Religious education in schools

Laughing said:
I am not sure why any thread on religion turns into making fun of anyone who believes in a personal god. Whilst I am mostly atheist as I work very much in a scientific industry, we none of us know whether there is a god or not. Scriptures from religion are clearly not based on many facts we could independently coroborate but none of this means there is not a creator.

As for religion being taught in schools. Of course it should, it forms an important part of the world we live in.
Click to expand...
None of us know? I think we do.
 
These threads always descend into catholic bashing 😂 It’s like water off a ducks back guys 👍🏼

I’m surprised some of you guys aren’t poking your heads into the pearly gates the size of the horses you’re on.

I haven’t yet seen anyone mention parents who choose to send children to faith schools and want that for their child. As with a lot of subjects, this forum has a tidal wave of single thought.
 
Gunslinger said:
I don't have a position of faith, that's you, in the same sense you have faith that a giant bunny rabbit didn't create the heavens and earth

Is it faith to suggest Harry Potter and middle earth are fictional?

The central tenet of evolution is that we evolved from simpler life, we are after all , still eukaryotes, and have been for millions of years ,
so were still the same clade as we always were

Religion teaches the opposite of evolution.............and geology...and cosmology, so the burden of proof is on you as i already have
all the evidence i need , whereas you have a book written by illterate cave dwelling jews
Click to expand...
So evolution doesn't prove that "every religion is made up fiction" then? And the "illiterate...Jews" did quite well in managing to write something that was readable if they were, indeed, illiterate. Truth cannot contradict truth, and so where faith and science are both based in truth, there will be no disagreement. Insisting that the current evolutionary model proves "every religion is made up fiction" is not something even the scientists who propose it claim.
 
Laughing said:
So go ahead and educate us all. How did the universe begin? How did chemistry turn into biology?

We can start with that.
Click to expand...
I thought we were talking about god/religion?

I didn't say I was presenting evidence (that I don't have) of chemistry turning into biology.

I also don't have the evidence of 'God' and neither does anyone else, although I would love to be proven wrong.
 
italianjob said:
I thought we were talking about god/religion?

I didn't say I was presenting evidence (that I don't have) of chemistry turning into biology.

I also don't have the evidence of 'God' and neither does anyone else, although I would love to be proven wrong.
Click to expand...
So we don't know if there is a creator then?
 
theboydom said:
"religion should have no place in the class room" is a dogmatic mantra, is it not? Hope you didn't pick it up in a classroom as that would be terrible... 😜 Without faith schools, there wouldn't have been any schools, but hey ho what has history ever taught us?
Click to expand...
It's not a 'dogma' to expect that the education of children should be evidence-based! Investigations into what's termed 'spiritual practice' and studies of faith traditions contextualised within a history curriculum are welcome. But religious worship should surely be a private family affair, not something underwritten by a democratic state, as it is a claim to 'understanding' that simply doesn't yield to evidence. Teaching children that God exists is no different to teaching them that God doesn't exist.
Faith schools, as you imply, are a hangover from the fact that when the mass education system was properly instituted in 1944, much of the school estate was owned by churches, so their conceits had to be accommodated. If you were to design education now, given the non-religious majority in this country, you certainly wouldn't think it a good idea to create division among children by allowing faith schools. To remind you, there are no Muslim children, or Catholic children - there are just children.
 
equaliser said:
It's not a 'dogma' to expect that the education of children should be evidence-based! Investigations into what's termed 'spiritual practice' and studies of faith traditions contextualised within a history curriculum are welcome. But religious worship should surely be a private family affair, not something underwritten by a democratic state, as it is a claim to 'understanding' that simply doesn't yield to evidence. Teaching children that God exists is no different to teaching them that God doesn't exist.
Faith schools, as you imply, are a hangover from the fact that when the mass education system was properly instituted in 1944, much of the school estate was owned by churches, so their conceits had to be accommodated. If you were to design education now, given the non-religious majority in this country, you certainly wouldn't think it a good idea to create division among children by allowing faith schools. To remind you, there are no Muslim children, or Catholic children - there are just children.
Click to expand...
RE in schools is the only subject that isn't evidence based?

And yes, nobody is born religious. It's 'inflicted' on children.
 
equaliser said:
It's not a 'dogma' to expect that the education of children should be evidence-based! Investigations into what's termed 'spiritual practice' and studies of faith traditions contextualised within a history curriculum are welcome. But religious worship should surely be a private family affair, not something underwritten by a democratic state, as it is a claim to 'understanding' that simply doesn't yield to evidence. Teaching children that God exists is no different to teaching them that God doesn't exist.
Faith schools, as you imply, are a hangover from the fact that when the mass education system was properly instituted in 1944, much of the school estate was owned by churches, so their conceits had to be accommodated. If you were to design education now, given the non-religious majority in this country, you certainly wouldn't think it a good idea to create division among children by allowing faith schools. To remind you, there are no Muslim children, or Catholic children - there are just children.
Click to expand...
So there was no religion the the early Greek democracies? It is a very modern invention, descending from Enlightenment thinking, to even think that religion has no place in the public sphere and should be confined as a 'private family affair'. It is also itself an imposition of belief.
"Teaching children that God exists is no different to teaching them that God doesn't exist." As I said earlier, this view depends on what you think education is for, whether you want to teach children truth, as opposed to helping them learn how to be useful economic units.
 
No, as a secular society it should be up to parents/guardians.
But my view is that no religious propaganda should be taught to kids until they are 16 at least so they can make informed decisions, rather than scaring the bejeesus out of them by saying they'll go to hell for not being good.
I've not problem with religion or spirituality, just organised religion and it's leaders who generally live a very nice, comfortable life while leveraging tithes off the believers.
 
My kids who were at school until 2018 had religious studies but it was teaching them about all religions of the world which I thought was good. Educating them about what religion was, what people practised what, the differences, beliefs etc.
I thought this was a good use of the lessons (even though I think organised religion of all types should be banned off the face of the earth).
 
italianjob said:
'Creator'? What is this 'Creator'??

Who calls it a creator?
Click to expand...
I did and you responded to that. Not sure why using creator rather than god is an issue for you.

Is it because it's easy to bash a bible and the stories in it which say nothing useful about how life or the universe started?
 
theboydom said:
So there was no religion the the early Greek democracies? It is a very modern invention, descending from Enlightenment thinking, to even think that religion has no place in the public sphere and should be confined as a 'private family affair'. It is also itself an imposition of belief.
"Teaching children that God exists is no different to teaching them that God doesn't exist." As I said earlier, this view depends on what you think education is for, whether you want to teach children truth, as opposed to helping them learn how to be useful economic units.
Click to expand...
In the early Greek 'democracies' they had slaves. And there you see the problem with religion in a nutshell: it is always bound up with earthly power - used by the ruling classes, as Glover's Elbow says, to keep the masses compliant - and it excludes: you're in, or you're out. the price of being in is not to question 'dogma'. Like I said, a component of spiritual enquiry is one thing, teaching children about the dubious 'miracles' of obscure saints or the fact that every word of your holy book constitutes the divine and unmediated word of an impregnable otherwordly deity is not really 'educating' children, it's bamboozling them with mumbo-jumbo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top