Atheist Ireland Forum

Okay, I live out the country and the nearest non-denominational school is 30-40 mins drive away, so this September my daughter started in the local school. We checked it out and their booklet explicitly states that while it is a Catholic school it welcomes and accomodates children of all religions and none. My daughter is the only non-Catholic in her class. So, three weeks in and we get a note in her bag stating that the kids are all going to Mass as part of the local parish mission!!! What has the local parish mission got to do with me or my family or my daughter's right to an education.
She is a very smart kid and we often go through encyclopedia's togther. One of them illustrated evolution which she asked me about so I told her. She thought it was funny and was also fascinated by it. So now she goes to school and they contradict me AND facts in a book with some fairytale. How confused is she going to be? Who will she believe? What right has the dept of education to contradict facts with fairytales? Sorry for the rant but this issue has caused upset in this house.

First of all Welcome to the forum.

The school cannot force your child to attend mass. The problem is sadly that it means you probaly have to take care of her supervision yourself.

We have a web site where you can find some information http://www.teachdontpreach.ie/

I react a bit more later, need to run right now!

Several of us here have been down this road.

Firstly, I would say, you need to agree with the other parent on how you want to rear your daughter. If you both agree, then tell the school that as you are non-religious, your child will not be receiving religious instruction (this is your right not a concession from the school).

The next hurdle you will have to cross is what to do with your child during religious instruction. Some here have been able to get their children moved to other rooms, some have allowed their children to stay in the room and do other work and some have had such hostility and opposition that they have had to remove their children from the school (a legal test case is in the pipeline, I understand).

If your wife agrees, why not meet the teacher or principal and tell them your views.

Good luck and keep in touch.

Following my son's birth, the issue of childhood indoctrination is what forced me to confront my own RC beliefs and successfully deconvert, but I'm constantly in conversations with friends who espouse the view that children need the "ethos" that a religious school provides.

My reply is that our morals are overwhelmingly secular now, and only very few biblical morals are considered acceptable by our society, most of which were taught by others before the onset of Christianity (cf. Confuscius' golden and silver rules stated around 500 BC).

It's worth fighting this one Wexfordhobbit. The only way the cycle of superstition can be broken is to free the next generation from the abuse of indoctrination. Good luck!

Following a heated debate along similar lines with a semi-friend, I sent him a birthday card that read: "I sacrificed a lamb for your birthday." I added: "The smoke went straight up, so we know the sacrifice was pleasing to your god." He took it in good humour.

Thanks folks. I went into the school today and very gently told them that my daughter would not be going to their Mass and that I would pick her up and bring her back. I decided to leave it at that for now, let them think about it (I'm sure it will be discussed in the staff room) and then I'm going to pop in for a proper chat in a week or so. If I can sort this out with minimum impact on my daughter then well and good.

On the subject of morality it's a tricky one to pry apart. If you are religious and immersed in a religious community (or family) you will of course absorb and internalize alot of your moral beliefs from those structures. But there is nothing to say that any of those beliefs are A: compatible with the society you live in and B: "good" in any kind of objective way. Society itself (peer groups, siblings etc) is a far more consistent and reliable source of morality. If anything religion only compounds social inequalities and norms and pathologizes those who dont subscribe to the dominant belief system.

The amusing thing is schools say they are meeting children's spiritual needs. I would consider myself spiritual. For me the wonder of a tree is that it is a tree, not that it was magically put there for my egocentric amusement. If there is one thing Atheists need to get more emphatic on is that Atheism is not mechanistic, it is full of wonder and joy. There is no truth for all time to be uncovered, it is always learning. always discovering....isnt that what schools are supposed to be about?

Hi Wexfordhobbit,

Best of luck with the school. I hope it works out. I have two kids in school, the eldest is in 1st class. Thankfully, he has never been brought to mass and they've never had a visit from the local pp. I think I'd be doing the same as you if a trip to mass was in the offing. Let us know how you get on.

What do you mean when you say you are spiritual? Do you believe in spirits? Do you believe we have a soul? Do you believe in an afterlife? You've clearly stated that you're an atheist so I assume the answer to these questions is no.

If it is no, what alternative meaning do you give to 'spiritual' if it doesn't relate to spirits?

I can advise you to write every thing down and send a letter with all that is agreed. In our case the principal would tell us something and the teacher would do the next. It is not uncommon that the principal and teachers lie to you and then say they never said certain things.

