In defense of religion -- the stupidity of militant atheism

[Doug]

The militant atheism I am aiming at is that which attacks, in practice, normal mainstream Christianity as it is practiced today in the West.

The attackers can find no end of horrible examples of religiously-inspired or religiously-justified butcheries in the past, and on the part of various religions -- most spectacularly radical Islam -- in other countries today.

But they aren't doing history lessons, and they don't book toursto sell their books in Karachi and Baghdad. Their target is that little church down the street.

Now so far as I am concerned, those people worshipping there have chosen a very different method from me to acknowledge the existence of something besides matter-in-motion. I am sure not one in a thousand have even heard the word "ontology" and could care less, but they are expressing their belief in a transcendent order, and investing it with that sacred nature that humans seem to yearn for.

They have given their response to the enormous mystery of life by focussing on various events and writing about those supposed events that their ancestors saw as proof of Something More to mankind's existence than just eating and copulating and dying. I cannot join them in this, but I sure as hell am not going to try to get them out of their churches.

"Hey ... listen everyone ... if you rob my house and rape and kill my wife and you don't get caught by the police ... you know what'll happen to you? Nothing!! You'll skate! There is no meaning to life, nothing sacred, and no reason to restrain your appetites beyond whatever accidental and irrational commands your brain-stem sends you -- the remnants of a "conscience" -- and a rational calculation of probable consequences! So have at it!"

No thanks.

As for the social disintegration of the working classes in the United Kingdom. I am too much of a conservative to have a nice neat little explanation. Let me just say that making the government your alternative daddy-and-mommy -- or rather, your Mommy -- has not led to better behavior on the part of the people who take up this alternative. We have in fact the opposite of what the comprehensive welfare state plus severe restraints on the state's coercive functions, was supposed, according to socialist theory, to bring us. I won't, however, theorize a simple X-caused-Y relationship.

However, here is an anecdote. For about ten years, I taught in the Mathematics Department of a University of London College that was located in a poor area, where there were a lot of African and Afro-Carribbean immigrants. Naturally, there was high crime and welfare dependency. We had very few Black students apply to do a Mathematics BSc -- but we did have a few. There were five, and I knew them all well. It struck me as signficant that four of them were regular attenders at one or another little Protestant sect -- Seventh Day Adventist, Pentecostal, that sort of thing.

Now I doubt that the doctines of these churches are "true" -- they cannot all be true since they contradict each other. But what these churches did was to give these young people a solid anchor in the moral chaos of the ghetto. They were given very powerful -- supernatural -- reasons to respect their bodies, to work hard, to conform to old-fashioned social norms about sex and drugs and immediate self-gratification.

Now Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens would have had me try to convince these young people that they were wasting their time, worshipping an illusion, believing in impossible things.

What madness -- the most important impossible thing that their religion gave them was the idea that you could be a Black kid in London and stay out of the gangs and off drugs and go to University and get a BSc in Mathematics. And it worked.

That's miracle enough for me.

On British patriotism. Believe me, it's dead. What you saw in 1982 (and I was living here at the time) was the twitch of a corpse.

 

[Diuretic]

It's interesting that you see the welfare state as sort of parental metaphor. I would have used the metaphor of a welcome helping hand rather than the sometimes ambiguous hand of the parent.

 

[Doug]

The liberal/socialist idea of the welfare state is that it becomes the Nurturing Parent, not the Strict Disciplinarian Daddy.

Don't like the idea of getting a low-paid menial job and having to turn up at work every day at the same time, and have someone whose teeth you could knock down their throat telling you what to do? No problem, the welfare state will give you a flat in a council estate and enough money to live on. When you get your nose broken in a drunken brawl on the weekend it will fix you up for free. And it will. not. be. judgmental. And God help the policeman who might have boxed your ears when you were 13 and told him to F*** Off. Anything like that now and he'll be repremanded and you will be given several thousand dollars in "compensation". Think I'm kidding?

If you do find yourself in jail, and you are a drug addict, you will have a right to your drugs. Think I'm kidding?

If I had more entrepreneureal spirit, I would organize Welfare State Holidays for American tourists who want to see one in action. But since it would require leading, or rather sending, my clients into those lovely areas where the state owns everything and pays for everything -- and where the Christians have literally been driven away -- I don't think I could get the necessary insurance.

 

[Diuretic]

When did the rot set in Doug?

 

[doniston]

Of course, some here will find the ideas presented too difficult to deal with, and/or of little interest.

