This is a triply repellant idea, for it implies that knowledge is bad, disobeying God s will is the greatest sin of all, and children inherit the sins of their ancestors, and may justly be punished for them.

We cannot here turn our backs on the particularly repellant cases of children forcibly recruited into armed bands and turned into war machines to perpetrate grave crimes against their own communities or used as cannon fodder to blaze a trail through minefields for fighting troops.