(February 19, 2012 at 8:05 pm)Shell B Wrote: It does no such thing. Separating it from public schools ensures that the government has nothing to do with religious teachings. If parents were not allowed to send their kids to private religious schools, they would just teach their children their religions at church and at home.
I fail to see why this is a bad thing. Sorry. That's EXACTLY where it belongs. Isn't the discussion here regarding whether private faith schools should be allowed?
I'm not convinced by the argument that its discriminatory against the religious by not allowing private faith schools. You aren't putting them at any positive or negative disadvantage to any other person by rights of their deeply held belief.
Quote:Telling people that they cannot send their children to private religious schools promotes tolerance?
Yes. It does imho. Unless the logic here is that if you tell anybody they cannot do something it is therefore intolerant. I can think of several reductio ad absurdium points on that immediately to say the least.
Schools have a responsibility to teach a fair and equitable viewpoint of philosophical matters including religion. You breed intolerance when you have a "special" school which has an agenda of promoting only a single theological viewpoint, to the extent that it excludes, and warps subjects beyond the theological.
The popular and most obvious example is seen regularly in the debates over whether a creationist school can teach the creation myth as equally if not more valid than natural selection and evolution in science.
It would be easy to look at this point of view and demand that this is just an opposing point of view that equally shouldn't have precedence, and that shows the very problem with theological thinking in terms of the above example of science. It denies the scientific method, and gives validity to opinion and strongly held belief as valid balancing views in ALL aspects of the curriculum beyond science, including history and religious study/philosophy.
Anyway, this is getting away from the point of this thread, which has been somewhat derailed by some spectacular and unwarranted personal abuse and worth looking at the points raised themselves. I just had some opinions I wanted to share on those comments, although that's all they are.
Tiberius Wrote:It wasn't his style I had a problem with, it was the content. It has "converted" a load of people to atheism for all the wrong reasons imo. Like I said before, I still respect him as a biologist, but biologists should keep out of philosophy.
This is an interesting outlook. What are the wrong reasons you have specifically. Simply that you are aware of a more complex counterargument to the points posed by Dawkins incomplete philosophical method? That the reader should only allow themselves to be swayed if they have engaged in a study of philosophical thought?
Without being belligerent about it, that appears to be a little elitist.
Self-authenticating private evidence is useless, because it is indistinguishable from the illusion of it. ― Kel, Kelosophy Blog
If you’re going to watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo. That show was so cool because every time there’s a church with a ghoul, or a ghost in a school. They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The f**king janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide. Throughout history every mystery. Ever solved has turned out to be. Not Magic. ― Tim Minchin, Storm
If you’re going to watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo. That show was so cool because every time there’s a church with a ghoul, or a ghost in a school. They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The f**king janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide. Throughout history every mystery. Ever solved has turned out to be. Not Magic. ― Tim Minchin, Storm