There is a wide distribution of knowledge, attention spans, and IQs in the general population. I certainly must remain silent in many discussions, some of which I probably could not even understand if I wanted to, my facility with Clifford algebras and tensor calculus being non-existent. We can choose what to talk about, and certainly de gustibus non disputandem est.

But for anyone who is able to read a few hundred consecutive words, some of which are multi-syllabic, and who cares to challenge my arguments, please do.

For instance, I think Diuretic is a non-believer who does not fit my description of materialists. He may be a non-materialist non-believer, or may subscribe to some more sophisticated form of materialism than I have described. (The question of consciousness has been debated for centuries, as the mind-body problem, and free will -- and many attempts have been made to explain conscious phenomena while holding onto a matter-is-all-there-is metaphysics.)

In which case, here is an opportunity to expound his own beliefs.

I have frequently counter-attacked liberals and Lefties who start posts with "Conservatives believe in ..." and then follow it with some false statement about conservatives. It's a great opportunity to refute error.

I for one have not joined into you conversation, tho I understand what you are saying. But to me it is not of sufficient import to discuss. I will agre with you on one thing, I do not beleive there is such a thing as true self-determination. Everything we do is dependent upon some other action or event. It is like the true fatalist who says he was right because it happened, ----------------or didn't happen. Regardless of which direction, the Fatalist beleives IT WAS ORDAINED

 

[Doug]

Diuretric: When did the rot set in? Good question. I don't know. I don't even pretend to understand how societies commit suicide, but they do.

Society is too complex to really understand. All we can do is perhaps get little insights into what is going on. There is a trend of thought on the Right which puts it all down to a Commie plot, following a strategy laid out by Gramsci and the Frankfurt school, but I think that's bollocks.

A more promising line of inquiry might be to look at the social effects of advanced capitalism itself, which produces such an abundance of goods and services and whose logic is extreme individualism. The problem is that almost all people who are intelligent enough to even begin to think about this problem already have a set of views which pre-disposes them to one or another kind of answer, one which grinds their ideological axe.

As for the welfare state and its effects on people, a fruitful line of inquiry might be to examine its operation in different cultures. I don't think that welfare state measures per se are corrupting, and I would offer the examples of the Scandanavian countries -- prior to massive Muslim immigration, which has changed everything -- as an example, and also places like Singapore.

Both of these cultures combine a pretty vigorous capitalism -- Sweden has one of the most free economies in the world, which many conservatives are surprised to hear -- with a very comprehensive welfare state, and yet one which also is surprisingly conservative in its emphasis on individual responsibility. For instance they have loans for their university students, and (limited) school choice. Singapore has a compulsory government-run retirement scheme, and they also hang their drug dealers.

I believe the problem is not the welfare state per se, but something more complex, where the welfare state can provide oxygen to the fire of social self-immolation, but does not have to.

This however is a diversion from my attempt to get the militant atheists to defend themselves. I wonder if they have had the fear of God put into them?

 

[Diuretic]

On the British welfare state. My grandfather served in the East Kent Regiment in WWI ("Steady the Buffs!"). He survived the whole of WWI with the regiment. When he came home to London and resumed normal civilian life he contracted cancer of the neck. He died and left his wife (my grandmother), a son (my father) and five daughters. My father left school and went to work to help the family survive. There was no welfare other than private charity or the poorhouse in Lambeth for them. They stayed out of the poorhouse.

There may be faults indeed with the British welfare state but going back to Edwardian times isn't the answer.

As for militant atheism - I'm just a common or garden type.

 

[Doug]

I agree entirely. Actually, the welfare state was not invented by liberals or socialists, but by this man. (Scroll down to the section on his Social Legislation, towards the bottom.)

What is killing us is to extend benefits to people who do nothing to earn them, when they could. They do not even remain passive parasites, but actively wreak mayhem in society. This sort of welfare-statism is social suicide.

 

[Diuretic]

Thanks Doug that's a very interesting article.

The 1880s were a period when Germany started on its long road towards the welfare state it is today. The Social Democrat, National Liberal and Center parties were all involved in the beginnings of social legislation, but it was Bismarck who established the first practical aspects of this program. The program of the Social Democrats included all of the programs that Bismarck eventually implemented, but also included programs designed to preempt the programs championed by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. Bismarck’s idea was to implement the minimum aspects of these programs that were acceptable to the German government without any of the overtly Socialistic aspects.

