Evolution To Be Taught In British Primary Schools

I haven't seen that. I'll have to check it out.

perhaps the authorities feel more law and order is required in society and bringing religion back is a way to promote it?religion serves an important purpose because it gives people a higher authority to answer to...it also gives them hope, purpose and a moral framework to live byeverything that evolution took away

Moral framework? How can you still say that? Religion gives people an arbitrary set of rules that they may or may not aspire to.You are very wrong to suggest that religion gives peopel a moral framework with the implication that this framework is not present in irreligious.Atheism Myths and MisconceptionsHow long have you been here?The only thing evolution took away is the dogmatic belief in the literal meaning of either Genesis fables.Move into the early 20th Century, why don't you? You really believe this, really?Take a look at some Home Office (UK) figures on the subject. The Times & The Sunday TimesPuts it into perspective, eh?

Hi Peg I'm sure many in authority think along those lines. I'm sure that many of them are scared that if young children are no longer indoctrinated with religion, as they were, society will go to the dogs. Personally, I see no connection whatsoever between religious belief and an understanding of why law and order is valuable to society. There are many allegories and parables, some of which could be taken from the Bible, that could be taught to children to give them an understanding of how to behave and be good to each other without any need whatsover to make them believe in anything supernatural. Again, there is absolutely no need for the supernatural to be used to give someone hope, purpose and a moral framework. And I would absolutely object to having any kind of dictatorial authority with arbitrary morals imposed upon me or anyone else.

I don't think it has anything to do with bringing religion back. We've always had state-run religious schools in Britain, and there's always been religious education. If you go to a secular school, however, RE is more a comparative religion course than anything else. If your school's in London or Leeds, after all, the class is liable to be a mix of Christians, Muslims, Hindus and non-religious of various stripes.

I'm not sure what if any conclusions you can draw from those figures given that they were based on the declared religion at the time and a number of cases seem to be the result of conversions while in prison.I'm also a bit dubious how any of this data supports your position given that ... Surely the proportion of the general population is considerably higher than a 2:1 ratio of believers to non-believers, from this data it seems that those of 'No-religion' may in fact be over-represented in the prison population.Having tried to find some data on the religious makeup of the UK I now have no idea. Wikipedia has a value from the 2001 census giving ~20% as having 'No-religion' but a 2007 British social atitudes survey give the number as ~45%. Obviously with one figure the non-religious are over-represented in the general prison population and with the other they are under-represented.I still think that these statistics are far from making your case.TTFN,WK

True, I would not draw any firm conclusions from this item but my point was to show that being religious is not the automatic road towards morality that Peg was implying.

Yeah, burning witches, homosexuals, and Protestants.The flame of faith has flickered and died out. Let's bring it back. I notice that you are still pretending that evolution is antithetical to both religion and morality even though you know perfectly well that this is a God-damned lie.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

LOL. Sorry folks, but teaching kids Evolution won't make them better off than those who don't know it. It's the right answer, to be sure, but to the wrong question.Jon

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[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

I think the point that some of us are trying to make is that religion is not required to make people moral or law abiding, not that teaching people 21st century science makes them so.

Well of course it will. It'll make them better able to understand biology. Well, what is the right question?If the right question is "what's six times seven?" then sure, it's not going to be a big help.Could you please explain further what you're getting at? Your point is obscure.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Religion has always been a part of UK schools. Religious education is compulsory and schools have to observe a weekly session of collective worship - there is no talk of 'bringing it back' since it hasn't gone away yet. Clearly the 'officials' don't agree: or they wouldn't be considering expanding the teaching of evolution, neh?

Since when? And how does this play out in secular schools? What do they worship, exactly? At my Catholic school there was a weekly chapel service, but this was held during breaktime so attendance was minimal.

Hi Caffeine, Since always, I believe. As long as we've had publicly funded schools, there has been communal worship. There isn't really any such thing. There are explicitly religious schools and there are schools which are not explicitly religious - both can receive state funding.At my old school there were assemblies where we would listen to our tedious and insane headmaster tell us didactic stories with little do-good morals. Then there would be a non-denominational prayer. Then we would sing a hymn. Because there were so many Muslim and Hindu kids there (and a few from other denominations), there was never any reference to any particular religious faith. The hymns and the prayers were vague, spineless pablum, sanitised of all meaningful content for fear of offending someone . Basically a complete waste of time.Eventually me and a few other smart-arsed middle class brats decided that we weren't going to pray. We refused to bow our heads. We were thrown out of assembly and lectured at length. I argued that making an avowed atheist pray was counter-productive. At best it was a waste of time, at worst, you would be forcing the atheist to offer an insincere prayer, effectively lying to God. They were not impressed. They threatened dire retribution, we folded and carried on pretending to pray.All rather pointless really. High time it was done away with.Mutate and Survive

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

In Britain, state schools are not secular schools. Singing hymns and praying were compulsory, at least in my day.You'd have to go to a private school for it to be secular.