Im an atheist and went to a christian school as a kid - I never felt in any way that the Christian agenda was being pushed at me - the school's philosophy was to value science but religion was valued for providing personal and spiritual comfort, not for pushing dogma at me.

Schools should be places where children learn hard facts - not delusive fictions. There is no doubt that the imposition of religious dogma and faith narratives involves a significant suspension of disbelief in an inappropriate context and setting. The suspension of rational disbelief is alright for enjoying fictions, but not very healthy for guiding one's daily decisions. The misconception that faith is some kind of virtue has to be overturned. This is long overdue. Trained non-religious counsellors will be more effective at preventing youth suicide. They can do so without the ulterior motivations of religious impositions that are provably costly to the individual in terms of stress, cognitive dissonance, an inability to connect with reality, and associated financial and sociological impacts. My children have enough stresses to deal with without someone lying to them about what is real and placing upon them the real stress of faith-institutionally motivated straw-man devaluing of their persons as inherently sinful and corrupt. Add to that the offering of a faux solution to a set of fictional strawman problems in the form of costly devotion to a set of duplicitous and vile imaginary characters, which move further requires them to further suspend their rationality and invoke more cognitive dissonance. Such fictional characters and the fictional narratives that include them have been cooked up (usually some time well before or during the dark ages) by dishonest mythologising doctrine shovelers who want to manipulate the behavior and thinking of others out of personal bitterness and confusion masquerading as moral rectitude - not to mention economic and political motivations. It is depressing and mentally damaging for children to be denigrated and devalued by the ascription of metaphysical nonsense and fictions like the sin fiction, threatened directly or implicitly with such vile constructs as the hell-fiction, and then offered fictional solutions to non-existent problems within themselves that require them to choke down cognitive dissonance by the bucketload as they force their minds into submission to kooky fictions, including the requirement to lower their self esteem in accordance with the sin fiction. The only thing available to redress the impact of the imposed sin fiction is being valued highly by some fictional god character who is angry, jealous and murderous without restraint and at will (much like a large Ape or a corrupt tyrant). What a crushing and negative outlook! That this kind of psyche-crushing thing is the best our societies have to offer in 2012 is utterly appalling and completely pathetic. I would like to more studies done that investigate the link between depressive illness and cognitive dissonance due to the imposition of religious doctrinal memes and narratives that are clearly at odds with both common sense observation and contemporary scientific understanding of basic facts. A working assumption of many is that religious faith is a coping mechanism at worst, or is correlated with an inability to cope at best. I suggest that it is likely that it will exacerbate any existing depressive state, and stands a good chance of invoking one in those that were otherwise 'existentially stable': http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-11-05-depression-faith_N.htm That would be a reasonable step in the right direction, and one that would deserve some of the funds from the Chaplaincy program. The damage done by cults (just Google child deaths and faith healing, Catholic church abuse of children, Scientology abuse of members - many others available) is no different to that done by established religious bodies - which are really just cults that have grown large enough to bully everyone into submission about their status. In the meantime the funding for chaplains should go to trained psychologists for any counselling requirements and to science teaching. It is astonishing people are quick to ascribe propagandish tendencies and vapidity to an atheist movement and yet neglect recognising the massive programs of delusive financially lucrative mind-subverting psycholiniguistic head-programming undertaken by religious faith instutions from Islam to Mormonism and from Christianity to Scientology. This is perhaps because such blights upon human society and offenses to individual and collective human dignity have become so common and deeply ingrained in our societies that no one questions or challenges them anymore. No - wait. We atheists do. Bringing faith and faith movements into question and combatting their damaging effects is in and of itself a great service to one’s fellow man and to society, and is intrinsically humanistic (as opposed to fictional godistic).

Bruce 'very' Long :)

Jerry Blindhard · 10 months ago

I shudder to think what you would say about something that you DON"T have a religious conviction about. My sympathies for your misinformed certitude.

Jerry Blindhard · 10 months ago

Do you think you got your message across Bruce? It is rather a 'long' diatribe or should that be runny diarrhoea.

Mark Mann · 10 months ago

Complaints about style that detract from considering the real issues and arguments at hand. Hmm - sounds like something religionists would do. Perhaps you could try an actual intelligent argument instead. Perhaps not.

Bruce Long · 8 months ago

@Jerry Blindhard. If someone rejects and complains against the practice of driving cars and avoids doing so, that doesn't make them a car driver Jerry. A strong conviction is not a religious conviction. To infer or assert as much is just willfully ignorant failure to acknowledge real distinctions. To equivocate on strong anti-religious convictions and religious convictions is just daft. Religious convictions by their definition have some kind of religious content, and religious content involves deities, dogma, rituals and the supernatural - all of which I reject. Perhaps instead of making 'smart' comments, you would like to try to indicate in what way I am misinformed. I was converted to Christianity as a young teenager - having the costly and damaging scourge of faith memes foisted on me by a bunch of no good proselytisers who cared about me as much as you do - and I dug myself out of that atrocious hole over the course of many years. I would shudder at the thought that you believe you have said something worth saying, or said something at all. But like most religionists and faithists, you haven't actually said anything at all of any value aside and have fallen back upon making an ad hominem attack. You certainly haven't proved or argued anything. There is an extremely high likelihood you would just parrot popular religionist doctrine and values anyway, so I guess I can assume your nonsense is just a placeholder for that.

