Religion in School

english_bob

professorben said:

english_bob said:

professorben said:

english_bob said:

tampadragon said:

If they have to teach it, then it should be taught in an un-biased way by a teacher who has no beliefs and presented as facts about the religion in full. 

So should the teacher be an atheist, or an agnostic? Or someone who doesn't actually give a shit about the topic they're teaching? Why can't a religious believer be unbiased? Wouldn't a confirmed atheist be just as biased?

Facts about the religion in full? How many hours a week do you think we should devote to this? I'm sure they could at least do a bit of myth-busting, like a slightly fuller social/religious/historical context for the Crusades, or about the diversity of attitudes to women within the major world religions.

FWIW, I think children should be taught about religion in something like this way. Given that something like 84% of the world have some sort of religious belief, ignorance of all of them seems like a bad idea. 

I agree a full coverage of all faiths is really important, but it's when the lines between fact and faith are blurred is the issue, I have no issue with people being religious, but have a real problem when people foist their beliefs on others, especially to young impressionable minds and even more do when coming from scene in a trusted educational position.
i think the OP was expressing concern that his child is being told that God created the world in seven days, or that the sky is blue because God wants to be etc.
its an easy get out for a lazy teacher, or for a Teacher with an agenda to influence young minds.

Isn't it "foisting your beliefs on others" to tell your kids that God doesn't exist? If there's one educational position a child will trust more than a teacher, it's a parent. People pass on all sorts of beliefs to their kids all the time.

And FWIW, the OP didn't say that his child had been taught anything other than that "God made everything"- nothing about seven-day creation or the sky being blue because God wants it to be. That's your interpretation of what the statement means, and it's only one of a whole range of views.

From your posts, I'm assuming ( rightly or wrongly) that you are yourself religious, that's cool, whatever you like man., I myself ( I'm sure you have guessed) am anti-religion, by that I mean not that I am an atheist, I actively disapprove of organised religion as a concept, I believe that is causes more problems than it solves.

The OP stated that his child had been making statements along the lines of "God made everything" this is worrying to me, because we know for a fact, that a pretty much everything in the known universe is in fact made by other processes than a Devine being, a teacher ( as much as a parent) has a duty to educate with the best information available at that time, and the existence of a deity relies on the emotional willingness of the individual to believe, it's not like explaining photosynthesis, or evaporation, those are provable, demonstrable facts, and that is what a child should be learning.

I do have a problem with religion, and thusly religious people,my issue is the influence that religion has on the world, last Sunday I ran out of wall fixings for a diy project, I was unable to buy new ones because my local b and q was closed, the reason? Sunday trading laws, laws controlling when shops of a certain size can be open on a Sunday, why Sunday? It's a supposedly religious day, not religious to me, I don't give a stuff about whose invisible friend did or didn't shag a swan or whatever, but it impacts on my life.
now imagine the other end of the scale, where someone's son/daughter/partner has been killed by an act of terror, somebody's belief drove them to consider it their duty to blow themselves up, or drive a truck through a crowd, then this is celebrated by authorities within that religion.

is that the kind of thing you want to push a child towards? 
Why would you want an innocent child to associated with those types of people?

So your antireligious feeling (I knew what that was already thanks) stems from the opening hours of your local B&Q? 

I honestly can't work out whether this is supposed to be serious or not.

english_bob

lloyd said:

Jesus Christ you're an idiot.

The assertion that god doesn't exist is not a belief, it's an scientific assumption.

The assertion that god does exist is a belief.

Telling your kid the first one isn't asserting your beliefs on the kid.

Telling our kid the second is.

An assumption is something you take to be true without proof. A "scientific assumption" is something you take to be true without proof for the purposes of doing science and shit. So not all that different really, is it? Smarter people than you have conceded that you can't win this argument.

fields5069

I suspect they haven't, surely that shows they're not very smart. It's easier for me to look at it by saying that for me, there is no question. being an atheist seems to imply a disbelief in a god, which in some small way seems to me re-inforces the possibility that there may be a god. There is no question for me, the question doesn't exist, or it exists to the same extent that the question "do elephants fly" exists. But someone isn't trying to drum into my daughter the "fact" that elephants can fly.

fretmeister

Jason Morris said:

God does exist, it's just that he's a cunt

If God exists, then Jason was right.

octatonic

Tell him that Clapton is God.

fretmeister

octatonic said:

Tell him that Clapton is God.

