Do you know how many people they surveyed overall, how many in each country, and how the sample was selected? Some of those results are potentially interesting, but obviously only if they're accurate.
For example, I'm amazed that only 33% of Israelis blame "people of other religions" for much of the world's trouble.
Also, 46% of people regularly attending a religious service and "in most countries well over 80%" saying they believe in God or a higher power is at odds with the (barely credible) assertion in the CIA World Factbook that only 14.97% of the world's population are atheists or non-religious.
Could the 71% of Americans who claim they're willing to die for their God or beliefs please just go and do it, quietly in the corner? What makes that figure worse is that I suspect the majority are either cretinously deluded or barefaced liars.
There's also going to be disparities between religions - for instance some make more of a deal than others about communal prayer. Some require believers to die for their god (if need be) - others do not.
Could the 71% of Americans who claim they're willing to die for their God or beliefs please just go and do it, quietly in the corner?
ooof. unfair there.
What's this or beliefs bit? I want to know what questions they asked. I'd likely be willing to die for my belief that, for instance, my family should be left unmolested. That doesn't make me a religious zealot.
Are we blaming religion for our own problems here?
I have a pamphlet of what looks an awful lot like conservative Christian apocalyptic literature, going on about how the world will end soon because children aren't respecting their parents etc. But it's Buddhist...
I kind of feel that people make religions (and so God, kind of) in their own image, and they mutate depending on what a particular society wants at the time. Hence Englands' fluffy "don't blame us for Northern Ireland" Anglicans, and in the US "we are all powerful, we know what is right" types. Broad generalisations, but you get the idea.
If we didn't have religion, we're more than capable of making up another ideology to kill, repress, discrimiate etc with. Communism, Fascism, Nationalism, Football. And unlike a lot of those, religion does occasionally cause people to go out and do good things, hence the Salvation Army, the Islamic commitment to donate to charity etc.
But the government doesn't feel the need to protect communists, fascists or nationalists from discrimination; nor does it subsidise schools where little communists, fascists and nationalists can be educated away from each other.
I was assuming "or beliefs" should have said "or nontheistic religious beliefs", and that's the spirit in which I made the comment.
From being prepared to die for one's faith, to seeing virtue in that preparedness, to seeing virtue in dying for one's faith, to advocating dying for one's faith, is a series of pretty small and insidious steps. That kind of extremism shouldn't be condoned or encouraged; the next small step is suicide bombings.
Hence, if people are interested in the idea of dying for their faith, I really would like them to just go and do it without harming anyone else by indoctrinating them into the same belief or by persecuting them for a contrary one.
I'm only a little more happy about willingness to die for non-religious ideals. Yes, there are things I might, perhaps, in extremis, give my life for, but I'd scarcely be willing. Sacrificing one's own life should be a measure reserved for desperation, not something to be flaunted as part of one's ideology.
I think I did inadvertently end up in a Manchester United segregated school though. Brrrrr.
Religious schools are indeed a big pile of poo, but the current government is making schools "specialist" in various subjects, including sport and business (how the f**k do you select an 11 year old for aptitude in business?), which makes about as much sense...
Most of the Christian ones (and in some ways, I suspect the other ones) are more for kids from overly fussy middle-class parents who think that an education with "religious values" is somehow better than a "bog standard" one. They will read the Daily Mail. Most of the religious nuttery happens in private "flogging 4 year olds is sanctioned by God" ones. And that one state one with the creationists. Gah, f**in Blair. Most state religious schools are like Grammar schools but totally open about the daft entry criteria </troll>
They don't have state religious schools in the US do they? Hrm...
Do we have religious discrimiation laws in England yet? I know there's something in Northern Ireland, but that's a whole other barrel of mad monkeys in bowler hats. Think there was talk of something, but not with the same bite as sex or race discrimination laws?
I'm surprised that 21% of the population apparently regularly attends religious services. Thought it was more like 4%. (Though if the other 17% are Muslims that might explain it.)
Hey, hey. As an overly fussy middle class atheist I'd just like to be able to get Kathy into a good academic state school which doesn't take her on days out to Creationist theme parks and tell her that the moon wanes because God gets tired. I don't read the Daily Mail, but I do read the Ofsted reports, and I may have a nasty choice coming up shortly.
