Well said Glen. You could also have mentioned that the Judeo/Christian tradition has it that something called 'sin' entered the world (presumably meaning the human psyche) via the intervention of a talking snake.
If there is any hope for humanity to survive, that hope is via the development of a rationally based naturalistic ethic rather than via a load of baseless and logically inconsistent prescriptive rubbish. Whilst readily acknowledging the part played by religious belief in art, literature,and even early scientific discovery, the time has now come for the development of a workable and universal ethic - an ethic independent of the fairy tales and demonstrably false preudo- scientific nonsense as espoused by the Judeo/Christian apologists who rightly see their hard won privileges and authority on the wane.

""But to rid schools of well controlled RE would be sad if nothing else.
Children are not forced into such classes.. so why worry?

"That they are taught about Jesus Christ...you know..that personality from who's life, death and resurrection we DATE OUR VERY HISTORY! just a minor thing.

"We open our Parliament with the Lords Prayer. We have a strong Christian heritage..and it is fitting and proper for children of this country to be informed about where this came from.""
Posted by ALGOREisRICH, Wednesday, 15 December 2010 3:51:44 PM

well-controlled RE classes are few and far between, ALGOREisRICH

Children have been frequently forced into them especially by religious Principals not providing supervision for those opting out of SRE

Appeals to tradition do not justify forcing the tradition on everyone in the future. The proposition there was a life and resurrection is still debatable.

I'll just add my hurrah for this excellent article.

Nothing much more needs to be said here,
but I'd like to see the near consensus of this
forum reflected in policy and practice sometime
soon.

Teach kids about religion/s by all means,
but keep the evangelists, missionaries,
proselytisers and other charlatans away from
them.

For Gawd's sake.

Let the holy rollers brainwash their own unfortunate
kids, but I really object to them being allowed
into my kids' schools for the express purpose of
recruiting them to their cults.

Dear ALGOREisRICH
“Children are not forced into such classes.. so why worry?”
But they are. The forces are often subtle rather than direct, covert rather than overt, but they operate in many schools. Frequently, declining to take Scripture attracts a form of ostracizing from other students who, doubtless, are coached by their religious parents in how to put those non-believers in their place. I have relatives who are atheists but who regretfully sentence their children to Scripture in order to protect them from the institutional and peer religious bullying they believe is the fate of most children who eschew it. No doubt, the likelihood of such treatment varies greatly across schools.

“That they are taught about Jesus Christ...you know..that personality from who's life, death and resurrection we DATE OUR VERY HISTORY! just a minor thing.”
You are right. In the big scheme of things, it is a very minor thing. It’s also probably not true. Contemporary scholarship favours the view that Jesus, if he existed (and it is thought he probably did) was born sometime in 5-3 BC; or BCE, if you want to be politically correct, the prevailing view now being that crediting the birth of Jesus with having determined the position of the zero on the scale of years is both too dubious to accept, and too insulting to non-Christians to be tolerated. BTW, it’s ‘whose’, not ‘who’s’.

“We open our Parliament with the Lords Prayer. We have a strong Christian heritage..and it is fitting and proper for children of this country to be informed about where this came from.”
I agree. It is proper and fitting for children of this country to know about the things that Christians believe and the customs which the former majority acceptance of those beliefs gave rise to. That’s all part of the education about religion that I was calling for. But Special Religious ‘Education’ does more than inform children about Christian beliefs; it requires subservience to them. And it teaches children nothing about the many alternative belief systems that Bronwyn reminded us of. Thank you Bronwyn.

Glen Coulton's article is excellent and timely. At last a breath of fresh air is wafting though the NSW public education system, with the government undertaking to continue the ethics classes. Many parents, disillusioned with church teachings and examples (such as paedophile priests), seek to have their kids discuss ethical issues in a non-religious context. The kids are invited to put forward their views on lying, graffiti, etc with their classmates free to either agree or disagree. No one is telling the kids what to believe. Simply by discussing these issues in the best Socratic manner, the kids arrive at their own views, with no one telling them they are either "right" or "wrong". If other parents want their kids to be indoctrinated by visiting clergy or well-meaning lay-teacher "believers", then they should send their kids to the SRE classes. Indeed, if they want their kids to have a religious education, then send them to one of the many so-called Christian schools (all subsidised by the Australian taxpayer incidentally). The public education system should be secular. There should be a complete separation of church and state. In our present, hopefully enlightened, educated society, many people are weary of "the church" telling them what to do and how to behave. Most religions are out of touch with present-day thinking on issues such as voluntary euthanasia, abortion, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. As a result, many people in today's Australian society are either indifferent to religion, or understandably hostile to its out-of-touch teachings and archaic practices.

@Bronwyn The extent of our 'Christian heritage' has been massively overstated. Anti-clericalism was rife amongst the lower classes of 18th century Britain, and those who came here on the transport ships were generally not, in any real sense, Christians. When Bibles were distributed on the ships, the men tore them up to make playing cards, and the women convicts used the pages to curl their hair.

According to historian, Manning Clark, our first Governor, Arthur Philip 'worshipped at the shrine of cool reason' as did most of his fellow officers.

The First Fleet chaplain, Richard Johnson, was denied permission to say a blessing at the Foundation ceremonies on 26 January 1788. He pleaded for six years with successive governors for a church to be built and finally gave up and built one at his own expense. When convicts were forced to attend, they burned it down.

The nationalist movement of the late 19th century was decisively anti-clerical also. The Bulletin magazine was scathing about the clergy and one of our finest poets, Henry Lawson, was an atheist.

The Fathers of Federation fought a long and hard battle against the churches in providing a secular constitution for our nation. The eight word invocation to 'Almighty God' was only added reluctantly.

The ANZACS were not much interested in religion either. Chaplains were called 'Cooks tourists' and the ANZACs delighted in parodying hymns. After WWI many people turned away from traditional religions to spiritualism.

A recent investigation into the religiosity of our 27 Prime Ministers by respected political historian, John Warhurst, shows that less than half of them were in any way serious about religion - nine were only nominal Christians and six were atheists or agnostics.

Some of our greatest prime ministers are among the atheists/agnostics, including Billy Hughes, John Curtin, Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke.

So while Christians have, undoubtedly, made contributions towards our nation, the irreligious and non-religious have made an equal, if not superior, contribution. To talk about Australia's 'Christian heritage' is quite misleading from an historical point of view.