Tagged: atheist Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • DistroMan 20:00 on December 16, 2011 Permalink
    Tags: atheist, Christopher Hitchens, freethinker, rationalist, realist, skeptic   

    In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011 

    The news that Christopher Hitchens has passed away came through a short while ago.  I’ve lost a few people in my life over the years, but none affects me as deeply as the loss of this man.  Never having met him doesn’t change the fact that he has had a huge impact on my life and the way I live it.

    A lot of outspoken, famous or loud atheists have had some quite descriptive words used in connection with them.  The one I saw earlier used about Christopher is the one I happen to like the most.  Unflinching.  I’ve never known the man to take a backward step or water down his words to accommodate anyone.

    Whenever Christopher took the stage or stepped in front of a microphone you knew you were about to hear something worthwhile.  He may have been the embodiment of using a sledgehammer when a hammer would have sufficed, but that was his way.  Sometimes when a point has to be made, you need to make it loud and clear.  He knew how to do that.

    Christopher had a lot more to offer the world and sadly, now we’ll never know what that may have been.  There will be plenty of others who knew him personally who can talk so much more knowledgeably about this fine man, so I will leave that to them.  For my part, I can only tell you how sad his passing leaves me today.

    I will never forget you my friend.

     

  • DistroMan 20:00 on August 13, 2011 Permalink
    Tags: atheist, , , , , , , ,   

    Ezra 1: Morals are not made of gold and silver. 

    Ezra Part 1 of 10

    1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of Yahweh by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying,

    Here is an instance of Yahweh being able to direct the ruler of a kingdom/country to do his bidding.  If that is possible, why then were so many kings in the previous books able to be so evil in his eyes.

    2 ”Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘Yahweh, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he has commanded me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

    He hadn’t given you any such thing.   You guys didn’t even know about most of the earth in those days.

    3 Whoever there is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of Yahweh, the God of Israel (he is God), which is in Jerusalem.

    The whole of Persia is going to invade Jerusalem?  How much of Persia followed Yahweh?

    4 Whoever is left, in any place where he lives, let the men of his place help him with silver, with gold, with goods, and with animals, besides the freewill offering for God’s house which is in Jerusalem.’”

    If he was ‘left’, then he wouldn’t be a man of god and then you have to ask why he would bother helping out a believer of a different god?  That makes no sense.

    5 Then the heads of fathers’ households of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, even all whose spirit God had stirred to go up rose up to build the house of Yahweh which is in Jerusalem.

    6 All those who were around them strengthened their hands with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, and with animals, and with precious things, besides all that was willingly offered.

    An admission that not all was willingly offered?

    7 Also Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels of the house of Yahweh, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought out of Jerusalem, and had put in the house of his gods;

    8 even those, Cyrus king of Persia brought out by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and numbered them to Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah.

    9 This is the number of them: thirty platters of gold, one thousand platters of silver, twenty-nine knives,

    10 thirty bowls of gold, silver bowls of a second sort four hundred and ten, and other vessels one thousand.

    11 All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four hundred. Sheshbazzar brought all these up, when the captives were brought up from Babylon to Jerusalem.

    Soooooooooooo?  Is this to be yet another book of moronic statements about kings, gold, silver and animals, yet nothing to do with morals?  I expect so.  This book is what it is.  Immoral in the extreme.

    Index      Ezra 2>>

     

  • DistroMan 20:00 on August 12, 2011 Permalink
    Tags: , , atheist, , , , , , , , , , , , ,   

    2 Chronicles: The Post Mortem 

    2-Chronicles: What was it all about?

    Having gone through 1-Kings and 2-Kings, I was feeling rather worn out.  There wasn’t a moral to be found in any of the 47 chapters.  Then to find that Chronicles was just a rehash of Kings was exasperating to say the least.  But I started this, so I kept on going night after night, wading through the ridiculous rantings of delusional morons who seemingly thought that killing hundreds of thousands of animals is/was the way to show your love of God.  Add in the millions of human lives lost in the never ending wars/battles they fought over the period in question and you have to question the sanity of anyone who believes in the word of the bible.

