Johnsonontheleft
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The bible and Koran should be taught in the same terms as other fairytales and works of fiction like Harry Potter etc.
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Should kids be taught religion in schools
- Thread starter Bill Walker
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Kirkstall Blue
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I'd agree with all of your post, but the bit I highlighted interests me, as a lot of parents are now specifically wanting there children to go to religious schools because they consider them to be academically a good choice. Religion is not taught in state schools to the depth it once was, so is there a link between academic success and religious knowledge. Id say there is.amber2345 said:I think an awareness of all religions should be taught, hopefully this will minimise prejudices against people from other religions. I do feel that a lot of prejudice is the result of ignorance and a lack of understanding for other peoples beliefs and circumstances. So yes going by this theory there is a place for religious studies. Once the kids have an awareness they should them have the option to continue if they wish to do so, in more depth.
Parents should also think carefully when choosing schools. For those who feel strongly about their childs religious up bringing the then send them to a catholic/C of E/Islamic school by all means. But those who don't wish for their kids to study RE then don't put your kids in such schools. A friend of my parents recently complained about this but her kids go to a catholic school. She isn't religious and had to appeal for her kids to gain a place there as it is the top primary in the area. So yes it's the best school but if you put your child in a catholic school then they're going to be taught based upon catholic beliefs!!
Damocles said:nijinsky's fetlocks said:Faith schools should be abolished.
Full stop.
It's bad enough teaching kids divisive fairy stories to start with,but once a school starts to teach five year olds that followers of religions other than their own are infidels and will burn in hell, it really is time to stop the madness.
Faith schools should not be abolished AT ALL.
Here in the UK, we have the freedoms to practice whatever mystical traditions that we wish, from Christianity to Jedi. Removing this, is a far, far worse scenario than removing faith schools. Faith schools' curriculum should be regulated to ensure that they are in line with the National Curriculum. I'm not sure if this currently happens or not, but I hope so.
What you want, instead of an enlightened society as you preach it, is a dictatorship in which we decide what it is ok for you to believe.
Don't be daft that's not what is being advocated (not preached ffs) at all. As of yet nobody has mentioned removing the freedom to believe whatever they want (not that that's possible anyway). The French education systems is, nominally at least, secular, as I believe, are most of the Scandinavian countries, these hardly suffer for the absence of religion.
As for the National curriculum, it's a tick box system which does not stop religious zealots offering their interpretations as fact, bar the Sciences most subjects can be skewed to offer a view favourable to one sect or another.
.<br /><br />-- Fri Dec 10, 2010 2:47 pm --<br /><br />
Kirkstall Blue said:I'd agree with all of your post, but the bit I highlighted interests me, as a lot of parents are now specifically wanting there children to go to religious schools because they consider them to be academically a good choice. Religion is not taught in state schools to the depth it once was, so is there a link between academic success and religious knowledge. Id say there is.amber2345 said:I think an awareness of all religions should be taught, hopefully this will minimise prejudices against people from other religions. I do feel that a lot of prejudice is the result of ignorance and a lack of understanding for other peoples beliefs and circumstances. So yes going by this theory there is a place for religious studies. Once the kids have an awareness they should them have the option to continue if they wish to do so, in more depth.
Parents should also think carefully when choosing schools. For those who feel strongly about their childs religious up bringing the then send them to a catholic/C of E/Islamic school by all means. But those who don't wish for their kids to study RE then don't put your kids in such schools. A friend of my parents recently complained about this but her kids go to a catholic school. She isn't religious and had to appeal for her kids to gain a place there as it is the top primary in the area. So yes it's the best school but if you put your child in a catholic school then they're going to be taught based upon catholic beliefs!!
Perhaps, (and only perhaps) but not in the way you would like.
