Religion should be given the same priority as "Grimm`s Fairy Tales".
Teach about it but not teach it.

The first thing we should be honest about is the myth (even lie) that there is such a thing as a commom Judeo-Christian tradition.
This point was raised last week in response to the new educational review. The work of both Arthur Cohen and Rabbi Jacob Neusner was cited to prove the point.

yep keep your head in the sand Merdith. The zoo like behaviour of children in class, the foul language, the total lack of respect, the inability to read and write, the drunkenenss,the violence, the abortions are all largely fruit of your beloved secular dogmas which lack any moral basis. No wonder so many who are not even believers are voting with their money and feet. The lame excuse the secularist always use is that its because of lack of money.

Religion should be left to parents: it’s a private matter and people other than parents have no business teaching it.

Schools need to concentrate on the 3 R’s and get back to turning out people ready for the real world of business and science. Currently, schools are not doing the job they are supposed to do, so teaching something that might or might not be a myth is a total waste of time.

Leave it to parents, ministers and the appropriate organisations (churches).

I'd like to see more evidence of these so called "Secular Values" and what their basis is within secular thought.

I also dispute the claim that "Christianity's key ideas were already familiar territory to those living two thousand years ago".

In his book "Humilitas", John Dickson shows how the unique idea of Humility has been shaped by the Cross. According to Dickson, a PHD Historian, the idea of putting others interests ahead of your own power was not a common or esteemed idea until Jesus came along

runner,
Since the days of Socrates it has been known that people who have learned how to think clearly are better citizens.

This was confirmed for 10-11year old students in Scotland in a properly conducted trial in 2001-2. Fifty plus hours of discussion of open ended questions over sixteen months resulted in CAT score increases averaging 6.5 points, compared to a matched control group. Behaviour improved substantially and communications between staff and students doubled in both directions.

The Sam Houston University, Texas, conducted another similar trial in 2012 which confirmed the Clackmannanshire, Scotland results. The Scottish trial confirmed that the benefits are long lasting and, in my view, the benefits pass to the next generation through better marriage and family-raising decisions.

Quebec has introduced a compulsory subject, Religions and Ethics, which must be doing some good. It has been opposed by the Roman Catholic Church all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court, where fortunately they again lost an appeal.

I have a question for you. Of the new findings in science how many have religious leaders supported forthrightly compared to the number they have adamantly opposed? Vaccinations for smallpox, and treatments and preventative measures for aids, come to mind.

It is the probable benefits of such religious dogma free education that alarms the Christopher Pynes of this world and others accustomed to dogmatic teaching methods.

Trav - there is nothing unique about the authentic Spiritual Teaching of the Jewish Spiritual Master Saint Jesus of Galilee.
His Teaching was simply True.
Indeed the cultivation of self-transcending "humility" is the core teaching at the root of all authentic religious and Spiritual traditions in all times and places,including Sufism within the tradition of Islam.
Tragically many/most "orthodox" advocates of Islam regard all forms of Sufism to be "heretical".
Indeed there is a deep-seated prejudice against any kind of esoteric or "mystical" religion within main-stream Christianity, especially within Protestantism (which has NO esoteric or mystical elements associated with it)
The claim by Dickson that "humility" was or is a uniquely Christian development or virtue is a conceit - pure humbug.
Meanwhile this essay describes the content and purpose of much/most/all of what is promoted as religion in this time and place.
http://www.dabase.org/up-1-6.htm The kind of religion promoted by the right-wing culture war warriors fits entirely within this description.

Trav,

A simple Google search reveals the answer to your first question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_values

<<I also dispute the claim that "Christianity's key ideas were already familiar territory to those living two thousand years ago" ... According to Dickson, a PHD Historian, the idea of putting others interests ahead of your own power was not a common or esteemed idea until Jesus came along>>

I’d be interested in what evidence this Dickson presents in support of his claims, but even if he’s right, the question still remains whether a person named Jesus opened our eyes to such values, or if the story of Jesus was embellished with values that we started to embrace around that period.

I suspect John Dickson started halfway down the back straight in his investigations.

Teaching children about religion - specifically comparative and historical aspects - can be considered as eduction and probably worthwhile in this dogma-riddled world.

However, instructing children in a particular religion is simply indoctrination and nothing more.

Using religion as a tool for the behavioural control of children is a delusional way of thinking and probably a form of child abuse.

We are run by people who have supposedly Christian values, Obama, Bush, Howard, Blair, Abbott, all torture and war for the plebs, kill, kill, kill, great Christian values I don't think so, Royalty, wealth beyond your dreams , lets dispense some of this wealth to the third world countries, but off to church we go and pray to a God that was complete opposite of the wealth syndrome of these people. The whole world is full of corrupt leaders, then why on earth should not the plebs, school personnel etc, forget the so called Christian values and join those at the top and act like them, kill, drugs ,lies, rape etc, if the top can do it then why not I. There are no such thing as so called Christian values in the world ,there never was even in the past, nor will be in the future , it will always be the same attitude as in the past, kill, plunder, keep the poor, poor and so on, foks it is here to stay so don't dream of the perfect so called "Christian" utopia.