    Oh, a quick and dirty calculation tells me that the blood spilt on just one occasion would have filled an Olympic size swimming pool.  Things to think about:

    1. Size of the herd and how big an area that would have taken up.

    2. People to care for the herd.

    3. Amount of people to kill the herd in one day.

    4. Space taken up during the kill.

    5. Amount of blood spilt on that area.

    6. What would the ground have been like after even the first hour let alone at the end of the carnage?

    7. How many people does it take to eat that amount of meat in one day?

    8. How many fires were going to be able to cook that meat in one day?

    9. Do you really believe this happened in one place in one day?

    I’d like to have a real believer explain how an eight year old can be the ruler of a kingdom and have God saying that the kid has done evil in his eyes.  If God can accuse an eight year old of being evil, he is not the kind of deity I’d like to have my kids modelling their lives upon.

    Expecting us to believe that king after king would have kept on making the same mistakes knowing that God would take revenge upon them is moronic in the extreme.  We may be slow learning as a species in some circumstances, but not to this extent.  The exaggeration and outright lies contained in the bible should be obvious to anyone reading it with an open mind.

    For one in six people upon this planet to be so taken in by this crap is mind boggling.  Add in all the believers in other stupid books of the same ilk and there is reason to wonder if we’ll make it past this century.  I wouldn’t be betting on it.

    << 2-Chronicles 36       Index      Ezra 1 >>

     

  • DistroMan 20:00 on June 8, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: atheist, , , , , , , , , , , United States   

    Q: Are we equal? A: Yes, but no. 

    I’m thinking of the religious amongst us.  If we were to go to a church this Sunday, stand outside and ask people as they emerge if they think we are all equal under God, they would most probably all say yes.  That is presuming that it was a happy clappy, love is in the air type service.  If it happened to be a more fire and brimstone, let’s kill the unbeliever type service there would be a lot of people saying no, but it’s the people who say we are equal that bother me.  I know who to watch out for when they are saying no and putting themselves out there in opposition to us.  But when they are the smiley, I love everybody because Jesus is in my heart type, you can’t tell when they are going to blow and come out against you or in what fashion.  I do admit though that there are plenty who will say we are equal and do honestly believe it.  They also believe that we will never be as happy as them without Jesus, but that is about as far as they go differentiating between us.  I get along really well with them and they are the majority in my life.  There is a troubling trend though.  The good ones are diminishing and the ‘down with the unbelievers’ are growing.

    Just how many who say we are equal are the type who when they go to church and hear their preacher saying that the godless are the enemy, that we eat our babies, that we have no morals, that we would as soon murder our neighbour as eat a hot Sunday lunch, would then sit there nodding their heads in agreement?  Most of them would.  When was the last time you ever saw or heard someone voice disagreement with their preacher?  I know I’ve never heard of it.

    We are told daily that our countries are based on Christian values and the believers are trying to get more and more of the Bible into our government and into our lives whether we are religious or not.  Not only are they trying to get their foot further in the door, but they are also actively trying to do away with anything that proves that their way is not the right way.  Take for example the way Texas have now managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century.  This is not only going to affect students in that state.  This is not just Texas history they are rewriting.  Any change in history of this magnitude affects the whole world.  There is no such thing as ‘just Texas history’.  History is a planetwide concern and should not be allowed to be rewritten under any circumstances.  This kind of action is tantamount to old style bookburning.

    Here in Australia, the religious have been getting worked up about the non-religious wanting to teach their children ethics.  I have no idea what their real agenda is in this matter, but the best we can think is that while ever we don’t teach ethics and morals to our children it allows them to keep saying that we don’t have any.  Could it really be that they are willing to fight this hard just to stop us proving we can be moral and ethical people just like everybody else?  It’s not that they don’t know it, but I suppose it would stop the preachers saying over and over in church every week how much better they are.  If their flock started to believe that we are just as moral, then what would be the point of Church?