Atheists scored 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions
<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosit ... telligence</a>
Kirkstall Blue
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I cannot understand why parents are choosing religious schools then if that's the case, I clicked on a link called "Is atheism linked to intelligence?" and it appears that if you don't believe in a god your likely to be more intelligent or further on the evolutionary path than those that do, that's a strange one!
government should levy fees/ taxes on kids at better schools who are likelier to earn more money when they are older than kids who don't get that opportunity. It could be added on to the uni fee/tax so that those spoilt barstewards who went to good schools/ good uni's and end up having good jobs are punished for it later in life as if their higher vocational tax bill wasn't enough in the first place
if they are religious schools that exclude people from other religions then these schools should receive a bigger levy and therefore higher taxes for religious high achievers will apply later in life as studies show that these people have more chance of being on a higher plane than non-believers after death and why should the rest of us pay for their eternal happiness ffs?
if they are religious schools that exclude people from other religions then these schools should receive a bigger levy and therefore higher taxes for religious high achievers will apply later in life as studies show that these people have more chance of being on a higher plane than non-believers after death and why should the rest of us pay for their eternal happiness ffs?
BELFAST_BLUE_BOY
Well-Known Member
Religion is part of being human, having the intelligence to see something greater and in a small way understand your role in it all.....GOD LIVES!
MCFC BOB
Well-Known Member
This might be a little more difficult, but teaching Religion and Atheism would help the kids come to their own conclusion?
Mabe it's a little more difficult than that.
Mabe it's a little more difficult than that.
Kirkstall Blue said:I cannot understand why parents are choosing religious schools then if that's the case, I clicked on a link called "Is atheism linked to intelligence?" and it appears that if you don't believe in a god your likely to be more intelligent or further on the evolutionary path than those that do, that's a strange one!
That certainly is a strange one, and the evolutionary one appears a bit daft. If you read the link I provided you will see that societal factors play the greatest role, which may indicate that religious schools have advantages within this country that non-denominational schools don't. I imagine discipline may well be part of the equation here too but I'm only guessing and I don't doubt that stats may well show religious schools performing better but good practice should not be confined to them. What I would say is that religion in itself has no bearing on ability, the discipline from a structured upbringing does.
Post that link will you?
Kirkstall Blue
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To be truthful I quickly scanned the wiki-link and came to the wrong conclusion so clicked on this one. <a class="postlink" href="http://ibcsr.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=150:is-atheism-linked-to-intelligence&catid=25:research-news&Itemid=59" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://ibcsr.org/index.php?option=com_c ... &Itemid=59</a>
Not so long ago experts predicted the imminent collapse of religion in modern western cultureSocial_Psychology_Quarterly_Cover_March_2010. Religion – often synonymous in these discussions with superstition, magic, and delusion – would at last give way to the autonomy of human reason and the power of the experimental method of natural investigation. But something happened on the way to religion’s funeral. People kept on believing. Recent neuroscientific and evolutionary research has suggested that either many of the hallmarks of religion are, or are byproducts of, adaptations that helped our earliest ancestors survive. The more that has been learned about the way our brains and our genes function it is the evolutionarily novel lack of religious belief and practices that is truly puzzling. A recent study by Satoshi Kanazawa provocatively titled, “Why liberals and atheists are more intelligent,” suggests that people that are more intelligent are able to overcome the limitations of our evolutionary past. In other words, the smarter you are the more likely you are to be an atheist.
Kanazawa proposes what he calls the “Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis” as an explanation for the “origin of values and preferences” in human mental and social life. The hypothesis consists of a combination of the “Savanna Principle” and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence previously proposed by the author that suggests general intelligence evolved as a “domain-specific adaptation for the domain of evolutionarily novel, nonrecurrent problems” such as flash floods, drought, and lightning strikes (35). The Savanna Principle is the idea that the “brain has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment” (the African savanna). The combination of these concepts leads Kanazawa to propose the “Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis” that the constraints placed on human understanding by the ancestral environment should be stronger among those with less general intelligence and also that more intelligent people should be “better able to comprehend and deal with evolutionarily novel . . . entities and situations than less intelligent individuals” (36).
