-Nobody has a right to be protected from offence.
-offence isn’t even a bad or good thing, even if it is bad for the offended.
-gross, sacred offence whatever.

-Religion is in large ways of farce and arse.
-Not to be glib, God is a lot like Santa Claus in that they are both made-up things that some people believe in: the difference being that it’s accepted when you are young that Santa isn’t real, but it’s accepted by too many people that religious Gods are real for it to be accepted for people to say it is not.
-Therefore not be able to say that you disagree with religion or to take the piss out of something because of blasphemy is all wrong, ja know.

http://piratepartyireland.com/forum/index.php?topic=52.0

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

Where we differ is that I believe that religious “education/indoctrination” can easily be dealt with as an ajunct to the educational requirements and reinforced by exposure the parents’ ethos anf lifestyle. In Ireland however, the de facto situation is that the state with the connivance of and with pressure from the religious, have relinquished responsibility for the educational system over the years, so that it is impossible to access a secular education.
You say that people have the right to have their beliefs reflected in the educational system?
Personally I believe that you have the right to do whatever you want, provided that you do not interfere with the rights of others. The problem starts when two conflicting “rights” occur. Again it’s just me, but I believe that conflict can be resolved by having the more fundamental demonstrable right take prescedent.
The exercise of the majority’s “right” to a religious education ensures that the right to an education without mixing up the facts with conjecture and superstision (which to me is what religion is), removes the right of an education free from such “balderdash”.
The fact that the religious aspect of the education/indoctrination could easily be provided by those wanting it, outside the educational system makes the system as we have it even more unfair. This is compounded by the “ethos” within the schools requiring that everything good that is percieved happens because of “God’s” intervention ensures that the formative mind is going to have a serious conflict with the parents who are foreced to send their child into the religiously controled system. A religious parent sending their child into a non-religiously controled system can still provide religious education outside of the system. I am not for one second suggesting that the schools adopt a stance where they contradict the views of the childs parents, just that they acknowledge that the religious facet is outside of their remit.

OK gareth,
Lets keep what I also think is a reasonable exchange og conflicting idaas going.

We’re both grown ups. I can deal with your criticisms, you can deal with mine

No, I don’t have a problem with religion eing imparted to the children of religious people, -or any other people for that matter.
My problem is partly that in Ireland, without being consulted onthe matter, I am paying for it through the government.

Okay, that’s fine. However, if there are schools of every sort in Ireland. Secular, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and so on. Surely you are just contributing to the pot so as to be fairly distributed amongst all these groups.

Where I agree with your objection and I have made this clear at the start. There isn’t enough representations of other minorities within the education system. I think secular schools should be built if there is the demand. I think Muslims, Jews and others should have the freedom to provide religious ethos based education as Christians do. I think this is perfectly fair. All taxpayers pay for the general distribution of education to serve all minorities. Insisting that all schools are secular is unfair to the proportion of parents who want their children to be educated according to their own religious values. As such I think it is fair as long as there is equal opportunity in Government legislation and plans for all groups within our society to have representation. I do not however suggest that the Government should force secular education and have no other, I think that’s highly unfair.

Why should religious parents have to pay for an education that doesn’t serve their requirements?

Secondly, the provision of religious doctrine (which in my view is completely different from both fact and the nous required to be a decent human) can be provided by those religious bodies from there own resources.

See what I have said above.

I fully accept that the role of education is to allow a person to “round” themselves and progress as much as they can, but a serious debate arises, when the educational process becomes hijack by those who’s view of the process is to “spin” the system that takes the vulnerable mind, with the approval of existing society, and produces an adult that reflects in his/her mind the society has conspired to produce. This has the eminently forseable result of ensuring that the religious system is propegated.

I’ve been through two schools with a religious ethos, and yet I have not been “spun”. Infact I found it very hard to get my head around the idea of Christianity until I took personal investigation on the issue.

