The Irish Independent has a poll at the bottom of their main page: “Are you in support of the Catholic Church retaining its key role in Irish schools?” It’s very evenly split, 49% yes, 51% no, which represents some solid opposition already. I had no idea that the church controlled 90% of the primary schools in Ireland, but it’s a good sign that the church seems to be interested in reducing its authority.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I am not surprised at the un-hyjacked poll results.
45% Y
55% N
now 42% Y, 58% N.
Onward, rampaging godless hordes!
I dunno… I guess I’m a bit more concerned with what’s happening in Maine at the moment. Having a bunch of non-Irish people responding to a poll from a newspaper in Ireland doesn’t seem like something that would accomplish all that much.
Who in their right mind would want an organization guilty of covering up rampant child abuse involved in your child’s education?
Apparently Guinness is cutting production in Ireland, resulting in expected layoffs in the next few years.
Without Catholicism and Guinness will Ireland even be recognizable? So many Irish jokes will cease to exist.
Heh, some of us are Irish (that’s the magic of the internet!)
Frankly, I don’t see not – its a newspaper poll, not one that the Church will take too seriously if they don’t want too. But it might raise awareness among undecided Irish if they see that a lot of folk are against the idea of a huge corrupt religious institution retaining a stranglehold on children’s education.
My part of the world, thanks for the heads-up PZ.
It might not accomplish much, but it does make me laugh at the jolt it’ll give to the smug folk who always harp on about how Irish parents want Catholic run schools.
And trust me, if the poll ended vastly in favour of continued church interference, the smug would use that to argue their case.
If I’m 25% Irish, is it OK? On the other hand, the Irish haven’t really influenced things here in Boston. Perhaps I shouldn’t interfere…
Y’know, I’m not so sure that some amount of religious education is all bad. By that I mean education about religion, not indoctrination. Some of the worst lackwit fundies I have met were never brought up with the fairy tales, and so they never realize how silly the whole thing is.
I mean, if you’re brought up to believe that the entire world was covered in water after a 40 day rainstorm, that the whole thing was poofed into existence in 6 days…..
Well sooner or later an intelligent person figures out that it’s just plain implausible.
34% Y
66% N
Now at
Yes 33%
No 67%
The godless outnumber the godmore 2 to 1!
Yeah – controlled by the Church, but subsidised by public money.
I’d be more than happy to strip all control of schools from the bishops, though I’m pretty sure that’s not the answer they’re looking for with that little letter of theirs.
They probably want everyone to squeal – “No! No! We can’t imagine an education system that’s not run by the Church”.
I’d love if the answer was: “Great, buh-bye! Say hi to cultural irrelevance for me”.
Sadly, that’s unlikely, but a boy can dream.
I just voted, now it’s:
71% Yes
29% No
I think it’s been well and truly Pharyngulated.
Having both attended and taught in Church controlled schools here in Ireland I welcome the reduction of their role. However in practical terms this all happened 20 years ago. The huge reduction in vocations caused a huge decrease in the number of actual priests, brothers or nuns in teaching positions and in the last 5 years there have been none in any school I attended or taught in. The last vestige of control was on the school board which is what the recent news concerning the Christian Brother’s schools was referring to. My memories of primary education are not particularly pleasant regarding church involvemnt, but after that it faded away and during my teaching years was mostly irelevant – but it’s still good news.
78% no…
nice to know we have an effect
Speaking of Ireland, at the end of the film “Deliver Us from Evil”
the priest who was a child molester (O’Grady) was shown living in Ireland. I’ve wondered what has happened with this. Is he still there? Alive? With no surveillance?
27% want church involvement
73% do not.
i think it was my vote that made the difference.
I feel like less of a brat for voting on this one seeing as I am Irish!
I’m an Irish citizen.
Y’know, I’m still pretty sore about getting banned from a well-known secular-humanist site for insulting Catholicism. Hey, I only called Catholics ‘nasty little people’. (http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/04/15/expelled-exposed/)
I actually went to an Irish school (for a time) and had to endure a Catholic priest give us lectures about the mathematical impossibility of evolution.
People don’t realize how strong the Catholic’s influence is in political matters in Catholic countries. They influence the government at every level and lobby at every turn when the government shows even the slightest inclination to modernize.
