The Guardian web site carries a story about Accelerated Christian Education schools, of which there are approximately 60 in the UK in which secondary school-age children are indoctrinated with fundamentalist Christian propaganda in place of the conventional secular syllabus.
Very worryingly, the "science" education is a mix of vaguely plausible (but wrong) pseudo-scientific factoids mixed with quotations from the bible. In one instance, the claim is made that, due to the angle of the spokes on snowflakes being 60 degrees, it should be possible to extract electric current directly from snow "eliminating the need for costly, heavy, and complex equipment now needed to generate electricity." Needless to say, scientists have likened this claim to bovine excrement "on stilts".
The English education system permits state-funded faith schools where pupils can be indoctrinated into a particular religion in the course of their studies, and there is no restriction on which religion can be taught. Faith schools have been very popular since they appear to have better academic results than conventional comprehensives, mainly because they select their pupils by ability and complicity. It is not uncommon for parents to adopt a religion superficially in order to get their children into such a school (traditionally Church of England or Roman Catholic but increasingly Jewish and Muslim).
Does religion still have a place in the state-funded classroom? Is it not dangerous for society to proactively support ignorance, superstition and sectarianism?
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday September 27 2014, @09:29AM
Well, if they are not teaching the TRUE evangel of the Flying Spagetti Monster (Marinara be his name!) who created all of this, including the mountain and the small, stick figure man, but left no evidence of creation as a test for our faith (ramen!), then they are not doing it right! I am also partial to the Hopi creation myth, which involves lots of ladders, the Australian aboriginal myth that apparently involves dreaming bandicoots, and the Hawaiian Kumulipo that have everything emerging from slime. But my favorite (gee, I hope my pastor at the New Hope Faith Olive Garden Church of the FSM is not reading this!) is the Norse origin myth: "In the beginning there was nothing. To the south of nothing were vast regions of fire, and to the north of nothing were vast regions of ice." Nothing like neighbors for nothing to get creation rolling! Ice giants and excessively legged equines can not be far behind. May you be touched by his noodlely appendage!
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Saturday September 27 2014, @09:47AM
My god is linguini carbonara!
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Saturday September 27 2014, @02:49PM
Well start a FSM school, let's see how your pupils fare against the others. Competition is good.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday September 27 2014, @06:09PM
It's turtles, all the way down.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday October 03 2014, @01:12PM
The Hawaiian myth isn't so bad TBH, given how everything actually evolved from primordial bolognooze.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @09:48AM
Let's get into churches and demand proper science be given equal time during sermons.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday September 27 2014, @09:49AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by tonyPick on Saturday September 27 2014, @10:32AM
(At the risk of being accused of Flamebait)
It's becoming apparent that the recent problem of Extremist Militant Sunni Islam infiltrating into Birmingham's Schools [theguardian.com] was that they had the wrong kind of funding. Apparently if they'd got the accounting right the government might have been trumpeting them as a success story.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday September 27 2014, @10:57AM
Perhaps they were schooled in a faith based school?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Saturday September 27 2014, @11:54AM
Indeed :-)
The law needs to change to abolish faith schools. The tax payer should fund modern, secular schools so that all children get the best start in life, free from brainwashing. If parents want their children "schooled" in religion, it should be up to them to do it on their own time (i.e. evenings and weekends) with their own money.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Saturday September 27 2014, @12:25PM
+1
One of the benefits of an enforced general syllabus is that it works against any leaning towards particular subjects according to political/social/religious bias of the educators in the classroom, protecting children who are extremely intellectually vulnerable from being taught horsesh*t that any adult would abhor but they're too young and inexperienced to know to reject.
I don't mean to sound like a Daily Mail reader, but I'm actually ashamed to live in this country right now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday September 27 2014, @06:24PM
I wish that were true. Please remember, however, that for a long time in the USSR schools were both non-sectarian (unless you count atheism) and also taught Lysenko's version of genetic science. Being government supported only guarantees that they teach what the government approves of.
