Do we have an obligation to correct fundamentalists' mistaken beliefs?

Are we, who understand (more or less) Darwin, evolution, science, etc., our fundamentalist brethren and sistren's keepers? When we witness them telling their children falsehoods about natural history because the truth conflicts with their religious beliefs, do we owe it to the children to point out the truth? Or should we step back and allow fundamentalists to inflict error on their children because of a principle more urgent than truth, namely, parental privilege to raise one's children as one sees fit (provided no unambiguous harm results)?

Unless you are a teacher and the kid starts spouting pre-Dark Ages dogma in the classroom, you have no right to intervene. Turn it around. How would you feel if some drooling fundie decided to lecture your kid about the earth being 5,000 years old.

Is it parental privilege? Do parents really have the right to keep their children ignorant?

Yes, basically. It is up to the parents... if i want to teach my kids that God is a walnut coffee table, then others have right to intervene and tell them otherwise.

Starve them as punishment?

Beat them senseless?

Clearly we draw lines as a society where parental rights end and the concerns of society begin. It's not as simple as saying "parental rights."

can be harmful, yes, but just as you don't want creationism shoved down your throat, fundies would resent you shoving evolution down their throats... there has got to be a line drawn somewhere, however...

They're not.

While a child can't be taken from a parent who tells them that the moon is really made of cheese, I have to wonder how much damage we are doing to society by essentially allowing that kind of nonsense to be put into children's minds.

assumes that one mans meat is another mans poison. Shoving contrarian opinions is what it is assuming. Like somebody said in a previous post, it is Darwinian. The kid who who doesn't understand or believe in science isnot going to be well prepared in the real world and will likey fail.

With all the beliefs in the world and so many of them directly opposing each other, someone somewhere is wrong. As we progress and explore this universe our knowledge increases. Dogmatic beliefs often make proclomations about the nature of the universe and these may come under assault by our growing knowledge.

But because they are dogmatic beliefs they cannot change just because our understanding has changed. So they resist as long as they can. And inevitible conflicts break out.

The fundamentalists and creationists find themself in this vice these days. Progress is rendering their doctrine absurd. Its a proverbial rock and a hard place. If they adjust their doctrine then it isn't really the truth in their eyes any longer. If it was handed down by god in the correct form in the first place then it has to be true no matter what. They cannot change it.

Thus they have few options. Ignore, Die out, or fight. Those that ignore will be rendered obsolete as society advances. They too will eventually die out. Thus the only real option they have is to target the thing that threatens their beliefs. So they go after science.

They assail it in every way imaginable. Offering their own counter theories. Try to pry open philosophical paradoxes found within the field of science. Cut off funding. Destroy the educational system that promotes it. In the end it is science or their beliefs. Only one will survive. And they are not going quietly into the anals of history.

Granted, it's a difficult question. I don't think parental rights, however, is as compelling a reason to butt out as just plain freedom from coercion of any kind. Unfortunately, the child is being coerced to believe a falsehood, and is being put at a cognitive disadvantage through no fault of his own other than the accident of who his parents are. And the belief being shoved down his throat by his parents is, as Richard Dawkins argues, effectively a virus that, if not cured, will only spread. Ignorance is, in other words, a social disease.

In short, it's a sticky problem, with no simple answer.

Let them raise ignorant kids, when time comes for them to compete against those who learned science in the marketplace the fundies kids can have all the truck driving jobs and your kids can can make the real bucks.

otherwise, let them go back to the "original intent" of the Founding Fathers, and keep their religious beliefs in their homes, and in their spiritual communities...

which means being vigilant and keeping them the hell out of power, along with anybody on "our" side who has enabled their insanity.

George H. W. Bush once went to Garfield High School in California, which was the subject of the movie "Stand and Deliver" starring Edward James Olmos as Jaime Escalante, who turned around the math program - and the entire school - there. The school is primarily poor Black and Hispanic students, and it sends 70% of them to college. George went there to speak in 1988 (on Cinco de Mayo even) and basically downplayed the need for them to go to college to succeed, telling them, "We need the people to run the offices, the people who do the hard physical work of our society."

In the case of the fundamentalists telling their kids wrong information, in the vein of Bush, I say, "We need people to pay taxes into the system to run our public education system (including universities), and if these same people want to take their kids out of the running for scholarships to go to colleges so others can get them (like say my nieces and nephews when they get older), I'm all for it."

TlalocW

or representatives, or judges, or public elementary school teachers even. They don't all go where we want them to. In fact more and more, these kids will grow up with political power.

You will be as successful at this as you would be getting fundies to believe in the validity of the scientific method.

From James Randi's JREF site this week

Announcing LABRats!

If you've got teens or pre-teens in your life who enjoy science, you've got to check out LABRats, a new FREE on-line science club created by my friend and fellow MacArthur Fellow, Dr. Shawn Carlson.

Shawn founded the Society for Amateur Scientists in 1994 and wrote for Scientific American for six years. LABRats is his most recent attempt to bring the light of empiricism to a science-illiterate world.

Members of LABRats get a weekly hands-on science lesson full of "the coolest science tricks, tips, quips, quotes I know," says Shawn, "plus contests and prizes and discounts on wonderful science stuff, not to mention lots of nifty principles that real scientists use every day to make the discoveries that change our world."

Rest assured, skepticism and rational thought are central to his course. Indeed, LABRats could very well introduce skeptical thinking to thousands of kids who certainly wouldn't have learned it elsewhere. Hundreds of families have already enrolled.

You can sign up your kids at www.scifair.org.

LABRats is only the first step towards an exciting new vision to remake science education in America. If you'd like to learn more about that, go to the Society for Amateur Scientists' home page (www.sas.org) and click on "LABRats."

I see heads exploding right now!

If someone doesn't speak up for believers that do not agree with the fundamentalists then the public perception will simply be that they alone speak for Jesus Christ and the beliefs associated with him. If you have no concern about public opinion then you don't need to worry. If on the other hand it is a concern for you then you bear a responsibility if its something you believe in.

"don't awaken a sleeping person. Help only those who are beginning to awaken."

The reason, I believe, is because a belief system can be so strong that the individual cannot conceive of anything else. The few times I've ignored the Sufi advice and have had conversations with fundamentalists have been of no avail-the ones I talked to literally could not hear my words or see written citations of examples.

They'll reject atheists outright, and they're even more suspicious of liberal Christians, because their ministers teach them that we're disciples of Satan who twist Scripture to our own advantage.

I think that people have to come out of fundamentalism when they're ready to, sort of like alcoholics not giving up drinking until they're ready.