Stephen Law

January 11th – 365 Days Of Philosophy Podcast – An Interview With Stephen Law Kylie Sturgess The interview for January is with Stephen Law. http://365daysofphilosophy.libsyn.com/rss Download audio here: January – Interview With Stephen Law Stephen Law (BA, BPhil, DPhil) is a philosopher and senior lecturer at Heythrop College in the University of London. He also edits the philosophical journal Think , which is published by the Royal Institute of Philosophy and aimed at the general public. Professor Law is the author of a number of books, including  The Philosophy Files, The Outer Limits, A Very Short Introduction To Humanism, The War For Children’s Minds  and  Believing Bullshit.  He is also the  Provost for the Centre for Inquiry, UK . He blogs at Stephen Law and  Believing Bullshit , and uses Twitter at https://twitter.com/stephenlaw60 . For this interview, I opened with a question that my students always ...

Interesting row developing in Australia about alternatives to religiously-based ethics teaching. Go here . Almighty row over ethics in schools: Democracy and the welfare of children By Dr Simon Longstaff The Sydney Morning Herald (Saturday 26 September 2009) is to be congratulated for having helped to initiate public debate about discrimination against children whose parents make a conscientious decision that they not attend classes in special religious education (scripture). It is unfortunate that, rather than engage with the serious arguments advanced on behalf of many parents and their children, Mark Hillis of the InterChurch Commission on Special Religious Education in Schools (ICCOREIS) is reported as having said “I don’t see how having a small interest group coming into a school and ramping up things helps”. But who is this small interest group to which he refers? The NSW Federation of P & C Associations has been promoting a review of NSW Education Department policy since 200...

From IBTimes: " A Mori poll has found that over half of Britons believe Creationism and Intelligent Design should be taught alongside Evolution in science lessons. The poll, which was part of a worldwide study into attitudes to the teaching on the origin of life on earth, saw 1,000 Britons questioned on the subject. Around 54 per cent of those who responded said they thought teachers should talk about “alternative perspectives” to the Theory of Evolution, however only six per cent said they felt Creationism or Intelligent Design should be taught instead of Evolution. Just over one fifth of respondents said that only the Theory of Evolution should be taught, as is currently the case under the national curriculum ." Read more ... Guardian article here . What explains these statistics, and what if anything should be done?

The recent revelation that about 30% of secondary school teachers want "creationism" taught in schools reminded me of the results of a survey reported back in 2006, which is still one of the most disturbing educational surveys I've ever seen. If you are not aware of it, it's worth checking out. Go here . The original tables of results of the Opinionpanel survey are here (scroll down to 2006) Students from British Universities were surveyed on a range of questions, including whether they were Young Earth Creationists, and whether Young Earth Creationism had been taught to them by their parents, school, sunday school, etc. Amazingly, 12% of these undergrads were Young Earth Creationists. But the real stand-out statistic for me was that 19% of students said that they had been taught Young Earth Creationism "as fact" in school. 19%! One in five students. We are not talking mostly Muslim schools either. The figure for those who were of other non-Christian reli...

Just stumbled over this old unpublished piece. It was submitted for Face to Faith in The Guardian, but the old editor of that section reacted in a very hostile manner! Of course, it cover stuff I have written about in depth elsewhere. Face to Faith Stephen Law The smoke generated by the battle over faith schools has obscured a far more fundamental dispute – that between liberals and authoritarians. Liberals believe individuals should be encouraged to think independently and make their own judgements about, say, whether stealing from supermarkets is wrong or if Jesus literally rose from the dead. Authoritarians believe individuals, and particularly children, should defer to some external authority that can make these judgments for them. The issue here is freedom of thought, not freedom of action. We can all agree children shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever they like. But should they be encouraged to think freely. Liberals say yes. Authoritarians are far less enthusiastic. This liberal/...

Many seem to think that, so long as a faith school is providing children with knowledge of other faiths, that's good enough. It isn't. Here are 3 reasons why: 1. For a start, knowledge of other faiths does not necessarily lead to a reduction in friction between faiths. In fact, often the most vicious and violent religious conflicts are between groups with detailed knowledge with what the other believes, e.g. Catholic vs. Protestant; Shia vs. Sunni. Mere knowledge of other faiths does not produce tolerance and respect. Actual interaction with members of other faiths (and none), on the other hand, probably does have a beneficial effect. 2. Mere knowledge of other faiths, in the absence of any robust critical thinking about faith, often also promotes a very intellectually flabby sort of relativism . Pupils presented with a range of faiths are likely to realize that, as these faiths all contradict each other, most of them (perhaps all of them) must be largely false. Teacher...

Religion and philosophy in schools [my chapter from Hand and Winstanley (eds.) Philosophy in Schools , Continuum 2008] WARNING: THIS IS LONG! Stephen Law Is philosophy in schools a good idea? The extent to which early exposure to a little philosophical thinking is of educational benefit is, of course, largely an empirical question. As a philosopher, that sort of empirical study is not my area of expertise. But of course there is also a philosophical dimension to this question. As a philosopher, conceptual clarification and the analysis of the logic of the arguments on either side certainly is my field. That is where I hope to make a small contribution here. This chapter is in two parts. In the first, I look at two popular religious objections to the suggestion that all children ought to be encouraged to think independently and critically about moral and religious issues. In the second part, I explain a well-known philosophical distinction – that between reasons and causes – and give a ...

I have posted my chapter from the book Philosophy in Schools here, if you are interested. PS oops I posted it above by mistake. It'll have to stay there now...

