Labour hates gays, loves Jesus.

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Apr 292009
 

Faith Schools Free to Preach Against Homosexuality

Oh fucking hell. The Guardian writes:

[Sir Alasdair] Macdonald said: "What we're trying to do, and I accept it's difficult, is find a balance between young people having an entitlement to knowledge, facts, information but where schools, particularly schools with a particular faith interest or other disposition, also have a right to put that in context of their particular institution. "

Why?

Think about that — a balance between young people having an entitlement to knowledge, and an institution's particular faith interests. This is just so irresponsible.

Ethics versus religion in Berlin

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Apr 262009
 

Referendum Pits Ethics against Religion

What a beautifully irony-laced headline from Spiegel Online International.

From the article:

Since 2006, ethics has been a compulsory subject for all high school students in Germany's capital city, while religion is an optional course. The "Pro Reli" campaign wants to change those rules so that pupils would have to choose between ethics and a faith-based religion class. Those classes would be strictly divided along religious lines, with Protestants, Catholics and Muslims being taught separately.

I actually can't believe this.  It's like a piece of science fiction.

Faith Schools: Why They're a Really Bad Idea

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Apr 262009
 

As the title suggests, this short article is about faith schools, and why they're a really bad idea.

To begin with, I'm going to have to make some assumptions.  I don't want to have to argue everything through from first principles, so let me first detail my starting point.  I think I'll need just three ideological presuppositions to argue my case.  First, pluralism is good.  By this I mean that we should have some respect and tolerance for other cultures and opinions.  Notice here that I don't mean that all cultures and opinions are equally valid.  In fact, this is my second assumption — cultural relativism is bad.  By this I mean that no matter how strongly a person or group of people believe something, that doesn't make it true.  Some things really are universally and objectively wrong.  I'm sure we can all agree that genital mutilation and smacking children are not only wrong, but that people who disagree with us are actually incorrect, by some objective metric.  If we don't submit this point, then right from the start anything goes.  Rape, murder, anything.  If rape is wrong, it's wrong objectively.  This second assumption may seem to be in tension with the first, but I don't think it has to be.  We can find the point of agreement by saying that everyone's entitled to their opinion, but that we don't have to take them all seriously; though we certainly shouldn't be dogmatic about which ones we do and don't.  Finally, I'm going to assume that needless human suffering should be avoided.  Hopefully this maxim won't require me to defend it.  I should also point out that I'm speaking as a British citizen here, so my knowledge and analysis relate to faith schools as governed by UK law.

I'm basically going to address three things in this essay.  I'm going to detail what I think's wrong with faith schools; outline some criticisms.  I'm going to try to look at arguments put forward in defence of faith schools, and dismantle them.  Then I'll try and come up with some suggestions about what should happen.
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Democracy in action

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Jan 212009
 

Step 1: Pick any British politician from any party.

Step 2: Listen to them talk.

Step 3: Think to yourself: Would I buy a car from them?

Step 4: Ask yourself why we're happy with them having the positions of maximal responsibility.

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