Atheism, Reason, Skepticism, Happiness

Jane Donnelly and I wrote a chapter on secular education and human rights for the book ‘Towards Mutual Ground – Pluralism, Religious Education and Diversity in Irish Schools’ edited by Gareth Byrne and Patricia Kieran and published last week by Columba Press.

Other contributors to the book include Dermot Lane, Patricia Kieran, Robert Jackson, Terence Merrigan, Suzanne Dillon, Andrew McGrady, Marie Parker-Jenkins, Gavin D’Costa, Anne Looney, Elizabeth Osewska, Gareth Byrne, Niall Coll, Anne Hession, Jones Irwin, Rik Von Nieuwenhove and Michael Hayes.

Here is an extract from the chapter by Jane and me.

Only Secular Schools Respect Every Person’s Human Rights Equally

There is one fundamental question that informs all debate about pluralism and patronage in education. That question is posed here as an option:

1. Do you wish to bring about an education system that satisfies the desires of a majority of parents and children, (perhaps to satisfy the desires of those who happen to share your own personal religious beliefs) regardless of the wishes of minority groups?

2. Alternatively do you wish to bring about an education system that respects equally the human rights of all parents and all children, without sacrificing the human rights of a minority in order to satisfy the desires of a majority?

The manner in which a person answers these foundational questions determines what conclusions they arrive at.

It is understandable that many parents, and representatives of particular religions, have as their priority an education system that satisfies their own desires, and the desires of those who think like them. However the role of the state should be to counteract this self-centred approach, and to ensure that the education system respects equally the human rights of all parents and all children. In practice, the only way to ensure this is for the state to establish a secular education system.

A secular education system would be neutral on the question of religion and non-religion, and it would allow further educational options to develop as a supplement and not a replacement to that secular system. Religious schools or atheist schools should be an added extra for parents who want to avail of them, if they can afford them. However having religious schools as the foundation of the educational system creates only the illusion of choice.

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This is a response to Dick Spicer’s open letter to Atheist Ireland last week, followed by documentary evidence that the HAI does in fact promote the political cause of separation of church and state, contrary to the assertions made by the current HAI Board in order to sign up to the Civil Registration Act.

I respect the contributions that Dick Spicer and the current HAI Board members have made to the advancement of secularism in Ireland, and several of them are my personal friends. But I believe that they have lost perspective on this issue.

I have waited a week to respond, because I wanted to enable others to read Dick’s letter on its own merits, without me shifting the focus by immediately responding. I hope that we can tease out or differences reasonably.

Because Dick’s letter says very little about the Civil Registration Act itself, I have confined myself here to responding to the points that he made in his letter, which are largely about the political philosophies of Atheist Ireland and the HAI. These are important issues to discuss, as they go to the heart of this matter.

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