Reason v Superstition.

Reason;- is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, establishing and verifying facts, applying logic, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information. 
Superstition;-  is a pejorative term for any belief or practice that is considered irrational: A positive belief in fate or magic, or fear of that which is unknown. "Superstition" also refers to actions arising from irrationality. The word superstition is often used to refer to a religion.

    I ask a very simple question, most days, on why can’t Religion just be made optional, in the Irish schools, just like home economics or accounting or French? In this age of Reason/Science, Religion is a very harmful superstition, God is not only dead, it or he or she never lived. There is no compatibility between religion and science, none. Our Children shouldn’t be martyrs to their parents superstitions and faith, after all evolution and science undermines religion every day. As Philip Larkin Poem said- 

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   
    They may not mean to, but they do.   
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.
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    Religion claims that they have authority, revelation, dogma, and indoctrination as their methods and have no way of proving their tenets false. But false it is, it is hard to believe that there are thousands and thousands of religions and all of them make incompatible claims about the universe and a god. When you think about it, all religious belief is unfounded and irrational. The vast majority of people in our world are believers who believe in superstitions. The true damage that religion has done to humanity  far outweighs the good it claims it did. Once you believe in an absolute authority that tells you what to do, you’re heading down the road to perdition, a christian state of eternal punishment and damnation into which a sinful and unrepentant person passes after death.

    According to the Cult, it is hard to be a good Catholic except in a Catholic society and Catholic schools ought to be an article of faith. The Irish Catholic Church controls today over 90% of Primary Schools and because of this, the teachers, male and female, they employ are obliged to teach the Catholic Faith. All the teachers they employ must have, The Certificate in Religious Studies issued by the Irish Catholic Church, this is extraordinary today that they, the Irish Catholic Church have still so much control. The part-time Certificate in Religious Studies prepares teachers to teach in Catholic schools in accordance with the requirements of the Council for Catechetics of the Irish Episcopal Conference. This certificate is a necessary prerequisite to teaching in Irish Catholic Primary Schools. In making any appointments, Catholic School Management Boards will always ask about the CRS as a condition of employment.

    The Catholic Certificate in Religious Studies (CCRS) is a certificate managed and awarded by the Board of Religious Studies on behalf of the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference;-
It is designed to: 

• provide teachers and those involved in parish ministry with knowledge and understanding of the teaching and beliefs of the Catholic Faith
• develop an appreciation of the principles of Catholic education at all levels
• employ and encourage sound adult educational processes which express Gospel values
• enhance understanding of education within the Church as a lifelong process
• enable all participants to make an informed contribution to their chosen field of work in the Church
• highlight the role and function of Religious Education within the school curriculum.

    It is time now to change this, immediately, the vast majority of publicly funded schools in Ireland are controlled by the Catholic Church, and if you want to get a job as a teacher you have to accept that Irish school teachers must be Catholic missionaries. To add insult to injury, the local Catholic Church will send around local Diocesan Inspectors to schools as religious police, to examine the teacher, not the students. The Inspectors are checking up that the teacher is fulfilling the requirement of their employment to evangelise local children into the Catholic Faith, as this is their purpose and what they were hired to do.

A teacher must accept that Irish school teachers must be Catholic missionaries. You must:

1. have a Catholic Certificate in Religious Studies, which has as a programme objective that the trainee teacher ‘engage in personal reflection, research and discourse with a view to enhancing their own religious awareness,’ and which includes such learning outcomes as ‘demonstrate competence in the planning of liturgy, prayer and sacraments (Reconciliation, Eucharist, Confirmation) in the Catholic primary school,’ 
2. and uphold the religious ethos of the school, which the Catholic Church sees as a central part of the mission of the Church, and part of the commission given by the Risen Christ to the apostles in Mt 28:18: “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

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    And worse still, in order to help the Catholic Church evangelise children, the Irish Government requires publicly funded schools to uphold the ethos of the Irish Catholic Church. This is supported by law, Section 15 (2) (b) of the Education Act 1998 which obliges the Board of Management of all schools to uphold and be accountable to the Irish Catholic Church, for upholding the Catholic ethos of the school. Rule 68 of the Rules for National Schools requires that Catholic Religion be integrated into the state curriculum and the Primary School Curriculum requires that all children come to a knowledge of a Catholic God.

    In this day and age, our children shouldn’t  be forced to listen to superstitious nonsense in Irish Schools, so why is religious superstition still taught in Irish schools? With a secular education every parent is free to educate their own children in whatever religion they choose or, none at all. This education can happen at home or at weekends, Sunday school or whatever. However, once standard, compulsory education contains religious indoctrination parents cannot ‘remove’ this indoctrination from the child after school. So, Secular Schooling removes the totalitarian system that is religion and replaces it with choice. It is now time to remove the Cult of the Irish Catholic Church, this insidious cancer, permanently from both Irish Schools and Irish Life. In the Reason and the Age of Science, Religion is a very harmful superstition, God is not only dead, it or he or she never was. Owen Felix O’Neill