There’s a big difference between saying you’re Christian because you believe that there is a God and that His Son died for your sins and saying you’re Christian because you’re wearing an England football shirt and you don’t like Muslims.

‘If it even makes sense to talk about instilling “freedom of conscience” through compulsory religious instruction’

The fuck it does.

Religion should only be tought as, say, a module in history or art where it provides a context necessary for understanding how people understood the world at that time. Otherwise it has no place within the state education system.

To teach religion as if it were epistemologically equivalent to science or history, or as if it has something valuable to add to ethical development is ridiculous and to make it compulsary is an afront to the intelligence of children.

Religion is more a way of living than a body of thought that can be taught. Faith schools don’t spend much more classroom time teaching lessons about religion than ordinary schools. Instead they go about all activities in a religious way. The mistake that non-religious people make about the religious is to think religion is supremely about a set of ‘beliefs’. It isn’t.

When Sarah writes:

it’s patently excessive to ascribe all those liberal values to Christianity. Many Christians have done great work for social causes – but then, so have people of every other faith and no faith at all

…she totally misses the point the Telegraph was arguing. It wasn’t ‘great work for social causes’ that created ideas such as human rights itself. It was that same ‘Western Civilization’ that makes her snore. European culture civilization was the product of the Christian religion. The ideas that liberals think are important simply didn’t arise in other cultures.

Shatterface meanwhile writes once again in a way which makes me think of Orwell’s image of the jackboot smashing over and over again into a human head.

The Telegraph article is deeply flawed but so is the attitude of schools to religious teaching.

On the one hand, religious education is generally taught from a secular viewpoint concentrating on comparing the tenets of various religions and their history and influence. On the other hand, however, many schools have retained remnants of the tradition of Christian worship at assemblies etc as a relic of the days when all children were expected to be raised in the Christian faith. In Catholic schools, such indoctrination has been more resilient and persistent and it seems Muslim schools are even more polemical.

In my lifetime, the UK has become an increasingly secular society and whilst I would be happy to see education become entirely secular I can understand that those who have a religious faith want the right to teach their children to believe in their particular God.

It seems to me that such an instinct is entirely selfish and fundametally illiberal but I don’t suppose I will have much success in selling this view to a dedicated Christian or Muslim .

How many of that 50% of Brits who define themselves as ‘Christian’ (or more likely CofE) because they are British?
I worked in medical records once and was amazed at the number of people who responded ‘English’ or Bri’ish’ (that’s the glottal stop there!) in response to the question of religion – so many that I eventually gave up asking that irrelevant (as far as medical need is concerned) question. So many people seemed to assume that religion and nationality are so closely related that of course you are CofE (or English) if you are a white Briton. ‘Not one of yer funny foreign religions’ someone once said – my response that they could have been Methodist or Congregationalist rather than CofE was met with a blank stare.
So, basically, I would doubt that 50% of the UK really are ‘Christian’ at all – they’re just telling us that they’re British.

Religion should only be tought as, say, a module in history or art where it provides a context necessary for understanding how people understood the world at that time. Otherwise it has no place within the state education system.

Yes, why study a phenomenon that – for good or for ill – inspires billions around the globe, and was formative in the development of culture, society and ethical perceptions. Clearly, what’s needed is more food tech.

“Some people wonder if there shouldn’t be a way of making this ostensibly Christian country a bit more, well, Christian.”

Be careful of what you ask for:

“28 Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. 29 For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” [Matthew chp. 25]
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:14-30

“12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” [Matthew chp. 7]
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7%3A12&version=NIV

What if they have different preferences?

“Our youngsters have no chance of understanding the history of Britain, or its fundamental values of equality, toleration, and freedom of conscience, unless they also understand where those values came from.”

This would be the same nation of toleration that went around the world stealing other countries and their treasures would it? And the same country that has, except for the last 100 years run a system of huge inequality.