The sad truth is that there is no way to teach the truth, because nobody knows it. What you can teach is beliefs. Some beliefs have practical advantages over others in certain situations. E.g., if you want to build a bridge, a conventional engineering degree is a good place to start. If, however, you want to become a preacher, it's a rather poor place to start. It's not even very good if you want to become a politician.
That said, there's a good argument to be made that the government should not be subsidizing religious schools. But it's not totally clear and one sided. Perhaps they need to subsidize the teaching of multiple religions within the same school? Perhaps all students should take instruction in multiple religions? What about philosophies? What about Buddhism? Basic Buddhism isn't a religion, as it doesn't involve any gods, but there are many different versions that blend in various different sets of gods.
What about REAL minority religions...say those of less than 0.5% of the population? There's quite a good argument that current subsidisation of religious schools discriminates against minority religions.
So the real question is: "What social goods are promoted by subsidizing religious instruction?", and, secondarily, "How effectively are those social goods being promoted? How could their promotion be improved?". These are very difficult questions as I don't believe that an explicit consensus exists. In fact, I rather expect that even attempting to reach a consensus would cause extreme rancour.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @08:09PM
...or, rather than pushing rote memorization and magical thinking, you could teach--heh, get this--The Scientific Method. [wikipedia.org]
Showing them that a result must be *repeatable* would put them on the path of wanting demonstrable proof and thinking for themselves.
Of course, children who have been indoctrinated with unquestioning acceptance of dogma are easier to manipulate as adults.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday September 28 2014, @11:06AM
But it's politically incorrect to be critical of Belief! Someone might be offended!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by LookIntoTheFuture on Saturday September 27 2014, @11:21AM
In one instance, the claim is made that, due to the angle of the spokes on snowflakes being 60 degrees, it should be possible to extract electric current directly from snow "eliminating the need for costly, heavy, and complex equipment now needed to generate electricity."
Great, now I have lost my appetite. This is absolutely sickening.
from the but-it's-traditional dept.
from the I-thought-doing-drugs-was-a-sin dept.
FTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @12:21PM
I guess what infuriates me with those of religious persuasion is I have such a hard time trying to ask them to verify their claims. In scientific circles, this is a perfectly reasonable ( and even expected ) request. The standard response I seem to get of religious people is to drown you out with very powerful amplifiers - as if the sheer volume of emitted audio would make it into a truth.
They are also experts in the use of music as a way of downloading their agendas into people. Most of the stuff seems innocent enough, while a lot of it seems geared to fundraising or sharing the "good news" around the world that they owe this preacher a tithe.
From what I can make of it, many religious people have gone "agentic", believing themselves to be agents of God, doing His will. Many apparently see nothing wrong with what they are doing as they perceive themselves commanded by God himself to engage in unthinkable acts... much like Stanley Milgram got people to electrocute each other using no more authority than that conveyed by a white lab coat. ( Reference to "Obedience to Authority", a study done at Yale University to see if there was something unique to the German people that caused the Holocaust. Turns out a lot of us can get really mean if someone else puts us up to it - and we perceive its our job to do so. )
That is the main concern I have ( and I think Christ did too ) about religion. Religious people can be really nasty if misled. It was the religious people who Murdered Christ on the Cross. People believing they are on a mission from the Creator of the Universe can be really nasty.
I consider myself to be religious, but I also get the very strong idea religion is like high explosive... handle carefully or it will blow up in your hands. One does not question authority ( well, at least if you want to keep your job and social standing! ). I did and paid the price. I could not live a lie.
Religion will turn decent people into very dangerous psychopaths if they are led down that path.
So will economic imbalances. From what I can tell, that is what drives most wars, holocausts, and French Revolution type things. Its just a reset of the banking system. A few people think they own everything, then everyone else revolts. Just like a little neon-bulb oscillator does with voltage and ionization breakdown.
