Comments on: label

By: Westdude

Westdude — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:33:29 +0000

All right, Xtian dudes. You can prove that god exists.
Now you have to prove if she is really a male or a female.

By: Jerry w

Jerry w — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:18:31 +0000

You could easily leave out the word “critical”, and the rest of the material from this page would remain the same. Thinking is the curse of religion, it always has been, it always will be.

By: Kristian

Kristian — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:33:56 +0000

Here’s an explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Education#United_Kingdom

By: jz

jz — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:00:06 +0000

your comics are really insightful and since i’m new, i’m now taking the time to read them from the start, a little a day. they’re timeless – love them!

By: Joshua3886

Joshua3886 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:17:41 +0000

Still not sure what RE is even after googling it and wikied it. I never took a course about religion in college and am still not offered one. Is it something in High School, cause I dropped out and took my GED instead. I never even went to high school. Oh well guess I sound uninformed.

By: BigDaveSB

BigDaveSB — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:18:18 +0000

Still loving the comics, but I would love them more if Jesus got his old beard back. I’m getting used to Mo not being a little of centre with his garments, but Jesus just looks wrong.

That said you’re a genius with the scripts, and it’s your show!

Thanks for the great comic!

By: nina

nina — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:03:05 +0000

as for the don’t label me advert: I agree with the blog entirely – and would add that if the xtian parents were concerned about how their children’s images might be used

perhaps they shouldn’t sell their photos to stock image companies.

if you’re willing to exploit your kids and rent them to others, then you can’t really complain about how the images are used.

By: nina

nina — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:00:29 +0000

I wouldn’t object to a comparative religion or including religion in history and art classes – as long as it’s “about” religion and not religion.

Indeed, in these classes, it’s rather intwined – but religion must stay out of science classes – unless it’s part of the history of science and how religion retarded science.

man, to think, we could have hover cars, a moon base and doing zips around the galaxy by now.

By: Jesus & Mo’s take on the “PLEASE DON’T LABEL ME” campaign « The Antitheist Daily

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:19:06 +0000

[...] Read the cartoon here… Tags: humour Share this post! [...]

By: archbish

archbish — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:18:31 +0000

PJ – two inaccuracies. 1 RS was compulsory since the establishment of state education in the 1800s. 2. the monitoring of delivery of RS lies in the hands of the local standing advisory council for RE. This is composed of local ministers of all religions, LEA members, union members, etc.. It is a public body and it’s minutes/meetings are open to all.

Muffin: the same SACRE needs to ensure that RE covers more than Christianity in state schools. THe syllabus has to reflect that the heritage of the country is, in the main, Christian but if it does not cover other religions – and for some of the more recent revisions humanism, etc – it is failing it’s job. your latest “legal” statement does not exist. some schools offer critical thinking as a course in it’s own right – it should not take the place of RE.

Toast: 2 points. 1. many people who teach RE are not RE teachers. Actually, this is an important issue. If you want to change the critical approach to RE then become an RE teacher. WE’re a scarcity subject. 2. How successful am I? That’s hard to assess but I am getting students coming up to me years later to thank me for the courses they followed since they have seen some benefit in their later life.

By: Garlic

Garlic — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:46:13 +0000

“there are a fair number of nutters out there as well. We recently had to deal with our 13 year old daughter having extremist anti-abortion propoganda, including graphic images of dismembered foetuses presented as part of a �balanced� debate on reproductive rights.”
I experienced this in school too. I am currently working in a country where abortion is illegal and think it should be compulsory for any sadistic morons caught bombarding small kids with this tripe to come to places like this and see the real problems a natalist domestic policy can cause, as well as being fired from their jobs. The first because they clearly have no concept of what ‘balance’ is and need shocking into reality, and the second because they have no right to indoctrinate young minds.
In my school we were never taught about the pro-choice side of the abortion debate, only the anti. I taught myself about it by reading feminist literature. My mother, a liberal and very lapsed Catholic, said she would not have an abortion herself but staunchly refused to deny this right to others and said if I ever ‘found myself in trouble’ I could rely on her support irrespective of what decision I made.
I got an A* at RS GCSE, ten years ago when that was really quite unusual. It was a higher mark than all the Christians who made up the rest of the class, but I was an agnostic. We only studied Christianity, and the vicar who taught the class (also a qualified teacher) came out with a remark in one lesson that he thought the holocaust had happened because the Jews demanded Jesus’ blood to be on their heads. As a part Romany child with Jewish friends I was also aware that Hitler’s racial purity rules would have condemned me to a cattle truck followed by a horrific death. I was not best pleased with this inhuman statement. I taught myself about other religions by reading the sections of the book we never covered and doing my own research. Now I am thinking of becoming an RS teacher myself and I swear if I go through with it that I will never do such an appalling bodge job as this.
Incidently, this is the first time I’ve ever mentioned the holocaust remark to anyone as far as I know, and while repeating it I can clearly see its similarity to the parts of the Koran where Jews are compared to demons and we hear that Allah turned them into pigs and dogs (he obviously didn’t do a good job, since they are still around and look neither porcine nor canine to me). In bed indeed, eh?