Lemmy.

fields5069

Ask Eric why my bottom hurts so much.

EricTheWeary

You said you wouldn't mention that again 

fields5069 said:

Ask Eric why my bottom hurts so much.

RocknRollDave

fretmeister said:

octatonic said:

Tell him that Clapton is God.

Lemmy.

Clapton is Lemmy........? 

Axe_meister

If god created the universe who created god?
Of course we did, just like we created the Norse gods, the Egyptian gods, the Roman Gods, etc, etc.
My son laps documentaries up. Currently watching the Cosmos series on Netflix. This provides more than enough (and plausible) explainations of how/why things are as they are. The very concept of a god being involved makes no sense to him what so ever.
The only thing that he questions is the mechanism for the beginning of our current universe.
And he has come up with expansion and retraction theory. 

fretmeister

fields5069

EricTheWeary said:

You said you wouldn't mention that again 

fields5069 said:

Ask Eric why my bottom hurts so much.

It's alright for you, with your cushy job in the Vatican.

lloyd

english_bob said:

lloyd said:

Jesus Christ you're an idiot.

The assertion that god doesn't exist is not a belief, it's an scientific assumption.

The assertion that god does exist is a belief.

Telling your kid the first one isn't asserting your beliefs on the kid.

Telling our kid the second is.

An assumption is something you take to be true without proof. A "scientific assumption" is something you take to be true without proof for the purposes of doing science and shit. So not all that different really, is it? Smarter people than you have conceded that you can't win this argument.

My word, you miss the point over and over again.

Whats your take on evolution? We can't prove it outright but the overwhelming data means we pretty much have to take it as a universal fact-even with certain assumptions thrown in (we assume god didn't make the animals change for example).

By your reasoning my acceptance of evolution as fact is as equal as a creationists acceptance that "god done it" an absence of belief in god isn't a belief system, it's a an absence of belief in God-that could change in one second if anyone anywhere came up with one genuine piece of evidence-that's what separates believers and non-believers.

contrary to what you might think I'm not trying to "win" anything, just point out a few truths.

professorben

english_bob said:

professorben said:

english_bob said:

professorben said:

english_bob said:

tampadragon said:

If they have to teach it, then it should be taught in an un-biased way by a teacher who has no beliefs and presented as facts about the religion in full. 

So should the teacher be an atheist, or an agnostic? Or someone who doesn't actually give a shit about the topic they're teaching? Why can't a religious believer be unbiased? Wouldn't a confirmed atheist be just as biased?

Facts about the religion in full? How many hours a week do you think we should devote to this? I'm sure they could at least do a bit of myth-busting, like a slightly fuller social/religious/historical context for the Crusades, or about the diversity of attitudes to women within the major world religions.

FWIW, I think children should be taught about religion in something like this way. Given that something like 84% of the world have some sort of religious belief, ignorance of all of them seems like a bad idea. 

I agree a full coverage of all faiths is really important, but it's when the lines between fact and faith are blurred is the issue, I have no issue with people being religious, but have a real problem when people foist their beliefs on others, especially to young impressionable minds and even more do when coming from scene in a trusted educational position.
i think the OP was expressing concern that his child is being told that God created the world in seven days, or that the sky is blue because God wants to be etc.
its an easy get out for a lazy teacher, or for a Teacher with an agenda to influence young minds.

Isn't it "foisting your beliefs on others" to tell your kids that God doesn't exist? If there's one educational position a child will trust more than a teacher, it's a parent. People pass on all sorts of beliefs to their kids all the time.

And FWIW, the OP didn't say that his child had been taught anything other than that "God made everything"- nothing about seven-day creation or the sky being blue because God wants it to be. That's your interpretation of what the statement means, and it's only one of a whole range of views.

From your posts, I'm assuming ( rightly or wrongly) that you are yourself religious, that's cool, whatever you like man., I myself ( I'm sure you have guessed) am anti-religion, by that I mean not that I am an atheist, I actively disapprove of organised religion as a concept, I believe that is causes more problems than it solves.

