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.