This is relevant. Marx died in 1883, in London. Engels survived him and read the eulogy. But importantly the ideas that Marx had (and Engels had separately from Marx cf his Conditions of the Working Class etc) had galvanised those in authority who knew they had to do something to ensure there was no communist revolution in Germany.

The Brits did nothing similar until after WWII (but I will stand corrected on that of course) when the Attlee Government knew it had to rebuild Britain after the devastation of WWII. I remember reading a reasonably good text on the Great Strike of 1936 when I think Stanley Baldwin was PM. The sub-text to the work was that the strike was a failed revolution. I can't remember who said it but someone - Napoleon? - mentioned that the Brits wouldn't have a revolution because they had no imagination, so perhaps Baldwin was lucky. But my point is that WWII saved the arse of the British class system and the Attlee Labour Government saved it again after WWII by bringing in the welfare state.

But again, when did the rot set in? It wasn't post-War. It wasn't in the 1960s. When did it turn bad?

 

[Doug]

I think you have in the mind the General Strike of 1926.

When did the rot set in? A very good question. Here are a couple of books which may hold pointers to an answer. I have not read them yet, though.

[ame=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welfare-State-Were-James-Bartholomew/dp/1842751611/ref=sr_1_1/202-1606341-4584646?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191324117&sr=8-1]The Welfare State We're In[/ame].

[ame=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Our-Culture-Whats-Left-Mandarins/dp/156663721X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/202-1606341-4584646?ie=UTF8&qid=1191324117&sr=8-1]Our Culture -- What's Left of It[/ame].

You might also check out Frank Field, a true workingclass-originated socialist who understands what non-judgemental welfare has done to the proletariat. (He's also a Christian, which I think adds a gram or two to the weight of my original post in this thread.)

 

[CSM]

I just have to say that this is one of the best discussions I have seen on this board. Too bad all of the topics could not be discussed in a similar, civilized manner.

 

[Diuretic]

I think you have in the mind the General Strike of 1926.

When did the rot set in? A very good question. Here are a couple of books which may hold pointers to an answer. I have not read them yet, though.

The Welfare State We're In.

Our Culture -- What's Left of It.

You might also check out Frank Field, a true workingclass-originated socialist who understands what non-judgemental welfare has done to the proletariat. (He's also a Christian, which I think adds a gram or two to the weight of my original post in this thread.)

Yes, 1926, thanks for that (it wasn't a typo, I did type 1936)

 

[Diuretic]

CSM - Doug has really put some interesting points forward and not just in this thread. I like a bit of biff of course but sometimes the more leisurely and considered examination of opinion is very rewarding.

 

[Diuretic]

Doug - I've read a few pieces from "Theodore Dalrymple" (mainly extracts from his British newspaper pieces which are reproduced in domestic media here in Australia). He is apparently a medical doctor and works, amongst other places, as a medical officer in some British prisons. He has seen the dark underbelly of British life indeed.

But I wonder if it's the Welfare State that is to blame. People outside of the UK have, I think, an unrealistic view of British society. Historically it hasn't been a very nice place at all. In fact I would suggest that the golden years of British society have been post-WWII and up to Thatcher. Since Thatcher Britain has reverted to type and that type is a country that is ridden with class distinction and which has huge social problems in all classes. The working class and the lumpenproletariat (which Marx despised) are at the bottom of the heap in Britain. Can they be too far from becoming Droogs? In the Britsh upper class they're abusing the Labour Government for outlawing fox hunting. Demmit, if someone can't allow their hounds to rip Reynard apart then country life will be as idiotic as Marx once accused it of being. They're probably still smarting over the ban on stag-hunting with dogs from the 1950s, when the front pages of the popular (ie the Daily Mirror) papers showed stags being savaged by the staghounds of the port-swilling equestrians.

There are probably still a few Brits with double-barrelled names and lots of land who think Moseley was given a raw deal.

In truth Doug, Britain has historically not been a very nice society. Take a look around there. If people think the Burmese junta has been brutal they need to look at the Brits. Wat Tyler was stabbed to death by the Mayor of London and his minions. Tyler was unarmed. How dare the peasants revolt. There are many stories like that in English history.

