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.

Grey, I still don't understand why you are so wound up that people subscribe to a religious belief? Lots of people have a religious belief and don't force it on others. If they are not doing you any harm, then leave them alone. I can't say that my mum's belief in God hurts me or mine at all, so I let her get on with it. I even give her difficult questions to ask at the various house groups she goes to at her church.

Greyriverside (and possibly Unquiet Dad) I think you have a bizarrely specific idea of god and therefore of religious belief. Your posts read as though you once saw a Ladybird book on God featuring a bearded man in the clouds and now believe that this is the essence of all faith.

Religious belief encompasses a huge range of viewpoints, from very particular, literally understood stories to very general and abstract ideas of "god" as simply the totality of human consciousness or as an ideal "good" to which we might aspire, with scriptures of various faiths being culturally specific accounts of the attempt to realise this.

The thing that you are arguing against is not religion, it is your very particular and cartoon-like idea of what religion is - as evidenced by the 7 foot banana analogy. Which is fine, but I think we should be clear about it.

'Imaginary friend' is actually a pretty correct description of belief in 'God'.

I think you're being slightly patronising there, Iorek. But you make the point that it's worth clarifying what we mean.

When I talk about God I mean specifically the Judeo-Christian God as portrayed in the Bible. With all the things he can and could supposedly do.

Just to clarify, this is where I stand. I believe Jesus Christ was a historical figure, and that much of what he said made a lot of sense. I just don't believe he was the son of "God", because I don't believe there is any evidence for a thing called "God". I don't believe his words were divinely inspired and, indeed, don't believe there is any such thing as "the divine".

Obviously you can have a notion of "an ideal good to which we all aspire" and this is no bad thing, but it ain't "God" in my sense, because there is nothing divine or supernatural about it - it's actually a very Humanist notion.

Oh well, and unquietDad has run out of so many arguement that he starts critizing my spelling.

I never realised how much people like scaryteacher had their work cut out. If her lessons help to promote greater understanding and friendship between different groups of people then her subject is definately worth a place in the school curriculum.

I think that experts on world religion are needed to teach RE. An English or History teacher just simply doesn't have the subject knowledge at secondary level.

You would be surprised how many schools farm out their RE teaching to non-specialists. Conversely, I've also taught History and Geography at KS3 (I do have A level history though, and I did some at degree level too, but had not done geog since I was 14). It's funny how soon I learnt about grid referencing when I had to teach it, as I'd been avoiding it for years!

Some of the discussions I've had with the sixth form and the year 11s have sounded like this one, and it's great I think, that people are engaging with the subject and discussing religion. We live in a multifaith society, and we have the right to choose to believe or not. However, I think that care needs to be taken in how we express our opinions about the beliefs of others. For some (and I paraphrase Schleiermacher here), God is the ground of their being, and just as we find mockery of our deeply held beliefs and convictions hard to take, so do they.

I can get so far with the idea of God, but I can't personally get past the problem of evil; that if God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent, why does shit happen, and why does it happen to kids? I know the theodicies and the free will defence are supposed to answer this, but for me they don't cut it; and yes, I do explain this to my students so they know precisely where I'm coming from.

Teaching RE is fun, especially explaining the idea of the Trinity with a toblerone (but only a milk chocolate one), and as there may be nut allergies, I eat it! (The kids may get chocolate buttons though).

I am forever puzzled by this common Christian view that the God of Quran is different than the God of the Bible. It is so elementary.

What exactly does your RE teach?

I still don't get 'the Trinity'. Sounds like the work of some pretty insistent cognitive dissonance to me - Jesus is God, but he's also God's son, and there's also something called 'Holy Spirit' (God's ghost?) that impregnated Mary, nevermind her husband, and oh did we mention she was a virgin?

Some women do have rather strong & flexible hymens that don't break until childbirth, so I understand she would appear to be a virgin with her intact hymen, but still... Who on earth can possibly believe a married & pregnant woman to be a virgin impregnated by God?

I understand the official party line. I just don't get how otherwise reasonable adults can believe it.

You're not really trying are you, Cote.

Fortunately not all religious people are this literal-minded. Some are of course. Evidently so are some atheists.

OK, one way to look at it is that God is like the summit of a mountain. There are many different paths to the summit (the different religions) and they will all choose different approaches to the summit. The summit is still the one place though.

For the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam it goes as follows: Jews believe in the oneness or unity of God. Muslims believe that there is no God but God (similar to the oneness of God), and Christian believe in one God, but that God can present himself (yes, patriarchal language I know) in different ways.

(Sikhism is also monotheistic, and it can be argued that Hinduism is as well.)

For instance, I am me, but I am a mum, a daughter, a wife, a sister, a friend, a colleague, a teacher, an aunt, a grand daughter, a daughter in law, a student etc. These things are only facets of the entire me. The all combine to make the whole. The Trinity can be viewed in the same way, God (for Christians) is the sum of these parts. It's like toblerone - take away any of the elements of the toblerone, and it wouldn't be toblerone any more.