    One day, far in the future, a future I probably won’t live to see, humanity may just learn that religion really is just load of rubbish.  It’s nothing more than fairy stories to control the people.  But this can only happen, ‘will’ only happen if we stop them from taking power again.  We must keep a separation of Church and State so that reasoning people have a chance to see the truth, because even reasoning people who don’t have the truth on display to examine will believe whatever is thrown at them every day of their lives by those who have a vested interest in maintaining power.

    CHURCH <  WIDEN THE GAP  >  STATE

     

  • DistroMan 20:00 on June 6, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: atheist, , ,   

    Can we live ‘free range’ or must we be ‘herded’? 

    It is said by believers of all ranks that the bible contains the answers to all of man’s questions and that without it we would be nothing more than animals killing each other, living without care for anyone or anything. Let’s look at that for a minute or nine and see if we really need that kind of ‘herd’ mentality forced upon us.

    Long before Constantine gathered all the misbegotten, wandering storytellers together there were communities of people all over the world that had set down rules to live by. They had been able to do this by thinking about what was best for themselves and for the group within which they lived. When people live in groups there will inevitably be disagreements and they will find ways of dealing with them. One way that just about everybody has found is to get someone they both respect to listen to both sides and then make a decision. That person will become known by all and then others will ask them to mediate for them as well.

    All of a sudden you have a judicial system. When things like this happen the most common problems will become very well known by everybody and a common law that prohibits whatever it was that caused that problem will come into effect. Changes to laws will happen when people question them and give good reasons for that change. It isn’t hard to understand that you don’t want people hurting you as it causes pain. Therefore, you innately understand that it will cause pain to others when you do something similar to them. Nobody likes to have their property stolen, so it is also quite simple to come to the conclusion that stealing is bad as well.

    Imagine that. We’ve set down laws to live by. Wasn’t that easy?

    I can see no reason why people think that they couldn’t control themselves without the bible to tell them what to do. We were doing it long before the bible was ”invented” and will be doing it long after it has disappeared from living memory.

    That pretty much takes care of what ”not” to do, but it will always be asked how we know to do good things without the bible. That question is just as easily answered as the previous one. Unless you were born with a brain that doesn’t work properly as some psychopaths have been, you will be able to feel ”good” when you see a child smile or a couple obviously in love and enjoying each others company. You will feel pride when your child accomplishes a task for the first time or goes out on their first date. You will feel anxious when they go off to school on the first day or take out their car on their own for the first time when they’ve grown up. These are the feelings that drive you to experience them again and again. When you do things that make you feel good you quickly learn to keep doing them. Giving blood, helping an aged person up a step, picking up a small child that has fallen, opening a door for someone that has their arms full. All of these feelings are within us from the very beginning of our lives and develop as we grow older and experience different things in our life. They do not magically appear just because we’ve read some book that was cobbled together more than 1650 years ago.

    Being good or bad is within us all. Which way we go depends on our upbringing, our surroundings, friends, and the things we see, hear and feel. If something traumatic happens at a low point in our life we can go bad. If we are looked after by a kind person at that same time we may turn out to be a kinder and more gentle person. We are born with certain innate abilities or instincts that are either nurtured through experience or that wither away due to lack of use.

    What it comes down to is that we learn to be good or bad and also have a choice in what we become. To abrogate your responsibility for your own behaviour is tantamount to cowardice. To give the credit for being a good person to a higher being is saying that you aren’t a good person at all, but an animal that needs “controlling”. It does not surprise me that some people cannot control themselves without their beliefs because they have been so brainwashed all their lives by their parents and religious leaders to “know” that they are sheep, that they know no other way of thinking.

    To do this to our young is not only unconscionable behaviour, but extremely detrimental to our future as a species. For mankind to fulfill it’s potential, we need everyone to be themselves, to have their talents brought out and allowed to mature. To suppress ourselves is to stay in place. If that had have been allowed to happen in the Dark Ages, we would still be living in the Dark Ages. We wouldn’t have our Educational Institutions, Health Systems or Space Travel.

