The slow, whiny death of British Christianity

And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. Britain is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of us are non-believers, according to an ICM study, while 82 percent say religion is a cause of harmful division. Now, let us stand and sing our new national hymn: Jerusalem was dismantled here/ in England's green and pleasant land.

Now that only six percent of British people regularly attend a religious service, it's only natural that we should dismantle the massive amounts of tax money and state power that are automatically given to the religious to wield over the rest of us. It's a necessary process of building a secular state, where all citizens are free to make up their own minds. Yet the opposition to this sensible shift is becoming increasingly unhinged. The Church of England, bewildered by the British people choosing to leave their pews, has only one explanation: Christians are being "persecuted" and "bullied" by a movement motivated by "Christophobia." George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says Christians are now "second class citizens" and it is only "a small step" to "a religious bar on any employment by Christians".

Really? Let's list some of the ways in which Christians, and other religious groups, are given special privileges every day. Start with the educational system. Every school in Britain is required by law to make its pupils engage every day in "an act of collective worship of a wholly or mainly Christian nature". Yes: Britain is still a nation with enforced prayer. The religious are then handed total control of 36 percent of our state-funded schools, in which to indoctrinate children into their faith alone.

These religious schools, paid for by you and me, are disfiguring Britain. I know one reason I grew up without the prejudices of some of my older relatives was because I went to school with kids from every conceivable ethnic and religious group, and I could see they were just like me. A five year old will make friends with anyone, and he'll be much less likely to believe smears against those friends for the rest of their lives. But in Britain today, that mixing is happening less and less. Increasingly, the children of Christians are sent to one side, Jews to another, Muslims to another still, and they never see each other except from the window of their parents' cars. After the race riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley in 2001, the official investigations found that faith schools were a major cause.

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God in the classroom

"Do you believe in God, sir?" I imagine that this is a question that science teachers, like me, get asked far more often than, say, English or Geography teachers. I usually answer with a simple "no, I don't", but I recently answered this question by saying "what do you think?" to which the student replied he thought I was probably an atheist because I was a "scientist". He was right about me being an atheist, but I was an atheist long before I was any kind of "scientist".

My student needn't have been right – not all scientists or science teachers are atheists. I've worked alongside religious science teachers and some of the greatest contributions to the science have been made by people who believed in a god. There are some people who would say that there is no conflict between science and religion but young people brought up in religious homes are not necessarily taught this and a few will even have been taught to believe the opposite. I know that some of my own students are struggling to reconcile what they see as contradictory approaches to understanding the world. I suspect it's particularly difficult for those who enjoy science, and are good at it, but come from particularly religious families.

I'm a physics teacher and you might think that I get away without too much of this sort of conflict in my lessons. You might think it's mostly the biology teachers, the ones who have to teach the theory of evolution, who have to deal with the awkward situation of teaching something that flatly contradicts the religious beliefs of some of their students. But it's not. And it shouldn't be. The truth is that all science teachers must deal with the fact that, if they are teaching science properly, their lessons will necessarily challenge the religious beliefs of some of their students.

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School Board might OK teaching creationism

LIVINGSTON — The Livingston Parish School Board will begin exploring the possibility of incorporating the teaching of “creationism” in the public school system’s science classes.

During the board’s meeting Thursday, several board members expressed an interest in the teaching of creationism, an alternative to the study of the theory of evolution, in Livingston Parish public school classrooms.

The discussion came up during a report on the pupil progression plan for the 2010-11 school year, delivered by Jan Benton, director of curriculum.

Benton said that under provisions of the Science Education Act enacted last year by the Louisiana Legislature, schools can present what she termed “critical thinking and creationism” in science classes.

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"Biology, the Bible, and the First Amendment"

Genie Scott and Stephen Meyer square off at the First Amendment Center. For more about the First Amendment and related issues, visit www.firstamendmentcenter.org. Broadcast date: 2/17/1997

Selective creationists

Some interesting, if terrifying statistics from the Why Evolution Is True website.


This flashy graph has already been posted on Pharyngula, but I thought I’d echo P. Z.’s sentiments. This graph comes from a survey of high school biology teachers published in PLoS Biology in 2008 (download is free). The teachers were asked about their personal beliefs about human origins (click to enlarge):


Only a tad more than one in four teachers really accepts evolution as scientists conceive of it: a naturalistic process undirected by divine beings. Nearly one in two teachers thinks that humans evolved but that God guided the process.

Can we count those 48% of “guided-by-Godders” 0n our side? I agree with P. Z.: the answer is NO. Yes, they do accept that our species changed genetically over time, but they see God as having pulled the strings. That’s not the way evolution works. The graph labels these 48% as believers in intelligent design, and that’s exactly what they are, for they see God as nudging human evolution toward some preconceived goal. We’re designed. These people are creationists: selective creationists.

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