I don’t think anyone hijacks anything by coming in and discussing a religious text for an hour a week. Bear in mind other religious faith groups can opt out. If you are not a Christian and you find this objectionable your child does not have to sit through this. If there was no choice, I’d understand you. However parents who want to impart religious belief to their child should have the option to at least teach their child the basics about their faith and then let them decide for themselves later. Sounds fair to me.

The religious forethought and entry into the educational system was facilitated, in just about every countru that permits religious interference in education, in the repression of their client’s thought processes whereby the search for pure knowledge is subsumed by the effect that thet knowledge’s impact will have on the doctrine of thost providing the control of the education.

This is where I differ with you. I don’t see it as “interference” or even unneccessary. I’m glad for the religious education I had because it helped me to grow as an individual and see the world differently than I ever saw it before. I didn’t appreciate this until my last two years in secondary school when I took religion as a subject and got quite interested in it. Not only Christianity, but Judaism and Islam also. For the non-believer it even has benefits to help people to understand what motivates their culture and their world to a large extent. I see religious education as welcome. You see it as unwelcome because you do not want parents to have a choice. Let’s be real here, that’s what it comes down to right?

Perhaps, but is it belief? True belief cannot be forced. One who does not believe in somethinf may, for very many reasonable reasons, pretend to believe in something, including the reason of remaining a member of the society into which they were born, through fear or for the physical advantages it bestows.

From personal experience through my faith, I don’t think that belief can be forced. I think all religious education can do is open up a contact point for people to see Christianity and to explore it deeper if they are truly interested. It is up to the individual to decide for themselves in all situations.

Indoctrination means drilling into people ideas without critical thinking. I did however think critically about Christianity before adopting it. I believe the factors you mention are reasons why people pick faith A over faith B, but it doesn’t force anyone to faith. If it did you would be a staunch Catholic right now wouldn’t you? (due to where you were born) However you decided that it wasn’t true.

However, I can agree with you on one point. People can believe out of fear where it is restrictive. There were crypto-Jews all over Europe during the Inquisition. However, you cannot say in modern Ireland that there is any fear in denominational education. I never experienced fear. I decided to accept Christianity because it was relevant to me and it was realistic to me.

The second part of your statement is probably true, but the ethos, undoubted comradeship. membership of the crowd (society) is such that most will be seduced by the opinion of others rather than think forthemselves. If in thinking for themselves, why put their relationships on the line if they are considered a lesser person for speaking against the majority?

Undoubted? – Are you for real? I met very few people in my class in school who did not doubt the existence of God at some point through being educated in Christian education. You seem to have this ridiculous notion that kids somehow resolve their belief in God from the second they are in Junior Infants. That isn’t the way it works, and it’s a fallacy of atheist argumentation. Personally I think it shows how little atheists understand about the formation of faith.

People have told me before that they stopped believing in God when they were 8, and I cannot help but laugh at how ridiculous that is. You are 8 years old, and you have suddenly decided for sure on the biggest question that there is. Christianity also cannot be understood completely by an 8 year old. Other people don’t understand there is a difference between the faith of a child, and the faith of an adult. A radical difference infact.

I met nobody who was considered “lesser” for having a different view. Mind you I’m not sure what you mean by “speaking against”. Do you mean legitimate questioning or disrespectful slander of other people who have faith for having it?

The word Indoctrination?
I am of the view that it describes the process by which views are inculcated into a person where the views supporting the indoctrinator ate emphacised, the views critical of him/her/it are reduced, ridiculed or eliminated and those expounding any alternative are attacked either personally or accuerd of having an ulterior motive.

I disagree with this form of education, I also don’t believe it occurs in Ireland currently, and I never experienced it in any of the schools I attended. Funny that your objection to schools in Ireland doesn’t seem to be all that valid, well, in Ireland.

Sure, Faith base schools do provide a certain ammount of education, but it seems to me that they provide it out of a fear that if they don’t, someone who is not committed to preserving that religion will, and that person may not have the religion’s best interest at heart, and may even let the facts interfere with the interpretation of religious indoctrination.

