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?