The Times is reporting that the happy, smiling children on an atheist ad campaign are in fact from a Christian, evangelical family. An interesting irony perhaps.
Children who front Richard Dawkins’ atheist ads are evangelicals
The ad calls for children to be brought up without having religious labels placed upon them by their parents. Of course while the humanists don’t want parents to instill their values within their own children, they really want children to turn into humanists without any religious belief – why else would they fund these adverts?
It is an interesting question what right parents have to instill their beliefs upon their children (I would suggest it is in fact a duty to bring children up to love and respect others, and the best basis for that is within a Christian ethos) But I would ask, what right does Dawkins and friends think they have to force their beliefs upon other people’s children? Absolutely none!
While they have a pretence to respect children’s freedom to believe, the humanists are engaged in a campaign to remove traces of religion from public life in Britain and America. Secular education for instance has an undercurrent of humanist beliefs. Charles F. Potter wrote in 1930 (in Humanism: A New Religion), ‘Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?’
The ‘program’ of Dawkins and friends is not about freedom and respect at all, but about control – their control.
But perhaps the message of the smiling children in the ads, is that if you want your children to grow up happy, then bring them up in a loving Christian environment where they learn about values. About their own values and the value of others.