to not allow my child to do a reading in church?

[GooseyLoosey]

Dh and I are atheists. The dcs attend the local school which is C of E (although wholly state funded). There are no alternative non-C of E schools locally.

The school tends towards being very religious and there is a special Easter service in church for the school this week. Ds (5) has been given a reading to do at this service. It includes many "Praise God" and "God is good" type statements.

I don't wish to over react but getting ds to actively participate in an act of worship may be a step too far for me. AIBU to object and to consider telling them to get someone else to do this?

I am a scientist and I teach evolution in a university. There is no scientific support for intelligent design and there are no articles in peer reviewed journals that support intelligent design. What you are saying makes no sense at all.

It's a belief not a theory.

Happy for you to express your beliefs, not to teach beliefs as theories.

I would be very interested to see some links to the research that proves creationism as a theory.

YABU. What does your son want to do?

Gracie, you are confusing people deliberately. The existence of dragons, for example, is "untestable" in that you can never prove 100% that they don't exist. But most sensible people weigh up the (lack of) evidence and there is a consensus that dragons are vastly more likely to be mythological invention than scientific fact.

All the papres suggesting 'evidence' for the universe being created by little green pixies are written by maniacs and peer-reviewd by maniacs. Unfortunately, due to the corrent Government having a high proportion of superstitious bucketheads (one of the reasons I disliked and mistrusted Blair from the very beginning was his evident pride in his irrational beliefs), schools that teach this sort of crap are not only thriving but are being encouraged.

Next time anybody asks why atheists have to get so cross and do down religion at every opportunity I shall point them towards this thread. It's a good example of why it is always so necessary. One dumb idea let loose unchallenged is like one infected patient escaping from an an otherwise sealed-off hospital.

A simple google search by any of you would have yielded hundreds, but nevermind, here we go:
www.arn.org/orpages/or.htm
www.commonsensescience.org/newsletter.html
ww w.creationresearch.org/matters.html

UQD - I have no intention of deliberately confusing anyone. I am just pointing out that it is unreasonable to claim your viewpoint is the only valid one.

Thank you MillyR, although I was looking forward to reading some creationism theory!

None of these links are to scientific, peer reviewed journals.

I can google with the best fo them, but those are hardly scientific journals...

I'm challenging it too UQD, and
I'm no atheist...

It is not enough to claim your viewpoint is valid. You actually have to provide evidence. See above for why the "debate" is not a true one.

It's interesting how we have got to a point in our society where one brand of superstitious nonsense has permeated into the consciousness so deeply that an awful lot of influential people simply don't see it as odd. They are so deeply-embedded within it that stepping back from it and seeing just why it isn't as valid as a scientific theory is actually impossible for these people, and the more one tries to argue it reasonably, the deeper-entrenched they become.

There must be a scientific name for this kind of occurrence...

As ?evidence? that creation or intelligent design is not ?good science,? atheistic evolutionists exult in the fact that the standard peer-reviewed scientific journals do not publish papers that support intelligent design. A couple of sample statements to this effect follow:

?ID [Intelligent Design?KB] advocates complain that their views are rejected out of hand by the scientific establishment, yet they do not play by the normal rules of presenting their views first through scientific conferences and then to peer-reviewed journals and then in textbooks? (Scott, 2006, p. 22).

?Most telling, perhaps, is intelligent design?s near total failure to make any headway in the peer-reviewed publications that are the gateway to scientific success? (Wexler, 2006, p. 94).

The reasoning here is that if creation or intelligent design were scientific, then it would be included in peer-reviewed journals. Since it does not appear in peer-reviewed journals, then it must not be scientific. The problem with this reasoning is the circular process by which papers are accepted for inclusion in such journals. The scientists in authoritative positions have established their own preconceived definition for science. ?To be scientific in our era is to search for solely natural explanations? (Hewlett and Peters, 2006, p. 75, emp. added). Thus, if a paper even hints at something other than a ?natural? explanation, it is rejected as ?unscientific? regardless of the facts or research presented in the paper. Creationists? papers are not allowed in peer-reviewed journals, not because they are poorly written or documented, but because they do not offer ?solely natural explanations.?

boogiewoogie - I think you are being unfair to the OP. Seems to me she is trying extremely hard not to be hypocritical in a bad situation - her child is at a school whose ethos she does not like and she has said that she has no other choice in this.