Catholics talk a pretty talk about reconciling themselves to evolution, but if you spend any time at all researching their views you will find out that they don’t believe in it any more than the average member of the DI institute. (Essentially, Catholics believe that whilst evolution occurred, God still did all the important things like implanting souls, and He also had to guide the whole process.)
I’m going to quickly jump in here and say that I’ve got a poll up at my blog (shameless plug) about the geographic origins of Pharyngula readers. Will you use your poll crashing powers for good, or for awesome?
Well, I am not Irish, but I live in Ireland. My taxes help subsidize this horrendous catholic-fool-maker machine. So my vote means something.
BaldApe @#11
“Y’know, I’m not so sure that some amount of religious education is all bad. By that I mean education about religion, not indoctrination.”
My daughter teaches (UK) at Primary level – ages 5 to 7.
She has had children in her classes who between them represent 10 different faiths. The last Conservative government (Thatcher 1980’s) dictated there should be ‘some act of Christian worship’ in school each day. This can only work in a Christian school.
In schools like the one my daughter teaches in the children learn about each other’s faiths and gain some understanding about people different from themselves . Comparative religion for 5 year olds usually means celebrating big festivals, like Christmas, Eed, Duvali, or Passover. There’s lots of dressing up and food and everyone has a good time.
This is far from indoctrination (my daughter is an atheist) but allows even the smallest children to learn something about their neighbour’s culture and beliefs.
It is interesting that the only family who ever objected to their children participating in these celebrations was an American Baptist preacher on an exchange visit. It was pointed out to him that his children would miss out on the rich complexity of life in a multi-cultural environment. His reply? “That’s the way I like it ma’am”. (They were home-schooled after 3 days)
So I think this sort of religious education is actually beneficial to society as it demystifies and makes accessible things in other people’s lives which can seem strange and threatening. It enables debate about the existence of ‘one true god’ too when children grow up knowing about the many gods their friends espouse.
It can also initiate questioning of fundamentalist dogma from a very young age if a child can see there is more to religion than the narrow mind of the Baptist preacher dad would allow.
Our schools in France used to be run by the catholic church until 1905. That all changed in one election.
Hey, Ireland, we’re in 2008, why let your Children’s education be dictated by a small group of senile perverts who never understood what to do with their penises, are sitting in a conclave thousands of miles away, and still believe that the ancient mores of a tiny group of goat hearders should be used as a reference guide ?
I don’t understand that. Ireland is a mystery, an exception. It’s the only country amongst the top 10 bext nations according to the human deveoplment index (HDI) which has such a ridiculously small % of non believers (less than 10%). And with only one dominant religion.
And it’s a tough one, because there aren’t any of the usual wackaloons, televangelists, creationists crazies like in the US to complain about.
It’s almost as if the catholic church is part of the definition of irishness, a natural defense mechanism against those bloody brits.
Does religion in this case have to do with enforcing some deeply rooted tribal instincts ?
Uh, yes. The ‘troubles’ (euphemism for kids killing other kids) in Northern Ireland were at root a Catholic vs Protestant divide.
The Irish believe themselves to be a persecuted race, and Catholicism plays into these feelings at every level.
BTW, and particularly germane to this discussion- the continuing subdivision of kids into Catholic and Protestant schools in Northern Ireland is perhaps the single biggest reason why enmity has lasted so long between these groups.
Here, here.
Might I add that one of the reasons why the Chruch has been so important in Irish primary education is that many primary school would not have existed without the additional financial support of the Church.
That said, it is time for the church to move on. For people to move on.
“Uh, yes. The ‘troubles’ (euphemism for kids killing other kids) in Northern Ireland were at root a Catholic vs Protestant divide.”
As an Irish person living in Ireland this stuff really annoys me. The Catholic v Protestant divide is only a small part of the issue in Northern Ireland and one now that is increasingly irrelevant following the peace process. It is, as it always is, about power. Segregated schools are still the norm in NI but that is changing as the political situation improves and matures.
“The Irish believe themselves to be a persecuted race, and Catholicism plays into these feelings at every level.”
Aaaaaaaaaaaargh! No we don’t. It’s usually other people who go on about this. We were a colonised country but have been a republic since 1922! Until the foundation of the State and then the Republic, Catholicism was, amongst other things, a means of finding social and historical identity in a colonial setting.
