Christmas is not pagan

 A self identified atheist and sceptic gets it. Why don't some Christians, then? 

Pagan Christmas, Again. - History for Atheists

Glass houses

Every time a school shooting takes place in the United States, such as the recent one in Florida, internet conspiracy theorists spread allegations that they are false flag events. Put simply, secret elites stage these incidents to create a pretext to confiscate the firearms of law abiding citizens. I was one of several Christians discussing these conspiracy theories with Internet atheists on social media the other day. They claimed that religious people are more susceptible to conspiracy theories than atheists.

Several Christians made it clear to them that were were appalled that other Christians were peddling this stuff. It makes all of us look bad. On the other hand, some atheists are no better. For example, I have met atheists who were adamant that The Davinci Code, or rather, its premise that its author allegedly plagiarized, was completely factual. The Zeitgeist documentary offers a revisionist take on the origins of Christianity that doesn't stand up to historical scrutiny. The Jesus mythicist movement that has emerged in recent years is also based on a conspiracy theory.

If people attempt to use social media to make all Christians look bad, or deliberately distort or misrepresent their beliefs, sometimes they need to be corrected. I will do my part to correct them.

Against the grain

Outspoken biologist and atheist has suffered a minor stroke, forcing him to cancel his planned speaking tour of Australia, which was scheduled for late this month. I'm praying for his recovery, because I wouldn't wish suffering a stroke on anybody, and also because the Bible commands praying for your enemies (Matthew 5:43-48).

Seriously?

I sometimes debate online with atheists and agnostics who sincerely believe that Jesus never existed. I post this summary of a recent article, linked at the foot of this posting, for the benefit of them and any other spiritual seekers.

Firstly, recent archaeological finds reveal that Nazareth existed and was settled in the time of Jesus.

Furthermore, Jews in the time of Jesus believed that there would be a messiah figure who would suffer and die, that Christians always believed in Jesus as being divine, and this was not a later innovation.

The gospels were based on written sources, and not oral transmission, as skeptical New Testament scholars have claimed.

The gospel of Mark, widely believed to be first of the gospels to be written, may have been written 5 to 10 years after Jesus was crucified, and not in the late 60s or early 70s AD as scholars often claim.

Finally, many contemporary authors claim that Jesus was an illiterate peasant. However, looking at the debates between Jesus and the Pharisees in the gospels, Jesus shows a thorough knowledge of Jewish law and scripture.

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/6-shocking-new-discoveries-about-jesus-of-nazareth/

Knockout punch?

This is supposed to be a "gotcha" meme, one of the favoured weapons in the arsenal of internet atheists. These internet atheists are fond of claiming that Adolf Hitler was a Christian. At the time he said this, Hitler would not take power for four and a half years. One can look at both his private and public statements, and find both pro and anti-Christian rhetoric coming from the same mouth.

To his distorted mind, true Christianity was corrupted by the apostle Paul, and Jesus Christ was not Jewish, but Aryan. Hitler sounded sympathetic to Christianity and courted churches out of political expediency. But had Nazi Germany won the Second World War, he would have eliminated the churches altogether.

The fact of the matter is that the atheist claim that Hitler was a Christian does not stand up to historical scrutiny, as any reputable scholar will affirm. Their work is a far more reliable source of information than a selective quote in a meme.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

It ain't necessarily so

I'm a long time reader of The Age newspaper's weekly television and radio lift out, the Green Guide. One thing that its columnists seem notable for is their disdain and mockery of Christianity. Brad Newsome was prevailed upon to review The Jesus Mysteries, a documentary showing on the National Geographic channel on Good Friday.

Newsome, whose area of interest is science, wrote as follows: 

"One mystery is why everyone involved in all these Jesus documentaries seems to accept everything in the gospels as, well, gospel. True, there is next to nothing in the historical record to attest to Jesus' existence, let alone corroborate the gospel stories, so they're short of material to work with. But to proceed on the assumption that everything in the gospels is literally true is like making a doco on Islam and concluding that Muhammad really did fly around on a winged horse. The only scepticism displayed by the scholars and theologians assembled here has to do with extra-canonical matters. One of these is the belief that Jesus travelled to Britain and studied under druids (this began, we are told, with a yarn put about in the Middle Ages by an abbey in need of pilgrims). There's interesting stuff about the symbolism of the nativity stories, and the veneration and demonisation of Mary Magdalene. What would be even more interesting would be a documentary that took a serious look at the Bible as a human book, examining precursors and parallels in pagan religion and literature. Don't hold your breath."

Before I watch the documentary, let me offer the following responses to Newsome's review.

The majority of historians accept that Jesus was a historical figure. Likewise, when I discuss these matters with people, if you want to talk about the historicity of the gospels, I usually start with the gospel of Luke. Luke was a careful historian who compiled his account of the life of Jesus by speaking to eyewitnesses of the events described. Scholarly opinion on when it was written varies, either from 59 to 63 AD, or the 70s or 80s AD. In any event, it was written within the living memory of the eyewitnesses. As Craig S. Keener of Asbury Theological Seminary writes, "very few ancient biographies (the gospels are biographies) were written as close to the time of their subjects as the gospels were."

In any event, scholars believe that the synoptic gospels were written between 50 and 70 AD, and the gospel of John between 70 and 100 AD.

Then he conflates things by comparing Jesus to the prophet Muhammad, and Buraq the flying horse of Islamic belief. When I was at school and writing critiques of films or books, my teachers always marked me or my friends down if we went off on tangents and wrote about other subjects that were irrelevant to what we were writing about. If you don't want to lose marks, stay on topic.

Bart Ehrman is one of the scholars featured in this documentary. In contrast to classical Christianity, which holds that Jesus was God in human form, he believes that the early Christians attributed divinity to Jesus long after his death. Surely having a scholar of Ehrman's profile in this documentary should be enough to satisfy Newsome. Did Newsome know that Ehrman used to be a fundamentalist Christian, then a liberal Christian, but now self-identifies as as agnostic?

On the other hand, I share Newsome's skepticism that Jesus travelled to Britain to study under druids. Because some scholars believe that the gospels tell us nothing about the life of Jesus between the ages of 12 and the commencement of his public ministry as an adult, there is also a body of esoteric literature claiming that during these "missing" years, Jesus visited variously India, Tibet, Persia, Assyria, Greece and Egypt. This is reading things into the text that cannot be supported. It's more likely that he grew up like his peers, staying in his village of Nazareth (Luke 2:52), being schooled in Judaism, and learning the carpentry trade from his earthly father, Joseph (Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3, Luke 4:22). In other words, Luke makes a summary statement about Jesus growing into adulthood, and he clearly was already well known in his community.

Newsome then sarcastically complains that the documentary doesn't deal with the Bible's precursors and parallels in pagan religion and literature. These objections are commonly made in atheist and skeptic circles. I wonder to how much depth Newsome looked at these issues? Did he watch the Zeitgeist movie, which also makes these claims, which a skeptic acquaintance of mine once suggested to me that I watch, in the hope that it might de-convert me?

