science

• dawkin's argument on faith schools


  1 in 3 schools in England are faith schools.  He cites a survey which states that 59% of people think schools should be for everyone regardless of faith.

  He argues that faith schools prevents non-religious parents choosing to send their children there.
• Dr Hanna White - the Nones


  just because someone selects no religion does not make them an atheist, they could be spiritual, or agnostic, or atheist
• Oasis' challenge to dawkins on faith schools and groups


  •Don't all children deserve choice in education? Not just those in leafy North Oxford but those whose families are dependent on food-banks and may not have enough to eat. Those in failing schools.

  •Faith organisations like Oasis are trying to help children and communities other groups would go nowhere near.....
• Oasis trust core message

  "We are for community. A place where everyone is included, contributing and reaching their God-given potential.  

  Established in 2004, our vision is to create "Exceptional Education at the Heart of the Community." We have grown into one of the largest Multi-Academy Trusts in England, a growing family of 52 primary, secondary and all-through academies in five regions across the country. 

  We serve over 32,000 young people, 47% of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds and 31% speak English as an additional language."
• •Richard Dawkins – evolutionary biologist, Selfish Gene, fierce opponent of Church schools ‘in the actual historical world of existing societies, the good is something that gets argued about’ 

  •Joel Daniels,  American theologian. If you have a society which runs according to programmatic secularism and deny religions and ideologies a voice you are more likely to drive them underground and make them feel disenfranchised and opposed to the State.

  •Rowan Williams, Professor and Archbishop of Canterbury – procedural and programmatic secularism.
• arguments against faith schools

  •Children should be able to choose their own beliefs and should not be indoctrinated with any one faith system.

  •It limits parental choice. In some areas most schools are church schools so children may get a worse education or one a long way from home.

  •It segregates children – eg it’s hard to be atheist in a faith school.

  •Schools could be teaching wrong things – eg Creationism rather than Evolution (esp. in America), contraception and sexual ethics in Roman Catholic schools
• arguments for faith schools 


  •It provides families with choice. Why shouldn’t Christian families be able to choose a school that reflects their values?

  •Gives a sense of community,  cohesion. Parents want the nativity plays and seem to want the ethos.

  •In England it reflects English tradition and culture, just as you teach children to read in English first and English history.

  •You can be a church school and teach other faiths. It doesn’t have to be either / or.
• McGrath


  “Such is Dawkins’s unruffled scientific impartiality that in a book of almost four hundred pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori improbable as it is empirically false. The countless millions who have devoted their lives selflessly to the service of others in the name of Christ or Buddha or Allah are wiped from human history – and this by a self-appointed crusader against bigotry.”