Welcome to Gaia! ::

Well, let me throw down my main points for not teaching religion in schools:

Bias: When people tell me, they're teaching "religion" in schools, it's usual a form of Creationism trying to pass as science. If they're going to teach religion, I say teach them all or teach none.

Religion is Personal: Religion is a matter of personal choice and belief. Science is empirical and not meant to be personal.

Religion Cannot Be Proven: Religion cannot be proven or disproven, it is all a matter of faith. Science attempts to use reason, logic, and empirical data to prove what it states. As thus, it doesn't try to explain the whole picture, because we can't without faith.

I guess, in the end, I wouldn't have such a problem with religion being taught in schools if it was presented as belief, and if it spanned across bother religions, neither of which are likely.

As for public school making atheists, I wouldn't know. I just started going to public high school for my junior year. Seventh through tenth grade was in Lutheran education, which only hardened my atheistic beliefs.

^_^ i see. people have asked me before about different things like eyes: how can sometime like an eye evolve? the more i learn about the physiology, the more obvious it becomes. i was expecting an answer like that. but i completely agree with you in this aspect. i often feel that Divinity is in the Physical Constants that we observe. like why is the speed of light what it is? why is there gravity? why does and electron have the mass it does?

The whole point is that you can't solve everything. Humans are limited. We can't understand everything, and the things we do understand we can never be certain if we're seeing it objectively. We aren't seeing it objectively in probably all cases. We evaluate the world using an exclusively human point of view; right there is a severe bias. It will be a fantastic day when we encounter an offworld species we can communicate with. It will bring our biases as a species to the forefront and maybe then we'll have a more balanced understanding of the universe. whee