From: Kate Distin (memes@distin.co.uk)
Date: Thu 19 Jan 2006 - 09:21:06 GMT
Price, Ilfryn wrote:
> Kate
>
>
>>I have a cousin who has never eaten meat in her life, as her parents
>
> were vegetarians long before she was born. My children eat meat and
> always have done, because we're omnivores. Ethically, either my husband
> and I, or my aunt and uncle, have got something wrong. Two of us are
> imposing a false set of values on our offspring. C'est la vie.>
>
> Why is one or the other false?
>
In that one of us says eating meat is morally unacceptable, and the
other that it's morally acceptable. I'm assuming it can't be both.
>>Here's one far more ubiquitous, and in its modern form nothing to do
>
> with religion: Father Christmas. (He may have been Saint Nicholas once
> upon a time but now he's just the big guy with the goodies.) Also,
> though less perniciously: the tooth fairy. I could rant about this at
> some length, but will take a deep breath and not. All I'll say is that
> this is the most bizarre cultural practice that I can think of. It's
> not like adults themselves believe in Santa. They know they're lying.
> But "my parents did it for us", so they do it for their children.>
>
> But I imagine they expect their children to grow out of it, unlike a lot of religions or believers which or who tell equivalent
> stories without the same expectation.
>
But the reason they expect their children to grow out of it is that they
don't believe it themselves and they know that nobody else does either.
Religious believers tell what you regard as equivalent stories, but they
do it because they (we!) regard them as the truth.
As I said, don't get me started . . .
>
>>Ok. Enough. The point is that children's minds are sticky, yes; but
>
> they grow up into less-sticky adult minds; and the things that stick to
> them most tenaciously are not all religious.>
>
> No but religions have a tendency to be stickier than much else,
I still haven't heard anything that convinces me this is the case.
> especially when pushed on young mindsa without questions.
Anything pushed onto young minds without questions will stick pretty
firmly I think.
Kate
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