Its just been my observation that many people just do not think. They just do as they are told. Our society likes followers. When someone puts them up to no-good, things go to hell in a handbasket.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fritsd on Saturday September 27 2014, @06:59PM
You're describing "authoritarian followers".
Here, this is for you:
download it for free, and read it.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ [umanitoba.ca]
Bob Altemeyer - The Authoritarians.
The author describes the Milgram experiment as well, in chapter 7 (page 222).
It's probably better if you read the rest of the book first though.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by c0lo on Saturday September 27 2014, @02:48PM
Even snopes.com [snopes.com] jumped in, not quite sure if the piece [fanfiction.net] is an authentic attempt or a satire (Reverend Albus Dumbledore, his lovely wife Minerva and their beautiful and obedient daughter Hermione Granger, while Ron is a Slytherin and Draco is Ravenclaw the religious equivalent of something evil.). Without further ado, let's introduce Valdemort:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Saturday September 27 2014, @04:02PM
I really hope the relocation of the story from England to America was simply the re-author being a dick to the material and isn't considered part of the Christianitization process. They do realize they've just pissed off the richest woman in England who isn't the Queen, right? You know, the one who had Warner Brothers by the short and curlies for the many years it took to adapt the whole series into films and liked to dig her fingernails in when they suggested something stupid?
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday September 27 2014, @04:49PM
The richest woman in England? Kirsty Bertarelli? Ok, she lives in Switzerland, but she is English.
If you are referring to J K Rowling, she's richer than the queen. She's not in England either, she lives in Scotland.
(Score: 1) by wantkitteh on Sunday September 28 2014, @04:26PM
My bad - if I'd got that one wrong a fortnight ago, I'd have been strung up.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday September 28 2014, @12:09PM
You know what is the nice thing about science? You don't need to argue with that. Just ask them to build such a snow-electricity machine. If they fail, well, so much for their "theory."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday September 28 2014, @07:36PM
And what if doing controlled experiments is not a ritual permitted by their religion? :-)
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @11:56AM
We all have different feelings about religion. My view is kind of simple, I see it as a way to look for answers. I see heaven and hell as a concepts that are more workable than not. That does not seem to change with educated or non educated societies. Remove higher standards and things go to hell, no pun intended.
The thing with the modern man is he can't see any logic to a heaven and hell. Having seen our ancestors superstition, the modern mane prefers scientific evidence. It brought us out of what we call the dark ages.
The thing with socities over centuries, none have survived once religion exited their society. They all started decaying and eventually disappeared.
My conclusion is that religion puts a higher value, a higher standard there for man to look up to and seek. Without some higher standard to reach for history has shown man keeps lowering his standards and values. A little bit here and little bit there. In the end however man starts to look at man as nothing more than an evil piece of dirt and that's all she wrote. The end.
I have my own ideas of how we fit into the big picture and whatever my disagreements I always try to respect the various religions as they are a key component in surviving societies.
Looking at the arguments between creationism and evolutionism I see good arguments for both being equally true as there is no reason something could have put it there and it evolved.
Of course today, as in most times, spirits and things that go bump in the night, are feared, hated, propitiated to and respected.
Some are trying to say we are nothing more than a chemical mix of random chemicals. What does not fit in with that picture is the results you can get when working with man. If you help others people feel good and get better. When you work with people towards being mud and chemicals he does not improve but slides further and further down.
This is so true that you can take a miserable person and make him happy and contributing to others by allowing him to get rid of his deeds against others. In fact society generally considers help the most valuable trait in others. If you came from mud and consisted only of chemicals, you would probably be more interested in makign new chemical combinations than caring about others.
I think people get to a point where the idea of all coming from mud and basically being evil would stop them from feeling so guilty. I also think that man so does not understand himself that he continues to grasp at straws, much like in the dark ages. Coming together and forming societies towards the common goal of surviving, where the wellbeing of all made them successful and vice versa.
