Victorian state primary school students will soon be able to take religious education classes which teach there is no evidence God exists.

The Humanist Society of Victoria has developed a curriculum for primary pupils that the state government accreditation body says it intends to approve, The Sunday Age newspaper reported.

Accredited volunteers will be able to teach their philosophy in the class time allotted for religious instruction, the newspaper said.
.....

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=696722

That will make for some interesting schoolyard debates  

Quote:


Not really, I wouldn't like to see religions die out either, that would mean one less topic to argue about.
But I'd like to see Islam toned down quite a bit. It would be a sad day if this forceful religion dominates the world.

One more prove that atheism is just another religion.

Have Religion as an element of a subject of LOGIC & CRITICAL REASONING. As part of L&CR, all of the best arguments for the proof of God and the rejection of the existance of God could be examined and be shown that both camps arguments start with either a leap of faith or an assumption. That neither argument proves anything at all except how some of these arguments work on the uneducated or blinkered thinker, that ultimately it is all an act of faith that must be a personal choice and that the school system is no place for the delivering of religious instruction.

I am not quite as generous as muso when it comes to the world losing religions. I am all for the recording of these beliefs as a matter of anthropological interest etc but see no real value to the world that cannot be handle by universial humanism based on a few core tenents that still allows cultural flavouring. I think those energies would be better channelled into the real world. Get god out of the equation.

freediver wrote on Dec 15^th, 2008 at 12:30pm:


I agree almost entirely. It's just as strange as teaching that God does exist in isolation. My point was that this is not an example of  teaching 'atheism' as a 'religion'. It's teaching humanism.

It's not the schools job to prove or disprove God. Nor is it really their place to be "educating" children on things like religion. I know Australia doesn't have a constitution, but here we have seperation of church and state. (Even though nobody pays attention to it or has a clue to what it means..)

What it really means basically is that church and state are protected by the law. That the state cannnot intrude on religious practices that are not blatantly disruptive, and the state is not to be overtaken by any particular religion. Banning the production of pork based on Muslim law would be violating seperation of church and state, barring Muslims from praying in their backyard would be violating seperation of church and state.


School should equip our children to find jobs. Learn a trade, focus more on linquistics and whatever study they're interested in.. It would save the taxpayer money, give our kids some valuable information, and nobody would get pissed off because we could still teach our kids our values at home..

I think he meant Bill of Rights.

Actually I prefer the approach that the US public education system has taken. They don't teach religion in public schools (there may be some exceptions), although some of them have that broad teaching of different religions that I alluded to earlier.

Leaps of faith? Well we certainly witness that, and I can accept that,but what annoys me is leaps of logic.

FD wrote that the victorian example was a case of humanism as a religion, it, of course, is not.

They clearly state that they will be teaching that there is "NO EVIDENCE" of there being a god, which will at least allow them to start their enquiry into the subject from an honest position, unlike "ALL" religions, which claim to "KNOW", definitively of the existence of god.
Not just any god either, they definitively know of their particular flavour god.

So, once more we see religions trying to have their faith based beliefs, taught exclusively as facts, and the idea that kids be treated with enough respect, as to give them an honest and well rounded education about the religious choices they could make, scares the crap out of them.

As Jim pointed out, we unfortunately have no enshrined legislation to separate church and state in australia, which is unfortunate, because religion has no place in education, it should always remain a private matter, and definitely should not be imposed on kids, it should always be a free choice for adults to make.
Seeing another, honest perspective, should help kids to make up their own minds, when they are ready.