Yes, the Bible is a human book. It didn't descend to earth from heaven, gilt edged and leather bound. Its authorship was superintended by God, with its authors writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It comprises 66 books, written by 40 different authors over a period of hundreds of years, and from beginning to end, it narrates God's plan of redemption for humanity and all of creation.

I'm sure that Newsome is very good at what he does, but in this review he's clearly operating outside of his area of expertise. He's clearly not across his brief. It would be akin to me attempting to write a structural engineering textbook on stresses and tension in bridge design and construction.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-18/dickson-tips-for-atheists/539789

http://www.alwaysbeready.com/zeitgeist-the-movie

http://www.craigkeener.com/gospel-truth-luke-11-4/ 

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-guide/friday-april 18-20140416-36qbc.html#ixzz2zDJ5POVy

When you can't be bothered writing your own blog post, borrow someone else's content

Alain de Botton is the hipster of the world of philosophy, making his discipline accessible for the common man or woman, as the case may be. Mr de Botton asserts that the Judeao-Christian ten commandments are no longer relevant in the modern world, so he has devised a set of ten alternate commandments. Dale Stephenson, Senior Pastor of Crossway, one of the largest Baptist churches in Australia, deftly dissects them, and I think he did a good job, hence my reposting his article here.

Dale Stephenson of Crossway Baptist, Melbourne reviews the 10 commandments for atheists: biblesociety.org.au/news/reviewing…
— EternityNews (@EternityNews) February 21, 2013

Aggregation

Somewhat belatedly I'm posting an article about the much anticipated but in the end disappointing and frustrating debate between prominent atheist, Professor Richard Dawkins, and his opponent, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell on Q and A.

There won't be any triumphalist and petty gloating over which side one the debate; I'll leave that to others to argue. If you can digest the flowery language and abstract thinking, ABC Religion and Ethics editor Scott Stephens makes some valid comments about the debate here. I smiled at his description of some Christian leaders as "hucksters" and "glorified life coaches."

Muc-bhuachaill

On this post I'd like to reflect on my experiences of attempting to have civilized discussion and debate with militant Internet atheists on atheism blogs, and to also dissect their debating tactics. I hope you're sitting down, because it's not for the faint hearted. Firstly, a disclaimer. Not all atheists are alike. The majority of them want to live their lives without interference from religion, and based on their own definition, live a good life. They want to work hard, feed their children, pay their bills, and raise their families. They have nothing against religious people, but they want no part of it. In other words, they think, "if you want to follow your religion, keep it to yourself and don't bother me with it."

I describe the atheists I have dealt with as militant to differentiate them from those described above. This is the situation as it currently stands. To their minds, religion is impeding human progress. It is evil, and a relic of a primitive, less enlightened era. Science has rendered religious belief unnecessary, but millions of deluded religious believers around the world refuse to accept this. Militant atheists are actively campaigning against what they see as the excessive and unhealthy influence that religion has upon Western society. Not only do they want to drive it completely from the public sphere; they are working to eradicate it altogether. Having achieved this goal, they think they will be able to bring about a fairer, more just society; or to overstate things slightly, a secular utopia. If  they ever achieve this, I'd be very surprised if it turns out as well as they would have us believe, but that's another issue.

Why would I attempt to dialogue with these militant atheists? During my theological studies, one of my lecturers said that every Christian should be dialoguing with different belief systems. From a Christian framework, I have attempted to do this for several years. As an avid reader, I have read several books on comparative religions, cults, and new religious movements. Book learning has its place, but if you're careful how you go about it, talking with followers of these movements can be very informative as well. In recent years I have visited a mosque to talk to Muslims, talked with angel worshipers, members of ISKCON, Gnostics, faith healers, Reiki practitioners, Jehovah's Witnesses, followers of David Icke, members of the far right group nationalist group the Citizen's Electoral Council, and so on. My activities on atheist blogs are a continuation of this process. I want to understand their mindset better. My agenda is to develop my critical thinking skills, and at least attempt to have a respectful discussion of competing belief systems.

I'm not attempting to convert them or bring them back to the Christian faith. Based on my experiences, this seems like attempting to ride a bicycle uphill with the chain removed; in other words, pretty much impossible. Going by their blog comments, you can pick up some clues about their backgrounds. While they claim that their rejection of Christianity and its claims, or of any religious belief is purely on intellectual grounds, in at least some cases, it seems evident that there's sometimes more to the story than that, not that they're prepared to admit it if you ask them. They may have had bad experiences of church as an institution, or of significant figures in their lives who were Christians. You can cite numerous examples of the hypocrisy and moral failings of Christians, the corruption of the church, alleged discrepancies in the Bible, to cite a few examples. Add some or a combination of these factors together, and this has driven them to atheism. Their minds are already made up, and it would literally take a miracle for them to change their minds.

I have tried to be polite and respectful, just as I would if I was talking to them face to face, but being nice hasn't worked. I've never been an overbearing, in your face type of Christian, but I have been savaged. Some of them accuse me of "imposing" my beliefs on them. All I'm doing is merely stating my beliefs, strongly at times, but almost always respectfully, so I fail to see how this constitutes imposing them. They attempt to caricature me as some sort of rabid fundamentalist, as if all Christians think alike. If offering a Christian perspective on issues upsets them, this says more about them than me. Besides, there is a difference between being passionate and being obnoxious; a difference which some of them fail to appreciate.

Just because I'm a Christian, they are not prepared to give you a fair hearing. Other Christians are treated the same way. They refuse to take you seriously, or dialogue or engage with you on an equal footing. Just for disagreeing with them, I and other Christians have been mocked, ridiculed, patronized, belittled, and called ignorant and intellectually stunted. Yet my patience, such as it is, wears thin when I see how they badly they misrepresent and distort Christian beliefs, time and time again.

In one hubristic post, one militant atheist blogger trumpeted what he saw as the growing influence of their movement, citing research showing a statistical decline in church attendance and religious belief among certain demographics in North America. Somehow this lead to me bringing up the millions of Christians worldwide who are being persecuted for their faith, sometimes at the cost of their lives. If I remember correctly, I called these Christians "martyrs." Historically and in the present day, these Christians have usually been peaceful citizens, without a violent bone in their bodies, following the example of Jesus himself.

Their only crime is to live under and defy unjust laws which deny them freedom of worship, or live under regimes that do little to protect this freedom. Taken to extremes, sometimes it comes down to a choice between renouncing their faith, imprisonment, or being killed. I had my words twisted, as if I was trying to say, "millions of Christians are being persecuted for their faith, therefore Christianity is true." I was actually making a point about the remarkable resilience and dedication of these Christians under very difficult conditions, and how inspired by their example I am. I was drawing a broad comparison between their persecution and the militant atheist campaign against Christianity, and some of their personal attacks against me, which I see as a form of persecution. As for my use of the word martyr, someone tried to suggest that a non-violent Christian martyr is no different from a militant Islamic suicide bomber. At times their thinking is so warped and vitriolic it leaves me flabbergasted.