It's nuts, really. On the one hand you have atheist parents who feel they have to go to church for a year to qualify for a decent school (I wonder how much of the church attendance figures they account for...). On the other hand I have a deeply religious friend in London who is strongly against infant baptism (since it should be your own choice as an adult) who nevertheless has had her son baptised because the local non-Ofsted-failure requires it.
And it gets worse. The LEA has to provide transport to school, provided that you've accepted allcation to your nearest (and it's more than some qualifying distance away, yadda yadda). Unless they've allocated you to your nearest school, and it turns out to be Catholic, and you're not, in which case you're not entitled to a place on the bus even if there are some spare. Here.
Actually, I find it deeply depressing if we're the least religious place there is. There's enough of it around to have damaged me, and I suspect there's still going to be enough to damage Kathy. In fact, I'm amazed at how few of the obvious bogosities from when I was little have been fixed.
Arrgh. Good luck whatever happens. OK, I didn't realise quite how common the problems were (I've only come across fluffier religious schools who couln't care less), that is utter pants. Though... (sorry) even if religious schools were banned tomorrow, there would be similar, not as severe, problems cropping up with selective schools I suspect. Maybe not getting on the bus, but say the local good school is a sports academy, and you have a kid who is borderline dyspraxic and couldn't care less about team sports, like muggins here. And then there's the whole Grammar school issue...
I dunno, I just feel that we're more than capable of messing things up with or without religion, and worrying about it distracts us from real issues of discrimiation, prejudice, greed, stupidity etc that will still happen whether it's there or not.
Given half the chance, the BNP would like their own segregated schools (kind of got them in a weird kind of way in Burnley...). They want to build large walls between the communities/ghettos in Burnley to stop rioting. Sounds an awful lot like Northern Ireland's "Peace Walls". They may well, in public, claim that this is a religious issue (Muslims are dangerous y'see), but they don't spend much time proclaiming their Christianity for some reason. Betcha they'd love to do the same thing in Tottenham given half the chance.
This is true. I'd be much happier, though, getting her through academic hoops than religious hoops, partly because I think we both have that particular aptitude but partly because I think academic capabilities are inherently Good and should be nurtured, whereas I think religious observance is worse than useless and I wouldn't want to expose her to it anyway. Sports Academies are an interesting thought-experiment, since that's an aptitude I don't have, in spades, and I'm not interested but I'm not desperately anti either, and it doubtless would correlate with academic results. But I don't imagine she's going to be naturally sporty, and you don't want to go somewhere where you're not reasonably good at what they value. And even if she is I'd rather she spent the time on academics than kicking balls around [fx: Oxbridge snob].
FFS. Why can't they make schools which give good sound general education and allow individual kids to specialise? All this beacon school crap is exactly not the direction they ought to be going in.
And besides, if your school decides to specialise, and decides it wants to specialise in IT or languages, it gets told it can't because other schools have specialised in those already, and it has to specialise in Sport, even if its interests and enthusiastic teachers are in languages and IT. So it has to fake a specialisation in something it isn't interested in or good at, to get the extra kudos and funding, and what's the point of sports academies anyway?
I took this question to mean "if someone said to you 'recant or die', would you take the 'die' option?". For me the answer is yes (mostly because I'm stubborn, and no one is going to threaten me into saying anything I don't believe), but I wouldn't be prepared to kill anyone else for my beliefs, meaning I would have answered yes to this question, but would never be a suicide bomber.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 01:32 am (UTC)(I mean, is it hooray that the UK is a v secular nation or hooray that most people think the world would be more peaceful if nobody believed in God?)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 02:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 02:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 02:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 02:37 am (UTC)For example, I'm amazed that only 33% of Israelis blame "people of other religions" for much of the world's trouble.
Also, 46% of people regularly attending a religious service and "in most countries well over 80%" saying they believe in God or a higher power is at odds with the (barely credible) assertion in the CIA World Factbook that only 14.97% of the world's population are atheists or non-religious.