I ended up taking my son out of school. If problems persist I can recommend writing to the ombudsman for children.

But first try and arrange it with the school since a few of us have no problems and their school are willing to look for a solution, I did not have that much luck but you might have.

Thanks for that Beebub,

I use the word spiritual mainly because I cant think of any other word that accurately reflects what I'm trying to say. I lament the propensity among atheists to view the world mechanistically (I'm thinking mainly of how people mistake Dawkins' academic approach to how he is in person). When I am out walking in the woods I frequently experience feelings that must be akin to what religious people feel. Maslow refered to them as "peak experiences" and they are not confined to the religious. For me it is the stripping away of superstition and illusion that reveals the wonder around me. I sound like a tree hugger now!

Thanks Tulip,

That's good advice. Luckily the teacher seemed agreeable enough today so fingers crossed. Had a look through all her books today and came across some religious stuff alright. At four years of age! They really get them young dont they? Disappointed is not the word.

Unfortunately I am not from the area and have no family/support structure and the inlaws would NOT be supportive of my position so it could get tricky if I have to put the foot down. You guys need an online shop with some atheist battle-armour!

good luck ad keep us posted, most of us have gone through the motions already. Some good some bad!

People who think Dawkins is purely mechanistic have failed to read his books or engage with his ideas. See the preface of "Unweaving the Rainbow":

"To accuse Science of robbing life of the warmth that makes it worth living is so preposterously mistaken, so diametrically opposite to my own feelings and those of most working scientists, I am almost driven to the despair of which I am wrongly suspected. But in this book I shall try a more positive response, appealing to the sense of wonder in science because it is so sad to think what these complainers and naysayers are missing... The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that makes life worth living... "

Thats it exactly Beebub. Too many people MISTAKE Dawkins as an academic for how he is as a person. Dawkins is actually quite a warm guy and loves nature but too many people assume because he is primarily an academic and speaks in academic terms that he is cold and mechanistic and that atheists should be likewise.

You are not alone in this at all. One could of course make up a word for this but alas language is not so easy and people will just look at you funny if you come out with a new never heard before word. Currently, like it or not, "spiritual" is one of the best words available for this range of discourse and is the one most likely to engage the listener and let them know what you mean.

So I too find myself forced to use the word but as pointed out I do not mean spirits, souls or any of that when I use it. I use it to describe merely the experience of being human, of our shared human condition with other humans, and of our feelings related to our "place" in the world... and the feelings within us that the world is capable of evoking.

The feelings of interconnectedness and profundity that we attain fleetingly in our lives are interesting, useful and powerful experiences and they are worth exploring. That exploration is what I would be talking about when I talk of "spirituality".

There's some interesting work being done by people like VS Ramachandran on the area too. He has identified a part of the brain... by studying people in whom that part was "broken" such as sufferers of Capgras Syndrome... which control how relevant to us items, places and people are in our mind. By hyper stimulating this area he has illicted in subjects a feeling of everything being connected, everyone and everything being important and powerfully relevant and more. The way they describe the feelings afterwards are almost indistinguishable from the contemplatives who come out of caves espousing much the same notions.

As distasteful as it is that we are compelled to stick with the word "spiritual" I think it an error on behalf of some people in our world who abandon all interest in such realms of discourse solely because of their distaste for the label we are stuck with. As Sam Harris would put it, there is a range of attainable human experience out there which most of us are not even aware of and even fewer explore and even fewer again actually reach. There is likely some benefit in exploring that realm however.

Alas many of the things people say when having such experiences can often be hard to distinguish from magic and woo. The subjects of Ramachandran had the feeling everything was connected, everything was relevant, and it was all the expression of one supreme interconnected entity. That of course sounds like "god talk" but it is not really and it is worth exploring.

Of course it is only when reaching the end of this post I realise how horrible off topic it all is

Let's run with it though.

I tend to agree with you nozzferrahhtoo; also these sentiments remind me of Carl Sagan's views on spirituality. In chapter 2 of his book "The Demon-Haunted World", he says this:

" "Spirit" comes from the Latin word "to breathe". What we breathe is air, which is certainly matter, however thin. Despite usage to the contrary, there is no necessary implication in the word "spiritual" that we are talking of anything other than matter (including the matter of which the brain is made), or anything outside the realm of science... Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognise our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and sublety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both."