"So let's not get distracted by the call for 'Judeo-Christian values'. If there's any gap in Australian education, it's that there's not enough recognition of the foundational role of the ancient Greeks in ethics, the ancient Romans in law, and the Enlightenment."

Yes, exactly, thankfully Western civilisation has outgrown "Judeo-Christian values", we certainly should not re-introduce them.

So, the answer to the title question is--"we shouldn't teach any religion in schools, it's not the business of the secular state to waste valuable time with fantasies".

It's a myth that religion is a necessary basis for ethics.

We may as well all follow the Way of Ralph.

It is just a Ralph. All of this is Raplh, and that is it. It is just a Ralphing. You are being Ralphed. You are Ralph. You do Ralph. You believe in Ralph. You hate Ralph and resist Ralph. You are troubled by Ralph. You fear Ralph. And you are going to die from Ralph sooner or later. You breathe Ralph. You think Ralph. You are in charge of Ralph. Ralph is in charge of you.

It is all nonsense, you see?

Real Life, True Existence, all comes down to a non-conceptual Reaity, the Reality of Non-Separateness. You have no ultimate explanation for it and no way to differentiate youself from It or get control over It (which is what all conventional religion attempts to do).
You just must give yourself up to "Raloh", the Unknown and Unknowable, That Which is Beyond yourself. You cannot Realize the Real until you stop being yourself, stop separating yourself, and stop suffering the illusion of separateness.

When there is no separation, no gesture, no "theology", no effort, or result of "sin", then the "Ralph", or God, Truth, Reality, and The Beautiful Itself, is Inherently Obvious.

There is no proof that any religion is true, it mainly being passed down from adults to children when very young, lets keep your fairy tale religious beliefs out of the school room, and also out of Government.

'runner,
Since the days of Socrates it has been known that people who have learned how to think clearly are better citizens. '

if that's the case Foyle then the secular system has certainly produced people who can't think very clearly. Secular Humanism is among the most closed minded of all the belief systems around. That is why it produces such rotten fruit.

Keep that dumb crap away from our kids. isn't it bad enough that their parents still get sucked in by primitive superstition ?
Keep Religion in the home, keep it out of the public.

Regardless of whether a person believes in a particular religion, it has been a powerful force in human history and is worthy of study. Knowledge and faith are quite separate things.

Candide: "Regardless of whether a person believes in a particular religion,…" If you assume (you probably don't) that those of us who reject belief in gods are opposed to childern being taught about religion, please be assured that is not the case. As you say, religion has been such a powerful force in the history of our species that it would be criminal not to teach children about it. But they must be taught about it, not compelled to believe it. They should be taught that people have come up with an astonishing range of beliefs to satisfy their wonder at what life is all about but that not one such belief has been found to be so convincing that the whole world has agreed, "yes, that's the answer." They should be taught that religious belief has led people to do many many good works but also to commit many atrocities. And they should be reassured that no child is a little Anglican, Catholic, Muslim or anything else because you cannot be any of these things until you are old enough to make a mature judgment about what you believe. Pressuring children to accept without question things that adults believe that are not supported by evidence is just another form of child abuse. Are you there, Runner?

GlenC
But it's alright to do all those things in the name of the State?

Jardine K Jardine
In the name of the State? I interpreted what Glen C wrote was advocating doing things that are to the benefit of each child and expecting the community as a whole to support such an education system run by those who supposedly represent all our interests , our politians

Candida a powerfull force to kill people throughout the centuries, religion is an abomination to the human race.

Foyle
How do you know whether it's an unfalsifiable belief system?

' Pressuring children to accept without question things that adults believe that are not supported by evidence is just another form of child abuse. Are you there, Runner? '

Yes GlenC as is indoctrinating kids with homosexual propaganda, gw religion, promoting porn and failing to instal any morality into a child's life. The secularist are certainly experts at indoctrination. I suppose with Stalin as one of their founding fathers its not surprising.

Runner you are a true Christian, I don't think so, you are more in line with the fantasy devil.

runner,
All my close adult friends are Secularists or Skeptics and/or Humanists. Every one of them is honest and ethical and not one of them acts in any of the ways you suggest.

Those friends are all concerned to see that future generations learn to think clearly about all issues. Students need to know, for example, that religious leaders and their mobs have always suppressed knowledge by such nefarious activities as destroying the Library of Alexandria and murdering millions for the "crime" of not believing whatever religious nonsense was then current. We have religious leaders to thank for the Dark and Middle Ages between about 400CE and 1550.