In order to test his hypothesis, Kanazawa conducted two studies, one of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the other from the General Social Surveys (Study 2) in order to identify any correlation between general intelligence and three “evolutionarily novel values.” While Kanazawa offers political liberalism and monogamy as well, we will look at what he has to say about the third novel value, atheism.
Before reviewing the specific findings related to atheism and intelligence we should note that Kanazawa takes it as settled that, “it is evolutionarily familiar and natural to believe in God, and evolutionarily novel not to be religious.” Kanazawa maintains this based on recent research in evolutionary psychology that suggests a hyperactive perception of intentionality in the brain that is adaptively paranoid about unknown causes and thus attributes quasi- or supernatural causation as an explanation.
While this line of research and the theories that attend it are far from unanimously accepted by students of the neurological dynamics of religion it should also be noted that there is a good deal of theoretical and experimental work needed to connect the tendency to perceive supernatural agents and the related but distinct idea of belief in a single supernatural agent such as the God usually denied by modern atheists. While it may be natural for our brains to suggest the actions of spirits or even gods it is not clear that belief in a monotheistic deity – the one usually denied by modern atheists – is similarly “natural.” In other words, whatever the state of the neuro-psychological evidence, Kanazawa’s line of argument might well benefit from greater sophistication in the understanding of religion.
In Study 1, Kanazawa analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) in order to determine if adolescent intelligence (IQ) accurately predicted future adult beliefs and values (“religiosity”). Kanazawa followed the Add Health data in relying on Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) scores to determine “general intelligence.” The raw PPVT scores (0-87) “are age-standardized and converted to the IQ metric, with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15” (42).
While acknowledging that the PPVT is “properly a measure of verbal intelligence, not general intelligence,” Kanazawa pools an impressive collection of research suggesting that the PPVT is related closely enough to general intelligence as to be applicable to his study. Unfortunately, the author does not even discuss the work of researchers who argue exactly the opposite point on the relationship between the PPVT and IQ (such as Maxwell & Wise, 2006).
After controlling for age, sex, race, education, religion, and number of times married, Kanazawa found a “clear monotonic bivariate relationship between adolescent intelligence and adult religiosity” (43). In other words, as religiosity increases intelligence decreases and as intelligence increases religiosity decreases. In fact, adult subjects who identify as “not at all religious” had a mean intelligence as adolescents of 103.09 while the “very religious” had a mean intelligence of 97.14.
While Kanazawa is correct that numerically these scores are significantly different from each other, he does not mention that despite this, the means are well within one-half of the standard deviation for IQ. Given that the range from 85 to 115 is often considered “average” intelligence, it remains an open question how significant these scores can actually be when translated into meaningful interaction with the world. The extent to which such scores can represent actually meaningful differences in intelligence would seem to be therefore in some question.
In Study 2, Kanazawa seeks to overcome the obvious generational limitations of his first study by comparing intelligence to religiosity in the General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2004. After controlling for age, sex, race, education, earnings, religion, and survey year, Kanazawa found that “more intelligent individuals have a significantly weaker belief in God . . . and significantly less intense religiosity” (47). On this basis, Kanazawa argues that the trend discovered in Study 1 is replicated in this far more demographically diverse sample.
However, only the data from Study 2 includes responses to the question of belief in God. The data used in Study 1 does not offer a measure of theistic belief. Rather, the first Study’s only religious variable is the extent to which subjects consider themselves religious people. For this reason, while it may be argued that “religiosity” has the predicted relationship to intelligence (as measured in the two studies) it remains to be demonstrated that atheism specifically – the intended “evolutionarily novel value” highlighted even in the paper’s title – has such a relationship.
In addition, the measure of intelligence in Study 2 is a relatively simple multiple choice synonym quiz, which is most properly a measure not of general intelligence per se but of verbal intelligence. While it may be true that verbal intelligence (especially when measured by sophisticated tools like the PPVT) is “highly correlated with general intelligence” it is by no means certain. Furthermore, it could be argued that a high level of verbal intelligence is itself an evolutionarily novel feature. In light of the intelligence measure selected for Study 2, especially one might ask how many synonyms our ancient savanna dwelling relatives would have had any use for in the ancestral environment.