I am sure the torygraph will be defending the legislation being brought in to allow home owners to defend their property. Funny how the same people who support this, also defend the theft of Empire.

And all in the name of an imaginary cloud man with a grey beard

Conservatives off all faiths love religion because they teach the people not to question, and be obedient.

FWIW, until the church becomes seperated from the monarchy and the monarchy are seperated from our political system, there will always be those who argue that christianity should be taught in schools as it is part of our political constitution. Take that away, and christianity (and all other religions) will be totally equal and the argument for favouring any belief over another would be obsolete.

“This would be the same nation of toleration that went around the world stealing other countries and their treasures would it? ”

Not to overlook the successful Opium Wars over trading rights to sell opium in China and by which Britain acquired Hong Kong in the Treaty of Nanjing in 1843:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

Or the Atlantic slave trade?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

‘Shatterface meanwhile writes once again in a way which makes me think of Orwell’s image of the jackboot smashing over and over again into a human head.’

Yeah, right – saying the state shouldn’t fund the teaching of fairytales is just like being a fascist boot-boy.

Maybe I’d respect theists even a little bit if they could distinguish between criticism and violence.

‘Yes, why study a phenomenon that – for good or for ill – inspires billions around the globe, and was formative in the development of culture, society and ethical perceptions. Clearly, what’s needed is more food tech.’

Look around you – do you see people who need consoling fantasies of the afterlife, or people who need a better diet?

“so many that I eventually gave up asking that irrelevant (as far as medical need is concerned) question.”

Claire,

That’s possibly one of the reasons why healthcare provision in the UK is simultaneously shoddy and simultaneously elitest. Think of it as on a par with ‘a special diet’ or ‘next of kin’.

Yvette

Shatterface @ 11

Maybe I’d respect theists even a little bit if they could distinguish between criticism and violence.

Violence and/or a brutalized sensibility is often implicit in language. The words and constructions we use are a pretty good (though not always 100% reliable) clue to character. I’d respect rationalists more if they didn’t try to wield reason like a club.

sally, above, says:
“Conservatives off all faiths love religion because they teach the people not to question, and be obedient.”
Meanwhile I love it because it taught me exactly the opposite. Your argument is what, exactly? Oh, I see. It’s because you’d prefer to think that all monotheistic adherents believe that God is “an imaginary cloud man with a grey beard” because then you can dismiss them as obvious idiots rather than deal with them as any sort of equals. To me, it looks more as if you’re the one with the irrational belief.

Yeah, but when all’s said and done more people go to church than go to Premiership football and a heck of a lot more self-identify as Christian than will be watching the World Cup in the UK.

But no-one questions whether there should be football in schools.

Whatever side of the argument you’re on, you have to admit that religion is a huge great cultural force. More Christians than members of all the political parties put together. More Christians than Guardian readers.,,,etc.

Agree with Shatterface @2 (I write as an atheist brought up by non-denominational Christians) – religion should be kept to places of worship – Mosques, Churches, Synagogues etc – and if taught in school then as part of history (or maybe compulsory GCSE philosophy )

Look around you – do you see people who need consoling fantasies of the afterlife, or people who need a better diet?

(Clearly, you never did food tech!)

Religion is a fascinating subject. One doesn’t have to accept its truth claims – I don’t, by the by – to see that its concepts; its role in the formation of the modern world and its influence on social relations, culture and psychology are, well – really interesting and worthy of study. That doesn’t excuse the lesson where – I kid you not – we were treated to a video of a circumcision…

Do we really want to go the communist way and insist on atheism at schools? I think the answer is no. Many faith schools are oversubscribed, which shows how popular they are. Their standards are also higher than non-faith schools. Asking faith schools to abandon religion will open a whole can worms, so its not worth the hassle I say.

My daughter goes to a RC primary school. Although she learns the basics of the Christian faith, she also learns about other religions. What’s wrong with that? I think the majority of other parents who send their children to faith schools are like me – they want their children to have a basic grasp about their own faith. Any way, most religious learning takes place in the home and not at school.