As for the Virgin Birth, that is about marking Jesus as special for Christians.(however, some consider that the translation of the word in the gospel is wrong, Mary was referred to as a young girl). I don't suppose many Buddhists today would subscribe to the belief that Siddhartha's mum was impregnated by an elephant in a dream; the point was to underline that he would become a special person.

A friend of mine has just become pregnant by AID, and hasn't had sex as she doesn't have a man......

What do you mean what does my RE teach Cote? The syllabus is the answer.

Again, Cote - why get so het up about what people choose to believe? People aren't having a go at you about being an atheist, any more than they are taking pot shots at me for my agnosticism, so leave the theists to get one with it. They aren't hurting you, or anyone else.

I also meant to say that as far as I understand it, God is both transcendent (God the father) and immanent (the Son, and the Holy Spirit). When Jesus ascended into heaven, to comfort those left behind, God sent the Holy Spirit down to inspire and guide the disciples. Christians believe that the Holy Spirit moves and guides them today.

I am perfectly aware that the God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the same, and that those religions are people of the book. I think the majority of believers in those religions are aware that they share a God too.

As I said earlier, I have problems with people who tell me imaginary numbers exist, but I don't go around ridiculing their belief.

I think all of you who want RE teaching taken out of school, work for Ed Balls, and have been briefed to cut the number of teachers and so reduce the salaries bill.

There's a difference between "running out of" arguments and "having to repeat the same thing over and over again." I often find myself doing the latter.

Cote - that's why they call it faith...

Iorek - I had no education whatsoever on Christianity, having grown up in a Muslim country, so don't feel it is a sign of my intellectual shortcomings that I don't understand your 'trinity'.

Do explain, though, if you don't mind. I would be interested to hear what it really refers to (if I have misunderstood, which is quite possible).

Ach, I'm sick, and I wanted to avoid this thread, but the Trinity thing was mentioned earlier when I was ont' thread actively, so I'll have a go.

The mainstream Christian belief about the Trinity is that there is but one God, who exists eternally in three different persons. So, it's kind of like the difference between a long-distance view and a birds-eye view.

There is only one being called Yahweh - that's the long view. He has given us the privelege in the Greek Scriptures (although there are foreshadowings in the Hebrew scriptures) of revealing Himself as three distinct persons - The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. So, it's like being able to see the 'inner workings' of God, if you like.

It's not three seperate gods, that's polytheism, it's not one god with three manifestations, that's modalism, it's not one god and his lesser god, which is arianism.

Trinity is just a nice easy theological short-hand word to describe what is presented in the Greek scriptures, in scriptures like John 1:1 and Acts 20:28 and so on.

Now, to be fair again, this is not the belief of Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter Day Saints (Mormons), Unitarian christians, Oneness pentecostals and a number of other slightly-out-of-mainstream groups that go under the broad 'Christian' banner.

From my perspective, it is manifestly not the same God as the Muslims worship, because they themselves would call it heresy to describe God in those terms. And I can be quite clear that I don't worship God as the Muslims believe Him to be, because I believe that it is possible for God to enter into His own creation. I am certain that no Muslim would be happy to call my god, God, because I worship Jesus Christ, which is something abhorrent to them.

scaryteacher - I don't know what 'het up' means, but I assure you people's beliefs don't upset or bother me at all. I am merely curious about them and would like to understand what/why and even how they believe in these things.

"I have problems with people who tell me imaginary numbers exist, but I don't go around ridiculing their belief."

The difference is that if you were to spend some time learning related part of mathematics, work the numbers, solve the problems, you would understand 'imaginary numbers'. Because they are part of the logical and rational framework we use to solve real-world problems called 'Mathematics'.

There is no amount of logical explanation that can explain belief in God, not to mention the myriad details of religion. Apparently, you need to have 'faith', and only then things become clearer .

"I think all of you who want RE teaching taken out of school"

I think RE is a great idea. Once kids are old enough to think for themselves and decide whether something is believable and contradict what they don't. Say, age 9-10, minimum.

CoteDAzur,

You could go to a faith school and attend church every Sunday and still not understand the Trinity. Infact I am sure that the Pope does not fully understand the Trinity.

Anyway I think that children should be introduced to the notion that there are a range of relgions as soon as possible.

Otherwise the only religion that the know is what their parents tell them. Ie. if mum says there is no god then there must be no God. Knowing that lots of people believe different things shows to children at an early that life is full of contradicting views.

My son had it sussed that Father Christmas did not exist at the age of five. Many children can decide whether something is believable or not long before 9 or 10.

Infact interesting and varied high quality RE lessons allows children to question and form their own beliefs.

Kay - Thank you for that explanation. That was clearer than anything else I heard until know.

