Intelligent People 'Less Likely to Believe in God'

[S.A.M.]

You should be. It was the non or very little religious parents that did not like religion being forced onto their children in school that prompted this to begin with, IIRC.


I personally don't want any teacher or school staff teaching my kid some religion.
Exemption: IF the school is teaching the children about the religion itself, its origins, history and how it operates, that's ok. Just don't try to persuade them in believing it.

Why could the non-religious people not open a school for their children? Wouldn't that be better than having the religious pull out their children from school? Why force the religious to stop something they want included? Isn't imposing your views on another as well? And if more and more people are teaching biblical schooling to children at home instead, what exactly did you achieve? A national drop in math and science scores is hardly something to boast about.

 

[Mr. Hamtastic]

Homeschooling is quite the investment, Sam. One person has to stop working, educate the children to make sure they pass their appropriate tests, keep up with all the state required records... it's doable, but hard and expensive.

 

[SkinWalker]

There are many religious schools for all of the major denominations and religions, including Judeism and Islam where prayer and religious indoctrination is not impeded or curtailed.

The law forbids only teacher-led prayer or the introduction of religious proselytizing to students. The legislation behind this was backed primarily by the religious who didn't want a majority sect imposing their particular brand of religion on their own children or the children of others.

 

[S.A.M.]

Homeschooling is quite the investment, Sam. One person has to stop working, educate the children to make sure they pass their appropriate tests, keep up with all the state required records... it's doable, but hard and expensive.

I don't doubt it. And I don't doubt that some parents are excellent teachers. But I would hesitate to say that learning everything from the same two people is beneficial to obtaining diverse points of view. In our school, not only did we have different teachers for each subject, but the same teacher did not teach the same subject for every level. So, when we learned English, for instance, we varied from a teacher who sang the poems, to another who wove stories out of them, to a third who dissected every single sentence into its composite parts and explained it in such depth that it would sometimes take an entire class to get through a few lines. We were exposed to many many ways of approaching the same situation, the same subject. No parent, however loving or expert, can be a substitute for those experiences

 

[Mr. Hamtastic]

One of the basic problems we have right now, is that church and state are not seperate. You go to government school, you should have no exposure to religion, except as, "it exists". Private religious schools should not be state funded in any way.

 

[Balerion]

One of the basic problems we have right now, is that church and state are not seperate. You go to government school, you should have no exposure to religion, except as, "it exists". Private religious schools should not be state funded in any way.

Amen!

Or teach it as mythology, like we do for the Greeks and Romans.

 

[S.A.M.]

I have never understood how antagonisng your target audience is supposed to achieve anything. Just look at how athiests on this forum react to me

 

[Mr. Hamtastic]

mythology should be taught in the same way, and all religions simply being said to exist, here are their basic beliefs, etc, and taught in a seperate elective religion class.

 

[Mr. Hamtastic]

I have never understood how antagonisng your target audience is supposed to achieve anything. Just look at how athiests on this forum react to me

what?

 

[Balerion]

what?

I think she's babbling to herself again, Ham.

 

[iceaura]

I have never understood how antagonisng your target audience is supposed to achieve anything.

It is impossible to educate children without antagonising fundie religious parents.

Are you going to teach girls to read and write? Are you going to teach basic facts and fundamental theories in biology and other sciences? Are you going to teach history without skipping major events and causative factors? You are going to be antagonizing fundie parents.

Are these parents your "target audience"?

 

[S.A.M.]

what?

I'm referring to the attitude of atheists and how it is leading to a decline in science and education. What do they hope to achieve by this?

 

[Balerion]

Yeah, the atheists are responsible for the US being light-years behind the rest of the world in math and science. Yeah, cuz the atheists are the ones putting science on trial at every opportunity, and outlawing the federal funding of scientific research. Yes, it's the atheists doing that.

Wow.

 

[S.A.M.]

Yeah, the atheists are responsible for the US being light-years behind the rest of the world in math and science. Yeah, cuz the atheists are the ones putting science on trial at every opportunity, and outlawing the federal funding of scientific research. Yes, it's the atheists doing that.

Wow.

Its not just the US. Its everywhere that atheism has an audience.

There’s a worrying trend spreading across Europe. We’re accustomed to hearing about the fiery debate surrounding the teaching of evolution in the USA, especially but not exclusively in the Bible belt. But in November 2006 in an article in Nature, Almut Graebsch and Quirin Schiermeier expressed concern that the teaching of alternative theories in schools is not just an issue across the Atlantic (Graebsch & Schiermeier, 2006).

