Caught a bit of the Nicky Campbell phone-in today on the report by Linda Woodhead and Charles Clarke on religion and schools. In case you don't know, Linda Woodhead is a very intelligent person who knows lots about religion and sociology. And Charles Clark is a politician.
As ever there were questions about why humanists' taxes should pay for faith schools. To which the answer is (and I apologise for being a pragmatist here): "because, on the whole, they're better. And when you are in your childless, friendless old age and depending on the State pension to know where your next anorak is coming from, you'll be glad some people are educated well enough to pay taxes, you smug, secularist prig."
And then there was the tweet to Radio 5 that said school was for teaching "facts". So there go drama, music and English Lit.
But it was the equating of creationism with Christianity by some that got me down. How many times do we have to explain? Christians can be scientists. We accept different insights into truth. We actually have more tools for understanding this world than atheists do, because we use all the ones available to atheists, and then faith and theology as well. We are able, or most of us are, to distinguish genre in writing, to tell philosophical and theological approaches from scientific ones, and use them all.
So, in short:
Creationism ≢ Christianity.
And, though it may be a subset of Christianity, it's also a subset of Science. And it's bad at both.
“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”
ReplyDeleteDickens, Hard Times
You beat me to it with the Gradgrind response. Absolutely. On the other hand, the fact that Dickens felt it necessary to satirism 'factism' means it's been around quite a while...
DeleteI've no idea why a secularist would want only fax to be taught in schools? That is so yesterday and out of date. All the little darlings will be consulting wikipedia on their ipads or smartphones to get the historic context and if it's before 1999, won't give a toss about it all.
ReplyDeletePleaseSir, do you mean ≠?
ReplyDeleteDepends on whether one is using a symbol from mathematics or computer programming
ReplyDeleteI would interpret A<>B as meaning that A is both less than B and more than B. In what sense creationism is more than Christianity, I know not.
ReplyDeletePostulating about mathematics is a factual response to a tongue in cheek post. We need to beware the Arch Druid is some sort of scientist and she will try to bamboozle us with that scientific 'intelligent design' stuff next. Nothing wrong with Genesis, taken with a spoon full of medicine.
ReplyDeleteTwo key strokes, three if you count the shift, and look at what happens! The love of symbols is the root of all argument. I begin to understand iconoclasm.
ReplyDeleteI really meant the symbol that is now at the top of the page, but couldn't work out how to do it on the phone so did <> - which is the nearest you can get to it in some programming languages.
ReplyDeleteI hope that's clear.