Church of England wants better RE

[MuswellHillDad]

"Church of England attacks Michael Gove over state of religious education"

www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/05/church-attacks-gove-religious-education-schools

As an atheist, I'm delighted that RE is being squashed out of the curriculum and that kids leave school seeing religion as a "mystery".

Why can't churches keep out of school? I don't want Scientologists there or the Pope.

Discuss

[MuswellHillDad]

People. Laws came from people that collectively agreed it served their purpose and agreed to be bound by them. The fact that those people may have been religious is relevant but wouldn't those laws come about in some form anyway? Or is a secular society anarchy?

[RainierWolfcastle]

no but to have a kind of tabula rasa approach where you dont try and teach where these came from is a bit... extreme.

Your issue is ( I think ) that you dont realise that RS is NOT instruction as French in school isn't trying to make people French.

Until you sit in a lesson and look at a Scheme of work from the teachers point of view I dont think you will get this.

[MuswellHillDad]

Plus, how much of the Philosophy of Religious thinkers is actually standing on the shoulders of Greek giants?

[niminypiminy]

Hm. I just had a look at the National Secular Society web site. Funnily enough their latest campaign is ... a reform of RE, dispersing the subject matter across various curriculum areas, and casting RE as a form of indoctrination.

Exactly what MuswellHillDad is saying! Can I ask, MuswellHillDad, whether you are a member of the NSS? Because I think it would be, um, ethical to say where you are coming from on this.

[MuswellHillDad]

Do you know what? I'm loving this thread. I hope my constant twisting and turning isn't putting people off but I feel like I'm learning and developing as I read others point of view and debates.

[niminypiminy]

Little of the philosophy of religious thinkers is standing on the shoulders of Ancient Greek giants -- but I guess you would have to know something about the history of religion to know that.

[MuswellHillDad]

I'm not a member of the NSS, nor had I seen that campaign. It might be that the Ofsted comment and the campaign are linked though.

I have avoided any kind of secular or atheist societies quite deliberately. I am put off by the aggressive approach they take. That said, I clearly agree with many public figures (Hitchens, Dawkins).

I did go to the Sunday Assembly a few weeks back to see if I could get into "Group atheism" but it felt too "churchy" for my liking.

[ErrolTheDragon]

plus most of the legal system has its basis in the Judeo Christian tradition

does it though? Civilizations from the Sumerians on have had legal systems which covered matters which we might consider 'moral' but also the more practical (tax etc). I'm not an expert but I thought some of our legal system (for instance being tried by a jury of your peers) stemmed from the Vikings.

[niminypiminy]

Ok fair enough

[Catmint]

Ethics, morality, cultural difference, religious education. Yes to all of those, I think they're all very important frameworks for thinking about the world and our place in it.( as long as it is done well and without dogma).

Assemblies with mandatory religious content? no! No! A thousand times No! I HATE it!

[MuswellHillDad]

Niminypiminy

{reaches for copy of History of Western Philosophy}

I'll get back to you on the Greek shoulders thing.

[ErrolTheDragon]

Here is the NSS's comments on the Ofsted report.

This is the campaign alluded to, I assume - I'm not sure niminy quite represented it correctly - the 'dispersal' was in addition to a reformulated 'RE'.


Seems a pretty reasonable proposal to me - and not 'aggressive'. (Though perhaps faith groups defensive of a privileged position might not agree)

[pointythings]

A lot of Christian tradition is directly nicked from its pagan predecessors. It's impossible to determine exactly where in human evolution human morality begins - but at the heart of it all having a society with laws and rules that benefit the population as a whole is a simple survival trait.

[DioneTheDiabolist]

Ancient Greek giants? Ancient Egyptian giants more like. And Babylonians and Sumerians and no doubt plenty of lost to history, smaller civilizations that predate the written word.

[blessedhope]

MuswellHillDad we are too far removed to ever agree unless you get born again, but though I generally believe in obeying the law, I do not see it as a source of morals in any way. I will teach my kids that the word of God is the ultimate source of morality- NOT man's laws or social consensus.