There’s a simple solution: rather than imposing atheistic teaching in faith schools, why don’t agnostic/atheist parents send their children to community schools?

@Jay 16

“Yeah, but when all’s said and done more people go to church than go to Premiership football and a heck of a lot more self-identify as Christian than will be watching the World Cup in the UK.”

Well, for one thing it’s free to go to church, and the cost of premiership football is a lot more (the cheapest ticket at old trafford is 27 pounds).

Also, I think that you are comparing incomparable data. Someone who self-identifies as Christian is more like someone that self-identifies as a football supporter than someone actually watching the world cup.

I think a more useful comparison is numbers of people watching teh world cup and numbers attending church:

A report on “Churchgoing in the UK” published by Tearfund in April 2007 shows that 7.6 million adults in the Uk attend church once a month.

The BBC final stats report showed that the 2002 world cup final averaged 7.9m veiwers on BBC1, and itv averaged 1.9 million with their combined share accounting for 71% of all viewers. So overall 13.8m people watched the world cup final. More than went to church that month.

The same BBC stats show that they had an average veiwing figures of 3.2m while ITV had an average 2.1m viewers for all the matches ( a total of 5.3m). If we assume they held teh same proportion of veiwers across the whole event as for the final then approximately 7.5m watched the world cup overall.

When you then account for the fact that these are home viewing figures only and that the real figures are therefore higher it becomes clear that actually a lot more people will watch the world cup than go to church, and as such the number of practicing fottballers is clearly higher than the number of practicing christians.

It should also be noted that church attendance is declining, so not only are football viewing figures likely to be higher but church attendance is likely to be down.

18 Theology, I admit, is an interesting subject but the debate is about christianity rather than the historical/philosophical aspect of religions generally.
19 Why do you associate atheism with communism, it was liberalism which reduced the cultural/political impact of chistianity in Europe, not to mention a greedy English monarch.

Iggy comes with all the straw man arguments as usual. People who don’t believe are Communists. Faith schools being over subscribed…… blah blah blah. Never mind people are going to church only to get their kids into faith based schools

Religion is the Conservatives form of communism. Don’t question, do what we say, except what you have, and don’t get above yourself.

And before all the usual suspects say what about other religions. I apply it to ALL religions.

The greatest teacher we will ever know resides inside us as believers…The Holy Spirit. How great would it be if the 50% of those “Christians” were encouraged to use his power to do better academically, imagine how our kids would be performing.

>If it even makes sense to talk about instilling “freedom of conscience” through compulsory religious instruction, it’s patently excessive to ascribe all those liberal values to Christianity.

I’d be interested to see that “patently excessive” argued from history rather than assumed.

@24 Matt

Go look up what Dawkins has to say. I think he argues quite well that christianity is no basis for morality.

@8 sally: This would be the same nation of toleration that went around the world stealing other countries and their treasures would it? And the same country that has, except for the last 100 years run a system of huge inequality.

Yes, actually. From your point of view as an early 21st century Briton (I presume), Britain’s past doesn’t have enormous amounts of “equality, toleration, and freedom of conscience”. But compared to the vast majority of cultures that have ever existed, and to many that exist today, it does.

Conservatives off all faiths love religion because they teach the people not to question, and be obedient.

That’s true.

@sally

“People who don’t believe are Communists. Faith schools being over subscribed…… blah blah blah. Never mind people are going to church only to get their kids into faith based schools”

Please read what I have written. Atheism is clearly a central part of communism whether you like it or not, but I am not calling all non-believers communists. What I am saying, however, is banning religious education in schools is similar to the approach taken by communists. Regardless of whether some parents are simply going to church to get their children into faith schools, the fact is they want them there.

“Religion is the Conservatives form of communism.”

A ridiculous statement, which shows how much you value the religious traditions of this country. If you get rid of religion, you get belief in something else. Another ideology takes over. I’m fine with moderate secularism.

