Actually seems quite mild compared to some of the rantings in SBBS ;-)
Shame you they can’t actually write in digital blood…..
I do hate religion peddlers from all sides; everyone’s common theme is to try and force their way of thinking on you without letting you actually critique their belief system. The only religion I have any vaguely warm feelings towards as the Buddhists as they generally try not to kill things / people in the name of some imaginary Deity…
Frankly I’m very much in favour of banning all religious schools and taking the state properly secular; it would have the added advantage of pissing off Mr Bush about as much as it’ll piss off the non-Christian minority. In my brave new world schools would be forced to do at least an hour a week of cultural and religious ‘education’ in the proper sense. This would involve presenting all views and encouraging young people to actually think about what they mean by way of critique and group discussion. I’d also introduce at least an hour per week of financial awareness education and an hour a week of good parenting classes.
I’ve now donned my Asbestos gimp suit and await you all eagerly……
TBH if those are the best that the Times can find in its ceaseless efforts to stir up shit between Muslims and non-Muslims, the boards must be fucking tame.
Your education plan sounds excellent, meanwhile. The trouble is that society is infested with people who think that morality=religious values. Even among people who don’t actually go to church or seriously believe in patently absurd doctrine themselves, a high proportion mistakenly believe that religious indoctrination of children is good for society…
Well whether or not there is an equivalence between religious values and moral values depends very much on how you interpret religion. For example, there isn’t much in the Gospels that’s very objectionable. It essentially boils down to "try and be nice to each other for a change". The Koran and most monteistic texts are quite similar in that respect. But then I’m always rather surprised at how there are those who manage to read "except the poofs, women, Yids, blacks, Communists, etc" between the lines of "Thou shalt not kill". Or in fact hidden behind that line because there isn’t much space between the four monosyllabic words. Actually God must despair at being unable to make this point any clearer.
My own view is that it’s safer to keep religion out of schools and to leave it up to the families to deal with that aspect of education.
there isn’t much in the Gospels that’s very objectionable
Not morally objectionable, maybe. But as a scientist I rather object to all that water into wine, walking on water, coming back from the dead nonsense.
As an engineer, I very much approve of the water into wine nonsense. Besides, nobody said it was a science textbook (except the Creationists, but sod them). That isn’t what it’s for. It isn’t a fair criticism.
Last word on religion and education. I’m going to quote the great Jean-Claude van Damme: "It’s thanks to love and sex that you can make children, so you need to be physical. But when they’re there, you have to be a bit more mental, and then spiritual to make sure they have a good education". Like everything else he says, it’s stangely memorable despite being a load of garbled twaddle.
As group works of fiction I think most religious books such as the bible are quite inteteresting as most books these days are from single, or at most dual authors.
It’s kind of a collective group story telling around the fire (of burning Jews/homos/commies other…..)
In my brave new world schools would be forced to do at least an hour a week of cultural and religious ‘education’ in the proper sense.
As far as I’m aware this is actually compulsory in British schools up to the age of 15, however both this and the "daily act of worship, broadly Christian in nature" which is also compulsory tend to go by the by as the schools try to shovel as much league-table fodder into the little dears as possible.
Interesting stats: The Muslim population of the UK is about 3%, if they all become mad bombers and based on the hit rate of the london Bombings (c.52:4) they could theoretically reduce the population by c.21m in the UK. Predicted DM headline "40% of UK population at risk from British born Muslim Bombers"
I’m now wearing my extra thick asbestos gimp suit…..
I especially like "Morally, today’s Muslim extremists must be put exactly on a par with neo-Nazis. Their violence and hatred may be motivated by deep philosophical convictions and a genuine sense of grievance, but the same was true of Hitler" and "reducing the concept of martyrdom to what it really amounts to: a sad, lonely and utterly futile suicide."
It’s not actually compulsory for religious education up to the age of 15, you can opt out on religious grounds, which I found totally insane. At my school it was the Muslims and the really weird Plymouth Brethren who didn’t go and in my opnion needed to learn the most about other faiths and tolerance in general… At my scholl anyway the "daily act of worship, broadly Christian in nature" usually consisted of the local policeman turning up to cart off some little shit and show him Retribution the old fashioned way…
btw, I think sick jokes are reasonably ontopic for this site, so I will pass on the fact that the Newsnight report last night described the Muslims who formed the local community in Dewsbury as "not like the Islamic community in London at all really … they’re really uneducated, backward-looking and insular".
So in other words, they’d made quite an effort to integrate with the Yorkshiremen then.
I wonder if the bomber chap who worked at a primary school was also a Paedo?
;-)
In my brave new world schools would be forced to do at least an hour a week of cultural and religious ‘education’ in the proper sense. This would involve presenting all views and encouraging young people to actually think about what they mean by way of critique and group discussion.
Curiously enough, that broadly describes the secondary school religious education that I had. I’m sure there was a stronger Christian element than I’m making out, but there was definitely lots of comparative religion, after which we largely abandoned any pretence at discussing spiritual matters and spent the last couple of years exclusively discussing moral issues like sex, drugs and crime.
At the time, I had no idea that this was especially unusual, and I’m very sorry that this seems to have been the case.
Oh, and I second Chris’s recommendation for the Kaletsky article – in fact, rather to my surprise, I’ve found The Times has offered much the best coverage of 7/7 of any of the broadsheets (both in terms of depth and intelligent contextualisation).
Excellent! Also, spare a thought and a pint for Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite this evening , since the spineless swine who are supposed to organise the celebrations in London have caved into to terrorists.