By: Intelligent Designer

Intelligent Designer — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:52:31 +0000

AJBJASUS said “I�m afrais that�s a traditional British handpump, not a tap handle. It dispenses beer by mechanical action from a non pressurised barrel. When done properly (ie in Yorkshire) it produces the best pint in the world.”

As an ex-barman, I can assure you that the beer that squirts out of freshly tapped barrel is most certainly under pressure. The beer is still fermenting slightly when ‘canned’, so gasses build up. There is a reason that barrels and kegs are built so strongly!

By: Hobbes

Hobbes — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:52:36 +0000

Muffin, you are correct. In the US, and I suspect the UK as well, when evangelicals talk about teaching “religion” in schools, they are as usual being deceptive. They really mean Christianity. And they don’t mean teach “about” religion, but to indoctrinate religion (Christianity).

By: Vordreller

Vordreller — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:53:41 +0000

http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/anath/another-lesson-in-advertising-and-missing-the-point

Didn’t check the other comments. Might be up already. This blogpost is about the ads.

By: JP

JP — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:29:45 +0000

I just realized where I have seen Jesus, before. He is doing stand up under the alias, Demetry Martin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demetri_Martin

By: Muffin

Muffin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:06:07 +0000

I would be all for Religious Studies at schools – it’s interesting, even if you don’t ‘’subscribe” to the beliefs – if they’d actually study religion. Not Christianity. Alone.

The course *I* did was ok: we managed to ‘cover’ 4 religions(!). That was back in… ooh. 2004?

Then they changed the curriculum, and even in non-religious schools, it became a government initiative to educate students fully on Christianity. Very useful to the two Hindus in the entire school. Not so much for those Christians clued up on it, or atheists fed up with Christio-centric teaching.

It is apparently even now a legal requirement for schools to enrol all children into an extra (quarter) GCSE of RS aka ‘Christianity’ or ‘Critical Religious Thinking’.

No wonder young people (and through them their parents) have no idea about other faiths…

By: Daoloth

Daoloth — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:24:27 +0000

@Archbish: You sound like an RE teacher who was at my school. She was a moral philosopher really, but this was the only platform to introduce it. Is that a fair description?
My arguments with her (and with Alistair Macgrath) tended to revolve around what on earth god was needed for. As sophisticated theologians they (and you?) had ridded themselves of pretty much all of the objectionable bits, but I have to confess that I wondered what was left apart from the sense that somehow being reductionist would somehow be bad for the seriousness of moral thought?
Now I might be putting words in your mouth- so please forgive me if I have got the wrong end of the stick. Interested in your response.

By: ShaunOTD

ShaunOTD — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:49:51 +0000

@Crusader Rabid – That’s nice dear. I hope you’re including the parts where the God who is Love commands his followers to commit genocide, rape, looting and slave-taking. And that he has a bizarre obsession with collecting foreskins.

By: PJ

PJ — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:29:38 +0000

As a historical note, the teaching of RE or RS in English schools is not there for any educational reasons. It results from a classic Brtish fudge dating from the 1945 Education Act which, as well as making it the duty of local authorities o provide free universal secondary education, also brought Church of England schools, previously independent, into the state system. The payoff for the CofE was to make “scripture”, later remarketed as RE, now RS, a compulsory part of the curriculum (bizarrely for 40 years RE was the only compulsory subject in English schools). Any school that tries to take it off the curriculum gets immediately shopped by some local God-botherer to the authorities. Lately teenagers are rightly unwilling to give up valuable time for a Mickey Mouse subject, so most schools make it a compulsory GCSE.

In practice the value of the course depends largely on the individual teacher. While it is very encouraging to see postings from the right sort of RE teacher, there are a fair number of nutters out there as well. We recently had to deal with our 13 year old daughter having extremist anti-abortion propoganda, including graphic images of dismembered foetuses presented as part of a “balanced” debate on reproductive rights.

By: Peter Harris

Peter Harris — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:16:42 +0000

In a classic Times “missing the point”, they have felt compelled to point out that the models in the Humanist campaign are Christian:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6925781.ece

Despite the very message of the campaign being that labelling is not necessary. Interesting they brand it “athiest” rather than “humanist” [isn't the latter areligious but not necessarily atheistic?].

Ahhh…