4thought.tv

Are you suggesting that religious education should only be taught from the standpoint of your own interpretation of what you consider to be the one true faith? Sorry, but I'm afraid your evangelism has no place in the classroom.

Being a born again may have been life changing for you. For others the same life changing effects happened by becoming a Muslim, atheist, Buddhist, etc. What makes your experience any more special?

School is a place to learn real facts and to spark the imagination and critical faculties of young minds. Not to brainwash and indoctrinate them into believing magic and fairy tales. Yes, teach religion education. Religion has and still does, permeate the fabric of our existence in this world, but not as truth. Give the children the material and the ability to think for themselves both critically and rationally.

Norman Lowndes said:

"As a teacher, the last thing you want is to turn your children off from learning."

Telling children that your religion is in any way superior to all others is called indoctrination, not education.

As a teacher, the last thing you should want is to turn children off from thinking for themselves.

Schools are there to turn out adults, ready for the world, not to turn out sheep.

If you want to belong to a fascist party and believe in fascism that's your problem but you wouldn't want it taught in schools. So why do you thing you have a right to impose your religious nonsense on children, this is simply abuse.

This man`s attitude to teaching is appalling. About time he retired.

"If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you."

Religion does three things quite effectively: Divides people, Controls people, Deludes people.

I wonder if you would teach the following in your RE classes?
Deaths in the Bible. God - 2,270,365 not including the victims of Noah`s flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc because no specific numbers were given. Satan - 10.
I would hazard a guess and answer....No, you wouldn't.

"Prayer has no place in the public schools, just like facts have no place in organized religion."
- School Superintendent on "The Simpsons" episode #100, 1994

Norman, does the reality that Christianity does not exist as a single religion not tell that it may be flawed? Judaism and Islam follow the same God. Both those religions do not have a single settled view of what they are. How can so many different sects and denominations all be right?

Who or what defines your brand of God different from the God of Jews and Muslims?

As I have become acquainted with Islam I am learning that far more accommodating of Christianity than Christians are of Islam. Muslims mostly accept the Bible and the Torah. How do Christians reconcile this paradox?

As an RE teacher, you should know better.

If the parents predominantly agree, fair enough. Otherwise, you should start by convincing them and the powers that be.

I am a Christian and choose to put my children in Christian Schools where that belief is encouraged because as a Chritian parent, I want the classroom learning to be an extension of the home learning and vice versa. My issue with the educational system is when this 'eclectic' view of RE is forced on Christian schools and not on other religious schools. Christians are often ridiculed in society today and while some of that has a valid basis, this chorus of abuse and ridicule is certainly unacceptable. If that was an atheist or scientologist speaking on the video, I am sure the response would be more positive and if it was a Muslim, no one would dare ridicule them. Everyone is allowed to speak and choose their faith and indeed choose how to raise their children and perhaps if the lines in society were clearly drawn respectfully, we would have less confused teenagers without a goal or ambition.

All religions are equal Norman - all equally INvalid - they are all wrong - I can PROVE God does not exist.

God does not exist for these reasons:

1. Since axiomatically we must assume no God from the start - the same as we do all other entities,the burden of proof is on the claimant and atheism is valid by default. It is not a faith or a belief but a starting point. No proof of God is provided by theists - so he does not exist by default.

2. Theists assert that God is needed as a first cause of the universe and all creation - but God has no first cause,and since theists assert using cause and effect that "something cannot come from nothing" - thence God cannot come from nothing - so even using theists logic - God cannot exist.

3. The universe actually does not need a 1st cause since in quantum mechanics and at the start of the universe cause and effect break down - so science says "we do not need God to start it all off" - so God is not the creator of all things. Something CAN come from nothing (see links) - it is just that theists have no idea how.

4. Even if God were to exist - we cannot presume HE is the one who started everything anyhow - since people believe in other Gods and creation myths.

So yes - theists not not understand logic or science - they use FAITH - faith means "I choose to believe something regardless of what evidence there is against it" - which is a fools choice and maximise the chances of being wrong.

Science's system uses Occam's razor and proof beyond a reasonable doubt and minimises false positives and is most likely to be correct.

So choose theism and faith and you are most likely to be wrong - choose science and atheism and you are most likely correct.
Sit on the fence like agnostics and you just look like you do not know anything.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?” Epicurus.

You have 38 thumbs down and counting Norman - why do you think that is? Religions is outdated and there is no special place for yours - the answer to confused kids is easy - stop teaching about outdated Gods and creation theories - we all know science is correct and religion is wrong - so why educate kids about lies that can be prove as such?

I'm sorry but it's not confusion that is turning children off religious education/exploration(it turns out children are quite bright really). If children are being turned off it's probably boredom that is causing it seen as you as much as admitted in your film to presenting all religions save your own in an uninformed and 2 dimensional way.

Religious education that only seeks to educate others on one or two specific religions is hardly a broad spectrum education.

To be a considered and rounded subject it needs to encompass a curriculum that looks as religion from a historic and developmental perspective. I am long baffled why there is little consideration of native religions such a paganism - our British heritage after all - or any daring to tackle the fact that Christianity was forced upon it's 'followers' and sought to drown original belief systems by dominating them and ambushing festivals with their own. It seems that Norman would seek to carry on this practice himself....

To provide a balanced religious education to our young people would be to allow them to be educated about them all.... and to allow them to consider how their developed belief system may, or may not, fit in with any 'titled' religious form.