Could the 71% of Americans who claim they're willing to die for their God or beliefs please just go and do it, quietly in the corner? What makes that figure worse is that I suspect the majority are either cretinously deluded or barefaced liars.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 03:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 03:12 am (UTC)ooof. unfair there.
What's this or beliefs bit? I want to know what questions they asked. I'd likely be willing to die for my belief that, for instance, my family should be left unmolested. That doesn't make me a religious zealot.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 03:46 am (UTC)I have a pamphlet of what looks an awful lot like conservative Christian apocalyptic literature, going on about how the world will end soon because children aren't respecting their parents etc. But it's Buddhist...
I kind of feel that people make religions (and so God, kind of) in their own image, and they mutate depending on what a particular society wants at the time. Hence Englands' fluffy "don't blame us for Northern Ireland" Anglicans, and in the US "we are all powerful, we know what is right" types. Broad generalisations, but you get the idea.
If we didn't have religion, we're more than capable of making up another ideology to kill, repress, discrimiate etc with. Communism, Fascism, Nationalism, Football. And unlike a lot of those, religion does occasionally cause people to go out and do good things, hence the Salvation Army, the Islamic commitment to donate to charity etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 04:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 04:34 am (UTC)From being prepared to die for one's faith, to seeing virtue in that preparedness, to seeing virtue in dying for one's faith, to advocating dying for one's faith, is a series of pretty small and insidious steps. That kind of extremism shouldn't be condoned or encouraged; the next small step is suicide bombings.
Hence, if people are interested in the idea of dying for their faith, I really would like them to just go and do it without harming anyone else by indoctrinating them into the same belief or by persecuting them for a contrary one.
I'm only a little more happy about willingness to die for non-religious ideals. Yes, there are things I might, perhaps, in extremis, give my life for, but I'd scarcely be willing. Sacrificing one's own life should be a measure reserved for desperation, not something to be flaunted as part of one's ideology.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 04:35 am (UTC)Religious schools are indeed a big pile of poo, but the current government is making schools "specialist" in various subjects, including sport and business (how the f**k do you select an 11 year old for aptitude in business?), which makes about as much sense...
Most of the Christian ones (and in some ways, I suspect the other ones) are more for kids from overly fussy middle-class parents who think that an education with "religious values" is somehow better than a "bog standard" one. They will read the Daily Mail. Most of the religious nuttery happens in private "flogging 4 year olds is sanctioned by God" ones. And that one state one with the creationists. Gah, f**in Blair. Most state religious schools are like Grammar schools but totally open about the daft entry criteria </troll>
They don't have state religious schools in the US do they? Hrm...
Do we have religious discrimiation laws in England yet? I know there's something in Northern Ireland, but that's a whole other barrel of mad monkeys in bowler hats. Think there was talk of something, but not with the same bite as sex or race discrimination laws?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 06:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 06:37 am (UTC)It's nuts, really. On the one hand you have atheist parents who feel they have to go to church for a year to qualify for a decent school (I wonder how much of the church attendance figures they account for...). On the other hand I have a deeply religious friend in London who is strongly against infant baptism (since it should be your own choice as an adult) who nevertheless has had her son baptised because the local non-Ofsted-failure requires it.
And it gets worse. The LEA has to provide transport to school, provided that you've accepted allcation to your nearest (and it's more than some qualifying distance away, yadda yadda). Unless they've allocated you to your nearest school, and it turns out to be Catholic, and you're not, in which case you're not entitled to a place on the bus even if there are some spare. Here.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 06:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 07:24 am (UTC)I dunno, I just feel that we're more than capable of messing things up with or without religion, and worrying about it distracts us from real issues of discrimiation, prejudice, greed, stupidity etc that will still happen whether it's there or not.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 07:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 08:45 am (UTC)FFS. Why can't they make schools which give good sound general education and allow individual kids to specialise? All this beacon school crap is exactly not the direction they ought to be going in.
And besides, if your school decides to specialise, and decides it wants to specialise in IT or languages, it gets told it can't because other schools have specialised in those already, and it has to specialise in Sport, even if its interests and enthusiastic teachers are in languages and IT. So it has to fake a specialisation in something it isn't interested in or good at, to get the extra kudos and funding, and what's the point of sports academies anyway?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 09:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 06:21 pm (UTC)