Educational Change?
Have you noticed a subtle change-taking place among Pentecostal churches in Australia during the past few years? You may not have noticed but the word 'Church' is being dropped from their vocabulary, The word church and all of what it stands for is losing popularity and the 'church' is in its death throws and the Pentecostal movements are aware of this. These institutions are now calling themselves Christian Family Fellowships.
As an example what used to be known as an (A.O.G.) Assembly of God Church is now known as Assembly of God, a house of Christian fellowship, or maybe Christian worship centre, or similar. C.O.C. Christian Outreach Centre. Pentecostal schools are known as Christian Schools.
The question that I raise is this? Is there a well-organised plan by Christian Pentecostal groups to take control of the education system, to curb the advancement of science by retarding the advancement of education? Pushing to the fore religious dogma and also belief in creation science and that the bible is the only history book that man needs to be guided by?
Public school education seems to be doing a back pedal and becoming unpopular. Is this due to the fact that the teacher no longer has control over the behaviour of students who during class should be under the control of the instructor, and also lack of government funding, which is being diverted to the supposed "private schools"? I use the word supposed here, as there should be a question mark over the word private school? Private schools in the main are becoming more and more Christian orientated. With the steady unpopularity of public education also comes the decline of critical thinking skills, and general literacy standards.
In my view if we are to address the problem fully we must recognise religious faith for what it is and for its limitations in regards to academic education. It should be a Teacher's prime responsibility to teach only what is truthful. Children's education should be more important than dogmatic religious laws, creeds, theologies, and beliefs.
Instead of enriching the lives of children Christian schools do the opposite; these types of schools weakens a child's ability to think rationally. They are conditioned to believe that they are sinful depraved beings living in a state of sin without Jesus in their lives. This is a controlling spirit of fear because they are led to believe that without Jesus they will be punished in the everlasting eternal fires of Hell. It is this fear of Hell that keeps a child in bondage (subject to external control) to Christianity. Teaching children things like Adam and Eve and the original sin, and Noah's ark and the flood, Angels, Satan, Demons, and the eternal suffering in Hell for all non Christians must be looked upon with suspicion.
. What has any of this ancient archaic petrified theology got to do with achieving academic qualifications? It is worse than teaching kids about Father Christmas or the tooth fairies down in the garden, all of this is only perpetrating a lie? The children are eventually told that Father Christmas and the fairies are a lie, but they are left to believe that the rest is truthful. Why teach these fantasies in the first place? Why not always teach truthfulness?
As there is no evidence for any of this stuff it should not be taught as truth. There is also no evidence for a God who probably does not exist much less communicate with people, therefore it becomes a handicap and a source of fear and hinders the advancement of honest education.
In order to highly educate youth we need to advance forward not go back to the unfounded beliefs of past primitive ancient mythology whose only means of communication was by word of mouth. We need to educate our children thoroughly with the very best that modern research has to offer devoid of any religious doctrine. All religious dogma should be left at the altar, and should only be kept for those who are gullible enough to warm the pews at a Sunday service.
Christian schools do not advocate or teach freedom of religions or freedom of speech. I feel sure that many people who prefer to send their children to Christian schools have not looked into all of the issues that are involved.
Schools need to teach critical thinking skills and to train upcoming scientists and engineers for the benefit of progress, and children should not have their young minds distorted by prepackaged dogma that prevails in many religious institutions today.
Many laws and regulations in our society are based on religious doctrine, which is defective. A society that obeys the law should do so out of respect and not out of fear. A law thats based on religious doctrine is a law that is not shared by all people in our land and this law become repressive and becomes self defeating by undermining respect for the law in general.
I believe that governments have a duty to fulfill with the education of our young, and skillful education should remain in control of governmental organisation and not become diluted and polluted with religious belief systems. I also believe that Private Christian schools if they must exist should only be financed by private contributions and they should be held responsible for paying all taxes in line with any other private institution of business. Christian scripture teaching should also be abolished from state run government schools. Why should Christianity be shown favouritism over other religions in this regard?
Governments also have a duty to the people to maintain not only freedom of religion but freedom from religions also. The people who do not believe in a supernatural being should have exactly the same rights as those that do. After all there is not a single person on the face of this planet that has any knowledge that there is a God, so until such times as we know that a God exists then those who don't believe have a perfect right to do so. Governments should allow people to contribute further to the development of the human race by free thought and every person should have the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to share in scientific advancements and all of its benefits.
I have seen present day government literature advocating the advancement of Christian religion, when the same government also say that in a democratic society we have freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. Why any government in the world today would want to advance any religion is beyond my comprehension. If the Christian coalition party ever came to power in this country then they would try to return to the period known as the dark ages. Abortion would be outlawed (paving the way for the return of the backyarder) the homosexuals life would become unbearable, all literature, television and the Internet would come under extreme censorship as they would try to enforce a theocratic government.
All that religions ever create is intolerance, bitterness, and hatred for each other, which eventually leads to wars, as history has recorded over and over again. If all belief systems cannot stand up to reasonable questioning then they should be abolished. Need I say more?
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