Why should religion have any influence on our lives?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Hrm. That does seem a bit weird to me just because that's not what I've grown up with. The rather cut-and-dry nature of the serparation between public money and faith schools in the US at least makes that aspect much more simple.

Separation between public money and 'religion' doesn't happen here which is odd as the the UK is much more secular than the US.

The current faith school system effectively means that the UK Govt endorses given religions by handing over buckets of cash which allows them to enforce segregation (remember they can pick and choose who attends based on the child's religious adherence). This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of people who have contributed that tax do not adhere to or believe in that religion, and this is true whether it be Catholicism, CofE, Islam etc.

Again, fair?

[Michael B]

I'm not sure I'm quite clear on that. So everyone pays taxes into the gov't, and then the gov't can use that tax money to pay for faith-based schools depending on popular...vote? So if I paid tax in England as an atheist, the government could use it for a religious school because enough Christians/Muslims/Jews voted for it?

To put it in slightly simplistic terms: you have 10 schools in your local area. You choose which to send your child to. The government pays for your child to go to whichever school you choose - they pay the school on your behalf (it doesn't matter how much you do or don't earn, and all schools get the same tariff). The schools then grow or shrink depending on demand, so the number of classes per year can vary (within the physical constraints of the school which are slower to adjust). Over recent years the numbers of different types of schools have changed as schools will also close and new ones will open depending on demand. So in your example you would, I presume, choose to send your child to a non-faith school. So that school gets the money. If everyone wants to send their children to non-faith schools, those schools will grow at the expense of faith schools (though the opposite has been occurring in recent years). There's obviously a limit to the speed of change, but the system does allow for changing demand. In the UK, for example, Islam is growing quite a lot at the moment (from conversions, from larger families, and from immigration), and so we'd expect to see more Muslim schools appear over the next decade or so, responding to the changing ethnic and religious demographic of our country.

Sometimes a local 'preferred' school may not exist. So it's not perfect. In our case our children had to go 20 miles to school between the ages of 11 and 18* (which is probably nothing to an American, but it's considered quite a long commute to school in the UK). There must always be a certain amount of demand before a particular 'flavour' of school can sustain itself, but most schools are pragmatic and know they must willingly accommodate all children if needed.

*There is frequently, but not always, means-tested provision of transport if there is not an appropriate local faith or non-faith school.

Does that make it clearer?

[FatAndFaithless]

Hrm. That does seem a bit weird to me just because that's not what I've grown up with. The rather cut-and-dry nature of the serparation between public money and faith schools in the US at least makes that aspect much more simple.

Separation between public money and 'religion' doesn't happen here which is odd as the the UK is much more secular than the US.

The current faith school system effectively means that the UK Govt endorses given religions by handing over buckets of cash which allows them to enforce segregation (remember they can pick and choose who attends based on the child's religious adherence).

Again, fair?

Yeah..that seems bizarre. So take the small portion of say...Hindus, in the UK. They pay taxes as anyone else would. However, their tax money would be used to a local Christian or Muslim school because that's where most parents send their children to school, and I'm assuming there wouldn't be any Hindu faith schools locally? That seems rather unfair to religious minorities and the irreligious.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Separation between public money and 'religion' doesn't happen here which is odd as the the UK is much more secular than the US.

The current faith school system effectively means that the UK Govt endorses given religions by handing over buckets of cash which allows them to enforce segregation (remember they can pick and choose who attends based on the child's religious adherence).

Again, fair?

Yeah..that seems bizarre. So take the small portion of say...Hindus, in the UK. They pay taxes as anyone else would. However, their tax money would be used to a local Christian or Muslim school because that's where most parents send their children to school, and I'm assuming there wouldn't be any Hindu faith schools locally? That seems rather unfair to religious minorities and the irreligious.

That's true except under recent government legislation Hindu's can apply to set up their own free school which explicitly caters for the local Hindu community. I'm not even 100% sure there needs to be a quota for non-Hindu's to attend but I could be wrong on that. One this is for sure; Academies run by religious organisations are not (yes, read that again, not) required to follow any national curriculum at all. They can teach whatever they want.

There are Hindu faith schools in the UK, as well as Muslim schools, Sikh schools, even a Seven day Adventist school:

https://www.gov.uk/types-of-school/faith-schools

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...th-schools

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_school#England

None of them are legally required to open up their doors to children of any faith beyond a token quota (of given %). None are required to follow the national curriculum on religious education. They can teach that their faith is the one true faith and that all other faiths are lies and nobody can do anything about it.

[FatAndFaithless]

I'm not sure I'm quite clear on that. So everyone pays taxes into the gov't, and then the gov't can use that tax money to pay for faith-based schools depending on popular...vote? So if I paid tax in England as an atheist, the government could use it for a religious school because enough Christians/Muslims/Jews voted for it?

To put it in slightly simplistic terms: you have 10 schools in your local area. You choose which to send your child to. The government pays for your child to go to whichever school you choose - they pay the school on your behalf (it doesn't matter how much you do or don't earn, and all schools get the same tariff). The schools then grow or shrink depending on demand, so the number of classes per year can vary (within the physical constraints of the school which are slower to adjust). Over recent years the numbers of different types of schools have changed as schools will also close and new ones will open depending on demand. So in your example you would, I presume, choose to send your child to a non-faith school. So that school gets the money. If everyone wants to send their children to non-faith schools, those schools will grow at the expense of faith schools (though the opposite has been occurring in recent years). There's obviously a limit to the speed of change, but the system does allow for changing demand. In the UK, for example, Islam is growing quite a lot at the moment (from conversions, from larger families, and from immigration), and so we'd expect to see more Muslim schools appear over the next decade or so, responding to the changing ethnic and religious demographic of our country.