You keep trying to tie the non religious to the exceedingly poor behaviour of various politicians such as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Politicians worship and seek power. They are politicians first to last, unbelievers maybe, but not secularists.

Secularists believe that people can have their own personal set of religious beliefs but those beliefs should not intrude into nor control society nor restrict the ability of others to make their own decisions on personal matters. Also, those religious beliefs should not be allowed to reduce the intellectual capacity of the young, something usually done by indoctrination.

Foyle, my question is how you distinguish state from church indoctrination of children, and how you know that the beliefs the state inculcates in its indoctrination are not irrational and similarly vicious as other religions or belief systems?

I don't think you have any rational, non-arbitrary criterion by which you can distinguish them, but if you do, what is it?

To
a) confuse society with the state,
b) personify the community as a decision-making entity
c) use a double standard by which you criticise the irrationality of church indoctrination, turn off the same critical faculty and merely baldly assert the beneficence of state indoctrination,
are only signs of your superstition of state-worship.

This is the same irrational belief system underlying your neo-Keynesianism which believes that "we" (mystical abstract superbeing - the State - that can magically suspend the laws of nature for man's benefit) can create wealth out of nothing by stamping special ritual symbols on pieces of paper "monetary policy". It's just irrational fetishism, fully on a par with any other bone-shaking or superstitious charlatanry. That's why whenever I have challenged you on it, you have never been able to defend it but by circular reasoning, thus proving me right and you irrational. And that's why you avoided answering my question, isnt it? It rationally disproves you.

If a belief can't be falsified, it's irrational. I say that your belief is irrational because you can't show how it can be falsified, but if it can, how? How can it be proved wrong?

runner
Why can't people choose moral values and standards without believing the dubious cosmology of Genesis? btw where in the New Testament does it say marriage must be monogamous?

Jardine, I'm not sure what you mean by a belief system. If you mean a set of beliefs about some aspect of our universe than can only be held on faith because there is no verifiable evidence attesting to it, which is what religious belief is, then I agree with you that the state should not be imposing "belief systems" on children. But if you mean a set of beliefs about how some aspect of the universe, such as a human body or a jet engine or a bioverse,works, and there is currently a set of such beliefs that is almost universally agreed to by those expert in it, then I think that is something that the state can teach children provided that, as is always the cease, the children are taught NOT that this is the only possible truth for ever, but that it is the best explanation available at the moments and will remain so until something presently unforeseen is discovered that requires that it be modified.

This, after all, is probably the main difference between religious belief and scientific belief. Religious belief, because it is presumed to comprise knowledge given and guaranteed by God, can never be questioned or modified (witness Runner's helpless entrapment by his belief in the literal truth of Genesis). Scientific belief is only ever "true" until the next discovery that requires its modification, at which time it is modified, as verifiable evidence requires, without fear of earning a God's wrath. Of course, some religions do change their dogma (albeit slowly and reluctantly) when the evidence of its error becomes too powerful to ignore (witness Galileo), but they seem to have this incredibl ability to carry on as if, in the process of changing one of their god-given, irrefutable beliefs, they have exposed neither their beliefs nor themselves to scorn.

Jardine K Jardine,
You appear to have never heard of axioms or you are prepared to completely ignore the concept.
Two very well known sets of axioms are firstly those which underlie the Constitution of the USA -
Thomas Jefferson Declaration of Independence
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
And, secondly, those which are the foundation of Euclid's Plane Geometry -
"To draw a straight line from any point to any point."
"To produce [extend] a finite straight line continuously in a straight line."
"To describe a circle with any centre and distance [radius]."
"That all right angles are equal to one another."
The parallel postulate: "That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles."
Although Euclid's statement of the postulates only explicitly asserts the existence of the constructions, they are also taken to be unique.
The Elements also include the following five "common notions":
Things that are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another.
If equals are added to equals, then the wholes are equal.
If equals are subtracted from equals, then the remainders are equal.
Things that coincide with one another are equal to one another.
The whole is greater than the part.

'All my close adult friends are Secularists or Skeptics and/or Humanists.

says it all Foyle. Expand you base and open your mind.

Foyle
Not sure what you’re getting at there.

Why is it an axiom to say that all men are created equal?

My working definition of an axiom is a proposition that is either conceded, or cannot be denied without performing a self-contradiction.

E.g. “All human action takes place in time”. One either concedes it, in which case there is no issue, or one denies it:
“No it doesn’t.”
in which case one performs a self-contradiction because the denial takes place *in time*, so the denier performs a self-contradiction by the act of denying it. Therefore it is axiomatic that all human action takes place in time.

Another example would be “All human action consists of preferring one thing to another.”
To deny it consists of performing a preference of one thing to another. Therefore it’s axiomatic.

