New Feature: Facebook Pages That Enrage.

Usually I'd introduce a new feature with a witty paragraph full of puns, but due to my lack of Quarterly-ing over the last little while I thought I'd get straight into it.

Facebook Page that enrages me: "Save Our Scripture - Make a Stand"

The dribble that has been let fly after the introduction of ethics classes has been truly amazing, spend 10 minutes listening to any of it's detractors and you'd be forgiven for thinking that students would be sacrificing small animals to Satan himself and simultaneously whipping a fresh batch of ecstasy in the dunnies.

The moron(s) behind the SOS (Stupidity Over Smarts seems to be a better use of this anagram) seem to have one particular issue with these classes being offered, the fact that they will result in less students in what they call "SRE" classes.

Calling scripture classes "SRE" is a lie in itself, not once in the scripture classes I had in high school was I ever educated about a religion. I was constantly told how good the Christian God is, but never was there any mention of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or any other religion.

But back to the topic on hand, in there own words SOS are protesting the introduction of ethics classes because :

"The NSW Government is trialling secular ethics classes in competition with school Scripture. In some schools scripture classes have lost up to 60% of enrolments." 

Now I'm not sure about that figure of 60%, but if it's true it suggests to me that a majority of students would prefer an ethics class rather than a scripture class, so maybe SOS should be getting it's followers (I prefer zealots) to pester the 60% of kids who don't want a bar or a cross of scripture classes rather than their local MP's.

Their other point is equally as stupid, so what if these classes are in direct competition? If school kids have the ability to opt of scripture classes, than why can't they opt into an ethics class that's run at the same time? Would they prefer these classes to be run at the same time as Maths or English? Classes that might actually help students in their future.

Of course, it's not only SOS who are producing this type of pollution, plenty of others have supplied their own brand of idiocy to the argument.

For example, I just discovered this stupidity over at The Australian.

I really don't know where to start with this article, it meanders from point to point like a drunk after closing time, Ms Shanahan comes out strong with her headline "Godless ethics classes are pointless," but from then on it's just dribble. I assume the writer was either under severe deadline pressure or had recently undergone a lobotomy.

When she does try to address a point, Ms Shanahan falls back on some pretty unethical evidence (see what I did there?).

"It has already happened in Quebec, where an aridly secular relativist ethics course that introduced concepts such as the same-sex family to Year 1 children was boycotted, causing chaos in the schools of the heavily Catholic province.

The NSW course does not introduce any such concepts; in fact some more controversial ones such as terrorism and designer babies have been removed."

This is just unforgivable. What Ms Shanahan has said here is "Ethics classes are evil, in another country they were unpopular due to introducing controversial topics to children too young to appreciate them, but in Australia the classes have been designed in a different way, and said controversial topics have been removed, but remember ethics classes are evil."

Dribblers, the lot of them.