I'm reading Idiot America at the moment, by Charles Pierce.
Ok, I confess that I got the book because I like poking fun at the good ol' USofA, and I thought that this book might be a good laugh. It is, but it also cuts uncomfortably close the bone, even here in Australia.
The three Great Premises of Idiot America:
Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units
Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough
Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it
I suspect that Mr Pierce and I wouldn't agree on lots of things in the public policy debates in his country or mine. I'm pretty certain that we have very different worldviews. Some of what I believe he would comfortably (and maybe even fondly) label as "crank". From him, I would probably take it as a compliment (you'll have to read to book to understand why).
But I think that we would agree on this: the quality of public debate in America (and Australia) is now so poor that it's really no debate. It's much more like this:
Mr Pierce's book seems to say that what passes for public debate now is little more than a series of unrelated pep-talks to the respective teams. There is little-to-no engagement with fact, or even much effort to discern what the true facts are. There is no engagement with the arguments and assumptions held by "the other side". There is overweening arrogance and self-aggrandizement from those in power and authority (and from anyone who manages to get onto talk TV or talk radio). There is extraordinary apathy and cynicism from the vast majority of people on most issues.
Above all, there's the official dogma: Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and all opinions are entitled to equal respect.
Is it naive to hope for a culture in which most people learn to discern truth from falsehood? In which most people can recognise nonsense, even when it's dressed up as serious opinion? In which one is confident enough to say so? In which one is humble enough to be corrected and to change his opinion?
I didn't catch the Q and A episode with John Lennox - it had started before it hove into my conscience, but some friends of mine on twitter were tweeting about it. So it's in the iView queue, and I followed the thread on twitter for a while. Two significant themes emerged from the tweets: One is an assertion that Christianity cannot be proved, and so should not be taught in schools at all; the second is that teaching any form of religion in schools is brainwashing.
Both views seem to be pretty widely accepted in our society, and both views are complete rubbish. So I want to respond, and think about how we can inoculate our kids against these fallacies.
Firstly - evidence for Christianity. The standard argument that there is no evidence is usually one that relies on there being no scientific evidence for Christianity: that the existence of God, or the occurrence of miracles, or the efficacy of prayer cannot be tested under laboratory conditions. Therefore they are unprovable scientifically, and therefore there is no evidence for a belief system that includes these things. But if we look at these statements, it's clear that there are many things that will fall outside the field of scientific enquiry. I know that my wife loves me; I know that I can trust my close friends to keep my confidences; I know that I can believe what my parents tell me: but there are no scientific experiments that can prove these things.
Perhaps nearer the point, most of us only know what our children did at school today because someone who was there told us. We only know that Hadrian built his wall, or that Stalin killed his millions, or that Hannibal crossed the alps on elephants because of historical documents that record what witnesses to those events observed. Most of us only know that there are microscopic things like atoms, molecules and cells because someone has told us about them (and certainly not because we've undertaken the scientific experimentation ourselves!)
The fatal flaw in the "no evidence for Christianity" argument is that it overlooks other categories of evidence in exclusive favour of scientific evidence. As a criminal lawyer for 8 years I saw this same error occur at times in jury trials. Extremely persuasive and cogent eyewitness testimony was rejected because there was no forensic scientific evidence. If we refuse to take note of any evidence that is not scientific, we exclude significant sources of reliable knowledge.
I think it is important to teach our kids about this! Not everything can be known through science. Not everything that science tells us is necessarily reliable. Our kids need to be taught to sift through and evaluate the evidence. Just as our kids need to be taught to sift through and evaluate other forms of evidence - eyewitness testimony, historical record and the like.
And that leads to the second false view circulating - that any teaching of any religion amounts to brainwashing. In my view, the fact that the term is bandied about so freely in the religion-in-schools debate is either a display of ignorance about how religious education is (or can be) approached in modern schools, or else a misleading piece of rhetoric.
Let's assume ignorance to start with - I suppose that hangovers from the 40s or 50s might lead some to assume that any religious education in schools will be rigid, dogmatic, programmatic and allowing of no dissent. Where belief (or expressions of belief) are coerced, then perhaps this does fit a description of brainwashing, such as occurs under some totalitarian regimes and in some times of war. It cannot seriously be suggested that Christians or the churches currently have the social or political power to coerce belief, even amongst children. It cannot seriously be suggested that the churches would use a fear-based technique that would bring such fleeting and superficial results. But do we truly believe that teaching kids the tenets and historical foundation for the world's greatest faith amounts to brainwashing? Laying out a belief and providing reasons and evidence for that belief is not brainwashing - it is education!
I suppose there might be some Christian parents who enforce belief in their children through objectionable means - but given that this is a universal parenting problem that spans all beliefs (and lacks-of-belief) - it's stretching things too much to credit this evil to the Christian side of the ledger. The argument might more strongly be put that atheist parents are brainwashing their children by refusing to present the evidence for Christianity - certainly in the current prevailing culture those children are less likely to see both sides of the debate fairly presented.
Which brings us to the use of "brainwashing" as a rhetorical device. If the real concern is coercive Christian education, why not say so? We can understand that we are happy for our kids to learn about Christianity, but not to be pressured into a decision. We can then truly agree, perhaps, that we want each person to make up his or her own mind by reference to all of the evidence and arguments. I suspect, though, that this is precisely what many aggressive atheists do not want - they do not want every person to have the opportunity of fairly and individually assessing the evidence for and against Christianity: they want to push any discussion of Christianity out of the public sphere altogether. They want the field to themselves.
Again, what to do for our kids? Just as our kids need to know about different types of evidence, and need to learn how to evaluate such evidence, our kids need to know about different types of argument. They need to be prepared to meet these different worldviews in their school yard, from their teachers, from their teammates. They need to be prepared to present and defend their own beliefs (even as they are being formed and refined!), while they can carefully assess (and where appropriate, attack!) the beliefs that are being pressed on them.