This leads to another point. Some of these militant atheists hate having the Bible quoted at them. They make it very clear that they reject it and that it has no authority over them whatsoever. However, they're happy to quote it back at you if it suits their purposes. They want to have their cake and eat it too. To give one example, to support his argument that the Bible condones and prescribes the oppression of women, one commentator quoted from the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus. On the same topic, another commentator produced a long list of Bible passages giving examples of women being treated badly.

She shouted me down when I countered that she was reading these passages out of context, and that these passages were descriptive rather than prescriptive. I offered to look into these passages and explain them for her, but she wasn't interested. Just the other day I had one tell me that the Bible prescribes incest, stoning of homosexuals, rape, burning witches, and atrocities against children. Because I personally practice none of these things, I have been accused of cherry picking, that is, only following those parts of the Bible that suit me. This is a meaningless accusation, and one I absolutely reject.

Another commonly used tactic is to obfuscate. Look in the comments archive of this blog for a couple example of this. If they're irrelevant to the issue being discussed is of no concern to them. As soon as you identify yourself as a Christian on these blogs, they will bombard you with a long list of objections to Christianity. These may either be based on difficult passages of the Bible, doubts about the historicity of the Bible or of Jesus himself, the moral failings and hypocrisy of some Christians, or historic and contemporary injustices perpetrated upon humanity by those claiming to act with the sanction of God. In doing this they hope to so overwhelm you that you will feel intellectually outgunned and discouraged from further discussion and give up, leaving the argumentative atheist with the impression that they have won the day, and another Christian has been put in their place.

I take atheist objections against my Christian faith seriously, probably more seriously than they take my faith. Insofar as I personally cannot answer them, sometimes these objections rattle my cage a bit and challenge my faith. These challenges cannot be allowed to fester for too long, so they are actually driving me to look for answers to their objections. Even if I personally lack the knowledge to answer these objections, plenty of other Christians do.

As others more learned than I am have frequently observed, these objections are nothing new. They have already been dealt with satisfactorily by the vast body of Christian scholarship. All I need to do is find it and make the time to read it, just as I have previously whenever I come across people with different beliefs to my own. Some of my militant atheist friends might think that their campaign against Christianity will persuade some Christians to abandon their faith, but in my case, this is very unlikely. My faith has been tested more severely than anything they can dish up. If I was going to give up my faith, I probably would have already done so a long time ago.

Gussett boots

From the Australian Prayer Network comes this unedited transcript of former Australian Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson's address at the Brisbane Lord Mayor's breakfast. I'm posting this hear because of his remarks about atheism. In particular, I draw the attention of this blog's reader to his references to such prominent figures as naturalist and public face of the militant atheist movement, Richard Dawkins, his comrade Christopher Hitchens, Christopher's estranged brother Peter, a former atheist, historian Arnold J. Toynbee, intellectual Malcolm Muggeridge, and Russian novelist Alexander Solzehnitsyn. These sections speak for themselves.

Hello and thank you very much indeed for your kind introduction. It’s great to be in Queensland. I’m sort of ‘out to pasture’ these days in terms of public life and I have to say that I don’t greatly miss it, and I think very much of myself as just a private citizen again so it’s always a bit of a shock when sometimes someone recognises me or half recognises me.

I was in a reception line for a charity in Sydney a little while ago and people were filing past and politely saying ‘hello’ to the heads of the charity and then to my wife and then to me, and a very charming and gracious elder lady from a prosperous area of Sydney, immaculately dressed and manicured, looked straight at me in the eyes and great warmth radiated and she put her hand on mine and she said ‘Now Sweetie, I know I’ve seen you around Sydney many times over the last couple of decades. Worse than that, I know we’ve been introduced, but I’ve forgotten your name and I’m going to have to ask you to tell me who you are because I cannot resist the temptation to tell you that you bear an uncanny resemblance to that fellow John Anderson who used to be the Deputy Prime Minister.’

Lord Mayor Campbell Newman, it’s great to be here with you. I served for many years around a cabinet table with your mother. I was very fond of your mother; she was a lovely, warm, friendly person – one of those genuinely beautiful people – and I mean that in every sense of the word. You will know, as her son, that the smile often hid a very forceful and gritty approach to life.

I remember on one occasion she came to me with an idea that involved spending quite a bit of money on disadvantaged rural communities and she said, ‘Are you with me on this?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely!’ She said ‘Do you think that the Treasurer and the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister will be?’ and I said ‘No, not with that price tag attached to it.’ ‘Good’ she said, ‘Well I’ll go up and publish it now as our policy, and then they can clean up the mess afterwards!’ And I have to tell you that she and I lost quite a bit of skin over that, but we got the policy.

Well, like so many Australians, I watched on with horror at the recent seasonal events - out-of-seasonal natural events in the state - over the summer period and I want to say to you that our hearts certainly went out to you. We admire greatly the leadership that was shown and the volunteerism and all of the things that went to ensuring that the best of a dreadful situation was made.

It did cause me to reflect on something, and that is that, tragic as it was, and particularly tragic where lives were lost, we are fortunate indeed, are we not, to live in a country where we have the capacity to mount outstanding emergency responses, and the financial wherewithal to assist communities and indeed the state, frankly, to recover? Those are good things!

The great majority of people who live on the surface of the globe today do not live in societies where such things are possible. Yet we take them for granted. But I want to say to you, ladies and gentlemen, that I don’t think we should take the great blessings we enjoy for granted. I think we are in very, very great danger in the West of seeing our privileged position ebb away.

As a farmer, I’m very conscious that if you want to grow a good crop you have to first till the soil in which the crop is grown. The crop of freedom, of democracy, and all of the good things we take for granted in our lives, is, in fact, Christianity and yet our society has moved away from it and so little understands now, the soil in which the crops of freedom are grown, that I do not believe that we can continue to expect to grow those crops, and I’m deeply sobered and deeply concerned by this. I really am.

You know, it strikes me as a great irony that the atheistic regime in Beijing better understands our history than we do. I’m indebted to the ABC (I’m sorry, Heather – another media organisation, you’ve heard of them) to the ABC Religion Hour, if it still exists, for a broadcast they had a couple of years ago and someone gave me the transcript and it was with a very senior correspondent in Beijing and he was reporting on a major study that the Communist government had undertaken into the Christian church in China; and the report had come back indicating that the church growth in China was amazing and that it is not likely to be stopped.

And it caused great consternation, and that is, of course, behind the persecution of the house-church movement in particular in China. Why? I’ll tell you why, as our correspondent said. The Chinese government understands that it is Christians who start to agitate for the recognition of ‘the little person’. For the radical idea that we take for granted yet you find in no other culture. No other belief system that I’ve ever encountered. That all have dignity before God, and that the King must respect the peasant just as the peasant is expected to respect the King - the Good Samaritan story.

The Bible, of course, is based on the whole idea that each is precious; and the Chinese understand the European history! It was that radical nation that built the idea of representation in Parliament, peaceful means of removing those who become corrupted by the lure of power, which is almost all people who get hold of power. Not Ron Boswell and me, but most people, and you need a peaceful means to resolve that and democracy has evolved out of it. Nor do we understand the way in which transformed and renewed lives have transformed our society.

