If public schools taught critical thinking instead of memorization, what affect would it have on religion?

Question

Angel of Fire: Certainly!

Answer 1

It would still be around, but everyone would really understand and agree with the religion they practiced. I think there'd be a lot more people like me that make up their own religion that fits them.

Answer 2

The government schools are designed to baby sit not teach. When teacher lost the freedom to teach as they saw fit the students lost. Now our federal government dictates what is acceptable knowledge and what isn't. What our school teach as knowledge is just memorizing the government's so called facts not proper reasoning and critical thinking. The problem only perpetuates itself because our teacher are from the same government schools and don't know the difference between memorization and knowledge. Our schools have become a big trivial pursuit game.

Religion would parish because it can not stand up to rational thought. Just think we have this book written more than 2000 years ago by a primitive culture. They obviously took material from other books and compiled it into what is known today as the bible.

Here is this God character you cannot even contact but you are supposed to love more than anything else. He is above your mother, your father, your wife and hour children. Since he has created your and the planet you live he owns you and can do whatever he pleases with you. How crazy is this?

Religion is the greatest duping of mankind into controlling him to give up his time and money to religious leader so they can live a life on your dime.

Answer 3

I think more people would be religious, more would change religions, and more would doubt evolution and the big bang.

Critical thinking went on alot in Catholic monasteries in the middle ages. They debated the nature of God, but that was supressed outside the monasteries, where "heretics" were burnt at the stake. A similar process happened in Muslim countries, where critical thinking was limited to the elite.

Political correctness is the new limit on communication. Critical thinking is allowed, as long as the masses do not understand it. We're too afraid of fascism and communism to allow people freedom of thought, especially in Europe.

But if no memorization was taught, we couldn't read or add. We'd return to the dark ages, embrace superstition and become more gullible.

Answer 4

Impossible to predict.

One possible outcome would be that a lot more families would send their kids to religious schools, or home school them.

And there would probably be a bigger push to have public schools dismantled than there is now (right now it's fairly covert, and consists mostly in the "school voucher" programs).


But the best possible outcome, IMO, would be a return to mythic/mystic thought in religions, and abandoning the attempt to apply the principles of scientific rationalism to religion.

To let go of trying to prove the historicity of religious texts, or trying to manipulate what is in those texts to "prove" that they are scientifically valid.

Religion and science are supposed to address *different* aspects of our lives, and answer different questions.

Religious scriptures were not intended to be science textbooks. And the measuring devices of the scientific method are not applicable to religious insights, any more than they are to Aesop's fables. And yet religions, and those wonderful fables, have value for many people.

No one dismisses the insights into human behavior supplied by Aesop's Fables because we know, scientifically, that lions and mice don't actually talk to each other or make mutual-help agreements, or that wolves don't actually don the skins of sheep.

People either find value in the fables (as fables) or they don't. Their value isn't determined by their historicity or factuality.

Answer 5

DUDE!! I missed ya. I was wondering about you today 'cause I have The Big Lebowski DVD sitting on my computer desk.

Like it's been said in many ways by many people: Reason is the death of faith. What use do we have of faith if we have reason? And with rational though and critical analysis, how can we possibly believe in something so logically impossible as "a god"?

I suppose asking more questions isn't really an answer to YOUR question... but when you think about it... it kind of IS.

Answer 6

Well, if it's the sort of "critical thinking" that I suspect you're referring to, then I believe there would be an awful lot of kids out there today insisting that homework does not exist and that those of us who do our homework are foolish :)

In truth, though, aren't our public schools also currently force feeding children the theory of evolution? Perhaps if children were encouraged to think about it for themselves and question it, instead of simply being told to memorize it, maybe more of them would come to the conclusion that it simply isn't logical.

Answer 7

This is a thoughtful and brilliant question. But I think people (and not schools) need to start teaching their children how to think critically and not simply accept a belief based upon nothing other than tradition. That, and I think we need a new reference or a new source of information to elicit a better understanding of how we can view human behavior and our relationship to what may or may not cause it.

Answer 8

That might be what we need to bring religion to the year 2007. If we could make religion about knowledge and the pursuit thereof, the world would be a much more peaceful place. Don't you think?

Answer 9

Nobody teaches critical thinking. It's just something you need to have or you would believe everything that was taught.

It should have a good effect on religion of any form. Were they not the ones who taught us from the beginning of recorded history,

Answer 10

All we need to know about God is in the Bible. It can be learnt by memorization.
Critical thinking is really only speculation on what '; might be'
And speculation is never proof of any subject.
Example; the middle ages thinking that base metals could be turned into gold.