I know Daniel gets a little bit annoyed at me sometimes for being quite proud of my country’s secular ways, but I’m putting that down to jealousy over stories like this one:
“Answering questions from MPs on the Commons education select committee on Wednesday, Mr Gove [Michael Gove, UK Education Secretary] said: “One of the most striking things that I read recently was a thought from Richard Dawkins that he might want to take advantage of our education legislation to open a new school, which was set up on an explicitly atheist basis.”
It seems sometimes that the US and the UK, despite many cultural similarities [read: We're adopting big chunks of yours] have the exact opposite system of government when it comes to religion. To clarify: Ours is filled with pomp, tradition and religious ceremony and is even headed by the titular head of the Church of England – but in actual fact, religion has very little influence over us. We largely ignore it. On the other hand, the USA is explicitly secular by law, and yet you can’t seem to keep religion out of US politics with a crowbar.
Much as there are many things I really dislike about my own nation… Things like this make me happy and just a little bit smug :-)
Great Britain: The Greatest Country in the World.
To mangle an Al Murray quote:”This is GREAT Britain. GREAT. Not like those other countries. France? Not GREAT, is it?”
To be fair Dawkins never said he wants the school “explicitly Atheist” but rather more sceptical and inquiring. It wouldn’t prohibit religious thought I’d imagine.
They’d be no point making an explicitly atheist school in the UK as a considerable percentage are secular (I forget how many — maybe half).
It’s one of the odd things about UK schools, certainly when I was being educated (1985 to 1998); there were prayers and hymns in morning assembly, and in primary school we said prayers before every break [Note for Americans and other aliens: "Break" = "Recess"], but most of us were not religious in the slightest. It was just stuff that you did because you were supposed to do it.
My schooling was like that too – both primary and secondary. At primary school all the kids sang because, well, that’s what you were supposed to do. Kids were confused about what religion they were.
When we got to secondary school, everyone was simply atheist, and we mumbled and sighed our way through the monthly hymns. Except when they gave us ‘Jerusalem’. Everyone belted that out. It really has become an unofficial National Anthem. Ahh, the memories.
We used to sing especially hard if we could substitute dirty lyrics for the hymns. Particular favourites included songs about God’s “purple headed mountain”…
Ha, I like that.
I went to a London school with a large proportion of ethnic minorities there, so it was a bit different.
We had the atheists/agnostics/secularists and then the more vocal Christians and Muslims. So often times we’d have debates about religion every now and again. But in the end we all stayed friends.
The most hostility that ever arose is when I brought in a book called the Philosophy Gym which had a chapter suggesting a personal God doesn’t exist — some girl got offended when she accidentally read it. Another time was about two years ago in Sixth Form when I joined a group called “Fuck Jesus Christ” on FB. People saw that on my feed and got offended and confronted me, but not in an aggressive way. I explained my position, they didn’t like it, but they accepted it and we moved on. We’re all still very good friends.
I think most ethnic minority kids in Britain more or less become agnostic at the end of school life or by University. Any other religious displays are probably just for tradition or to keep community ties.
That’s kind of always been my impression as well. From what I’ve observed of the british culture (and I should clarify I’ve never actually been there in person), it seems that there is a lot of sentimental attachment to religious rituals but it seems like it is just the ritual they are interested in keeping up and that seems to be mostly out of tradition.
Over here people at large tend to take the whole thing a bit more seriously.
I think your assessment of Mr Gove is too high.
He sounds like he is being very critical of the idea as he misquotes Dawkins and uses the religiously charge word atheist rather then keeping it as the school where they teach reason and thinking.
I’ll believe it when I see it happen.
Ya, well…. you still have a monarchy! And your prince peddles homeopathy and he is a mushy headed ninny!
And your entire ‘country’ could fit inside Oregon!
So take THAT with your tea and biscuits.
Don’t you insult tea, friend – that’s just going too far!
Tea obviously rot the brain, there is no other explanation to the teacups taking Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin seriously.
The problem with the Teabaggers is obvious! TEABAGS! No true Brit uses teabags! One teaspoon of loose leaf tea per person plus one extra in the pot, add hot water and cover for a few minutes to steep. Omnomnomnom.
The Tea Party had nothing to do with drinking tea as it was thrown into the harbor. I would normally dislike being pedantic, but pointing this out, tea is not rotting the brain when used properly. Also, just for fun (not exactly SFW or NSFW, use your discretion if people are uptight and can see your monitor):
http://thecheeky.com/?p=10
So only when diluted to homeopathic strength (few crates in the atlantic) does tea become potent enough to rot brains.
