Rod Dreher unintentionally describes his own column* thus: "This is narrow-minded cant."
But now that's a slight to the narrow-minded, who at least aren't generally inclined to make shit up:
Camp Quest [is] a five-day atheist camp supported in part by Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins. The idea, Dawkins said, is "to encourage children to think for themselves." Yes, well, as long as they don't think well of religion, tykes are welcome to join his herd of independent minds.
It's hard to see the pleasure of sitting around the campfire, learning from grown-ups that the world is disenchanted after all. (No ghost stories for you, lad!)
Yes, sitting around with other kids talking about secularism all day does seem kinda dorky. I wondered, though, could that really be the idea?
Not being paid to play the fool, I opted to do what is now within the power of any non-moron and research the issue. And, taking great care to navigate the precarious three-link path to this page, I soon had my answer:
We are currently in the process of developing our 2009 activities programme. As 2009 is “Darwin year” - the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of “The Origin of Species”, the theme of our camp will be EVOLUTION....
In the mornings and evenings we will hold our own activities, which will include:
Philosophy for Children (P4C), pseudoscience, astronomy, evolution, critical thinking, nature games, the famous Invisible Unicorns Challenge and much more!
In the afternoons, the instructors at the activity camp will lead the children in: archery, zip wire, climbing, high ropes, canoeing, rafting, the Great Wall, air rifle shooting, night line and the assault course!
Sounds like a real drag, having to learn about science and then go rafting. If only they would let counselors tell the kids ghost stories.
(Via Butterflies and Wheels.)
*Click at own risk.