Andrew Copson has responded to Christina Odone's report on faith schools . Copson begins: According to a pamphlet published today by the Centre for Policy Studies , penned by Cristina Odone, they [faith schools] are under threat as never before from "a government … aligning itself with a stridently secularist lobby". Here's my comment [further developed 3/7/08] on Copson's excellent piece, which I just posted at comment is free. The UK has seen a huge increase in the number of religious schools over the last decade. Having looked into how they are monitored, I was shocked to discover just how little monitoring there is. There are no national statutory requirements , not even for state funded schools; there are some non-statutory guidelines for state funded schools but they are toothless waffle (focused mainly on providing kids with knowledge of some other faiths). State funded schools are guided by the local Standing Advisory Committee on Religious Education (SAC...

Half a century ago, most faith schools offered a pretty rigid form of religious education in which dissent, independent critical thought, etc. from pupils was certainly not encouraged, and was in fact usually suppressed in one way or another. Fashions change. Nowadays, the tendency is to say that of course children should be encouraged to think and question, even when it comes to religion (though this may well immediately be qualified by "But not too early or too much!"). I think many religious schools are in something of a quandry on this point. On the one hand, they want to pay at least lip service to the idea that children should be raised to be autonomous critical thinkers; on the other hand, there's a suspicion that this might erode the faith, and perhaps also lead children into immorality, etc. My view is that we certainly should raise children to be very robust critical thinkers even about morality and religion. It's easy to pay lip service to the idea of fr...

I have had a long dialogue with Ibrahim Lawson, head of an Islamic school, about faith schools. Ibrahim had said on Radio 4 that in any good Islamic school "Islam is a given and never challenged". I said that such schools (Islamic, Christian, or indeed, atheist) should no longer be tolerated. He got in touch... Here are links to the correspondence so far (which has become very spread out). Nov 27th My Original Post, which provoked Ibrahim into getting in touch. Ibrahim's original email to me , which I then posted. The correspondence that followed this initial exchange can be scrolled through here (in reverse order). Note that some of Ibrahim's responses appear not as posts, but as comments on posts. To see the comments on a post, click on "comments" at end of post, or click on the orange title of the post. Scrolling backwards through these posts will give you the gist of the dialogue to date. My latest response to Ibrahim is here .

You can hear me on "Reporting Religion" on BBC World Service this week - here . I am quoted at the beginning of the programme, but the relevant bit is toward the end. The programme has me debating faith schools with the education officer of the British Council of Muslims.

Here's the last response from Ibrahim Lawson. He is responding to this . See link to left for the thread. Dear Stephen et al, I have been away on holiday, but in any case thought that this discussion had petered out. However, since you have replied then I will make one last effort to respond. I have been quite disappointed with the way the discussion has turned out, confirming my doubts about the usefulness of this kind of cyber-conversation as an act of genuine communication. This is partly because the issues are extremely complex to unpack so we end up shouting at each other from our respective entrenched positions. The other reason is the regrettable prevalence of the kind of point-scoring mentality which I suggested characterises debate as distinct from dialogue; perhaps I have been as much to blame as anyone else. I have, though, learned from some of the contributions that my view of religion is evidently even more esoteric than I had previously realised; as such, it is not re...

According to today’s Observer (p5), the Catholic Bishop of Lancaster, Patrick O’Donoghue (illustrated), has said in a document written for schools in his diocese that: “ Under no circumstances should any outside authority or agency that is not fully qualified to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church ever be allowed to speak to pupils or individuals on sexual or any other matter involving faith and morals ” O’Donoghue also called for any books containing polemics against the Catholic Church to be removed from school libraries. He also maintains schools should reject the promotion of safe or safer sex, as it is based on the (in his view, deluded) theory that condom use can provide adequate protection against AIDS (I discuss this here ). O’Donoghue is one of several “fundamentalist” Catholic Bishops pushing for a much more authoritarian, conservative approach to Catholic schooling. I draw attention to these Bishops as they illustrate the point that it is not just Muslims like Ibrahim La...

I struggled a little bit to understand Ibrahim's latest post . In the first part, Ibrahim seems to do exactly what I thought we said we wouldn't do: go nuclear . I have already pointed out why I consider this an intellectually dishonest strategy. But perhaps I've misunderstood. Can Ibrahim explain why he hasn't yet again, just reached for the nuclear button? The second part of his response is a direct response to my arguments for being liberal in our approach to moral and religious education . Ibrahim says (his stuff in italics): Having rehearsed these preliminary ideas, and arrived at the Enlightenment, I would like to turn to your recent postings, and in particular the idea of liberalism. Much of what you recount strikes me as revealing of the almost naïve utopianism of liberal thought, which is characteristic of much similar ‘technological’ thinking. By this I mean the kind of thinking that sets up an idealised, theoretical description of some human situation which ...

Is there not a good case for ensuring that every school, state-funded or not, should do the following? 1. have a syllabus that includes periods in which open, philosophical discussion of important moral, cultural, political and religious question takes place. These sessions should be run by educators with some training in running a philosophical discussion. Safeguards should be put in place to ensure that pupils are not subtly (or not-so-subtly) psychologically pressured into not asking certain sorts of question or making certain sorts of point (e.g. about religion). 2. present their pupils with a broad range of different political, moral and religious beliefs and arguments. It’s important alternative points of view are not caricatured or demolished as mere straw men. One way to avoid this is to allow pupils to hear these alternative points of view from those that hold them. Students should get at least some chance actively to engage in discussion with those from other faiths. An...