    To be all that we can be, we need to say no to those who want to hold us down and control our every move. We can live a civilised life within society without being sheep.

    OWN YOURSELF

     

  • DistroMan 20:00 on June 4, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: , , atheist, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,   

    P.O.P.E. Pissing Off People Endlessly 

    The Pope’s linking of Islam to violence during a speech in Germany led to outrage in the Muslim world, nearly forcing cancellation of a trip to Turkey in 2006.

    Another controversy arose from his remarks on a trip to Africa that condoms can “make the continent’s AIDS epidemic worse”.

    He  made comments in Brazil that Latin America’s native people “wanted” to become Christian even before Europe’s conquerors arrived.

    Pope Benedict XVI called abortion and same-sex marriage some of the most “insidious and dangerous” threats facing the world today.

    In suffering, you will discover an interior peace and even spiritual joy.

    In Latin America the Pope said, “There is another disquieting trend, authoritarian forms of government and regimes wedded to certain ideologies that we thought had been superseded.” Here the Pope seemed clearly to be referring to leftist governments such as the Venezuelan regime of Hugo Chavez, who has clashed frequently with Church leaders there.

    An Irish government-organized compensation board has paid out more than $983 million to 13,000 people abused in Ireland’s church-run residential institutions for children. Why do the Irish people have to pay when the Vatican has more money than they do and they were the ones doing wrong?

    Archbishop Timothy Dolan, hand picked by Pope to join the Child Sex Abuse Probe in Ireland let a priest sue his accuser in St Louis and fought against reforming Wisconsin child sex abuse law.  Is this the right person to be on the panel?

    Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor is also a Papal choice for the Irish Probe.  It was Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor’s decision in 1985, when he was bishop of Arundel and Brighton, to move Fr Michael Hill to a chaplaincy at Gatwick airport.  Eighteen months previously the cardinal had removed Hill from ministry because of child abuse allegations but then allowed him back to work at the airport where Hill abused a child. Hill was jailed in 2002.   Is this the right person to be on the panel?

    British Taxpayers are to be asked to pay over $24.2 million to help fund the Pope’s visit in September all because ex Prime Minister Gordon Brown wanted the visit to help shore up Labour’s vote among the faithful in Scotland.

    It seems that there is a never-ending onslaught of Papal intervention in the affairs of Sovereign Governments these days.  When the Vatican seems less and less capable of even taking care of it’s own house you would think that they would be better off STFU.  But no, they seem quite willing to carry on laundering money, abusing children, raping nuns, avoiding the law, pimping, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousand by denying their followers the use of condoms, allow mothers to die during childbirth by denying abortion, allowing women to get pregnant too many times and risking their lives by denying the use of condoms and birth control.  All this and more while they put themselves up as the moral arbiters of our actions.

    The furor over child abuse has been growing steadily for around two decades and yet they still sit on their hands and wait for ‘nothing’ to happen.  Popey Joe continues to talk about ‘decisive action’ but none has been taken.  He has only just gotten around to naming a panel of ‘men of the cloth’ to go to Ireland and he couldn’t even get that right.  At least a third of them have questions to answer about their own activities.  How can anyone take them seriously when they themselves haven’t even cleared their own names.  Joe travels around the world spewing forth about the abuse and how it is ‘wrong’ and ‘evil’, but only blames the secular community, homosexuals or lack of faith by Catholics themselves.  One of his Cardinals even went so far as to accuse the children of ‘wanting it’.

    The US government is now involved in helping him avoid trial.  Their Supreme Court is so top heavy with Catholic Judges that they won’t give a verdict themselves on whether the Pope is immune from lawsuit, but have asked the Obama Administration to tell them what they should do.  What use are Judges if they won’t judge?  Of course, if they decide not to follow the Administration’s recommendations, then the Pope could still face trial if he is ever stupid enough to step foot on US soil.  I ‘pray’ that they do and he does.

