'Please tell me were to sign up to stop the idiotic Religious Education that happens in public schools.' I suggest you join the Greens or Democratics (r they still a party). They have many go haters among their ranks.

State Governments are not providing choice. I experienced both IR in state and private high schools. At the state high school, with half an hour of IR, the atheist students in class had fun debating the credibility of that week's bible story. I enjoyed the discourse and thought nothing of it at the time.

However my world was turned upside down when my father took a job posting to the Hamersley Iron in the Pilbara region of WA, resulting in 3 tortuous years enrollment at a private boarding school where religion was force fed seven days a week, twice on Sundays in chapel and religion, of the christian kind, was a compulsory subject for my Leaving Exam.

I barely scraped a pass in religion due to my irreverent analysis of fantasies that others held to be the 'word of God'. However I did gain a valuable insight into the power that religion exerts in Australian politics, especially in the corridors of parliament. At school assembly we were told that several members of federal and state parliament were old boys.

Sadly we'll not see enlightened legislation changing the status quo of IR in state schools. I'd love to see comparative religions taught over the year. We need to understand all religious views including the oldest religions like animism. They have some of the most beautiful creation stories.

Too many MP's fear the Cardinal 'consequences' of not toeing the Ratzinger's now papal dogma against stem cells, for church school funding, against contraception, for church tax concessions, against death with dignity, for government grants to churches, against civil unions for gays and lesbians and strongly endorse candidature to parliament of suitably supplicant members of the flock.

"how about if someone came into the religious schools and lectured for half an hour each week about atheism and how God doesn't exist?"

Great point Bugsy! Given the amount of federal funding given to
religious schools, why should their pupils not receive a bit more
objective education? Lets face it, if kids from an early age have
been brainwashed by family and friends into following the
Bretheren, JW, Catholic or Muslim faiths, when are they in fact
exposed to more rational and objective viewpoints?

If religious nuts won't accept even half an hour of say "morality
and ethics" rather then religious fairytales, perhaps its time
that we demand that those religious schools who are busily brainwashing their kids, if they want any kind of federal funding,
should accept that those brainwashed kids hear about another side
of the debate, in interests of more balanced and objective education.

Religious brainwashing, funded by my taxes, is a real worry

Eh, Johnj, what you could be getting at about Julie Bishop, is that the Howard Elite is getting so much tied to the ultra-right-wing Corporate Culture, they are developing the steadfast eye-gaze of the ultr-rightist NAZI SS while on parade.

It is also common with ultra-left-wing militias like North Korea.

Couldn't say whether it's fear or favour, or fanaticism?

Cheers, BB

It is worthy of note that where atheistic secularism has been taught in schools and religious instruction even by parents in the home is a Federal Offence their societies have become totaly void of equal justice. The USSR for one - murdered children and parents who disobeyed by teaching religion to children, now realising the benifits of teaching Christian morality now have it a formal subject in State schools. Observe the moral state of North Korea as an example. Since South Korea has adopted Christianity as its major religion it has become a nation of note in the World even though they many of the christians are immature in their faith.

The Atheist Bertram Russell states in his writings that every child should be taught Christian morality - it makes for a safer less selfish and more caring society. At least Bertram was a wise man.

The attitudes, misinformation and hostile immaturity of atheists toward Christian teaching on this thread are far from attitudes I want taught to my children. The problem with atheism is it is negative and a society does not function haromously on negative attitudes.

So I suggest atheists formulate just what the world is about rather than what it is NOT about and they might have a believeable philosophy. The thing is they are as divided as any organised religion on these facts. If the philosophy of the Greens are the epitome of secular socialist atheism then observe their personal atitudes to all life, personal use of toxic poisons and social reality. They are equally steeped in negativism and obstruction to a productive society.

Jesus, Philo. No one is accusing Queensland Christians of being the Spanish Inquisition, so maybe you can similarly forgo absurd references to the Soviet Union. The issue isn't the banning of religion, the issue is the forced shoving of one particular religion down people's throats. And, as almost all of the "atheist" posts show, one can value the moral and cultural and historical messages of Christianity without also advocating the fairy story nonsense.