The system of primary and post primary education in Ireland is a hangover from the 1920s and 30s when the Republic was defining itself (many of the men who were involved in the foundation of the sate were scholars and of course the great monastic tradition of scholarship was part of the romantic identity of Ireland). It means little now. The curriculum is a state curriculum and teachers are paid by the state. Boards of management may include members of the clergy or religious orders but there are few who are teachers any more.
I’m not going to vote. It’s better to have a realistic poll answered mainly by the people who live there.
Kate:
The Irish don’t believe themselves to be persecuted?
Gee. Could have fooled me.
How about the gazillions of Irish folk-songs and pop-songs which ‘celebrate’ their persecution and oppression?
What about all the sickly sentimental Catholic/Irish murals in NI which depict events such as the potato famine, which are part of Irish iconography ? (e.g. http://peacelinetours.g2gm.com/murals.html)
It’s an enshrined part of Irish culture to feel persecuted, and you know it! (The Scottish are just as bad.)
Oh, and as to your contention that Catholics have a negligable influence on education in Ireland- a 3 second Google search turns up
http://www.ireland-fun-facts.com/irish-laws.html
Or, a recent BBC news article about schools in NI:
Or how about this page?
http://www.movetoireland.com/movepag/schover.htm
20% no
80% yes
Well that about does it. Now we can all sit back and watch as the results roll through Ireland irreversibly changing the school systems. It feels good doesn’t it?
Woopsie doo.
It should have been:
20% yes (More church)
80% no (less church)
Pheew, that was close.
I don’t know why some of you are so squeamish about crashing these polls. Don’t most of them sport the discalimer “for entertainment purposes only”? Well I’m sure entertained when I voice my opinion. As to those who excuse themselves because it’s “not in their neighborhood”, it’s the Internet! Do you avoid going to sites because they are created by someone in another country (or even Minnesota). There are no borders here. All of these issues affect us to some degree. Speak up! Even if it’s by crashing some poll over idiotic behavior done in the name of psychosis and delusion.
Christianjb
‘How about the gazillions of Irish folk-songs and pop-songs which ‘celebrate’ their persecution and oppression?’
Irish folk songs and folk culture speak to their times as all folk culture does, it’s part of the function of folk culture. There is as much dance/fun music in the folk tradition as there are ballads. Most of the persistent current guff about persecution and opression comes from Irish Americans and it’s really annoying.
‘What about all the sickly sentimental Catholic/Irish murals in NI which depict events such as the potato famine, which are part of Irish iconography ?’
The murals in NI aren’t religous, they’re political along unionist and nationalist lines.
The potato famine cast a long historical shadow. The peasant population was halved (from 8 million to 4 million) through starvation and immigration. Its causes were complex (not just potato blight) and effects were staggering. The only thing that can be done when historical events are (mis)appropriated for a particular cause is to try to stick to the facts. Those murals are as alien to me as they are to you. The don’t speak to me or represent me. Also, don’t confuse NI and RoI, they are two distinct political entities and what happens in one is not neccessarily reflective of what happens in the other.
As for the effects of the Catholic Church on the education of young people, all you have to do is look at the number of young people attending church. My larger point is that the church does not control the content of the curriculum. I’ve been through it, taking maths, biology, music, English, Irish, French and geography as my Leaving Certificate subjects in the late 80s before I went to university. They were taught straight up, no nonsense about God and evolution for instance.
I don’t think that the role the church has played in Irish education is benign, neither is completely malign. My point was that the situation came out of its historical context and is changing, not least because we have become an immigrant country, no longer an emmigrant one. We are also still a young nation, where my generation is probably the first one without direct connections to the foundation of the State and the Civil War, both critical events in the formation of the constitution and the policies that originally drove the nascent state. We still have plenty to do to make Ireland a better country for her citizens but we will do that through our political system, not through the church.
‘The potato famine … through starvation and immigration.’
Should be ’emmigration’, sorry. Kate
Kate:
I couldn’t agree more.
I have children attending a Catholic Primary school in Ireland. In all I’m very happy about the standard of education the children are recieving, as a fairly hardcore atheist, I get slightly uneasy hearing about school prayer, and visits by the priest, but I am also very confident in my childrens ability to filter their information sources, it certainly wont hurt them to be exposed to some other types of thinking.
Having experienced the education systems in many different countries I can say without a doubt that France has the best equipped schools, and generally quite secular, but the teachers in Ireland, New Zealand seem to be alot more relaxed and friendly.
