To think that religous education should be complusory for EVERYONE

[ReallyTired]

I think that everyone should learn about ALL the major relgions in the world, whether they are Christian, Muslim, Buddist, Hindu, or Athesist or agnostic.

However I think that religous education should be taught as "This is what Christians believe" rather than "This is what WE believe". Children should not be subjected to attempts to convert them to different relgions, but they need to understand and tolerate difference. Ie. Learn that there are times that we should agree to disagree.

A basic knowledge of the five world's major relgions helps children understand current affairs, history and avoid offending people from other cultures to themselves.

If parents want their children brought up as a Christian, Muslim, athesist or pagan then they can take their children to church/ Temple/ Mosque out of school hours.

I like the assemblies at the the special school I work at. They have no relgious songs, but the school has fun singing pop songs. Although the songs are non religous they have lyrics encouraging good behaviour.
All the children are included and gain from the experience.

UQD, I knew you were past the "proof" stage

nooka, my comment was a reply to the following post by spero
15:36:11
"But the ones who seem to get REALLY steamed up, to the extent that they will seek to physically hurt those who don't agree with them are, I'm afraid, the religious"

Again it must be my English, but I think this comment says explicitly that the religious people want to harm others who don't agree with them.

spero, for me anybody who doesn't harm others is worthy of respect and tolerance. I tend to consider the value of individuals, and not of groups as defined by sex, religion, nationality or age. And that is what I am trying to teach dd.
Re "delusional" I think I would use the word delusional too, but to describe people who think being in a TV show is the same as being "talented" or those who think that the world owes them a living.
And that is it.

You can/should respect someones right to believe whatever they want. You absolutely don't have to respect the belief itself.

Personally I think that God reveals himself/ herself in a range of mysterious ways.

Our Indian friends told me that they saw god rather like a Jigsaw. For them all their small gods were like lots of pieces of jigsaws where as the mono theist religions saw God as being the whole jigsaw.

I quite like the idea of seeing God as the life force in everything rather than as an independent being who might throw thunderflashes at naughty humans. Our cat is definately not a robot and science does not explain her stroppy behaviour. Science does not yet explain moggy or even human conciousness.

Prehaps before thinking of someone as being a theist, an atheist or even an agnostic its worth deciding what your definination of god is.

Hmmm, do you need to have something properly "defined" in that way before you decide you don't believe in it? I only have the vaguest notion of what fairies are, but I'm pretty sure I don't believe in them.

You can be nice to actual people but still think their the fundamentals of their beliefs are just plain wrong, sometimes ludicrous, and worse, sometimes absolutely wicked and bad. I certainly don't 'respect', for example, the Islamic belief that a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's in a court of law. I absolutely despise it and do not 'tolerate' it. Any more than I would tolerate the Afrikaner church's belief in the inferiority of black people. Does anyone (aside from Tom 'Fruitloop' Cruise respect Scientology, with its made-up (for a bet!)dogma about Martian Bishops with Giant Steamrollers? Really?

re the respect thing. Luckily religion isn't all there is about a person. I have a friend I respect for their intelligence, kindness, sense of fun. I still think their staunch belief in astrology is utter bollocks, and they know it. We just choose not to discuss it much!

Look at these pages to find out about some unsavoury religious practices.

www.mexicolore.co.uk/index.php?one=azt&two=god

The children at the school I work at had a videoconference by mexiicolore and it was fanastic. What was frightening was how advanced the aztec civilisation was, yet the tore the hearts out of small children as sacrifices.

They also dilibereately made the children cry by explaining in detail what was going to happen to them. If the child was too young to understand that they were going to be brutally murdered then the pulled the child's finger nails out to achieve the affect of making the child cry. It was believed that the children's crying made the rains come.

www.mexicolore.co.uk/index.php?one=azt&two=god&tab=two&id=316

Yet this same civilisation had amazing art and engineering.

In someways the fact that religion can be so dangerous, I think is a reason to cover it in schools. Although worship of the aztec gods as ceased there are plenty of loony cults in the world that do other slightly less hideous things.

