US judge says University can ignore Christian course credits A federal judge has told the University of California that when considering applicants, it has the constitutional right to ignore high school course work grounded in the notion that the Bible is infallible. On Friday, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Judge James Otero denied claims from a group of Christian high …
"Hi, writing a history book from a Christian perspective is not wrong."
But going on a course to teach you HOW to get history right (or as right as possible wiht the limited knowledge available and the assumptions that must be made to fill in the gaps) when you've already been told that the bible is not only right but the ONLY right source IS wrong.
Rather like going into teaching after having been taught and now believing that women should not be educated because they should only have babies.
Because, (in both cases) if they are wrong, they are damaging the very thing they are supposed to be serving.
@ Mark
You said: "christian nutjobs (rather like yourself)"
As I read that remark, you've made my point for me exactly. I want to be clear: my complaint is NOT that people are attacking religion per se - despite one of the favourite claims of Dawkins et al, I don't believe my religion should be proof against criticism. In fact, valid criticism exercises the mind and is a positive thing. What I object to is *invalid* criticism. Attack my religion for what it is, by all means (and note I haven't told you, primarily because I don't believe you're obliged to share it - again despite certain assumptions, religion doesn't automatically demand proselytisation). Attack me for what I believe, if you wish to attack me.
I quite clearly said in my original comment that I am NOT Christian - and yet here you are with "christian nutjobs (rather like yourself)". Some people in defending religion argue that atheism is a religion in itself. It's not. I know that. But certainly, some people are fanatically opposed to religion is precisely the same blind, narrow-minded way that *some* others fanatically follow a faith. When these supposedly more sophisticated minds attack something without knowing, and often without apparently caring, what they're attacking and why, then of course I question the intelligence and the rationality that they claim.
I'm willing to be corrected if you'd like to tell me that you meant something else by "christian nutjobs (rather like yourself)" - but as it is it looks pretty clear. To you, 'religion' does indeed equal 'Christianity'.
Oh, and for the record, I'm not Muslim either, but in principle I've no problem with someone criticising Islam, and I'm sure most Muslims wouldn't have either - provided, again, that the criticism was valid and not just an indiscriminate blaze about the evils of 'religion'.
@ adnim
You said: "Teaching children about all religions and faith on an equal footing, parents telling their children 'This is what we believe, you are welcome to come to church/synagogue/mosque with us should you wish, you will not be chastised if you don't. We have no proof that what we believe is fact, you are free to choose your own path' is not abuse [...] If you cannot see this then all I have to say is the indoctrination and conditioning you may well have received as a child had the effect that those who raised you desired."
I can see it. And as you describe your attitude here, I've no objection to it at all. As you described it before - "religious indoctrination IS child abuse, and I believe this to be fact" - I wasn't at all sure that you could. 'Indoctrination' is a weighted term - very subjective, and very often used by those opposed to religion to describe exactly the sort of process you now define as acceptable. So I'm glad you've been willing to clarify that.
I repeat: in general I have no objection to the criticism of religion as a whole or individual religions. What I do object to are the assumptions so often made that 1) religion equals superstitious stupidity; 2) religion is evil; 3) that religion as a concept is broadly equivalent to fundamentalist Christianity; 4) that atheists are by definition more intelligent than religious people; 5) that scientific endeavour invariably leads to atheism; and 6) that religion makes a person opposed to science. Together with the strong implication that humanity would be living in peace but for religion (a common theme running through much anti-religious rhetoric), these are *all tenets of faith*. By which I mean that they are all assumptions adopted on the basis of individual conviction and without empirical evidence to support them. All these assumptions can be found in The God Delusion, and all of them are regularly preached by those who ape the author of that book.
It's not atheism that I object to, and it's certainly not science or the scientific method. What I object to (from religious people and atheists) is hostility based on blind faith and prejudice.
Yes, I should have perhaps qualified my use of the word indoctrination. Forcible indoctrination or brainwashing whether into a religion or indeed atheism is child abuse and is not acceptable. Every child has the right to free and informed development. What shapes a child's mind during the formative years has a huge influence on their path through life and how they interact with the world around them. Forcing a child a particular way severely limits their horizons and potential to experience what should be a wondrous existence.
Why is the sky blue?
Because God did it that way.
Why do the birds make that noise?
Because God did it that way.
Why are we here?
Because God wants us to worship him.
etc.
Not a lot of "education" there.
Same thing with "irreducable complexity" for IDers: when you've decided that something is irreducibly complex, you stop checking to see if you're right. So where do you go after that? Something else not irreducibly complex? Well, you'll run out of them soon enough. So how will ID lead to improvements in the knowledge of living things if something becomes too complex to be natural?
