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.
15 December 2008 at 12:50 am
Humanism isn’t atheism; nice segue with the “hum-atheism” though.
Humanism relies on you believing in non-scientific axioms.
You had an interesting continuum a while ago. One way to characterise it is: how much your worldview depends on external entities. Religions: based on what others tell you. Science: based on what you can observe. Maths (which you missed!?): based on what you can deduce.
Humanism tends to be in the first category. You can deduce that following humanist ethics will tend to improve the quality of human life, but valuing the quality of human life is an axiomatic assumption. c.f. atheistic Nihilism.
Humanism (and Christianity too) is congruent with and reinforces common Australian beliefs, it’s in the interests of the “social genome” to indoctrinate beliefs that will perpetuate itself. Humanism is better not because it’s true, but because it removes some of the junk that is outright incompatible with science.
15 December 2008 at 12:53 am
erm, think I got the wrong link there. Somewhere you had a “is science a religion?” post.
22 December 2008 at 6:19 am
It occurred to me not too long ago that, to people who are uneducated (and don’t come from educated backgrounds), what experts say probably seems mystical. They probably don’t see themselves as able to construct scientific sorts of arguments themselves and, without higher education, have likely never been trained to critically examine anybody else’s argument.
Which means that, as they perceive it, science is based on what others tell you. Which, according to Dean’s characterisation, lumps it right in with religion. I’ve seen theists in the religion vs science debate pretty much say just that.
22 December 2008 at 12:53 pm
I know; I find I need to say something like, “Science is just people observing things and coming up with testable explanations.” Or “Science is trying things and keeping what works.” Both only partial answers, I guess, but nice and simple.