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Dawkins: faith schools should teach all religion
Atheist Richard Dawkins also says he would pretend to find God to get his child into a good faith school
The outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins has said faith schools should be forced to teach other religions besides their own - as required in ordinary state schools.
"Faith schools should not be allowed to opt out of religious education," he told the Times. "Yet they are given this free pass to do religious education in their own way, which is not inspected by Ofsted."
Religious education, when taught according to the national curriculum, currently introduces children to Christianity plus two other "principal religions". Children must also be introduced to a "secular world view", such as Humanism. Faith schools, on the other hand, tend to only teach children about the religion or sect to which they are affiliated.
Dawkins is currently promoting his polemic documentary /Faith Schools Menace?/, in which he argues for the abolition of faith schools. In the film, he calls such establishments socially divisive and anti-educational.
Dawkins - who has already caused one storm this summer by referring to burkas as "bin-liner things" - believes forcing faith schools to teach RE according to the national curriculum would be the first step towards ending the "wicked"
practice of brainwashing children with religious belief.
On the widespread practice of pretending to find God - which many parents do every year in order to secure their child a place in faith schools, which are often educationally outstanding - Dawkins, the author of books on evolution, such as The Selfish Gene and Climbing Mount Improbable, showed an unsurprisingly evolutionarily adaptive attitude.
"I don't want to cast any blame on them," he said. "It's hypocrisy that is imposed on them by a ridiculous and unjust system."
Dawkins even said that if he were in the same situation, he might do the same. "Since I have absolutely no belief at all, I wouldn't be betraying anything." ·
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All parents currently have to play the system in order to get their children into a good school, why should atheists be any different? Luckily the schools that were considered to be the best locally when my children were at school were also secular in outlook. I think a child should automatically be enrolled into the school that is nearest to their home and state funded education should neither be tied to any "faith" or be allowed to select their intake. This would ensure that all schools are of similar quality and children would fully integrate, faith or not. We have children that are being taught that there's an invisible being, living in the sky, that created us and has a list of ten things he doesn't want you to do but not taught the fact of evolution. This is a national disgrace.
The truth is important and this ridiculous God garbage divides people. We will eventually be rid of it, let's hasten its demise.
I did have a laugh at the 'squawkins of Dawkins' comment, nice one. I totally agree the Programme was a heap of dung really making a parady and mockery of religion.
Dawkins must be out of his mind spouting such mindless nonsense and those who listen to him must have taken leave of their senses in abject blind pride. What is so wrong about schools that try and teach wrong and right to children when the whole world has turned wrong and right upside down and back to front?
We were born to love and serve God and our neighbour on earth. If people don't have faith they shouldn't attack others but have the humility to ask God for the gift of faith and he will answer their prayer.
Yes, some schools may be extreme and these are rare most faith schools have become quite watered down in the name of being PC! My family and I have taught the full curriculum in faith schools and such schools welcome non faith pupils. The non faith parents want their children to learn right and wrong, quelle surprise!
State schools try to teach right from wrong but it can be so general, vague and weak it has no impact, remove Christianity the back bone of our culture and you remove the life blood only empty humanism remains.
Children are like rivers they need banks to get where they're going, they need guidance and morals! I pray Dawkins has a massive conversion of a Pauline nature and has to eat humble pie for the rest of his days, that should end the Sqawkins of Dawkins!
@michael jose, again the 'selfish' in the title, which dawkins has admitted was a confusing choice, merely illustrates the fact that our genes compete amongst each other to get passed on to the next generation. The ones that give an evolutionary advantage to the host species is successful; the ones which give a disadvantage will ultimately disappear. This gene-level competition manifests itself in all living things in the physical/mental attributes they develop. It just so happens that many of these behavioural attributes in humans have been positive ones; like the instinct towards altruism, group cooperation, love etc... because these lead to the survival of the people carrying these genes, and therefore the survival of the genes; nothing selfish about that. We are not robots, and as far as we know are the only creatures to become self-aware, meaning we can rise above our instincts. Superstition is one I think we're still having trouble doing away with!
What a joke! unbelieving parents lied and cheated to get their kids into faith schools, and then their kids complain that they had religion rammed down their throats! Well it wouldn't have happened if the parents hadn't lied and cheated, would it?
So would parents lie about the sex of their son and dress them up like a girl so that they could go to a girls school because it has better academic standards than the local co-ed school? And is the son then going to whinge all his life about being treated as a girl at school as an argument against girls schools?
These arguments against faith schools are pathetic. Is that really the best you atheists can manage?
Oldman 247 "i think that religion should be banned in all schools i had it rammed down my throat as a child". Isn't that a matter you should take up with your parents? They chose to send you there when there were other schools. This is no argument against faith schools.
Anyway, you can't evacuate schools of religion, morality and ethics. When these strident 'new atheists' say they don't want religion taught in the schools this is merely a smokescreen for saying they don't want YOUR religion in the schools. Get rid of your religion so that they can implant their own. Make no mistake about it, atheism and humanism are religions. The old humanists were more candid to acknowledge that - so Huxley termed it 'religion without revelation'. A religion such as Christianity is a revealed religion, whereas humanism and atheism are non-revealed religions. Christian presuppositions are based on revelation, which atheists claim they made up. So, aren't atheist presuppositions made up? Don't tell me they are transcendent infallible truths!!