According to this theory, “All men are created equal” is not an axiom because by denying it – “No they aren’t” – I don’t necessarily perform a self-contradiction – indeed I demonstrate that the proposition is untrue so far as others don’t equally deny it.

GlenC
I agree with that, save for any conclusion as to the proper role of the state.

The problem as I see it is that many of the beliefs and arguments in favour of state education suffer from the same defects and irrationalities as the irrational beliefs and arguments for religion and religious indoctrination of children.

Human beings seem to have a curious double nature. On the one hand they are capable of a high degree of rationality, such we see as in mathematics, logic, and technology. On the other hand, in all cultures and all ages, they show a propensity to believe things that are either blatantly illogical, if not bat-sh!t mad, or so highly dubious that their truth value should be regarded as negligible, e.g. the Old Testament accounts of the origin of
a) the planets
b) species, and
c) languages.

It’s not just that the superstitious tendency is illogical, but that it is a prime vector of corrupt, exploitative, abusive, and unnecessarily divisive behaviour.

In modern times, I believe the predominant form of this religiosity revolves around belief in the State. Basically the church has been replaced by the State in the popular imagination of the just authority of a monopoly corporation, a selfless superbeing, concerned with our moral and material well-being, that supposedly communes with defective man’s true higher teleology. It ha superior knowledge, and goodness, and competence. It can cure the sick, fine-tune the climate, know best what children should be taught, and solve the natural problem of scarcity by creating wealth out of thin air by printing paper with special squiggles on it. It’s a superstitious belief based on demonstrable fallacies.

For example, imagine a religious cult compelled all children to attend for indoctrination, the timing, place, funding, content, qualifications, personnel and all conditions of which were to be decided unilaterally by the religious authorities.

We would immediately recognise the irrational components of the justification, the potential for corruption based on a conflict of interest, and the great vector of divisive, anti-social irrational behaviour that such an arrangement would represent.

But substitute the State, and all of a sudden we get this assumption that this is fundamentally different, and presumptively social rather than anti-social, beneficial rather than exploitative, and economical rather than wasteful and stupid.

Now maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. But when I ask its apologists to say by what rational criterion they distinguish it, I’m not getting very satisfactory answers. Foyle at first ignores the issue, then assumes what’s in issue, then answers with irrelevance and what appears to be diversion or evasion. At best it’s circular and confirms my allegation of irrationality.

And you answer truly as to the rational merit of mathematics, but this gives no reason
a) why the State should be teaching it any more than a religious sect, or
b) how the bulk of subject matter taught could claim any such rationality or be anything but indoctrination with the same issues and problems as religious indoctrination.

Is that not so?

Abbott is a Rhodes scholar and as you say Jardine how can a well read man not question a superstition, surely in the back of his mind he must think is this belief really true, or is it purely indoctrination as a child , and it is true, most people like myself who had a religious upbringing early in life no longer believe the superstition, but that indoctrination to believe was also as a child, this also was as at a time when no one queried the superstition that was being taught to the child. Some rituals really astound me, confessional boxes, eating bread handed out by another man in a robe, no other persons blood, and the list goes on and on and on. Wake up for goodness sake.

The push to teach religion in state schools bothers me - especially if this is one of the guiding principles of the 'review' of the largely untested Australian Curriculum. It hasn't even been fully rolled out, but it is apparently already a failure. No child has finished Grade 12 as a product - even for a couple of years - of the Australian Curriculum. So how do we know it doesn't work? We can revise and rethink curriculum until the cows come home, but we need to do so from an evidence-based perspective.

Here in Queensland, there is a senior subject studied primarily in Catholic schools called Study of Religion. It is not religious instruction (though Catholic schools usually offer RE as an alternative, non-OP subject) but would, perhaps, best fall under the heading of sociology. I did it in high school and my understanding of Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, as well as non-aligned spiritual movements was greatly enhanced. My critical thinking skills were given quite a bit of exercise and I came to understand much of the impact of religion on society.

I think there is a place for religious instruction in religious schools, and I think there is a place for religious schools in our society. The fact that a very sizeable group of parents opts to send their kids to Catholic and other religious schools shows that this is something many Australians want. My ideal would be that students learn ABOUT religion. If it is taught properly and, if it is deemed worth its place in society, those students are more than welcome to pursue their faith further. If the students find it to be worthless, then at least they know what they are rejecting.

I think our state schools should be free of religious instruction. We have no state religion, and we are not compelled to accept any faith as the truth.

