Originally posted by: shira
I ask this in response to those who think courses on religion in public schools would be a good idea. A happen to agree, but it seems to me that to remain truly balanced when addressing the question of faith, we would want to include all sides of the question.
So in addition to the obvious, mainstream deist religions, I think we'd also want the course to dedicate a week or so to atheism, another week to agnosticism, another to Satanism, another to Voodoo and the occult, etc. This would provide a truly "fair and balanced" view of the beliefs held be people.
The purpose of the course would, after all, be to educate, not to indoctrinate.
So, whaddaya think?
I actually have a fairly practical critique of this issue. As far as Atheism and Agnosticism goes, the question is how much do students really need to know about these two beliefs that will be useful in the course of their general educations? There may be some complexity, but the question is how much do you need to cover in this course and to what extent could save things like existentialism for a philosophy course or when you're reading the right book in your english Literature course? My personal feeling on this is you can cover these two belief system pretty quickly in a survey course.
As far as the other three religions you mentioned, the issue is there are actually thousands of religions in the world today, and you can only cover so many in a survey course. You have to pick specific ones to teach about, and probably focus on certain "major" religions, and two obviously ways to do this is to do so by the sheer number of practicioners of a religion, and the religions historical impact. You could also potentially consider other things such as religions that other religions branched off from being considered more significant due to that detail.
The point is, as organized religions go, Satanism, Voodoo, and the occult are fairly limited in significance as organized religions. Satanism (which really involved at least two seperate religions using this word as part of their name) wasn't actually an organized religion (at least in any measurable way) until rather recently, and they don't have that many followers. The reality is very few poeple practice simply Voodoo or the occult as organized religions. Most of these practices can be effectively covered as part of cultural studies when you're dicussing some groups of people or a society in a different class and dont' need to be covered in a religious survey class. If anything, you might want to talk about some of the traditional African religions (not the relative newcomers of Chritianity and Islam) and this might provide a basis for understanding some of the basis of voodoo practices in another class.
Basicly covering religions such as Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism ahead of some other religions in a survey class makes sense and is not simply a case of religious bias.
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