...I'm going to respond to these replies one at a time because each are highly deserving of healthy debate. So if I screw up with the quote/reply thing on here, please bear with me. Thanks.
Ok, but if it is taught in a way that is free of all dogmatism e.g; 'Class, today we are going to discuss the role Jesus Christ's story played in history. Christ was a Hebrew who rebelled against the hatred going on at his time. Some say he was the son of God, put here on earth to provide enlightenment and a message of universal respect for everyone else', then yes, that might work. Likewise for Mohammad. Mind you, I believe the first question kids would ask would be 'What is god?' Or, 'what is Hebrew?' Already it's going down the path of teaching the history of seperatism. Dangerous stuff religion, even if taught without dogma...delph_ambi wrote:Lugh, your arguments are precisely the reason why there should be religious education. Remember; the word is education, not indoctrination.
The stupid, ignorant and bigoted will always be with us. The only effective weapon against their views is education.
Above you say "the word is education not indoctrination" and I agree, but letting someone who wishes to acknowledge her subjugation through a faith that sees women as inferior/unequal really shouldn't be encouraged in such an environment or anywhere for that matter. Seriously Delph; who is going to listen to a teacher talk about religion and its history in a positive way if that teacher's assistant puts on a veil everytime a man walks into the room because the branch / sect of her religion that she follows instructs her to do so?
The image above is really quite ridiculous if in a placement where freedom to advance through learning or questioning is supposedly the order of the day. By the same token, if a Catholic priest wanted to sprinkle holy water all over anyone who took the lord's name in vein or spread the notions of demons or guilt, or an evangelican preacher wanted to lay her/his hands on the masses to heal them in the name of Jesus, I would take issue.
Yes, but it is part of the whole 'God' or 'no God' scenario. Are all the advantages of living in Britain / Europe where the art of conversation has been hard fought for, going to be allowed to fall by the wayside because of a few dogmatic faiths, followed by uneducated people who believe it is wrong to have an alternative opinion or freedom of speech?delph_ambi wrote:The argument about the existence or not of God is a red herring here. If people are educated, rather than indoctrinated, then they are empowered to make up their own minds on that one. I don't for one moment think the removal of the concept of 'God' would solve all the ills of the world, but that is an argument for another day.
This is what I am talking about. For most of our lives we have been encouraged to rationalise and come to our own conclusions about gods. Some people see advantage in teaching morality through the medium of a fairytale like the bible but moderation steps in when it becomes fanatical.
If fanatics who follow these faiths blindly are allowed anymore leverage, then we will all take a few steps backwards in our progress and their dogma will become even more mainstream. We will allow ourselves to become as subjugated as the woman campaigning to wear her veil in the classroom. We would openly acknowledge that homophobia was ok because 'God / Allah' disapproves and if we dared speak out, we would find ourselves on the recieving end of extremist violence.
I'll lighten the atmosphere a bit here and say that we are a cluster of countries that believed 35 to 40 years ago that war was wrong, governments were corrupt and peaceful co-existence was on the agenda. This was known as the time of the 'Hippie'. Stop The War (in Vietnam), Long hair, colourful clothing, smoking pot, dropping acid, writing music and songs, painting pictures and coming to our own idealogical conclusions based on or gained through meaningful conversation and freedom of expression, were the things people campaigned for.
Then there was the Punk generation who directly confronted all notions of unreasonable order and in my opinion very healthily spat in the face of government. Are their beliefs, now so much a part of the culture we live in, to be thrown aside to accommodate people who haven't risen above extremist violence in the name of their god or their sectarianism / sexism?
I know you to be a highly talented artist and writer Delph. Hypothetically, if you painted a picture depicting the times we are living in now and it offended a few Christians, Jews or Muslims so much so that they damaged either your work, lifestyle or reputation, would you not take issue? It is the 'veil - wearing' or 'demonising preachers and priests' among us who police art with perverse notions of morality. Giving them anymore openings in our advancing society would be a form of intellectual mass suicide.
The woman wishing to wear her veil in the classroom and further the notions of a seperate identity, or her right to practice a faith that is opposed to the civil liberties we have come to expect, is a bigot. She was most probably schooled through fear of men and in a cultural enclave that inflicts violence on anyone opposed to her religion.delph_ambi wrote:When I was little, I thought that the people my parents referred to as 'natives' were only just out of the jungle, and that 'we' were far more advanced. Without education, maybe that view would have stayed with me. Maybe I'd now be the worst kind of racist. Luckily for me, I became educated, so that years later when my next door neighbour was a kindly Jamaican lady, I didn't avoid her in fear and hatred. Unfortunately for her, when I moved away, her new neighbour was a fascist pig with a couple of vicious alsatians, whose education had clearly been lacking. (The pig, that is. The alsatians were probably bright enough.)
Bigotry of all kinds can only be fought with education. It is based, after all, on misinformation. Give people unbiased information, and teach them the sense of what the Jesus who is depicted in the Bible was trying to get across (or the Prophet, or any other great religious leaders) and you're half way to removing bigotry. Teach them nothing of these matters, and their bigotry is free to flourish.
However, and it must not be forgotten, she is a European / UK resident with the right to take issue with the environment she lives in. Realistically, if she were in the homeland of her religion and expressing what she thought were her rights, she would be ostracised or stoned to death for having an opinion. Women in the homelands of her faith are not allowed opinions. That is clearly condoned by the males who preach her religion. She is attempting to advance the notion that they are right. That is a form of bigotry.
If it is taught in an equal environment, free of separatism and as part of the Social Studies / World History syllabus then yes, but is it possible to forward any religious education without causing or exacerbating tensions borne from all the ignorance it generates?delph_ambi wrote:That's why you need religious education.
Would you believe if I told you I used to spell 'religious' the right way but was corrected on MSN The Pleasure Dome one day by a member who said it was spelled 'religeous'?delph_ambi wrote:Oh yeah, and Lugh, 'religious' has two 'i's and one 'e'...
I have edited this thread to correct mispelling of 'religious' and tighten up grammar in all of my posts.
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