I’m sure there is much to be learned from looking at the different types of religions. I’ve always been fascinated by the way that having multiple gods can be used to represent and explore different personality types and aspects of the same personality, and I suspect that nature religions contain a lot of information about cycles of nature and local knowledge of flora and fauna. I imagine that monotheistic religions work in a slightly different way again. Speculating a little from what I know about Christianity in particular, I can see that a monotheistic religion can have emphasis on one particular narrative and encourage a focus on the idea of building a one-on-one relationship. Maybe that encourages people to think more in terms of individual responsibility and less in terms of group behaviour and identity. I’m not a theologian so I could be wildly wrong here though!

And is there any virtue in distinguishing between different kinds of religion, so that you could, say, evaluate those which believe in the existence of gods separately from any which belives in the existence of one unique and necessarily existent God?

Asking for interest, not annoyance : )

And will be away from computer now till Monday night, so no urgent reply necessary!

Focusing on the example of Religious Education, one may point out that religious teachings and discussion include philosophical arguments and approaches to exploring ethical issues or interpreting texts. Religious texts often include stories of individual figures and morality tales which illustrate perspectives and encourage empathy and compassion. Some critics of religion would argue that religious texts belong entirely to the realm of literature. I included religious education in my ’shared human values’ category because I felt that as well as the texts, there is the whole element of how people put their beliefs into practice and live their lives. I figure it helps to take a step back from theoretical based studies and take a look at what people are actually doing as well.

– can I ask whether it’s possible in principle that one could learn about reason (and also compassion i suppose) from religion? Or is it part of your underlying philosophy that religion is inherently unreasonable?

I’ve been following my own path in a somewhat haphazard fashion, filling in (I thought) on the ‘literature’ element lately with Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. It gives a very compelling framework for much of the myths, fairytales, legends and religious teachings, and has in fact turned out to be a useful tool under your ’shared human values’ category.

Considering the above as a mental checklist, I’d say I’ve been most remiss in the areas of philosophy and law. Thanks for helping me to see this!

I can’t seem to find any publically available figures for the overall occurrence but an article on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour gives a figure of one child in every thousand (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2001_50_tue_01.shtml). The wikipedia article on Klinefelter’s Syndrome describes it as the second most common condition caused by the presence of extra chromosomes. The Down’s Symdrome Association in the UK lists the incidence of Down’s Syndrome as 1 in 1,000 children born if that is a useful comparator.