Someone came up with the idea of putting the fear of God into someone, probably as a desparate attempt to curb some activity not deemed prosurvival. Which goes counter to the idea of God being love. In fact history seem to indicate that having many Gods was a very good thing, but then we could not have many anymore as another group conquered all and now we ahev different views of who that god is depending on what part of the world. These changes are probably easily attributed to how most people don't want to do their own research into every part of life to form their own opinions and observations. It's far easier to just go with the crowd, or you might get crucified or stoned, as the case might be.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @12:02PM
I hear what you're saying, but then I look at something like systemd. Here's a technology that some people have elevated to god-like status. They worship it. They sacrifice open source projects like GNOME and Ubuntu to it. And any sane person sees this and thinks it's absolute bullshit!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @12:42PM
Heretic... Blasphemer... Sinner! Join the happy clappy systemd cartel so that your udev can be saved from eternal damnation! May nonbelievers be expelled from all of unix and forced to spend an eternity in the depths of Poetterix running 'journalctl -f' to watch for corruption of the sacred binary log file.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @04:59PM
And that's why, of all the candidates, Ron Paul makes the most sense!
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Saturday September 27 2014, @02:47PM
> the modern man prefers scientific evidence.
No, the modern fake atheist prefers an arbitrarily chosen threshold for defining evidence.
There is no way to distinguish a miracle from a fraud perpetrated by a sufficiently powerful entity belonging to your same reality. All it needs is access to some undiscovered ways the universe works, or messing with the victims' perceptions, e.g. hypnosis.
The sad thing is that a couple millennia ago, those saying you cannot see God probably had understood this.
If you need proof, please stop classifying yourself as atheist. You are an "adventist", waiting for the day somebody will scam the likes of you, or the hypothetical day when the big GAME OVER appears in the sky and your acknowledging of a god becomes irrelevant.
Atheist is the one who chooses not to believe because the hypothetical God give him the freedom not to and the responsibility of steering his life how he sees fit and paying the consequences for it (God or no god, the meaning of the things we do is meta wrt the universe, so it is eternal and final).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @03:11PM
No, an atheist simply lacks belief in deities. A "strong atheist" believes that deities do not exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @08:02PM
No, an atheist simply lacks belief in deities. A "strong atheist" believes that deities do not exist.
Which is also religious dogma. Atheism is not related to science.
You can use scientific method to arrive at Atheism, but that's all. Some hacks are trying to manipulate science to reinforce their own beliefs system. But science itself cannot determine whether "magic deities" exist and maybe manipulate our lives, or not.
As I've said before, science is not a subset or superset of religion. But atheism is a subset of religion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @09:27PM
You're partially right, science cannot tell you if a subset of magic deities that choose to manipulate reality in such a way that it is indistinguishable from natural processes exist. However we can use use science to look at claimed miracles to determine if they could be due to some natural process, which rules out the subset of deities that supposedly manipulate reality in an obvious manner (well, perhaps not completely rules out as you can't prove a negative, but makes them extremely unlikely).
And I reject your assertion that atheism is a subset of religion, it is just plain wrong. Atheism has no proscribed set of beliefs that go with that would characterise a religion. If you want to call atheism a religion you must call not collecting stamps a hobby.
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Saturday September 27 2014, @08:03PM
You can't have a society without the concept of socius ("fellow traveller"). You probably can't have a functioning society without ethics and morals. Religion can and often does inspire people's ethics and morals.
But so does humanism, and that idea is (at least) 500 years old.
See if you can find "Praise of Folly" from Erasmus of Rotterdam translated into modern English.
Or get it here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30201 [gutenberg.org] that translation is from 1876 and very readable (except that the translator couldn't find a Greek font).
Erasmus was a very religious man. He believed in humanism, as well. He didn't have much truck with people (mis-)using religion as a tool to focus their own and their compatriots' aggression.
"Praise of Folly" explains that the human race would have died out by now if we were all rational or serious all the time.
