Some reflections on Brett's contribution part 1 of 2:

"Schools were initially set up in this country by the Churches not the state." Indeed, and Australia was an evolving set of colonies at that time, so not all was the same around the wide-brown-land. We know Brett is not from Qld, so 'his' history will be similar, but different, to that of Qlders. In Qld, in the 1860s, one of the first actions after separating from NSW was to defund the denominational schools and push for secular schooling, such was the feeling here against funding religions at all. By 1875 we had real secular schooling, not the half measure of NSW, and I believe Victoria-could be wrong there. This was opposed by Christians (there were no other religions, of course)and the good work of thinking people, many of whom were Christians who understood the benefits of a secula public sphere, to all of us including them, was undone in the 1910 referendum which imposed RI and Bible lessons on Qld students for the next 100 years.

"Today, provided you can satisfy the legislation any group may teach a group for their religion within a school and any parent may remove their student from it." Not true in Qld. 'Any group' applies only to a select few, so Pagans are excluded, and there are over 100000 declared Pagans, plus those too scared to 'own up' on the census form. In effect, generally, only Christians enter schools for RI. More recently, as Buddhism has become the 'new' plaything of the angst ridden middleclasses, these, and a few other odds & sods get in too. Indeed, 'any parent may remove' is true in theory, but so too is the requirement to have a 'separate space' for non-RI students, generally ignored in Qld state schools, while the habit of using RI as a 'default option' is the practice not the exception, and to Hell with what parents want.

"Most teachers are unpaid and voluntary" - the word 'teacher' is too grand, stick to 'volunteer, yes, that's the deal

George,

The Nazi's weren't professed athiests, in fact they used the church to unite the population against the athiest communists.

Likewise one of the reasons that marxism pushed for athiesm was because of the excesses of the church in accumulating property and wealth at the expense of the proletariate.

These ideologies did not spring from athiesm.

Reflections on Brett: 2,

"Should the state now attempt to remove this forum for discussion of religion from schools?" RI is a closed shop for low grade indoctrination from poorly equipped volunteers, in the main, in Qld, and yes, it should stop as it is a waste of scarce time and resources.

"The reason that I think that Religious Education is not necessarily indoctrination is that I think there is more to this world than mere empiricism can deliver." - ah, that RE expression. Well, if you mean RE not RI, then it could be done, by trained EQ employed staff, within SOSE, as part of an exploration of philosophy, thinking and behaviours.

The situation in Qld, where Ed Qld employed staff are required to give Bible lessons in school is simply ‘not on’ in this world anymore. RI is one issue, which can be dealt with intelligently by ending it and instituting a broad education ‘about’ religion and thinking, but our non-secular status here makes us a laughing stock. Perhaps Afghanistan is comparable?

The political processes in Qld are so inflicted-upon by Christianity that we might as well be a theocracy. Then Bible lessons in public schools would not be considered odd or unusual.

Secular public schooling, after 100 years of Christian public schooling, has come of age. Tim Mander, spoke glowingly of the multi-faith and multi-cultural state of the nation. Most posters here understand the real Mander position, and if they don’t, go visit the SU website to see what he strives hard for.

It is not a secular state at all, but a state fit for ‘the return of Jesus’. But in the meantime, he is happy to take the secular tax handouts to religions, not only in the form of Bligh’s $10m and Gillard’s $165m of the NSCP monies that pay for his 500 plus frequently unqualified chaplains, but also all the tax-free perks, like no income tax for ‘vicars’ up to $60k a year, no council rates, no taxes for ‘religious’ businesses, not to mention the AOG ‘university’ that churns out ‘qualified’ evangelists.

Shadow Minister,

Apart from his famous "opium of the peple comment", it can be argued Marx was not an atheist to the extent that belief was was immaterial to material dialecticism in history. To Marx, religion didn’t count enough to actively oppose it. I guess Marx was a product of the bourgeois middle-class himself and his political economy an example the mechanistic nineteenth century.

When it came to Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, I suspect the quest for power overrode any rational atheism opposite to genuine faith. If one is a dictator, one does not want any form of potentially threatening reference groups, be these groups religious, the press ot an intelligensia.

Dear David f,
>>I view Marxism as a Christian heresy.<<
I appreciate that you present this as a personal view - that I can understand and share to a certain point - rather than a sweeping statement.

>>Both Marxism and Nazism embodied ideas of secular messianism. To a large extent they had the same source.<<
I agree and thank you for an interesting account of the Hegelian background to a stream of German philosophy that certainly went wrong after Goethe and Schiller (you probably know Hans Kohn’s ‘ The Mind of Germany’ where this is elucidated) and led to both Nazism and Communism.

On the other hand, not only German but all European thinking has its sources in Judaeo-Chirstian (and Hellenistic) traditions. Of course, the “trinitarian structure” of the Divine (and its reflection in Western culture) is of Christian provenance (but Christians are not the originators of messianic myths and expectations), however I do not think that everything that is/was subdivided into THREE varieties, stages, epochs, etc. can be traced to that. For instance, the Platonic ideals of beauty, truth and goodness can be used to explain a lot about how humans relate to their environment. It could be an interesting (though probably futile) exercise to try to correlate this triple with others, including the Trinity, the same as one might correlate the yin-yang complementarity with many pairs of concepts intrinsic to Western thought (well, there are six permutations of three elements, but only two of two).

Just one small remark: The Marxist theory of historical materialism recognises six, not three stages: Primitive Communism, Slave Society, Feudalism, Capitalism, Socialism and Communism. Even if you lump the middle three into one “class society” you get four stages.

I appreciate your perspective that acknowledges the common roots of Nazism and Communism: both Jews and Christians suffered by both, although in the first case the Jewish suffering was incomparably higher than that of some Christians, whereas in the second case - at least in the years following the October Revolution - it was rather the Christians who suffered.

Pelican,
I was not comparing the situation under Communism with the status quo in Australia but with a situation that might arise if your model was fully implemented (I do not think it is yet an official policy in Australia to regard ANY religious education as indoctrination), and even that only as far as its instability rather than harshness is concerned.

>>What is the alternative? To have one religion reign supreme?<<
That was exactly my point, except that not only “one religion” but no world-view orientation should “reign supreme” by e.g. calling indoctrination, or some other pejorative name, education into world-views that disagree with it. The real alternative is a majority world-view (orientation) that does not teach children disrespectfully about other orientations. The majority might be Christians (as in the past) or secular humanists (I really prefer this term to secularists that one somehow correlates with islamists or fundamentalists) as the future seems to hold for Australia and Western Europe. In Australia you teach children how to properly speak English without using derogative terms to describe other languages, especially if some children might come from a family where that language is spoken. The same with world-view orientations, religious or not. What I was trying to say was that such a situation was rather unstable, that irrespective of who is in the majority there will always be those, from the majority or minority, who will want their view to “reign supreme”, starting by condemning, denigrating, ridiculing, etc. the alternatives.

Chaplains/Counsellors, are useful only if they are properly qualified as child psychologists, but I do not see why an additional qualification in a religion that the child can relate to, should be an obstacle.

Religions can be discussed in classes supervised by a secular humanist or a Christian. The emphasis is on the teacher’s sense of tolerance not orientation.

Shadow Minister,
>> These ideologies did not spring from athiesm <<
A standard cliché reciprocated by “the evils perpetrated by Christians did not spring from theism (or Christianity) but from motivations external to their religion”. Both clichés are right to a point.