Freedom of religion for children

The freedom of religion we all hold so dear, and which is implemented in many constitutions additional to being a universal human right, unfortunately does not apply to children.
The fact that in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, there are laws for 'minors' and religion doesn't change much in this matter. In Germany children under 12 years old cannot be forced to change to another belief, which implies that until 12 they can, and only kids over 14 years have the freedom to choose whatever religion they want to be in, which implies that up to 14 the parents have a legal right to indoctrinate their kids with religious dogma. This is clearly a joke, and should in reality be 14 months or something in this order of magnitude.
Now I hear you thinking that a child of 14 months cannot make any decisions or deliberations on which religion is the right one for him or her. That is of course true, but neither can a child of 13 or 14. And at this age, it's clearly too late anyhow. A child is "designed" (by evolution, not a designer) to be very open-minded and accept what his/her parents say, because it doesn't have the abilities to make certain decisions on it's own. It is inclined to accept what the parents say and teach and, for its own benefit, not to question too much until it has gained experience and knowledge about the world it lives in. For example if children won't listen to their parents when they tell them to stay away from the pool, the child will fall in and die. Children are of course impulsive and can run straight into the pool when chasing a ball, but would generally listen to their parents and respect their opinions. A small child generally can not form its own opinion about religious or philosophical issues. Taking in mind the mystic, fairy-tale character of many scriptures it is not difficult to see how children are susceptible to religious dogma brought down from their parents.

Consider the most common situation where a child is raised by his two parents: it is normal and expected that the parents teach values and morals to their children. Whether these fall into a religious realm will depend on how religious the parents are. When both parents have the same religion it is unrealistic to expect they will not raise their kids according to their religious beliefs. The only way to balance this is by schooling or another strong anti-theistic influence. Without it, a child raised by two religious parents is 'doomed' to be religious itself.
To raise a child with a solid moral framework does not require religious dogma any more than living a religious life needs religious dogma: it is certainly possible to live ethically without attributing to a religion, and raise your children the same way. Moreover, neither we nor our children are dependant on holy scriptures for the conduct of ethical behaviour, but I will get back on this independence in a later post.
One of the most important things that a child learns in the first decade in it's life is what is good and bad, and how to interact with others: apart from moral standards he gets from his parents, a child learns the basic rules of human interaction in kindergarten. If a child hits another child on the playground, takes away its toys or lies, it is wrong regardless of which religion either child is brought up in. For such basic social rules there is no need for religion, specially not for kids. There is also no need for an all-knowing, all-powerful God that punishes with hell fire. Properly inflicted, such ideas can cause trauma in children that border on mental abuse.

Essentially we are all born as Atheists because theism is not innate, we are not born with it. An uninformed child is godless, it has no notion of religion and will stay that way until it learns to speak and listen and form opinions on religious matters. So the act of baptizing is committed far earlier than when the child can form it's own opinion on religious matters. Baptizing an infant is therefore strictly speaking a breach of a basic human right for children, namely the right to freely choose a religion. When baptized, the parents of a child decide on its behalf that it will enter into church, and thus saved for salvation. Strictly speaking, once baptized a child is a christian (by whichever church variant it is baptized) until it's death. But without the child's consent, what validity does this baptism have? It can only have validity if a child is grown up and can decide for itself it it wants to be part of church.

All influence of parents and family aside, there is another important factor in a young person's life that has influence on its view on life and religious matters: education.

As I wrote before, children are likely to accept their parents beliefs. It is also generally considered to be 'not done' for a kid, specially in primary school, to dispute what a schoolteacher teaches but instead to accept what he says to be true. So if the schoolteacher tells the story of the Arch of Noah as being a true story, they will believe him just as much as when he teaches the earth is round and circulates around the sun. They will also believe him that eve was created from Adam's rib or that the earth and universe were designed by a designer.
If you tell the story of the Arch of Noah to a well-thinking adult, he will counter that it is impossible for an old man to gather a male and a female example of each of the thousand species on a boat. On his own. A child will find it a fantastic story while every reasonable adult will find it humbug.

The educational system could act as a counter-weight to whatever religious dogma children get fed at home. Even a "neutral" education where all religions are briefly touched upon and explained in rough lines would be beneficial to kids as it will expand their horizon. Unfortunately this is not the case even in the most civilised countries. There are of course neutral schools, but there are also Catholic schools, Protestant schools, Islamic schools etc. In this way, the kids that need it most (those that are raised in a religious fashion) are not taught about other religions and irreligious ideas like evolution theory and thus expand their horizon beyond what their religious parents teach them.
In a recent study among British schoolteachers, 29% of them said that they want creationism to be taught in science classes. Creationism! In science classes! Since when is creationism a science? It isn't, it is a malign fable.


So why is this taught in schools? The school system can be a good instrument to counter-balance the religious upbringing children get from their parents. They can learn about creationism at home and get taught Darwin's evolution at school. However, all over Europe there are schools and other educational institutions which label themselves as religious, and where religion is taught. It wouldn't be all that bad if kids would learn about all religions in religion classes, so they would get equal knowledge about Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and what some of the more obscure schools of thought like Scientology. If I had kids, even I as an atheist would gladly send them to such classes. Unfortunately, on roman catholic schools kids just learn about the roman catholic religion, on protestant schools they learn about protestant religion. And immigrants from the middle east send their kids to Islam-schools where they just get taught about Islam - if we are lucky they don't get told that the Christian and Jewish religions are bad and its followers should have their heads chopped off. But I wouldn't hold my breath for it. To add insult to injury, the state pays for such religious "education" and therefore it is you and I who fund religious education through taxes.

Apart from what children are taught at home or in school, they act very much on example, they learn on repetition. Children are born without speech and without belief, so they just mimic what they see around them. The best thing we can do for our kids, in other words for the coming generation, is to show them to be honest, compassionate people (thanks to or despite their religion) and with a bit of luck they will take over the good things we show them.