The Atheist Blogger

I attended a lecture a few months back (before I started this blog) entitled “Enemy in the Mirror: Richard Dawkins, the New Atheists and their Crusade against Fundamentalism”. It was nothing special, and the “lecturer” didn’t actually talk about anything to do with the subject. She just went on a random rant about how everyone should respect the church etc.

However, after the lecture there were a lot of questions asked from the audience, a large majority of whom were openly atheist. One such question was from a theist (towards the atheists) who complained that we argue all the time about religion and yet send our children to catholic schools and CofE schools with no problems. The parents in the audience said they do this because the results from those schools are better than those at non-religious schools, and they wanted the best for their kids.

I’ve got no problem with people doing that, they want their kids to do well. However I personally do not trust education systems that rely on religion to get students. The only reason that these students are getting better marks is because of the high levels of discipline those schools have, and the only thing large amounts of discipline does is inhibit creativity. You are taught what to think and how to think, and completely ignore the principles that freethinking was founded on.

The education system in England is a strange one. Public schools have to teach Evolution, and cannot teach I.D (for reasons we discuss in this forum thread). However, private schools (often religious in nature) can teach extra things to the standard curriculum. I know of Catholic schools in London that teach I.D far more than Evolution, and even have students learning that Noah took dinosaurs on the Ark. They are creating the next generation of Young Earth Creationists, and it sickens me to think of what they will be like in the future.

I used to think America had a better deal in education. Secularisation made sure that I.D was kept out of the schools, and that useless things like prayer were also removed in an official nature. Even the fundamentalist Liberty University has to teach Evolution (alongside I.D of course). Today, I’m not sure where I stand. It seems that everywhere Creationists are using loopholes to push their agenda onto innocent minds, in order to corrupt and control them. A couple of states have surrendered currently, but who knows how many it will be in a years time?

A lot of schools should take a good look at English universities. They seem to have a nice balance between education and belief, and I should know. My university is supposedly secular (although the CU would like to ammend that), and in lectures we are given the facts and told to think for ourselves. One of my friends is currently doing a PhD in Crypto Zoology, a course that doesn’t even exist, but to which the university has found adequate for him to form a theisis on.

The future doesn’t rely on religion, it relies on free thinking. I want my children to learn in an environment which will give them the ability to work things out for themselves, and I fear a religious setting will only hinder that and make them slaves to the false doctrine they support.