Christianjb wrote:
Utter horse shit. I was raised Catholic. My entire family is Catholic. I attended Catholic schools for 16 years. Most of my closest personal acquaintances are Catholic. Some of these are real right-wing Opus-Dei/John Bircher types. Out of all of the Catholics I have ever met, I can think of only ONE who might have doubted the reality of evolution.
One. Maybe.
Kate: As I said, I also experienced the Irish educational system. I’m also an Irish national, except currently I’m living in the US.
As I said, I was taught creationism at an Irish state school, by a Catholic (~1985). I can’t claim that this is a universal truth, but it’s my experience that the Catholics are actually pretty powerful in Irish schools, up to the present day.
Oh- and I know the diff. between RoI and NI of course, but the NI Catholics do mostly self-identify as Irish (at least culturally).
Of course, there’s a misty eyed sentimentality about Ireland from US descendants of Irish ancestors, but I was referring to how actual Irish people perceive themselves. I guess it’s my word against yours, but I don’t think I’m making it entirely up when I characterize the Irish as (on occasion) wallowing in romantic notions of being ‘oppressed’ and ‘persecuted’. It’s been my experience that this is a part of Irish culture. (Oh, and Irish folk music is almost singularly obsessed with alcohol, persecution, death and murder- which is why I like it.)
Oh, and I should add that throughout history there were times when Irish people had good reason to feel oppressed- because they were being oppressed. What I’m referring to is the celebration (rightly or wrongly) in modern times of Irish suffering from days of yore. For instance, I can think of a few modern Irish songs which reference Oliver Cromwell. It’s hard to think of any modern British songwriters who write about battles from centuries ago. (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.)
Well, let’s see if any other Irish people want to weigh in on these points. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks this! Hopefully I can offend more of my countrymen.
Forget Ireland. Let’s take on Maine.
Chuck C:
Ooohhh! I like this topic!
Catholics teach that evolution does not explain our human ‘inner being’. They specifically teach that God is responsible for implanting humans with souls. Otherwise we would be little more than automatons, or animals without a consciousness.
I’m not an expert on Catholicism, but everything I’ve read from official statements made by various Popes, shows that Catholics don’t really believe that evolution is enough to get us from single-celled organisms to human beings.
There’s a lot of waffle about the ‘guiding hand’ of God at certain stages in our evolution.
For instance: from ‘catholic.com’ (!)
http://www.catholic.com/library/adam_eve_and_evolution.asp
Of course, your milage may vary, and I’m aware that individual Catholics may differ from their church’s teachings on the almighty implanting souls etc. However, the above quote seems to be based on official church statements.
As always, I’m willing to be proven wrong. If anyone can show me official statements to the extent that Catholics believe that evolution is entirely sufficient to explain human origins (without any interference from God) then please let me know.
Also, I’ll repeat that I’m well aware that Catholics *say* they believe in evolution. I’m not disputing that- I’m just calling them liars!
Please please join in! It’s not just that the Catholic Church has such a controlling interest in education it is that the State relies on it to be so. We have no separation of Church and State in schools. Heck we don’t even have a majority of co-ed schools below third level. All voices of reason gratefully accepted – although that might be a bit alien to the ‘Indo’
I wonder if there’s any chance there are more atheist readers of Pharyngula than there are Catholics in Ireland?
Christianjb, go say three our fathers and a decade of the rosary and all will be forgiven!
The poll is from the Irish Independent, a newspaper that about a year ago ran several articles denouncing evolution and promoting creationism, all prompted by one of their columnists receiving a copy of Yahyas’ atlas of creation in the post!
I have to agree with ChristianJb. In fact I would go further. The degree of sycophantic sucking up by the Irish Government to the Catholic church is sickening. Many of those from other countries probably don’t realize that compensation for church sexual abuse of children comes not from church funds but from general taxpayers (of all religions) due to a disgraceful decision by the government trying to financially protect the catholic church. The taxpayers in turn seem quite OK with the situation and voted the government back into office in the following general election. Molesting small children may be one thing to Irish catholics but heaven protect their property values.
sammy wol:
“Please please join in! It’s not just that the Catholic Church has such a controlling interest in education it is that the State relies on it to be so.”