The OP stated that his child had been making statements along the lines of "God made everything" this is worrying to me, because we know for a fact, that a pretty much everything in the known universe is in fact made by other processes than a Devine being, a teacher ( as much as a parent) has a duty to educate with the best information available at that time, and the existence of a deity relies on the emotional willingness of the individual to believe, it's not like explaining photosynthesis, or evaporation, those are provable, demonstrable facts, and that is what a child should be learning.

I do have a problem with religion, and thusly religious people,my issue is the influence that religion has on the world, last Sunday I ran out of wall fixings for a diy project, I was unable to buy new ones because my local b and q was closed, the reason? Sunday trading laws, laws controlling when shops of a certain size can be open on a Sunday, why Sunday? It's a supposedly religious day, not religious to me, I don't give a stuff about whose invisible friend did or didn't shag a swan or whatever, but it impacts on my life.
now imagine the other end of the scale, where someone's son/daughter/partner has been killed by an act of terror, somebody's belief drove them to consider it their duty to blow themselves up, or drive a truck through a crowd, then this is celebrated by authorities within that religion.

is that the kind of thing you want to push a child towards? 
Why would you want an innocent child to associated with those types of people?

So your antireligious feeling (I knew what that was already thanks) stems from the opening hours of your local B&Q? 

I honestly can't work out whether this is supposed to be serious or not.

Amongst other things. 
I can see you are coming round to my way of thinking 

professorben

@english_bob you really need to start questioning things. 
Start asking the really deep questions. 
Do B&Q only open 10-4 ( with a 30 min browsing from 9:30) on a Sunday because it's part of their retail strategy?

Or, is it part of a deeper subtext? Are they doing it to maximise customer numbers thus saving on wages? If so, why are they open 8-8 Monday to Sat? 

Surely an hour less per weekday would makes sense then add 5 hours to Sunday opening? 

This is what I'm saying man, peel the onion. 

CabbageCat

lloyd said:

Fucking hell, Mr Logic from the Viz enters another debate. 

Umm. Sorry, I guess.

lloyd said:

If you want break it down to a micro-level then fine, but no, in the real world failing to recognize an abstract concept/idea/incident through an absence of evidence does not equal "a belief" it's an absence of belief in something that when we apply the scientific method to we have to accept that it is overwhelmingly probable that it does not exist-to the point that we have to say it does not (with an * next to it).

We can't be certain that there isn't a giant invisible man ensuring the world keeps spinning by whacking it with his 8 mile long cock can we? But we don't say that the belief of that is just as valid as somebody's assertion that they can fairly happily state that there isn't one and point out all the facts we do know about why the earth spins.

The same goes for god-everything in the old testament has been killed by facts disproving it, now it's all allegories and metaphor, the same is slowly happening with the new testament.

So no, they're weighted differently apart from in your anal logic world.

The absence of a belief isn't the same as a belief (sorry, assumption-based-on-insufficient-evidence) of an absence.

I'm not saying the belief in God is just as valid as the belief in the lack of God (though if you google "probability that God exists" you get 67%) but they are still beliefs.

I don't know why anyone would want to assert that God (or cock-spinny-man) does not exist when they don't know that, but religion does funny things to people.

Sporky

CabbageCat said:

I don't know why anyone would want to assert that God (or cock-spinny-man) does not exist when they don't know that, but religion does funny things to people.

If you do want to know, The Case Against God is a decent starter.

I should, for the sake of clarity, self-declare as a weak atheist - in the sense that I have no belief concerning any metaphysical entity (this is not agnosticism). There's also strong atheism, which is a more deliberate rejection of the concept of god (generally as a man-made conceit).

DLM

fretmeister said:

Jason Morris said:

God does exist, it's just that he's a cunt

If God exists, then Jason was right.

I miss JMo so much.

fields5069

This has gone on for a few pages now. It occurred to me that, in line with the original thread subject, all I want is for theism not to be taught in schools. I don't think teaching antitheism would be that useful either.

capo4th

As long as they are not learning about Allah and going to paradise they will be fine.