UnquietDad - I think you are being unfair too. Gracie123 is not the Archbishop of Canterbury and it is ridiculous to say that her views are representative of religious belief in general.

I'm afraid I'm going to bed guys (little one will be up at 6am . Happy to chat more in the morning if the thread hasn't gotten ridiculously long ;)

"Thus, if a paper even hints at something other than a ?natural? explanation, it is rejected as ?unscientific? regardless of the facts or research presented in the paper."

Is anyone else thinking: well, duh?

Provide all the "unnatural" explanations you want. Just be prepared to prove them.

So we've drawn a blank on the scientific journals that support creationism have we?

I can't believe this has become a debate about religion.

The bare facts are that before it was the state's responsibility to educate children, churches used to do it. Many of our great-grandparents would have only learned to read or write because of their local church. When the state made education for children compulsory, the state took over all charity schools. Some of these, however, were on church land, so the Church of England was able to retain a degree of control over them. Nowadays all this means usually is that the Vicar and perhaps one or two members of the Parochial Church Council are on the Board of Governors, the Vicar will come to church to take assemblies once a week and major Christian festivals are celebrated by the school in the Church building.

If a parent is not happy with this level of Christian influence in their child's life, then they can opt out. Their child can sit with a colouring book when the rest of the school go to assembly/church.

I cannot see what the problem is.

Except that maybe the OP wishes to exclude her child from something without her child feeling excluded.

Ah now these threads always become arguments about religion

I think we've got to the point of the creationists stamping their feet because the Big Nasty Scientific Journals won't print their unsupported, irrational mumbo-jumbo. Waaaah, etc.

It's interesting - if a little scary - to try and think oneself into a mindset that goes: "My paper is scientific. They won't print my paper. Therefore they are not a properly scientific journal."

It's along the lines of those people (with whom I am all too familiar, sadly) who think fiction publishing is a vast conspiracy designed to prevent "unusual, quirky, different" voices from outside the mainstream from being heard, and that their work isn't published because it is too "challenging." Yeah, right.

That is very much not always the case BalloonSlayer. I think it depends entirely upon the discretion of the head, and his/her board of governors. There are many schools around like the one you describe, but also many like the school we were forced (no other word for it I'm afraid) to send our little boy to, where the religious aspect is overt and pervasive. Sitting out of assembly (which I would have been loathed to choose on his behalf, as assembly is obviously an important community occasion), would not have cut it.

Ballonslayer - but the point, which is always missed, is, why should the onus be on the non-Christian parent to "opt out"? Why should they be faced with that decision? Religion, if you wish to practise it, should be something you do totally separately from your child's education - like supporting your football team or watching Star Trek or line-dancing.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - no other kind of pressure group has that degree of influence over the education system.

The fact that it can have - and that people who think it shouldn't do are somehow seen as bizarre aberrations in some quarters - is an indication of how far the irrational and absurd and superstitious has become "normalised".

UQD: re the Fiction Publishing Conspiracy loons... I share your pain/irritation but especially hate the likes of Minerva Press and the rest of the vanity publishers who exploit these silly sods so brutally - at least the likes of Lulu.com don't promise them any more than what they will get for their money. The music industry is riddled with similar loons, BTW. Many of whom work for the music press...

I couldn't resist checking my computer one last time (but now I really am going to switch it off and go to bed ).

UQD, you are being really rather rude and unfair, and I'm really having to bite my tongue when replying to some of your posts.

I'm not saying anyone is unscientific, I'm saying the criteria for a 'scientific' journal makes it impossible (no matter how much evidence you provide) to print anything that suggests a creator. Any form of god is by nature supernatural (e.g. outside our natural understanding) so no matter what evidence is produced the conclusion will be that it points to something un-natural and therefore not scientific.

To be honest, I'm not a scientist, and I'm being asked to defend a view point, when I all I wanted to say was that equal rights should be given to all view points. I am no expert in intelligent design, or science in general, but that doesn't mean that nobody is and I've read enough to know that there are arguments for both sides. I'm willing to bet that you have never read a single creation focused science article, let alone journal.

Right. I'm actually going to bed.

Hmm, yes, I'm now wondering how many Creationist journals are actually published at the writers' expense. Creationist vanity press industry!

Oh, no, hang on - that would never happen, because there are no religious zealots with more money than sense.

As you were.

[straightface]