Historically yes. In the early day’s of the state it was only through the financial muscle of the church that many schools were founded but now all schools are state funded and all curricula are determined by the state. The trend in
Irish education has been strongly against the catholic church (whoopee!) in the last 20 years and is only getting stronger. The recent announcement by the christian brothers regarding their withdrall from our education system is just spin. They no longer have the numbers (having close to zero vocations) or the finances to continue, so they’re pretending they’ve come over all caring and modern. In reality they have for all intents and purposes been irrelevant in the education system for at least 10 if not 20 years. They still like to make some noise but “it’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing”.
Just ask my lovely (atheists all) nephews and nieces!
Christianjb (#41) charged,
So, you’re arguing against the idea because they don’t explicitely say anything about ‘origins’?
Are you expecting Catholics to conflate evolution with abiogenesis or something?
It’s certainly not representative and the priest was doing a solo run. He would probably have been in trouble with the DoE inspectors and his bishop if it was known that he had done this. I was in 4 different primary/secondary schools in 3 counties in the 80’s and I was never once taught creationism of any kind. Your story is the first time I’ve ever even heard of anyone being taught creationism in an Irish school. If anyone had taught YEC in my religious-run secondary school (late 80’s), the parents would’ve showed up with torches and pitchforks and the brothers and priests would’ve lit & sharpened them.
AFAICT, the vast majority of people of my generation got the wishy-washy “God is love” bollocks and don’t know the first thing about Church dogma, and laugh their asses off at the bits they do know. I reckon that 90% of Irish Catholics are latae sententiae excommunicated and fewer than 1% would even know what that means. From what I remember of religion class, it was very banal, watered-down Catechism, a few “nice” extracts from the NT, then, later on, a lot of discussion about social, ethical, and moral issues, but I don’t remember The Church Line(TM) on any of these ever being presented as The Truth(TM). Maybe I was just lucky, but it was treated as something to be considered critically.
I still remember the howls of laughter and derision suffered by a poor unfortunate thirty-something female religion teacher explaining the Church teaching that masturbation is sinful to a large mixed class. I’ll never forget one wag saying “Miss, what am I supposed to do? Go to bed with handcuffs on?” The general consensus was that this element of Church teaching was “a load of bollocks”. I’ve no evidence for it, but I think most Irish people who self-identify as Catholic have an “a la carte” attitude to Church teaching, and the Church hasn’t really discouraged it: half a believer is better than no congregation.
Still, I welcome anything to further the removal of religion from schools, although I definitely favour teaching about religion in the way advocated by Dennett and Dawkins.
There was a similar discussion with Dawkins taking part on the situation in the UK (he had the video on his site).
It is almost comical how the proponents of Church schools will insist that absolutely nothing in a Catholic school or a CoE school has anything to do with religion. They claim that there is no difference to a secular curriculum and there is no form of segregation when non-religious students learn there even though they don’t take part in prayer etc.
So why do they need Church schools if they insist that they are indistinguishable from secular ones?
P.S. The Catholic church is a worldwide operation and all its power bases help it fund and sustain its operations in other parts of the world. That makes everyone an interested party that could vote in this poll.
Oh yes, many’s the afternoon in which the kindly Mrs. Egan taught us about Saint Brigid, Saint Patrick and Saint Colmcille and all their miracles in the old schoolhouse. Lovely memories.
I’m an infidel myself, but the Irish education system is quite broad and quite effective, if a little underfunded. The government are taking the ecological approach, that is not to rock the boat in case there will be unforseen consequences.
I think a few commenters are mixing up NI and Ireland – different education systems.
The church talking about pulling back in education is just lip-service – at the same time they’re trying to dictate staffing in new state run schools when they have no right to.
The education they provide in primary schools isn’t religious education – it’s religious instruction, and IMO there’s a big difference.
The Educate Together schools in Ireland provide the best alternative, but it costs money to establish and run schools, and the funding provided by the state doesn’t cover it. School buildings are often church owned, but the church won’t sign them over to the state to be run and managed on a non-denominational basis.
The Indo’s hardly a shining light of journalism though – doubt they’ll do anything with the poll.
Did anyone else notice the irony of the bar graph that shows the Yes votes in orange and the No votes in green?
84% “no” after I voted.
