Why is religion forced on all children at school?

[Kateyoz]

We are not religious and so chose a state school not a faith school for our boys but they come home every day singing hymns they are taught in assembly - the school said we can withdraw them from assemblies but why should they be made to miss out? Shouldn't state schools teach all beliefs and not focus on one, or leave religion to the parents and keep it out of school? Feel like mine are being indoctrinated into a religion against our will

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

jasper Just to clear one thing up, you obviously know nothing about Ireland. None of the UK is in Ireland and the culture is completely different. Glad to get that off my chest.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

Regarding my comments about a perceived decline in morality and the correlation between this and traditional Christian teaching (and the practise of that teaching), I think this JR report probably provides a balanced perspective that would be hard to argue with - especially as it does not unequivocally back my view!

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

www.jrf.org.uk/report/has-there-been-decline-values-british-society

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

Note I'm not saying the JR makes the points I'm making, but if we're going to have a debate about the basis for my remarks, we could save ourselves a lot of time by agreeing that this seems a reasonable view.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

A great deal of scientific research isn't absolutely conclusive

Ha! I realise that. Interesting that you now realise it also. If you are going to say 'the evidence says...' in response to someone's point and basically close the door to their viewpoint on 'scientific' grounds, then you need to present a case for the reliability of that evidence. You didn't - and in fact seem to have a shaky grasp on exactly what it was you did read. And it is an interesting bypath to the discussion that I would contribute to another thread about if you care to start one, but is not central to the point here really because the central point seems to be that humans are predisposed to believe in something but don't have to - something we could both make use of in different ways.

There are good reasons for thinking we could never be like Ireland - even Ireland could never be like Ireland again. Catholicism has rightly taken a battering, has radically changed and has lost the old footing. Even if it were the dominant religion in the UK, it wouldn't come close to being like Ireland twenty, thirty years ago. The C of E arguing for a more conservative approach on various issues (bearing in mind the open letter re homosexuality in the news at the moment) is not evidence that anyone wants to be 'like Ireland'. That has all the logic of a conspiracy theory.

mammouth Sorry your experience was so crap. Anything badly done is better not being done. It's no reason not to do it well.

chilli Read the JR report...you do realise there are plenty more like it.

mathsmum You're not getting my point at all and I wonder if you even want to try. No matter what position you adopt, even if it is a position of deciding that it is not possible to know, that is not a neutral stance because human being are literally incapable of making meaning and looking for explanatory theories (I could provide a lot of articles to back this up from my academic research but please, please don't make me because I don't have an athens password just now and it would take ages...). Suffice to say, a small child will listen to a sentence and use what they know about the grammar of how a sentence works to identify the likely meanings of each word. Groups of people dream up weird and wonderful stories to explain everything. Folk stories, spontaneous combustion, old wives tales - we don't stop. Now we've gone all post-modern and got disillusioned with meaning, we have a new 'theory' - that is all means squat. Even if you leave that decision there and proceed on as usual, it's still a position that is likely to inform your outlook and choices on some level. Atheists who feel sure enough to believe in the non-existence of a God are exercising an element of faith (yes they are) in reaching this decision because no conclusive explanatory theory for existence (at least, not one that satisfies everyone) exists either way.
Everyone encounters these questions and the desire to know, or not to know, or at least to think and decide what you do think, is a spiritual process - it is where some people encounter faith and in a Christian country, the Christian faith should be recognisable to everyone should they wish to take it further. It won't be recognisable as a living faith unless it's part of school life because faith is not really a lesson to be taught anymore than netball can be taught sitting down, it exists in the worship and in the praying.

But ultimately this is a pretty pointless discussion because no one's going to budge an inch.

jasper I'm saying the decline in moral standards and the rise of other less desirable things (like internet porn available to young people) is part of the picture, yes.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

incapable of not making meaning, sorry

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

mathsmum Thinking further, there is no point our talking about this more because we are talking about two completely different things when we say religion. We could never even agree on the terms for a discussion. And your vitriolic dislike of religion leads to a posting style that I would engage with if there was a point to it, but would prefer not to if all things were equal. So let's leave it there and by all means, conclude I secretly think you are right if you wish!

[JasperDamerel]

jasper Just to clear one thing up, you obviously know nothing about Ireland. None of the UK is in Ireland and the culture is completely different. Glad to get that off my chest.

I am from Northern Ireland. Which is part of the UK. And also in Ireland. I now live in England. Which is also part of the UK but not in Ireland.

Come clearly knows a lot more about the place than I do, though, so I'll just acknowledge her (her?) superior expertise and take her word for everything from now on.

[JasperDamerel]

Sorry, Gone, not Come.

[mathsmum314]

JR was a Quaker, one of those nice pacifist tee-teetotalers, hardly unbiased.

A major factor in moral decline has been the decline of the family
In other words back when women were forced to stay at home in abusive marriages and the man was legally allowed to rape his wife, we had a more moral society.

... the demise of marriage between heterosexual couples, and the existence of marriage between homosexual and mixed-race couples ... oh FFS I am not reading anymore of that awful report

Not a very good report, no references to check that anything they say is actually true. Seems to be moralizing that society is changing, away from good old traditional values, and gives no verifiable explanation why this is a moral decline rather than just change or even moral improvement.

[Mishaps]

It is proposed that faith schools should in future be allowed to have a 100% intake of pupils from families of that religion. Up till now they have been obliged to take some pupils from families of other religions.

What piece of madness is this? The government has a PREVENT policy which all schools have to prove they adhere to and its aim is to counter fundamentalist indoctrination. So why this new change of policy?

