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How do we stop religion from spreading further and causing more damage? By understanding the religious replicators, the ideological replication strategies which keep religious faith alive. See how they work, and we can find ways to disable them or diminish their effect.
A high birth rate among the faithful helps spread religion. We might wish that those with more rational ideas would start having many children, while the religious slow their rate of reproduction, but this isn't likely. What we can do though, is expose children to better ideas, so that the religious nonsense is not carried on to the next generation.
The idea of purposefully countering the religion of children's parents may seem shocking at first, but let's look at it closely. Imagine parents who taught their children sugar is health food, bleeding is still the best medical treatment, and red is green. We might not take the children from the home for such bad parenting, we but certainly would not feel obliged to perpetuate these lies in the classroom. We would contradict them with the truth. Why do religious beliefs which are clearly wrong deserve any different treatment?
They don't. And of course, we do teach children about evolution, archeology, paleontology and other things that are offensive to the fantasies of the religious. But what about teaching epistemology? Why not encourage the discussion of questions such as "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?"
Any rational person, for example, can agree that observation, empirical evidence and logic are better means than faith for determining what to believe. Let's look at two simple examples to understand this more clearly.
Suppose a man's religious faith teaches him that sickness is caused by "evil spirits" or spells cast by Satan worshipers. Because of his belief, he seeks out the "witches" who caused the disease, and kills them after extracting a confession through torture. In the past, this seemed like a reasonable belief to many people. But it didn't do much to stop illness.
Eventually a more scientific man observes the spread of illness, notices that washing hands seems to stop the spread, and develops the germ theory. Others eventually even identify germs under a microscope. This man believes that germs cause illness, and teaches how to prevent them with good hygiene.
Now, which man's beliefs are more in line with reality, and therefore more useful to human life? The second man's ideas are clearly superior, but why? This is the important point.
They are superior because they are based on honest observation and evidence. Also, like most scientists, he would alter his beliefs if new evidence suggested better explanations, an approach which keeps our knowledge growing and prevents us getting stuck with less useful ideas and theories. This, unfortunately, is an approach which is forbidden by religious faith, at least for anything related to religious dogma.
Why, when this is so clear, can't we teach this clear and honest and truthful thinking to children? We can. We can justifiably show the danger of faith in the classroom and teach the value of reason. It is the right thing to do.
That parents would object so strongly to this approach is a testament to the frailty of the ideas they teach their children. They would not fear their children being exposed to new ideas if they were certain that their own religious ones could compete. Since the value of faith itself would be clearly challenged, children might start to trust their own minds, which surely would be devastating to religions.
Continues here... Wishful Thinking