Religious Education

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome this report because it seems right that our approach should be that of a Weltanschauung. I speak as a humanist and atheist. I do not believe in divine revelation or miracles such as the resurrection, but religion plays an important part in our society—often for good, although not always. It is important that we should know about the historic contribution that Christianity has made to our history and culture in Britain, and about the important role of Islam in the Middle East and Asia and, indeed, in today’s Europe. I wish I had learned more about Islam and other religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, at school.

I went to a Church of England boarding school. Its approach was not a million miles away from that recommended in this report. Every day started with chapel, but actually chapel was not a very religious experience. We wondered which boy—there were no girls then—would read the lesson, commented on how well or badly it was read, hoped there was a good stirring hymn and took bets on the length of the sermons on Sundays. Generally speaking, religion was not thrust down our throats at school. Indeed some masters positively encouraged independent, and even dissident, views about politics as well as religion, but that is not true of many faith schools.

Teaching should teach us about beliefs—to understand them and be tolerant towards other beliefs, when they too preach tolerance—but in my view schools should not teach beliefs. They should teach children to think and question and if that leads them to adopt a religion or confirm their parents’ religious views, as they mostly do, that is well and good. But it should not treat children as Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Jewish any more than we would treat them as Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat children. That would narrow their Weltanschauung. Children should have a chance to choose their beliefs for themselves. Religion should be taught in the context of science.

One of the great moments of history and civilisation, as Isaiah Berlin observed, was the Enlightenment. It dethroned authority, especially theocracy, as the arbiter of truth. Evidence, not dogma, was now the test for truth in the natural world. It undermined superstition, prejudice and autocracy because it taught that there was uncertainty and doubt. Some truths about nature are now established as facts, no longer as heavenly portents. Evolution, for example, is overwhelmingly supported by evidence and can be regarded as a fact—except in the United States—as is the fact that night follows day and the earth is round. But however well-established they are today, some theories about how evolution evolves—for example, Darwin’s theory of natural selection—may one day, like all theories, be succeeded by a better one. There are always uncertainties.

Pope wrote:

“Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night.

God said, Let Newton be! And all was light”,

to which one later wit added:

“It did not last: the Devil howling ‘Ho!

Let Einstein be!’ restored the status quo”.

There is always some room for doubt, and science is not to be confused with scientism—as science’s opponents often do—which believes that science has an answer for everything. Of course it does not. Scientism has no room for doubt and was one of the flaws in certain aspects of Marxism, which certainly allowed no doubt.

It may be unrealistic to suggest that teaching about the Enlightenment should be part of the curriculum in all schools, but the new Weltanschauung should place religion in a wider context to avoid dogma. Perhaps one key quotation should be Locke’s plea for tolerance, which I regard as basic to the defeat of autocracy and the promotion of democracy:

“For where is the man who has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or who can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men’s opinions?”