My political hero is a man called William Wilberforce. To many of you he’s still a hero today – to Christians everywhere. Here is a man who came from Hull, entered Parliament as an extraordinarily privileged and wealthy young man with the world at his feet, in an age of great moral ‘messiness’ in Great Britain. It was a ‘Superpower’ but it was a dreadful place; inequitable, corrupt, vice-ridden, and he had everything to gain by remaining the sort of dissolute young man that he was, but he got converted.

He got converted and he was transformed, and this man went on to do something that was extraordinary for somebody from the mercantile class; a very wealthy man. He came to see that people with black skin mattered equally to God to those with white skin and he led the greatest human rights campaign of all times, that which freed the slaves.

The Left in this country used to prattle on about human rights till whales became important; until the cows came home but we’ve erased our understanding that it was the Christians who gave rise to our democratic freedoms and to the idea that slaves should be freed, and so on and so forth. We’ve jettisoned it all.

Now England, the country that exported Christianity and freedom; you know, the ‘mother of the parliaments’ and what have you, has changed. Like Australia, there was a time when Christianity, even if you didn’t go to church, was seen as true; then there was a time when it was just one of many truths. Now, according to the intelligentsia, it’s dangerous and you shouldn’t expose your children to it! And England’s busily exporting the new atheism – the Richard Dawkinses of this world and the Christopher Hitchenses.

Christopher Hitchens wrote God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything. Are you all aware of that book? He was in Sydney about twelve months ago. He was at the Opera House with the ABC (you can see how I love that organisation) I think it was them. They had this 'Dangerous Ideas Conference' you see. So here’s one of their great heroes, Christopher Hitchens – a brilliant man who’s against God – he’s up there.

At the same time, ironically, I have to tell you (I’m an Anglican) the Anglican Church had an outreach thing called ‘Thirty-nine Prominent Australians Talking About Their Christian Faith’. And they were prominent Australians (well, thirty-eight of them were – I was the thirty-ninth)! Remarkable men, from captains of industry to Peter Costello to sportsmen to scientists to medicos, proclaiming their belief in the resurrected Christ - while Christopher Hitchens is saying that only an imbecile believes in a resurrected Christ today!

 

I would have thought that that was a potential ‘field day’ for the media. Thirty-nine (thirty-eight plus one) prominent Australians saying they do believe while the Great Atheist is saying only an infantile believes. Isn’t that rich ground? And yet the media, confronted with something unfortunate, like a whole lot of thinking, intelligent Australians who believe in a resurrected Christ – it’s easier just to ignore it, isn’t it? What have we come to?

Christopher Hitchens has a brother. His name’s Peter. Peter was an atheist too. Then he went to live in Russia for quite a while and he saw what seventy or eighty years of atheistic Communist rule had done to the people, and he converted, and he’s written a book called The Rage Against God and in that he mounts incredibly powerfully, the argument that we are being blind and foolish beyond belief. He says we’ve silenced God; we’ve mocked Him, we’ve sidelined Him; we won’t give Him a role in the public square. Must we learn it all again – that no society that says it can do it without God preserves its freedoms or lasts for very long? The brother of a great atheist; that's what he says; and he goes on to talk about some of the disastrous results – and again, he’d have seen them in Russia.

Do you know the first thing he nominates that’s been so damaging out of all of this? The trashing of marriage. The trashing of family; and he argues very powerfully, and I agree with him because I can see it – I saw it in public life – your elite, your intelligentsia, the ‘trendy’, who are at the forefront of trashing traditional marriage and traditional family and seem only to speak for adults, and never for the interests of the children who have to grow up in some sort of environment, ladies and gentlemen, so they, in a way, are the least to suffer from the trashing of marriage. They can go and find a ‘trophy bride’, or a yacht, or a chalet in Switzerland to take their mind off the pain, but as it filters down through society the results are more and more and more devastating.

There is a little town not far from where I live which used to be a good, honest working town; it’s now a social security town. The school has shrunk and shrunk. There’s twelve kids in that primary school today; they have between them three mothers and five fathers.

Will those children – precious every one of them – be selfless givers to humanity, able to contribute to society; to take their place in our community and help us build a bigger, stronger community and families of their own? Or will they be people tragically locked into a cycle of welfare dependency and of deep need drawing on the rest of the community – I ask you?

They will be preoccupied with self and that is another enormous price we are paying for the abandonment of Christianity. Selflessness built our freedoms. Selfishness is destroying them.

One thing politicians know about is what you’re thinking. They employ very sophisticated and expensive polling techniques to establish what you’re thinking, so that they can tell you what you’re thinking and hopefully you’ll say, ‘What a great leader!’ Now the trouble is that, of course, nobody thinks the same thing anymore because we’re breaking up as a society and it’s almost impossible to find a ‘common thread’ anymore but, the other people who know what you’re thinking is the advertising industry and in particular the banks. Sorry, I’ll offend everybody by the time I’ve finished this morning! And you may recall that advertisement that just had a big page and a hand pointing out of it ‘Look after the most important person in the world – You’.

Stop and think about it for a moment. Isn’t that what’s ripping our society apart? Isn’t it that very selfishness that we now idolise that so threatens our and our children’s future? And more than just the fabric of our society; it spills over into economics. The thing that is really shattering us now is, of course, the GFC. We’ve been largely immuned from it in Australia. Now, it wasn’t very long ago that I would have said that there’d been a good government that had a bit to do with that. I suppose if I’m honest it’s China taking all our exports and all those sorts of things. But I think we’re all aware that we’ve been very fortunate in this country but that the world is in deep, deep, deep trouble.

You’ve got once wealthy countries all over the world, once really wealthy countries so deeply ‘in hock’ that there responses will be one of three or a combination of three things; they’ll have to massively wind back government services, and in a selfish age that’s a very painful thing to do because no-one wants to lose anything; they’ll have to raise taxes – ditto – or default on debt repayments. All of them threaten us; threaten those societies and the Western Alliance; indeed, the global outlook. That’s something, ladies and gentlemen, that in an age when politicians want to say ‘We’ll make sure this never happens again, and we’ll put in place the regulations that won’t let the greedy bankers and so forth, do it again’ that we’re overlooking that the crisis has its roots in character failing and in moral failing; in greed and in poor judgment, and you can’t legislate against those things.

You actually need a cultural environment where people understand that your word should be your bond; that you should earn rather than seek instant gratification, on borrowed money, the things that you want. I’m not saying I’m against sensible use of debt. I’m not against that at all. I’m a good capitalist after all. But this is out of control and you won’t fix it by regulation, and it wasn’t just a few greedy bankers in the United States. What is revealed is that everywhere, governments and their citizens had been living beyond their means, and what it amounts to, of course, is a monstrous inter-generational theft, because we’re putting our children’s and our grandchildren’s futures at risk. That in turn, of course, has further consequences. It threatens the whole of the Western Alliance that we are part of.

