I thought this interview by Rob Palmer with 8th grader and minor celebrity (in skeptics circles) Bailey Harris was interesting for its insights by the Utah-based Harris into her fellow students, particularly in relation to noted Creationist Ken Ham:
Palmer: Is there anything you’d like to say to Ken Ham here and now? I’m sure he reads Skeptical Inquirer online!
Harris: Ha ha! I would just like to tell him that I believe that what he is doing is harming children. He presents things as though they are pure truth when he has had to use a thousand rationalizations to get to them, and children can’t understand this at their age. …
Palmer: How do you think people can be so wrong about something like the flood myth, which is so well proven by so much science and history to have never happened?
Harris: From what I can tell with my religious friends, kids basically believe in the religion that their parents teach them when they’re little. I was fortunate to be taught how to think, not what to think. I know that my parents will love me no matter what I believe. They basically taught me the scientific method and the platinum rule. But religious children aren’t given that option many times until they’re older. I don’t think that I’m smarter than my friends who believe in the literal flood or in gold plates. I was just not taught that these were undeniable truths when I was five years old! …
Palmer: What would you say to the parents who decide to bring their children to the Ark Encounter?
Harris: Even if you are Christian and believe in the Bible, please don’t expose children to this. It is extremism and antiscience. It is designed to overwhelm children with its size and beauty to then present untruths from beginning to end.
Her consciousness of how kids are at the mercy of their parents is fascinating, although I’d have to wonder how many of those kids are also influenced by peers, peers who may be questioning the received wisdom in light of a world which may seem to be at least somewhat unstable and at risk.
As people grow older and more invested in the social order which they have built, their vision of reality seems to dim.
