Dawkins on Alien Rubbish

[Gawdzilla Sama]

My point was about indigenous beliefs. Have to draw a line somewhere. There's a difference between popular culture and traditional belief. While x-men may have it's followers, it doesn't have it's believers.

The Line is what I'm talking about. Who gets to decide what The Line is to be?

Well x-men and spiderman are undisputed works of fiction. There are those who wish to hold up certain religious texts and oral tradition as truths. These should be presented in full light so they can be seen for what they are, why they are and where they came from.

I consider any religious text to be a work of fiction.

[Magicziggy]

My point was about indigenous beliefs. Have to draw a line somewhere. There's a difference between popular culture and traditional belief. While x-men may have it's followers, it doesn't have it's believers.

The Line is what I'm talking about. Who gets to decide what The Line is to be?

Well x-men and spiderman are undisputed works of fiction. There are those who wish to hold up certain religious texts and oral tradition as truths. These should be presented in full light so they can be seen for what they are, why they are and where they came from.

I consider any religious text to be a work of fiction.

And so do I. But a significant proportion of any population would disagree.

My own local skeptics group is looking promote critical thinking. It's a difficult one to address. It's really hard to get people with an entrenched world view and a position within that world with which they are satisfied, to reconsider the possibility that it is all based on lies. Leave it till 18 and it may be too late.

I remember reading somewhere, probably The God Delusion, that church attendance in the uk was falling and some were noting the fact that the uk was not secular. The opposite seemed to be the case in the US.

Faith schools are dangerous if they can teach anything as science. It makes me shudder. I have taught some creationist home schooled kids science. These kids come to us when about 16 years old to ensure they get formal qualifications and some subject teaching expertise. They have to study science. They are good students. They will do everything that's required and get As. But they do not believe the bit where god didn't create the earth. It's too late for them.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

As long as we are required to respect people's religious beliefs I will continue to fight against them.

[Exi5tentialist]

Well, you want to teach 13 year old degrees in "Theology" along with evolutionary biology.

Such a pity, with all that education you quoted, you didn't actually learn to READ!

O.k. - so you don't want theology taught in schools? Or, you want it taught to 14 to 17 year olds? Please clarify.

Some schools, fine. Depends on what the parents want to make available and what the children want to study. It's a local decision, really.

But not degrees. That's a bit advanced.

[Magicziggy]

As long as we are required to respect people's religious beliefs I will continue to fight against them.

Where should the battle begin.
Here it starts by getting the politicians to remove the prayer from the formal opening of parliamentry sittings.
It starts by by removing the ability of schools to employ government funded chaplains, although some ground has been made on this.

It starts at the top, with government. Get rid of the religious bias there. I have no problem in calling religious lunancy for what it is. I do not repsct the beliefs of those who think the Earth was created 6000 years ago. However, I live in a world dominated by people who are entrenched in various shades of lunacy. I have to navigate it carefully.

Get scientists in positions to make decisions.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I do what I can when I can.

[Magicziggy]

I do what I can when I can.

[charlou]

Homerjay, thanks for your reply. I will respond to your post a bit later.

OK, so ATM the score is something like 10 well argued views for Dawkins' POV and one fragmented and self-contradictory against?

The discussion has been a bit broader than just arguing for or against Dawkins' POV ... I also don't see it as polarised as you're suggesting. While it's obvious that there are extremes, it is still a range of views being presented and with some overlapping.

[charlou]

I have taught some creationist home schooled kids science. These kids come to us when about 16 years old to ensure they get formal qualifications and some subject teaching expertise. They have to study science. They are good students. They will do everything that's required and get As. But they do not believe the bit where god didn't create the earth. It's too late for them.

re the bit I've bolded ... I wouldn't say too late. Even though I never could go along with the biblical/miracle/interventionist god (it went too much against logic/reality as I was aware of it, even as a child), I did believe the myth that god created all things into adulthood. So, I'm an example of it not being the case and I've read enough examples from other people to know it's not too late after that age. More difficult, perhaps? Like Ronja and I touched on earlier, it may depend in part on the details of the individual's indoctrination background/environment.

Other than that point, my thinking is pretty much in line with yours.

I still want to discuss/clarify thoughts with homerjay.

[Ronja]

"Theology is a legitimate academic subject in its own right... I really don't see what's so controversial about teachers of theology teaching from their own perspective..."

.

I'm going to bed. My most heartfelt appreciation to those who can take the time and have the energy to continue debating Exi5 also tonight.

Theology degrees are offered by many of the world's respectable universities. They are valued by many employers as an indicator of high academic achievement, because they demonstrate that the graduate has the kind of skills in research, interpretation, presentation, and many other areas, that are valuable in many work settings.

Really Ronja, if you are going to demand rational discussion and supported argument then you are going to have to put forward a better case than "I'm going to bed."

. Good to see that you are relaxing a bit, at least at times, and can post humorously, too. Maybe you will become a Cheesy Rat in time, after all.


The bit about theology degrees will need to be addressed separately, if I have time before we go on a short vacation beyond the effective reach of the Interwebz (shiver) Thursday-Sunday.

