Essay Ethics

Name: Schuurmans, Rosanne Student ID Number: 3332497 Advanced Course: Ethics Academic Year: 2020-2021 Word count: 1000 words

Children should learn different perspectives on belief systems

Case and Normative Statement The other day I was having a conversation with my friends about religion. As an atheist I do not believe in god, but I can see the beauty of it since it could give people hope and a sense of belonging. By talking to my friends who are believers, I wondered what made them choose their religion. The answer to that was a bit concerning in my opinion. All of them said they were taught by their parents which religion they should follow/believe in and therefore, what books they should and should not read including how they should approach their religion in general. When my friends were children, they did not even question what they were taught in regard to their religion. And could you blame them? No of course not, they were children…

The issue in this matter is about the lack of personal freedom to choose, if wanted to, a value and norm system (like a religion) to follow/believe in when being a child. Combined with the lack of freedom on how to think, read, act and behave as stated in religious books as well as learning different perspectives upon their religion. In this essay I would like to focus on learning different perspectives in order to define one’s identity and why I think children should learn them.

Arguments in Support of Normative Statement When a child is born, he or she is an independent individual without any kind of collective purpose rather than the labels that the surrounding society has put on a child according to Jean-Paul Sartre’s view within the Existentialism theory (Thought Monkey, 2017).

Later on in the life of a child, he or she will explore the world and defines him- /herself afterwards (Thought Monkey, 2017).

When it comes to children already having labels that society gave them before they could explore it for themselves, they tend to be more selfish and meaner than those who do not have religious labels at birth (Decety, 2015). Research led by psychologist Jean Decety (2015) from the University of Chicago examined children in the US, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa who were given religious labels at birth.

The cliché that religious people are the ones who care more about their loved ones, is by the results of this research to be proven wrong (Decety, 2015). According to Joop.bnnvara (2015) the results are this way because religious people are taught from an early age that they are ‘better’ than others.

By exploring the world, one can define him- / herself (Thought Monkey, 2017). The idea of Existentialism is that the world is The Absurd and because of the world’s dimensions, life is a lot stranger than we might think (Thought Monkey, 2017). It is a place where things do not have to be the way they are. Therefore, a child should learn different perspectives in order to define him-/herself.

Arguments Against Normative Statement Is it wrong to label a child with a chosen perspective of religion at birth? Let’s take a look into an example; a traditional Catholic Christian family household where a new-born gets the same label as the family household lives by. Does the given label, in this case ‘Catholic Christianity’, at birth harm the child if the child will be raised by parents who are Catholic Christians? A question which can be explored trough John Stuarts Mill’s Harm Principle from the Liberal point of view.

I personally believe the Catholic Christian parents do not mean any harm to the child and just want to, for example, pass along the tradition of baptizing a child in order to be protected by their God. According to the Harm Principle, if someone’s actions does not cause any harm to others than there cannot be a legitimate reason for an individual or a government to prevent someone from committing this act (De Souza, 2020).

So, the new-born child itself is not harmed when it was given a label at birth as well as the moment of being baptized in the case of the example. From this way of thinking, children do not have to learn different perspectives on religion since the given labels is not causing them any harm.

Personal Conclusion and Recommendation The child of the example is not harmed by its society because of the label itself, but the research of Jean Decety (2015) showed that a child with a label of religion given at birth is

more selfish and meaner than those who do not have religious labels. How is that possible?

Perhaps it is the perspective on religion and the way children with given labels learn about God that might be causing children being more selfish and meaner.

Benedictus de Spinoza had a unique view on God during his time called Pantheism. He believed that God was in everything and that everything was in one and the same as God (De Souza, 2020). Spinoza himself was once a child with a given label at birth by his parents when later he has felt bound in the end to embrace other views (The School of Life, 2015).

Spinoza argues that the task of human beings is to understand how and why the universe works the way it does and accept it rather than protest it by sending prayers into the sky (The School of Life, 2015).

My personal recommendation of the case where children with given labels are more selfish and meaner than those without labels, is for them to learn different perspectives on religion itself instead of only one. Because of that, the view of Spinoza’s Pantheism might be a good starting point. Within Pantheism the acceptance of everything seems bigger to me than the religion itself. And therefore there might be a bigger chance that a child with given labels, when learning different perspectives like Pantheism on belief systems will then accept those without labels more and will accept their own path in order to define him-/herself.

Sources: de Souza, O.Q.H (2020). ETHICS with a pinch of ontology and epistemology. Course reader. Retrieved 22 January 2021 Fontys ACI, Tilburg Thought Monkey. (2017, 6 januari). Existentialism in 3 Minutes. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-eRTJzaFsg The School of Life. (2015, 12 juni). PHILOSOPHY Baruch Spinoza. YouTube. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=pVEeXjPiw54 joop.bnnvara. (2015, 7 november). Religie maakt kinderen egoïstischer en gemener. Joop. https:// joop.bnnvara.nl/nieuws/religie-maakt-kinderen-egoistischer-en-gemener Decety, J. (2015). RETRACTED: The Negative Association between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism across the World. Cell. https://secure.jbs. elsevierhealth.com/action/cookieAbsent?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982215011677%3Fshowall%3Dtrue