Satanism in Schools...

steamboat28 wrote:

Edan wrote: Edit:... If we leave parents to educate their children on religion, some will never do it, hence why I believe schools should teach religion.

RyuJin wrote: my parents didn't force any religion on us....they told us to keep an open mind, do the research and choose for ourselves....

I may be speaking out of turn here, but I have noticed a surprisingly large number of people who grew up atheistic and/or non-religious because of these reasons, who (when they got older and decided they "wanted" a religion) had the hardest time wrapping their mind around the concepts of theology later.

I think there comes a certain mythic understanding with a basis in religion; like the laws of Faerie, they're odd, and they don't always make sense, but they're rather consistent. It's almost like initiation into a mystery. When we gain this initiation at an early age, we are far more receptive to its more nonsensical qualities, allowing us to accept them so that we might later look at them non-literally as we age. Many people raised without these get stuck, as adults, on the nonsensical bits, not having had the benefit of experience with which to look at them from different angles.

Furthermore, neglecting to teach about religion in schools is a dangerous, dangerous path. While I don't endorse the teaching of religion in public schools, religion has influenced every other topic from history to politics to war to art. Nothing humanity does is untouched by it; even the non-religious are noted for being "secular". It is very necessary to understand the basics of religious history in order to properly interpret world history.

i just wanted to chime in on this last point and say that to my way of thinking a religion is nothing more or less than what a person belives is the fundamental truth of life and thier own place in the world

whatever paradigm one adopts is less important imo - thoughtful people always ask essentially the same questions; what is true? who am i? whats the cause? whats the outcome? does it all work together? how? what are the rules?

whatever answers we accept to these questions become inseperable from our every day - every moment experience

school or home or on the toilet even
there is no seperation between our belifes and our experiences

so imo its never going to work to say "this is a no religion zone" lol any more than saying "this is a no math zone" (in the spirit of saying that the rules of math dont apply here) or "this is a no rectangles allowed zone" lol good luck with that!

even if we say the specific tenants of a particular religion cannot be expressed in a particular place, religious thought (as i speak of it to mean) imbues each of our personalities at so basic a level that the only REAL rule you can apply is "dont let us catch you" because its always right there in our eyes and our minds and its not possible to seperate us from our religions - only to convince us to redefine them

Edan wrote: Religious Education in the UK must cover certain religions.. there is the national curriculum /quote]

We don't have national curricula (yet). primary and secondary schools (age 7-16) are organized and financed on a community level, so everyone more or less does whatever they want. Some subjects are at least state-harmonized, but religion isn't. To save money, it's often taught by local religious leaders and the outcome is a rather one-sided affair for the Christian religions. The Muslim community members are organizing their own religion classes, but if you're neither a Christian nor a Muslim, you're required to sit in with the Christians (and hope that your teacher isn't an extremist).

Much of the Christian Right in America want to promote their teachings but are unable to because state laws prevent the inclusion of religious views in the public sphere. Their response of course is to declare that this is against their "religious freedom" and thus justify what they do through the law. Of course this then allows other religious groups to declare the same which will greatly upset the Christian Right!

This just seems to lay bare the argument that the Christian Right act not because religion is being victimised, but rather because they want to priviledge their own views over and above everyone else.

when i was in highschool....someone convinced the school board to allow a religious group to form...fca (fellowship of christian athletes)....i asked what about buddhists...the school opened the door for all....a week later the fca put up a banner saying: "jesus is lord above all, including buddha"....the school then nixed the whole thing....no more fca or any other group....

kind of funny since buddhism predates christianity by a good bit....

Akkarin wrote: Much of the Christian Right in America want to promote their teachings but are unable to because state laws prevent the inclusion of religious views in the public sphere. Their response of course is to declare that this is against their "religious freedom" and thus justify what they do through the law. Of course this then allows other religious groups to declare the same which will greatly upset the Christian Right! [...]

I'm not sure it will upset as many of them as you might think. A distinct and non-negligible subset simply see it as either public confirmation, or an inevitable outcome, of the "spiritual warfare" that they see all around them.

I live in the USA. I went to public grade school but a private RC high school. That high school did have an elective class on world religions, and while I suspect it was probably handled pretty well, I had no interest in that sort of thing at the time so I didn't take it. I regret that now.