[JassyRadlett]

Gone, if you're going to persist in misquoting people for the purposes of belittling people, I think I'll forego further conversation. There's not much point unless people approach discussion in a spirit of honestly.

[mathsmum314]

gonetoseeamanaboutadog

You could say I dont understand your point or you could say I just dont think it stands up to even the most casual scrutiny.

The JR report is pretty much a reflection of its Quaker ideology and even if there is massive moral decline it doesn't say forcing religion on children in school is the answer.

Groups of people dream up weird and wonderful stories to explain everything - yes like supernatural beings.

Atheists who feel sure enough to believe in the non-existence of a God are exercising an element of faith NO they are not, your trying to say if you cant prove a negative then your taking something on faith. NO NO NO.

Faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have evidence for it. I base my beliefs on evidence, the more confidence I have in that evidence, the closer that belief comes to what I would say I know as a FACT. So nothing I know is 100% fact (I could exist in the matrix) but I am so confident in the evidence that I am 99.99999999% confident I do not live in the matrix. The extra 0.000000001% is not made up with faith. However if something were to change in the evidence I would change my beliefs accordingly.

A delusion is a persistent false belief that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary, to falsely claim something even when there is evidence otherwise. What makes these beliefs delusional is that they don’t change when the person is presented with conflicting information—the beliefs remain fixed even when the facts contradict them. This is a perfect description of faith.

I am not saying all atheists believe as I do but I can confirm that I do not use ANY faith when it come to my beliefs.

the desire to know, or not to know, or at least to think and decide what you do think, is a spiritual process Maybe it is for you, but back in reality, the impulse to know something comes from the subconscious, which is responding to our evolved genetic programming. To reinforce this act, the brain produces serotonin as a reward. This encourages continued curiosity seeking behavior, such as exploration and experimentation. There is nothing spiritual in curiosity.

The Christian faith should be recognizable to everyone should they wish to take it further Why? so people should only be indoctrinated with the religion of the country they are born in? What if its the wrong religion? Why should we fill our children's head with stuff there is no evidence for? I will budge an inch as soon as you produce evidence that suggests there is even a chance that you could be right? But of course you don't credit belief's based on evidence, your beliefs are unchanging despite the evidence.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

You know math no one is forcing your kids to be part of school worship. I get that you don't want them to have to opt out of anything but for the sake of your own blood pressure you really should exercise your parental rights and remove them from any head -stuffing situations. I would say that in capitals but I have realised it just makes me sound like I'm shouting...

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

Reductive thinking isn't 'reality' BTW-it's not even seen as particularly scientific or intellectually superior. Many scientific experts are able to acknowledge that talking about hormones in the brain is a bit of a cop out-or incomplete - when looking at the big picture.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

Can I just ask math...have you really give out of your way to see if there is any spiritual element? I didn't believe for a while and I was forever coming up against inexplicable things that made it quite difficult to keep on. And I wasn't doing an exhaustive trawl for evidence as I presume you will have done since you're completely evidence based.

[JassyRadlett]

However if something were to change in the evidence I would change my beliefs accordingly

Maths, that is such a crucial point - the openness to thinking differently if different or new evidence emerged. Quite the opposite of faith or dogma.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

Is quite interesting math, when talking about what faith is and your own absence of faith, you actually sounded as arrogant as I did when talking about faith. You plainly do, like people of faith, feel that your viewpoint is the superior one. There is nothing relativistic about your stance.

Maybe it's impossible to talk about faith and what you believe to be true without sounding like you know better than others --perhaps that's partly the nature of the beast rather than Christians trying to be obnoxious (notice I didn't say belief system math but you do clearly believe your view, or reductive explanatory theory, to be true and real.)

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

What I don't see, and haven't yet encountered, is any over powering arguing for the non existence of a deity (not the same thing as lack of evidence for existence of one).

It doesn't bother me that we don't have some kind of apparatus for ringing God or measuring his existence. There are plenty of amazing things we know very little about in empirical terms and many more, I have no doubt, still to come.

When you talk about people of faith as if they're intellectually lacking, please remember you're going up against some very bright people.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

If you're from NI jas and are suggesting it has shared the fate of the rest of Ireland in terms of the Catholic Church -or is more Irish in religious outlook and culture than it is British- I can only think you have been away too long to have a feel for things.

[sashh]

So you wouldn't go to a church wedding, christening or funeral then?

I would attend but I would not take part.

And that includes my mother's funeral a couple of years ago.

[BertrandRussell]

"Is quite interesting math, when talking about what faith is and your own absence of faith, you actually sounded as arrogant as I did when talking about faith. You plainly do, like people of faith, feel that your viewpoint is the superior one. There is nothing relativistic about your stance."

The big difference between you and any of the atheist posters is that none of us think your child should be forced to be an atheist in order to take a full part in the life of a state school. You think that our children should be forced to be Christian. That's it. We just want to be left alone. You want to impose your faith on us.

[chilipepper20]

Read the JR report...you do realise there are plenty more like it.

Did you read it? It doesn't reach the conclusion I think you think it does. In fact, it is more the opposite, although it seems to be more nuanced then yay or nay.

What I don't see, and haven't yet encountered, is any over powering arguing for the non existence of a deity (not the same thing as lack of evidence for existence of one).

that's right. Very few atheists would assert with certainty that there is no god, or god like creatures (though some do).

But that's true for big foot and leprachauns. I wouldn't say there are certainly no leprachauns in the world - just that their existence is incredibly unlikely. I am certain enough that I live my life as if there are no leprachauns: I don't get excited at the sight of a rainbow and think there might be some gold at the end of it (or whatever people think about leprachauns).

and that's the reasonable position. my belief in leprachauns matches the evidence I have for them, which is next to nothing.