Jihadi blogging
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1693297,00.html
Actually seems quite mild compared to some of the rantings in SBBS ;-)
Shame you they can’t actually write in digital blood…..
I do hate religion peddlers from all sides; everyone’s common theme is to try and force their way of thinking on you without letting you actually critique their belief system. The only religion I have any vaguely warm feelings towards as the Buddhists as they generally try not to kill things / people in the name of some imaginary Deity…
Frankly I’m very much in favour of banning all religious schools and taking the state properly secular; it would have the added advantage of pissing off Mr Bush about as much as it’ll piss off the non-Christian minority.
In my brave new world schools would be forced to do at least an hour a week of cultural and religious ‘education’ in the proper sense. This would involve presenting all views and encouraging young people to actually think about what they mean by way of critique and group discussion.
I’d also introduce at least an hour per week of financial awareness education and an hour a week of good parenting classes.
I’ve now donned my Asbestos gimp suit and await you all eagerly……
TBH if those are the best that the Times can find in its ceaseless efforts to stir up shit between Muslims and non-Muslims, the boards must be fucking tame.
Your education plan sounds excellent, meanwhile. The trouble is that society is infested with people who think that morality=religious values. Even among people who don’t actually go to church or seriously believe in patently absurd doctrine themselves, a high proportion mistakenly believe that religious indoctrination of children is good for society…
Well whether or not there is an equivalence between religious values and moral values depends very much on how you interpret religion. For example, there isn’t much in the Gospels that’s very objectionable. It essentially boils down to "try and be nice to each other for a change". The Koran and most monteistic texts are quite similar in that respect. But then I’m always rather surprised at how there are those who manage to read "except the poofs, women, Yids, blacks, Communists, etc" between the lines of "Thou shalt not kill". Or in fact hidden behind that line because there isn’t much space between the four monosyllabic words. Actually God must despair at being unable to make this point any clearer.
My own view is that it’s safer to keep religion out of schools and to leave it up to the families to deal with that aspect of education.
there isn’t much in the Gospels that’s very objectionable
Not morally objectionable, maybe. But as a scientist I rather object to all that water into wine, walking on water, coming back from the dead nonsense.
As an engineer, I very much approve of the water into wine nonsense. Besides, nobody said it was a science textbook (except the Creationists, but sod them). That isn’t what it’s for. It isn’t a fair criticism.
Last word on religion and education. I’m going to quote the great Jean-Claude van Damme:
"It’s thanks to love and sex that you can make children, so you need to be physical. But when they’re there, you have to be a bit more mental, and then spiritual to make sure they have a good education". Like everything else he says, it’s stangely memorable despite being a load of garbled twaddle.
As group works of fiction I think most religious books such as the bible are quite inteteresting as most books these days are from single, or at most dual authors.
It’s kind of a collective group story telling around the fire (of burning Jews/homos/commies other…..)
In my brave new world schools would be forced to do at least an hour a week of cultural and religious ‘education’ in the proper sense.
As far as I’m aware this is actually compulsory in British schools up to the age of 15, however both this and the "daily act of worship, broadly Christian in nature" which is also compulsory tend to go by the by as the schools try to shovel as much league-table fodder into the little dears as possible.
Interesting stats:
The Muslim population of the UK is about 3%, if they all become mad bombers and based on the hit rate of the london Bombings (c.52:4) they could theoretically reduce the population by c.21m in the UK.
Predicted DM headline "40% of UK population at risk from British born Muslim Bombers"
I’m now wearing my extra thick asbestos gimp suit…..
PS
Mr Kaletsky is always a good read and fairly spot on with this
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1061-1693163,00.html
I especially like "Morally, today’s Muslim extremists must be put exactly on a par with neo-Nazis. Their violence and hatred may be motivated by deep philosophical convictions and a genuine sense of grievance, but the same was true of Hitler" and "reducing the concept of martyrdom to what it really amounts to: a sad, lonely and utterly futile suicide."
It’s not actually compulsory for religious education up to the age of 15, you can opt out on religious grounds, which I found totally insane.
At my school it was the Muslims and the really weird Plymouth Brethren who didn’t go and in my opnion needed to learn the most about other faiths and tolerance in general…
At my scholl anyway the "daily act of worship, broadly Christian in nature" usually consisted of the local policeman turning up to cart off some little shit and show him Retribution the old fashioned way…
btw, I think sick jokes are reasonably ontopic for this site, so I will pass on the fact that the Newsnight report last night described the Muslims who formed the local community in Dewsbury as "not like the Islamic community in London at all really … they’re really uneducated, backward-looking and insular".
So in other words, they’d made quite an effort to integrate with the Yorkshiremen then.
I wonder if the bomber chap who worked at a primary school was also a Paedo?
;-)
In my brave new world schools would be forced to do at least an hour a week of cultural and religious ‘education’ in the proper sense. This would involve presenting all views and encouraging young people to actually think about what they mean by way of critique and group discussion.
Curiously enough, that broadly describes the secondary school religious education that I had. I’m sure there was a stronger Christian element than I’m making out, but there was definitely lots of comparative religion, after which we largely abandoned any pretence at discussing spiritual matters and spent the last couple of years exclusively discussing moral issues like sex, drugs and crime.
At the time, I had no idea that this was especially unusual, and I’m very sorry that this seems to have been the case.
Oh, and I second Chris’s recommendation for the Kaletsky article – in fact, rather to my surprise, I’ve found The Times has offered much the best coverage of 7/7 of any of the broadsheets (both in terms of depth and intelligent contextualisation).