Agrippina wrote:Darwinsbulldog wrote:Agrippina wrote:<snipped for brevity/>
There is education...and education. Often, interested parties will try to influence education in terms of political or religious gain.
Yes, there is, but a person who works in a laboratory, and holds an MSc in microbiology is a scientist. A person who holds a specialisation in heart surgery and who works in an operating theatre repairing damaged hearts, is still a scientist. If they are also people who believe that 'God' exists and that they are going to be judged good or evil on their death, they are theists. If someone is a politician who holds a law degree on top of the wealth they've inherited from their ancestors, but advocates keeping religion in schools, they are theists. These are the sort of people I'm talking about. In each case, I'm citing people I know who have argued with me over time about the existence of 'God' and the afterlife. My argument on this particular topic is that saying that educated wealthy people are inclined to be atheists is nonsense. We have the entire Republican Congress in the US as examples of people who are both wealthy and educated (yes perhaps not educated in the sense that they've learnt beyond their college education) and mostly theists.
I have agreed that poverty, and no education does. often, make people more likely to be theists. What I don't agree with is a generalisation that atheists tend to be wealth, educated and cultured people. I've known some pretty ignorant atheists in my time as well. Maybe being an atheist is likely to make you more open-minded, but I think if you're inclined towards wanting to learn more, that doesn't guarantee that you actually will, either learn more informally or seek formal education.
You make some good points, but what is often regarded as a "good education" is anything but. The New Republicans you talk about may be well-educated in some areas, but not in science. Indeed, they try to dismantle institutions that promote or support science. Republican may often be pro-technology of certain kinds, like "Star-Wars" missile defense systems and the like. That is what most republicans mean when they claim they are pro-science. They are really pro-technology or science that has no negative implications for their political/economic or religious ideology, or promises "smart" weapons.
As science is open-minded, it will more often than not be an impediment to their agenda. This is hardly a well-rounded education, and even if some of them did get a well-rounded education, the religious cultures they were brought up in negated a lot of the good work that teachers did in schools.
There are a lot of bright kids from poor backgrounds with little education that reject religious bollocks, but for many poor, a good education [in the way I hope you understand me to mean that term] will inevitably act as at least a partial immunisation against religious and other bollocks.
by 
