Flying Spaghetti Monster – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You should also check out http://www.venganza.org/ for the letter.
We’re now having to put up with people pressing for the teaching of religion in the Science classroom in .au as well.
Honestly – religion in a religion class and science class. Is it that hard for people to get that into their heads?
Although the 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense should probably be examined by students.
If people don’t come out of school having learnt how to think then there really was no point to them going there in the first place. We will not progress as a species without understanding and thought.
(this isn’t to say that many core ideals of at least several religions are not a good thing. The idea of being nice to each other for a change is an old one that’s preached by many a religion. I just wish people followed it instead of pretending to.)
I always thought kids who go to catholic school only really got taught about (i.e., indoctrinated in) catholicism. Apparently that’s the not the case. These days they get taught all the different religions on the planet and the take home message is tolerance. When you compare that to religious education in public schools (or at least, the way it was taught when I was there) it sounds absolutely enlightened. My experience with religious education was that all the kids were segregated, taught only what their parents had elected them to be taught, and it was optional for kids who had no religion. Dunno if that was the way it was done in other public schools but it seems to me like it’s not a very sensible way to introduce people into a harmonious society.
totally.
same kind of experience when I was in primary school. It would have been much more adventageous to learn about more than a single religion (other than from discussions with friends who were a religion).
I heard a bunch of the christian stuff – never beleiving it. Finding out the differences with the others was up to me.
I’ll have to ask some catholic schooled friends what their experinces were. I know that there was a fair bit of indoctrination though.
I also know a friend of mine who went to a religous primary school who refused to acknowledged the once existence of dinosaurs.
It seems to be a very mixed bag.
You said:
“If people don’t come out of school having learnt how to think then there really was no point to them going there in the first place.”
And that reminded me of a great quote by Helen Keller:
“One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think.”