Of course there should be references to religious beliefs in the relevant areas of the school curriculum. History, certainly, along with music and the arts. As Mr Chao points out, religion has played a significant part in recent world events, especially the last four thousand years or so.

The problems arise not with the concept, but with the execution.

One of the basic problems with religion is the inability of its different versions to live comfortably alongside each other. If there were some form of unity - those who believed, all believed in the same entity - it would hardly be a problem at all. The population would simply divide itself between believers and non-believers, and that would be that. Unfortunately, many hundreds of years of conflict inform us that this cannot be the case.

So, what would be the practical implications of introducing religion as a subject? Quite simply, it would form yet another battleground for one religion or another to take pride of place in the classroom material. And the last thing we need is yet another place for us-and-them conflicts to breed and multiply.

The chances would be high that one faction - Micks or Prods, Mozzies or Anglicans - would attempt a hijack on the curriculum, and paint it their way. And as Newton explained, mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear. The next thing we know, Blenkinsop Minor in the lower fifth would have started the Tenth Crusade. Or Mick O'Flaherty will start kneecapping his Proddy classmates.

Hi Martin, in response to your post about Kalb's view on Liberalism, here's a reply to Kalbs treatise on Liberalism I wrote a while back. I don't think his argument is as water tight as it seems.

http://journal.telospress.com/content/2011/154/181.short

It's bad enough that the religious cohort go on about "militant atheists", without atheists trumping them at this unjustified name-calling: "aggressively militant atheist". As I've followed the debate in various media it's been my experience that most atheists are "for" religious "education", or comparative religion, and none are "militant". It's "religious instruction" and proselytisation by stealth that the atheists I know, or know of, condemn.
In other words I and most atheists, I believe, agree with the article's distinction between education and instruction; religion is of course quite properly a vital element in every culture's history and development, so why preface your remarks with nonsense about "aggressively militant atheists"?

To make matters worse, the author then goes on to be aggressive and militant himself!: "It is only by studying your enemy that you can defeat your enemy".
Peter Sellick is quite right to object to this unnecessary drawing of lines, I object myself; as if there is unimpeachable right on one side and wrong on the other, when neither side has a monopoly on wisdom--or ignorance.
Yes we need comparative religious education, but we also need political and ethical education, and self-reflexive critical thought, turned on rationalism as well as religion!
"We can only defeat the enemies of reason by studying them. Ignorance of religions breeds the ignorance that religion brings and thrives on";
what high sounding garbage!
I do not see religious people as my enemies. And religion does not breed ignorance any more than science and so-called reason do!
The author has said precisely nothing here, as thinking atheists don't object to religious education!
But worse, he goes on to breathe life into and personify himself exactly the straw man of ignorant-aggressive-militant-atheism he props-up.
I'm an atheist, Roger Chao, but you do not speak for me!

That's great Rog. I'm sure you had a profitable conversation with Mr Kalb, Mr Gottfried et al. but it's $USD20 to read mate and Jim's latest in ISI likely clarifies or tightens? What say you?

I take it we agree that your concept 'religion' is vacuous and does no useful work in your article.

As an atheist, I don't have any trouble with schools teaching about superstition, magic, ritual, barbaric practices and religions - in fact, about all uncivilized or pre-modern attempts to understand the complexities of the world, and at the same time, justify existing social inequalities (i.e. 'culture') - in schools, provided that it is all taught by atheists.

There's certainly enough interesting material to cover twelve years of schooling. There is a pictorial edition of Frazer's 'Golden Bough' which would be a good text for nine- and ten-year-olds.

After liberalism as the applied politics of totalitarian religion, or "religion" as a dramatization of individual and collective psychosis, which by its very nature systematically eliminates ALL other cultural possibilities while all-the-time masquerading as the self-appointed guardians of the "one-true-faith", in the form of both "orthodox" Christian-ism and Islam-ism.

http://tpjmagazine.us/adams29

Of course the "victory" of such Islam-icism would be a complete disaster for even the possibility of the emergence of a truly free religious and Spiritual consciousness.