Underpinnings
The Sydney Anglican diocese is pissed off because students who have the option are ditching classes in “scripture” to take ethics classes instead. The Sydney Anglican diocese seems to consider this some kind of violation of nature and of its property rights in the children of New South Wales.
The controversial trial of secular ethics classes has ”decimated” Protestant scripture classes in the 10 NSW schools where it has been introduced as an alternative for non-religious children, with the classes losing about 47 per cent of enrolled students.
The figure was calculated by the Sydney Anglican diocese, which is so concerned about the trial that it has created a fund-raising website to ”protect SRE” (special religious education). The website says the values underpinning ”Australia’s moral framework” are under threat…
”If we lose religious education, we risk losing true, fundamental ‘ethics’ that have underpinned Australia’s moral framework for hundreds of years,” the website says.
Well, no; more likely, you “risk” losing false, misleading, often bad underpinnings and replacing them with better thinking. Australia’s moral framework for hundreds of years, by the way, has been as limited and often ruthless as anyone else’s; it stands shoulder to shoulder with the US in its not altogether praiseworthy treatment of its indigenous population. The Anglican church didn’t prevent that, after all, so why should anyone believe it has some pipeline to better “underpinnings”?
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I would say this is a case of “the pot calling the kettle black”, but in this case it is the “pot calling the sparkling-clean, see-through, glass kettle black”.
A very appropriate use of the single quote. ‘Ethics’ indeed.
Very encouraging news indeed,let’s hope that the virus spreads rapidly.The introduction of ethics classes is about 100 years late.
Most believers seem to assume that a system of ethics is impossible without some god or other to enforce compliance with threats of punishment in the afterlife.
I’m not sure to what extent Western societies are underpinned by ‘Christian’ morality anyway.
Thankfully, the Anglican diocese of Sydney, and its vile Archbishop Peter Jensen, aren’t nearly as influential as some media reporting suggests. In recent years Jensen has lost far more battles than he has won. In fact, as the most vocal Anglican in Australia, Jensen is doing more to undermine the reputation of his church for tolerance and intellectual curiosity than anyone else I can think of. This ethics-class insanity is just the latest. He was responsible for the worst of those bizarre atheist-bashing Easter sermons: he played the Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot card, and claimed that atheism is “a form of idolatry in which we worship ourselves”. In recent years he has built an alliance with the theocrats of Africa’s Global South – men like Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria who have fought vehemently to maintain and strengthen criminal sanctions against homosexuals and their sympathizers. Like I said, vile… but thankfully also increasingly impotent.
It’s almost criminal that the two things we don’t teach to all public school children are evolution and ethics. For one thing, it’s really easy to explain ethics from an evolutionary perspective to children. For another, well… are there two subjects which are more indispensable in the conversation about what it means to be human? I can’t think of any.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we seem to have this pervasive fear that if we don’t teach ethics by rote, we’ll somehow plunge society into anarchy.
Either decimated or down 47% – can’t be both.
Chris you don’t seriously expect people to start using “decimate” to mean what it says at this late date do you?! You might as well expect them to use “literally” to mean “literally.”
The most bizarre fact is that Archbishop Jensen would prefer young people to have no ethics training at all than to have non-religious training. In other words, Church training is positive, nothing is neutral, but secular reason-based ethics is negative.
It is a bit like the local chief of Nissan saying that he would rather see a customer on a bicycle or getting around per boot than driving a Toyota. In the classic Christian perception, secularist ethics would have to be a definite evil.
One can arrive at the basic common morality observed by all the world’s cultures: thou shalt no murder, steal, cheat, lie, assault etc. It can be done completely by reason, unassisted by any ancient document. All that is needed is the intial assumption that others are like yourself, and what you do not like having done to you is aversive to others too.
Ther final proof is the clear fact that reason created religion itself. Archbishop Jensen would strongly dispute this as far as his own religion is concerned, and invoke divine inspiration. But I’d be damned sure that he would rule out divine inspiration in the creation of all the others. Well on second thoughts, maybe one or two Protestant denominations would get a guernsey, but not any of the non-Christians: Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Zoroastrians, us polytheists, and last but not least, Catholics.
That phenomenon isn’t confined to Australia. Testimony in the John Freshwater termination hearing in Ohio showed that when parental permission slips were required for students to attend Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings (held in the school during non-school hours), attendance dropped in half. Like the Sydney Anglican diocese, a fundamentalist Christian mother who testified in the hearing thought that was “tragic.” How arrogant of her: Parents taking control of their childrens’ religious training and opting out of proselytizing is a tragedy!