For years we’ve lived as a middle-ranking, wealthy and free nation as part of the most privileged alliance of nations on earth; probably that the world has ever seen, ultimately under the protective mantle, in recent decades, of economic, military, social, and I cringe a little when I say it, the cultural might of the United States. But the warning signs are all there; that it isn’t going to continue much longer. And in the midst of all of this in a deep-seated sense of anxiety right across the western world, governments are failing. This is not a reference to Obama in any way politically or personally, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more ridiculous, more frightening or naïve or stupid than watching the way in which everyone salivated at the thought that this new American President Obama could ‘save the world.’

Lemming-like, everyone, including the western press (except Heather) embraced this idea that if we just get rid of that other man and we put this new one in, it will all be fixed up. There was only one Messiah. The undue expectations placed on that man’s shoulders were ridiculous – and we’re doing the same thing in Australia, we’re casting around for leadership because we want to be let out of it. But the problem is, ladies and gentlemen, as any good historian knows, you’ve got no hope of working out where to go if you can’t work out where you are, and you can’t work out where you are if you don’t know where you’ve come from. That is our problem. So don’t think any time soon some great western leader (who can be trusted anyway) is going to come along with the solutions to the problem, because it isn’t going to happen until we collectively wake up to ourselves (in my judgment) and that doesn’t look like happening any time soon. So it’s a grim outlook in some ways.

I recently re-read, though, a little book called The End of Christendom. It was written by Malcolm Muggeridge. Actually it wasn’t written by him, it’s a record of two lectures that he gave in America in 1978. Malcolm Muggeridge was one of those truly brilliant Englishmen. They do happen. And he was absolutely ‘up there’ with the CS Lewises of this world. He’d been a journalist and he’d lived in Russia in the heyday after the revolution when much of the West, let alone the Russians, thought this was the way to freedom; atheistic communism – ‘we can do it better without God’. That was the Left Wing’s version of how to do it without God; then you have the right wing’s version, which is fascism.

They both visited unbelievable suffering of humanity. Remember Peter Hitchens? Think you can do it without God? Learn the lessons of history – you can’t. He became firstly very cynical, and ultimately a Christian out of what he saw in Russia, and in 1978 in these two lectures; Pascal lectures in America; Pascal named in honour of a great French Catholic philosopher and thinker who wrote so powerfully about mankind, coined that term ‘the glory and the scum’ - the nobility that is the God image in us; the scum that comes from our fallen nature evident in all of us.

Sometimes we say ‘I’m the good guy’, that’s what we do isn’t it? They’re the bad guys. No we’re not. The Bible says that each of us are a combination of both; flawed hopelessly by sin. He became converted. He said ‘Western society based in Christianity is moving away from everything I’m saying now’. He has a much greater mind than me so I’m only following in his footsteps really. He warned precisely what was happening, and thirty-three years on, everything he said would unfold is unfolding, albeit, I fear now, at an ever-accelerating rate. But, he said in the second lecture, ‘This is no great cause for concern at one level. All societies rise and fall’.

Another great English mind, Arnold Toynbee, wrote that towards the end of his life in the 1970s. He said that of the twenty-three great civilisations that he had studied down through the ages, all had ultimately collapsed - not as a result of external takeover, but of internal decline, and the dying stages, very interestingly, the common theme, the dying stages of all the great civilisations were first selfishness and then a giving-over into apathy. ‘I don’t care. I’m not going to lift a finger for anybody else. Except that I demand that someone else fix my problems’.

So Muggeridge said ‘Look, it may be that the West will fail, in fact it’s probable that it will.’ I hope he’s wrong; I pray he’s wrong and I’m sure you all do too but we’ve got to heed the warning signs and understand why it’s happening. ‘However’, he said, ‘That will not be the end of Christianity. It will not be. God will simply move on to new areas. He loves His creation and He will move on.’ And he was repeatedly asked by journalists and cynics and so forth, ‘What’s your evidence for this?’ And his evidence was very interesting. He said, ‘Look at fifty or sixty years (at that time) of atheistic rule in Russia. It hasn’t killed off Christianity’. A third of Russians at that stage still believed in Christianity and he pointed to people like Solzhenitsyn, the great thinker and Christian writer who found faith in a gulag salt mine prison.

He couldn’t see what we can see, which is that Christianity, actually, is quite evidently, about to enter its most vibrant and wonderful stage globally. That is what is actually happening.

It’s terribly bad new for Mr Dawkins and Mr Hitchins and they must sob themselves to sleep every night, but this will not be a century of atheism. This will be a century of enormous ferment over beliefs and the values that are driven by beliefs; and by behaviour. The Chinese government understands that. They should. Ten to twelve percent of the Chinese population today are believed to be Bible-believing Christians. That is a hundred to a hundred and twenty million people!

Six percent, it’s estimated, of India’s population: I have a friend who heads up – gave away a business career, a very spectacularly successful one – to head up Alpha in Asia, not Australia, in Asia. Twelve thousand churches in India today are offering Alpha courses and forty percent of the people who enrol in them remain in a church.

I’m here with Stuart Brooking, a very good friend of mine. He is the Executive Director of Overseas Counsel Australia. It’s a mission organisation. We support colleges in the emerging world. There’s an ad, Stuart, if anyone wants to talk to you afterwards! And I should acknowledge Jeremy German who’s a very good friend from CMS - he’s here as well. The people dedicated to mission; they would know what is happening.

In Indonesia, the most populous Moslem nation on earth right on our doorstep. There’s a hundred Bible Colleges in Indonesia. Did you know that? Just been there, and for all of the ferment in that country there’s a real interest in belief and some very strong Christian growth.

Africa: seventy percent Christianised. Now they say it’s a mile wide and an inch deep – desperate need for good teachers. I heard the Bishop of Uganda the other day describing how he has several hundred parishes that he cannot fill with trained men and women. Enormous need, but an extraordinary response to the Christian gospel.

What should we say then, in the face of all this? Should we despair at the state of our culture? At one level – yes! But what should it drive us to do? Gird our loins to take up our cross and to reflect the Hope that is ours! I had Tim Costello say to this city a few years ago (I’m Patron of Scripture Union in Queensland; a role I love. I always love it when Queenslanders are friendly to me, because I know how you feel about southerners in this state) and Tim Costello was saying ‘You know, one of the things we don’t understand any more; we’ve stripped our kids of hope. Our grandfathers hoped that if they ran the risk with their wives of coming out to this country and surviving the ship journey and then going out into the outback and building a life, they might develop a better future for their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. Our fathers’, he said ‘hoped that if they worked hard they’d have a comfortable retirement and be able to provide a better outlook for their children. Our children hope for a good time tonight.’ And he had a point.

We must broaden our horizons and understand the Christian hope. There is real work to be done, firstly in this country. We must do everything we can firstly on our knees to encourage people, our fellow-Australians to come back to faith. As a very big part of that we need to recognise that as a multi-racial society – great thing – many of the people who come here are very open to the faith.

