This is the fifth of my pieces on religion.

Her name is not important, but she is nine years old and she is worried sick. She told her teacher all about it. She had been dreaming the night before, and she had dreamed that her mother was going to die. She wasn't sure why, but she had certainly had a disturbing dream, and had woken up absolutely certain that tragedy was not far away. She had not wanted to talk to her mother about it, she said, because she thought it would be unfair to worry her. After all, dying unexpectedly is bad enough, without having to worry about it as well beforehand.

When the teacher told me I was not terribly surprised. The child has an active mind, and children with active minds sometimes come up with the craziest things. But in this case I was even less surprised than I would normally have been, for the cause of our pupil's disquiet is as obvious as it is lamentable. The experience which has terrified her is unfortunately not uncommon in schools, and like so much that is harmful and damaging, it is protected by tradition, ignorance and British law.

Of our two-hundred-and-thirty-odd pupils, two hundred have been working intensively for three months on the school production - Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. They have all enjoyed themselves a great deal, and the two performances last week drew almost universal acclaim from parents and friends. There was a difference, though, between this and previous spectaculars. Sure enough, the comedy was there (although rather muted), and the major roles lent opportunity for original, show-stopping interpretation, but something was wrong. The problem lay, I believe, in the players' perception of the story they were presenting - they did not really know how to regard it. In the absence of clear instructions to the contrary, I think most assumed that the source of the tale carried its own guarantee of credibility. That source is, of course, the Bible.

A supply teacher recently asked a group of ten and eleven year old children to produce newspaper reports about the story, as though they were on the spot as the events unfolded. Without exception, the children wrote of the dreams experienced and interpreted by the title character. The editorial team chose as headlines JOSEPH THE DREAMER HIMSELF and DREAMS HIMSELF INTO JAIL; DREAMS HIMSELF OUT. I think this is conclusive evidence that the dreaming element is, as far as children are concerned, the most important (and certainly the most memorable) aspect of the whole sorry tale. The idea of every dream having a specific meaning; of being a portent of events to come; is a powerful one. And it leads to questions....

Every question has at least one answer. A questing, vigorous mind will seek and consider answers to all manner of queries, and the conclusions it reaches will be those which best fit its stored archives of experience, most recent predominating. Nor will they necessarily be the correct ones.

Joseph had dreams which came true. He also made predictions based on the dreams of others, and the lyric makes it clear that never once did his predictions go unfulfilled. No matter how outlandish the dream; no matter how unlikely the predicted consequence; every dream had a specific message. Never did Joseph dismiss his clients' dreams as having no meaning; never did he say, "Yes, your dream is about death, but it won't come true so don't worry." Always there was a meaning. Sometimes the message was a welcome one; sometimes not. But the dreams were never meaningless.

This story comes not from the Brothers Grimm; not from Shakespeare; not from Disney or Andersen. It comes from the Bible. And there are plenty who would imply, sometimes tacitly and sometimes overtly, that the stories in the Bible are true.

I hope that their nights are more peaceful than our troubled little girl's.

The line of reasoning developed above will, I trust, go some small way toward refuting one of the most popular misconceptions about religious education. These days many people sensibly, although quietly, refuse to believe literally the fantastic tales set out in the Bible. Many people also choose not to become involved actively in religious activity of any kind, for they see no point in it. These same people are, however, prepared to stand by and watch while that in which they do not believe is taught as gospel (!) to children of all ages. If you ask them they will tell you that they see no inconsistency in this, for while religion does little good, neither can it do any harm. They could hardly be more wrong.

Young children have an awful lot to learn as they grow up. They will believe practically anything they are told, especially by those in whom they place absolute trust. Their view of the universe and their place within it will begin to form almost as soon as they are able to think, and false ideas instilled at the outset are extremely hard to shake off. Religious belief persists in the world because parents fill their children's minds with it, and they in turn see to it that their children are similarly indoctrinated when the time comes. It is true that some turn to religion later in life, but I would wager my pension that, in each case, either a dormant spark of early teaching awaits rekindling after some misunderstood chance experience, or some tragic or similar event has warranted a distortion of the unfortunate individual's perspective on the world. In the same way that some sadly fall victim to serious illness, so some will succumb to the deceptive influence of religious belief. But that does not give anyone an excuse to promote lies and falsehoods - especially those among us with responsibility for the welfare of children.

The awful problem is this. Gradually, step by step as mankind's store of knowledge accumulates, humanity as a whole is able to create an ever more accurate mental model of the universe in which we live. It is through such a model that our understanding of that universe will eventually arise. The model is developed by individual minds working in a kind of global network, and without the imaginative, investigative power of each of us, true comprehension is severely hampered.

Understanding the real, beautiful, complicated, mysterious, exciting, sometimes happy, sometimes sad nature of the world and everything that happens in it is probably the most demanding undertaking we are ever asked to make. Curiosity leads to questions; inquiry, experience, communication and reasoning yield answers. By degrees, the model takes shape. Making the model is an act of the most outstanding creativity.

Religious belief provides a set of ready made answers to ultimate questions about the universe, the purpose of life, death, and a host of other issues. It shuts out inquiry and stifles creativity, for usually the answers are implanted before the relevant ultimate questions have even been framed. A child, its mind contaminated by comforting falsehoods, will never seek the true answers to those questions. The opportunity of intellectual creativity has been denied.

Those who defend religious teaching on the grounds that it can do no harm would do well to reflect upon this. To amputate surgically the hands of a child showing promise in music, or to blind a child with a flair for art, would be to remove from its life a rich dimension of future inspiration and fulfilment. To poison a young mind with biblical claptrap is to do precisely the same thing.