rationalskepticism.org

I would be interested to know from Jarrod Cooper how he intends to instruct his pupils to respond should one of them ever meet a pupil from another Saudi-funded faith-based school, the King Fahad Academy, who has learned from his school's textbooks to believe that Judaism and Christianity are 'worthless' religions and that followers of Judaism are 'repugnant' and Christians are 'pigs'?

Seeing the report on Look North last night left me feeling disturbed that children are told through their workbooks that 'God' loves them etc... as if it were a certainty that their god exists. They are effectively told to uncritically accept a book filled with unsupported assertions and contradictions throughout. That's surely going to result in these pupils needing to do all manner of mental contortions in order to defend their Biblical literalism to the world once they're outside the school gates.

They're being prevented from developing the art of critical thinking through being forced to wear a straightjacket of blind faith. And just because they're educated in such a controlled environment, it doesn't necessarily follow that they'll have this mindset in adulthood. Read through the near-1000 contributions to the 'Convert's Corner' page on the official Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and you'll discover that many, many people have become atheists after being raised in a strict religious household during their childhood.

There is no good evidence to suggest that religious followers are any more moral than humanists and atheists. A good example of this 'moral delusion' can be shown no more graphically than the numerous stories of religious leaders who abuse children and altar boys, who they are supposed to safeguard, and clerics that tell chldren they'll suffer eternal torment if they do not think as they do...

Who benefits most from all this? Not society but clergy, who are desperate to secure a new generation of followers (and loyal financiers) before they're old enough to make reasoned decisions about who they are and what they really believe. They need these followers to be kept in employment.

The more I think about this, the angrier I become!