I have a young Chinese friend in Sydney. He’s a Presbyterian Minister, he’s only 31, but you know he has a thing called Rice. I said ‘Why do you call it Rice?’ and he said because I come from Asia and we like rice. I said ‘What’s Rice?’ He said, ‘Once a month we get young, mainly Asian believers together in the Sydney Entertainment Centre for a night of fellowship. Not a church. Just a night when we come together for some fun, share experiences, sing, pray, what-have-you.’ I said ‘How many do you get?’ and he showed me a photograph. Auditorium full; he said eight to ten thousand people.

Wouldn’t it be an incredible irony if we from a traditional Caucasian background who walk away from our faith and our culture and let it decay around us, have the whole situation picked up and retrieved for us by New Australians? God bless them if it happens, but we ought to be working with them in every way we can. And then there’s the homelands they came from.

You know, the fascinating thing, the wonderful set of opportunities and responsibilities that arise for Australia stem largely from its geography. We’re of the West, that’s patently obvious, but we’re not in it. We’re in Asia, and Paul Kelly who’s a journalist I respect enormously is the Editor-at-Large of the Australian. He wrote the other day that if Wayne Swann is right to say that Australia can ride (and he was referring to economics, but let’s face it, it needs to go much beyond that I believe, and a whole range of ways) ride the rise of Asia. He went on to say to stop and think about whether our values are in sync with Asia, and he referred to their hard work, to their commitment to their countries, to their family values and to rising religious faith.

That’s what he wrote in the Australian just before Christmas and then he said, ‘You must realise these values are anathema to many of the people who run the debate in Australia today.’ And they are, but we know that they’re right and we need to ‘tap into it’ and to work into it and to recognise that if that is where God is working, there are tremendous, strategic opportunities and responsibilities for us.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a great pleasure being with you. I seek to encourage you in that hope that in the midst of despair we need to recognise that God is building His Kingdom. He will not be mocked. He will not be thwarted. As Peter Hitchens says, that is a very stupid western idea that will only enjoy a very short currency, ladies and gentlemen, because in the end, we get our three score and ten; and our response in the midst of this must be to remember that God calls each one of us into a loving relationship with Himself through Jesus Christ.

We need, then, to use the gifts and talents that He has given us and which ultimately belong to Him to expand His kingdom here in our own country; here amongst those who come to us in our country and, I would suggest, wherever else we have the opportunity, but particularly in Asia. God bless you.

Spitting image

Actor Roger Allam

Over the weekend a group of acquaintances and I went to a special screening of Stephen Frears' new film, Tamara Drewe. As this was a meet the director screening, Frears himself was present, and obligingly answered questions from the audience after the film. The cast includes Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace, Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Tess of the D'Urbervilles), Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia, the forthcoming Captain America) and Roger Allam (Speed Racer, V for Vendetta, The Queen), who plays a philandering crime novelist who gets trampled to death by stampeding cows. Tamsin Greig (Black Books) appears as his longsuffering wife.

Christopher Hitchens

This isn't an entirely original observation, but I couldn't help but notice Allam's startling resemblance to journalist and outspoken militant atheist, Christopher Hitchens. If ever a biopic of Hitchens was made, Allam would be the ideal choice to play him. Based on his performance in Tamara Drewe, it wouldn't be that much of stretch. With some minor tweaking of his larger than life smarmy and pompous screen persona, he'd have the characterization of Hitchens nailed.

Conceded pass

ATHEISTS HAVE BROADEST RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 

"...Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth..." - 2 Timothy 3:7

Atheists and agnostics have a greater general knowledge about major world religions than the average Protestant, according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life. Mormons and Evangelicals scored the highest on knowledge about Christianity and the Bible, but were far less informed about other religions like Buddhism and Islam. Catholics scored even lower than Evangelicals, and people who considered themselves to be religiously "nothing in particular" scored fairly low all around.

Between May 19 and June 6, 2010, Pew Research Center interviewed 3412 American adults on cell phones and landlines, in English and Spanish, and asked them 32 questions about world religions. The survey found that people who had higher levels of education and who talked regularly with others about religion tended to have the greatest general knowledge about religion. College graduates on average answered almost eight more questions correctly than people with a high school education or less.

Jews and atheists/agnostics tend to have higher levels of education in general and as a whole did the best on the survey. These groups are fairly small portions of the population and were oversampled to provide a large enough sample to analyze.

Catholics and mainline Protestants scored relatively poorly on the survey, averaging 16 and 15.8 answers correct respectively, while atheists/agnostics scored the highest, with an average of 20.9 questions out of 32 correct. Jews actually scored the highest on knowledge of world religions, with 7.9 correct answers out of 11. They also scored relatively high on Bible and Christianity questions, answering an average of 6.3 questions correctly out of 12, behind Mormons at 7.9 but ahead of Catholics at 5.4 correct answers.

On the whole, most Americans surveyed did know that Mother Theresa was Catholic (82 percent) and that Moses was the Bible figure to lead the Exodus out of Egypt (72 percent). Seventy-one percent of those surveyed knew that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Seventy-three percent did not know that most people in Indonesia are Muslims, even though Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population. At the same time, 52 percent of Americans know that Ramadan is a holy month in Islam, but only 45 percent could name the four Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

According to the survey, a majority of Americans think the Constitution offers less religious freedom than it truly does. While 89 percent knew that a public school teacher is constitutionally not supposed to lead a class in prayer, only 23 percent knew that a public teacher is indeed free to read from the Bible as an example of literature.

While atheists/agnostics and Jews scored the highest on the religious knowledge survey, they still answered just about two-thirds of the answers correctly, which on most exams is still a "D". Mormons and Evangelicals had the highest knowledge of Christianity and the Bible, but still missed four - almost five - questions out of 12 on average. The average American only answered half of the religious questions correctly, and these were not particularly difficult questions. In a country in which children were originally taught to read so that they could read the Bible, the religious ignorance is concerning.

Sir Francis Bacon famously said, "Knowledge is power." And he was right. However, knowledge is a tricky thing. Certain things are more important to know than others. As the wisest man in the world said (in Proverbs 9:10), "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding."

Atheists may be ever learning, but unless they come to a knowledge of the truth, it's vanity. Yet, as one of our researchers once said, "It doesn't glorify God if I'm ignorant."

"Wise men lay up knowledge: but the mouth of the foolish is near destruction." - Proverbs 10:14 

Source: Koinonia House

This story also appeared on an atheism blog I read, but Koinonia House also picked it up. I'm posting it here in less triumphalist fashion than the atheist blogger did.

Biting the bullet

I'd never thought I'd see the day. I'm posting a link from Fox News, but only because it concerns an issue that is close to my heart. This is the network that according to its critics, wears its right wing colours on its sleeve, and has Colonel Oliver North, one of the key protagonists in the Iran-Contra affair, as an on air personality. Issues of suffering and illness are one of my hobby horses. Sometimes I dialogue with atheists in the blogosphere. In an attempt to portray religious people negatively, occasionally these atheist bloggers post horror stories about chronically ill Christians who refuse medical treatments because they believe that God will miraculously heal them, and that using conventional medicine would show that they lack faith, or bring God's wrath upon them. When this doesn't happen, and the illness worsens, or the person dies, this is put forward as proof that God doesn't exist, and that Christians are simple minded fools.

