I like the religion of secularism.Belief in non-belief.Could it be the perfect oxymoron?It has a real ring to it.What we need is the church of secularism and pay homage to the mighty dollar.

We could have a competition for the 'spectacular secular.'What do you believe in? Well just the opposite of those bastards over there.

teatree,

I think the difference is a theologian might advocate rather than teach. Something like the Trinity can be studied objectively, yet a cleric would take his/her church's position. As you would know, the Eygptians and Hawiians had trinities.That said, I see no problem studying the NT as one might the Iliad.

I have a friend, then already a cleric, who studied comparative religions and after independent analysis of the works available to became an atheist

WE have to get Religions out of Education not let them in. When has teaching untruths been one of the goals of Education? Secularism is better for you than fibs!

Do these religious instruction teachers really know their Bibles?

I have explained these points on many threads with the believers amongst us mostly rather silent!

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2572&page=0

Indoctrination is NOT Education. Manipulating minds to believe in flawed religions is NOT education.

Surely all that needs to be taught is

1. Love or at least try to like one another
2. Respect one another
3. Help & Care for one another
4. Be tolerant of one another

and a teacher is already qualified for this.

But back to the Bible - the great reference book, so flawed, and yet so heavily relied upon.

If your God gives you the courage read what it really says. Don't gloss over it.

The Bible really should have an MA15+ rating.

Examples

Why would we place a book that wrongly threatens hellfire and damnation in the hands of a child?

Luke 17:28-30

OR follow the teachings of someone who believes Jesus said at the end of the parable of the gold coins

Luke 19:27 "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."

OR teaches that their loving God killed all the innocent children of the Earth in Noah's flood

Genesis 7:4 "...and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth."

OR teaches that a loving God would kill all the innocent firstborn of Egypt

Exodus 12:29 "And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt..."

Now I know that the religious instruction teachers will say they don't teach these bits...BUT doesn't that make the teachings selective and therefore dishonest?

BrettP...If what you are teaching are falsehoods, then that isn't education!

Runner...what is a plausible origin to you, is a piece of clay to most....Ha!

Teatree...they don't canvass ideas they teach myth as fact...OMG

>> I don't like all this silly running around bending at the knees religious nonsense.<<
I could hardly expect to be seen as tolerant if I wrote "I don't like all this silly American placing one's hand over one's heart while their national anthem is playing, patriotic nonsense".

>> Our concern is that our children are being indoctrinated into somebody else's idea of the nature of reality and the moral codes that flow from it. ... it is not right for any one view to be imposed on the kids, and that further, the kids should not be admonished to learn, and cleave to, any one religious view. <<
I principally agree, except I would not restrict this to only "religious" views, but any world-view that has to come down from the teacher to the student (unless one restricts teaching to only science and maths). However, I do not see how to implement this in a society, where subjects like history, philosophy, ethjcs etc. have to be taught to children/students coming from families with different world-view preferences.

Also, the author seems to have conflated the role of a chaplain - a counsellor working from this or that world-view background - and a teacher of RE, an optional subject, like a foreign language.

>> as their atheist chaplain and we got in a Buddhist, Taoist, Islamic, Catholic and Judaic chaplain as well. .. Schools have properly trained and accountable councillors.<<
If the councellor/chaplain is not "properly trained and accountable" e.g. lacks the necessary formal qualifications in psychology (a science subject), the school should reject his/her services, irrespective of his/her world-view background. Besides, every school can offer only this number of foreign languages, and similar restrictions obviously apply also to the world-view backgrounds of counsellors/chaplains the school can afford.

Pelican, we already had a system:
1. That ... allows people to believe in what they will ... as long as those beliefs don't contravene the law, including the law against blasphemy (the old name for political correctness).
2. The freedom for democratic government to develop policy without the “shackles“ of the presuppositions of other world-views, especially those based on atheism.
3. The freedom for our children not to be indoctrinated at a tender age by those who rejected world-view based on Christianity and universally accepted.

It did not last for long, and I do not think your variation would, if implemented consequently, provide for a better and freer society either, though it might help religion - e.g. the Christian versions of it - by clearing out their dead wood. At least this was my experience with a system where your model was followed verbatim (in East-Central Europe) and it took only a few decades for a religious revival, both on the emotional (spiritual) and intellectual levels, to re-emerge. The same in Russia.

>>difference between Counsellors and Chaplains is that support is provided free from religious motivations<<
A suitably (psychology) qualified person can indeed cause a lot of damage by brainwashing a young person, irrespective of his/her motivations, religious, anti-religious or what.

Pericles,
>>Interestingly, the world has yet to witness atheists fighting amongst themselves to determine whose atheism is best.<<
Atheism is not an ideology, nor a religion, so one atheism cannot be better than another (though one atheist can be better educated, behaved etc. than another). However, there are many world-views based on atheism, and you just have to read about the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to see how deadly were the fights between different interpreters of Marx and Lenin, all atheists.

Nevertheless, one thing atheism has common with religion: both can degenerate into an ideology.

Dear George,

I view Marxism as a Christian heresy. The Marxist belief in the original sin of private property and the classless millennium makes Marxism like Christianity in the belief in a historical process leading to an apotheosis.

Possibly Joachim of Fiore propounded the first three stage version of History between 1190 and 1195. The book of Revelation was his key. One part of the Trinity presided over each stage. First was the age of the Father or the Law, second was the age of the Son or the Gospel, and third would be the age of the Spirit. The age of the Spirit was the millennium in which all men would be contemplative monks in mystical ecstasy singing the praises of God continuing until the last judgment. No mention of women. Since Augustine had maintained we were already in the Millennium with the advent of Christianity Joachim's theory of history was at odds with Augustine even though Joachim had the encouragement of three popes.

The theories of historical evolution of the German Idealist philosophers Lessing, Schelling and Fichte and also Hegel embodied the Joachite phantasy of the three ages. Comte had the idea that history went through three phases, an ascent from the theological to the metaphysical and finally to the scientific stage, and Marxian dialectic went through the three stages of primitive communism, the class society and a final communism in which the state would wither away.

Nationalist theorists wrote of three stages, too. Their nations were the heirs of an earlier glory. Of course powerful nations already claimed to be the heirs of Rome. The titles, kaiser and czar, are German and Russian versions of Caesar. In 1923 Moeller van den Bruck coined the phrase, "the Third Reich". The Holy Roman Empire was the first, Bismarck's Germany the second and the Nazis referred to their Germany after the takeover in 1933 in van den Bruck's phrase as "the Third Reich" or in millenarian terminology,
"the Thousand Year Reich". It lasted until 1945. Nationalist theorists added another hierarchical concept to the progression of their nation in history.

continued