Jardine K Jardine;
Jefferson's statement was a simplification of a complex issue, the concept of justice. In any political system, if it is to be just, the aim must be that all citizens should stand as equals before the law. That was the axiom he simplified. It is sometimes expended to mean equality of opportunity. I am surprised you didn't recognise that. Have you ever read the USA case, Brown vs The Board of Education?
Harvard University has freely available a 12 hour series by philosopher Michael Sandel on the concept of justice. I benefited from watching it. You might too.
runner;
Several of my Secularist/Humanist friends also act as teachers in the NSW Ethics Classes. They are amazed at the way young children benefit from discussing, with their peers, various open ended questions. Those students will benefit for the rest of their lives from those (Socratic style) discussions. You and your religious friends are the ones devoted to dogma and education based on tradition and history provided they are allowed to censor the history to their own satisfaction. How many Christian schools teach about the execution of Bruno and thousands of other thinkers?

I don't need to get out more. By aged 26 I was the senior supervisor on a shift in the then largest steelmaking department in Australia while still attending university part time. So I have mixed with a wide variety of people.

“In any political system … the aim must be that all citizens should stand as equals before the law. That was the axiom he simplified.”

Hang on. You haven’t established that it’s an axiom. All you’ve done is fall back to an assertion that something that’s factually false and logically impossible “must” be “the aim”.

“It is sometimes expended to mean equality of opportunity… Have you ever read the USA case, Brown vs The Board of Education?”

Obviously no-one in America had equal opportunity with any of the justices of that court to pass judgment in that case, did they? No.

And in fact no subject of any government, in his capacity as a subject of their jurisdiction has, or could possibly have, equal opportunity with its functionaries in their capacity as functionaries, could they? No.

Furthermore equal opportunity is factually impossible, isn’t it? Can you give us an example, ever?

And should a mathematical genius and a mental retard have an “equal opportunity” to be a professor of mathematics? You haven’t even eliminated the possibility that you’re talking palpable nonsense, or setting up factual impossibilities as desiderata.

So while you have failed to prove axiomatic the benefits of state indoctrination, on the other hand you’ve done an excellent job of demonstrating an irrational methodology indistinguishable from what you criticise in religious indoctrination of children, including:
• Belief in a magical superbeing
• Assuming what’s in issue
• Embrace of obvious factual and logical falsehoods
• Dealing with critical analysis by ignoring it
• Appeal to absent authority
• Non sequitur
• Irrelevance

“Harvard University has freely available a 12 hour series … on the concept of justice. I benefited from watching it. You might too.”

Your illogic is no recommendation, especially when you were responding to a challenge to prove you’re not being irrational.

Just as there should be a separation of church and state, so there should be a separation of education and state for all the same reasons, and thanks to Foyle for so frankly and openly demonstrating his methodology indistinguishable from vicious religious dogma.

Jardine, an important difference between a religion and a state is that whereas the members of a religious congregation normally do not get to determine, or even influence, what it is they are supposed to believe, the members of a polity do, at least if it's democratic. Having a state determine what children are to learn in the absence of some member-controlled check on how the state exercises this power would potentially be just as dangerous as religions already are, but, at least in countries like ours, this state power is capable of being reined in by the people. We are seeing this happen as we write with the people making it very clear to the state that Minister Pyne's intentions to subvert the curriculum are not on.

And one of the things we should, and I think do, demand of our state is that, at least in government schools, children should always be taught that the things we believe to be true are true as of now and only in the sense that a "truth" is the best interpretation of the evidence available at this time. That signals another important difference between church and state controlled schooling.

Runner, as usual you have failed to grasp a critic's point. When Foyle commented that his friends were secularists, he was not saying, as you leapt to conclude, that the only people he engaged with were secularists or skeptics or humanists. He was, instead, saying that of all the people he had engaged with, the only ones who had the qualities that he admired enough to become close friends with were secularists. He meant, I'm sure, that he chose as his friends people with the willingness and ability to participate in intelligent conversations with minds open to accepting whatever the evidence showed to be rational. Religious fundamentalists — indeed fundamentalists of all kinds — generally lack these predispositions and abilities. I'm sure that Foyle has known and engaged with people of many different attitudes and abilities in his time, and even with people like you.

I don’t think it’s true that the ordinary punter has, in practice, any determining or influential input as to what his children are to be compulsorily indoctrinated with.

The *belief* that he does is part of the mythology and the liturgy of the state religion; like the false belief that “we” are the state and the state is us. Again the socially-condoned belief in factual propositions that are obviously false, or at best so highly dubious that their truth value is negligible, is what we would expect from a religion.

Even if it were true that the ordinary members rather than the priviligentsia were able to determine what is taught as fact, that doesn’t explain why that’s a good thing, as if truth were determinable by popular vote. Obviously the idea that truth is whatever the majority say it is, is wanting: about as anti-rational as it gets.

But suppose it’s true. Then the statist case immediately falls into a self-contradiction. For its premise is that parents, as parents, are incompetent to determine what their children should be taught, otherwise there’d be no justification for the state to substitute its own decision, would there? If they do know, then the assumption that the state knows better must be rejected.