Before I post this, I just want to say, I don’t much care for Catholicism on a whole variety of grounds; all I’m saying is that this argument is ill-formed, and I (like so many of us here) have a bad case of SIWOTI syndrome.
Christianjb:
Okay. So your complaint here seems to be twofold: one about the phrase ‘under God’s guidance’, and the other about ‘special creation of his soul’.
If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient god, by definition everything occurs ‘under God’s guidance’ (all things must be as god wills, since if he willed them another way, they would be another way). So if you accept the existence of such a deity, all the phenomena that science describes are ‘under God’s guidance’. It’s a metaphysical property. Since science deals only with physical properties, this is clearly the Catholic church sticking to its purview, describing metaphysical properties, and letting us get on with ours.
The other objection is similar, in that the objection is that the church demands a metaphysical origin for a metaphysical object, the soul. Again, it concedes (at least, according to the passage quoted) that physical causes are sufficient to create all the physical parts of humans.
The REAL objection, of course, seems to stem from misinterpreting the intent of the passage. The doctrine is not intended as an argument for belief in the Catholic god; the argument–the ONLY argument, so far as I’m aware–for belief in the Catholic god goes, “The Catholic god is real and will send you to hell if you don’t worship him properly.” If you accept that premise–and that “Therefore you must believe in and worship the Catholic god” follows–then what you’re looking for is a way to believe the evidence of your reason without simultaneously going to hell. This is the purpose of much of Catholicism’s doctrine on topics of science, including this one.
“Physical causes are sufficient to explain all physical properties” really seems like the best you’re going to get from someone who insists on the existence of nonphysical properties.
Now, you could argue with statements about what properties a human without a soul would have, but you haven’t exhibited any.
You know you can never link to another poll again without having your godless minions hijacking it. It’s up to 84% No. XD
#51 beat me to it, but it is rather strange to use the orange and the green in that order, bearing in mind that the Irish Tricolore has Green for the Catholics, Orange for the Protestants, and white in the middle – in theory to symbolise peace and cooperation between the two, but you could see it as a yawning gulf between them, or as the people trapped between who’ve gone white with fear…
@Matt A
you could see it as a yawning gulf between them, or as the people trapped between who’ve gone white with fear
You have lost me. What are you talking about?
BTW, I am an atheist, but I attended Catholic schools in Ireland from ’71 to ’85. I went from a convent, to a school run by a monastic order and finally a school run my priests, and I wouldn’t change any of it. I consider myself lucky to have had a great education.
ChristianJb #41,
Well I think their position is that it is sufficient to explain the evolution from single-celled to humans on the material side, but they also believe that an immaterial soul is required. How the two are supposed to be related is of course a complete mistery. Doctrine on this matter is vague. Only humans seem to be in need of a soul to function, what it does for them exactly is unclear, it is supposed to be specially created by God in an unique way at a moment of his convenience.
Also, they believe that in the course of time God has had to intervene, by rare supernatural acts, to carry out his purpose. How that is supposed to work is also a complete mistery. Doctrine on this matter is vague.
So, the church does indeed believe in the reality of Evolution with all its key implications, common descent, natural selection, …, but when you say ;
… this is of course not going to happen.
My Grandmothers maiden name is Fitzpatrick – I reckon I’m eligible to vote!
Incoming!
How the two are supposed to be related is of course a complete mistery.
and of course will remain so, given the attempt to mangle make-believe into reality.
not to say there aren’t those who would try anyway, like say, Francis Collins with his “Moral Law” argument, or Michael Egnor’s dualistic arguments.
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Theistic.cfm
Hey All,
I live in Ireland, haven’t read the Independant in the last while, didn’t know it was still that many. Its still a load of shite though, most of the people I know outgrew religion in their teens when they noticed the wider world.
Padraic
Coupla comments…
First, remember this from a couple of months ago?
http://catholic.ie/
If you didn’t go then, go now. It’s still fun.
Second, further up the comment string, somebody made or remarked that they had heard the argument made that, aside from the specifically religious part of school, there was no difference between a Catholic education and a secular education.
Uh… No.
I spent several years in a Catholic school in the USA and I can attest that the Church would happily insert its agenda into every place it could. For example, I can remember arithmetic problems about finding the price of rosary beads given the price from the wholesaler and the fact that ten percent of the money coming in was to be sent to Catholic missions engaged in saving pagan babies.