@5: So many people seemed to assume that religion and nationality are so closely related that of course you are CofE (or English) if you are a white Briton.

While religion and nationality needn’t be closely related, relgion and ethnicity clearly are. If you think of places involved in inter-ethnic conflict — for example Northern Ireland, or former Yugoslavia, or Iraq — religious differences appear to be one of the major faultlines along with societies split. (Language differences are an equally obvious faultline.)

Many religious believers draw the boundaries of the ingroup around the boundaries of their co-religionists, and often see non members of their religion as not fully counting as people, which is seen (for example) in injunctions for believers not to marry outside their religion.

@3, 24: you may want to revise your understanding of the moral and ethical ideas of various classical (i.e. pre-Christian) Greek philosophers.

‘Violence and/or a brutalized sensibility is often implicit in language.’

No it isn’t. Me calling you an idiot is not the same as me hitting you. Me telling somebody to hit you, or stone you, or burn you at the stake, would essentially be the same, but it’s not atheists calling for violence whenever they are offended on behalf of a sky-pixie.

‘The words and constructions we use are a pretty good (though not always 100% reliable) clue to character. I’d respect rationalists more if they didn’t try to wield reason like a club.’

And again the idiotic link between words and violence, though I thank you for showing you see reason as a *weapon* rather than a tool.

“A ridiculous statement, which shows how much you value the religious traditions of this country”

Well, lets have a look at those traditions that you want to kneel to. A Catholic religion that was run from Rome, and specialises in keeping the people stupid and poor. That was replaced by Henry 8th who created the Church of England for great moral reasons?

ER…. No,

just so he could get a divorce and marry another woman, and steal all the wealth from the former Roman church., and of course, most importantly he could have a his men preaching his religion in every church in England. That then lead to Protestants and Catholics fighting each other for the next 400 years and they both call themselves Christians. Wow, are these the great traditions that you think are so important?

‘Religion is a fascinating subject. One doesn’t have to accept its truth claims – I don’t, by the by – to see that its concepts; its role in the formation of the modern world and its influence on social relations, culture and psychology are, well – really interesting and worthy of study. That doesn’t excuse the lesson where – I kid you not – we were treated to a video of a circumcision…’

You could cover that in anthropology but that’s not what Christians and others want: they want their values instilled in others.

I’m not calling for atheism to be ‘tought’, I’m asking for religion to be left outside. That’s secular education, not atheism. Teacher’s are obliged to teach things that are true, or at least consistant with knowledge.

I’m actually doing theists a favour here: do you want school teachers to avoid talking about the ‘resurrection’ entirely or do you want them pointing out the biological implausability? Do you want chemistry teachers subjecting the Eucharist to spectroscopic analysis to prove it isn’t made of Jesus meat? Do you want historians examining the veracity of the Bible? Or philosophers looking at the barbaric ‘ethics’ of the holy books?

I was never taught religion in school. I was taught about the belief systems, customs, histories and practices of the so-called Six Great Faiths. That is what religious studies should be about. After the main religions have been covered they should then move on to giving a basic understanding of different philosophies. To me, religious studies should be about educating people about other people’s beliefs and what they are based upon. I certainly don’t subscribe to this idea of teaching people to follow a faith while they’re in school. If they wish to follow a religion they should do it outside of the classroom.

S&M

>Go look up what Dawkins has to say. I think he argues quite well that christianity is no basis for morality.

Aha. Dawkins. Whenever I read Dawkins he seems to make counterfactual assumptions by the bucketload, which is hardly surprising when he usually refutes what he thinks religion should be, rather than going out and engaging with the facts on the ground. It’s not a subject I would expect him to know very much about, given that his home discipline is biology/ethology and he starts from a view that theology is worthless.

Sarah’s assertion “it’s patently excessive to ascribe all those liberal values to Christianity” seemed to me to do a similar thing, which is why I’ve asked for an account argued from history.