Our modern times could do with a bit more wisdom (translated from Latin from 500 years ago if necessary--do they teach Erasmus in schools in America nowadays??) and a bit less zealotry and fear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @09:18PM
The evidence is in. People will not die, or even fight, for humanism. They will however cut off heads for Jihad. Both in London and Oklahoma.
Humanism is the province of a few High IQ people who however will not fight and die for it. As an organizing principle for society it has failed for the last five hundred years.
Empirically the choice for humanity is:
JIHAD!
Christianity.
Nationalism.
Soft PC globalism, humanism, trans-nationalism, all fail because while they get the global elite excited (Thomas Friedman) they don't give purpose to the masses. China for example has dumped whatever remained of Marxist religion and embraced nationalism. The Muslim world has embraced JIHAD! against both Sunni/Shia rivals and non-Muslims alike (in China, in Thailand, in India, in Europe, in the US, in Burma, in Iraq, in Syria, everywhere Muslims live). Christians don't engage in JIHAD!, don't cut off people's heads for JIHAD! etc. So if you want to pick an organizing principle that people will actually fight for and is the least bad, Christianity is it.
(Score: 1) by pnkwarhall on Sunday September 28 2014, @04:33AM
Why are our modern times lacking in wisdom? And, isn't that a serious criticism?
For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.
Proverbs 8:11
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Saturday September 27 2014, @12:43PM
[Citation needed] to verify that that these "ACE" schools are state-funded. This link [independent.co.uk] taken from TFA describes the schools teaching the ACE curriculum as "private". All schools are subject to government inspection, but obviously the inspectors have less influence in private schools. The current government has a recent enthusiasm about creating "free schools" that are privately run with state funding, but judging by TFA these "ACE" schools have been around for decades before that. Incidentally, the big news in TFA was that some UK universities are allegedly accepting the qualifications issued by these schools.
Also, TFA points out that the materials in question are in use worldwide.
There are state-funded faith schools in the UK, so that's a perfectly valid point for debate, but I'm not sure TFA (though deeply worrying) is particularly relevant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @05:12PM
Only vaguely relevant to TFA, but it's a good one...
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2014-09-23/ [dilbert.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28 2014, @06:13AM
soytem = solent news item
Wow, so narrow minded. Evolution must be true, for it is the new religion for all those who would love to live without too many moral constraints. Heck, just delete this inconvenient "outdated" idea of a Creator because then we would have someone to answer to in the end. Therefore condemn and crusade against any other viewpoint, especially if it hints of Christianity (Buddhism, Islam, and basket-worship are Ok).
In reality, both the evolution and creationist camps will have a revelation, the latter possibly from a more comfortable position. Mankind was definitely created. We are eternal though these current physical bodies are not. The brain did not "just evolve", nor did our DNA. Evolutionists quickly kill off any scientific process when trying to "prove" their religion. Many discoveries are validating the Biblical record, but rarely to the timescale of the Young Earth club (eg - age of water article just this week).
Reality is more complex than our tiny puffed-up minds can imagine.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday September 28 2014, @10:29AM
You have completely missed the point of the story and the articles referenced. And, I'll bet, you don't understand the Scientific Method.
There are secondary schools in the UK where bible verses are being presented as scientific fact in science classes and pupils are being examined on the "education" to be awarded qualifications. This makes a mockery of Science, Religion and Education. Additionally, it is a dangerous and cruel form of brainwashing of young, impressionable minds.
That is what we are discussing here.
The brain did not "just evolve", nor did our DNA.
That is just plain, flat-out wrong. There is plenty of robust scientfic evidence (see the Scientific Method) for those things, and as rigorous scientific enquiry continues, the evidence becomes stronger. There is no doubt that these things arose from natural processes.
Evolutionists quickly kill off any scientific process when trying to "prove" their religion.
Lies (or willful misunderstanding), pure and simple.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].