Lawrence Krauss has said that teaching creationism is child abuse a number of times; at about 5:45 in the following video is one of them:
[youtube]https://youtu.be/UnuS583BFto[/youtube]
Neil Carter of the blog Godless in Dixie stated that that this is not true here, and indicates that this is a smaller point on a larger issue – namely, that many atheists tend to hurt our own cause by mischaracterizing the harm religion does with over-the-top analogies.
This seems to be a trend among a slew of articles from atheists stating that many of us atheists are irrationally belligerent and need to focus on being calmer and more rational. There is also a common thought, it seems, that expressing anger is not going to allow us to build fruitful bridges with religious people. In order to get our message across, we’re going to have to be a bit less irrationally vitriolic.
Neil Carter seems to echo these sentiments when he states:
You rob words of their meaning when you try to use them in situations that don’t merit the use of those words. You render meaningless all the other times the word more legitimately applies because now you’ve cheapened the term. Please stop doing this. It’s an unfair exaggeration and it’s beneath those who purport to communicate honestly and without unnecessarily embellishing the truth. We get onto preachers and politicians for doing that all the time, and yet here we have our own “celebrities” doing the same thing.
Fairly strong, provocative words. So, after the stir they created, I decided to examine his logic in this discussion, point by point. He has three.
First, he attacks Krauss’s analogy comparing depriving a child of knowledge of evolution to depriving a child of a vaccination shot that you know is available. He also attacks Krauss’s second broader analogy, which is that not giving a child information “because you would rather them not know what reality is really like” is harmful.
Neil’s rebuttal is:
In each of those parallel scenarios a parent possesses what the child needs (or at least knowingly has access to it) but chooses to withhold it from them for whatever reasons. That isn’t the case with teaching creationism because the parents who do that aren’t really aware that alternative explanations of the origins of the universe are legitimate. Surely Dr. Krauss knows these parents aren’t merely pretending to believe the stuff they’re teaching their kids. They really believe this stuff, as illogical as it sounds.
Neil Carter is partly right. If Krauss is saying that parents who know their child needs a vaccination and don’t give it to them are the same as parents who do NOT know that a child needs a vaccination and thus don’t give it to them (to state the flaw in the analogy a different way), then he’s clearly off base.
But I also suspect that, in appealing to the vaccination movement, Krauss is saying that the parents think their child doesn’t need a vaccination and, in ignoring reality (even though they don’t themselves believe it is reality), show that they do not want their child to know reality. It’s a tortured interpretation, except that this is the way the vaccination movement Krauss seems to be referring to actually works. They don’t deprive kids of vaccinations out of a sense of punishment, but because they genuinely believe it’s bad news.
In addition, Krauss isn’t just talking about parents — a fuller look at the context shows he is discussing politicians. Notice — Neil Carter is discussing a video from 2015. If you go back to an earlier explanation, in 2013, where Krauss had more time to give a complete discussion of his statement that the teaching of creationism was child abuse, you’ll see that Krauss is discussing politicians who he suspects will, in order to cater to their constituency, say creationism should be taught in schools even if they know that evolution isn’t true (emphasis added):
Senator Marco Rubio, who’s presumably a reasonably intelligent man and maybe even educated, was asked what’s the age of the Earth, and ultimately, either because he actually believed it or he was trying to appeal to some constituency, had to argue that it’s a big mystery, that somehow we should teach kids both ideas, that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that it’s 4.55 billion years old, which is what it is.
If you think about that, somehow saying that, well, anything goes, we shouldn’t offend religious beliefs by requiring kids to know – to understand reality; that’s child abuse. And if you think about it, teaching kids – or allowing the notion that the earth is 6,000 years old to be promulgated in schools is like teaching kids that the distance across the United States is 17 feet. That’s how big an error it is.
Now you might say, look, a lot of people believe that, so don’t we owe it to them to allow their views to be present in school? Well, as I’ve often said, the purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it. Fifty percent of the people in the United States, when we probe them each year with the National Science Foundation, think that the sun goes around the Earth, not that the Earth goes around the sun. When we asked the question – we provide the question: The Earth goes around the sun and takes a year to do it; true or false? Almost every year, 50 percent of the people get that wrong.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTedvV6oZjo[/youtube]
I think, given the fuller context, Krauss may have a point here. If the knowledge of children is sacrificed on the alter of politics — that is a serious, serious problem. It is disregarding the future of the children at a disturbing level.
But is it child abuse?
I think the answer is best answered in the context of Neil’s second point, where he states that there is such a thing as physical abuse, and emotional abuse, but is doubtful that there is such a thing as “academic abuse.”
Neil Carter is technically right. Technically speaking, there is not something called “academic abuse” in the way he is describing it — the term “academic abuse” refers to actual treatment in the educational environment, not what is taught (so insulting children by calling them “stupid” because they got a math problem wrong in a classroom may be an incidence of “academic abuse” — as might be assigning homework as punishment — although definitions do seem to vary, based on context). But “academic abuse” is not a common phrase, and where it is used, it simply does not seem to refer to withholding vital educational information from a child.
But that does not mean Krauss’s analogy is wholly incorrect, necessarily. Because not giving your child a vaccination shot also is not technically abuse. It’s serious, though. So what do we call it?
Medical Neglect is the closest term we have for it. As one state government site states:
Medical neglect is:
- the refusal or failure on the part of the person responsible for the child’s care to seek, obtain, and/or maintain those services for necessary medical, dental, or mental health care
- withholding medically indicated treatment from disabled infants with life-threatening conditions.
Note: Failure to provide the child with immunizations or routine well child care in and of itself does not constitute medical neglect.
The American Humane Association clarifies why the italics may be there:
Medical neglect is the failure to provide appropriate health care for a child (although financially able to do so), thus placing the child at risk of being seriously disabled or disfigured or dying. According to NCANDS, in 2005, 2 percent of children (17,637 children) in the United States were victims of medical neglect (USDHHS, 2007). Concern is warranted not only when a parent refuses medical care for a child in an emergency or for an acute illness, but also when a parent ignores medical recommendations for a child with a treatable chronic disease or disability, resulting in frequent hospitalizations or significant deterioration.
So, what this seems to indicate, although the legal line seems fuzzy and somewhat complex, is that if a child does not have a treatable chronic disease or disability, or an emergency or acute illness — then you probably aren’t, legally speaking, medically neglecting them by merely failing to give them immunizations.
That’s the legal definition, it seems, best as I can see it as a layman. It’s not saying the way the law should be written, but the way law is. This does not mean that we can’t say that not immunizing a child is neglectful in a more informal sense. We may even be able to argue that it’s abusive (in fact, we perhaps should, to change the legal definitions in ways that will protect children). But technically speaking, it’s not abuse or necessarily even neglect to refuse to immunize a child under the law, unless certain other conditions are met.
Does the technical legal definition mean that we should go out and say, “Refusing to immunize your child is NOT child abuse. It’s not. So stop saying it is!!!”? Or is that counterproductive to raising the necessary awareness immunization requires?