Religion in our Schools

 

I would suggest that our schools are loaded with "religion" but the religion that is taught is "science." By the definitions I find useful concerning religion (as a positive thing) it turns out that what goes by "Science" and is taught by the establishment (NEA, most universities) promotes a scientific view of reality that explains all previous attempts to explain things as myth. We even teach the study of culture and various religions as a way of understanding the myths of pre-scientific people. This includes the study of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and all the major religions. Religion is part of our sociological and anthropological studies. The Deists (Jefferson et al) expected the education of the citizens to be scientific and felt that as people became more scientific (In God we trust from a Deist point of view!) we would get along much better and become rational instead of emotionally attached to pre-scientific beliefs. This has in fact happened. We see the decline in religious practices (though not necessarily church attendance -- since parents that do not believe in the theology of a faith do believe that they ought to take their children to church) and the decline in faith playing a role in most of our legislation.

 

Good things about this: if this had not succeeded and our schools done such a good job people would not accept other people of different faiths as equal citizens. We would have community difficulties similar to Northern Ireland and perhaps even Bosnia.

 

Bad things about this: It seems this results in a decline in morals. Morals hold a society together. Thinking the same way about values holds a society together. Today we have succeeded in promoting a value of equality (mostly mythic), fair competition (mostly mythic) and non-discrimination (that is: do not discern differences!). Religion is a matter of "preference." Religions have to compete for our attention as though they were competitive corporations seeking to "please" the customers to attract them to their store. Stores do not tell customers when they are being bad, they only try to make them feel "good."

 

So what do we say about the suggestion that we bring religion back into the schools? But it is already there. Science wins. We think the beginning occurred with a Big Bang. There was evolution. Man invented religion to calm his fears of the unknown. God was created in our own image to make us feel good about the universe. This is promoted religiously through the schools and the media (which is far more powerful than the schools.)

 

Religion is treated "nicely." (After all, you don't want to disturb the "primitives" while their children are taught how to be more educated.)

 

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