Bible/Religious Education in America

There is, as a general rule, no religious education in America sponsored by the government. This policy is commonly referred to as the "Separation of Church and State", and is a prominent element of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Being British, you might recall the exodus of a number of Protestants trying to get away from state-sponsored religion and the war fought to keep it that way.In my view it is sufficient to teach proper reasoning and deduction, and let people make their own decisions based on the available information. Public education should not, and cannot, provide the religious training that some parents desire. It is their own business, and they can do it on their own time, and their own dime.

I don't see that they have any need to be integrated. Where religion has ideas about things that can be determined scientifically it is nearly universally incorrect. There is no debate, or anything to gain by teaching factually incorrect beliefs in that regard. Alternatively the parts of religion that cannot be scientifically determined may as well be opinions, and are probably infinite in scope.

On the contrary, I think the real problem is that such a class would never be complete. Education usually consists of teaching things that are to some extent objectively known to be true. If in this circumstance that requirement was removed, then there is no reason why any particular sect or variation in a religion should be taught preferentially to another. This would entail teaching the students the individual opinion of every being on the planet, something that simply isn't practical.If you only teach part of a religion then there will be people who think the part you left out is deathly important. If you only teach some religions then those who are not represented will be incensed. There is no way a teaching institution can give an unbiased view of every religious ideal.Is this necessarily a bad thing? Not in my opinion; everyone should learn about various religious ideas and draw their own conclusions. Their views will be biased and if they are intelligent they will recognize this and compensate to the best of their ability. The key is that the bias will not be the responsibility of the state. Nobody will be forced to pay for a bias contrary to their leanings, they will be free to impart their bias on their offspring on an individual basis.

You only have to teach one way of doing trigonometry, and nobody gets bent out of shape when you teach that and not quantum physics as mandatory public education. You speak heresy, my particular flavor of Christianity/Islam/Judaism is separate and distinct from those false religious in a variety of important ways. It deeply offends me that you would seek to lump my deepest beliefs about the Holy Truth in with those false worships. I demand equal representation.

Mathematics is a science. The debate about history is generally about the interpretation of history, not what actually happened. For instance: The North won the USA Civil War, and The Holocaust happened. Whether these were good or bad occurrences is generally discussed much more than if they happened or not (although I do recognize that some people are Holocaust deniers).My point is, history is like science in that something either happened or it didn't, and it only happened one way. There is a "Truth" out there, and a teacher can realistically attempt to get as close to that as possible. How the Civil War occurred isn't up to the personal beliefs of individual citizens, and there are some accounts that are objectively superior to others. Right, I could if you were not trying to make it a law that my children be subjected to such filth, and that I pay for it. When someone comes to my door with guns to make...Ok, I think the role-play has served its purpose. You yourself admitted that when a teaching institution stops teaching a subject at an arbitrary point there will be people who are ticked some subject didn't get taught. For you it was trigonometry, for someone else it would be their particular brand of Zen-Christian Buddhism.But seriously, no trig? Sin, cos, tan? SOH-CAH-TOA? Nothing?

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—noun
1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.

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Science Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com

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Mathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change.

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Mathematics - WikipediaI think it is in the sense of *everyone* using it that way. Really? Well gosh, why don't you call up the Jews, Catholics, and Protestants? Apparently you have some news for them! Right, but you don't teach that the Boer war was caused by aliens attacking a local brewery. You don't teach that because it is objectively not true, despite what the town drunk claims. With religious education they are equally valid topics of study. Well too bad, you are objectively wrong.Now do me, but tell me that being a Jew is wrong. So you are going to have a state-run institution tell the group down the road who follows "Jesus of Nazareth" and believes "Christ" is simply an honorary title that they are not really Christian? Do you potentially see a problem with such a thing? How about telling us why you, or anyone else for that matter, deserves to set up the official guidelines of what makes Jews Jewish? Well, lets lay it out perfectly clearly. If you are a history teacher in public school and you teach incorrect history, you will be fired. Sure, you can go home and tell your kids whatever you like, but public education has taken an official stance on some *factual* issues of history. And some countries make their women cover every inch of their skin and treat them as little more than property. Some countries will stone you to death for speaking ill of an entity nobody can prove actually exists. The fact that some countries do something is hardly a compelling argument that it is a good idea.

