Religion in School

Sambostar

Sporky said:

Drew_TNBD said:

Like Christians being a minority for instance... almost, but not quite:

I wonder how many of them are committed, and how many just pop to church at Easter and Crimbo...

Or want for a white wedding or a church service funeral?

Drew_TNBD

Sporky said:

Drew_TNBD said:

Like Christians being a minority for instance... almost, but not quite:

I wonder how many of them are committed, and how many just pop to church at Easter and Crimbo...

For the purposes of tackling the statement that "Christians are a minority" it doesn't matter. If someone identifies as a Christian, that is enough.

lloyd

SteveRobinson said:

I bet that more people in UK attend mosques than attend church

No way.

Edit: Looking into it there's around 3.5m church goers in the uk, that's less than the amount of Muslims (around 2m) the CH4 survey showed that 48% of Muslims in the UK "never go to mosque" apart from for weddings etc.

fretmeister

english_bob said:

Drew_TNBD said:

english_bob said:

BigLicks67 said:

As far as I'm aware the brainwashing of children by various sects is a bad thing, so from that point of view there should be no religious 'education' in school. Teachers should stick to what they know, not what they think they know.

Calling anything teachers do "brainwashing" is insulting, and frankly fucking ridiculous. It's just an inflammatory way of saying "teaching things I don't agree with".

Er... okay. Mr. fucking flat earth society.

Do me a favour Drew. Google "brainwashing", read the Wikipedia article then tell me if it sounds like anything you've ever witnessed in a school.

Here, I'll even do the donkey work for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_control ;

I presume that if you are suggesting that others should "educate themselves" you will also be agreeing to read the various peer reviewed papers on the susceptibility to inculcation in the early stages of cognitive development?

Jalapeno

We ought to calm the f*ck down a bit - sending kids to faith schools is a sure fire way of ensuring they don't become a believer.  My own Catholic upbringing as an anecdote - ensured a cohort of my peers exposed to self-serving hypocrites, I wouldn't deny anyone a chance for anyone to scratch their own spiritual itch, but a Catholic education pretty much garunteed that most who endured it rejected (organised at least) religion.

Sporky

Drew_TNBD said:

Sporky said:

Drew_TNBD said:

Like Christians being a minority for instance... almost, but not quite:

I wonder how many of them are committed, and how many just pop to church at Easter and Crimbo...

For the purposes of tackling the statement that "Christians are a minority" it doesn't matter. If someone identifies as a Christian, that is enough.

Indeed - I wasn't disputing that, it was just an idle aside...

english_bob

Drew_TNBD said:

english_bob said:

Drew_TNBD said:

I don't see any hateful stuff.

All I see is one thin-skinned ninny trying to make a martyr of himself.

Which is probably my cue to walk away and go find something guitar related to talk about. 

You've made several statements here that are just hogwash. Like Christians being a minority for instance... almost, but not quite:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/detailed-characteristics-for-local-authorities-in-england-and-wales/sty-religion.html

Don't worry though. It's going down. We're making progress and slowly evolving past that old archaic idiocy. We've just got to stop importing Islam and we're golden I feel!

I think church attendance is a better measure of the number of practicing Christians in the UK- there's a significant number of people who will self-identify as Christian on a census or a hospital admission form or whatever, but don't do any sort of religious observance. So that gives us something like five million Christians in the UK, not the 30-odd million from the census.

http://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html

Of everything I've said in this thread, that's the one I'm most surprised anyone wants to argue about. 

lloyd

english_bob said:

BigLicks67 said:

As far as I'm aware the brainwashing of children by various sects is a bad thing, so from that point of view there should be no religious 'education' in school. Teachers should stick to what they know, not what they think they know.

Calling anything teachers do "brainwashing" is insulting, and frankly fucking ridiculous. It's just an inflammatory way of saying "teaching things I don't agree with".

Did you watch any of Dawkins going into the faith schools around the UK?

Kids (14+) wanting to grow up to be Dr's believing literally that Muhamed flew to the moon on a Unicorn/flying horse and splitting it in two in my humble opinion is brainwashing.

fretmeister

I had a church wedding. Several reasons. Wife's parents had threatened to not have anything to do with it, and would not consider it to bed a real wedding if it wasn't in a church. Nice bit of emotional blackmail from her parents (science denying creationists)

But the church itself is a wonderful example of 13th Century stone work with excellent windows and it looked ace in the photos.

english_bob

fretmeister said:

english_bob said:

Drew_TNBD said:

english_bob said:

BigLicks67 said:

As far as I'm aware the brainwashing of children by various sects is a bad thing, so from that point of view there should be no religious 'education' in school. Teachers should stick to what they know, not what they think they know.

Calling anything teachers do "brainwashing" is insulting, and frankly fucking ridiculous. It's just an inflammatory way of saying "teaching things I don't agree with".

Er... okay. Mr. fucking flat earth society.

Do me a favour Drew. Google "brainwashing", read the Wikipedia article then tell me if it sounds like anything you've ever witnessed in a school.

Here, I'll even do the donkey work for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_control ;

I presume that if you are suggesting that others should "educate themselves" you will also be agreeing to read the various peer reviewed papers on the susceptibility to inculcation in the early stages of cognitive development?

Sure, if you go dig 'em up from the internet.

english_bob

lloyd said:

english_bob said:

BigLicks67 said:

As far as I'm aware the brainwashing of children by various sects is a bad thing, so from that point of view there should be no religious 'education' in school. Teachers should stick to what they know, not what they think they know.