Sometimes a local 'preferred' school may not exist. So it's not perfect. In our case our children had to go 20 miles to school between the ages of 11 and 18* (which is probably nothing to an American, but it's considered quite a long commute to school in the UK). There must always be a certain amount of demand before a particular 'flavour' of school can sustain itself, but most schools are pragmatic and know they must willingly accommodate all children if needed.

*There is frequently, but not always, means-tested provision of transport if there is not an appropriate local faith or non-faith school.

Does that make it clearer?

That does make it clearer, thanks. It just seems a bit unwieldy and overcomplicated to me, but that might be my dumb American talking~

[Mudhammam]

I think you'd be surprised. Certainly the schools our children went to gave a lot of time to other faiths (and organised visits to places of worship, and had speakers from other faiths), and it's from a position of respecting faith. I think a Catholic, for example, is perhaps more likely than an atheist to respect the Hindu or Islamic faith - because they (we) 'get' faith. There's something I share with a devout Muslim that I don't, and can't, share with an atheist. And I don't need to try to find the things we (the Muslim and I) have in common; in a way I feel more connected to those trying to go as deep as they can into their own faith than with those who are looking for commonality between the faiths. We frequently meet each other by going 'down' rather than 'across' I think, if you see what I mean.

That's probably true. I wasn't speaking about respecting a person's faith. I was only speaking about learning of religious history, tradition, rules, practices, etc., which I suspect an atheist is more likely to properly analyse in the broader spectrum of human experiences, alongside Catholicism, whereas a Catholic is apt to esteem those faiths in lieu of Church dogma.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

To put it in slightly simplistic terms: you have 10 schools in your local area. You choose which to send your child to. The government pays for your child to go to whichever school you choose - they pay the school on your behalf (it doesn't matter how much you do or don't earn, and all schools get the same tariff). The schools then grow or shrink depending on demand, so the number of classes per year can vary (within the physical constraints of the school which are slower to adjust). Over recent years the numbers of different types of schools have changed as schools will also close and new ones will open depending on demand. So in your example you would, I presume, choose to send your child to a non-faith school. So that school gets the money. If everyone wants to send their children to non-faith schools, those schools will grow at the expense of faith schools (though the opposite has been occurring in recent years). There's obviously a limit to the speed of change, but the system does allow for changing demand. In the UK, for example, Islam is growing quite a lot at the moment (from conversions, from larger families, and from immigration), and so we'd expect to see more Muslim schools appear over the next decade or so, responding to the changing ethnic and religious demographic of our country.

Sometimes a local 'preferred' school may not exist. So it's not perfect. In our case our children had to go 20 miles to school between the ages of 11 and 18* (which is probably nothing to an American, but it's considered quite a long commute to school in the UK). There must always be a certain amount of demand before a particular 'flavour' of school can sustain itself, but most schools are pragmatic and know they must willingly accommodate all children if needed.

*There is frequently, but not always, means-tested provision of transport if there is not an appropriate local faith or non-faith school.

Does that make it clearer?

That does make it clearer, thanks. It just seems a bit unwieldy and overcomplicated to me, but that might be my dumb American talking~

What Michael is saying is bollocks, though, because he's conflating choice of school with religion and religious adherence.

A large number of parents DO NOT SEND THEIR CHILDREN TO FAITH SCHOOLS BECAUSE OF THEIR RELIGION.

How many times can I say this? Faith schools have gone up in numbers whilst religious adherence has gone massively down. This is because faith schools get MORE money per head than standard comps in their local vicinity because, on average, faith school grades tend to be higher than their state run comprehensive counterparts. IT's a vicious cycle because faith schools get better grades, more people want to go to them, so their funding increases at the expense of other local schools.

And we cannot forget that faith schools can ACTIVELY PRACTICE DISCRIMINATION totally legally. They can say 'no your son/daughter is an atheist so unless we haven't filled the quota of students who don't follow our faith they aren't allowed in'.

They can also teach whatever they want in religious education classes. Michael's children went to a school where they learnt about other faiths, but there is nothing to stop a school saying "You will burn in hell unless you're Catholic and all other religions are totally false."

Indeed, I still don't know how many non-Catholics attending Michael's children's school. I know how many, more or less, attended mine, because my school wasn't free to discriminate against children based on nothing more than their personal beliefs.

[Michael B]

That's probably true. I wasn't speaking about respecting a person's faith. I was only speaking about learning of religious history, tradition, rules, practices, etc., which I suspect an atheist is more likely to properly analyse in the broader spectrum of human experiences, alongside Catholicism, whereas a Catholic is apt to esteem those faiths in lieu of Church dogma.

Certainly we'll all analyse things differently from our different perspectives. I think that's something that just has to be accepted, but also be aware of. The atheist is as biased as the Catholic, when it comes to looking at Hinduism. Or the Catholic is as biased as the atheist, if you prefer.

I think a sign of mature thinking is when we can recognise and acknowledge our own presuppositions. When I was younger I tended to think only other people had bias

[Mudhammam]

Certainly we'll all analyse things differently from our different perspectives. I think that's something that just has to be accepted, but also be aware of. The atheist is as biased as the Catholic, when it comes to looking at Hinduism. Or the Catholic is as biased as the atheist, if you prefer.

I think a sign of mature thinking is when we can recognise and acknowledge our own presuppositions. When I was younger I tended to think only other people had bias

Of course. When I was younger I tended to think all biases were equal.

[ShaMan]

Throughout Man's history, religions have formed as attempts to define, contain, and control/manipulate what is ineffable. The more adamant and certain the presumptions/doctrine of the religion, the more you can be certain that they're way off. Religions obscure precisely what is needed for us to evolve in the process of attempting/claiming to provide the same. That's one reason why hypocrisy is rampant in religion.