Topic: Religion and Government
Why Education Shouldn't Involve Religion by Jeff Peters
(conservative)
Friday, March 6, 2009
Faith and intelligence are two very different conceptual approaches to dealing with the world. We go to school so that we may be more intelligent. This allows individuals to logically approach humanly practical issues with some tools.
We use physics and biology so that we may understand the practical and not the supernatural experience of ourselves in this world. When we want to solve an everyday problem people resort to everyday practical solutions. If we want to make a meal we cook or bake, we don't wait for some supernatural being to get that done for us. When we seek a cure for a disease, we ultimately use a natural science as biology to understand the disease and develop a system to counter this problem.
At least that's what we do in the developed world.
Essentially that is the role of education all around - to provide us humans with insight on how humans as a conglomerate can deal with themselves.
Faith on the other hand has throughout history served as a tool to explain the unexplainable. The stars were the heavens, primarily because no one was capable of observing and visiting the stars with precision. Now we know, as Pumba said in the Lion King, they "are balls of gas burning billions of miles away." Diseases or plagues were considered messages by God for which sinners were purged. Now we can trace with certainty that most diseases break out naturally and because of lacks of antiseptics, hygiene, and technologies capable of destroying bacteria.
There are still things that can't be explained? What predates energy? What actually happened in those three days, as said in the beginning of Genesis, when the world was created: the Big Bang perhaps? Who knows, but religion has always been the system of thought that people should obediently follow a set of rules for fear that whoever created this world won't punish them for their sins.
Faith is essentially something that developed from asymmetric information, if I may be so crude and boring. More importantly, faith is not a tool by which we can solve practical problems. If we want a system to work, we have to understand the natural mechanism that allows a system to work - we can't just "believe" that something will work. The system works, doesn't work, or partially works - but to perfect a system that will help and improve the human condition we have to understand ourselves - not God.
Perhaps religion is a necessary component to making some system work - but what is central to that concern is improving the human condition - not trying to understand God.
After reading Genesis, the most beautiful paragraph I read was:
And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. (Genesis 8:21)
Thenceforth, God let the fallible human beings make mistakes and take control over their own lives. From then on humans had to resort to everyday practical intelligence to survive.
That is the whole point of the University and education system.
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Wow. That was a great article Christopher! That was one of the most enlightening explanations I've heard for religion (and I've been an atheist for a few years!).
Also, I'm surprised that you are a conservative. Why? Because the great the majority of conservatives tend to be religious.
So, I'm curious, for what reasons do you consider yourself a conservative? And, I'm also curious, what do you think of the philosophy of libertarianism?
Anywhoo, I look forward to reading your future columns!
Why make this assertion at all? That's the nice thing about a free country. If people want to involve religion in their child's education, they can. And if they don't, they don't have to. Education is something that can be done correctly in many different ways. It's not a black or white proposition. And it DEFINITELY isn't something that ought to be left exclusively to ideologues of any stripe. You definitely can't make the case that America's secular education establishment is superior to it's religious schools.
Even the most religiously controlled societies on Earth have medicine and nuclear technology, even though they are built on religious foundations. So, your argument that religion precludes practical solutions to problems is laughable. Where in the heck do you see historical precedent for that, especially in the Judeo-Christian world?
Also, Islam views religion has much more than merely something to "explain the unexplainable." It is the basis of public policy, banking, the entire culture.
You seem to make too many biased conclusions. That's okay of course, but you won't persuade anyone who isn't already sympathetic to your point of view. And even then, maybe not. How much research did you do for this article? Have you read any of Isaac Newton's works on religion? I wonder what he would have thought of your premise. Have you read any works on the Christian philosophy of education?
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