The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis remains an intriguing theory despite the potential limitations of the paper under review here. Most notably, people that are more intelligent were found to be no more and no less likely to value evolutionarily familiar concepts and objects such as marriage, family, children, and friends. This finding is entirely in keeping with Kanazawa’s hypothesis.
While offering a wealth of interesting observations Kanazawa seems not to have supplied an answer to his own provocative question. Further research is required to determine first if, and then why, atheists are more intelligent.
Satoshi Kanazawa, “Why liberals and atheists are more intelligent,” Social Psychology Quarterly 73(1): 33-57. DOI: 10.1177/0190272510361602
Not so long ago experts predicted the imminent collapse of religion in modern western cultureSocial_Psychology_Quarterly_Cover_March_2010. Religion – often synonymous in these discussions with superstition, magic, and delusion – would at last give way to the autonomy of human reason and the power of the experimental method of natural investigation. But something happened on the way to religion’s funeral. People kept on believing. Recent neuroscientific and evolutionary research has suggested that either many of the hallmarks of religion are, or are byproducts of, adaptations that helped our earliest ancestors survive. The more that has been learned about the way our brains and our genes function it is the evolutionarily novel lack of religious belief and practices that is truly puzzling. A recent study by Satoshi Kanazawa provocatively titled, “Why liberals and atheists are more intelligent,” suggests that people that are more intelligent are able to overcome the limitations of our evolutionary past. In other words, the smarter you are the more likely you are to be an atheist.
Kanazawa proposes what he calls the “Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis” as an explanation for the “origin of values and preferences” in human mental and social life. The hypothesis consists of a combination of the “Savanna Principle” and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence previously proposed by the author that suggests general intelligence evolved as a “domain-specific adaptation for the domain of evolutionarily novel, nonrecurrent problems” such as flash floods, drought, and lightning strikes (35). The Savanna Principle is the idea that the “brain has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment” (the African savanna). The combination of these concepts leads Kanazawa to propose the “Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis” that the constraints placed on human understanding by the ancestral environment should be stronger among those with less general intelligence and also that more intelligent people should be “better able to comprehend and deal with evolutionarily novel . . . entities and situations than less intelligent individuals” (36).
In order to test his hypothesis, Kanazawa conducted two studies, one of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the other from the General Social Surveys (Study 2) in order to identify any correlation between general intelligence and three “evolutionarily novel values.” While Kanazawa offers political liberalism and monogamy as well, we will look at what he has to say about the third novel value, atheism.
Before reviewing the specific findings related to atheism and intelligence we should note that Kanazawa takes it as settled that, “it is evolutionarily familiar and natural to believe in God, and evolutionarily novel not to be religious.” Kanazawa maintains this based on recent research in evolutionary psychology that suggests a hyperactive perception of intentionality in the brain that is adaptively paranoid about unknown causes and thus attributes quasi- or supernatural causation as an explanation.
While this line of research and the theories that attend it are far from unanimously accepted by students of the neurological dynamics of religion it should also be noted that there is a good deal of theoretical and experimental work needed to connect the tendency to perceive supernatural agents and the related but distinct idea of belief in a single supernatural agent such as the God usually denied by modern atheists. While it may be natural for our brains to suggest the actions of spirits or even gods it is not clear that belief in a monotheistic deity – the one usually denied by modern atheists – is similarly “natural.” In other words, whatever the state of the neuro-psychological evidence, Kanazawa’s line of argument might well benefit from greater sophistication in the understanding of religion.
In Study 1, Kanazawa analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) in order to determine if adolescent intelligence (IQ) accurately predicted future adult beliefs and values (“religiosity”). Kanazawa followed the Add Health data in relying on Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) scores to determine “general intelligence.” The raw PPVT scores (0-87) “are age-standardized and converted to the IQ metric, with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15” (42).
