not every abuse victim experiences most or all of these, but outcomes like this are typical. If a religious upbringing equals abuse, there ought to be signs that something like this happens to children of religious families.
There is data to test such a hypothesis. It was published well before Dawkins’ book, so he had ample opportunity to know what science had to say. Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, led a massive, authoritative study called the National Study of Youth and Religion. The results were published in the 2005 book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Eyes of American Teenagers (with co-author Melinda Lundquist Denton), published by Oxford University Press (yes, that’s Dawkins’s university). It is the best study of its kind to date.
This study sorted its 3,290 participants into levels of religious involvement: the Devoted, the Regulars, the Sporadic, and the Disengaged. Because America’s predominant religious groupings are Christian, the “Devoted” and “Regulars” were predominantly Christian—Protestant and Catholic. Therefore these results can fairly be taken as relating specifically to Christianity. (Results for other religions are hard to determine from the data.)
The closer teenagers were to “Devoted” rather than “Disengaged,” the less they engaged in these negative behaviors:
Habits: Smoking, drinking, marijuana use, TV watching, pornography use, “action” video game use, R-rated movies;
At school: Poor grades, cutting classes, getting suspended or expelled;
Attitude: Bad temper, rebellious toward parents;
Sex: Early physical involvement, including number of partners and age of first sexual contact.
Those more “Devoted” on the scale showed more of these positive outcomes:
Emotional well-being: Satisfaction with physical appearance, planning for the future, thinking about the meaning of life, feeling cared for, freedom from depression, not feeling alone and misunderstood, not feeling “invisible,” not often feeling guilty, having a sense of meaning to life, getting along well with siblings;
Relationships with adults: Closeness with parents, number of adults connected to, feeling understood by parents, sensing that parents pay attention, feeling they get the “right amount of freedom” from parents;
Moral reasoning and honesty: Belief in stable, absolute morality; not pursuing a “get-ahead” mentality; not just pleasure-seeking; less lying to parents and cheating in school;
Compassion: Caring about the needs of the poor, caring about the elderly, caring about racial justice;
Community: Participation in groups, financial giving, volunteer work (including with people of different races and cultures), helping homeless people, taking leadership in organizations.
The findings are overwhelming. On page after page, chart after chart, on every one of the ninety-one variables studied, the closer teens were to the “Devoted” end of the scale, the healthier their lives were.These are the results of Dawkins’ “child abuse.” This is what he complains is so bad for children.
H. Allen Orr wrote, “[Dawkins] has a preordained set of conclusions at which he’s determined to arrive. Consequently, [he] uses any argument, however feeble, that seems to get him there.” In other words, he sees just what he wants to see. It’s ironic—that’s what he accuses believers of doing.
What can we conclude? This study suggests (though its methods cannot prove) that growing up Christian is a very good thing. Concerning Dawkins and his book, we can easily see that his attack is falsely based. We also see that this “rational” scientist ignored science and clear thinking to make the point he wanted to make.
Twenty weeks a bestseller. For those who bought the book and found it persuasive, this should provide serious doubts about its credibility. (Other reviewers have found flaws on a similar scale throughout the book.) For followers of Christ who have been concerned about the bluster raised by books like this: This, like other baseless attacks, will pass. The Christian faith has stood for a long time; it will withstand this, too.
This article was originally published in the Hampton Roads Daily Press.
Tom Gilson is director of strategic processes in the Operational Advisory Services team for Campus Crusade for Christ. He maintains a blog at www.thinkingchristian.net.
For Further Reading and Information
BreakPoint Commentary No. 061129, “A Cultural Cold Front: Bashing Religion.”
BreakPoint Commentary No. 070102, “Brooking No Debate: Scientism, Crowbars, and Bats.”
Regis Nicoll, “Faith under Fire,” BreakPoint Online, 8 December 2006.
Regis Nicoll, "The Science of Design: Part I - A Dangerous Idea," BreakPoint Online, 15 September 2006.
Travis McSherley, “Religion, Believe It or Not,” BreakPoint Online, 12 June 2006.
Travis McSherley, “The Season for the Reason,” The Point, 13 November 2006.
Catherine Claire, “An Unsurprising Revelation,” The Point, 14 November 2006.
Catherina Hurlburt, “Easterbrook on Dawkins,” The Point, 14 November 2006.
breakpoint.org |