They’re not the first to notice this. In 2006 the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, launched an attack on creationism, concerned that the idea was gaining a foothold in schools and universities across the country. They enlisted Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College London (UCL), to give his public lecture, ‘Why evolution is right and creationism is wrong’.

Steve, author of several popular books on genetics, including In The Blood and The Language of the Genes, lectures widely about evolution in schools, universities, conferences and research institutes. He’s concerned – and absolutely baffled – by the growing influence of creationist groups in Europe.

“It’s a mystery,” he says. “In the 30 to 40 years I’ve been talking to audiences about evolution, I’d never once had a question about creationism. In the last few years, though, such questions have become completely commonplace.”

http://www.scienceinschool.org/2008/issue9/stevejones

 

[iceaura]

The opposition to science education by the religious is a modern phenomenon;

It coincides with fundie religious parents being more or less forced, by circumstance, to have their kids better educated than in the past - and finding out what that meant.

They used to drop out before the atheists could get at them, or attend safer and less rigorous establishments.

Its not just the US. Its everywhere that atheism has an audience.

A fundie Abrahamic audience, of people who used to maybe complete high school, without learning any science, and go get jobs.

 

[S.A.M.]

It coincides with fundie religious parents being more or less forced, by circumstance, to have their kids better educated than in the past - and finding out what that meant.

They used to drop out before the atheists could get at them, or attend safer and less rigorous establishments.
A fundie Abrahamic audience, of people who used to maybe complete high school, without learning any science, and go get jobs.

How do you arrive at that conclusion from this:

Steve, author of several popular books on genetics, including In The Blood and The Language of the Genes, lectures widely about evolution in schools, universities, conferences and research institutes. He’s concerned – and absolutely baffled – by the growing influence of creationist groups in Europe.

here is another statement from the same link:

“But by 1870, just over a decade after Darwin’s book came out, the uproar had subsided. Most churchmen were educated people and could see that they could accept evolution and that it had nothing to do with their religious belief. The two things simply don’t clash. Science is far too powerful to bother with ridiculous, untestable theories.”

 

[Nasor]

I have never understood how antagonisng your target audience is supposed to achieve anything. Just look at how athiests on this forum react to me

You are assuming that the atheists are trying to convince you that you are wrong. It's possible that they are trying to convince others that your arguments are foolish, in which case you aren't really the primary audience; everyone else is.

 

[S.A.M.]

You are assuming that the atheists are trying to convince you that you are wrong. It's possible that they are trying to convince others that your arguments are foolish, in which case you aren't really the primary audience; everyone else is.

That goes for me too. Why do the athiests assume I am addressing them? Maybe I am just convincing others how foolish and dangerous atheism is.

 

[Balerion]

How is trying to prevent creationism from getting in schools retarding the growth of science, Sam? That's obviously what you're saying, because that's the quote and link you provided. You think that getting creationism out of schools is bad for science? Bullshit. Creationism is junk, not science, and does not belong anywhere near a public school.

“But by 1870, just over a decade after Darwin’s book came out, the uproar had subsided. Most churchmen were educated people and could see that they could accept evolution and that it had nothing to do with their religious belief. The two things simply don’t clash. Science is far too powerful to bother with ridiculous, untestable theories.”

Bullshit, Sam. Revisionist history. Here's a link that shows the times Evolutionary Theory has either been on trial, been taken to court, or had legislation passed.

http://www.nwcreation.net/trials.html

Creationists (now IDers) have been fighting the advancement of science since this country was founded. And in reality, they've spent a hell of a long time fighting it throughout the history of the world. There were places and times where going against literal scripture would be cost you your life. How can you advance science when science inherently goes against scripture?

You can keep assuming that everyone who ever invented anything was religious, but the truth is you can't know, because saying you weren't was either a death sentence or career suicide back then. Matter of fact, I'd be willing to bet money that the greatest minds of antiquity were more likely to be autistic than they were to be religious.

 

[iceaura]

It coincides with fundie religious parents being more or less forced, by circumstance, to have their kids better educated than in the past - and finding out what that meant.
- - -
”
How do you arrive at that conclusion from this:

I didn't. I'm pointing to an obvious and major factor you and your sources seem to have overlooked.

The people who are objecting to Darwin and finding themselves shocked by the prevalence of atheism among the scientific and other intellectual classes, are people who in years past would have had little contact with those classes.

If you attempt to educate the children of fundies, you will meet antagonism and resistance. That attempt is a modern, recent effort.