    JOE AND BUBBA SITTING IN A CELL

     

  • DistroMan 20:00 on June 1, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: atheist, , cattle, , , , , , , ,   

    You just HAVE to love the Bible. 

    Cattle – Have as many as you can get and be ready to sell or sacrifice as Gods needs dictate.

    Children – Keep the little ones away from atheists as they want to eat them. How can you sacrifice them after that?  Silly atheists.

    Clear thinking – If the bible is telling you what to think it is ok to think that, but let’s be clear, you shouldn’t be thinking other stuff, because it’s harmful to your chances of gaining entry into heaven.  Stay clear.

    Courage – Fighting for something even if you don’t believe in it is courageous, because it takes courage to just do as you are told and not think for yourself and do what you would normally think is right.  That is why we have ‘clear thinking’ isn’t it?

    Education – You already have it.  It’s simple.  Love God and do as he says.

    Fairness – It doesn’t matter what’s fair.  If the bible tells you to kill the whole village including the children and cattle, you do it.  You get to live and he gets to die.  That’s balance.

    Family – Have more children even if it costs you your life because God needs more followers, but be prepared to sacrifice a couple in Gods  honour.

    Goats – See Wives.

    Hate – Gods enemies are your enemies.

    Honesty – Tell the truth when you go to confession, even if you lied earlier.  It’s only really needed then anyway.  If you are honest all the time you would have less to confess.

    Love – Just so long as it’s God you love.  If you are loving anybody else, you aren’t giving enough love to God.

    Love of the truth – Hey, love it all you want, but only if it’s the truth the bible gives you.  All other truths are lies.

    Wives – As per cattle.

    Work – Work as hard as you can so you can give it to God because you don’t need as much as he does because he needs Crystal Palaces and Mega Churches and Crosses and Statues and Fonts and Pews and Steeples and Altars and Apses and Rectories and Retreats and Basilicas and Wafers and Wine and Incense and Funny Dresses and Funny Hats and Funny Ball shaped thingies to burn the incense in and swing around while you sing and worship him and wear out the knees in the only pair of pants you own because you gave all your money to the church so that he may be praised in a better manner so that even more people can know his greatness which is all powerful and all knowing and merciful even if a few children are sacrificed and their mothers are left crying which is ok because the work and bearing of more children will take their minds off it while their husbands are out tilling the fields to grow more crops to make more money to give to God so that his followers can preach the evils of condoms that kill people when they stop them getting aids/hiv and then they can see the greatness of a God that has allowed them to die even though they were saved from the sin of using that condom against the wishes of men in funny hats that know the will of God and want everyone to love Him and only Him except when they want to love little boys that weren’t sacrificed to make his greatness even greater so that he could show his love to all men by killing those not of his chosen people that were not the only ones he created because if they were He’d have nobody to kill to show his chosen that they are his chosen and then they would be confused and not know they were the chosen because there were no ‘not chosen’ people around to slaughter in His name and be thrown into a pile and burnt while they danced and lauded praise upon God for being so loving that he saved the not chosen for the purpose of slaying so they could have a party and dance and sing as long as it was only for the purpose of praising him because dancing and singing for any other reason is a sin and you could be punished by his other followers and they would have to whip you and beat you and stone you till you died because you had done things he allowed you to do because he is so infinitely wise and loving and merciful that he knows you couldn’t be happy in this life without the free will to choose your own actions even if you knew that by doing so you would be killed by pious people that also had free will not to kill you but would still do so because you were a filthy sinner and it would be an insult to God to do otherwise even if they had done the same thing and had not been found out because they were sneakier than you were and that just proves that to love God you have to punish people even when you don’t agree that the crime was a just one but as long as it is God’s will it still needs to be punished and you are willing to mete out said punishment because Jesus died for your sins and so others have to die for theirs so that they are showing gratitude that God cut himself in half and made the other half into his own son that he sent down to earth to do things he knew would piss people off and cause them to torture and kill him and put him in a cave so that he could then miraculously come back to life and show that even Zombies are good and kind and need to be respected and have idols made of them so that really superstitious people made signs in the air with their hands and fingers that could protect them from the evils in the world that God created so that people had bad things to do so that other people could fight them in his name and make the world a better place so that even more people could worship him by going to church and confession and confessing that they murdered a child because they were disrespectful which was ok because it must have been God’s will that they kill them and confess so that their immortal soul could be saved and go to Heaven and sit with God for eternity because that is what any right thinking individual would do.  So there.

