Religious Education

Question:
Do atheists want religious education to be removed from schools, especially public and other secular schools?

Answer by SmartLX:
Generally not, though it depends on the type of religious education.

Like it or not, participate in it or not, religion is a huge part of modern life. Kids need to learn about it so they can understand where people are coming from, and of course keep the multitude of religious literary references whizzing around from going right over their heads.

Atheists tend to object to religious education only when it becomes religious indoctrination, particularly indoctrination of young children. The difference in a nutshell:
– Religious education is, “This is what people of this religion believe.”
– Religious indoctrination is, “This religious doctrine is the truth.”

There’s nothing wrong in principle with proclaiming what you believe to be true, but the reason why a lot of people believe in religious doctrine is that it was taught to them as fact before they developed the faculties to judge it on its merit. That makes it very difficult to examine objectively, even later on.

An approach which would make most atheists happy would be for schools to teach comparative religion: the beliefs, practices and known histories of all major religions (and as many minor ones as possible). Then it’s all in the open for the kids, and when they’re ready they can make their own decisions about what faith to identify with, if any.

One issue with comparative religion is impartiality. The person teaching it has to be very aware of his or her own bias in the matter. This also applies to the texts; there are plenty of books comparing religions, and some of them are better in this respect than others.
The Universe Next Door by James Sire is heavily biased towards Christianity and theism in general, which is why it’s used in a lot of Christian courses.
The Heathen’s Guide to World Religions by William Hopper is basically an atheist’s irreverent view of the different faiths. The difference from the above book is that this one doesn’t bother to claim impartiality. (It’s really very funny, so I can recommend this book for your own recreational reading.)
Our Religions takes an excellent approach from an educational perspective: the section on each religion is written by a scholar and adherent of that religion, so every faith featured can represent and defend itself.

Most atheists learn about religion, and in fact many of us were indoctrinated into various religions and denominations as children (including me – I sometimes refer to myself as a “cultural Catholic”). There’s no reason why the genuinely educational part of this shouldn’t continue into the foreseeable future, for as long as religion is so prominent in our daily lives. It would simply be nice to see religions compete with each other and with non-belief on a level playing field, letting people come to them with their eyes wide open.