German Authorities Slam "The God Delusion" for Kids (2 Viewers)

[withoutaface]

Personally I have issues with any kind of dogma being forced down kids throats, in particular during primary school. Just teach them scientific method and let them make up their own minds.

what?

Says in the article that it's "How Do I Get to God, Asked the Small Piglet".

 

[chicky_pie]

We were all born atheists.

 

[Enteebee]

you're so dogmatic lengstar btw, wrote this before seeing the other posts...

i could not agree more with katie. the god delusion is a wretched piece of dogmatic dribble and it should not be institutionalised as a "must read"

by all means have it in the library if kids are interested but fuck...

fuck the god delusion, fuck dawkins and fuck the anti religion band wagon.

- practicing atheist
__________________

I agree there's a very dogmatic aspect to it, but also a lot of interesting logical truths/arguments.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

I'm going to have a go at defending the anti-religious line

Most kids are already going to be instilled with religious values from their parents, regardless of whether they're getting some sort of religious education.

Here is the key point.

Kids in say Camden or Newcastle are instilled with racist values from their parents too, and at school we have a responsibility to teach them that that's wrong. Religion can be just as bad, (e.g. Northern Ireland) although not so much in Australia right now, but that's mostly because hardly anyone cares about it in the first place.

During scripture classes or even at Christmas/Easter time, the stories are never prefaced with "this is just a story" as would be known when the kids were reading fiction in class. They're told them as if they really happened.

Now if someone wrote a book banging on about why Russell's teapot doesn't exist, no one ITT would call it dogmatic, they'd call it obvious.

But there aren't any groups with considerable social power insisting they be allowed into schools to tell stories about the teapot as though they were historical and metaphysical fact to children. If someone suggested we should do so, they'd never get anywhere specifically because of the lack of any social power of the Church of the Teapot.

Between the influence of parents, community, peers and any scripture classes, the scientific method alone is not going to be enough for children to apply its conditions and reasoning to the question of God, because God is just 'there'.

Coming back to the racism comparison, racism will (hopefully) not persist in future generations because we don't allow it to be affirmed throughout individuals' childhoods, we refute it and condemn it.

At a fundamental level religion (or the teapot) is just as absurd and intellectually vacuous, it's just the lingering social power of religious institutions and individuals that create the impression that actively defending children from religion is 'dogmatic'.

We don't need to say 'there is no teapot', but we do need to say, if carefully, 'there is no god'.

 

[KFunk]

Personally I would aim for zero religious education in public schools, and thats of any denomination. Including atheist/agnostic related materials.

An alternative suggestion (by Daniel Dennett) is that we instead put in place a mandatory course in comparative religion (with thorough coverage):

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/94 (starting from about 4:15)

The idea is that some religions are aided in their survival by an ignorance of other religions/possibilities. A broad knowledge of the histories and central tenets of a large number of world religions would aid individuals in making an informed decision regarding which faith (if any) if makes sense to follow. Personally I think that such knowledge makes it seem more plausible that religions are a social phenomenon and I suspect that this fact could make some religious individuals uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I'm not sure how anyone could make a strong case for enforcing ignorance about these matters - such a proposal reeks of intellectual dishonesty.

 

[Enteebee]

Love Dan Dennett.

Nonetheless, I'm not sure how anyone could make a strong case for enforcing ignorance about these matters - such a proposal reeks of intellectual dishonesty.

Yea but they'd all say the curriculum is skewed and doesn't represent their religion properly, if it gave too kind a showing then the other religions/atheists would complain.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

Waste of time, the curriculum is already overcrowded and shallow, I could be teaching more science lessons instead of wasting time comparing bronze age myths. Mention them in history class if you have to.

 

[Atticus.]

I agree there's a very dogmatic aspect to it, but also a lot of interesting logical truths/arguments.

i guess i was poisoned against it before i even picked it up because i despise how its become fashionable to be anti religious and the god delusion is kind of the anchor for the whole thing. it really doesnt take a high intellect to point out the flaws in organised religion and its contradictory teachings and im sick of people jumping on the bandwagon to claim some sort of intelligence by association bullshit

im an angry young man haha

 

[KFunk]

Waste of time, the curriculum is already overcrowded and shallow, I could be teaching more science lessons instead of wasting time comparing bronze age myths. Mention them in history class if you have to.