[charlou]

Exi, not that you need to hear it from me or anyone, but you're fine being yourself, even if you're different. Personally, I prefer people that way.

[Robert_S]

I agree with both Charlou and Ronja.

Don't change to please us, but it really is nice to get more of a sense of the person holding the views and opinions I may or may not care for.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

We have 64 homeschooled kids coming to the Center next week. I'm thinking about volunteering to help with that bunch.

[charlou]

The value of a high quality comparative religious education maybe to counter the heavily biased one kids get from home.

So we expose all kids to this shit in order to conduct remedial work on the nutters?

Objectively delivered comparative religious education is important. Religion exists. It's not a case of let's ignore it and hope it will go away. It underlies many of our current cultural behaviours and laws. It exists in literature, film, music, art in general. It creates problems in secular politics, scientific research. As myth, it has some allegorical merit. Objectively delivered comparative religious education is not teaching faith or belief, or imposing dogma. It's delivering information about a cultural reality.

I can understand fierce aversion to religion ... but I don't think we should allow fear or anger to confuse us about the difference between dogmatic indoctrination and objective delivery of information and dictate how we deal with it.

I'm afraid I would consider this complete and utter bollocks, with nothing here worth saying Charlou, except that it continues gives nutters access to children (which is the religionists endgame).

Firstly, you don't say what 'Objectively delivered' means in this context so it sounds like you're arguing for a blank cheque to the nutters.

Since, by objective delivery I mean facts and discussion about religion as a cultural reality (as distinct from religious "facts" imposed as truths), delivered by qualified people who do not have a religious agenda, No, I'm not arguing for a blank cheque to the nutters. Thus should end that concern for you.

I've been quite vocal about my opposition to faith/dogma/indoctrination education, my opposition to so-called spiritual counsellors and any other inroads the opportunist religiots are making in our state schools, and my support (vocal and financial) for the legal action to remove them.

I've been using the words 'religious education' .... I'm going to try not using 'religious education', and use 'religion education' instead ... It's an important distinction.

In some Islamic faith schools in the UK kids split their day 50-50 between education and Islamic shit. That's 3 hours a day of shit. This can be delivered 'objectively', 3 hours of what 'good muslims aspire to' followed at the end of the day with a prayer that says simply 'allow us to be good muslims'. Indoctrination complete.

See, that's not what I mean by objective delivery. What you're describing is the imposition of dogma via brainwashing.

Everywhere that religion has or continues to touch our lives, cultural, legal, in literature whatever should be delivered in context not in a separate religious education programme - the whole point if what you're saying is correct is that it needs to be in that context, not lifted out and taught as a subject in it's own right, that is how you teach the 'cultural reality'.

I agree that context is important and am all for your approach, particularly for younger students. Just want to reiterate that my concept of an objectively delivered religion education is about simply describing religion in terms of its part in cultural reality, nothing more.

The nutters don't allow critical assessments to be made about their religions, so RE is always delivered as a hagiographic whitewash - out of 'respect' for those religions, so if the religionists won't allow critical commentary then they shouldn't be allowed positive commentary.

I'm not sure RE is always delivered this way. I'd think that would depend on the agenda behind the RE in each case.

I think a distinction between 'religious education' and 'religion education' is important here too, though.

This is a false dichotomy - that you can deliver some sort of information transfer without giving nutters opportunites to sow their seeds (yuk!), obvious forms of indoctrination maybe banned but in the Islamic example I gave above, conformity is dealt through much more complex mechanisms and this dichotomy is just too simplistic to touch on it.

This is why I'm against faith schools ... as I said above, I'm anti faith/dogma/indoctrination education.

We have a constant campaign from Christians to see creationism taught, not because they are creationist, in the UK only 10% of Christians identify as creationists but because it gives the mainstream chance to put their view over. They don't want people to be creationists they wan tthem to be good Anglicans.

They should not be given a look in, and wouldn't be with the kind of objectively delivered religion education I am talking about.

The continued calls for Religious Education we see, like this, I dismiss as a cultural overlay that religion should be respected, not as a considered view about what the content of the curriculum should be.

re the bit I've bolded: Not at all, not from my point of view. There's no moral evaluation involved in simply discussing religion as it exists in human culture. There's no attempt to instill beliefs, only to acknowledge various people have various beliefs and discuss why that is, and the effect on culture.

Note from what you've stated we have no idea of what the content or duration of your Religious Education programme would be (ie the most important points) but we do know that you think that children should continue to be exposed to this shit. In this sense it simply mimicks and enables the nutters without criticism.

Any curriculum that includes an objectively delivered religion element should, as I said, stick to cultural facts.


All that said, I don't just trust this to schools with my children. I am alert to any suggestion of religion (or any other potentially agenda based subject) being taught at their schools and am immediately on to the school for details of what is going on.

[JimC]

Excellent post, Charlou, I agree with the positions you express...

I, of course, am in a somewhat compromised position. However, a key factor for me is that science education at my school is not affected by the faith aspect. In reality, it is probably the "separate magisteria" idea, but as long as I can teach the science as I want to, I can survive...