I would like to start by saying that I love Jonathan Grieg’s opinion pieces. They are sharp, informational and entertaining.
However, I felt that the head-to-head about parents raising their kids religiously was pushy and, quite honestly, naive.
It is clear that parents will raise their kids as they see fit, regardless of any article The Collegian chooses to run. But by saying that parents are limiting and harming their children by raising them religiously seems to me that we aren’t putting enough faith in the adults those children will become and are putting way to much in blaming religion for all the world’s problems.
So parents use religion to teach messages of morality, but is that any different from Aesop’s Fables or any other story to prove a point? As long as children are learning to be moral beings, who are we to complain?
And yes, religion teaches children to believe in what can’t be proven, but can that not also give them the drive to want to prove that which has not been proven? There are many scientists who were raised religious. Isaac Newton was a Protestant, Galileo a Catholic and Charles Darwin was expected to be an Anglican priest. They all had great minds that were either aided by or overcame their religious upbringing. Perhaps religious children who grow into bigoted adults were going to anyway.
I posit that it is more than just an upbringing that makes adults hate people for being fundamentally different from them. It isn’t something an outdated book or their parents told them, but rather fear of the unknown and misunderstood. As long as we don’t try to understand those around us — which isn’t a religious problem, it’s an exposure problem — we will never learn to accept people for who they are.
Rachel Hall, senior in food science and industry