Notice also how your argument ignores the fact that the state is by definition a legal monopoly of initiating force? The whole discussion of alleged benefits is conducted as if the funding and attendance were not compulsory. So again, as with religions, we get this open embrace and propagation of factual and moral falsehoods or corrupt systemic ignoring of very significant truths inimical to the interests of the sacerdotal class.

How do you answer my objection that belief in the state’s presumptive beneficence and competence, and superior knowledge, is just as irrational as belief in the church’s, but MUCH more vicious, because of the state’s monopoly of aggression which you have so far ignored, which has killed far more people than any religion, and which is the basis of both the funding and attendance of compulsory state child indoctrination?

Jardine: "I don’t think it’s true that the ordinary punter has, in practice, any determining or influential input as to what his children are to be compulsorily indoctrinated with."
No but ordinary punters can and, at least in countries like ours, do protest if they believe that a state is mandating the indoctrination of plainly untenable "truths". Your choice of "indoctrinated" raises more doubts about how you use words. Suppose a teacher tells a class that steam can be harnessed to produce power, or that vaccination has led to the virtual wiping out of certain diseases, or that 20 is always double 10 in ratio scale metrics but not in interval scale ones, do you call that indoctrinating them? I think most people limit the idea of indoctrination to placing others under duress to believe something that is not supported by evidence, such as that praying changes outcomes.

"Even if it were true that the ordinary members rather than the priviligentsia were able to determine what is taught as fact, that doesn’t explain why that’s a good thing, as if truth were determinable by popular vote."
Well, of course that's true, but what is your point? Nobody is suggesting that curriculums should be determined by the vote of everybody including those with no accepted expertise. Curriculums should be determined by appropriately qualified people on our behalf. We trust them to do this for us just as we trust engineers and doctors to perform specialised services on our behalf. But if curriculum designers, engineers or doctors propose something ridiculous, such as not starting a lesson, bridge construction or operation until the omens are positive, the people would rightly, and successfully, object. They might not often determine what children should be taught but they can certainly determine what they shouldn't.

"How do you answer my objection that belief in the state’s presumptive beneficence and competence, and superior knowledge, is just as irrational as belief in the church’s…"? By asking you why you think I, or anyone else, holds this belief? Are you not scattering straw men everywhere

'Religious fundamentalists — indeed fundamentalists of all kinds — generally lack these predispositions and abilities '

You are kidding yourself GlenC.

Foyle wrote ' Every one of them is honest ' Can't you see that the fact that you have 'honest 'friends means nothing. I am sure that the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens consider themselves honest even know they preach unscientific nonsense. The fact that Foyle can''t even see that all of us are corrupt and honesty is only in degrees. Have all his friends kept their marriage vows, have any committed adultery, has any stolen. The self righteous are unable to see how corrupt humanity is. Usually many adopt humanist religions like gw instead of humbling themselves before Christ to receive mercy and grace instead. Many unbelievers can see clearly how religious the new atheist are. Many of them are of the nastiest brand even know all their friends are 'honest'.

Dear Runner,
Thank you for illustrating so beautifully my contention that religious and other kinds of fundamentalists have difficulty in participating in conversations that confront them with evidence that questions what they want to believe.

GlenC

thanks for confirming the closed minded nature of many who claim they are really interested in truth.

Runner
OK, I give in. Yours really is bigger than mine.

GlenC

LOL.

Okay, imagine you are travelling in a strange land where they believe that throwing virgins into the volcano increases crop fertility.

“How do you know it does?” you ask.
“We go by the empirical evidence” they reply.
“What empirical evidence?”
“Increase in crop fertility after we throw virgins in.”

(And of course they also believe that no consequent increase in crop fertility proves that they didn’t throw enough virgins into the volcano.)

This kind of reasoning – so common in the history of religion – is also very common in the state today, even at the highest levels of policy. It is for example, EXACTLY THE SAME in its logical deep structure as the justification and “evidence” for stimulus monetary policies used by the American and Australian governments, backed by the World Bank, the IMF, and so on.

The moral of the story is that the test of rationality can never be “the evidence” per se. Evidence doesn’t interpret itself. ONLY IF the theory being used to construe the evidence meets prior minimal threshold standards of rationality, can we enter onto any question of a rational claim about the evidence. If one’s theory is irrational or self-contradictory, one will misconstrue the evidence.

From the theists’ point of view, the existence of the world, its beauty and wonders etc., are evidence of the existence of God. The rational problem is not that the “evidence” doesn’t exist. It’s that they’re using an irrational belief system which misconstrues the evidence:
a) circularity: assuming it’s true in the first place, and then referring objections back to this assumption
b) relying on the authority of “experts” whose qualification is itself religious.