I’d like to know where else “equality, toleration, and freedom” came from in this country, and when, if not from the Christian tradition. Sure you may find other roots (please document), but less than you would think from the above.

How can you teach christianity as “just another religion” when it’s embedded in UK culture in a way that say, Jedi or Islam are not and will never be. The legal system is based on christianity, wars have been fought over it’s interpretation, the constitution is based on it, it permeates cuture right down to bank holidays and our definition of “the weekend”.
Whether you are a “christian” or not, pretending that somehow christinaity has no greater historical or cultural singnifiance than any other religion is to present an absurdy anodine, airbrushed and “context free” version of European history

“I’d like to know where else “equality, toleration, and freedom” came from in this country, and when, if not from the Christian tradition.”

C’mon. Check out the secular tradition in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason.

The Medieval Christian Church was highly authoritarian and sanctified the doctrine of the Divine Right of monarchs to rule. This notion was finally upset in Britain by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when William and Mary were invited by Parliament to rule as joint sovereigns after James II had fled. Thereafter sovereigns ruled with the consent of the governed, not by divine right.

In Rome, Galileo was sentenced to house imprisonment for the rest of his life by the Church for publicising his “heretical” theory that the earth moved round the sun while the official teaching of the Church was that the sun was in orbit around the earth. Galileo was only officially exonerated in 1992.

The traditional values of the Christian churches were anything but “liberal” or tolerant.

As late as 1880, Charles Bradlaugh refused to take a Christian oath on his election to Parliament and was therefore deemed to have forfeited his seat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bradlaugh

“Wow, are these the great traditions that you think are so important?”

Yes! Those were different times sally. Religion was much more important to people, so inevitably it sometimes led to conflict. There was politics involved too. As I said, I’m in favour of moderate secularism. Religion can sometimes lead to fanaticism, and we should avoid that. However, take away religion and people will inevitably transcendentalise something else like race, language, state, or even liberty itself.

You’ve just pointed out some of the ugly aspects of European history. However, there are many good things Christianity has given us such as the equality of man, charity, a sense of Christian brotherhood and abolition of slavery. Almost every civilisation in history has had slavery, and in some parts of the world it still exists. There was absolutely no economic reason why Britain should have abolished the slave trade, yet it was Christians like Wilberforce who led the struggle. This is an example of Christianity’s self-correcting apparatus, which makes amends for past injustices. Christianity is not orthopraxic. You are saved by grace, not by following a set of rules. This frees people up, makes them less self-righteous and bigoted.

Communist countries are staunchly secular where religion is outlawed. Yet these countries have seen terrible suffering. That shows getting rid of religion doesn’t necessarily lead to peace. Religion gives us a set of moral codes which we can use to base our rules. Take away that and you live in an intolerant and amoral society.

@37

Religion gives us a set of moral codes which we can use to base our rules. Take away that and you live in an intolerant and amoral society.

Erm, sorry? So any one who isn’t religious is intolerant and amoral? I happen to have more faith in human beings than that (foolishly or not).

“abolition of slavery”

“Wilberforce presented his first bill to abolish the slave trade in 1791 it was easily defeated by 163 votes to 88. Wilberforce refused to be beaten and in 1805 the House of Commons passed a bill to that made it unlawful for any British subject to transport slaves, but the measure was blocked by the House of Lords.

“In February 1806, Lord Grenville formed a Whig administration. Grenville and his Foreign Secretary, Charles Fox, were strong opponents of the slave trade. Fox and Wilberforce led the campaign in the House of Commons, whereas Grenville, had the task of persuading the House of Lords to accept the measure.

