Children & God

Although the English generally do not consider it quite polite to talk about God in public, all Britain seemed to look forward to this particular debate. In one corner, wearing a thin-lipped smile and a keen twinkle, was Mrs. Margaret Knight, 51, the atheist psychologist who had stirred up press and public the week before by urging parents in a radio talk not to tell their children a lot of fairytales about religion and God (TIME, Jan. 24). Opposing her before a BBC microphone was motherly Mrs. Jenny Morton, 52, onetime Church of Scotland missionary in India, and a clergyman's wife. The battle turned out to be so polite that the rattle of teacups was almost audible, but amid the "That's-rights" and "I-quite-agrees," emerged a sharp, well-stated difference on the upbringing of children.

Said Psychologist Knight: "To the humanist, moral behavior is primarily kind, disinterested, self-transcending . . . whereas to the Christian, moral behavior is behavior in accordance with God's will. Of course, in nine cases out of ten, it comes to the same thing in practice, but the sanctions are different. And I must say the humanist sanctions seem to me much better, much more reasonable, and much easier to put across to children. If we tell a child that he mustn't knock smaller children about, that he wouldn't like it if others did it to him . . . well, that is something he can understand. But talk about the loving purposes of God is a bit beyond him. And, of course, you're sowing the seeds of all these frightful intellectual problems later on, when the child gets older and begins to think for himself, and he is confronted by all the evidence which suggests that God's purposes are anything but loving." Moralist Self-Righteousness. Replied Mrs. Morton: "Well, I couldn't disagree more. My experience is that . . . what people like and don't like bewilders small children . . . Whereas in the Christian home you're appealing from the central relationship of the child's life--his relationship with his parents--to a similar relationship, God the Father. The child can grasp the idea that God's family includes all people everywhere, and that therefore we must behave to them as to members of our own family. It does seem to me that this understanding can grow with his growing experience of life, and though . . . there may be some difficulties, I feel this is not an understanding which will be outgrown with manhood.

"But I do think the central difficulty of [humanist] moral teaching is its danger of self-righteousness. You know the story of the man who set out to correct his moral slackness. He watched himself for a month, and honestly tried to be more thoughtful, more helpful, more honest and all the rest. And then he found he was jolly well pleased with his progress. And he thought: 'Good heavens, I am becoming a prig! I must learn humility.' So he concentrated on humility for a week, and at the end of it he gave himself 18 out of 20 for humility ... I think that if the only standards are human ones, in man himself, self-righteousness is almost inevitable."

Humanist Barrenness. As the debate wound up, the British press continued to argue about the BBC's propriety in airing Psychologist Knight's anti-religious opinions. "The attacks on Mrs. Knight do Christians little credit," editorialized the conservative weekly Spectator. "It is not Christians, but her fellow scientific humanists, assuming that there are any, who have reason to be distressed by her broadcasts. They can hardly relish having the utter barrenness of their beliefs formulated and widely publicized . . . The BBC deserves congratulations for these broadcasts. The churches must press for as many more of them as possible. No longer will there be any excuse for thinking that there is something in itself clever about not being religious, or that religious people are any more credulous than so-called unbelievers. Mrs. Knight ought to be promoted to television ..."

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