This is from the radically leftist Huffington Post UK.
Excerpt:
Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has argued that children with religious parents must be protected from indoctrination.
Dawkins expressed concerns to the Irish Times that parents are given too much leeway when it comes to their children’s education. The biologist, who is backing a campaign by Atheist Ireland to overhaul education, spoke ahead of a talk at Trinity College in Dublin.
He said: “There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children and I think the balance has swung too far towards parents.
“Children do need to be protected so that they can have a proper education and not be indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in.”
Physicist Lawrence Krauss who was also present for the interview agreed, but stressed he believed state education should be held to different standards than private schools.
He said: “If the state is going to provide education, it has an obligation to try and educate children. That means parents have a limited — it seems to me — limited rights in determining what the curriculum is. The state is providing the education, it’s trying to make sure all children have equal opportunity.”
He added: “Parents, of course, have concerns and ‘say’ but they don’t have the right to shield their children from knowledge.
“That is not right, any more than they have the right to shield their children from healthcare or medicine.
“And those parents who do that are often tried – at least in my country – and imprisoned when they refuse to allow their children to get blood transfusions or whatever is necessary for their health. And this is necessary for their mental health.”
So Richard Dawkins is too cowardly to debate Christianity with William Lane Craig, but he is willing to use the power of big government to force parents not to explain to their children why Christianity is true, and what Christianity teaches.
Why does Dawkins want to prevent parents from teaching their kids about religion? I think the answer is that he doesn’t like that religious people can make moral judgments. If there is no God, then there is no rational basis for saying that anything is objectively right or wrong.
This is in fact Dawkins’ own view. Dawkins has previously written this:
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
(“God’s Utility Function,” Scientific American, November, 1995, p. 85)
Dawkins’ view is that nothing is really good or bad objectively. Cultures just evolve certain conventions, and those conventions vary arbitrarily by time and place. There’s nothing really right or wrong in the universe. Just do what you like as long as you don’t get caught – or change the laws so that the evil you want to do is legal. You can even force people to pay the costs of it. Heck, you can even use the courts to force them to celebrate what you do. It’s all up in the air for an atheist.
Richard Dawkins himself is in favor of infanticide:
In the past, Dawkins has also spoken positively about adultery.
So this is probably why Dawkins is in favor of using government to prevent parents from teaching their kids that God exists. If you think that morality is an illusion, then you do what feels right to you, hurting the weak if necessary. That is what Darwinism teaches, in fact – survival of the fittest, the strong use and destroy the weak. And if anyone disagrees – well, that’s what big government is for. And that’s why atheism is often wedded to big government – they need the big government to force people with different views to do what they want them to do. Atheists like Dawkins want to do what feels good to them, and they don’t want to be judged for it. Not all atheists are like Dawkins, but he is favored by them for a reason – he represents a large number of them.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Sure, parents shouldn’t decide. But the state or Dawkins should decide???
Because either way someone is trying to decide.
No way.
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I say if a child when their 18 chooses to leave their faith or not, it should be their choice. They are now old enough to hopefully know about not only their faith but other religions and the world as well.
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They don’t even have to be 18. You can’t force anyone of any age to be a Christian. It’s not just that you shouldn’t, but that you literally can’t. It’s impossible. To be a Christian, you have to really believe Christianity is true and freely choose to follow Christ. Outward obedience to what someone (such as your parents) tells you to do doesn’t make you a Christian. It has to be in your heart.
So regardless of what any parents teach their children, the choice is always up to the child. It’s already the case that children decide for themselves. No one is forcing children to become Christians. They can’t. So I don’t know what atheists like Richard Dawkins are so upset about. No one is forcing anyone to be a Christian.
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In my interactions with a-theists, I am seeing more and more a-theists distance themselves from Dawkins. Not sure when it started, but I think it may have been when he said that it was immoral to not abort a Down’s Syndrome baby. Of course, under a-theism, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
But, it does seem that Romans 2:15 is being validated by the hearts of some a-theists who are just plain creeped out by the Demon Dawkins. Many fancy themselves libertarians, and they may be finally observing that the fascists are actually on their side. At the very least, Dawkins makes them look bad – even if “bad” does not really exist in their world.
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“I am absolutely convinced,” Frankl had said in The Doctor and the Soul , “that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”
I find this man’s brand of atheism unlivable.
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If non-atheist parents are not allowed to teach their children what they believe, reasonably it leads to two results in the children’s minds.
1- The parents are ashamed of their beliefs because they know they are wrong.
2- The default is atheism, as they have no understanding of theism outside what they might see on TV or in a movie.
It is an attempt to create atheists without the bother of explaining why they should be atheists. They would be atheists on simple basis that they lack any religious affiliation. It is not that different than some leftist groups. The idea seems to be that the best way to get someone to accept your view is to prevent any other view from being discussed, or if discussed to be discussed derisively. People don’t like being made fun of, and many will change their views rather than be mocked, even if they think they were right.
If you let someone talk long enough, they often hang themselves once people realize they weren’t quite as smart as they were thought to be, or people suddenly wake up to the ramifications of their speech. The question is how much damage is done before people realize that they have been snookered.
We know that Christianity will not die. I’ve read the end of the book.
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“Children do need to be protected so that they can have a proper education and not be indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in.” Yet having them indoctrinated into the religion of atheism is perfectly okay!
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Reblogged this on No Apologies Allowed and commented:
Read the articles about Dawkins and Wintery Knight’s commentary. The aggressive agenda of modern atheist “priests” like Dawkins should compel every genuine Christian to stop being so passive. In the marketplace of ideas, you need to be prepared to make a case for the truth of Christianity and oppose these bigoted, intolerant people that would rather you crawl away and die silently…
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I thank God for Dawkins and his buddy Larry (for whom I am praying, actually) because they are such excellent examples of the failures, deficiencies, and contradictions of atheism.
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Do you think Dawkins realizes just how fascist he sounds? Of course, none of this is new and certainly not unique to Richard. He represents a lot of emotionally-scarred individuals (many of whom are ex-fundamentalists or those with bad religious experiences) who would have no hesitation whatsoever in telling parents what to/not to teach to their children.
I really don’t know why people keep taking this man seriously. At this point I really, seriously, think that everyone should just ignore him. Don’t give the man attention or air time – regardless of how absurdly aggressive, offensive or maddening he acts. The man is a troll, plain and simple, and his recent attempts to keep himself relevant and in the public consciousness with ridiculous tweets (e.g. send “erotic videos” to theocracies), is evidence enough that dialogue with him is fruitless.
All we’re doing by keeping his name around is increasing the man’s ego and his bank balance. But yes, this probably won’t happen since he has a large gang of sheep behind him – ready and willing to keep him in the public eye – and he is an excellently effective troll. The very finest troll. But one can live in hope.
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Let Dorkins try to sell that in a Muslim majority country. Then I’ll be impressed. He may not admit it, but he is a major beneficiary of living in a country with a (once) strong Christian heritage, even if he does not subscribe to it himself.
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