I will have more to say later about Barbara Bradley Hagerty's new book, "Fingerprints of God." When I have more time, I will take up some of the issues raised in this well-written book. Suffice it for now that her book confirms for me the fact that those raised in a religion find it very difficult to depart from it even when reason and solid, testable facts intrude. I believe this is especially true for people raised in Christian Science. Where other kids may recoil from stern fundamentalism - and thus be ripe for apostasy - most CS kids are raised in such an atmosphere of pleasantness and self control that they come to associate the metaphysical claims with goodness. So even when their theology is refuted by facts, they still cling to the notion that there MUST be something to the concepts they were raised with. Hagerty's book confirms this. Even after interviewing articulate atheists and scientists, she still, in the end, relaxes into the belief system that gave her comfort and hope.

I am not such a person I was raised as a Catholic, and though I was assiduous in my practice I eventually left the religion, though I clung to the idea of some kind of God for many years afterward. Now that I am free of all that I notice the stickiness of religious education, and recoil against it. I see great wisdom in Dan Dennett's proposal that all kids be required to learn about all religions. Only in this way can the relentless drumming of one orthodoxy be prevented from establishing tyrannical control of a person's mind.

Labels: apostasy, atheism, atheist, barbara bradley hagerty, brainwashing children, christian science, Dennett, Fingerprints of God, religious education

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