This is a misrepresentation of mainstream Christian thinking on this issue, which sees no inherent conflict between faith and the healing professions. When He chooses to heal, God isn't limited to working through supernatural means. If God is sovereign, He can bring healing however He chooses, so medical science can and should be affirmed as a gift from God, and not treated with suspicion. If I was seriously ill, I'd have people pray for me, but I'd get medical treatment as well. If only my brothers and sisters on the fringes of Christendom saw things the same way. It would mean less of those horror stories, wouldn't it? 

Vociferation

The following is an edited version of the text of a speech given by Bishop Peter W Ingham DD at a Seminar titled "Concern for our Religious Freedom" sponsored by the Ambrose Centre for Religious Liberty in Wollongong last month. Bishop Ingham is the Catholic Bishop of Wollongong.

In Australia, it seems true to say that we enjoy a tolerance that values difference and diversity.  We believe popularly in giving everyone a “fair go!”  Like you, I try to read and hear the news critically so I’ll know what’s going on and make my own assessment about what I hear and see.  However, I detect that our tolerant Aussie acceptance of where the other person is coming from, is being more than somewhat threatened.

Richard Dawkins, was recently given a lot of publicity when he visited Australia to address the atheists’ convention in Melbourne. Jewish author, Melanie Phillips, writing in The Australian on 16 March 2010, called him, “the high priest of belief in unbelief” and she said “Dawkins has made a career out of telling everyone how much more tolerant the world would be, if only religion were obliterated out of human psyche.”

Furthermore she states, “Dawkins showed himself remarkably intolerant towards anyone who disagrees with him. When Dawkins claims religion is responsible for all the ills in the world, he conveniently overlooks the atheistic creeds behind the reign of terror after the French Revolution, the anti-religion dictatorships of both the Nazis and of the Communists.” 

Good atheists who present their arguments soundly and respectfully are quite ‘embarrassed’ by Dawkins’ methods of ridicule and intolerance, his bullying approach which shouts over the top of, rather than enters into dialogue with people of differing viewpoints.

A major target of today’s growing intolerance seems to be people’s religious beliefs and their freedom to hold what they believe in conscience to be true and good, whether they be Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu or of no religion. We are facing the ominous doctrine which attempts to build a society with no regard whatsoever for religion and which seeks to destroy the religious freedom of its citizens – an ideology hostile to the Christian faith.

That’s why, I believe, it is timely and it’s vital that we people of goodwill defend our religious freedoms and be alert to what is subtly going on in our society. Well-known media people are today publicly proclaiming their atheism in print. It has become fashionable to be dismissive of all religion particularly Christianity. This arrogant dismissivness could be quite aptly described as the new modern method of martyrdom.

People of faith were once upon a time fed to the lions, decapitated, crucified and the like. We instead find ourselves today subjected to death by 1000 cuts with the new mode of martyrdom coming in the form of ridicule, derision and character assassination, as opposed to being silenced through physical death. The torture of believers is to be found in the constant attempts to have them relegated to the sidelines, unable to contribute to the morals, laws and structures that make up the fabric of society without significant criticism.

The new mode of martyrdom is not as bloody as forms of old, but its aim is ultimately the same and its methods no less cruel. We have all noted the nonsense about attempts to outlaw public nativity scenes because they may offend non-Christian religions; or not allowing children to sing Christmas carols in government schools for the same reason. Other faiths aren’t offended, but secularists and atheists are. If we as Christians respect the celebrations of Ramadan, Passover, Diwali, Feast of Vesakh, people of other faiths will in turn respect Christmas and Easter.

What is Religious Freedom?

Australian citizens hold a variety of beliefs about the purpose and meaning of life. In a pluralist society, certain fundamental principles to which everybody can subscribe are vitally important for the common good of all of us. I list those fundamental principles as first, freedom of speech; second, freedom of assembly; and third freedom to hold and express particular religious beliefs.

In the course of history, it can be seen how these three basic freedoms mentioned are curtailed as soon as totalitarian dictatorships or regimes take power. It happened with Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Apartheid South Africa, North Korea, South Vietnam after 1975. The regime headed up by Mugabe in Zimbabwe is another current example.

When legislation curtails the first of these, freedom of speech, it militates against the freedom of the press and stops the media doing its job of communicating information; when legislation prevents the second, freedom of assembly, it stops public rallies being held to express discontent (remember Tiananmen Square), and thirdly when churches and religious faiths are outlawed, dictatorships aim to stop moral and conscientious objection to what a ruling regime is doing.

The reality and powerful influence of religious freedom was demonstrated by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Catholic Archbishop Denis Hurley in South Africa over apartheid; another example was Christians led by Cardinal Jamie Sin against the Marcos regime in the Philippines, and the long list of martyrs like Fr Jerzy Populusco in Poland, Cardinal  Mindszenty  in Hungary, the Anglican and Catholic Martyrs of Uganda between 1885 and 1887, Oscar Romero in San Salvador (shot dead at the altar 30 years ago today), and Archbishop Francis Xavier van Thuan in Vietnam (13 years in prison and 9 years in solitary confinement and on release banished from his native country), just to mention a few.

The claims you and I make to be free to practise our religion in a democratic society must be respected and permitted to be exercised, unless justice and public order are threatened.

Jesuit lawyer, Fr Frank Brennan, said in a recent lecture, “How can we ever hope to live in a truly democratic society when secularists maintain their demand that people with a religious perspective not be able to claim a right to engage in the public square agitating about laws on issues such as voluntary euthanasia, same-sex unions, abortion and discrimination in employment?  We have just as much right as our secularist fellow citizens to contribute in the public square informed and animated by our world view and religious tradition.

We acknowledge that it would be prudent to put our case in terms comprehensible to those who do not share that world view or religious tradition when we are wanting to win the support and acceptance of others, especially if we be in the minority.   But there is no requirement of public life that we engage only on secularist terms.   And we definitely insist on the protection of our rights including the right to religious freedom even if it not be a right highly prized by the secularists!”  (Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO; 8/2/2010 McCosker Oration)

An essential part of our Christian tradition is committed to promoting human dignity because we are all made in the image and likeness of God.   This ensures that our basic human rights are respected. The freedom to hold and express our religious beliefs is a paramount right. 

The United Nations has made various declarations on the right to freedom of thought, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. In 1948 it published the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in 1960 the Convention against discrimination in education, and in 1966 via:  (1) The International Convention on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights; (2) The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and (3) The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The UN 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religious Belief, attempts to define certain protections for religious freedom so as to protect individuals and religious groups from undue intrusion by the State or by any other body into the ethos, principles and conduct of religious practice.