“Greenville made a passionate speech where he argued that the trade was ‘contrary to the principles of justice, humanity and sound policy’ and criticised fellow members for ‘not having abolished the trade long ago’. When the vote was taken the Abolition of the Slave Trade bill was passed in the House of Lords by 41 votes to 20. In the House of Commons it was carried by 114 to 15 and it become law on 25th March, 1807.”
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REwilberforce.htm

If slavery was incompatible with Christianity, why did it take Parliament so long to abolish the slave trade in 1807 and even longer to abolish slavery in most of the British empire in 1833?

“Erm, sorry? So any one who isn’t religious is intolerant and amoral? I happen to have more faith in human beings than that (foolishly or not).”

I don’t deny that. Non-believers can be good people too!

As for sources of morality without religious authority, try:

“Scientists have discovered that babies can start to make moral judgments by the age of six months and may be born with the ability to tell good from bad hard-wired into their brains.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article7120735.ece

Compare that recent news report with this passage in an essay in 1748 by David Hume:

“All moral duties may be divided into two kinds. The first are those to which men are impelled by a natural instinct … which operates on them, independent of all ideas of obligation, and of all views either to public or private utility. Of this nature are love of children, gratitude to benefactors, pity to the unfortunate. … The second kind of moral duties are such as are not supported by any original instinct of man but are performed entirely from a sense of obligation, when we consider the necessities of human society, and the impossibility of supporting it, if these duties were neglected. …. We shall only observe, before we conclude, that though an appeal to general opinion may justly, in the speculative sciences of metaphysics, natural philosophy, or astronomy, be deemed unfair and inconclusive, yet in all questions with regard to morals, as well as criticism, there is really no other standard, by which any controversy can ever be decided.”
http://www.constitution.org/dh/origcont.htm

@Bob B

There was a time after Darwin’s theory of evolution when scientists argued that racial hierarchies could be classified by skull measurements, cranial angles and so on. The French anthropologist Gustave le Bon finally gave a ‘scientific’ stamp to racialist thinking by constructing an evolutionary pyramid with white Europeans lording over the less-evolved peoples. Some anthropologists announced (ludicrously, but who knew better?) that blacks were closer to apes than they were to whites. Of course, such racist thinking only helped colonialism.

So much for science always being right and proper!

‘So much for science always being right and proper’

Science is provisional and open to testing and revision.

Religion is the sacred and unquestionable word of ‘god’ passed down from illiterate bronze-aged goat herders.

I’m always amused by that instruction to schools to ‘conduct a COMPULSORY act of worship’ as if faith can be commanded!

I’d like to see all state schools teaching a secular curriculum, though with an understanding of what it means to live an ‘examined life’. This could mean looking at the tenets and principles of organised religion, and to have some understanding of what it means to have a faith; but also to understand that morality need not be based on religion. It is possible to live unselfishly and honourably without a religious faith.

Incidentally, though many Christians opposed the slave trade, they were by no means against imperialism: on the contrary, they saw it as an excellent means of bringing the Gospel to the ‘unenlightened.’

I meant to add (slightly off topic) that the slave trade was exactly that – a trade. The sellers of slaves were the kings and rulers of the African nations who did their deals with the slavers and profited mightily by it. Moreover, many people are not aware that the pirates of North Africa captured ships and made raids on Europe to carry off European slaves to the slavemarkets of Algeria. (See Giles Milton’s, ‘White Gold’ for a fascinating account of the white slave trade.) African slavery was not the oppression of blacks by whites; it was the oppression of the poor and wretched, black and white, by the rich and powerful, also black and white.

Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade was murky enough, but better than many other European countries, and once the abolition act was passed in 1806, the Preventive Squadron of the Royal Navy did sterling work in intercepting slave ships – 165,000 victims were rescued from slave ships by British patrols at the cost of 17,000 seamen’s lives, often from disease.

There is very little difference between christian ideals and humanism other than the supernatural bits. And christianity evolved from judaism, and just to complicate things further, paganism evolved into christianity. We were actually multi-cultural before the word was coined as our practices, based on religion, are a mix of all three.
According to Weber, it was the protestant ethic which brought about capitalism (although the material environment needed to be compatible). I’ve always thought that the King James’ version of the parable of the talents is interpreted as a bias towards capitalism.
42 There is little doubt that the christian missionaries, whether intended or not, propagated the idea of the ‘savage’ and science didn’t do much better, but even science isn’t totally value-free.