A problem to look out for in an education which focuses on the 'god issue' is that it is too easy to forget that religions consist largely of a way of life. It is one thing to say that 'on an empirical, or similar, account of knowledge we lack reason to believe in the existence of god' but another to suggest that it is silly to participate in any aspect of religious life.

Also, once we claim that god does not exist we are left with a question. Why did anyone come to believe in god in the first place? I.e. How can we explain religious belief? I think the best answer to this will come from a blend of disciplines including areas such as comparative religion and evolutionary psychology. I'm not sure that it is enough to generate some logical/empirical arguments against god and leave it at that.

 

[blakegman]

i guess i was poisoned against it before i even picked it up because i despise how its become fashionable to be anti religious and the god delusion is kind of the anchor for the whole thing. it really doesnt take a high intellect to point out the flaws in organised religion and its contradictory teachings and im sick of people jumping on the bandwagon to claim some sort of intelligence by association bullshit

im an angry young man haha

I'd say its not really a badwagon type situation at all just that as time goes on young children have a lot less pressure on them to be religious. most families these days in australia couldnt care less if there child is religious or not.

think about the way your grandparents are towards religion, then your parents, then you, then how u will raise your kids. It's all a progression away from religion, nothing to do with popularity or bandwagon.

 

[Enteebee]

Nah, I definately think if we did a study there would be a correlation between people who pride themselves on being smarter than everyone else and anti-theism (probably less so amongst atheists that respect religion more). Whether this is just because anti-theists are smarter and people play to their strengths or whether it's more of an arrogance thing I suppose might be up for debate.

I'll admit I'm probably arrogant, or at least seem it.

 

[katie_tully]

This is all exceptionally confusing. My point was mainly against Stevo.
I don't see the point in making atheist dogma mandatory reading for children purely because it's an up yours to organised religion. I think its pointless, and if you hate religion that much I think you need to go see someone about it.

Now as for Captain Ghey, I'll deal with you in a moment

 

[ALP FTW]

The government should always have a right to censor books and content on the internet so you can not argue with their right to do so. But the application of what is wrong with the book does not meet that right. Maybe they should keep the book to show that they can correctly use their power to censor content when the right situation presents itself.

 

[katie_tully]

Here is the key point.

Kids in say Camden or Newcastle are instilled with racist values from their parents too, and at school we have a responsibility to teach them that that's wrong. Religion can be just as bad, (e.g. Northern Ireland) although not so much in Australia right now, but that's mostly because hardly anyone cares about it in the first place.

K. Cept this isn't Northern Ireland, Australia's circumstances are completely removed from that of Nthern Irelands and religious distention in this country has thus far, for the majority, been a reflection of outside influences. Not because kids are learning that Noah took two of every animal on a boat and sailed around for a while.

During scripture classes or even at Christmas/Easter time, the stories are never prefaced with "this is just a story" as would be known when the kids were reading fiction in class. They're told them as if they really happened.

Well what is the point of having religious ed and going 'lol k guys, this didnt really happen'?. That's a bit dumb. So what if the kids want to believe that there is an element of truth in Bible stories? At the end of the day it's up to the parents as to whether the kid gets any religious education, and it's up to the parents to discuss with their children whether these stories are fictious. Just because you've deduced (from what source) that hardly anybody cares about religion anymore doesn't mean we should suddenly be bombarding school age kids with anti religious material.


[/QUOTE]But there aren't any groups with considerable social power insisting they be allowed into schools to tell stories about the teapot as though they were historical and metaphysical fact to children. If someone suggested we should do so, they'd never get anywhere specifically because of the lack of any social power of the Church of the Teapot. [/QUOTE]
They let the Right to Life anti abortionists give my sisters 4/5/6th class a talk

Between the influence of parents, community, peers and any scripture classes, the scientific method alone is not going to be enough for children to apply its conditions and reasoning to the question of God, because God is just 'there'.

