Posted by Hemant Mehta in These bus ads from the British Humanist Association have been getting a lot of media attention this week:
The point of the campaign is to point out how absurd it is to thrust a label — any label — onto a child who doesn’t even understand what that label means. It would be foolish to call any kid a “Republican child” or a “Catholic child” or an “Agnostic child.”
That idea hits home any more when you read this ridiculous column by Ruth Gledhill in the Times Online.
She quotes Brad Mason, a Christian pastor, whose kids happen to be the ones featured in the ads:
He said: “It is quite funny, because obviously they were searching for images of children that looked happy and free. They happened to choose children who are Christian. It is ironic. The humanists obviously did not know the background of these children.”
*facepalm*
It is ironic, indeed.
Wait. There’s more:
Gerald Coates, the leader of the Pioneer network of churches, which Mr Mason and his family used to attend before they moved to Dorset, said: “I think it is hilarious that the happy and liberated children on the atheist poster are in fact Christian.
Clearly, they couldn’t get past the kids’ images to read the words written on the ads.
These are not Christian children.
They are the children of Christian parents.
Get. It. Right. And stop labeling them.
…
On a side note, what’s with the headline for this article?
Children who front Richard Dawkins’ atheist ads are evangelicals
These are not Dawkins’ ads. He may support them, but this is not his campaign. And they’re certainly not pro-atheism.
Who the hell is writing this stuff?!
Aren’t all young children, by default, atheists? In the case of babies, one might even say new atheists.
My first, uncharitable thought was “I doubt a debate with a child evangelical would be markedly less stimulating than one with an adult evangelical.”
Perhaps future versions of this ad should feature generic hand-drawn images of kids. It will at least prevent the delusionals from thinking they know what religion/label the kids are ’supposed’ to be. Yes, I know it doesn’t matter. But if it helps prevent the message from getting ‘lost in translation’, I say its a good idea.
Besides the fact that the whole thing is ridiculous (and wouldn’t it make even more sense if the kids were from an evangelical family, since that’s the point?), what’s the normal course in getting images? It seems weird to me that the kids’ father wouldn’t have known what the images were being used for, unless he just sold them to a modeling agency who could then use them at will (um, the pictures, not the children).
It’s shit like this that makes me wonder why the hell we even bother. Clearly there are far, far too many people who a far, far too stupid to even speak to.
I know that isn’t really the case (I hope), this just makes me feel that way.
*sigh*
Exactly what I was just thinking. “Please don’t label me… a Christian Child.” And then they do.
I’ve told my daughters what I am, an atheist. I’ve never told them what they are. That’s for them to decide.
Oh, that’s tame stuff. I’m the one who (selectively) got stuck with a Telegraph article by Ed West who spent paragraphs equating the message of not labeling children as atheist fascism, authoritarianism and whatever. Crazy bugger.
Best part was when his argument boiled down to, “So, you don’t want kids to be labeled as religious? Then, find something else we can label them as”. Talk about missing the point by a hundred miles.
I think they’re looking in a mirror.
Same thing I was thinking. These children “are” christian because someone is telling them that there was a man named jesus who was the son of god, etc, etc. They would have never come up with that on their own.
Picking on the detail of who these child models are in real life is SO silly. It’s so amazingly funny how the religious side grasps at smaller and smaller straws as the voice of secularism and reason grows.
I looked up Ruth Gledhill on Wikipedia and she’s the daughter of an Anglican vicar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Gledhill
Eh, that’s strictly accurate by the definition, but it’s misleading and in the context of this campaign probably not helpful. Young children don’t believe in anything much — they don’t believe in gods, but they also don’t believe in other countries, or evolution, or gravity, which makes the atheist label (yeah, ‘label’) pretty meaningless. Just let it be enough that they aren’t old enough to decide for themselves yet, and don’t worry about scoring points with who is / isn’t an “atheist” on a technicality…
Wrong! As Sheikh Anwar so kindly points out for us:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/humanist-poster-stirs-up-religious-storm-14566599.html
Also, I think this column by Ruth Gledhill makes the very definition of missing the point, not to mention irony.
