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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who spoke to it in a most delightful and eloquent manner. I also wish to support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. Unfortunately, I do not give quite the same reasons for supporting the amendment as have been so far advanced. I support it because I regard it as an exercise in damage limitation. I take the completely opposite view on what education should do from that of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and I am sorry to differ from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth. Let me explain why I think that it is wrong in principle to teach religion in schools. I start with the proposition that part of the history of civilisation has been the gradual erosion of superstition by reason and the development of respect for evidence. I believe that it should be one of the primary aims of education to teach regard for evidence, to teach children to ask questions and not to accept authority uncritically. In fact, they should learn some idea of how science works, how nature works and how to use their intelligence to find out about the world. I recognise that there are many scientists who are Christians and, because Islam is under fire, I direct my remarks principally at the teaching of the Christian religion. I argue that teaching any kind of religious belief depends on authority and undermines regard for evidence, and is in opposition to what a good education should provide. People may be religious because they believe in a vague numinous presence in the universe, although most Christians believe in a personal god who can physically intervene in this world, which is what faith schools teach. They teach children to pray. If praying for the welfare of others is a ritualistic way of encouraging concern for others, which also makes the person who prays feel better, well and good. I love the language of many traditional prayers. However, children are taught to pray on the assumption that their prayers may be answered and that the object of their prayers may recover from illness or some other misfortune through a god’s personal response. Indeed, double-blind experiments have been done at considerable expense to see if patients in hospital who are prayed for recover faster than those who are not prayed for and—surprise, surprise—it was found that prayers had no effect. A belief in the efficacy of prayer as a possible cure for diseases is essentially a return to medieval superstition, when it was seen as the only hope of a cure for various illnesses. You prayed to a particular saint for a particular disease. You would pray toSt Lucy, for example, who was very beautiful and, according to one legend, avoided the lustful glances of men by plucking out her eyes, and that made her the patron saint for eye diseases. Christians believe in miracles. Jesus, it is claimed, performed miracles. Catholic saints qualify as saints because they perform miracles. The resurrection is a miracle, and how can the doctrine of the physical assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven be reconciled with the laws of nature? Miracles are, by definition, events in which the laws of nature have been suspended. Teaching people to believe in miracles is teaching them to ignore evidence and to believe in the supernatural. No wonder so many Christians reject the fact that animals and plants have evolved over many millions of years and turn to intelligent design or creationism to explain the world. A recent poll showed that 30 per cent of sixth formers in British schools do not understand evolution. If you are encouraged to believe in miracles, you can believe anything, including creationism. Roman Catholics are taught that the Pope is infallible, just as in Galilean times when the authority of the church overruled evidence. It is hardly rational to treat the authority of the Pope as infallible when he can change his mind and pronounce his predecessors wrong. Before 1861, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford has pointed out, the infallible doctrine of the Pope held that the soul only entered the embryo 40 days after conception in the case of the male foetus and 60 days after in the case of the female foetus. Since then, Popes have decreed that all abortion is murder because it has now been decreed that the soul enters the embryo at the moment of conception. Even today the Pope can change the official doctrine taught to Catholics because it seems that they may have been wrong to believe that babies who died before they were baptised go to limbo. Catholics may profess to argue on scientific grounds that stem cells from adults are more likely to cure certain diseases than embryonic stem cells, but their views are not decided by evidence—they are decided by the Pope’s current decree that the destruction of a human blastocyst is murder. I do not object to children being taught about various religions because they are part of our cultural heritage, art, literature and music. I also accept that religion gives great comfort to many people and that many moral teachings of the churches are admirable. I accept the great contribution that churches and religious groups make to the community. I regard the sermon on the mount as a wonderful moral text which everyone should know about, but you do not have to believe in a god to teach morality. Let us not, however, forget the harm that religion does. It is religion—the teachings of the American evangelicals, the Pope and Islam—that prevents UN agencies distributing condoms in Africa and thereby condemns countless Africans to death from AIDS, which I regard as a crime against humanity. It is religion that has led to the poor education of women in the world at large. It has also led to the decline and international support for family planning, which, as I shall argue in a debate tomorrow, is a vital part of any effective policy to reduce poverty. As my favourite Latin poet Lucretius put it a long time ago: "““Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum””." It is unfashionable to quote Latin these days. Nearly a century ago when it was still in vogue, the Conservatives pretended to understand even if they did not and the Labour Benches pretended not to understand even if they did. It means, ““Such crime did religion inflict upon the world””. We should keep religion out of the classroom, as the Americans do. In this they are wise. Unfortunately they make up for that by letting religion interfere in their politics. On the whole the tradition in our politics has been, in the words of Alastair Campbell, that ““we don’t do God””. It is a sad fact that through the promotion of faith schools, the Government are now undermining that tradition.