Posted on 03/05/2015 11:56:59 AM PST by wagglebee
DUBLIN, March 4, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The government needs to protect children from the religious views of their own parents, according to popular atheist writer Richard Dawkins.
His speaking partner went further, comparing parents instilling their religious views in their children could be compared to denying them medical treatment.
In an interview prior to a speech at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, last week, Dawkins told the media that parents have too much influence in their children's education, especially when it comes to religion.
“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,” Dawkins told the Irish Times. “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.”
He added, "You have to write off those people" who value the Bible over science.
Dawkins was in Ireland, along with physicist Lawrence Krauss as part of a tour promoting Arizona State University’s Origins Project. He also came to lend his support to the activist group Atheist Ireland, which is promoting a campaign to remove religious education from schools.
Krauss concurred with Dawkins, saying the state must restrict parental rights as part of its mandate to "properly educate its children."
“That means parents have a limited, it seems to be, limited rights [sic] in determining what the curriculum is,” Krauss said.
“And parents of course have concerns and a say, but they don’t have the right to shield their children from knowledge,” Krauss said. “That’s not a right any more than they have the right to shield their children from health care or medicine. And those parents that do that are often tried 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.”
Dawkins became a popular exponent of atheism after publishing his 2006 book The God Delusion, in which he argued that religious faith qualifies as a delusion. He considers religious belief one of the world’s great evils and coined the term "faith-sufferer" to describe religious believers of any creed in a 1991 essay titled, "Viruses of the Mind."
In his talk at Trinity College, Dawkins affirmed his belief in “Darwinian” evolution and denied the theory of Intelligent Design. Yet even some skeptics are challenging his ideas.
In his book The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking wrote, “The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned, and very little in physical law can be altered without destroying the possibility of the development of life as we know it. Were it not for a series of startling coincidences in the precise details of physical law, it seems, humans and similar life-forms would never have come into being.”
“We have arrived at the point,” said physicist Stephen M. Barr, “where we see that science can by no means explain away the rich design of nature and its laws. Science has only shown that design to be more magnificent than anyone had ever dreamt. Therefore, the Cosmic Design Argument for the existence of God still stands. Indeed, it is stronger than ever before.”
Just a small step away from forced indoctrination by the state.
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“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.”
Sir Francis Bacon
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
Max Planck (1858-1947) Father of Quantum Physics
That’s right libs - try to take our children.
Too far towards parents?
Is this guy aware we even have a public school system?
The Hitler Youth used to break up church groups for the same reason.
Thanks for continuing the tradition, Dawkins.
Yea, and at the hands of the exact same people who would scream ... "Separate Church and State"!
Well Dawkins is obviously a man who makes either a good Nazi or a good Communist.
“...and I think the balance has swung too far towards parents,”
Actually, the exact opposite is true. There was a time when the state didn’t care WHAT you did to your kids. They were your kids until they were adults. About the only thing you couldn’t do was kill them. Come to think of it, there was a time you could do that.
For a smart guy, he’s not very smart.
Bookmarked.
Here’s a great irony: Most “religious” kids know more about science than secular ones do.
At any rate, if this universe means nothing then why is Mr. Dawkins fighting so hard against “delusion” and for “truth” — modulo what those things should actually turn out to be? Perhaps he senses some manner of cosmic imperative after all, and it’s only a question about what it is?
Nothing new from Dawkins and his crew.
Most of them consider ALL religions equal.
It is apparently not PC to raise any one religions tenants over another.
But hey, the MSM loves to put these crazies on TV in order to advance their relativism.
For those that are interested, this is from 2006.
Beyond Belief: Science, Reason, Religion & Survival
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-science-religion-reason-and-survival
There is 17 hours of video of these folks taking turns bashing religion in front of their choir.
“He considers religious belief one of the world’s great evils and coined the term “faith-sufferer” to describe religious believers of any creed in a 1991 essay titled, “Viruses of the Mind”
Why don’t we make a big list and compare the evil done in the name of Christ against the evil done by atheists.
After that we can make a list of all the Christian food banks, charities and hospitals to contrast with the atheist versions (supported by atheists believing in the cause, not tax dollars) of the same.
Then we can discuss which one is the world’s biggest evil.
Seems rather ignorant of history, he does.
If it just randomly evolved into us, why should we give a hoot about what it is?
Seems rather ignorant of history, he does.
I’m dead serious here. My smartest daughter is dumb as a box of rocks when it comes to social skills. And she is darned smart.
Dawkins needs to focus on his area of competence.
Dawkins is an embarrassment! He has taken his personal atheism to the point where it is a religion in Islam like war with other religions. He is blind to the manner in which most religions soften the violence inherent in human culture and allows the values he expresses a framework in which to exist. As a scientist he must know that science can neither prove nor disprove God. Yet he sees himself as an atheist Mohammad.
One big supposition you’ll see by faith haters challenged this way is that atheist inquisitions only took a larger toll because they had more efficient weapons, and surely if the tables were turned, faith would carry on worse massacres...
But that’s at best to take the most fanatical sect and project their mindset onto everyone else. He can’t be ignorant, can he, that there are people who disagree with Jim Jones and with the Taliban etc? In fact that they are the vast majority?
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