Should atheism be taught along side religious studies in schools?

Originally Posted by idi banashapan

https://www.theguardian.com/educatio...-diverse-world

What are people’s views on this? Should atheism be taught in an equal measure in schools?

It would be difficult to teach in the same way as RE because the positive belief in a deity implies certain responses in terms of morality, lifestyle and religiosity. Atheism does also result in lifestyle and ethical choices but because it lacks the coherent third part, the religious response, it’s harder to integrate into a study of comparative religion.

That said, high schools these days seem to go for RME (religious and moral education) which has a greater focus on the ethical and lifestyle implications of belief and less on the religiosity of individuals or communities, so atheism as a concept would be easier to integrate into the curriculum.

As a Christian, I don’t expect my kids to learn their faith in a classroom. I think RME is (or should be) an extension of the humanities. I’m now studying theology at university and completed an introductory module in Ethics last term. I found it tremendously valuable. It was challenging and rewarding, all the more so because it sought to deal with Ethics as something living and real and in current and constant use by everyone, at all times, irrespective of their religion. I think the debate around current live ethical issues such as genetic modification (including human genetic therapy), abortion time limits, euthanasia, drug use, the death penalty, war and a whole lot of other issues would be much more vibrant in our society if there was a greater focus on ethics and the different ethical systems that are used to develop frameworks in which decisions are taken.

---------- Post added at 19:43 ---------- Previous post was at 19:34 ----------

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

I think the trick to teaching Atheism is to start with "who pushed the big bang button" and let it develop from there.

50% says God did it; 50% says it just happened - no God. You can then build on the "God did it" postulation leading to when God had finished setting the Universe on its path, including life on Earth, God died. Evidence? Who has seen God?

The Bible doesn’t try to prove God exists, any more than a Haynes manual attempts to prove the existence of your car. Both books make certain assumptions and proceed from there.

If you get stuck on trying to agree or disagree over cosmology you’re not going to get very far and you’re certainly not ever going to understand why a religion like Christianity exists and what the consequences of its existence are for believers and the world.

Religious studies, remember, are there to study the religion and its consequences. If you want to contemplate God, then you want theology (which is the term used by Christians at any rate ... you can study the concept of God in an Islamic or Hindu context also, doubtless they have their own terms for that).

[Angua]

Originally Posted by idi banashapan

Tolerance is a good one, unfortunately. It seems to me that intolerance is what is taught. Children in the infant school playground rarely even see the differences between themselves and the other children they play with. At some stage, as they grow, they learn to highlight those differences.

I notice my children are more tolerant than I am and a lot more tolerant than my husband is.

Seeing people as different is taught by parents and some schools via belief systems. So maybe this is what I mean by teaching tolerance.

[Sephiroth]

Children aren't born with a sense of "God". So teaching them that there might be a God (inferable because RE would include religions based on God) causes the children to lean in an improbable direction. Then they get leftfield information about how one religion regards other religions as inimical, one and of them only fit to be wiped out. You see where I'm coming from.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Children aren't born with a sense of "God". So teaching them that there might be a God (inferable because RE would include religions based on God) causes the children to lean in an improbable direction. Then they get leftfield information about how one religion regards other religions as inimical, one and of them only fit to be wiped out. You see where I'm coming from.

Competing world views are more than capable of attempting to wipe each other out without a religious framework or a belief in a god. Marxism, for example, has proven itself adept at facilitating mass slaughter in pursuit of its aims, whilst being avowedly atheistic.

Religion doesn’t turn humans into murderers. We are quite capable of developing rationales in support of genocide without it. Actually, in ethical terms the appeal to higher authority lessens the likelihood of conflict, not vice versa.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Chris

Competing world views are more than capable of attempting to wipe each other out without a religious framework or a belief in a god. Marxism, for example, has proven itself adept at facilitating mass slaughter in pursuit of its aims, whilst being avowedly atheistic.

Religion doesn’t turn humans into murderers. We are quite capable of developing rationales in support of genocide without it. Actually, in ethical terms the appeal to higher authority lessens the likelihood of conflict, not vice versa.

I disagree. History, including recent, is peppered with religious wars, violence, genocide. In England, it has been politically motivated to keep one Christian sect or another in power. In the Middle East, the ISIS sect has more than demonstrated the state of folly we have reached as a species.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

I disagree. History, including recent, is peppered with religious wars, violence, genocide. In England, it has been politically motivated to keep one Christian sect or another in power. In the Middle East, the ISIS sect has more than demonstrated the state of folly we have reached as a species.

Could you cite some examples please, with an indication of the magnitude of suffering caused. If you do, I’ll return the favour with a list of conflicts with no religious motive, and which I’m grimly confident will be longer and bloodier.

I’m sorry but I’m an old lag when it comes to the “religion causes war” fallacy. The truth is, humans cause war, in pursuit of resources and power, using whatever philosophical justification is closest at hand at the time.

Incidentally, ISIS is a zit on the arse of humanity. The suffering they cause is magnified by the fact that it is contemporary. In comparison with almost any other coherent philosophy, past or present, they’re barely out of the nursery.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Chris

Could you cite some examples please, with an indication of the magnitude of suffering caused. If you do, I’ll return the favour with a list of conflicts with no religious motive, and which I’m grimly confident will be longer and bloodier.

