Here's a short video of kids responding to the question, "What does God look like?" You can see from their responses that it's akin to asking the question "What color is a unicorn?"
(YouTube video link)
I find kids to be amazing and fascinating creatures of logic. They're so dang smart, it puts most adults to shame. I think the video above is amazingly telling of the abuse inherent in religious instruction. The kids at the beginning of the video are completely honest. When asked "What does God look like?" they respond that they don't know, or that they don't understand the question.
They have to be pressured to even answer such a nonsensical question. This is because children who are subjected to religious instruction are never asked whether or not God exists. They're told he does exist as an objective and solid fact. They're forcefully told it's true over and over again because there's not any way to arrive at belief in God through rational observation. Someone schooled in everything but religion does not arrive at a belief in gods on their own. It might sound strange to some of you to hear someone talk about religion as abuse inflicted on children, but it's hard for me to see it as anything else. Any system of belief that forces children to lie to attain the praise of their elders is corrupt.
In the video above, the children struggle to answer the question in the way that they figure the interviewer will want to hear. They often seem to be unsure of their statements, which they inflect as if they're questions. Several of the kids have goofy grins and look up and to the sides when ascribing fairly non-controversial physical traits (such as 'bearded' or 'tall') to this imaginary invisible being. Simple description of a real man they've seen before would never elicit such dodginess or evasion from kids. They'd just straightforwardly describe as much as they could remember about him.
Here's a video of kids explaining who Einstein is. Where they don't know, they just say so. None of them are embarrassed or shifty about their answers because they're based in reality. No goofy grins, no sidelong glances, no unexpressed uncertainties.
(YouTube video link)
These kids understand that the concept of describing a god is ridiculous. It's clear by their responses that they're made uncomfortable and embarrassed by the question. When asked to explain Einstein, it's a complete reversal. Weird...
As always, if you have a better explanation for this phenomenon than I do, hook me up with a comment!
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
In the Beautiful Brains of Children: God vs. Einstein
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3 comments:
Go read some Rousseau. Humans have five senses which to describe the universe. When you expect the five senses to make a creator tangible, you become defined by material reality. Defining God as a man with white hair is a delusion, but not so much as denying that one exists at all.
I'm confused. If there's some other way of understanding things aside from using logic and the senses, I'm not familiar with it. If you know about this method of understanding please describe it to me, but without using logic or the evidence of the senses.
Thanks!
@Jason McLaughlin: Hahaha. awesome response.
My response would be that the purpose of this article seems to be to point out that god is something that children are never allowed to contemplate in a critical manner. Were they able to, they would discover the only acceptable answer to this question (aside from the atheistic one) is to say that god is supra-material or non-material, and, as such, cannot be categorized in sensory language.
The problem with god, that you brought up, ironically, is how does one define him. This usually involves language that does not contain (at least directly) a material nature: love, power, knowledge, wisdom. Another route is to use titles, like the one you gave, creator; also judge, goodness, holy.
But the problem with these answers are that they are descriptors of characteristics or actions, not definitions. They do not tell you who/what god is, just general behavior and actions.
So then, what is god? Most people at this point would say he is undefinable. This is, of course, a paradox - the definition of god is a non-definition.
This can be brought back to another point that Jason made in the article, that religion is child abuse. Indoctrinating children over a paradoxical subject is dangerous.
In ever other endeavor, we attempt to make sense of the world. This is usually in making the best possible decisions in our lives. But in their most formative years, we place on children this absurd idea as the most important. In this idea we also add things like guilt and fear (specifically hell). We also shut down the most useful form of action - critical reasoning - as a means of solving these dilemmas, and replace it with it's opposite: blind belief.
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