I See that the Arsebishop of Canterbury’s swan song is the usual cockwaffle we have come to expect from him. One hopes that his replacement will be a more effective ambassador for the Anglican Church, or God help them for no one else will.
Rowan Williams has warned against “downgrading” religious education in secondary schools in his last Easter sermon as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Younger people take religion seriously “when they have the chance to learn about it,” he said.
Of course they do. It’s called indoctrination and the younger your charge when you carry it out, the more effective it becomes. That said, I have no beef with the principle of religious education in schools, providing that this is what it is. However, I suspect that what Williams is referring to is the peddling of Christianity that I went through when I was at school. Although at that point I was a Christian. It was only later I shuffled off the cloak of mythology and rejected all forms of superstition and belief in the supernatural – it’s remarkable what studying biology, chemistry and physics at O-level will do for one’s belief in the myths and legends of a bunch of bronze age goat herders. So, yeah, let’s have people learn about belief systems and what they mean. I’m all in favour as despite not believing myself, I still find them fascinating. Let’s not have schools turned into de facto churches, though.
Once again we get the “militant secularism” bogeyman rolled out.
Look, secular is not interchangeable with atheist. Just because atheists tend to prefer a secular society, it doesn’t follow that all secularists are atheist. Indeed, there are religious people who recognise that a secular state is their best guarantor of religious freedom. After all, the Islamic theocracies of the Middle East aren’t exactly paragons of interfaith tolerance, are they? Ask a Coptic Christian… The state has no place involving itself in religious matters and religion has no place involving itself in the management of the state. The two should remain separate for the good of both (and the rest of us).
But he insisted the ultimate test of Christianity is not whether it is beneficial to the human race but whether the resurrection of Jesus Christ actually happened.
I recall some years back, Jeremy Bowen asked this question in the closing moments of his documentary on the life of Jesus Christ. The answer is simple; necrosis sets in some six minutes or so after death – from that point on, the brain is so much useless mush as the cells degrade. After three days, bodies do not return to life. There is no scientific evidence that this could ever happen, let alone has happened – indeed, a body after three days in the Mediterranean climate would have been distinctly whiffy as the cells putrefied. So, no, it didn’t happen. It’s a myth. A nice story, but that is all it is. Believe it if you wish, but don’t expect those of us who don’t, to take you seriously when you peddle this stuff.
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The archbishop concluded that Christianity was true and the resurrection was a fact, not “a beautiful imaginative creation that offers inspiration to all sorts of people” nor merely a way of saying that “the message of Jesus lives on”.
Clearly Williams is having difficulty differentiating between the words “fact” and “assertion”.
“Younger people take religion seriously “when they have the chance to learn about it,”
Err…. no. When our year at High School were forced to sit the RE examination, (taking up study time for our other examinations) we were so miffed that we were actually running a book on who could fail the RE Exam most spectacularly. One of our number actually got a pass for spelling his name correctly and writing out the questions on a piece of A4 lined paper. I recall our headmaster was livid, and threatened to withdraw us all from all the rest of our examinations (Maths, English, History, French etc.) He backed down when a couple of parents threatened to sue if he did. Ah, happy days. 😈
That’s precisely the kind of thing I would have got involved in at that age.
I was the guy running the book and taking the bets.
Why does that not surprise me?
Yup, pretty much agreed to all of that.
I find it mildly irritating that the skye faery types want to pigeonhole everybody into stuff like “humanist”, “atheist”, “agnostic”, “secularist” or “non-believer” and dream up some ideological differences between them. Just because they love sub-dividing themselves into Sunnis, Shias, Wahabis,Catholics, Protestants, reform-orthodox-hassidic jews etc does not mean that people like you or me consider themselves to belong to anything in particular.
@ Mark,
“I find it mildly irritating that the skye faery types want to pigeonhole everybody into stuff like “humanist”, “atheist”, “agnostic”, “secularist” or “non-believer” ”
Well, man gave a name to all the animals 😆
Heh!
It would seem those who say they do not belong or believe in anything particular,have a lot of say about those who do.
All I know ,if anyone believes in nothing why bemoan someone who believes in something,however distant.
PS
Check out the “Secular” heroes
Yeah, it’s that quaint old notion of freedom of speech, thing. Inconvenient, isn’t it?
Believers – particularly church leaders – are quick to condemn and label those of us who do not follow their creed (although we can be thankful that they no longer torture and burn us). The conflation between secular and atheist for example, not to mention the silly term “militant secularism” which, frankly, is an oxymoron.
While idiots such as Williams peddle this nonsense, I’ll continue to debunk it.
I believe in God and Jesus Christ, so I’m a brainwashed loopie-loo, look I am not interested if your secular, atheist, buddist, muslim, etc. that is your choice.
Longrider, anyone of any religion or not, were persecuted, but that was then, this is now, so why is believing in Christanity so revilled?
A nice little strawman there. I didn’t say anything about it being reviled, merely that Williams is talking bollocks as usual.
Presumably you are making some sort of point here, but it isn’t immediately obvious.
Because believing in ANY BigSkyFairy is stupid, that’s why.
Besides, there’s nothing like a religion, islam, communism or christianity; for murdering millions in the name of the holy cause, is there?
Interestingly, despite my not attacking Christianity in the post, neither of the two defenders of the faith have addressed the substantive points that I was making, merely repeated the same nonsense that Williams has regarding secularism.
It would seem, from the comments, that Williams can say as he damn well pleases – even if it is rampant and provable nonsense – and we are supposed to just suck it up. Well, no, it doesn’t work that way.
LR,
I think Christians find the playground name-calling somewhat tiresome.
I’m not, by the way, denying anyone’s right to say what they want, or asserting that people’s beliefs should be protected from ridicule, or that an Archbishop should be listened to and respected, or that Greg Tingey should be burnt at the stake.
The two above haven’t exactly done themselves or their arguments any good, frankly. Indeed, they make themselves look silly as they have not responded to what I have said, leading me to suspect that they didn’t actually read it. One of the first things that religious people could do – and this is not just confined to Christians – is to stop conflating atheism and secularism. The two are not interchangeable as I mentioned ATL.
Of course they do. It’s called indoctrination and the younger your charge when you carry it out, the more effective it becomes.
Yep, no doubt about it. The eco and evolution guff currently trotted out as The Truth is rammed down kids throats and no other points of view get a look in. That’s indoctrination for you.
Yes it is. It’s no different to any other religion in that sense. And is no more true than the resurrection.
The evolution guff ? You mean the Darwinian hypothesis that has been subjected to 150 years of intense scrutiny and stood the test well ? Oh that guff, we’d better start teaching Lamarckism to balance the debate I suppose.
My response above was relating to the eco stuff. The theory of evolution as you say has been demonstrated time and again. We can see it in action.
It’s also worth pointing out that mainstream Christians tend to accept the theory.
Yes I didn’t think you’d be in agreement with that bit it’s what opponents of evolution do though, lump it in with something else that has much less credibility, although Ecology proper is also a genuine hard science that gets unfairly associated with the loopy Green agenda. Much the same as happens in fact with the secularism equals atheism which equals intolerance meme that the religious seem so wedded to.
The amazing bit is that the ArchMarxist actually appears to believe in God. I was under the impression that the opposite was the case