Oh, for goodness sake. What did they think, that atheists would post pictures of “atheist children” with the caption “Please don’t call us ‘atheist children’”? If they were choosing models based on labels, of course the picture would depict children labeled as Christian; children of a pastor are a perfect choice for making that kind of statement.
Trying to figure out the misinterpretation a little:
It’s apparent from the article that they think the ads are saying, perhaps, something like, “Please don’t bring me up in a religion, so I can be happy and free.” They see the phrase “let me grow up and choose for myself” as meaning “don’t teach me your religion, don’t bring me up in your religion, let me defer all that to adulthood, where I’ll make my own decision without your influence.” I have to admit, there is some of that sentiment in TGD and elsewhere, so I don’t think the misinterpretation is terribly far off the mark.
People wear their religion like an ethnicity. There are “Polish children” and “Italian children” and “Irish children”; so, similarly, in their view, there are “Catholic children” and “Jewish children” and “atheist children”. The child doesn’t get to choose not to be Italian. Try telling an Italian family they can bring up their kids with all the Italian traditions and rituals and language and holidays and history and family structures, but they should not claim the kids are “Italian children”, the kids should be unlabeled until they choose to adopt a label as adults. It doesn’t make any sense.
Really, the primary mental construct they need to learn is that religion is not an ethnicity, it is a choice. Unfortunately, this simplistic ad is addressing a symptom of the problematic construct, not the construct itself.
Contrary to what some people insist, there is no generally agreed meaning of the word “atheist”. There are at least the following common usages, moving from sensu lato to sensu stricto:
1) Someone who doesn’t believe in any gods, for whatever reason.
2) Someone who is old enough to be able to believe in gods, but doesn’t, for any reason.
3) Someone who has consciously considered the claims of religion and who rejects them.
Then there are some who seem to favour the following definition:
4) Someone who follows a completely rational lifestyle, eschewing all forms of religion, woo, etc
But I’m not convinced that’s a very useful usage. Rather sensu strictissimo – even if most people here would fit in.
And finally there’s this one, which seems to be used almost exclusively by people who are not atheists and have never met any:
94) Someone who has a religious conviction that no gods exist.
So under definition 1 (only), yes, you are correct.
(Should anyone be puzzled by the numbering, look up “Private Eye”).
I reject all of the above for what [A]theism is.
Atheism can be split into three parts. A – the- ism.
A = Without.
-the- = god
-ism = … er… Let’s go for some exemplae gratae. Vegetarianism? Judaism? … Wiktionary sez: a principle, belief, or movement. That works for me.
I might call babies agnostic, but I wouldn’t call them atheist. They don’t believe in a god, but they don’t not believe in a god, either. So maybe agnostic by default? If we need to label them as anything, that is.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be working from the assumption that ‘agnostic’ means “I don’t know whether there are any deities or not” and ‘atheist’ means “I declare that there are no deities”. If you answer ‘no’ to the question: “Do you believe in any deities?”, you are, by definition, an atheist. You are also presumably an agnostic, because to say that there are definitely no deities, unicorns, goblins etc. is a philosophically unwise stance to take.
So, to summarize my ramblings, all agnostics are also atheists and the vast majority of atheists are also agnostics, and I’m not sure why exactly there is so much confusion.
I think comedian Ron White said it best when he said, “You can’t fix stupid.” But that’s a little mean… maybe the Christians just need a little time to process the ad. Maybe.
As far as newborn babies go, if you really wish to label them, I would think that they would best be considered ignostic. The word/concept of God is non-existent until impressed upon them. As children mature, they should be free to make their own informed decisions
No, some people can be agnostic and still believe in god. How about that Pascal’s Wager so many people profess?
I think the best reaction to this labelling, would be to use more children in the ad. So we got the christians covered, why not use images of children by jewish, hindu or even muslim parents?
One response I’m sure some Christians will make is “I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I was six!” I have friends who have said similar things. When I tell people I was a Christian for around 20 years, I don’t include the time before I actually made a real choice which was at 18 or 19.
Sure, everyone is born without religion, but are those kids really not known to the people who started that ad campaign?