While acknowledging that the PPVT is “properly a measure of verbal intelligence, not general intelligence,” Kanazawa pools an impressive collection of research suggesting that the PPVT is related closely enough to general intelligence as to be applicable to his study. Unfortunately, the author does not even discuss the work of researchers who argue exactly the opposite point on the relationship between the PPVT and IQ (such as Maxwell & Wise, 2006).
After controlling for age, sex, race, education, religion, and number of times married, Kanazawa found a “clear monotonic bivariate relationship between adolescent intelligence and adult religiosity” (43). In other words, as religiosity increases intelligence decreases and as intelligence increases religiosity decreases. In fact, adult subjects who identify as “not at all religious” had a mean intelligence as adolescents of 103.09 while the “very religious” had a mean intelligence of 97.14.
While Kanazawa is correct that numerically these scores are significantly different from each other, he does not mention that despite this, the means are well within one-half of the standard deviation for IQ. Given that the range from 85 to 115 is often considered “average” intelligence, it remains an open question how significant these scores can actually be when translated into meaningful interaction with the world. The extent to which such scores can represent actually meaningful differences in intelligence would seem to be therefore in some question.
In Study 2, Kanazawa seeks to overcome the obvious generational limitations of his first study by comparing intelligence to religiosity in the General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2004. After controlling for age, sex, race, education, earnings, religion, and survey year, Kanazawa found that “more intelligent individuals have a significantly weaker belief in God . . . and significantly less intense religiosity” (47). On this basis, Kanazawa argues that the trend discovered in Study 1 is replicated in this far more demographically diverse sample.
However, only the data from Study 2 includes responses to the question of belief in God. The data used in Study 1 does not offer a measure of theistic belief. Rather, the first Study’s only religious variable is the extent to which subjects consider themselves religious people. For this reason, while it may be argued that “religiosity” has the predicted relationship to intelligence (as measured in the two studies) it remains to be demonstrated that atheism specifically – the intended “evolutionarily novel value” highlighted even in the paper’s title – has such a relationship.
In addition, the measure of intelligence in Study 2 is a relatively simple multiple choice synonym quiz, which is most properly a measure not of general intelligence per se but of verbal intelligence. While it may be true that verbal intelligence (especially when measured by sophisticated tools like the PPVT) is “highly correlated with general intelligence” it is by no means certain. Furthermore, it could be argued that a high level of verbal intelligence is itself an evolutionarily novel feature. In light of the intelligence measure selected for Study 2, especially one might ask how many synonyms our ancient savanna dwelling relatives would have had any use for in the ancestral environment.
The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis remains an intriguing theory despite the potential limitations of the paper under review here. Most notably, people that are more intelligent were found to be no more and no less likely to value evolutionarily familiar concepts and objects such as marriage, family, children, and friends. This finding is entirely in keeping with Kanazawa’s hypothesis.
While offering a wealth of interesting observations Kanazawa seems not to have supplied an answer to his own provocative question. Further research is required to determine first if, and then why, atheists are more intelligent.
Satoshi Kanazawa, “Why liberals and atheists are more intelligent,” Social Psychology Quarterly 73(1): 33-57. DOI: 10.1177/0190272510361602
Joycee Banercheck
Well-Known Member
Yes kids should be taught about all religions when they are young. But they shouldn't be baptised, or whatever the aternative is for other religions, at the age of 6 months etc. They should make that choice themselves if they believe in a faith enough to do so.
Religious Education was a compulsary subject at my school until the day I left. Can't say it has enhanced my love of art, etc. It might have helped me to have an impartial view on other faiths and practices, but I don;t even practice my own. If anything, having religion drummed into me made me hate it with a passion. So yeah, teach everyone. They might realise its one of teh main reasons why the world is fucked.
Religious Education was a compulsary subject at my school until the day I left. Can't say it has enhanced my love of art, etc. It might have helped me to have an impartial view on other faiths and practices, but I don;t even practice my own. If anything, having religion drummed into me made me hate it with a passion. So yeah, teach everyone. They might realise its one of teh main reasons why the world is fucked.