to think that some non-religious parents over-react just a teensy-weensy bit when their children are exposed to religion in the most benign form?

[SueBarooeeooeeooooo]

s'ok if I am. But threads complaining about this sort of thing are a regular MN feature, and I can't help thinking that some parents seem tremendously precious about it. We're Christians and it often comes up that not everyone believes the way we do, and I talk to my children about it and they wander off and scribble on the lounge walls again.

I've seen people complaining about Christian mums and tots groups, simple 'thankyou' prayers and christian charities. I am 100% ok with you bringing your children up atheist, theist, or chocolate-worshipping. Honestly, if I whipped myself up into a panic over every mention of different beliefs or none that my children encounter, I'd never get anything done.

(Please note, this is not a church schools whinge, I'm against selection on religious grounds.)

I would expect a parent to discuss the issue with their children, no matter how young - not to write it off as bollocks.

This thread is a real eye opener. It's extraordinary that schools can foister religion onto children. It's a personal family matter and has nothing to do with the state and therefore with state education.

Suebaroo: well it might be a problem if people were demanding the right to be able to leap tall buildings with a single bound, or stick their heads right up their own bottoms or something. But women have every ability necessary to become elders in an organisaion, and that they are being barred from this due to whatever superstitious old cock is given as the reason, is unhealthy and unacceptable discrimination.

Hello! Have I contributed to this thread yet or not?

ExplosiveScienceT: FFS, a christian bias positive? What's so positive about teaching kids that they ought to be ashamed of their bodies, that women and gay men are inferior, and that the Jews killed the Messiah? Let alone all the imaginary-friend rubbish.

OI! I am the imaginary friend!

The values that it's good for children to be taught - kindness, fairness, compassion etc - are not exclusively religious values and they are certainly not exclusively christian values. And there are people active in trying to get the waste of time that is a daily act of worship of imaginary beings removed from schools' obligations (while not forbidding it to those independent schools where adherence to the nonsense of one or other supersition brands is part of the deal).

blimey, it's all kicked off!
can't really post till modnay but..

madamez - so mysterious and exciting! who are these active people?
(or is it like fight club? or a 'if i tell you i have to kill you' situation?)

Batty m'dear, check out the British Humanist Association

Someone has obviously been feeding you nonsense, Madamnez.

what do people think of this?

The whole issue of religion being fostered on our children in schools is abhorrent - Miss X, whom small children look up to and have been told by us to trust and believe, giving them factual, academic knowledge on the one hand and then in the next breath exhorting them to pray to a non-existent sky fairy under the tenets of 2000-year old superstitions... thanking this invisible imaginary being for our food, the weather... for creating the earth... arrrrgh, it makes me want to stick my head in a bucket.

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that any adult who has decided all this mumbo-jumbo must be true will be swayed by anything any atheist says into taking a step back and thinking 'hang on a minute.. it IS all a load of codswalloppy mumbo-jumbo, isn't it? we KNOW what makes the sun appear to move across the sky these days, no need to invent an Apollo and a chariot,' no, alas, one must wait and hope the light dawns of its own accord, but I do think children should in no circumstances be exposed to it in school, where they are sent to learn facts and not have matters of faith presented to them as just another truth alongside 2+2=4.

That is so incredible disrespectful, and exactly the kind of attitude that I would never want any child exposed to.

it's not something I would type but tbh it is no more disrespectful to you than your view is to others (myself included) and your complete lack of comprehension of this is why you will never understand why people who don't believe don't want their child to be taught about religion as a truth rather than a belief.

Of course I understand what it means to have no faith. I don't think I have ever said anything to undermine this position. All I've done is to give my view that there is a great over-reaction to exposure to faith.

If I have come across as disrespecting your values, then please accept my apologies.

Frankly, no more disrespectful than the complete disregard for my point of view that I have experience at times! At one point you suggested, Explosive, that schools had to teach children within a Christian framework because parents were failing to give them a moral compass. You also told me that I didn't have to be happy with it - I just had to put up with it. I think it's a bit late for you to becoame a sensitive flower now!

I didn't say anything about morals, Seeker. I was talking about spirituality.

Short of lobbying parliament for the next 20 years, then yes you do have to put up with it!

just wanted to pick up on scienceteachers comment that christian/non christian children are't treated differently- earlier on in this thread I gave some examples which would prove a different angle- at a community primary school too- teachers telling parents they ought to be married, that muslims are stupid, compelled to write Jesus is alive... we were marked when we complained- I'm sure it compromised our kids position there. Teachers are human beings, they do have bias, we spent time feeling we had to tread carefully after our first questioning for the sake of our children.

oenophile, I couldn't agree more.

well said oenophile

northern refugee it is indeed very disrespectful and rather arrogant [and rude] to say that Muslims are stupid. But that is exactly what madamez and oenophile are saying about Christians [oh yes, about all religions, bet you wouldn't dare talk about another faith in this manner]. This was a very interesting and balanced [and intellectually stimulating] thread until recently. I find it odd that people who obviously have not read the thread come steaming in without a clue about Christianity with a startling arrogance. Let me just reiterate before you jump down my throat calling me a superstitious idiot that I am agnostic and agree that secular schools are a good idea. I do however know bit about theology and Bible. And can I just say that the Jews killing Christ is a complete misconception. The point about Christ's own people colluding in his death [as well as the Romans] is that we today would do the same thing. It is a point made about human beings in general, certainly not about Jews. Christ was a Jew for crying out loud, and so were his disciples.

I am wasting my breath here but Christ was neither misogynistic nor against homsosexuality. Any slight investigation into theology would throw that up. But that doesn't suit your rather conveniently cartoon version of Christianity.

I would also add that the problem with all relgions and their philopsophical alternatives is the level of intelligence of the specific person involved. Therefore you can get very irritating, intellectually limited and, most importantly blinkered and self righteous versions of of all religions, and of athiesm. As seen on this thread.

[i mean as seen on this thread by examples of idiotic teachers at school and by a few of the athiest comments. going now!]