Compared to the USA, Australia might seem like a secular paradise. But unfortunately there are weird little pockets of godbaggery, too. In Victoria, for example, religions get access to schoolkids to promote their fictional beliefs. But now humanists will get equal time.

VICTORIAN state primary school students will soon have an alternative — religious education lessons taught by people who do not believe in God and say there is “no evidence of any supernatural power”.

The Humanist Society of Victoria has developed a curriculum, which the State Government accreditation body says it intends to approve, to deliver 30-minute lessons each week of “humanist applied ethics” to primary pupils.

Sounds interesting. I’d go.

But the Christianists are none too happy about more groups horning in on their racket.

[T]he body that accredits Victoria’s 3500 Christian religious instruction volunteers, Access Ministries, says humanism is not a religion and so should not be taught in religious education time.

This is a funny little issue. Is hum-atheism a religion or not? Here the Christians are claiming it’s not, so it shouldn’t be taught. But elsewhere when Christians are denied access to a captive school audience, they turn around and claim that atheism is a religion, and since kids are exposed to the ‘religion’ of atheism, they should also be exposed to the religion of religion.

Atheism should not be considered a religion, any more than not collecting stamps is a hobby. I can see why people would disagree though. When someone asks, “What’s your religion?” I say “I’m an atheist,” which I think of as an indirect response, but someone else might not. I suppose the most generous admission I could make is that atheism is something like a setting on the religion parameter. But that simply suggests that atheism is a certain view on religion rather than a religion itself. I think we atheists should resist the temptation to take advantage of the benefits that religions accrue. As these humanists seem to have done.

The Humanist Society does not consider itself to be a religious organisation and believes ethics have “no necessary connection with religion”. Humanists believe people are responsible for their own destiny and reject the notion of a supernatural force or God.

The hilarious part for me:

Fundamentalist Christian group the Salt Shakers panned the idea of humanists being given religious education class time.

Research director Jenny Stokes said: “If you go there, where do you stop? What about witchcraft or Satanism?

“If you accredit humanism, then those things would have an equal claim to be taught in schools.”

At last she gets it. Except she needs to start with ‘If you accredit Christianity…’. Because she’s right — if you allow one mythology to be promoted in schools, you need to promote them all. And is that what schools want to spend their time doing? If you want to promote ethics (which sounds good to me), why not have a secular curriculum that privileges no particular religion over any other? In essence, a humanist one, not a religious one.