1) religion equals superstitious stupidity;
True.
Either that or plain old mental problems.
2) religion is evil;
True.
Religion is lies, therefore religion is evil.
3) that religion as a concept is broadly equivalent to fundamentalist Christianity;
Ah-ha - this is the bit they always get wrong - they equate religion with creationidiocy, which it is not - Creationidiocy (and its bastard child ID) is the preserve of a tiny band of very weird and scary morons.
4) that atheists are by definition more intelligent than religious people;
True.
Surveys show this to be a fact, and it is completely logical - people with more intelligence will be more analytical and therefore less likely to be satisfied with the uninformed hogwash that religions spout.
5) that scientific endeavour invariably leads to atheism; and
Not sure anybody makes this claim - sounds like a rather pathetic strawman to me.
6) that religion makes a person opposed to science.
Religion makes a person resistant to reason, if not blatantly opposed, so this statement has a grain of truth despite the misleading strawman wording you've given it.
The bottom line is that human society has a pedigree extending back through tens of thousands of years, all of them tainted with a myriad of stupid and uninformed superstitions.
Human Reason is only hundreds of years old.
It stands to reason that NOT ALL humans are born with the capacity to live by Reason, when Reason is such a very young part of Human Society.
So, many humans cannot grasp Reason and grasp Religion instead - it's not necessarily a bad thing for them, although there is no doubt it impoverishes the intellectual Landscape of Humankind.
I have to laugh, or I'd be dismayed, at the hypocrisy of the typical atheist. They have as much faith as a true believer, as much tolerance of others as a Southern Baptist, and even "buzz words" or jargon private to their religion: "Fucking hell fundamentalist nutters..." and "flying spaghetti monster".
That's good. Show us the value of secular education.
I am reminded of my daughter when she was little and declared, "silly daddy, there is no air!" I wondered how to prove "air" and decided to wait a bit. You see, it didn't NEED proving right then.
Eventually I used an inverted glass cup in a sink of water, the invisible air in the cup pushing down on the water. Like any convert, my daughter has no memory of ever NOT believing in air. But the evidence of air is somewhat indirect, someone could propose that the glass cup has a special property that pushes water down. In the end, the exasperated parent simply says WHATEVER is pushing the water down, is AIR.
So it is with religion. I do not need to prove god to you, and you do not need to disprove god to me. Should you persist, and many of you do, I will tend to agree that the "straw man" god you have created exists only in your mind and therefore has no other existence.
I love science in any flavor. The possibility that humans are more than mere assemblage of chemicals gives my life joy and purpose. I read National Geographic and Scientific American to see HOW things operate, but nothing in them is WHY they operate.
(Icon "GO" hoping that narrow minded, linguistically offensive persons of any flavor will go somewhere else).
Roman soldier: Who's that bloke then?
Jewish Priest: I don't know, some nutter.
Roman Soldier: Seems to be drawing a crowd though
Jewish Priest: Yeh, not sure i like the look of that....they seem to be hanging on every word.
Roman Soldier: Whats he on about?
Jewish Priest: Some "be nice" bollocks..not anything important.
Roman Soldier: Shame we havent got someone like that. Think of the money we'd save. We could close down the barracks and just have this bloke tell them what to do.
Jewish Priest: Actually, we could have a few blokes scattered about telling people what to do...speaking on his behalf and that..
Roman soldier: Brilliant! Now all we have to do is get rid of this one and the world is ours
Together: mwahahahahahah!!
What? Disregarding the inanity of the majority of your message, we have these:
"The possibility that humans are more than mere assemblage of chemicals gives my life joy and purpose."
Why MUST your life have purpose other than "to live"? You have little faith in things if you must have a reason for it. What's "God"'s purpose in living?
"I read National Geographic and Scientific American to see HOW things operate, but nothing in them is WHY they operate."
So why is it that some book that gives one rather weird reason as to WHY that this must be promulgated in an institution dedicated to telling you the HOW?
I do agree to a certain level with Michael, I do see no problem with an education which leads the student to question everything; which faith, in effect does not allow one to do. By defination it does not allow one to question certain things. Does god exist? You believe he does, by faith he 'factually' does and therefore it is beyond question. It reminds me of a famous Douglas Adams quote.......
So a secular, non-religiously biased education encourages the questioning of everything, that no facts are concrete unless proven. Faith and education do not mix, in my opinion, education is a matter of facts and proven science, faith is a matter of personal choice but the two do not mix.
