From Matthew T:
In Kirklees borough, where Batley Grammar School is located, the syllabus says children should be “give[n] reasons why visual representation of God and the prophets is forbidden (haram) in Islam,” by the end of Key Stage 2.
Pupils should also understand “key religious values including democracy, human rights, rule of law, secularism, freedom of expression and tolerance” – this is taught in Key Stage 3.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30813742
“key religious values including democracy, human rights, rule of law, secularism, freedom of expression and tolerance”
Literally none of these are ‘key religious values’ tho, and no amount of handwinging schoolteachers will make it so.
Obviously not in Islam, whose adherents will just laugh at and exploit your naivety. But they’re not Christian religious values either.
Democracy – the Kingdom of Heaven is not a democracy. They had a plebiscite in the New Testament, and the mob voted for Barabbas
Human Rights – our rights come from God, not men
Rule of law – this is a modern idea, not a Christian one. The Biblical view is that authority is divinely ordained.
Secularism – Thy will be done on Earth
Freedom of expression – Blasphemy and false witness is not protected in Christianity
Tolerance – God hates the wicked every day
What did the Reformers spend their time doing ?
Burning blasphemous images… oh and some Catholics.
Steve +1
“oh and some Catholics.” It can’t have been many: burning was a Roman Catholic thing. The Reformers were much likelier to chop heads off.
If they were interested in education rather than indoctrination they would enquire when Moslems started objecting to visual representation of the Prophet, for example. This would then, alas, lead to the question of when Moslems became distinctively different from Christians and Jews, in other words when did Islam become a “Thing”. Start looking seriously at the history of Islam and you could end up very dead.
A cold-eyed look at the history of the origins of Christianity and Judaism might also be less than popular.
Organised religion – old men with beards and funny hats exercising power.
Maybe it’s time to turn to people like this guy rather than the goat herders we’ve imported
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/why-muslim-i-defend-liberty
dearieme
The Blackadderisation of history, of course.
“Wicked child, the cold is just God’s way of telling us to burn more Catholics.”
But the point is valid. Iconoclasm is standard operating procedure for religious fundamentalists.
In what way is secularism a key religious value?
@ Rob
Atheism is a religion, one of the most intolerant of them.
It might be interesting to learn the religious leanings of the person who wrote that syllabus.
The end of Key Stage 2 is at end of primary (11 years). So it might actually be a good idea, for the child’s safety, to let him know there are some nutters out there.
My beef is with the spin that is likely to be put on “democracy, human rights, rule of law, secularism, freedom of expression and tolerance” by the mash-up of fundamentalists and relativists that infect the schools.
@John77
Atheism is a religion,
No, it isn’t.
If inalienable rights do not come from God, where do they come from? Any human construct can be altered by any human. Your rights become whatever you have the power to enforce. Who says your rules are better than my rules?
This is the ultimate goal of the woke left. The rules are what we say today. They will change as is expedient. You will follow them, or else.
Representative art is forbidden in Judaism and Christianity too, it is part of the Ten Commandments.
“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth”
This bit is normally bundled together with the bit about idolatry but it is stated fairly explicitly.
@john77.
Atheism is only considered ‘intolerant’ by those religious nutters (that probably covers all of them)who are not content to simply live their own lives governed by their religious doctrines but want every one else to live their lives governed by those same religious doctrines too.
The teaching of religion in schools should just consist of “Religion – Some people believe some things, some people believe something else and others don’t believe it at all”.
Stonyground: I thought the graven image stuff was in order to suppress idolatry, the golden calf story being an example of backsliding into animism if you don’t. Are you suggesting there is another explanation?
Authentic Islam is a license to invade, oppress, plunder, rape and enslave. That’s largely why it was originally so popular.
Islamic State is not an aberation. They embody the true values of Islam as prescribed by Muhammad himself.
Yet there is nothing more offensive to the secular left than to point out that Islam is a thoroughly evil creed.
– “Atheism is a religion”
You omitted the end of that sentence: “Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby. “
Adolff: Those crazy religious doctrines like “thou shalt not murder”? Yes, I would quite like it if the French revolutionaries, Stalin, Mao and every other atheist who gets a lick of power did indeed follow our religious doctrines.
Steve: Living peaceably with ones neighbours and loving everyone are radical Christian values; this covers toleration. And the rainbow is a sign of God’s tolerance. And the idea that there are real laws and that people have rights is far from obvious, but comes from Christianity.
I would recommend that oeople read Dominion by (agnostic) Tom Holland.