They provide the same education as any other school, only they teach a religious ethos in addition. Infact they are educated more if you think about it. Schools provide religious education out of fear?

Ah come on Jack, let’s be a bit reasonable before we start making up conspiracy theories.

You have provided a definition of indoctrination that has never fit any of my experiences in a school with a religious ethos. You then expect me to believe that it is hugely widespread that the fallacious definition you have given occurs. Then you ask me to believe that schools teach it out of fear. Finally, you say that the “facts” disagree with “religious indoctrination” which you still haven’t confirmed how it happens in Ireland.

Then you imply that the facts interfere with Christianity? How? Christianity operates independently of the educational system in several countries. I’m just finding the stuff you are coming out here to be inaccurate or exaggerated.

The simple fact is that Ireland is the only country in Western Europe where the religious have such a control over the education of the young within or withoyr the formal system.

Jack, I implore you to read my posts. I’ve said there should be more choice in the education system. You want to do the reverse and deny people of faith the choice to educate their children with a religious ethos.

We are only recently starting to acknowledge the extent of abuse that this system facilitated, though we all did know about it.
Perhaps the reason nothing was done about it was tha control the religious held over society.
To continue to permit a religious control over education is to continue to facilitate ongoing abuse.

I’d support distinguishing schools of COI ethos, Presbyterian ethos, or even other schools of Catholic ethos where this didn’t happen from the Christian Brothers and other orders. I agree that was a disgrace, however it is no reason to stop religious education it is merely a call to make teachers and management of schools, and indeed priests and pastors more accountable for what they say. Questioning can happen with religion too. I personally would regard myself as having an inquisitive mind. It seems that you don’t believe that theists can have a mind like this though.

I don’t support control. I support choice.

1), Because your parents are so important in your life, as a young person, you accept almost unconditionally what they tell you.

Not really. You accept what they say until a certain point, then you think about what they have taught you for yourself and examine if it is truly reasonable.

However as your parents teach what they believe, and particularly if they reflect the majority view, it is diddicult even as an adult to reject all that yo have been told by your parents as fact.

It really isn’t. I don’t think rejecting it should be key, but rather examining it. Reading for yourself, and seeing what other people think about it is important. I’m currently reading Hitchens’ – God is not Great myself. Why? To see what atheists and agnostics have to say about religion. I read Dawkins’ – God Delusion too but I found that dissapointing. There is nothing stopping people from examining the situation themselves. I accepted the faith I was taught because I found it to be rational. I never really accepted the faith of my parents at all before. I would have said that I went from unknowing what my beliefs were to accepting it. I just don’t believe people accept faith from birth or from their parents automatically. For me that isn’t how it works. Atheists continually argue this, but I cannot help but think they are wrong on this point.

Society colludes with your parents (or your parents collude with society) to reinforce these beliefs (and both parents and society lie to you as they do not tell you they are meerly beliefs, but present them as facts, -to my mind presenting theory as fact is a lie) whereby not to go along most often leads to some form of ostracision.

I disagree with this view at all. People who have a deep faith in society are generally ones who have examined the Bible and other scriptures for themselves. Perhaps there are people who have never really taught about it who consider themselves faith A culturally, but not really that seriously. But anyone I have ever encountered who has been serious in a faith has consulted the text and thought for themselves about it. that’s why I cannot help but think that you are completely wrong.

I’ll close with a cliche used by some athiests when engaging with a theist, “I reject only one more religion than you do”

I’ve heard all this before. I don’t want to reject Christianity because I don’t think it is rational to do so. I don’t think atheism makes sense.

When I get a chance, I’ll have a look at the software and see if it can facilitate that.

In the meantime I have deleted the first of your double posts.

For quotes, the commands are blockquote and /blockquote inside < and > tags

Michael, (and I’m being arrogant enough here to believe you read my posts) any chance of rearranging things so we can read our posts as they will appear and, if necessary change them as per Atheist Nexus?
Regards,
Jack