I think it is quite obvious that we are not collectively all agreeable.

Oh, I would agree. For instance, telling someone what their beliefs are or are not.

Bam! Now you have an official religious czar, who decides what religions get to be taught in school and which ones are not officially recognized. I don't think that is a good idea at all. So you would be OK with teaching people that being Jewish involves wearing a hot pink hat with a propeller and flashing LEDs, and chanting Norse folk songs backwards?Here is the tricky bit, if you are unwilling to teach that because it is incorrect, then you just told some person that their religion is "wrong". In this case it may just be one guy, but it means that somewhere there is a little town that has beliefs your religion czar does not deem worthy of being an official religion. Perhaps somewhere in Africa there is an entire country. Where can one draw the line, if at all? Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. In this case you are saying that people who do not believe that the angel Gabriel dictated its words to Mohammed are not Muslim, and while a contrary example may be quite rare there probably exists one. I think that setting up a government agency to define what is and what is not part of a religion is an extremely bad idea. Wonderful, those exam questions would be quite the minefield. Your test would arbitrarily decide what symbols count as religious symbols, inevitably telling some poor kid that his family is "doing it wrong". Some mosque isn't going to qualify as being built "up to code" for being a mosque and I doubt the resident worshipers will be thrilled. Are you really willing to tell some guy who prays in a mandir that his method is objectively wrong, or that a typical service isn't typical enough?

Given that all the math I know was invented long before my birth, I have not actually personally witnessed its development. However, yes it did involve using the scientific method. Specifically that whole bit about matching theories to data, and refining said theories until a useful model is created to predict future phenomena. Well, feel privileged in a dramatic minority.

Who decides if it is in the religion or not? At what point, if any, are you willing to tell someone that their religious beliefs are incorrect? No, not all scientific ideas are required to be treated equally. There is an objective truth for science, but not so for religion. Are you truly so prejudiced that you think your "common knowledge" is an appropriate scale by which to measure the personal beliefs of billions? You were raised to understand that certain religions have specific qualities, and there may well be many people who agree, but that does *NOT* mean you have the right to define those religions. I am going to ignore the spirit of your rude and snarky comment, and provide an enriching response. I think that people should do their own religious investigation as they see fit, and hopefully come to the understanding that religious beliefs are a personal and highly variable subject. If they choose to stereotype religious groups (as is inevitable) then they do so at their own peril.

Because there are differences between private parties presenting their view and a government sponsored program. Once you start forcing people to fund and participate in something, that something needs to live up to a higher standard. People don't generally get their panties in a bunch if they don't live up to your definition of utilitarianism, but they do if you try to tell them what religion they do or do not practice. And my point is that you are being needlessly dense. If Christians cannot agree among other Christians exactly what being Christian entails, don't you think there is going to be some disagreement with any one view of all religions? It is different because you only teach Lamarcke and Darwin, you don't teach Jake the Drive-Thru Attendant's view because you decided it wasn't important. It amazes me that you are so cavalier about doing the same thing with religious beliefs. Because I would be paying for it! Are you one of those people who thinks governments just do stuff by magic?

With all due respect, you clearly do not understand how those axioms and theorems developed. Do you really think humanity just started with a fully developed system of mathematics, or do you think that perhaps it developed as a model of reality based on observations?You are learning the groundwork of a developed field, and in doing so there is little direct application of the scientific method. Were you to be developing a new field of mathematics then you would apply the scientific method.

And there is the crux of the issue. I think there are certain things that are appropriate and acceptable to be taught by private parties and yet are *not* appropriate and *not* acceptable to be taught by public organizations.

Does it eventually give you the correct answer in reality? If so, the theory is functioning correctly. If it never correlates to reality at some point then nobody would care.