WWII changed Britain for a while. It was opened up. American servicepeople, I think, had much to do with this. The British servicepeople may have decried them with, "overpaid, oversexed and over here, " but Brits who socialised with Americans got a sense of what a real democracy could be like. I think that may have had something to do with the way the Brits turned their back on the establishment after WWII and voted the Labour Party into power. Attlee and in particular Aneurin Bevan, introduced the Welfare State and the National Health Service into a nation that pre-WWII would have only dreamed of it. And even when the Tories were returned to power they didn't dismantle it. The Tories ruled after Attlee up until 1965 when the Wilson Labour government was returned after the Brits tired of the Tories. Even the exchange of government between Labour and the Conservative Party didn't have a huge effect on Britain's golden era, but that changed when the great ideologue became PM.

Thatcher broke the idea of society, she despised it and set about smashing it. Her country of individuals took note. These are Thatcher's children, they are not the children of the Welfare State. They are the Thatcher-created lumpenproletariat. Selfish bastards every one of them, enjoying the selfishness that Thatcher unleashed. No sense of community, just a sense of "me" and a sense of entitlement without every thinking of giving something back to society because, as the
Great British Dominatrix said, society doesn't exist.

 

[Doug]

CSM: I am a newcomer to this board, and I have noticed something unique and interesting about it: the military people are the most civilized, well-informed and civil group here! The civilians could learn something from you guys. Is it the training in fighting in a disciplined manner?

Diuretic: You make some interesting points about Britain, and you are not wrong in all of them. I don't agree that Mrs Thatcher transformed the old British workingclass of the past into the lumpen trash we see today, although I know that's a common view on the Left, and with criminologists (who are part of the Left). Take a look at the figures for violent crime, and you will see they started to climb dramatically many years before Mrs Thatcher took office.

Because Britain has very strict gun control, the figures for homicide -- although probably the most robust and reliable crime statistic -- don't look too bad. A hundred years ago a little over 300 Brits were killed every year, and that figure didn't really begin to rise substantially until the mid-1960s. (Right after capital punishment was abolished, and National Service [the draft] ended, but I am not claiming a causal connection.)

It then went up to 4-500 a year in the 70s, the up to about 600 a year in the 80s, and held pretty steady there until the mid-90s, when it went up to 750 a year, and has continued to climb to the figure of about a thousand a year which we enjoy today.

But population also increased, from about 38 million to 60 million over the century. So the tripling of the number of murders is not quite a tripling of the murder rate, since population increased by about 50%.

In any case, as I said, gun control here makes it difficult to kill someone. (People don't kill people. Armed people kill people.) I know these facts will make American conservatives uncomfortable, but I am an equal-opportunity myth-buster.

What is much more interesting is the increase in the rest of the crime rate. You say that "historically Britain has not been a very nice society. So let's get some hard data on the niceness of Britain in the past.

Here are the categories and figures I have, for every twenty years since they started recording, and then every ten years for the last three decades. There are many detailed categories, but in the interests of brevity I will show just a few of the totals. (Anyone who is interested in the full spreadsheet of data can PM me with their email and I will send it to them.)

BURGLARY
1898..........8,352
1928........21,778
1948......112,208
1968......285,287
1978......560,109
1988......817,792
1997/8...988,432

RAPE
1898.........236
1928.........107
1948.........252
1968.........829
1978......1,243
1988......2,855
1997/8...6,898

ROBBERY
1898............354
1928............128
1948.........1,101
1968.........4,815
1978........13,150
1988........31,437
1997/8... .62,652

TOTAL VIOLENT CRIME
1898..........4,221
1928..........5,423
1948........17,206
1968........60,056
1978......122,590
1988......216,214
1997/8...352,873


These figures are so astonishing, so massive, and of such portent for the future of civilized society that if the academic social scientists were not so committed to a dogmatic left-wing, poverty-causes-crime view of the world, they would be in an uproar to try to explain them. Because over this time, Britain become far more prosperous -- and, as you say, the Welfare State kicked in with a vengeance after 1945: you might care to show me the difference this made in the crime rate.

I sometimes have a bit of grim fun with these figures, because they are so unbelievable, that most folks, even most conservatives, when asked to guess by what factor a given crime, say, rape, increased in the 20th Century, they underestimate by an order of magnitude. Has it doubled? Tripled? Quadrupled? Gone up by a factor of ten? No, no, no, and no. By thirty times!

Now, of course, a sophist can quibble with the numbers. Perhaps rape is more reported nowadays. (It is.) Perhaps the definition of rape has changed. (It has.) Perhaps crime figures are kept more scientifically, more conscientiously. (They probably are.) This might account for a 10% increase -- even a 50% increase. Or even a doubling. And for every two people in the UK in 1898 there are three today. But note that these figures show an increase in crime by ten times, twenty times, thirty times, and for every kind of crime (save murder, where the rate has "only" gone up by about three times.) Only someone utterly addled by ideology, in the face of these numbers, could say ... it's Mrs Thatcher's fault.

