Faith Schools And Children's Rights
/ sciencereason ... Faith Schools And Children's Rights - Richard Dawkins @ The Big Debate (BBC).
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Jonathan Dimbleby and a panel of experts come together to debate the controversial subject of religion in Britain's schools.
The role of religion in education is a subject rarely out of the headlines. Despite Britain's multi-faith society, schools are still required to include a collective act of worship of a Christian nature, while faith schools and religious academies have raised fears about community cohesion and covert selection.
Claims by some religious educationalists that faith is the best way to teach moral values is challenged by others in schools who believe religious morality to be outdated and dangerous.
Dimbleby is joined by Professor Richard Dawkins, Schools Select Committee chairman Barry Sheerman MP, and a multi-faith studio audience.
Richard Dawkins is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author. He was formerly Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He was voted Britain's leading public intellectual by readers of Prospect magazine and was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" for 2007.
Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene", which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term "meme". He is a prominent critic of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book "The Blind Watchmaker", he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics.
Dawkins is an atheist, secular humanist, sceptic, scientific rationalist, and supporter of the Brights movement. In his 2006 book "The God Delusion", he contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a delusion − as a fixed false belief.
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