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?