Can anyone say "Crisis of Western Civilization"?

Anyway, to return to the topic of this thread: I could also give you the figures for the decline in church attendance in Britain. They roughly track, in the opposite direction, the massive increase in crime: fewer people praying, more people robbing and raping.

I think that to make a simple, direct connection would be superficial. But at the very least, I wouldn't advise my American friends to follow the British example and empty your churches, no matter how clever Richard Dawkins and Sam Hunt and Christopher Hitchens are.

 

[Diuretic]

If I look at the statistics and then put them into some sort of perspective, will I be a sophist? I sincerely hope not.

Anyway, I'm aware of your desire to see the thread back on its original track but I would ask for just a little more leeway.

The statistics must be seen in context. That might sound a bit left-wing but so be it.

Britain in 1898 is quite obviously not Britain of 1945 or thereafter. Aside from population (and it's not just about simple numbers but the actual longevity of the population in the years after 1898, more people, more potential victims, more potential offenders) there's the nature of the society. In 1898 there wasn't a great deal of mobility for the "average" person. They were born, lived and died more or less in the same area. It was a very homogenous population. Criminogenic conditions were far different back in 1898. I'm not disputing the facts, Britain is far more violent than it was in 1898 on those figures, I'm trying to put some flesh on the bones as it were.

Now to your central point. Is it that a lack of religion is to blame for this staggering increase in crime in Britain?

 

[Doug]

Diuretic: You are quite correct. I try to be very careful not to massage my own prejudices with figures like this.

I try never to say, "Well, it was the welfare state ... it was abolishing capital punishment ... it was the decline in church attendance." Correlation is not causation, and thousands of things are different now --- rural/urban ratio, TV, immigration, the brutalizing experience of two World Wars, the welfare state, the abolition of capital punishment, the greatly-increased restrictions on the power of the police, additives in food, birth control, etc etc etc.

Oh yes, and Mrs Thatcher.

I'm a conservative, and -- counter to the spirit of the age -- we believe societies are not like giant mechanical systems which can be neatly dis-assembled, studied, and then re-assembled to work better.

And especially not re-assembled according to some abstract idea of how they ought to be. They are too complex for that, their component parts (us!) are too self-aware and subject to too many influences, many of which we are not aware of.

Which is why conservatives like to proceed slowly and cautiously when social change is proposed, and not sneer at common sense, or the customs and traditions of our ancestors. Backward as some of these were, they may also have embodied the distilled wisdom of many generations. I think history has borne out the wisdom of this approach.

In fact, the Leftie intellectuals are actually the people whose Faith has brought about great suffering: their faith that human wickedness is caused by lack of enough welfare state goodies for the masses, or poverty in general, or the police being impolite and having too much power.

This utterly insane belief, infinitely more fantastic than any belief about the existence of God, is refuted every day in every country of the world, and is refuted in the horrible statistics I have just shown you.

Anyway, when these very clever fellows, fresh from their triumphs in social policy, tell us that we ought to empty out our churches, because, hey, look, you can't prove God exists, and hey, look at all the wicked things religious people did 500 years ago, or are doing today in Iran ... well, since I am a REAL skeptic, the kind of hard-headed guy who actually looks at facts and figures, I just say .... man, are you crazy? ARE YOU CRAZY?

 

[Diuretic]

Oh yes, and Mrs Thatcher.

We do like to demonise Maggie.

I'm not that fond of social engineering, whether it comes from the right or the left. I do appreciate certain policies that provide a social safety net but the micro-management of individuals is unwelcome and unnecessary.

On "human wickedness". There's no single cause of criminal behaviour, that's obvious I know. There's a plethora of theories, both contemporary and historical (and some historical dressed up as contemporary and recycled). What does interest me from this great distance (I haven't been to the UK since 1982) is the apparent increase in the most callous and vicious of crimes. I don't know what the cause is. I'm not sure it's part of the lessening of the influence of religion though, I think the causes are far more complex. But I do suspect that a lack of concern for others is part of it.


Getting back to Dawkins and Hitchens, the radical or militant atheists. Dawkins of course is coming at it from a scientific perspective while Hitchens, I think, comes at it from the rationalist perspective. I don't know if I've described Hitchens' approach properly, any correction would be welcome. Hitchens may be demanding the emptying of churches but I'm not sure that the more urbane Dawkins would be taking that attitude.

