The atheist bus campaign had money left over. With it they have set about campaigning for children to be allowed to grow up free to choose whatever faith they like. The argument seems to be that marxists, humanists and atheists allow their children to grow up value-free, with free choice, while religious people indoctrinate their children and remove choice from them.

I am of the view that it’s impossible to bring up children value free – and it’s undesirable too. What parent in their right mind would leave a child to run riot, teach them nothing about what they think matters, and assume that the child will arrive at adulhood in a fit state to choose anything? To believe that you can bring up children in a neutral value zone is either a deception or a delusion.

I simply don’t believe that atheists, humanists or anyone else really tell their children nothing about what they think matters. Do New Atheists really bring up their children to think that if they want to be religious then that’s absolutely hunky-dory? Or do they impart their own views about religion?

I bring up my son to know that I am a Christian, that he can be too, that other people believe other things, that no-one is right about everything, that CHristianity is good in many ways but not perfect, and that he is an individual who can have his own thoughts. (actually, that’s a very Christian point of view.) But I’m certainly not going to withhold from him what I think matters.

The Jubilee Centre has a good report on this, but Ruth Gledhill has unearthed the delightful irony that the cheerful children on the anti-religion poster are actually the children of pentecostal Christians. You couldn’t make it up…