Religious Hostile Takeover

I know I've been writing a fair few posts about my school (and more importantly, the people in it) but this shocking piece of news came totally out of the blue and the first time I've ever heard of such an example occuring.

I got a letter yesterday that my school is to be converted to Church of England, against the will of all the school governers, and the government is powerless to stop them. All because of a loophole in a 17th century text.

The church claims that the purpose for which the school was established (1708) incorporated the following statement:

Religious instruction shall be given in the school in accordance with the doctrines of the Church of England

Basically, when the school was formed every educational body in the country had to be CoE, but over the years the school turned grammar and no longer followed the religion of the state, instead choosing to select students on academical ability rather than belief.

The funny thing is, they "assume" that line was written, there is no proof anywhere that such a line exists. Unfortunately, the government requires proof that the line wasn't written in order to overrule the CoE takeover. Bearing in mind that the document had to have been drawn up in the 17th century, the school had no idea where the document is.

And once again, the government has failed us by doing nothing. The school will of couse put up a fight but unless they find the precious document the governers will be powerless to prevent a CoE takeover. You hear the government waffling on about the falling standards but they refuse to halt the dissolution of the only school in Liverpool that allows entrance through academic excellence (others ask for massive yearly fees).

You may be wondering why this is such a big deal; the takeover won't affect me. It won't affect anyone in the school for the time being. But will affect the city.

Entrance into the school will greatly change. Everyone part of the CoE will have preference over the academically gifted. So a stupid CoE Christian would be chosen ahead of a intelligent muslim. Since my school is the only Grammar school in the whole of Liverpool (it is the only school that has an entrance exam and no fees) only the academically gifted are allowed through. The CoE's intention is to revamp the entrance system (to benefit the church) or possibly even remove it. Then where would the academically gifted go? There would be nowhere to provide them with a competitive atmospere and grades will suffer because of it.

Plus Religious Studies would be compulsory. Morally I have nothing against this; it just that it's an incredibly boring subject and most people despise it. (I don't really mind it since it's an easy GCSE)

Who knew the Church was capable of such acts of such cunning? Clearly I will need to rethink my views that the church is nothing more than an outdated system; this takeover was well-thought out and meticulously planned. Makes you wonder what really goes on at CoE HQ.


Harmless old monk or ruthless religious businessman?

Intelligent Design: Should It Be Taught?

Note: I am so pissed off right now, not because of Intelligent design but because of Blogger. I wrote one of the longest posts I have ever written (with thorough research and everything) and what does Blogger do? It completely fucks up the whole post and deletes half of it. All that time... lost. Now I have to write this post again... What motivation do I have now? How could I possibly match the quality of the deleted post? Shitty Blogger...

But anyway, to the post:

Despite being a man of science, I am very tolerant of religion. I respect what religion can do to peoples' lives and the purpose it brings. However, there are many aspects of religion too far-fetched to ignore and one of these is Intelligent Design.

There is a teacher in my school who is one of those crazy religious nutcases. Except he is armed with science and has been brainwashing all the students with tripe about Intelligent Design with scientific justifications for years.

It began with Christian Union, he would preach every week to an average audience of three about religion and science and how they are linked. He once declared that anyone was allowed to argue against his beliefs on Intelligent Design. My and my friends decided one day to ask him "How can you believe in Intelligent Design with the evidence around you?"

We were bored at the time and he had practically invited us to have an argument with him (when would we get another opportunity to do that with a teacher?). Before we knew it we were stuck in Christian Union listening to an hour lecture on how religion explains science or some other shit along those lines.

At first I was enticed by the idea of intelligent design, even though I still believed in evolution no matter what it all seemed to make sense. But later, when some thought was applied, it was a load of bullshit.

An example of such bullshit was: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

Apparently this refers to the Big Bang theory. It seems to make sense, after all, the Big Bang theory explains that the Universe was created and that time, space, everything was created in that one moment and began existing. Is that not what the first line of Genesis says? That God created everything (the Heavens and the Earth) at once?

Of course anything can interpreted as anything. The Bible was created by the Vatican (who picked and chose Gospels which benefited the them) and the Big Bang theory is just a theory and subject to change. If the Big Bang theory was disproved what then? New interpretations would be found no doubt.

But anyway that was just one example. Most of you are no doubt thinking, you stick to your beliefs I stick to mine. This post wasn't written to criticise Religious people (most of whom accept Evolution). It was the fact that my teacher went to the BBC and lobbying for Intelligent Design that sparked this post.

Now to the point of this post, should Intelligent Design be taught in schools? Is there any educational value?

The answer is no.

Firstly, Intelligent design is all based on faith while Evolution is based on something more substantial (e.g. DNA, Natural selection etc.). Most people (even the religious) accept Evolution and there is overwhelming evidence for it.

As The Now Show put it, any students fortunate enough to get Intelligent Design for A-level would get remarkable results:

Q. What happened during the Big Bang?
A. Something we do not understand caused by a thing we don't know.

Q. How did organic molecules develop the ability to self-replicate?
A. By some unknown force doing a thing we cannot understand.

Q. Explain the mechanisms by which species develop through random
mutation?
A. By the interference by some intelligent thing that is more complex than anything we know and yet, can never know.

As you see, if Intelligent design were put in place we wouldn't learn anything. Teaching Intelligent Design is such a waste of time and would just contribute to science in this country going backwards.

Secondly, there are a lot of clever, but impressionable, young people in my school. The influence my chemistry teacher has over them is massive. He has converted a fair few to Intelligent Design and they are not even religious. How can you believe in it if you don't believe in a creator? Most people don't understand and those that "teach" it are highly persuasive.

So to conclude, Intelligent design contributes nothing to education and it doesn't even count as a science, it's not in the curriculum for a reason. If we bow down to these evangelical lobbyists we'd become more and more like America. Does anyone want that?

A new Bible is required

Yesterday, Sir Elton John revealed the shocking revelation that he wanted all organised religions to be banned. When I read the headline, the first thing that went through my mind was: "Is he for real? What new complaint does the loser have now?"

With a face like that, how can you not feel sorry for him?

But having read through the articles, I feel some sympathy towards him.

I know sir Elton is loony and a few pies short of a picnic but for once he has a point. As I was listening to the 5Live phone-in they had some insanely religious fundamentalist Christian woman (you know the type) who was just spreading what can only be described as anti-homosexual propaganda through the airwaves.

What is it with America and their dangerously high number of crazy religious people that follow the bible to each exact word? There's something not right about someone (who's not a priest) who can quote every line from the bible.

I digress. Elton John's idea of banning all religions is ridiculous. It's not like homophobia will go away if there was no religion. Religion is the justification and not the cause, it's crazy right-wing people (from the southern states no doubt) that are the cause (sorry to stereotype... but you have to admit. That's where they all seem to be from). If the last episode of South Park has taught us anything it's that there will always be hatred/violence etc. even without religion. It's human nature.

And the Bible's outdated; we just can't relate to it anymore. The bible preaches to love your neighbour but what if he's gay? A paradox is it not?

My solution to making Elton John shut up and solving the problems of America's fanatic religious population would be to publish a new updated bible.

It'd need to be shorter, easier to interpret and filled with a lot less confusing crap. Also cut out all the genesis crap, can't be just come to a compromise and say God created evolution? Let's be cool about this people.

We could change it gradually, so no one notices.

If it'll make American zealots shut up, isn't it worth it?