I charge you, the author, and anyone who defends state education with the same.

The argument is, in short, that the criterion of threshold rationality disqualifies at least 50 percent of modern western government, including all state education. Socialism of any kind, whether democratic or no, is in no better position, as concerns rationality, than any superstition, which is why Foyle went out backward in a welter of self-contradiction, fallacies and errors.

Putting aside whether we call something teaching/indoctrination, and whether it’s done by church/state/someone else, there should be least issue between rationalists and others in the clear examples you mentioned, where the evidence is logically explained by logically valid theories.

The problem is that VERY MANY of the topics taught by the state to children do not answer this description, including huge slabs of social studies, civics, sexuality, gender, family, history, literature, anything touching on the state itself and the state’s concerns including science, medicine, production, and the environment. The opportunity for corrupt error is wide open; as unlimited as government power.

Not only does the state teach many things as truth that are in fact matters of interpretation or arbitrary. Much worse, it teaches many things as truth that are flatly incorrect, that do not meet minimal threshold standards of logic, and that have been disproved in theory and practice over and over and over and over again, at huge and ongoing cost in blood and treasure. For these it is perfectly appropriate to use the term indoctrination.

As for duress, what is compulsion but duress? For example in NSW, if you refuse to send your child for compulsory indoctrination, the state will remove (i.e. abduct) the child, place it in foster care even if the education is worse, and thus destroy the family. If you refuse to pay, you’ll be imprisoned.

So yes it’s duress and indoctrination, properly so-called. It concerns the compulsory inculcation of many beliefs that misinform the child about the true nature of the world, and social co-operation, and rational ethics; it misleads them about the true nature of the state with false beliefs that are biased in favour of the state and corrupt interests, such as the author's tacit assumption that "we" are the state.

The parent’s right to “protest” will avail him nothing; that argument is just a piece of flummery, the moreso since his right to protest inheres in his nature: it is not a gift of the state. (The argument that one can protest is mere irrelevant docile state-revering.)

Why do they keep teaching these beliefs if they’re wrong? Because just as with religion, they believe, even strongly, what they can’t rationally defend and because it’s in their interest to do so.

And it’s in their interest precisely because of the privileged one-sided position these “educators” and authorities - these secular priests - have in the state, as against the subjects of their power. The state’s priestly class the intelligentsia, as much as or more than religious acolytes, has all the same potential for corruption and conflict of interest as against those forced to fund, and to undergo, its indoctrination.

That’s the point that the article ignores.

In these circumstances, it is laughable to suggest that “Curriculums should be determined by appropriately qualified people on our behalf”, when “appropriately qualified” is to be determined unilaterally by the state, and the evidence that it’s “on our behalf” is only that the state does it!

And what would you say if I made the claim that the Ayatollah decides “on our behalf” what indoctrination we should all be compulsorily subjected to? It’s just as much a circular, absurd, and completely impermissible appeal to authority when made for the state.

To think of state indoctrination as if the people were a land-owner commissioning an architect – a consensual transaction - is to display fundamental moral and intellectual confusion by completely ignoring the compulsory nature of state education: talking AS IF the funding and attendance of state indoctrination were not compulsory. Once we correct for this blatant factual and logical error, the argument collapses.

Just as religious indoctrinators have a program for systematic conversion to their creed, and hate competition, so does the state. But the state is much more of a threat to the good society because it has a monopoly of aggressive force which it uses to shove its religion down everyone’s throats and persecute non-conformists by harassing them, and threaten them with court, and fines, and abducting their children, or physically attacking and caging people who refuse to pay. The position of the state today is much more like the position of the Catholic church in the late first millennium, than like any other contemporary religion. It is positively derelict of the rationalists not to be alive to this point.

I will prove against all comers that all attempts to vindicate the rationality of the state’s child indoctrination flounder in the same fallacies, and exactly the same methodology, as churches’. State education has all the same credulous irrational dogmatic religiosity and intolerance, and is much worse for being based on physical duress, which the modern churches’ aren’t.

Education and state should be just as completely separated as church and state, for all the same reasons.

Should we teach more religion in schools?

God no, but it would be nice if they taught a little of the 3Rs, & made a lot less rounded students.

'God no, but it would be nice if they taught a little of the 3Rs, & made a lot less rounded students. '

would agree Hasbeen but due total lack of respect and ethics the kids tell the teachers to get s-. Maybe in not so many words but definetely in actions.

Jardine, you have poured so much of yourself into your comments that I feel I should try to propose at least as painstakeningly argued a response, but I'm not even sure that you and I live in the same world; or that what you see as we move in our world is what I see.