The book they are proposing is not 'scientific method'. It's a bullshit book that pits religions against each other and would leave an already confused chlild more fucked up.

Coming back to the racism comparison, racism will (hopefully) not persist in future generations because we don't allow it to be affirmed throughout individuals' childhoods, we refute it and condemn it.

I believe they're called Utopias. They don't exist Never have.

At a fundamental level religion (or the teapot) is just as absurd and intellectually vacuous, it's just the lingering social power of religious institutions and individuals that create the impression that actively defending children from religion is 'dogmatic'.

We don't need to say 'there is no teapot', but we do need to say, if carefully, 'there is no god'.

Why do we have to tell children there is no God? That's such a fucking ridiculous idea. Let them believe there is a god, and once they're old enough to critically analyse the logistics behind such a being THEN they can decide for themselves. If there's no God, we may as well just fuck Christmas and Easter off as well.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

EDIT: long post warning

K. Cept this isn't Northern Ireland, Australia's circumstances are completely removed from that of Nthern Irelands and religious distention in this country has thus far, for the majority, been a reflection of outside influences. Not because kids are learning that Noah took two of every animal on a boat and sailed around for a while.

Of course it's not like NI, lol. But at the core of religion, particularly the 2 monotheisms, is the belief that you have the absolute truth about the universe, and everyone else should have to believe the same thing. So there's always some latent potential for religious movements to appear, like "jesus camp" in America (something you might be able to imagine actually happening here, perhaps). To use another example which I don't think Australia is like, the rise of more radical Islam in its present form only occurred over the last century
For the main part the problem is that while the texts say what they do it's not a good idea to promote or respect the belief that these are the words of the all powerful creator and dictator of the universe, because people's beliefs tend to be a powerful determinant of how they interpret the world and how they act (anti-semitism, yo).

Well what is the point of having religious ed and going 'lol k guys, this didnt really happen'?. That's a bit dumb. So what if the kids want to believe that there is an element of truth in Bible stories? At the end of the day it's up to the parents as to whether the kid gets any religious education, and it's up to the parents to discuss with their children whether these stories are fictious. Just because you've deduced (from what source) that hardly anybody cares about religion anymore doesn't mean we should suddenly be bombarding school age kids with anti religious material.

I think it's against what education should be to tell children something that no reasonable adult could believe is true. Obviously I'm happy with simplified versions of knowledge for understanding at the appropriate level before you pick me up on that, but something blatantly false is different. Now I did not say at all that less people being strongly religious in Australia is why we should protect children from religion, I'd tend to think the same way if all of us went to church every sunday (ignoring the obvious possibility that I'd be religious myself in such as society).
All my carrying on about Russell's teapot was pretty much just to show that I'm equally against anything irrational in school, but there's a lot of irrational things we don't need to protect children against because no one advocates them in the first place. Religion shouldn't be privileged just because it's more prevalent than any other random nonsense you could make up.
At the present time it's actually not much at all up to parents what sort of maths or science they learn, and as I said before there are anti-racism programs in schools whose students have extremely racist parents. Too bad for them, they don't deserve to have their opinions respected. Hopefully that makes it clearer what I meant too
Actually I should add to that, that the stories themselves have a lot of cultural value, obviously you can't understand a lot of art and literature from western history without knowing about the Bible. Doesn't make them any more true.

The book they are proposing is not 'scientific method'. It's a bullshit book that pits religions against each other and would leave an already confused chlild more fucked up.

I'd have to have a look at it. I don't think that being derisive towards the preachers of the 3 monotheisms is a useful thing to do really. One of the reasons I'd like to see children protected against religion is obviously the conflict you get from believing other people are evil for not believing the dogmas that you do. So this book might for example get a-religious kids making fun of kids who hold in high esteem any of those 3 kinds of preachers.

I believe they're called Utopias. They don't exist Never have.

No of course not but does that mean it's acceptable to say "well, you hate asians, that's the opinion your parents taught you and we respect it"?