Yes, absolutely all this awful stuff is great at secondary school, but clearly unsuitable for young children. Which means teaching about religion in primary is closer to indoctrination, as it tells children religion is good and moral, and simply cannot describe the ever-present nasty side, as it is just far too horrible.

ReallyTired, you wrote "Our cat is definately not a robot and science does not explain her stroppy behaviour. Science does not yet explain moggy or even human conciousness."

The key word here is 'yet' (though actually I would disagree, I think a great deal of consciousness is explained by science). The difference between the rational, scientific approach and the religious 'spiritual' approach, is that the former say, 'we don't understand that yet. So let's try' and the latter say, 'We don't understand it, so we'll just call it a mystery and not try'.
The Aztecs didn't understand how the sun rose in the morning. That didn't mean is was an arcane mystery, it just meant they didn't understand it yet. If they'd realised that, instead of being so spiritual, maybe fewer children would have been tortured.

Sweenytodd, most of what I want to say has been covered by others above. But I need to clarify something.

When I speak of you not being able to prove your gods exist I don't just mean "prove it to me"

Consider this.

I have a coffee on my desk. I can't prove it to you, but I know that is true because I can see it. If you denied I had coffee then I could smugly say "I can't prove it to you, but I know I have"

This is what you're saying to me yes?

But you don't even have any reason to think that gods exist. There is no 'coffee on your desk' to look at. All you have is a feeling and a hope. Against that is the fact that millions of people 'feel and hope' that their god exists too and theirs is incompatible with yours. That is proof that the feelings are unreliable right there.

I don't offer this proof that your feelings that god exists are false. Your fellow religionists from all those other religions do that.

Despite this I have no plans to ban you having these feelings or believing in them. All I ask is that believers stop trying to impose them on our kids.

Yes, and your feelings are real enough, your hope etc. But the fact that your feelings are real feelings does not mean that any gods are real. Feelings & emotions aren't proof of anything, except your own emotions.

Greyriverside,

Would you want your kids to watch a video conference by Mexicolore, provided that they are secondary school age? (In the case of the school I work at the children were 15 year olds with learning difficulites) The video conference was done during an RE lesson.

The good and the bad sides of the aztecs were presented and the children were able to see film of relics that are in Mexico. It was a fanastic experience. It is very hard for a child with major special needs to go to Mexico and see these things so isn't great that they can see things like temples by video conference.

What I don't understand is why an athetist would want to pull their 15 year old child out of such an experience. I agree that I would not want my six year old son sitting in the video conference.

I don't want religious instruction. But do you object to factually presented education about different religions. I find the idea of converting children hideous.

At primary school level I think RE should be about an appreciation of different cultures. Its enough for a child to learn that not everyone celebrates christmas and that other religions have their festivals.

My son has been at a secular primary school for two years and he knows more about other religions than I ever did at his age.

He wants to join the hari Krishnas as he has heard that they have an excellent adventure playground near Watford. As he gets older he will learn that there is more to Hari Krishnas than there adventure playground.

And Spero is right. There are lots of people who think they have the right to kill others because of their religion. Does 9/11 mean anything to you? Of course religion and politics are intertwined, but there are plenty of Muslim clerics and followers who think that people who aren't Muslim deserve to die, and that anyone who changes their religion from Muslim to anything else also deserve to die. Of course this doesn't apply to all religious people. That would be a silly thing to say, and nobody's saying it, but it does apply to some.

ReallyTired, the aztecs are part of history so a perfectly valid part of history lessons.

In addition if older kids studied 'current affairs' or something that might include wars, international relations and religion. If it happens to come up then that is fine.

But that's not really it is it. We're talking about presenting religion as something real.

No one is insisting on presenting father christmas as a real person and teaching us not to disrespect him, but god/s are special because those advocating this believe they are real.

