Re why critical thinking is necessary....
I think Dawkins' discussion of
the impact of the hell myth on children is relevant here.
Dawkins asks, which is worse, child molestation or threats of hell?
In answering this question, he applies critical thinking to both cases.
First, he says, we can't simply lump all cases of sexual molestation into one category, as is so often done today. (E.g., right now, there's a legislative effort in my state effort to effectively banish all "sex offenders" from the state by making housing practically impossible for them -- this includes the child rapist as well as the grown man previously convicted at the age of 16 of canoodling with his then 14 yo girlfriend. The stated goal of the sponsor is to move "sexual predators" to other states... just as pedophile priests were shuffled from parish to parish.)
In cases of simple fondling, he argues, it can be much more traumatizing to tell a youngster that many of his friends and family will be tortured for eternity.
Dawkins said:
Being fondled by the Latin master in the Squash Court was a disagreeable sensation for a nine-year-old, a mixture of embarrassment and skin-crawling revulsion, but it was certainly not in the same league as being led to believe that I, or someone I knew, might go to everlasting fire. As soon as I could wriggle off his knee, I ran to tell my friends and we had a good laugh, our fellowship enhanced by the shared experience of the same sad pedophile. I do not believe that I, or they, suffered lasting, or even temporary damage from this disagreeable physical abuse of power. Given the Latin Master’s eventual suicide, maybe the damage was all on his side.... [Yet] the mental abuse constituted by an unsubstantiated threat of violence and terrible pain, if sincerely believed by the child, could easily be more damaging than the physical actuality of sexual abuse. An extreme threat of violence and pain is precisely what the doctrine of hell is. And there is no doubt at all that many children sincerely believe it, often continuing right through adulthood and old age until death finally releases them.
So it is not necessarily some benign matter of personal faith.
I applaud Dawkins for telling this story in a straightforward manner without the hysteria we're so accustomed to lately.
I recall the story of a young man arrested on a minor charge who was placed in a holding cell with, coincidentally, a former coach who had "molested" him (I don't know what that consisted of) as a boy. He beat the man senseless.
The young man's mother, in an interview, defended her son by saying that this man had "stolen his manhood" among other hyperbole.
Is it any wonder that this fellow felt so traumatized, what with his own mother willing to make statements like that publicly. I would be very surprised if her reaction back in the day were any more sane. I would bet that her reaction had a lot to do with how this youth came to interpret what had happened. No one, after all, had "stolen his manhood" or "stolen his life" as his mother claimed. The crime may have been serious (e.g., forced sodomy), but if it was, then this sort of reaction is not conducive to healing. No wonder he turned into an angry young man.
So what does critical thinking have to do with all that?
I believe that the continued practice of critical thinking conditions us to stop for a moment and ask "what's really going on here?" It helps us to act, rather than to react.
It also frees us from the sort of "positive bigotry" which allows us to dismiss the psychological manipulation and terrorizing of children as mere "faith".
