The Dalek Chicks
I read much about the question of should parents imprint their children with religious values. I intend to answer this, most pressing question, in a slightly unorthodox manor. I’m going to describe to you an experiment involving chicks and a remote control Dalek to draw parallels to religious imprinting. As bizarre as it sounds; stupid it is not.
Before I go onto tell you about the experiment I want to slash a bit of terminology. The word imprinting is a physiological term and is defined as:
“… the term used in psychology and ethology to describe any kind of phase-sensitive learning (learning occurring at a particular age or a particular life stage) that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behaviour. It was first used to describe situations in which an animal or person learns the characteristics of some stimulus, which is therefore said to be "imprinted" onto the subject.” – Wikipedia (they got something right and well articulated!)
The aim of my experiment is to see if we can make chicks believe that a Dalek is its mother. For this experiment we incubated some eggs until they hatched. Upon hatching they spotted the remote control Dalek and latched onto this as being its mother. We then devised a feeding system to work with the Dalek. The amazing – and at times humorous – aspect of the experiment is when you moved the Dalek away from the young chick they would instinctively follow the Dalek. Imagine you’re sitting in your car waiting for a never ending line of ducklings to cross road. Then imagine they were following a toy Dalek. You must admit that would be funny.
Now, we can draw our first set of parallels. Chicks are much like human babies as they are totally dependent on their parent for guidance. Agreed? So, if we consider that the Dalek was religion (the fact that it is a Dalek is not intended to imply anything) and the chick was a baby then we can hypothesize that the same results would be seen. The baby would see religion as normal and the right way to behave. Like the chicks with the Dalek mum they know no different. You have imprinted the baby in just the same way as the chick.
After a few weeks, you can try another experiment and things start to get interesting. If you divide a rectangular box into three parts; with Perspex dividers lengthways; and place the chicks in the middle one, Dalek mum directly to the left and the biological mother to the right when you remove the two dividers the chicks rush over to Dalek mum. This proves that they are so fixed to the idea of the Dalek being its mother that they ignore the real mother. Imprinting is as natural as evolution. They have been imprinted.
So what can we see from this? Obviously, I have proved though scientific experimentation that imprinting works. But it also proves the old saying of: “stick to what you know”: these chicks have been raised with the belief that the Dalek is its mother and they don’t realise it is not. Though, chicks and humans are very different, the principle remains the same. Unless both options are present then it is you making the decision not the entity it concerns – we could have used a remote control cyberman. That is not fair.
The whole point of the article is to show that to be fair to their children; religious parents need to ensure that they don’t imprint their children with their own views. I’ve not got children, but if or when I do, I will not imprint them with my atheist views – I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I admit it is tempting. But for the sake of others you can’t empty the cookie jar all on your own.
So, by all means educate them about your religion but educate them to consider other ideas outside just your religion – open mindedness perhaps? Notice DNA is made of four nucleotides and none of them determine religion.
