The UK government’s Department for Children, Schools and Families has proposed the expansion of the number of faith schools. This has worried the teachers’ unions and should give the rest of us cause for concern.

Faith schools, the government tell us, do not only offer religious parents the assurance that their offspring will be similarly prejudiced to themselves, they also offer exchange visits, studies in comparative religion and outreach programmes.

But instead of studying with other children of different faiths and cultures, instead of experiencing each day the similarities and differences between them, the pupils at these schools will be introduced to other faiths as part of a curriculum.

The cohesion of our future communities can only be undermined if these proposals are adopted.

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The Guardian Science Experiment at the Hay Literature Festival put together Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, and Martin Rees.
Dawkins kicked off by reminding us that although we live in a global village, we should not forget the presence of global village idiots. He said that the main question behind the assembly of the panel was to [...]



Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages:

That trend toward enlightenment has indeed continued in Europe and Britain. It just has not continued in the U.S., and not in the Islamic world. We’re seeing a rather unholy alliance between the burgeoning theocracy in the U.S. and its allies, the theocrats in the Islamic world. They are fighting the same battle: Christian on one side, Muslim on the other. The very large numbers of people in the United States and in Europe who don’t subscribe to that worldview are caught in the middle.

Actually, holy alliance would be a better phrase. Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional “next world” is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.

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god stuff

This is old news having a new outing:
‘The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.’
Richard Dawkins

The whole story is on [...]






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