I am tired with what I see as Christians acting like victims. I am not putting everyone in the same arc, however, I feel that the majority of them speak as if they are being picked on in todays society, such as Norman here. Just because you are disagreed with, doesn't mean you are being treated any less than anyone else. To me, lots of people of this particular faith seem to be the ones that attempt to indoctrinate people in town centre's, telling those of whom their cries who fall on deaf ears, that they 'will burn in hell for eternity'! Isn't it about time that Christianity as well as other faiths realised that their religion is fast becoming outdated and old fashioned, thus people's lack of interest. It simply doesn't fit in todays modern society for a lot of people. Faith is all well and good if it has a good impact on society. I am happy to be educated in any and all faiths (the more I can learn, the better), but I choose not to believe in ANY God because I feel that the world wouldn't be such a terrible place if a higher being was supposed to be so loving.

We're finally almost at the point where religion can be moved into the history classroom in this country. It's important children are taught about religion but to continue trying to tell them it's anything other than a fairytale is a bit like telling a classroom of 15 year olds that Father Christmas still brings them presents every year.

All he has to do is give us some incontrovertible evidence that this magic invisible sky-fairy in which he believes even exists in the first place.

Norman,

I've posted rather a lot on Mike Lake's page. I do not have a strong view of faith schools unless, like three Islamic schools have recently indicated they intend to do, fundamentalist views will be promoted.

You share your God with Muslims. You teach that Jesus is the Son of God. Muslims revere Jesus as merely a significant prophet.

You say that the only way to God is through Jesus. Muslims and Jews perceive a more direct route to God.

By definition the three Abrahamic religions share a common God. If your God wrote the laws of nature

There are two criteria to evaluate the benefits of a given religion: first, by how peacefully it treats other people (both what it preaches and how it acts), and second, on its metaphysical search for truth - its theological claims, position on afterlife, etc; no one religion contains all such truth and we don't even know how much truth there is out there, so it's both speculative and relative - a matter for culture and upbringing etc.

Therefore I disagree strongly with Mr Lowndes' attempt to bias neutrality in favour of Christianity. The point of RE lessons is to give an introductory understanding of several religions, that is all.

The Christian missionary mindset is generally depicted as that of simple religious folk with a pure desire to peacefully spread their gospel and message of love. In reality, their methods of propagation are often anything but peaceful and usually leave behind a native population stripped of their culture and often decimated. With Christianity failing in the west, the evangelists seek new and greener fields in the poor and uneducated sections of third world countries, backed by huge coffers from the less zealous, who are nonetheless convinced that to bring civilization and religion to the poor natives is a noble cause, even if they don't want it.
Missionaries often intermixed military campaigns with missionary campaigns in their fervour to "civilize the heathens," who are often simple happy natives, whose only crime is that they are not Christians. This mood of conquering the heathens by any means, at any cost, is supported in the Bible:
"Thou shalt save alive nothing that breathest. But thou shalt utterly destroy them..." (Deut 20)

"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." (Luke 19.27)

In the words of one resident of Thailand, “They [Christian missionaries] seemed that they did not show any interest for our culture. Why? They are just eager to build big churches in every village. It seems that they are having two faces; under the title of help they suppress us. To the world, they gained their reputations as benefactors of disappearing tribes. They built their reputations on us for many years. The way they behaved with us seemed as if we did not know about god before they arrived here.”
“Why do missionaries think they are the only ones who can perceive God?”

In fact, most of the civilizations which were overrun by zealous Christians in their conversion fervour, were highly evolved in their moral standards, with complex social structures, high standards of cleanliness and hygiene, decorative art and evolved sciences, and content with their own religion.
History is witness to the mass destruction of countless cultures, and the almost complete genocide of entire races at the hands of Christianity. History is now proving that most cultures destroyed by Christianity far outweighed in morals and dignity what they were replaced by.
Since the effects of much missionary work, the cultural traditions of a people being replaced by some form of Christianity, are intentional, this means by definition (according to the United Nations) that genocide is the missionary profession: converting other peoples to Christianity and thus destroying them as an ethnical group, and denying the right of native peoples to exist as what they are, with their own culture, language, and religion. For a variety of reasons a massive depopulation, in other words the death of a large percentage of the native population, follows. And this so-called righteous work continues even today around the world in the name of [Christian] humanitarian work.
The plain and simple truth is that people never give up their religion, any more than they give up their children or their parents...except when they are pressured with use of force or are

There is a long history of the persecution of Jews by Christians, starting with the burning of synagogues in the 4th century, to numerous killings of Jews who would not convert to Christianity, to the extermination of Jewish communities in many European countries, all the way to a number of extermination camps during World War II in Yugoslavia, headed by a Franciscan Friar and run by Catholics, which were the equal of the German kilns of Auschwitz — killing about half a million people alone in this small country.

Hitler Himself justified the extermination of the Jews citing the Bible and Jesus:

"My feelings as a Christian, points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those (the Jews) by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited. ":
(Adolf Hitler, in his speech on 12 April 1922)

. It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous. — Gloria Steinem

Norman asserts that children are turned off , and/or being confused about religion due to the scope the education they receive upon it.

Perhaps instead it is the natural conclusion to reach when given a choice of otherwise indistinguishable non falsifiable claims. When given Pascal's wager , without the false dichotomy of just belief in Jesus and non belief, with the more realistic plethora of beliefs present in reality as additional choices, it becomes correct to become apathetic about a choice , there is no reasonable way to deduce the correct one. I would say Norman is obviously having some success in his lessons.

As for Normans personal deity, and the 30,000+ beliefs derived incompatibility from it's book(s), there is nothing moral or meaningful in it that a child cannot learn from a secular view point, and much that should not be taught. Such as, capital punishment for homosexuals, endorsement of slavery, the forced marriage of a rapist to his victim, incest, and much much more, most Christians dont really read their bible. If you also add a literal interpretation as a requirement to belief, it instantly brings such a view into direct conflict with scientific knowledge( e.g. Genesis vs the fact of evolution ).