Safe haven chat thread for non-believers

[technodad]

I thought it would be lovely to start a "safe haven" thread for all the non-believers on mumsnet. It doesn't matter how strong your disbelief is, or if you are agnostic or humanist rather than pure atheist, the important thing is that you believe in the scientific method and the fact that evidence and testing is used properly to grow our understanding of the universe.

The idea is to talk with other non-believers to share ideas, thoughts and evidence or even provable theories.
So come in and relax!

Please can I respectfully ask that this is not a debating thread to challenge people. While I am not the mn police, there are other threads to debate on or please start your own. This is a safe haven.

P.S. It is unfortunate that Starwisher seems to be implying in his/her thread that non-believers do not allow "safe haven" for religious discussion. I am pretty sure that there are no atheists debating in the "Hallelujah He is Here ? Chataway [sic]" thread, the "Pagan interest thread" or the "Christian prayer thread- Easter on the way" thread, we just tend to get involved in threads where clearly the OP intended to provoke debate or is asking for a balanced view. However, since Starwisher has asked for his/her thread to not involve any debate, I felt it was not appropriate to make this comment in the "Safe haven chat thread for believers" thread.

The problem with what you suggest Juule (the ways around the system, play the game argument), is that people like me are forced to compromise our principles in a way that would be unnacceptable if I was part of a religious group.
Why am I penalised by the state for having what I believe to be rational and well thought out beliefs ?

ElBurro - but as a committed secularist, I'd be just as opposed to an 'atheist' school as a religious one. Two wrongs don't make a right - that would just entrench division yet further.

There are plenty of people who are outraged by faith schools - I'd guess this issue is one of the main recruiting sergeants for the BHS and NSS. But there are too many people who enjoy the privilege, too many who are happy to go along with the status quo. Politicians don't see secularisation as a vote-winner.

Juule, the faith secondary I know round here has a maximum of 90% places for their own faith and a maximum of 10% 'other faiths' - from a defined list, absolutely no places for atheists or pagans etc. The top priority goes to 'looked after' children and special medical or social needs, so if there were many of those my reading of the rules is that the 10% other would get squeezed (in practice, this school seems oddly free of the most needy kids). Another I looked at recently had 'looked after' children first (no takeup ), a second 'points' category which amounted to faith selection, and only if all places were not filled by those then places allocated by distance. TBH it looks even worse than primaries to me (but then again we've so many faith primaries hereabouts they can't all be fussy)

And now genuine questions. Why are faith schools seen as a better option? And if they are a better option, why is that? Just wondering.

Because they can pick and choose their intake. For decadesimmigration intot he UK was from old 'colonial' places (1950 -1970s) so you could get schools in places like Bradford with a lot of EAL pupils comming from Pakistan, India, Kenya. At the same time you could have an RC school whiich was 100% white and 100% English speaking, Non RC parents who wanted their child educated away form the influence of immigrants (and I totally think they were and are wrong) would try to get them into the RC (white) school. Quite often if a child was baptised RC / C of E that would be enough.

In recent years the EAL immigrant children have come from Eastern Europe (RC or orthodox) and suddenly the RC schools are having to deal with immigrant children and a lot do not like it. Then someone realised that in Eastern Europe it is common to have your child baptised at about 1 year old. And if the baby is born in the UK parents may choose to wait until a trip back to Poland to see gran and grandad before baptising.

If you look at the policies of a number of RC primary school one of the requirements is, "baptism before the age of 12 months". So child whose parents are RC from Poland, who has attended church with parents from 2 weeks old, baptised at 14 months on a trip to visit family in Eastern Europe, with parents who have attended church since they, themselves, were babies is lower down the waiting list than the local kid whose parents had child baptised at 2 months because they wanted a party and have never been to church since.

Its quite interesting now there are stats on each school's intake and various other metrics such as percentage of pupils making expected progress in Maths and English.

If I look at a faith/nonfaith pair of schools nearby, the former is 2 places ahead on the league table but has a significantly higher proportion of 'high attainers'. The schools I've looked at, there really doesn't seem to be much that isn't explained by the intake.

This morning when I took my ds1 to school, I got chatting to one of the other mums. I have often talked to her before, our sons are in the same class. This morning, however, it seems she was in a strange mood. She told me (in a manner as though she was making a huge revelation) that she had grown up a muslim but had converted to Christianity as an adult. She just volunteered this information, I certainly didn't mention religion to her. I said something along the lines of "Oh really?" just trying to be polite, as I didn't really know what to say.

She then asked about my views on fasting. I made a flippant remark about it being good if you are on a diet! But honestly, I was stumped. How do you respond to something like that? I don't want to be rude, she's generally very pleasant, but I found it very hard to just change the subject.

Hi alex. Maybe the mum was actually on a fast hence the strange mood you sensed? From the little I know about fasting it can affect your cognitive abilities quite dramatically from the steep dip in blood sugars and what not. Has she spoken to you again?

Ugughugh. Angel feathers. Probably scores a strong 8.3 on my richter scale of utter nonsense.

hello :)

I have nothing to add ATM but great thread :)

I've skipped three pages of this thread but would like to ask them as know stuff: Could you set up a religion called Scientists of Pragmatists (or some such) or even Atheists?? If so, would you then be allowed to do things other religions are allowed to do like run schools according to your doctrine?

As it happens, I think a grounding in Christianity is helpful because it underpins so much of our culture - language, art, everything. My 1960s primary school ( nominally C of E) education was fairly unbiased: RE covered major religions throughout history, focusing on the mythologies but judging none of them. Exactly the same approach applied to Christianity, only with more songs.

• or Pragmatists. That wasn't some arcane literary reference!

I'd forgotten about this thread.

headinhands yes, I have spoken to her since and she hasn't brought it up again. Perhaps she was just having an off day! I don't actually know if she was fasting or not, I don't know all the fasting times, not being a believer myself!