Our geography book, whenever it had a chapter about a third-world country, would concentrate on the good job Catholic missions were doing in helping the people of that country.
In one of our history books there was mention of Catholics in US history, far out of proportion to their actual importance. If a Catholic was involved in anything, that Catholic’s name was featured prominently in any discussions. Sometimes, it looked as if Charles Carroll of Carrollton won the Revolutionary War all by himself.
There was, however, an ambiguous silence about the religions of the other Founding Fathers. For example, the book showed a woodcut of a praying George Washington without ever mentioning either his religion or lack of it. I did not realize that Washington was a non-Catholic until I was thirteen years old.
The school was also hazy about religious freedom. They were for it, of course, but they were not willing to give some non-Catholics credit for being in favor of it. For example, our books would say favorable things about William Penn but were not happy with Roger Williams. This is all the more interesting since this school was in Rhode Island and Roger Williams is usually recognized as being one of the first of this nation’s founders who promoted freedom of worship.
Science was taught funny. In six years in that school, I can only remember three or four science lessons. Looking back, I can’t say that I am surprised. Usually, the nuns would take a verbal swipe at some scientist along the way because scientists were supposed to be atheists. (In my case, they turned out to be right.) Louis Pasteur, a French Catholic, was a happy exception.
Whenever the topic of the USSR came up – this was in the fifties – the nuns would go off on a rant about how the Russians were godless commies as if atheism was the very, very worst part of the USSR. They would also take a swipe at scientists in this context since scientists were atheists and communists were atheists so they had to go together, right?
Ok. The point of this is that a Catholic education is not limited to catechism. The Church will sneak its propaganda into any other subject it can.
Finally, I am an Irish-American and proud of it. I love the music and dancing and all of the jokes and smart Aleck comments Irishmen come out with. Yeah, the English treated the Irish badly but they have been gone from most of Ireland for over eighty years and I can’t hold a grudge that long. Therefore, I am in favor of anything that can be done to get the Church out of priest-ridden Ireland.
Crash that poll.
Ichthyic,
talking of Collins, did you see this presntation he did at the Veritas forum :
I’m not sure if it was discussed on Pharyngula. Do you know ?
I think he has improved some of his points from the language of God.
As creationism dissapears (I can’t imagine it will survive much longer), I think this is going to represent the main line of defense of theism vs atheism.
Yeah, Ireland is pretty loving fucked up. I’m Irish, and I can’t even defend the somewhere that Catholic. It took Ireland until like 1980 to legalize divorce and 1990-something to legalize condoms. I might have those mixed up though.
@negentropyeater:
I’m not sure if it was discussed on Pharyngula. Do you know ?
not sure, but many things Collins has said since he published his book have been.
like for example, some of the the things he said during his interview with Time he shared with Dawkins:
COLLINS: By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time. Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.
and:
COLLINS: My God is not improbable to me. He has no need of a creation story for himself or to be fine-tuned by something else. God is the answer to all of those “How must it have come to be” questions.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/11/time_bobbles_the_god_and_scien.php
Is that the kind of “refinement” you speak of?
I rarely pay any attention to anything Collins has to say anymore.
I think this was the last time anything Collins had to say was visited by PZ:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/01/i_endorse_francis_collins_for.php
The problem with Collins, is that he summarily dismisses entire fields of endeavor, like animal behavior, and thus creating artificial gaps for his idea of god to fit in.
Collins should be dropped like a bad habit as an example of someone who has “successfully” reconciled science and faith.
(not that I actually think there are any, but some have certainly been able to compartmentalize well enough).
…actually, I tried watching that vid you linked to, but after 5 minutes of listening to Collins, I didn’t hear anything new.
perhaps you could summarize what the changes to his arguments have been?
PatF? I suspect you made up most of that little screed. I went to a Catholic all male high school. While the segregation was pretty dumb on my part, the education was first-rate, including the science lessons. When I got to college level science classes, the high school prep was as good as anyone else’s groundwork.
There’s plenty wrong with a faith that tells you humans are made in his image and then springs things like Down syndrome or ML4 or any other genetic defect om unsuspecting parents. And then you’re supposed to believe she knows what she’s doing!
Hey- there are plenty of reasons to be proud of being Irish, and I’m not only referring to the largest per-capita consumption of alcohol and tea in the world.
