Presuppositionalism

[elfs]

Two articles caught my eye this week, and combined together they produce a kind of twisted irony that makes me wonder if the critical facilities of the writers ever engage on their own prejudices. The writers of the two articles have no reason to have ever heard of each other, but their ideas clash is my brain with entertaining resonances.

The first is a letter to the editor of the Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota. The writer, Mark Broden, following an article on a "secular summer camp," asserts that "eight-year-old boys and girls cannot make the decision to be atheists themselves" and therefore "their parents are forcing their ideas on their children."

The second is an article by Jonathan Rosenblum in the Jerusalem Post, discussing the recent Pledge of Allegiance case in the United States. One of the critical points in that case was that the father, an atheist, felt personally injured by the pledge because, as he put it, "the government tells her there is a God, and the father tells her there is not." Rosenblum asserts that "one of the purposes of education is to make children unlike their parents."

In both cases, the authors are asserting a kind of presuppositionalism; this is the religious belief that all people know the truth (as described according to the presuppositionalist's belief system) and that any other belief system one espouses is, in fact, a lie or a deception. The parents at the distinctly non-religious summer camp aren't just transmitting their values to their children; they're indoctrinating their children into their rebellion against the Christian being both the parents and their children really know down in their hearts is lord of all and yadda yadda.

In the second case, the author makes the case that the child in this needs exposure to the truth (in his case, Judaism) because it is the duty of the school system to "make the child unlike his parents."

Everyone got this? In one case, it is the duty of the system to affect a child in one direction, in the other, it is the duty of the system to *not* affect the child in the other.

There are days when I wish people understood that their religion is not merely a convenient nexus around which to hang one's prejudices.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I think that's all the more reason to try and herd cats... hammer out a minimalist consensus and go for it. Of course, all this idealism is dependent on whether the Emperor manages to hold on to his tyrancy past January.... if he's still in there come spring, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do but further participation in the mainstream political process will be irrelevant.