    HERE ENDETH TODAY’S LESSON

     

  • DistroMan 20:00 on May 29, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: atheist, , , , , , , , ,   

    Should a Politician put aside their religious beliefs when making decisions? 

    The simple answer would seem to be yes to anyone who understands that to fairly administer a nation for all citizens you need to be able to know what the peoples needs are and how to fulfil them in a fair and just manner, not only from your own persepective, but from theirs as well.  If you are a religious person it seems that it is nigh on impossible for you to do this.  Just lately this has been shown to be true for about 90 percent of the religious community that have had anything to do with decision making.  The Ethics Classes debate has shown most religious people only care about keeping kids in the Special Religious Education classes and not at all about those who don’t attend.  Those who don’t attend are left to fend for themselves and aren’t really bothered about unless they wish to do something useful and then they are stopped.  It seems that Scripture is the be all and end all of their existence and what others needs are don’t matter.

    I do have to say here that the Muslim community have shown themselves to be the more openminded and are quite happy for the classes to go ahead. I and many others applaud their support at this time.

    The Australian Christian Lobby on the other hand are mobilising as much support against the classes as they can muster and seem to be of the mind that they are the absolute arbiters of what should be taught, where it should be taught, when it should be taught and who teaches it.

    Look at what is about to happen shortly and you can see that the religious are getting their way much more than you would have thought.  On 21st June Prime Minister Rudd and the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will address Australian churches via a web-cast.  I have never heard of such a thing in my life.  What has so radically changed in this country that they are giving in to one group to such an extent?  It just shows that the leaders in this country not only have religious leanings, which in and of itself is alright, but have a bias towards religion that is blinkering their outlook on the community as a whole.  It’s not that there is anything overt being done that has affected us, but more that when we speak, we aren’t heard.  It’s like we don’t exist at times.

    No politician should be giving in to any one group over others consistently or to be seen to be playing favourites in this manner.  There is a section of politics that is fighting back, but they are small and don’t have the numbers to make changes as easy as other factions.  It is up to us, the people who are fed up with the way things are, to support these people and help them make the changes we wish to see.  If  we don’t, then we have no right to be complaining when next our lives are disrupted by religion getting in the way.  We are a bigger part of the community than even most of us are aware and if we mobilise ourselves and make ourselves heard we can bring this country back into balance.

    You, as an atheist, agnostic, freethinker, secularist, humanist or another religous person that thinks the christians in this country have far too great a say in our lives, then you need to start asking what you can do to change things for the better.  Help these brave politicians.  Sign their petitions, attend  parliament, write letters and emails.  It really now has come to the time that you need to make yourself heard.  I hate to have to put it as plainly as this, but…

    IT’S TIME TO PUT UP OR SHUTUP

     

  • DistroMan 20:00 on May 26, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: atheist, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,   

    Ethics Trial debate is becoming a farce. 

    Abbreviations:

    * SRE – Special Religious Education – Single faith instruction, usually by a ‘chaplain’ of that faith.