Again, making sure everyone here understands I don't believe in what I am about to write and don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities, here is something about Islam that you might find interesting in this context:

As I said before, the God of Islam is very clear that it is the same God that sent Judaism and Christianity to people. He also clearly says that he sent Christianity with Jesus Christ once it became clear that Judaism was distorted beyond recognition, and he sent Islam through Mohammad after Christianity had veered off the 'true path'.

Now, would it not be possible that it is indeed the same God who sent the three books (as He says), and the difference in message is due to the distortions over the centuries? If so, then the stories about the trinity, virgin birth, divinity of Christ, etc could be the distortions in question. Mohammad's Islam went to extremes to avoid any worship of him, banning any depictions of him whatsoever. (Which was later distorted into 'no human depictions whatsoever', but such is the way things change/are distorted over time)

Do take a look at the parts of Quran that talk about characters in Christianity. Like the whole chapter on Mary. It would be interesting to see how you compare/contrast them with the Bible.

ReallyTired - If nobody (incl. Pope) doesn't understand 'holy trinity', is it not possible that the whole concept just doesn't make sense?

"My son had it sussed that Father Christmas did not exist at the age of five"

Because he realized that adults don't really believe in Santa. If you and other adults aroud him really believed in Santa Claus, so would your 5 year old.

Cote, I wasn't for a moment suggesting that you should know anything about the Trinity. But your position seemed to be that the reason you didn't understand it was not because it was outside your range of cultural references, but because it was an inherently ludicrous concept. It may well be, but until you've made some effort to understand, it is hardly deserving of your contempt.

Religion is not science. It tells us nothing about the material world. Religion is a cultural phenomenon born of the human desire to understand the purpose of its own existence and to act accordingly. It is unsurprising that this should result in such massive variations of belief, but this doesn't invalidate the attempt.

It depends how you define santa.
If you define santa as 'a person who gives secretly' then santa is real, and I certainly get a sockfull from I'm not sure where every christmas!

I am having another go of wading through reading the god delusion now because I never finished it. I'm trying to read it with an open mind to atheism. I do see Richard Dawkins as having alot in common with other preachers! He does want to convert people! And we probably need this kind of thinking now. It is good to question and challenge everything I think.

I watched an interesting programme on tv a few years ago about near death experiences and they were trying to find some evidence. Iirc, Eventually they did find a woman who was clinically dead for an hour having an operation on her brain and she was electrocuted back to life and had 'memories' of what she was doing in that hour which I think did include her conversing with a dead uncle or something and having information about her operation that suggested she had seen what they were doing from outside her body...And I remember someone talking about their theory that our brains are like a transmitter for our consciousness...or something must try and find that, I'm so full of vague information!

Also recently saw a stephen Hawking documentary...very abstract, talking about there being about 11 other dimensions existing alongside ours...anyone see that? My small brain nearly exploded trying to get my head round that one was good.

Religion has always tried to explain real things but has invariably been totally and utterly wrong. I do wonder why people keep faith in gods who have always proved so stupid. I think as a way of explaining the so-called purpose of humanity is it equally idiotic, frankly.

Had to tell my 5 year old that dr who wasn't real the other day though I couldn't wriggle out of that one! ooh I'd love to believe in Dr Who!
(turns serious thread into senseless chatter....)

Cote, I completely understand the familial relationship between the big three monotheistic faiths. Wouldn't dispute that at all.

And I agree with you that it's a perfectly straightforward belief of the Muslim that, if the previous revelations of the one God had become corrupted, it would make sense to follow the last, unchanged version of those revelations.

But, in all honesty, two things prevent me from subscribing to that belief (clearly, otherwise, I'd be a Muslim!) The first, and probably most significant on a number of levels, is that there is no evidence at all that the early beliefs of the church have been distorted over time. Yes, there are certain beliefs that I would reject that have crept in to different Christian denominations. But the basic Christian message as presented in the Greek scriptures, is attested to by some pretty significant manuscript evidence, and it just doesn't change over centuries.

The other reason is that, having read the Quran, I'm not that impressed by the Jesus presented in it. He seems to be merely a cipher to say 'what Christians believe is in error', and there is a bit that seems to misunderstand the Trinity teaching, by suggesting that Christians believe Mary is part of the Trinity (don't have the refs. to hand, but will look them up if you'd like, although my friend has my copy of the Quran at the moment).
It's like Muhammad didn't have access to the bible himself, saw the multitude of heretical christian sects that were around him at the time, and thought they represented Christianity accurately (and who can blame him!), and the Quran reflects that.

Now, I know that the Quran is considered a completely divine product, sent down as messages through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad to pass on, exactly as he received it. But if that was the case, surely it would present my beliefs accurately, even if only to tell me I was wrong?

oo..ooo.. thread has turned to talk of Dr Who while I've been pondering inscripturation...