I’m sorry but I’m an old lag when it comes to the “religion causes war” fallacy. The truth is, humans cause war, in pursuit of resources and power, using whatever philosophical justification is closest at hand at the time.

Incidentally, ISIS is a zit on the arse of humanity. The suffering they cause is magnified by the fact that it is contemporary. In comparison with almost any other coherent philosophy, past or present, they’re barely out of the nursery.

Bearing in mind that Judaism is 5,000 years old and Christianity is 2,000 years old and that there are different Christian sects, also Islam is younger than Christianity, examples are easy to cite.

The Crusades; the English Reformation; the Balkans ethnic cleansing, Shia vs Sunni, Northern Ireland. It's all politically driven - power.

Yes - humans cause war; but in the name of religion is well documented. Scrap religion and we can tackle other cause of war. Of course we're not going to be able to scrap religion and I predict that in 90 years, we'll all be facing east.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Bearing in mind that Judaism is 5,000 years old and Christianity is 2,000 years old and that there are different Christian sects, also Islam is younger than Christianity, examples are easy to cite.

The Crusades; the English Reformation; the Balkans ethnic cleansing, Shia vs Sunni, Northern Ireland. It's all politically driven - power.

Yes - humans cause war; but in the name of religion is well documented. Scrap religion and we can tackle other cause of war. Of course we're not going to be able to scrap religion and I predict that in 90 years, we'll all be facing east.

A little high-level name checking shows that actually, you can’t do as I’ve asked ... you don’t actually understand even the examples you’ve cited. Allow me to elaborate.

The crusades are every pub bore’s go-to. Can I request you read about the sacking of Constantinople - a Christian city - in the year 1204, during the fourth crusade, before you make simplistic, sub-GCSE assertions about what motivated the young English nobles who went crusading and what they hoped to get out of the exercise.

The English Reformation ... where to begin ... well for starters let me help you out a bit, the Reformation wasn’t English; Protestantism occurred almost everywhere in Europe. It stuck, leading to Reformation, in places where local rulers saw the opportunities inherent in taking control of the influence previously held by the Pope, hence, in the English context, the creation of the Church of England that then allowed Henry VIII to get his divorce. Ordinary people may have been motivated by belief, but it turned violent when their leaders began to seek political advantage. For sure, plenty of blood was shed on the orders of those who believed that heretics must die.

The Balkans ethnic cleansing, well exactly ... ethnic, not religious. The Bosnian part of the conflict, where one side was predominantly Muslim, has lived longest in the memory because of the Srebrenica genocide, but the disintegration of Yugoslavia is the story of the disintegration of an artificial state that held together only as long as strongman Marxists were able to retain control. In any case, as many ethnic Germans were slaughtered in Yugoslavia in the aftermath of World War 2 as the combined total of all Serbs, Croats and Bosnians in the conflicts of the 1990s (130,000 or more). I assumed you’re willing to concede that the Yugoslavs had no need of any religious justification to unofficially carry on the war against those they perceived to be German for some three years after the conflict ended everywhere else.

Yes, there is often a religious component to conflict. As I’ve said, humans will use whatever philosophical justification is at hand in pursuit of power and resources. But “in the name of religion”? I’m not entirely convinced even you know what you mean by that.

[Pierre]

There’s no point. Stop now.

You cannot argue with a person of faith, likewise a person of faith cannot argue with someone that is not a person of faith.

It will decend into a slanging match about religion and just end there.

[Matth]

It should definitely be taught / considered that atheism or agnosticism are as valid as any other choices, and maybe also evaluate the former Gods and the claims of heresy aginst such things as the Earth orbiting the Sun.

The only proof of religion, has been when it has been proved to be wrong, though perhaps the basic problem is that religion can only exist in the vacuum where proof and science have not yet reached, the same vacuum occupied by sharks and charlatans, the snake oil salesmen, the purveyors of "health giving" radioactive quackery (see "revigator" and be shocked). Belief can be harmful.

I used to think that religion should be kept out of our schools. I still do. I think that the old religious morning assembly has become pointless in a multi-faith society where some of the school are not Christian and are thus exempt from attendance.
I do however think teaching the basic tenets of differing religions can only add to pupil's knowledge and understanding why others are the way they are.

[papa smurf]

At my old school there were two systems in place

1 God did it.

2 sit in detention after school .

Well time for a change.

[Stuart]

I think for some athiests, atheism almost *is* a religion, just with no defined deity (although some seem to worship Richard Dawkins as if he is one). They certainly show a lot of the piousness they say that religious people show.

Personally, I don't believe in God. I believe something created us, but I don't define that thing as a God, in fact I am not sure I can define it. I am unsure if it still exists.

Do I think Religion causes wars? No. I believe it's an excuse. I believe the Human race would have wars and just use another excuse should Religion just vanish.

Do I think RE is a good thing. Yes, if it's taught correctly. It shouldn't be just telling people about a particular religion, or how good a given deity is. It should be teaching people the basis of all belief systems (I even count atheism as a belief system). It should also teach people how to look at things critically, but fairly.

Regardless of which religion you believe in, and even if you are an atheist, people may not believe the same things as you. Understanding those beliefs, and the basis for them helps in breaking down barriers between people. Something I think that especially now, the human race needs to happen.

[downquark1]

Atheism, no, "secular philosophy" yes