    ** GRE – General Religious Education – Comparative religious instruction on many faiths.

    Last night on television here in Australia a show called Insight had a somewhat varied group discussing their opinion on the Ethics Classes that the Education Department hope to introduce on a fulltime basis.  As you have probably seen from previous articles I have written on the subject, the religious community have gotten in on the act and are trying every tactic they can think of to stop these classes going ahead.  We have heard arguments that:

    • it isn’t necessary because they already have religious classes
    • it has no moral basis
    • ethics lacks substance
    • the term ‘ethics’ is problematic
    • it’s not fair and just to the religious children
    • it’s hostile to religion
    • it just shouldn’t happen because they have an agreement with the government
    • you can’t teach ethics outside a religious framework
    • the children’s minds can’t critically analyse ethics
    • philosophy discussion ‘problematic’ at that age (10 to 12)
    • the work of the Greek and Roman philosophers is irrelevant to ethics
    • afraid more children will opt out of SRE*
    • wasn’t implemented in a way they approve of

    They gave some of the children a chance to give their opinion and describe the classes they are involved in.  I was amazed at the explanations of the ethics given by the children and how it was being taught, but the religious in the group could not come up with one reason that countered the children’s wish to continue.

    It was explained by the person who originally put the syllabus together that scenarios are tailored for the age groups they are given to so that the children can not only comprehend the problem put to them, but analyse it and come up with different ways of dealing with them and then discussing those ideas amongst themselves with the objective of finding better solutions to ethical problems in their lives.

    The Anglican Minister confused me with his objections.  I can only think that he has no idea how atheism is defined.  He said,

    “If there was an atheistic teaching system we would be happy with that at the same time. Teaching all faiths is better than ethics with no faith component”

    and something about

    “Atheistic religion it’s a religion of some sort.”

    I don’t know what he is thinking because I’m not sure he knows himself.  None of his objections made sense and he was less than helpful in the discussion.  Whilever we include clueless people in these discussions, an outcome is impossible.

    The children who were removed from the SRE* classes told the audience that they were allowed to:

    • watch movies
    • read books in library or in the back of SRE* Classes
    • played on computer

    This is the part that really upsets the Non Religious parents.  Why, when the ‘religious’ children are being taught something their parents and the ‘chaplains’ are happy with, are our children being made to go without?  Blaming us for not wanting our children in those classes is no more than a smokescreen to reflect the responsibility back on us.  The trouble most of us have with that is that they wan to have their cake and eat it too.  I’ll explain what I mean by that.

    We take our children out of the SRE* classes, and they say it’s our fault. Fine, we take responsibility for our own children the same way they do for theirs.  Our children sit doing nothing and they say that’s our fault as well.  Sorry, but that’s not true.  It was part of the agreement they had with the government.  Why they would ever have made an agreement that the non SRE* children were not to be allowed to undertake educational activities is something they need to answer for as it is neither an ethical or moral stance.  So we took appropriate action to give our children a positive educational influence during that time and then they want responsibility back and the authority to stop us teaching ethics to our children.  We took them out of those classes and they didn’t care.  Our children sat idle and they didn’t care.  Why so much concern now?

    They showed a clip of one Minister teaching 10 to 12yr olds with toy bears.  THAT does not seem age appropriate to me.  If you can’t do better than that, it will only reinforce the decision to keep our children out of SRE.  While I certainly do not believe that all ‘chaplains’ would be that bad, I can only assume that they would have tried to show their best to the world.  If that is so, it was a pretty pathetic ‘best’.  They did themselves a great disservice and only managed to show how poor SRE* can be as an educational tool.

    It was also a sad reflection on the Victorian State Government to hear that they wouldn’t allow Humanist/Secular Ethics classes in Victoria because the group proposing it weren’t religious.  It really does show that the Christian Lobby in this country have quite a stranglehold on our Education Departments.  This is inappropriate in this day and age.  It needs to be looked at seriously and a resolution sought that will allow for our children to get better educations free of the restraints being imposed by a ‘special interest group’.  It is their ‘interest’ and not that of the wider community.

    Let’s get to some facts.

    1. They have the classes for their children that they want.
    2. We don’t have an existing alternative.
    3. Their children learn scripture according to their groups beliefs.
    4. Our children are banned from learning anything during that time.
    5. Some parents put their children into the SRE* classes because there is no alternative class.
    6. If there was an alternative, they would change their children over to that class as has already been shown during the trial.
    7. There has been up to 47% drop in SRE* attendance in some classes.