They make a point: If we show a photo of a child, we’d better make sure we know WHO that child is, and that they agree with the message in the ad.
Clip art is great if you’re making an ad for something that isn’t controvertial. We have to be careful about things like that. We’re on the side of honesty.
Valdyr,
You seem to be unaware of the most common definition of ‘agnostic’ – there’s all these mountains of evidence against the existence of any deities and zero evidence for their existence, but even so I arbitrarily declare the odds of deities existing to be 50/50 because Jesus gives me warm fuzzies.
In short, ‘popular-usage-agnostics’ refuse to take a stand one way or another, rather than ‘atheist agnostics’ who recognize that while you can’t prove a negative, the odds are so miniscule that it’s pointless to even pretend there’s a real chance.
[...] Friendly Atheist: on Ruth Gledhill’s article; “Clearly, they couldn’t get past the kids’ images to read the words written on the ads. These are not Christian children. They are the children of Christian parents. Get. It. Right. And stop labeling them.” [...]
I would describe babies and toddlers as “default atheists,” if one has to have a term for them.
My question would be how/when children transition from default atheists to regular atheists. In my own case, I’ve never believed in any gods, so I consider that I’ve been an atheist all my life. However, I’m unclear at what point the switch took place. Was it when I was 7 or 8 and first heard about the concept of gods? When I was 11 and began to realize that people actually took such things seriously? Or when I was a young teenager and began to pay more attention to religious and philosophical topics?
As SeekingDuck pointed out above, wouldn’t calling children “atheist by default” be the same as calling them “evolution-deniers-by-default”?
You can say it, but it’s really taking away the practical meaning of it.
I don’t think it takes away from the meaning of the word. By its very definition, atheism is the absence of theistic belief. Babies do not have those kinds of beliefs, in addition to being ignorant of their very existence. Until such time as the beliefs are implanted in their brains by well-meaning religious parents, I don’t see how they could possibly be called anything other than default atheists.
Of course, they are atheists in the exact same way that Golden Retrievers are atheists. The difference between a baby and a Golden Retriever is that the baby is eventually going to have the mental capacity to comprehend the idea of deities. More likely than not, the baby will grow up in a culture permeated by theistic belief. I would suspect that most children in American society are only default atheists until they are two or three years old.
And, yes, babies also do not believe in evolution. However, they don’t deny evolution; they simply don’t have knowledge of it. It’s not a concept that is in their brains. If atheism meant overt rejection of gods or the god-concept, then I would agree that it would be improper to call babies default atheists. But I take a broader view of the term. I think one actually has to have the god-idea inserted into one’s brain before one can properly be called a theist. Before that time, “default atheist” seems (to me) to be a useful and correct term.
This is merely more atheist propaganda as Richard Dawkins wonders whether there is occasion for “society stepping in” and hopes that such efforts “might lead children to choose no religion at all.” Dawkins also supports the atheist summer camp “Camp Quest.” Furthermore, with this campaign they are attempting to piggy back on the United Nations.
Phillip Pullman states the following about his “fictional” books for children, “I don’t think I’m writing fantasy. I think I’m writing realism. My books are psychologically real.” But what does he really write about? As he has admitted, “My books are about killing God” and “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.”
More evidence here:
http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2009/11/deceptive-manipulative-propagandist.html
Yet again, atheists are collecting “amazing sums” during a time of worldwide recession not in order to help anyone in real material need but in order to attempt to demonstrate just how clever they consider themselves to be—while actually loudly, proudly and expensively demonstrating their ignorance and arrogance—need any more be said?
Dude, WTF does Phillip Pullman have to do with this post? Seriously? I really liked his books, btw. Although the Golden Compass movie could have been better. And no, they’re not “about” killing any gods. The god dies, but nobody kills him, and it’s hardly the main plot point. I’ve actually read them, and can give an informed opinion. Have you?
In other unrelated news, how’s that mountain of gold in Vatican City doing? Helping any poor people? Does your pastor drive a Mercedes or a BMW? Does your church pay the taxes that fund their local police and fire departments? Was Jerry Falwell hurting for money? Did Jim Bakker go to jail? Oh.