And the monarch still officially has veto power and a tiebreaker vote in some major elections. And she is also officially the head of state of Canada.
The Queen is head of state only so long as she doesn’t do something incredibly stupid like try to exercise any power. If she does that, she’s gone. On the other hand, the armed forces swear loyalty to her, so if any but her appointed government (i.e. whoever won the last election) try to seize or retain power, she does have repsonsibility for getting the military to take the power back.
It really shouldn’t work – yet somehow it does.
I noticed a similar thing when I moved to Canada. The provincial/public universities here have seminaries or divinity schools where one can train for ministry and tax dollars support religious schools (you can determine if you want your property taxes to go toward the religious school or secular school in your neighbourhood). Here there is not an explicit separation of church and state. However, my Canadian friends and colleagues cannot fathom how a politician’s church attendance had anything to do with their ability to govern. And they do not understand why we “yanks” obsess over making such private matters public.
Listen. I think it’s time for a little friendly competition across the Atlantic. I don’t like when those Brits beat us at our own game (i.e., making the priests flee the advance of reason like witches fleeing daylight) so how about we set achievable short-term goals and make a game of it? I’m not sure which I dislike more, religion in government or losing to the English. And that’s saying something.
Man, you come from a nation that sucks so hard at international sports that you call the domestic league of your national sport the “World Series” for crying out loud!
We kick your ass and most other countries’ asses at the Olympics, so you shut your piehole about sucking at international sports. Also our baseball leagues are American and National. The championship is called the World Series, get yer terms straight, aight?
I dunno dude, we have a fifth of your population and a tiny fraction of the budget to spend on developing decent sports stars, so I reckon we hold our own :D World Series is still basically the USA though!
You just don’t have the drive. In fact, your drive is on the wrong side of the road. It so happens that the winners of the World Series are the best baseball team in the World. Can you argue that isn’t true?? Canada is allowed to play with us, but you play cricket, which is also the name of a bug.
(In case anyone brings up the story that the fall classic was originally sponsored by the New York World newspaper, it’s not true).
I dunno, apparently the Japanese have some pretty impressive teams these days. In fairness though, that two whole nations have the patience to do something as mind-numbingly dull as watch baseball is pretty impressive – at least in cricket they hit the bloody ball and there’s an occasional meteorite strike.
You won’t get an argument from me.
I’d rather watch *soccer* than baseball.
I will buy that baseball is pretty boring, but cricket is arguably the most boring event on Earth. Not only do people simply hit the ball and run back and forth in a straight line, but they do it for hours. Hitting the wicket is so difficult and rare that people can literally score one hundred runs before getting out. Just to slow things down, the ball is rolled along the ground instead of pitched like some sort of horrible combination of baseball and bowling. There is no real variation in strategy because every bowl is the same (no difference with men on base, no count, no real difference between early and late innings, etc.). You can’t even steal.
But all of that would be almost bearable if games didn’t last twelve years.
“It so happens that the winners of the World Series are the best baseball team in the World. Can you argue that isn’t true??”
Might that be because the better teams aren’t in the US (or Canada)? And they don’t bother to compete in a lower level competition.
No, I don’t think there is any debate about where the best baseball teams are located. Japan does field some decent teams, but their best players often go to the U.S., along with the best players from around the world.
I do think “World Series” is a dumb name, though.
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Meanwhile Australia doesn’t quite know where it stands, and the Religion card has been played an awful lot in the last week or so (we are in the middle of an election campaign). The Big issue being that our sitting Prime Minister (who gained leadership of her party a few weeks ago) is known to be an atheist.
The official position of the main opposition party (who’s leader is a stanch catholic, and former seminarian) has stated that personal religious views are beside the point. He’s even dis-endorsed a candidate for in Sydney for expressing radical (christian) religious views.
However this hasn’t stopped other members of his party from playing the religion card again and again. Sadly I have heard the phrase ‘Australia is a Christian Nation’ too many times in the last few days.
Where I live I expect no less then two candidates from religious parties to be on the local ballot paper.
‘Australia is a Christian Nation’
Oh no… not Australia too…! :(
They’ve been infected!
I thought Australia was a nation of tribal spiritualism. Clearly Crocodile Dundee lied to me.
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