    This whole debate is entirely unnecessary.

    • They have their classes for their children, so why complain?
    • They haven’t cared about our children going without before, so why are they so interested in what we ‘do’ teach our children now?
    • Our children learning ethics is a good thing, so why complain?
    • They have GRE**, SRE*, Church, Sunday School and home. What more do they need?

    It really boils down to this:  The children of religious parents have the right to have their children taught the belief system they choose.  We, as either non-believers or parents whose children’s school does not have a chaplain for their ‘belief system’ would prefer to have our children taught ethics.  Why when they get exactly what they want do they think they have the right to deny us the exact same thing?

    Again, the explanation is simple.  They have to ‘automatically respect’ the other religions so they don’t make a noise about children of other faiths being taught in SRE*.  But we aren’t religious and are not given that respect.  We are nothing to them and in their opinion we don’t have equivalent rights to teach our children ethics.  It would not be in any of their interests for our children to be shown to be becoming more moral and ethical without their so-called religious beliefs.  It would once and for all show to the world that their gods and prophets are not needed for us to be good people.  They will continue to fight this even if we do get these classes approved.  It is not in their interests for us to be good.  How then do they claim that without God, there is no morals, no goodness, no compassion etc?  What use will there be for religion if that happens?

    THE DEMISE OF RELIGION IS AT HAND

     

    • Kat 11:58 on May 27, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I am a strong supporter of teaching ethics in primary and philosophy to high school age students. One of the things that most strongly affected my thinking as a child was that while Mum wanted us to go to Catholic school where our thinking was often stifled – my father taught us many philosophies, encouraged critical thinking and had many ethical discussions on many topics.
      I taught my children ethics when they were primary school age and Philosophy when high school age. Even though my daughter has not pursued it academically – it has helped her make good life choices and decisions. My son is still interested and continually questions and discusses ethics and philosophy daily.

  • DistroMan 20:00 on May 25, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: atheist, , , ,   

    Atheists and Atheism: Are we misunderstood? 

    The short answer is yes.  That’s obvious from the multitude of comments you can hear on Radio, read each and every day in Newspapers, Facebook, Twitter and many Blogs.  We have been accused of everything from causing world wars to genocide and everything in between.

    The biggest problem I see is that the commenters either don’t or won’t understand the meaning of the word ‘atheist’.  This is most noticeable from the questions we are regularly asked by believers. e.g.

    • Why do atheists hate god?
      • You can’t hate something you don’t believe exists.
    • Why do atheists hate believers/christians/priests/the pope?
      • If we do, and I will admit that some do, it isn’t because we are atheists, but because of the wrongdoing of some of those people.  It is a misconception that we hate all of them.
    • Are atheists devil worshipers?
      • This is probably one of the silliest I have seen. God and the Devil are your fairytales, not ours. Oh, just in case, we don’t believe in Angels either.  None of that stuff.

    This silliness goes on and on and on.  There will never be a stop to it while the likes of power hungry priests, ministers, pastors, nuns etc are still allowed to spread their bile and hatred against those of differing opinions.

    I’ve just read an article (which I encourage everyone to read) entitled ‘Is there such a thing as an ex-atheist?’ where some Christians gave very far fetched ideas of what being an atheist actually means.

    1. Living without god. No church, no praying, etc, but still believing in God.
    2. Not attending church for a while.
    3. Not thinking about religion.
    4. Doing “bad things’ like stealing, etc.
    5. Getting ‘angry’ with god for not giving them what they wanted.

    These things don’t make you an Atheist, just a very stupid or bad Christian.

    How many times do we have to keep saying it?

    ATHEISM: is the acceptance that there is no credible scientific or factual evidence for the existence of a god, gods or the supernatural.

    MORE SIMPLY, WE DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD

    MEMORISE IT

     

← Older posts

c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
l
go to login
h
show/hide help
shift + esc
cancel