But I suppose like many things, it's an issue of perspective.

 

[Doug]

On the micro-level, I think shaping human behavior is actually pretty easy: reward the behavior you want to get more of; punish the behavior you want to get less of. I believe all sentient organisms will respond to this regime, for good Darwinian reasons.

I am not talking about adult criminals. By then, it's too late.

I'm talking about the environment that young children grow up in. If what they see around them is a certain kind of behavior going unpunished -- parents defied, policemen taunted, teachers sworn at, juvenile criminals allowed to swagger around and intimidate anyone they feel like -- then that sort of behavior will increase.

And here is why I think it is insane for people who happen not to believe in God, to be trying to kill everyone else's belief in God. Because, while we can pass laws to try to punish bad adult behavior, shaping the behavior of children is basically the job of parents. And it is very hard to control the behavior of parents towards their children, although the Left has worked hard to withdraw the right of parents and teachers to use physical sanctions against children, so in a way, we have controlled their behavior -- for the worse.

My grandchildren go to Sunday School. There they learn about being good, about sharing, about truth and beauty and being kind to others. They are given as the supreme example of good behavior, a man -- or Man -- who sacrificed his life for them.

Yes, they are also taught things that I think are not historically accurate, plus -- this being Britain -- various mildly Politically Correct stuff about African poverty being our fault, etc. (My granddaughter told me, the other day, about (1) Adam and Eve, and (2) about "Fair Trade" for Africa. If I was going to take objection to her education it would be the latter I would more upset by.)

But they're 5 and 6 years old. Let them learn all these things now. When they get older and can read more, then they can raid my library and read Bertrand Russell and Mary Warnock and other philosophical arguments about God's existence, and the Higher Criticism of the Bible, and The Selfish Gene, and decide for themselves how much of the Bible is actual literal history and how much allegory, and how much was recorded in the idiom of the times by people who had to try to make sense of the world around them using the concepts then available.

Let them believe for the moment that Jesus is watching them from heaven and is happy when they do something good, and is sad when they do something bad. Later perhaps they will decide that this Jesus is actually within them, and is a personalization of everything we aspire to beyond our immediate selfish natures. Or not. So long as they become good people, I won't be unhappy.

I am a million times more concerned about their moral character, than about their factual grasp of the details of ancient history. (Although I do care about the latter, and in our modern, secular left-dominated school system they learn nothing about that, either.)

And to come back to the militant atheists: of all the things in the world today that could use a good intellectual machine-gunning ... why, why, why take on and try to destroy the Christian churches as they actually exist in the world today, and in the world as it is today?

I know we atheists don't believe in an after-life, so we have all the more reason not to nourish a death-wish.

 

[Diuretic]

Without a hint of patronising (patronisation??) that was a terrific read Doug.

Yep, we are easily shaped. I like to think humans are a bit more than a bunch of conditioned responses but I also remember reading that Fred Skinner and his wife brought up their daughter according to his philosophy (meaning his mindset arising out of his behaviourist research) and she was reported as being (at university, I think she went to Harvard) well adjusted if a little distant from people. I would think having B.F.Skinner as yer dad might have done that. I read his Walden Two and I have to say I felt a wee bit chilled. I prefered the original Walden (but I'm a wannabee anarchist).

I believe you are right on the money with how children develop. They get their sense of normality from their parents. If their parents are dissolute shit bags then that's normal to the kids. That ain't theory, I've seen it over the years. It's fact as far as I'm concerned.

Your grandchildren are learning important human values. Those values pre-date Christianity. But I am so glad they don't go back as far as the Druids. I've seen their altars (Chislehurst Caves, Kent) and it's not nice to realise they sacrifice humans to their gods.

Good, they can make their own minds up later. Bertie Russell and his "Why I Am An Atheist" would be interesting. But in the interests of balance they should also he exposed to the later writings of Malcolm Muggeridge.

Personally - don't fall about laughing - I think our kids should be taught about Aristotle from an early age (using Bruner's spiral curriculum idea) and Aristotle's ideas of human flourishing and virtue ethics (Nicomachean Ethics, ironically written for his son). We need to be morally educated from when we are very young, if we aren't exposed to that then later in on secondary English we might realise what Tennyson meant when he wrote about, "nature red in tooth and claw". If we have to introduce God then so be it. I don't have a problem with kids learning the predominant moral culture of their environment, they can make up their own minds later on (when they read Bertie).