Labelling children with the religion of their parents

Power to the new ad campaign, aimed at raising consciousness. Raising consciousness means making people aware of something they don't know they are doing, and should perhaps stop doing. It has long been unquestioned, automatic practice to label children at birth with the religion of their parents. Richard Dawkins has pointed out that this is just as inappropriate as labelling the children of sportspeople with their sport (e.g. a cricketing child, or a figure-skating child) or politican's children with their party (e.g. a Liberal Democrat child). In the last example it is clearly silly to attribute a complex socio-political ideology to a newborn infant. But why is it any more sensible, or desirable, to attribute a specific set of beliefs about the universe to someone not yet able to understand language?

This consciousness-raising will drag a whole host of issues into the public spotlight and facilitate a great deal of very valuable discourse. Assumptions that have remained unquestioned and unchallenged for far too long will be subjected to rational inquiry. Even theists like Jeremy Vine, Joanna Bogle and Ruth Gledhill, who miss the point entirely, raise related issues onto the stage of public awareness. For instance, it is obvious to any rational thinker that the principal reason for the survival throughout centuries of unsupported sky-god myths is that they are taught to children at an age when they are highly credulous. Although this point is not raised directly by the 'Don't label me' campaign, it is a closely related point and one that will surely arise many, many times. The assertions of different religions are incompatible with one another, and most religious adherents follow the same religion as their parents. Therefore, childhood labelling and childhood indoctrination ensure that the divisiveness of religious tribalism will persist down the generations. Moreover, the teachings of the world's major faiths cannot all be correct, so at least most of them must be wrong. This simple fact alone places an enormous responsibility on parents. Ought they to teach 'absolute truth' to their children, when they themselves cannot be sure that what they are teaching is absolutely true? And if they are sure, where does their faith fit in? It seems that faith develops later in life, following the inculcation of fixed ideas which are learned as undeniably true. Only later, when the growing child confronts doubt, does it learn to use the crutch of faith to shore up the rubbish it learned at its parents' knees.

My solution? Continued, rigorous questioning of the right to label children at birth, coupled with thorough education in comparative religion, whatever the denomination of the parents. Add plenty of encouragement to think rationally, and to question teachings that are based on assertion alone.

Here's to the future.