It might help me to understand your concerns if instead of just saying that religions and states are irretrievably malign, you could give us some idea of the alternative kind of society that you must believe could exist. It might be quite unfair but I have to say that, given the limited time (and intelligence) I have available to get my head around everything you say, all I see is someone driven to destroy every comforting assumption people make about our world and the societies we create in it. You actually remind me of how Mr Abbott dealt with problems when in Opposition, and that's proably a nasty and unjustified thing to say; but there it is.

BTW, I know Foyle quite well. He is an inspiration to all who know him, partly because he's always constructive, partly because he spends every day educating himself, partly because he gladly shares what he has with the less privileged, but mainly because he lives the Socratic good life. And he's like this knowing, as I do, that we have very little time left in this life and that there is no other; but knowing also that there is no God waiting at life's end to dole out rewards and punishments.

I hope you experience the peace that he and I enjoy, and not the fear that bedevils so many believers.

GlenC your last sentence said it all, I do not expect sprouting wings or having a flaming pitchfork in the next non existence place after death, I will be as I was before I came, knowing nothing and missing nothing, after all it was just a sperm & egg, and being a very good swimmer, otherwise I may have gone down the drain, nothing to do with some super being.

GlenC
If you and Foyle had been trying to present a caricature of the intellectual methodology of the people you are criticising, you could hardly have done a better job, could you?

Notice how your last post:
• Does not admit or deny my argument
• instead tries to personalise and subjectivise all issues
• impugns my motives
• pretends to a fake spiritual superiority.

To name these tactics is to dispose of them.

And what about this clanger?
“It might help me to understand your concerns if instead of just saying that religions and states are irretrievably malign you could give us some idea of the alternative kind of society that you must believe could exist.”

Firstly I didn’t say religions and states are irretrievably malign, so we can add misrepresentation to your list of fallacies.

Secondly, whether or not something is true does not depend on whether you would like to believe it.

My “concerns” are that your belief in state indoctrination of children is demonstrably just as irrational, and more violent and corrupt, than religious indoctrination. And we have just established that you are unable to defend your belief system, or refute my critique of it.

To quote you to runner:
“Thank you for illustrating so beautifully my contention that religious and other kinds of fundamentalists have difficulty in participating in conversations that confront them with evidence that questions what they want to believe.”

In the first quote above, you’re doing exactly what you accused runner of in the second quote, aren’t you? Having been shown that your belief system is indefensibly irrational, you still can’t bring yourself to admit it. Instead you try to satisfy yourself that admitting what you can’t defend, won’t confront you with what you don’t want to believe!

Well what if you’re wrong? What if you believe in the most violent and corrupt religion ever? What if you were brainwashed so much for so long that you don’t recognise it? What if your self-conceit of virtue is mistaken, and you actively support exploitation and child abuse on a massive scale?

“As you say, religion has been such a powerful force in the history of our species that it would be criminal not to teach children about it. But they must be taught about it, not compelled to believe it.”

So how do you justify compelling them to be indoctrinated by the state? We have just seen that you cannot distinguish state from religion, nor most of what is taught from indoctrination. So therefore you should support the abolition of state education.

“They should be taught that people have come up with an astonishing range of beliefs to satisfy their wonder at what life is all about but that not one such belief has been found to be so convincing that the whole world has agreed, "yes, that's the answer."”

Therefore we cannot justify compelling people to pay for or attend the teaching of one set of beliefs, ordained by one authority. You should support the abolition of state education.

“They should be taught that religious belief has led people to do many many good works but also to commit many atrocities.”

And they should be taught that states, just in the last 100 years, have killed more people than all the religions in the entire history if the world, shouldn’t they? And they should be taught that socialism – the public ownership of the means of production - is an irrational belief system that is intrinsically abusive and anti-social based on worshipping a monopoly of aggressive violence? And they should be taught that government’s pretensions to know best what to teach children are false ; and that state education cannot be justified even in its own terms.

“And they should be reassured that no child is a little Anglican, Catholic, Muslim or anything else because you cannot be any of these things until you are old enough to make a mature judgment about what you believe.”

But children can be assured, and compelled to be taught and believe that they are a little Australian? And wear a uniform to impress on them that they belong to the state? And the state has the right to teach them whatever it wants? Even if their parents disagree? And that killing people who never attacked, or offered to attack Australia is "serving their country"? And children should be implicitly taught that people can be locked in a cage and raped to force them to pay for the state to indoctrinate children under compulsion with whatever it wants? And even if it’s factually wrong, and even if it’s immoral, or promotes war, or killing people, or fraudulent, exploitative or parasitic behaviour? And that people’s rights are whatever the state says they are? And that the state knows best?

And you support that, don’t you, otherwise you’d support the abolition of state education?

Am I questioning your dearly-held beliefs?

“Pressuring children to accept without question things that adults believe that are not supported by evidence is just another form of child abuse. Are you there, Runner?”

Are you there, GlenC?