@42: “So much for science always being right and proper!”

Prevailing science at any one time is no more than a collection of hypotheses accepted by the community of scientists.

Ptolemaic models of a geocentric universe had been around for centuries before Capernicus and Kepler ventured to suggest heliocentric concepts of the universe. Indeed, the Ptolemaic model was able to yield sufficiently acceptable predictions of the movements of planets in the solar system, eclipses and celestial conjunctions for purposes of marine navigation and astrology.

The fundamental distinction between the prevailing scientific consensus and religion is that the former does not purport to offer eternal and immutable truths whereas the latter does. Scientific hypotheses can be refuted. Scientists no longer subscribe to the Phlogiston theory. The Newtonian model of the universe is now regarded as a special case of Einstein’s model.

Sally

A Catholic religion that was run from Rome, and specialises in keeping the people stupid and poor.

…er, would that be the same Catholic Church that founded most of Europe’s great universities (including Oxford) and whose monks kept alive the learning of classical Greece and Rome and which remains one of the largest providers of education to poor people in the world?

@ 33

I certainly don’t subscribe to this idea of teaching people to follow a faith while they’re in school. If they wish to follow a religion they should do it outside of the classroom.

Don’t you want kids to be taught it’s wrong to steal; that they shouldn’t stab one another with knives; that they shouldn’t have sex behind the bikeshed; that they must stop telling tales; that they should do what mummy and daddy say….Christ, I’m half way through the Ten Commandments already!

“Don’t you want kids to be taught it’s wrong to steal; that they shouldn’t stab one another with knives; that they shouldn’t have sex behind the bikeshed; that they must stop telling tales; that they should do what mummy and daddy say….Christ, I’m half way through the Ten Commandments already!”

I’d prefer it if not raping and murdering were given higher priority than not working on Sundays though

@49: “Don’t you want kids to be taught it’s wrong to steal; that they shouldn’t stab one another with knives . . ”

That is nonsense. As a young teen at school in 1953, I went on an exchange visit to a Lycée in France which, I discovered to my surprise, had no school uniform and where there was no act of worship every morning and no weekly class in RE because education in state schools in France was entirely secular. If parents wanted religious classes for their siblings, they had to make separate arrangements with the local priest for classes outside school hours.

To my amazement, the school also had no corporal punishment. Wednesday afternoons were left free of lessons in case anybody wanted to arrange sports activities although this seldom happened. The Lycée had a good academic record.

I’ve liked this thread, there’s been some interesting angles presented. And unusually for LC the religion-bashing has been tempered and not descended into ad hominem attacks on anyone not agreeing.

Two things come to mind:

A number of LC folk openly abhor all religions equally (sally +shatterface for example), and are unwilling to give up thinking that all religions are equally bad, and unwilling to allow any measure of ‘compare and contrast’ between faiths.

In order to avoid the discomfort of having to rethink that worldview, they are even willing to take a highly inaccurate view of historical fact, on matters of record:

eg Bob B’s advocacy on LC that Christianity is opposed to helping the poor.

Or downplaying the abolition of slavery – which killed a ‘business’ that was as large as today’s UK IT industry! It occurred only after a prolonged fight from the secular, business centric camp -and was a phenomenal achievement driven by christians.

Secondly, it raises the question, given the posters saying they abhor all religions – why do they then actually spend 90% of their criticism only of christianity: and are surprisingly silent on other faiths?
Look back on earlier LC threads on faith schools: where quotes from Muslim primary schools where they say they do no music and no realistic art with their children, and teach them ‘appropriate treatment of genders’: where Sally + shatterface et al are suddenly silent, and have apparently no views or questions on such approaches!