TomNightingale, you really should hear yourself. This is the substance of what you say, word for word, except as it might come from the mouth of the Spanish Inquisitor: "You have to recognise that many of us see atheist beliefs as mindless nonsense, practising humanism as comparable to talking to trees. We do not respect other views...atheistic wallahs [are] unable to think beyond their own prejudices; that is how atheism works, how it survives." God help us if you sort get any influence in society.
Pah. @Rob Newton...what? Dawkins himself admits that the title 'The Selfish Gene' is inappropriate. Deoxribose nucleic acid is a chemical, it is not selfish, generous, crabby, nice-natured, altruistic, impartial, or beneficent, or atheistic, or spiritual. The chemicals in my salt cellar (NaCl mostly) are not selfish either. But they do go nicely ON shellfish. Machines, gene machines or otherwise, are machines. You can buy a robot to clean your appartment floor in Brussels for EUR299, a bargain if you have the wooden floor space and money to burn. But the spinning gizmo is no more selfish or generous than my toaster or my laptop, or my fax machine in my office. Either he means his title literally, 'the selfish gene machine, human being' or he means it metaphorically - and if so, in what way. Humans are characterised by a thing called reasoning power, a knowledge of right and wrong, and free will to good or evil. His silly pseudo-philosophy attempts to reduce us to the selfish gene machine and nothing-but. Pah. Phooey.
@michael jose, I think you misunderstand the book, the 'selfish' bit refers to the genes, not the person, a common mistake. @Kevin McGrane, the point is many people whose children already attend faith schools are pretending to have faith, they have to for the good of their children, they do not 'cheat and lie' their way through life, however. It is possible to be a conscientious and moral person without blindly following iron-aged texts; the growing number of humanists shows this. I sense a reactionary fear in your post that your ideals are under threat, Dawkins is not advocating a moral vacuum
Wow, talk about taking a comment out of context -
""I wouldn't be betraying anything", except the trust of people he proposes to deceive. Kevin is right that this is unethical behaviour."
That kinda goes without saying don't you think? I think you missed his point, or more likely are dodging it.
"I wouldn't be betraying anything", except the trust of people he proposes to deceive. Kevin is right that this is unethical behaviour. If it were a general principle that one could simply deceive others whose beliefs differ from one's own, we could no longer expect much honesty as a social norm. Atheists more sophisticated than Dawkins argue that morality can be sustained without religious belief. Dawkins undermines them with this kind of generalised and cavalier hostility to believers.
i think that religion should be banned in all schools i had it rammed down my throat as a child schools should teach all the requirements of a good education ,religion should be given to children in sunday school or temple or mosque or whatever their parents religious beleifs this would let the children blend with each other on an even togetherness
Agree with Kevin McGrane. It is a stupid argument. On that basis, an aetheist can do whatever he likes with impunity. One point that Dawkins misses, deliberately or otherwise, is that many parents send their childrens to faith schools or have them brought up in a particular faith, is to give them a sense of right and wrong, in the knowledge that at some point in time the child will eventually make up their own mind.
Kevin, as usual, is right. I have a hardened line in contempt for most of what Dawkins says and writes - I call it the 'squawkins of Dawkins'. He is a philosophical bonehead, pretending that science is the be-all-and-end-all, and that he is the high priest of atheistic science. I think his science is weak. He has, on the first page of the preface of 'The Selfish Gene', the description of human beings as "robots" - "programmed" by our genes!! So why should I believe anything he says? Presumably he wants us to believe he is human too...I must just be programmed to skepticism as well as selfishness! But then, my having a science degree and being a Christian does not quite fit his silly categories of thought, does it? I don't feel too out of it tho' - intelligent people like Abbot Gregor Mendel (discovered genes...), Father Georges Lemaitre (Big Bang theory), Galileo (Roman Catholic you know! Shocking...), Sir Isaac Newton (had to get a Protestant in there...), Sir Alexander Fleming (oh no, another Protestant...), and the physicists Max Planck and James Clerk-Maxwell....well, both Protestants I think! Then of course there is always that Johnny-come-lately the leader of the Human Genome Project in the USA, Francis S. Collins, who converted from atheism to Christianity (Protestant again!!)...so I don't feel too out of it...Oh, I said that already.
Kevin, it is you who come acrosss as an idiot, not Dawkins. Good parents will be concerned to ensure their kids get a good education. Any right minded atheist will not give a hoot about pretending to believe in order to help their kids. As Dawkins says, it would be betraying nothing. You have to recognise that many of us see religious beliefs as mindless nonsense, practising religion as comparable to talking to trees . We do not respect other views ( I accept the rights of others to "think"** differently but do not respect their silly beliefs). Dawkins is criticised by religious wallahs because they have been indoctrinated to be unable to think beyond their own prejudices; that is how religion works, how it survives.
**"think" in a loose sense, much as the sense in which a pre-programmed machine sometimes appears to "think" when it reacts differently to different stimulae.
"Since I have absolutely no belief at all, I wouldn't be betraying anything."
Once again, Dawkins comes across as an idiot. His argument sounds like a charter for gross unethical behaviour. The same argument could be used to justify just about any behaviour. So it's OK to lie and cheat on faith communities now, is it? It's OK to lie and cheat your way through life is it "because I have absolutely no belief at all"?