Calling anything teachers do "brainwashing" is insulting, and frankly fucking ridiculous. It's just an inflammatory way of saying "teaching things I don't agree with".

Did you watch any of Dawkins going into the faith schools around the UK?

Kids (14+) wanting to grow up to be Dr's believing literally that Muhamed flew to the moon on a Unicorn/flying horse and splitting it in two in my humble opinion is brainwashing.

I'm sure a man with Dawkins' famously impartial stance on the topic provided a fair and balanced view of what he found.

It's not really relevant though, because being taught something that isn't true, or that someone else doesn't agree with isn't brainwashing regardless of your humble opinion. 

professorben

english_bob said:

p90fool said:

english_bob said:

 Smarter people than you have conceded that you can't win this argument.

Smart people know you can't win any argument with someone who's actions and opinions are guided by their invisible friend.

In fact I'd hesitate to call it an argument at all, it's more a carer/patient scenario.

Talking like this about people of faith is one of the few remaining acceptable forms of bigotry. Direct the sort of equally hateful and ignorant statements people have made in this thread about religious believers at any other group and the PC brigade would be calling for stonings in the street. 

Cue more name calling.

Religion is a choice, sexual orientation, gender, or skin colour are not. 
Ergo, religious people are either willingly believing in nonsense or have been indoctrinated to do so. 
Hence my understanding of the fear of the OP regarding the seemingly religious leanings of the statements shown by his child. 

english_bob

lloyd said:

No, the point I'm making is that teaching your children to question everything and to put faith in the scientific method is not foisting your belief system on it. It's not even a belief system.

That's it.

Actually it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism

Sporky

Naturalism isn't the same thing as the scientific method - hence them having different Wikipedia pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

professorben

CabbageCat

lloyd said:

CabbageCat said:

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.

Is that what I've done at any point in this whole debate?

No, the point I'm making is that teaching your children to question everything and to put faith in the scientific method is not foisting your belief system on it. It's not even a belief system.

That's it.

No you haven't. I haven't said you had (in my previous post I specifically clarified that).

You did say that believing that there is no God is not a belief. That was the only thing I had a problem with. 

lloyd

english_bob said:

lloyd said:

english_bob said:

BigLicks67 said:

As far as I'm aware the brainwashing of children by various sects is a bad thing, so from that point of view there should be no religious 'education' in school. Teachers should stick to what they know, not what they think they know.

Calling anything teachers do "brainwashing" is insulting, and frankly fucking ridiculous. It's just an inflammatory way of saying "teaching things I don't agree with".

Did you watch any of Dawkins going into the faith schools around the UK?

Kids (14+) wanting to grow up to be Dr's believing literally that Muhamed flew to the moon on a Unicorn/flying horse and splitting it in two in my humble opinion is brainwashing.

I'm sure a man with Dawkins' famously impartial stance on the topic provided a fair and balanced view of what he found.

It's not really relevant though, because being taught something that isn't true, or that someone else doesn't agree with isn't brainwashing regardless of your humble opinion. 

I'm not sure how you can spin standing in front of a load of kids and asking them what they wanted to be when they grew up and then asking them if they believed in the literal truth of the Hadith  can be spun or edited to be anything that was shown.

Here's Dawkins on Al Jazeera TV (their edit, their release) discussing Islam, the guy interviewing him a well educated, urbane young British Muslim admits in the video that he literally believes in the splitting of the moon fable. 

It's not something that Dawkins needs to spin or be impartial about-its widely accepted amongst people that these things literally happened.

Teaching someone one thing that isn't true isn't brainwashing no, but teaching young people a multitude of untruths in order to control their lives according to those beliefs-down to what to wear, eat, how to eat, what to do on certain days of the week etc is brainwashing, and this goes to all faiths, I'm not here Islam bashing.

What certain faith schools are doing to kids is brainwashing, so your assertion "Calling anything teachers do "brainwashing" is insulting, and frankly fucking ridiculous." is demonstrably false as on top of everything else it's too wide of a claim.

There's a couple ex members of cults/extreme religions that post on here, I'm sure they'd be the firt to say that what they learnt as children was brainwashing (one of them has written that on here).

BigMonka

Jalapeno said:

We ought to calm the f*ck down a bit - sending kids to faith schools is a sure fire way of ensuring they don't become a believer.  My own Catholic upbringing as an anecdote - ensured a cohort of my peers exposed to self-serving hypocrites, I wouldn't deny anyone a chance for anyone to scratch their own spiritual itch, but a Catholic education pretty much garunteed that most who endured it rejected (organised at least) religion.

You know what, that's the funny thing about the whole debate. I can't think of anyone I know who has a religious belief because it was taught at school, it's way more common to be the opposite.

I personally think that awareness of all religions should be taught in schools, but nothing more than awareness. I say this as a Christian. You just have to look at discussions like this thread and how many people think that the main point of the bible and christianity is to tell people they're going to hell - I don't think that anyone needs to be brought up with that as a main philosophy. Gospel means "good news", Jesus spent the majority of his time being positive, kind, generous to people and healing them and doing miracles, but that's not what people are taught in schools - teaching guilt and condemnation to kids is messed up!

Troy

Two things, it's called the theory of evolution as it's not proved factual though is the most reasonable theory to explain us. Also, I'm pretty sure that religion is the cause of shed loads of deaths.

english_bob

Sporky said:

Naturalism isn't the same thing as the scientific method - hence them having different Wikipedia pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Yes, but the idea that we should put faith in the scientific method to answer questions about reality is naturalism.

Or, arguably, Scientism

Either way, a belief system.