Mick V,
-Your mind is your brain, a collection of electrical and chemical impulses that can be manipulated by drugs and scalpels to create a different mind. This is routinely done by medicos; the impact of appropriate drugs on the minds of people who want to kill themselves/others/or who think they are a parrot, is often truely astounding. I recommend a book by Stenger 'God; the failed hypothesis. How science shows that God does not exist' who impassionately expounds on some of these ideas.
-There are many atheists today who came from positions of belief, including the ministry. Some have books and blogs.
-If you are honest I think you will realise that your opposition to evolution only comes from your faith; why else would anyone care if reptiles evolved into birds? I think that it is eminently more plausable than the alternative; that God just clicked her fingers and created everything in one puff.

Quite so, Yvonne. RE's bad enough in State schools, but apparently standards and safeguards are even lower in some church-run schools:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22078268-952,00.html

CJMorgan, at least in a church run school a parent knows that there will be religious teaching of a particular kind.

I was hit for six when my daughter came home quoting bible texts from a public school. The kids got a lolly if they got it right. Or, my daughter thought this the funniest thing, the world was created 4,000 years ago, the dinosaur bones included.

There were none of the parables that Jesus told his disciples, I asked her, these were the stories I loved as a child. There was lots about prayers being answered if you REALLY believed, statements about scientists vs those who love God and visual 'jokey' work sheets ridiculing evolution.

This has absolutely NOTHING to do with teaching and learning about morals or values, but everything with fundamentalist Christian indoctrination.

I was wild, withdrew her and she was then made to move her desk to the back of the class and sit with her back to the class during RE. So I wrote a letter to the department of education asking how this exactly fitted into their waffle about equal opportunity and respect for all children. I got a tepid response back about my right to withdraw her from RE and the school then contacted me.

Why do parents need a 'right' to withdraw? The education department needs to ask my PERMISSION for this. A parent who wants this kind of stuff should need to put in the effort, not the other way round. And you need to go through this farce every year.