A friend passes along this clever Yahoo! Answers forum answer to the question someone there posed: “What is the best way to stop your child from becoming an athiest?” [sic] He asked for my opinion. I told him that I thought it was a good piece of propaganda, one that like most successful propaganda pieces, keys into some truths. But it also depends on a view of religion that is cartoonishly exaggerated in the negative. It’s a view of religion that I used to have when I was 17, 18, 19, and thought that the only people who took religion seriously were anti-intellectual fundamentalists. I bought into a narrative of religion that was simply untrue, or rather, only partly true — a narrative that informs the document below.

As an exercise, I promised my friend that I would come up with an answer to this “Athiest” document, from the other side. That is, I would attempt to answer the question, “What is the best way to stop your child from becoming religulous?”, adopting the same strategy of taking the most extreme forms of atheism as normative. Let me be clear: I don’t think the most extreme forms of atheism are the last word on atheism! I am only trying to point out the narrowness and intellectual dishonesty of the pro-atheist piece.

I’ve put them both below the jump. Please let me know what you think.

(From Yahoo! Answers) What is the best way to stop your child from becoming an athiest?

Do not educate them, or expose them to critical thinking, logic or science.

Lie to them constantly about how the world works. Feed them a steady diet of mumbo jumbo dressed up like real knowledge – the jumbo jet in the whirlwind for example – and pretend that it is deep wisdom.

Make them loathe their own natural bodies and functions. Convince them they are small and weak and worthless and need redemption. Tell them everything enjoyable is grievously wrong to even think about, and that their only fun should be in grovelling to an invisible friend.

Ensure that they resent anyone who is not like them in every way – skin color, nationality, political opinion but especially creed. Make such people out to be evil and vile and give them – impotent minorities all – the fictional power to somehow oppress and persecute the vast majority who do think like you.

Teach them to laugh at and dismiss out of hand any faith but their own. Early – early mind you – make sure they are taught the difference between superstitious deadly error – that one raving lunatic in the desert told the truth about a vicious god who killed people, and divine eternal truth – that another raving lunatic in the desert told the truth about a vicious god who killed people.

Instruct them with all severity and import to never question for themselves – to never think for themselves – to never live for themselves – but to seek answers only in one – just one – particular set of semi-literate bronze age folk tales.

Above all – and this cannot be overemphasized – make sure they cannot spell, use correct grammar, or understand basic English words.

That should do the trick.

Now, my answer: What is the best way to stop your child from becoming religulous? 

Make sure they never learn that many brilliant men and women throughout history and even today — scientists, philosophers, artists and others — were and are religious believers. Children must accept that religion is only something for dupes and fools, and that no intelligent person could ever believe in God.

Lie to them constantly about the way the world works. Teach them to think that science and its methods are the only valid ways of knowing anything. If it can’t be measured empirically, it cannot exist.

Make them loathe their own soul and its functions. Convince them to mistrust and despise any intimations they have about its existence. Teach them to believe that they are proud and strong and entirely self-sufficient, and that to intuit and wonder that there is some power or reality greater than themselves at work in the universe is an occasion of shame and disgrace that must be rejected, never explored or admitted into serious consideration.

Ensure that they resent and despise anyone who believes in God. Make such people out to be evil and vile and their religious belief the source of all the world’s ills. Teach children that religion poisons everything. Help them to see people like themselves as the enlightened people in society, and to look down on the religious majority as therefore dim.

Teach them to laugh at and dismiss out of hand any belief system but their own. Early —early mind you — make sure they are taught that there are no important differences between religions or within religious traditions. They must come to believe that apparent differences are only illusory, that in fact, all religions teach and practice nothing but superstitious deadly error. There is no real difference between Mother Teresa and Torquemada, between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jimmy Swaggart, between Averroes and Osama bin Laden, between Maimonides and Baruch Goldstein.

Instruct them with all severity and import to never question for themselves — to never think for themselves — to never live for themselves — but to seek answers only in one — just one — particular set of Industrial Age folk tales.

Above all — and this cannot be overemphasized — make sure they believe that to possess technical mastery of language, mathematics, and other symbolic systems is the same thing as possessing wisdom.

That should do the trick.

I know I don’t have to tell my regular readers, both atheist and religious, that uncivil comments will not be posted here, but I want to let newcomers to this site to be aware of this policy. If all you want to do is rant about how awful and stupid the other side is, save your effort.