So on abortion, for example, I could explain why God is against slaughtering an unborn child and only then tell them the civil law in this country permits it, due to (among other things)
1)the deception of MPs in 1967 by forces of wickedness- they urged them to pass a Bill permitting "hard cases" then turned round and declared the new law should mean abortion on demand with no limits but the then 28-week cutoff;
2)the perverse secular humanistic view of right to life which claims it is a "human right" granted by men to "sentient" beings that no state can take away for punishment of a crime, as opposed to the truly moral God-given right which does not depend on a conceived human being's capacity to feel pain and which He aiuthorises to be withdrawn upon conviction for a capital offence and
3) certain people are so given over to the sensual nature they want to make it as convenient as possible to have illlcit SEX. Many justify themselves by reference to the "time" that they live in; actually men and women are morally responsible beings and the date on the calendar is NOT forcing you to be a libertine who values pleasure above the off-chance of a pesky baby. As extreme proabortion leader Ann Furedi has said:

^Legal abortion was essential if women were to enjoy their sexuality.
To argue against 'the right to choose' was to argue that women should fulfil their traditional domestic destiny as wives and mothers at a time when sexual freedom and women's economic independence were celebrated.^

Furedi focuses on those of us who can get pregnant, but I would add men too- you nearly always find the sexually ultra-experienced "cosmopolitan sophisticates" and men in the music/Hollywood etc. crowd standing with their partners in concupiscence behind the strict litmus test.

You will likely find those premises abhorrent because of your anti-Christian worldview but they are what I and several million of my fellow law abiding citizens believe and we are not a threat to anybody for doing so (hardly any violent or criminal anti-abortion extremism has ever happened here; believing that the "human rights" framework is inappropriate to apply to convicted killers doesn't make us take things into our own hands.) I am called neither to change laws through the political process nor to move away from this part of the world, but to remain in peaceful and principled disagreement.

[blessedhope]

and pointythings typical anti-Christian smear, I will not even dignify such trash with a response! God not man is the author of morals.

Also there are few if any "fundamentalist" schools out of the around 110 I cited. Ultra-conservative meant in comparison to what militant humanists believe, not the "far fringe" within evangelical Christianity (which would be pretty narrow and zealous places.) Trust a godless person to throw words like "fundie" and "indoctrinate" around to bash people over the head- they already have most of the state system and some apparently feel threatened that not every child is coaxed by the state into buying what they are selling.

[MuswellHillDad]

If you're going to rebut the statement made then you need to provide some evidence that Christian philosophers didn't draw on predecessors as much as asserted. Or perhaps you can't because they did?

My response to that question was to go find my old history of philosophy books and reread them, not to dismiss it out of hand.

I'm always open to change my kind given good debate and evidence, are you?

[pointythings]

blessed you are calling me a militant humanist - I am not. If I were arguing for the closure of all faith schools then I would be, but I'm not. I am simply stating that their existence makes me uncomfortable. Just as you find that the 'godless' State system (with its compulsory daily act of Christian worship) makes you uncomfortable.

Your assertion that God is the author or morals is a matter of belief and no more. Since I do not believe in God, it is meaningless to me and just smacks of the condescension of a particular brand of believer towards those who do not believe - that secular morals are inferior to yours. A lot of my friends are believers and we are able to have discourse without descending to slurs.

And I do believe that raising children in the faith is a form of brainwashing. It's legal, you are free to do it, I am free to prefer allowing my children to find their own path - within the law of the land we live in, of course.

Lastly I'd just like to point out that the essential tenets of all the major faiths, which are about treating each other decently, not committing crimes, mutual respect etc. are all pretty similar no matter what faith path you choose - that includes the laws of ancient pagan society. Human decency is innate and is a strong driver of morality, God is just the face some of us put on it.

[MuswellHillDad]

Cup if tea pointy things?

[pointythings]

Don't mind if I do, MuswellHillDad. Can I have with it?

[MuswellHillDad]

I sense you might have been in this debate before.

Cake?

[pointythings]

Yep, it's the new cake emoticon. I've been asking for a chocolate one for years now but MNHQ are putting us all on a diet .

FWIW I think you have made some very eloquent points, much better than I could have made them. I tend to see red when people play the 'pity the poor unbelievers, they know not what they do' card. All I want is for my DDs to have a solid grounding in what religion is, what people across the world believe, how religion ties in with philosophy and how it can be an influence for good as well as the reverse. Let's face it, religion gave us the Taliban but it has also given us St Matthew's Passion and the Messiah.

Fortunately my DDs have had a solid grounding in comparative religion - they have both been to a C of E primary school (and yes, I was honest about my atheism on the application form). The school has a Christian assembly - obviously - and my DDs have not been withdrawn from that. When they teach RE, it is however not RI. I chose the school purely with my gut - two primaries in our town, both 'satisfactory' at the time, so I went with the one we felt happiest with. It is a lovely school.

I currently have one DD who is an agnostic and another who is a pagan. Good for them, I say.

[MuswellHillDad]

I get the sense we're in a virtual tea room and we're sitting on one side of the room and there's a bunch of people on the other side. It's only a matter of time before the harpsichord music is interrupted by a food fight. Such a waste of cucumber sandwiches.

[pointythings]

I'm not sure it's just the two of us, I think dione might be on our side of the room. As long as we have all the cakes I don't really care. And can I have a G&T instead of just T?

[MuswellHillDad]

Vodka martini