Catholicism aside, the Irish are a pretty decent lot. We’ve got some of the best music and literature in the world (and Daniel O’Donnel’s songs combine both).
Also, last time I looked, Ireland has the oldest most out of shape and underfunded military in Europe. I’m proud of that!
Tom M@#66
“I suspect you made up most of that little screed.”
Thank you for calling me a liar. It’s always a pleasure to hear from a person who knows neither me nor my background and yet is content to wave his hands and airily dismiss it as a fantasy.
I assure you everything I wrote was true. The arithmetic problems existed and so did the books. The rants against communism were real and so was the lack of science. Unless you went to school in 1950’s Rhode Island, you would not know what I saw.
I will not return the favor and question your integrity. I will simply ignore anything you ever write again.
@#66 Tom M —
Because all Catholic schools are and always have been exactly the same; your experience certainly generalizes perfectly to PatF’s. I can see that your school gave you a truly first-rate education on logic and rhetoric….
…there’s another thing that really bugs me about the whole Francis Collins issue.
How many times has he been invited to speak, where it was JUST to speak on his knowledge of the human genome project, and the results (which comprised the bulk of his book, btw), vs. how many times he’s been invited to speak because someone wants him to espouse his idiotic religious ideology and how it’s “compatible” with science?
seriously, after he published that book, the interest in hearing him talk about the actual science (that he DOES know a lot about) dropped to near zero.
sad, but I rather think Collins knew that would be the result when he wrote the book.
the last desperate act of the religious in academia is apparently to resurrect NOMA as some sort of mythical wall to protect themselves.
@#70 Ichthyic —
But of course, NOMA is really just compartmentalization codified with a fancy title…
@ ShemandShaun
“You have lost me. What are you talking about?”
I’m talking about the history of sectarian violence in Ireland. I’ll freely admit that things have cooled right off there over the last decade or so, and indeed that I had a lovely time when I visited Dublin this year, but that isn’t going to wipe out the impressions I’m still carrying around from my childhood, when it seemed as if the IRA were blowing something up (or being narrowly prevented from doing so) every other week*. At the time, I was a Christian, and thus convinced that all that had nothing to do with religion, but these days I tend to side with the argument that if you want good people to do bad things, religion is a good place to start…
Perhaps coincidentally, I am also an atheist who attended a Christian school, and I also think I got a good education out of it.
* Obviously it wasn’t anywhere near that frequently in reality. But ask those who are growing up today in ten years time, and they’ll probably have the same sort of instinctive reaction to Al Qaeda that I do to the IRA / UVF / etcetera…
Dammit. I hate this sort of synchronicity.
I went to convent primary and secondary schools in Northern Ireland. The education system there is separate from that in the Republic. In my school, there was loads of praying, time spent preparing for sacraments, masses, and daily religion classes. The science education I received was fairly good; excellent biology but crap physics and chemistry. Religion was not ever brought into science lessons and evolution was absolutely accepted. The message was more that god wrote the equations and set it all into motion, but how that happened is a mystery. (They were big on mysteries in my school!)
It’s partially a relic of our colonial history that the Catholic church has such a stranglehold on education in Ireland, north and south. But although they may once have served a useful purpose in providing an education to children who otherwise would have remained untaught, they are no longer needed and the state must take control of the schools.
In the North, the separation of children in different schools is exacerbating the political mess.
But of course, NOMA is really just compartmentalization codified with a fancy title…
*bing*
…which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with education in state schools in Ireland today.
…which was almost entirely confined to NI. The last sectarian violence to speak of in the Republic was the Dublin & Monaghan Bombings in 1974. Even during the height of the troubles in NI, you were far more likely to die in a car accident than in a bombing. Anyone who lived in fear of sectarian violence in the Republic would have to have been some kind of paranoid loon.
More, I’d say. Not to mention the fact that most ballads are about emigration, loss, and reminiscence. Even when “persecution” is mentioned in some way, as in, say, “The Fields of Athenry”, to interpret it as the central theme, rather than as a hook to hang the usual themes on, is to kinda miss the point.
You’ve got those backwards and off by 5 years. The successful divorce referendum was in 1995. Condoms were made available without prescription in 1985.
To be fair, though, we did remove the “special position” of the Church from the Constitution in 1973, something many more progressive countries didn’t get around to for nearly 30 years: the Church of Sweden wasn’t formally disestablished until 2000.