To turn it around would you be perfectly happy if they spent an hour on fairies and if not, why not?

grey i don't follow you. How is the existence of other religions prove me wrong or prove of the non-existence of God? That does not prove anything regarding the existence of God. At most, it proves men have many ways of worshipping or believing.
I may not have proof but I have reasons to believe, although these may not apply to you.
In other words, how do you know there is no coffee on my desk to look at?
Oh and thank you so mcuh for not having plans of banning my feelings or beliefs. Thank you thank you, we're not worthy

Greyriverside,

I think you have gone off on a tangent from my orginal thread. I never suggested presenting religions as we believe. I think that religions should be presented as X group of people believe Y and this is why they do Z.

I got into lots of trouble last Christmas for saying that my five year old did not beleive in father christmas. MMHQ even changed the thread title as not to upset believers.

Read my post again.

For the benefit of others reading this later I don't say that other religions prove yours doesn't exist. I point out that other religious people also have these feelings that their god exists. I am sure they are just as sincere in thinking that those feelings are from their goddess.

Since their feelings contradict yours this proves (only) that feelings are not reliable enough to present as proof on their own.

ReallyTired, if we put you in charge of it perhaps it could be presented carefully, but in practice...

Still although I respect your intent, what would you think about a lesson devoted to those people who believe in fairies?

Well, I wouldn't mind a lesson on people who believe in faires. Many pagans, and those who believe in Anthroposophy believe in faires.

Prehaps a lesson on why Anthroposophist believe in faires, gnomes, pixes of spites could be very interesting. Prehaps someone from the local steiner school could be brought in to explain why Anthroposophists believe in faires.

Thanks for suggesting that I should be in charge of RE education, but I think that scaryteacher would be more suited to the job.

i am truly lost now. But who is saying that feelings are a proof of God?

"We're talking about presenting religion as something real"
Is it not?? Gee, I am hallucinating now.

Sweeney Todd, somebody posted (this thread is getting long) that the fact that lots of people believe in gods means there is (at least) 'evidence' of his/her/their existence. But belief in something you cannot see, hear or feel or communicate with is just a feeling, not evidence that something exists.

OK, religion is real, but it isn't TRUE.
As for inviting in Anthroposphists - great! Let's invite a lot of white supremacists who believe in gnomes under the earth to schools. What a totally brilliant idea. Gosh, that would be worth squeezing out literacy and numeracy for

Thanks for the vote of confidence RT, I'd love to be in charge of RE.

Grey, you say that 'Despite this I have no plans to ban you having these feelings or believing in them. All I ask is that believers stop trying to impose them on our kids.' It is not the place of RE teachers to impose any beliefs on students. What we do is for instance in Islam is look at: where it originated, some of the stories surrounding how Muhammed became the prophet, the Five Pillars and how these work for Muslims in their daily lives, what the Qu'ran means to them, how they find moral guidance, what their approach may be to abortion, euthanasia, contraception, we look at the idea of jihad in both meanings of the word, why there are Sunni and Shia muslims, what is halal and haram. I also use the same approach for Judaism, Hinduism, Bhuddism, and Christianity. In Cornwall Sikhism is taught at KS2, so I haven't taught that.

The syllabus at KS3 is set by the local SACRE (Standing Advisory Council for RE), and will reflect the mix of religions locally, so you will find Sikhism being taught more perhaps in Birmingham secondary schools, than in Cornish ones. There is more Islam taught in the Plymouth syllabus than in the Cornish one.

At KS4, we follow the exam syllabus and these can be seen on the exam board websites. Although we look at issues from the standpoint of two major religions, I also teach it from the secular point of view, so we look at the ethics of abortion, euthanasia, just war, genetic engineering etc, as I put in an earlier post.

Many of the RE teachers I know are either agnostics or atheists, so we have no drum to bang and are not in the business of promoting belief. We teach an academic subject in a professional way and I am beginning to be offended by the imputation that we don't. I don't attack your professional integrity, so don't attack mine.

It's interesting what we have problems with...some have problems with people believing in a deity (or imaginary friend); I have huge problems with the concept of imaginary numbers, but it doesn't mean I don't want maths taught in schools.