(Billy Goat) wrote in message

(Bob Crowley) wrote in message

(Billy Goat) wrote in message

I agree that some moral instruction would be welcome in

you can't force people to believe things. As children grow,

reconsider the religions they were brought up with. There's

guarantee they will stick to the religions of their families.

you truly want a generation of moral children, the safest bet

teach them moral lessons that stand on their own, *without*

beliefs.

Granted that children will not necessarily stand by their

religion. The incidence of teenagers dropping out of church is
legion, particularly when they get mobile with their own car

interests outside of church.

However the problem of morality without a religious guide is
that you wind up with a free for all eg. is abortion murder
or a social necessity? What morality you put on that will
generally depend on your religious outlook in the first place.

ericvonl@my-deja.com (Billy Goat) wrote in message news:<6bd3c70a.0310122106.61f5218d@posting.google.com>...

ericvonl@my-deja.com (Billy Goat) wrote in message news:<6bd3c70a.0310112139.753834cd@posting.google.com>...

I agree that some moral instruction would be welcome in schools. But
you can't force people to believe things. As children grow, they often
reconsider the religions they were brought up with. There's no
guarantee they will stick to the religions of their families. So if
you truly want a generation of moral children, the safest bet is to
teach them moral lessons that stand on their own, *without* religious
beliefs.

Granted that children will not necessarily stand by their parents'
religion. The incidence of teenagers dropping out of church is
legion, particularly when they get mobile with their own car and
interests outside of church.

However the problem of morality without a religious guide is that you
wind up with a free for all eg. is abortion murder or a social
necessity? What morality you put on that will generally depend on
your religious outlook in the first place.

Now if what my father said was correct, we live in a society which
advocates one's success in business or career areas above all else, in
which an entire education system is devoted to material success, only
to find out when we die we have been completely barking up the wrong
tree as far as God is concerned.

It depends on what you mean by material success. I think the education
system, at least before college, is set up to teach survival, not
greed. People gotta eat, and unless they're farmers, they gotta buy
food. If God doesn't like it, He shouldn't have given us stomachs. I
hope you're not suggesting that God would prefer the world to starve
to death.

I am not talking about work as a necessity, but about the climbing up
the ladder over others, the ambition to get to the top, all of which
flies in the face of the example set by Christ. Had Christ been of
like mind to our mindset, He'd have been a Pharisee, kicking the
average beggar or leper up the bum.

And as "religious education" is more
and more dismissed from the agenda, then if my father's appearance was
anything to go by, the system is setting more and more of us for
eternal destruction.

What are you talking about? There are still plenty of schools that
teach religion. The last time I visited a Catholic school, religion
was still being taught there.

In Catholic schools maybe, but in state high schools in my day, and in
private schools other than strongly religious schools, religious
instruction was a joke, an excuse for the class rebels to do what they
felt like.

Maybe its changed, but if it has, I bet a pound to a penny it has gone
the way of religious pluralism.

The only schools that religion is being "dismissed from" are public
schools. And that's as it should be. Teaching religion is a church's
job, not a school's. A school's job is to teach facts. A church's job
is to teach beliefs.

Which particular religion do you think should be taught in public
schools? Who gets to decide? I'm sure churches would rather keep an
eye on what religious beliefs their followers are being taught, rather
than let public school teachers teach whatever they want.

Since we come from a Christian based culture rather obviously I think
it should be Christian based. However a bit of intellectual honesty
on all sides would help, along with discussions on other religions in
general.

I don't think we can underestimate the effect of training and example
on a person's later life. Mind you too much of this is being left to
the schools, when the prime examples should be parents. But in a
society of singles, divorces and students well aware of their rights,
the schools are being left to carry the burden which should begin at
home.

The Jews have a ceremony called Bar-Mitzvah, which is basically the
age of adult responsibility for boys at about 12. I don't know what
arrangement they have for the girls, but I suspect God's judgement
begins at about that age. Again I am relying on memory of something I
have read, but at about that age (12,13), the brain undergoes a major
change in that the blood flow is partly blocked for some time and what
might be called the adult configuration is put into place. It is
also the time we start to learn by concept rather than emulation.

If He regards that age or thereabouts as the time of adult
accountability, then I don't see how we are doing young people a
service by keeping them in ignorance of Divine judgement, if it
exists, and I am quite sure it does.

And you won't find God in doctrine. That is the method of the
Pharisees and we know what they did.

It's interesting that you want religion taught in schools, but you
don't like doctrine. Without doctrine, what else is there to teach
about religion?

--Billy

Behaviour mainly, in that we should care for each other. Yet most of
my school it was "look after number one". Doctrines point out
differences in belief, but they don't work towards a caring person,
unless they are doctrines of selflessness.