Kyle, how did we ever manage before Exodus 20 (or Genesis if you prefer)eh?
And i’ll see your dicators and raise you 80 million Hindus dead because of islam.
@Stonyground
You do need the full commandment, not just verse 4:
4 You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Specifically idolatry.
@Addolff
A ban on casual murder was a revolutionary concept in the Bronze Age. Look at a lot of cities today where law and order has fled, and we see that casual murder is the natural state of things: we’ve just been lucky to have lived in a time and place where this commandment has been so ingrained that we consider it ‘normal’
Organised religions usually meet the same fate as any other large organisation: that they morph from being primarily concerned with the aims of the organisation to being primarily concerned with the prestige of the organisation before finally regressing to being concerned with the prestige of individuals within the organisation’s hierarchy. This is no fault of the philosophy behind the religion, but of the inevitability of large organisations, especially if they have been granted a monopoly power. The rise of free churches over the last 200 years has put such a dent into the C of E that it is still floundering around in the 3rd stage above, but without the broad base of support required to support that state: the results will be interesting.
Islam is different to Judaism and Christianity in that violence and corruption is built into the philosophy, not something that has been overlayed, and is therefore not something that can be stripped off.
‘… the syllabus says children should be “give[n] reasons why visual representation of God and the prophets is forbidden (haram) in Islam,”
The reason being, they copied the Jews.
Nothing on the silly bus as to why it is also so in Judaism where it is considered idolatry? Strictly speaking Jews may not say or write the name of God which is why in the Old Testament – “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain” – when referring to God, letters are replaced by symbols G-d, for example.
In fact Protestants also eschewed statuary and iconography, which is why they attacked churches and cathedrals smashing statues and stained glass windows depicting Biblical scenes, chipped off plasterwork with scenes painted on them and burnt paintings.
That’s not on the silly bus either. So why is Islam special? It is a plagiarist religion, not an originator. Muslims just copied Judaism and Christianity. One would hope that people teaching history would know that. Fat chance. It is about promoting ‘diversity’, which of course is actually perversity.
Mohave Greenie
October 5, 2021 at 12:16 am
If inalienable rights do not come from God, where do they come from?
The Common and Natural Law – discovered law. Like gravity, it was there all along. And those Biblical rules are pre-dated by Common & Natural Law, they just codified what already was, they did not invent it. But they did invent other rules.
Invented rules are legislation not law, to serve the interests of political/religious rulers and give advantage to certain sectors of the Body Politic by removing the protection given to all under Common & Natural Law, and making it an obligation on another to provide the Rights bestowed by the legislation.
I fully understand that the commandment discussed above is related to the practice of idolatry. My point is that the commandment doesn’t only forbid idolatry, it forbids the production of representative art. It doesn’t say ok you can do carvings and drawings as long as you don’t idolise them, it says no carvings or drawings.
@John B October 5, 2021 at 9:12am
Whose Common and Natural law? Empirically, common and natural law has tended towards despotism over recorded history (and pre-recorded history as far as we can tell). Common and Natural law appears to be uncommon and unnatural to the human condition. A nice bit of philosophy, but is Common and Natural law discoverable and repeatable like gravity? Unlikely.
“If inalienable rights do not come from God, where do they come from?” That’s easy – there aren’t any inalienable rights. You shouldn’t mistake political propaganda for a description of human reality.
“Representative art is forbidden in Judaism and Christianity too, it is part of the Ten Commandments.
“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, …”
No. Sculpture and engraving are banned – a painting or drawing is perfectly OK. So, Her Maj is fine on stamps but not on coins.
“any likeness”, is a drawing not a likeness then?
Islam’s problem is that its holy book is deemed to be the literal word of God and unchallengeable. Christian’s do not believe this of the Bible (or even of the Gospels), it is acknowledged as the work of men (and, for at least one book, women) – divinely inspired perhaps, but still capable of error. This is why Christians are relatively relaxed about such things as wearing clothes made from two different materials, and is also why nutters in the US bible belt claiming that Genesis must be read literally are simply that – nutters.
Sorry about the greengrocers’ ‘.
Stonyground: at the risk of being provocative, isn’t that a bit like the 2nd Amendment? There are 2 parts, which may or may not be intended to be read together, i.e. the first part is stated and then the reason for it stated. So, if you aren’t intending to worship a graven image (or be part of a militia), does the first part still stand?
@dearieme
Then the only rights you have are those you can enforce at the point of a gun. Either held by you or your proxy. And only until someone else comes along with a bigger gun. We are right back to despotism, where the biggest force makes the rules.