Why do we have to tell children there is no God? That's such a fucking ridiculous idea. Let them believe there is a god, and once they're old enough to critically analyse the logistics behind such a being THEN they can decide for themselves.

Well from an educational point of view I'm not 100% certain how I'd want to do it at this stage. Firstly I'd start by banning preachers from schools (and schools from preachers). But for me that's not enough because as I said in my first post there's still parents, peers and the community pushing religion on people. At primary school level you could have something like distinguishing myths (greek myths, biblical myths, other myths, they're all interesting for kids without being true) from history as discovered by evidence. Similarly you can distinguish BS (astrology, magic...) from sciences and why they're different.

At the very least if they're going to believe there's a god we need protection from psychological abuse such as telling children the grotesque descriptions of hell as a real place, that they or their family and friends could go to. Worse still is the idea that not believing in dogmas that are patently false will send them there. There are still schools and also Sunday schools where they hear this.

Just to digress a little before coming back to that, in year 8 I remember clearly we had a talk from a religious group that elaborated for about an hour the enormous diversity and complexity of biological life on earth and also the vastness and mystery of the universe. At the end of this I was left helpless to believe them when they said "...so, god did it!". It was very powerful, at least for a 12 year old.

So in secondary level we need to draw a distinction between theories generated by scientific enquiry, and non-theories generated by making something up. I think getting this idea leads to realising that a statement given without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and from the myths vs history before it becomes clear that of the 1000 religions in the world they all fall into the former category.

I don't think we'd need to rampantly chase out all possibility of belief in a deity, I can't imagine systematically examining students for symptoms of deism and making them write lines that say "God DNE" at lunchtime. I'm not a nazi, lol.

If there's no God, we may as well just fuck Christmas and Easter off as well.

Not at all, you can go to a Buddhist temple to celebrate Tết (Vietnamese new year, it's today so I used it) and practice all the traditions without the superstitious doctrines. You know quite well that xmas and easter were originally pagan celebrations which were probably appropriated from even older celebrations before that. Like I said before about the value of bible stories, people can preserve, appreciate and practice their traditions without having to believe something that in the 21st century is both obviously wrong and potentially dangerous

 

[KFunk]

Nah, I definately think if we did a study there would be a correlation between people who pride themselves on being smarter than everyone else and anti-theism (probably less so amongst atheists that respect religion more). Whether this is just because anti-theists are smarter and people play to their strengths or whether it's more of an arrogance thing I suppose might be up for debate.

From Wiki:

"In 1986, the Council for Secular Humanism's Free Inquiry magazine summarized studies on religiosity and intelligence.[12] In it Burnham Beckwith summarized 43 studies on religiosity and its relation with attributes that he considered were positively linked with intelligence: IQ, SAT scores, academic ability and other measures of overall "success". Although conceding that it was easy to find fault with the studies he reviewed, "for all were imperfect," he contended that the studies he examined, taken together, provided strong evidence for an inverse correlation between intelligence and religious faith in the United States."

 

[Mabs]

I was going to refute some of the pro-religious education people here but.. as I read on and on.. The arguments got worse and worse and my resolve to even bother laying the smack down melted into a puddle.

 

[KFunk]

I was going to refute some of the pro-religious education people here but.. as I read on and on.. The arguments got worse and worse and my resolve to even bother laying the smack down melted into a puddle.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. As far as I can see noone has made an argument for pro-religious education. In this thread --> Gh3y and Tully are debating anti-religious education and I have suggested Dennett's idea of a religion-neutral program of comparative religion.

 

[Stevo.]

Teach ethics and morality through childrens books, not through religious texts. Try to explain the world, the difference between right and wrong, without having it related to a religion. This is the ideal. Encourage curiousity, not absolutes through dogma. I was being outrageous to prove a point. Countering one extreme with another.

 

[katie_tully]

Teach ethics and morality through childrens books, not through religious texts. Try to explain the world, the difference between right and wrong, without having it related to a religion. This is the ideal. Encourage curiousity, not absolutes through dogma. I was being outrageous to prove a point. Countering one extreme with another.

Yeah. Dunno what he's talking about.

Maybe he needs to read the arguments again.