While these UN Declarations can only ever be general points of reference for us here in Australia, international law is a very legitimate and important influence. Our Australian Constitution stops the Commonwealth from making any law “to establish any religion”, “to impose any religious observance”, or “to prohibit the free exercise of any religion.” (Section 116 Australian Constitution). Two Commonwealth Statutes relevant to religious freedom are the Sex Discrimination Act (1984) and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act (1986).

The 1984 Sex Discrimination Act (Section 37) exempts institutions such as Ministry Training Institutions, so they may operate in accordance with the tenets and beliefs of the particular faith and permits the conduct of schools in accordance with the religious traditions and tenets of the particular faith.

The 1986 Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Act (Section 3) exempts us on the grounds of the inherent faith requirements for a position of employment or that the employment of a staff person will not injure the religious susceptibilities of adherents to that faith.  So we can legitimately say we don’t want an atheist teaching religious education in a Christian school.

What we are now witnessing are accumulating pressures on our religious freedom in areas such as education, healthcare, family life and social services.   These pressures seek to erode the exemptions already available to us or they narrow the rights of religious bodies to employ appropriate personnel by seeking to define what are called ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ religious activities, so as to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. For example, to say that only the religion teacher has a religious activity in a Christian School is not true. Secular bodies are not competent to determine what does or does not constitute religious practice.

Such constant subtle attempts by the enemies of religion are slowly working against the religious freedom already provided by legislation because they attempt to narrow the interpretation of current legislative provisions.  This can impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.

Religious beliefs have social relevance for the common good of the whole community. Religion is not a purely private and personal matter.  Christian Churches through their educational institutions, their cultural pursuits, through their social welfare and charitable organisations- Anglicare, CatholicCare, Uniting Care, St Vincent de Paul, Salvation Army, hospitals and nursing homes- put their faith into action after the mandate and example of Jesus Christ and they reach out to anyone of any nationality or religious persuasion in need.

In our own society and indeed worldwide, no organisation, no government or even the united efforts of governments as found in the United Nations, comes close to providing as many human or material resources as religions do to support the world’s most needy and vulnerable. In Australian Society, people of faith are at least seven times more likely to be voluntarily involved in social justice or welfare activities. You would surely think that the beliefs that lead religious people to these overt responses of involvement in solidarity with the poor and vulnerable, could only be regarded as wonderful and positive, something worth protecting. Nevertheless, the mantra describing these beliefs as backward and deluded are growing, and are getting plenty of prominent space in mainstream media.

In contrast, the individualism and materialism that accompanies secularism and atheism does not have as a by product, the widespread outpouring of solidarity with our world’s most marginalised. Pardon the pun, but ........God help the most vulnerable if the atheists were ever to come to dominate in the thinking of our western society.......... I would suggest that the principle of the ‘survival of the fittest’ would truly find its home in such a society.

Reaching out is how we give expression to our religious purposes and beliefs defending and helping the marginalised and the vulnerable and protecting and strengthening the vital institutions of civil society beginning with the family, upholding marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, teaching the truth about the nature of human life from its first beginning to its natural end and protecting human dignity. Justice and the common good are not just Judeo-Christian ideals.   They are of concern to all citizens and are the basis of the well-being of our society.

Attempts to redefine marriage and to change traditional understandings about the sacredness of human life are assaults by powerful secular forces in our society on truths that cannot be abandoned or compromised without seriously weakening our social framework. We are called as Christians to live, profess and develop our faith tradition in a social milieu that is often hostile to any religious perspective on life.

The critics of religion and religious people are increasingly, deliberately and quite incessantly endeavouring to paint a picture of people of faith as backward, superstitious, unlearned, and easily duped. I would suggest to them that they need to embrace authentically their own ‘scientific method’ in this regard, as the weight of evidence shows that people of faith on average are well-educated, intelligent, successful people. In the main they ‘outscore’ their agnostic and atheistic contemporaries in this regard.   So let’s not fall too easily into believing that people of faith are easily deluded, as the weight of both history and contemporary society shows that people of faith have in their ranks many of the greatest minds and intellects that have ever lived.

This pedigree of intellect amongst believers is not dwindling and today counts amongst its numbers, a significant proportion of the world’s leading scientists.   Many of those leading minds, rather than believing that religion and science are opposing forces argue strongly that Religion and Science are nearing ever greater points of intersection as humanity comes to understand more about life and the universe at both its most microscopic and infinite levels.

As Fr Frank Brennan points out, all citizens “need to concede that there are experienced, intelligent people of a religious disposition in our community, just as there are experienced, intelligent people who have no need or the desire for the religious sentiment. That’s (the very point) why religious freedom is so important.” (Fr Frank Brennan SJ, McCosker Oration)

My final point here is that, rather than calling for people of faith to remain silent or remove themselves from the realm of public policy and debate, their opinions and contribution should be eagerly sought. The weight of evidence would suggest that they might just have a little bit of wisdom to contribute to public debate. It is for this reason as much as any other, that upholding and securing religious freedom is so vital for society as a whole, not just for believers.

Source: Bishop Peter W Ingham, via the Australian Prayer Network

The mind boggles again

Contrary to popular belief, it seems that being an atheist and supposedly a disbeliever in the supernatural does not necessarily keep you from having religious impulses. Deny it all you like, but spirituality is an intrinsic part of what makes us human. It seems to me that whether we realise it or not, almost all people worship something. King Solomon of Israel, reputedly the wisest man who ever lived, said towards the end of his life that God has placed eternity in the human heart (Ecclesiates 3:11). This to me partially explains where these religious impulses come from, and what drives people to look for someone or something to give them identity, purpose, and significance.

Invective

Just following up on media reaction to the recent Global Atheist Convention, held in Melbourne from March 12 to 14. I didn't see that much of this coverage. One TV news report I saw showed the audience give keynote speaker Richard Dawkins a standing ovation. This act of hero worship was somewhat ironic in the context of the event. Controversial newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt has gone in to bat for people of faith, taking some of the convention speakers to task for their mockery and ridicule of religion and public figures with religious beliefs. What makes this particularly interesting is that Bolt is an agnostic. Meanwhile, Barney Zwartz, his broadsheet counterpart, was less strident in his criticism. Melbourne pastor Rob Buckingham also weighed in with his five cents (Please note that five cents is the smallest denomination of currency in Australia).

Atheists are right to point out that they are often treated with suspicion by society at large. There is a place for critiquing the place of religion in society, but how many different ways are there of saying that religious people are deluded? Many atheists would already hold this opinion, so there was little need for convention speakers to make the same point over and over again. I also wonder if atheist fears about the church having too much influence in society are somewhat exaggerated. In public discourse, the church is just one of many voices that must compete to be heard, so our secular democracy is hardly under threat by closet theocrats.

Brotherly love

In this moving excerpt from his new book, Rage Against God, Peter Hitchens, brother of Christopher, explains how his path diverged from his brother's and returned to faith in God. If nothing else, it's fascinating to see the dynamics of how two people with identical upbringings are poles apart on the question of religious belief or lack thereof. I won't comment further on the question of Christopher's atheism since I haven't read his work, but plan to eventually.