Bruce Long · 8 months ago

The paragraphs disappeared - I don't know why.

Maybe it was too repetitive, even for a computer to take.

David Teal · 10 months ago

Schools should be places where children learn hard facts - not to guide their life choices and decision making according to ill-informative, delusive and damaging fictions. There is no doubt that the imposition of religious dogma and faith narratives involves a significant suspension of disbelief in an inappropriate context and setting. The suspension of rational disbelief is alright for enjoying fictions, but not very healthy for guiding one's daily decisions. The misconception that faith is some kind of virtue has to be overturned. This is long overdue. Trained non-religious counsellors will be more effective at preventing youth suicide. They can do so without the ulterior motivations of religious impositions that are provably costly to the individual in terms of stress, cognitive dissonance, an inability to connect with reality, and associated financial and sociological impacts. My children have enough stresses to deal with without someone lying to them about what is real and placing upon them the real stress of faith-institutionally motivated straw-man devaluing of their persons as inherently sinful and corrupt. Add to that the offering of a faux solution to a set of fictional strawman problems in the form of costly devotion to a set of duplicitous and vile imaginary characters, which move further requires them to further suspend their rationality and invoke more cognitive dissonance. Such fictional characters and the fictional narratives that include them have been cooked up (usually some time well before or during the dark ages) by dishonest mythologising doctrine shovelers who want to manipulate the behavior and thinking of others out of personal bitterness and confusion masquerading as moral rectitude - not to mention economic and political motivations. It is depressing and mentally damaging for children to be denigrated and devalued by the ascription of metaphysical nonsense and fictions like the sin fiction, threatened directly or implicitly with such vile constructs as the hell-fiction, and then offered fictional solutions to non-existent problems within themselves that require them to choke down cognitive dissonance by the bucketload as they force their minds into submission to kooky fictions, including the requirement to lower their self esteem in accordance with the sin fiction. The only thing available to redress the impact of the imposed sin fiction is being valued highly by some fictional god character who is angry, jealous and murderous without restraint and at will (much like a large Ape or a corrupt tyrant). What a crushing and negative outlook! That this kind of psyche-crushing thing is the best our societies have to offer in 2012 is utterly appalling and completely pathetic. I would like to more studies done that investigate the link between depressive illness and cognitive dissonance due to the imposition of religious doctrinal memes and narratives that are clearly at odds with both common sense observation and contemporary scientific understanding of basic facts. A working assumption of many is that religious faith is a coping mechanism at worst, or is correlated with an inability to cope at best. I suggest that it is likely that it will exacerbate any existing depressive state, and stands a good chance of invoking one in those that were otherwise 'existentially stable': http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-11-05-depression-faith_N.htm That would be a reasonable step in the right direction, and one that would deserve some of the funds from the Chaplaincy program. The damage done by cults (just Google child deaths and faith healing, Catholic church abuse of children, Scientology abuse of members - many others available) is no different to that done by established religious bodies - which are really just cults that have grown large enough to bully everyone into submission about their status. In the meantime the funding for chaplains should go to trained psychologists for any counselling requirements and to science teaching. It is astonishing people are quick to ascribe propagandish tendencies and vapidity to an atheist movement and yet neglect recognising the massive programs of delusive financially lucrative mind-subverting psycholiniguistic head-programming undertaken by religious faith instutions from Islam to Mormonism and from Christianity to Scientology. This is perhaps because such blights upon human society and offenses to individual and collective human dignity have become so common and deeply ingrained in our societies that no one questions or challenges them anymore. No - wait. We atheists do. Bringing faith and faith movements into question and combatting their damaging effects is in and of itself a great service to one’s fellow man and to society, and is intrinsically humanistic (as opposed to fictional godistic).

Religion has NO PLACE in schools. Let those who want to believe in fairy tales pay to indoctrinate their own children themselves. I want my tax dollars spent on trained counsellors who can provide support and referral services to students based on professional judgement, not prayer.

"Why do you allow" sounds a bit weak and will get the usual parotted answer. What about the money being spent instead on trained counsellors or increasing the skills and part-time nature of school nurses?

Jesus and Mo comic of relevance: <http://www.jesusandmo.net/strips/2012-07-11.png>

From here: http://www.accessministries.org.au/about/core-values "Commitment to teach, live and commend the Christian faith through the ministry of Christian religious education and pastoral care." How is this even remotely compatible with the state schools' mandate to provide a free, secular education?

Get the nonsense out. Wwe need science not silly myths.

Any chance this anti chaplains in schools question is a diversion initiated by an ALP support organisation to save dear leader Juliar from the carbon tax temperature question?

No much of a chance. This is a real issue of great importance to many people. Are you not aware of the recent High Court challenge to the Chaplaincy program?

Jeff Keogh · 10 months ago

No, because anyone with half a brain can see those questions are designed to continue peoples misunderstanding of climate change and the carbon tax.

Mark taylor · 10 months ago

Simply put, No.

Neil Kingham · 10 months ago

Simply put, No.

Neil Kingham · 10 months ago