I believe, personally in a number of psychic phenomenon and ghosts but neither of these may be proven scientifically. They are, therefore, my beliefs but I cannot try to convince others they are fact. I cannot disagree with things others teach because of my opinion/belief. But I can, myself, explore the possibilities. If I submitted a paper, explaining an unknown phenomenon making use of my belief I would, and expect to, fail. The same should apply for all belief systems. Just because mine is not one of the Big Three does not make it any way superior or inferior to them, or any other.
You see? Athiesm is, however, simply the Cult of Science in most cases and not Nihilism.
Keep religion and education apart unless it is Religious Education you are teaching. Keep Secular Education and let people make up their own minds.
"inadequate treatment of several major ethnic groups, women, and non-Christian religious groups" - silly me, I've been looking for the right argument all this time and it was staring me in the face...
THINK of the children people... ban the bible - it is manipulative sexist and racist literature.
...and let (s)he who is stoned cast the first sin.
"(1) Why MUST your life have purpose other than "to live"? (2) You have little faith in things if you must have a reason for it. (3) What's "God"'s purpose in living?"
1. One must ask the maker of life why life must have purpose. If you believe there is no maker, then the question loses meaning as there can be, for you, no purposer and hence no purpose.
Realizing this requires "critical thinking", the thing that the University of California said was missing from religious instruction but which obviously is also missing from atheist instruction. Absent a god, we are *nothing* but an accident, with no purpose, no right, no wrong, no good, no evil. What will replace it is what is good FOR YOU and society will fail PDQ when large numbers of its members think that way.
If I make a pot, the reason for it is known only to me, the maker. I don't care if my pots believe in me; they need only to fulfil their purposes.
2. I suppose that by some definitions of faith this is a true statement. I do prefer to have reasons for things and my particular theology embraces knowledge with the motto "the glory of God is intelligence".
3. God's purpose in living is defined by God's maker. Only created things or made things can have a purpose, and the purpose is established by the maker. It is possible for a thing to have different purposes according to each observer who imagines what he or she might be able to do with the thing observed.
I am reminded of Schroedinger's Cat that is, until the moment of observation, simultaneously alive and dead.
Thus while I hold that the objective purpose of a thing exists only in the mind of the purposer, concurrent valid alternate purposes might well exist in the minds of observers and this superposition (multitude of interpretations simultaneously present) does not collapse to a single purpose until the authoritative purpose is made known by the maker.
Therefore I modify my assertions and allow for an *atheist to arrive at a personal (ie, non-binding on anyone else) conclusion as to the purpose of life.
*(In this instance, "atheist" will mean a person that denies the existence of a maker, hence, there can be no authoritative, objective "real" purpose of life).
Since each observer's judgement is non-binding on others, there is not much point ultimately in revealing private, non-binding judgements; while there may yet be value in revealing the *objective* purposes intended by the maker of the object.
As an example, consider the movie "Crockodile Dundee" in which he is trying to figure out the purpose of a bidet. He creates his own interpretation of the function of a bidet; but value exists in finding out what REALLY (objectively) was intended for the purpose of a bidet.
Thus we can suppose that life may have an objective purpose established by its maker, and many alternative purposes envisioned by observers.
The Wikipedia article on Schrodinger's Cat is rather interesting and explores some alternative interpretations; one of which is that quantum mechanics is deterministic (predictable) all the way back to the Big Bang; that everything that has happened or ever will happen has been determined from the very beginning. Maybe not *predictable* but determined. Other interpretations include the many worlds scenario where ALL outcomes simultaneously exist in non-communicating worlds which would be rather infinite in number. Science fiction plays to that theme quite a bit but if these worlds are not communicating then we have a problem with *mass* as each world would need its own mass (to avoid interacting with any other world whose mass might be somewhat different -- we shoot a rocket to Mars in one world, but not another; the mass of the Earth and everything on it will be subtly different).
"1. One must ask the maker of life why life must have purpose"
This presupposes a maker.
My mummy and daddy made me. I don't think they have the definitive answer to the reason for life.
Why MUST there be a maker? Why MUST there be a reason for life? Why MUST WE have a reason for life but not anything else (as, for example, alien overlords or deities)?
You didn't answer that except by assuming there MUST be a reason why there MUST be a reason for life.
Two weird quotes from you:
"I do see no problem with an education which leads the student to question everything"
"You see? Athiesm is, however, simply the Cult of Science in most cases and not Nihilism."
Nope. You start off OK but then make the assumption that the ONLY people who question are those who have faith.
Why is it belief in God means you question but non-belief is a cult and is nihilistic?
Endemic bias on your part: you don't know WHY you must believe but to make sure that you aren't questioned on it, you must demonise those who do not believe.
As you did there.
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