The British Humanist Association are running another ad campaign.

British Humanist Association real Ad

The British Humanist Association, (BHA) is promoting this campaign as being against ‘labelling children’. They talk about labelling children as being ‘divisive’, they say it leads to ‘segregation’, it apparently ‘restricts learning about other beliefs’ and ‘creates negative attitudes to other people’s beliefs’. (Not that the BHA is normally averse to ‘creating negative attitudes to other people’s beliefs’ when they want to!)

The advert’s slogan says: “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.” They talk about not labelling children, and it all sounds very good, no one want children ‘labelled’ do they? But the underlying massage of the campaign is not about labels, but teaching! “Let me grow up and choose for myself” is about not being lead into a faith, not about not being labelled with a faith name.

Richard Dawkins (Vice President of the BHA, President of RDFRS, and co-sponsor of the campaign) says that,

“We urgently need to raise consciousnesses on this issue. Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a ‘Marxist child’ or an ‘Anarchist child’ or a ‘Post-modernist child’. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. We need to encourage people to think carefully before labelling any child too young to know their own opinions and our adverts will help to do that.”

Richard Dawkins

We too, Mr Dawkins, have trouble with labels. We do not really know what to call ourselves these days. The church has strayed so far from the Bible and the teaching of Jesus, and the apostles, that the term ‘Christian’ is almost useless, ‘Evangelical Christian’ used to mean sound biblical believer, but I am told now that many evangelicals including the Evangelical Alliance have moved toward theistic evolutionism. Baptist would have been a sound denomination to stand with a few years ago, but they too seem to have abandoned creation and much of the Bible’s  authority.  But it is not labels that are really being attacked.

It is a battle for the right to train the next generation that is being engaged here.

Atheists and evolutionist, humanists, have taken over almost all of the state education system and are now pushing for the right to stop the few parents who put their children into faith schools or home educate them from having the right to teach them the moral code or beliefs that they hold dear.

Richard Dawkins further compounds my belief that what he is talking about is training or teaching children when he says that,

“labelling children as “religious” is a form of brainwashing.”

Richard Dawkins

Mr Dawkins care and concern that children are not brainwashed is, in my mind, somewhat hypercritical when you remember that he is a financial and moral supporter of  the children’s summer camp for atheists that were run this summer by Samantha Stein. These camps certainly were not intended to give people a balanced view on the teachings of evolutionist and creationist, nor do I believe they had a creation scientist in attendance to show how much of the evidence, that evolutionists claim can only be interpreted though Darwinian evolution, actually fit the biblical record like a glove. Though they claimed to teach critical thinking, from the little that has been in the press about them they very much misrepresented the teachings of the Bible.

The same could be said about many school text book they are more about promoting an opinion, (evolution), and supporting it than about presenting science and evidence.

Comedy writer Ariane Sherine, also wants children to have the freedom to make their own minds up about what they believe. She says,

I would like to raise a few questions

1. Who is to teach children? Why does Mr Dawkins or Ariane Sherine believe that they have more right to say how my children are brought up than I do?
2. Do Mr Dawkins or Ariane Sherine believe that it is possible for children to be brought up in a truly neutral way that will give them true freedom of choose?
3. Who is going to defend the child’s right to be brought up by their parents, to be rooted in the culture and faith of their parents? Who is to say that a child wants to be brought up as an atheist or a humanist?
4. Are there other things that children must not be taught, but must chose for themselves. What about taking drugs, saying please, obeying the law, respecting other people and their property?
5. If children are to be given freedom to choose, should they be given a good clear understanding of Intelligent Design in school science classes? For choice without a clear presentation of the options in not a real choice at all. Choice must consist of the mental process of  judging the merits of several options.
6. Do the BHA believe that TV producers and presenters, Magazine editors, the Pop industry, the Fashion industry, not to mention the Gay lobby or the Sexual liberationists are going to stop trying to influence children?

May be there are other things that we should be protecting children from?

This Ad “SEX ED OUT OF SCHOOLS” and “LIES OUT OF TEXT BOOKS” and the top ad
“EVOLUTION OUT OF SCHOOLS” are not the ads that the BHA are running, but if they care for children
then maybe they should sponsor these too.

The Bloger, Dave Cross, gives us a little insight into the attitude that many humanist have toward the Bible or other faiths. He says,

“I firmly believe that the majority of religious people only have those beliefs because they were indoctrinated as children. If people decide to follow a religion when they are old enough to make up their own mind then of course I have no objections to that. But forcing children to believe the same fairy stories as their parents is clearly wrong and should be stopped.”

Dave Cross

Well Dave you are entitled to your beliefs, just as you graciously let me have mine, but the science actually says that children are predisposed to believe in God, so it is probably the humanist children who are following the teaching of the humanist adults more so than the children of Christians. But what we see from Mr Cross’ writing is that he would give the teaching of the Bible little opportunity to be believed by children if he was in charge of what children were taught. The twisted and propagandist language used by Mr Dawkins also give me little trust that he would have children or anyone given a true and balanced opportunity to make their own mind up.

Graham Coyle, a teacher and national team leader at the Christian Schools Trust, which represents 43 independent schools, questioned what the BHA was asking parents to do.