richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

C H I L D H O O D , ABUSE AND R E L I G I O N 327
think the opposite, and aren't they entitled to teach it to their
children? Isn't it just as arrogant to insist that children should be
taught science?
I thank my own parents for taking the view that children should
be taught not so much what to think as how to think. If, having
been fairly and properly exposed to all the scientific evidence, they
grow up and decide that the Bible is literally true or that the movements
of the planets rule their lives, that is their privilege. The
important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall
think, and not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure.
And this, of course, is especially important when we reflect that
children become the parents of the next generation, in a position to
pass on whatever indoctrination may have moulded them.
Humphrey suggests that, as long as children are young, vulnerable
and in need of protection, truly moral guardianship shows
itself in an honest attempt to second-guess what they would choose
for themselves if they were old enough to do so. He movingly
quotes the example of a young Inca girl whose 500-year-old
remains were found frozen in the mountains of Peru in 1995. The
anthropologist who discovered her wrote that she had been the
victim of a ritual sacrifice. By Humphrey's account, a documentary
film about this young 'ice maiden' was shown on American
television. Viewers were invited
to marvel at the spiritual commitment of the Inca priests
and to share with the girl on her last journey her pride and
excitement at having been selected for the signal honour
of being sacrificed. The message of the television programme
was in effect that the practice of human sacrifice
was in its own way a glorious cultural invention - another
jewel in the crown of multiculturalism, if you like.
Humphrey is scandalized, and so am I.
Yet, how dare anyone even suggest this? How dare they
invite us - in our sitting rooms, watching television - to
feel uplifted by contemplating an act of ritual murder: the
murder of a dependent child by a group of stupid, puffed