Saturday 20th of April 2024
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doomed by faithaholics...

crosses

Jonathan Malesic is assistant professor of theology at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and author of Secret Faith in the Public Square: An Argument for the Concealment of Christian Identity (Brazos Press), which won the 2009 gold medal for the religion category in ForeWord magazine's Book of the Year Awards. Jonathan blogs:

That an atheist couldn't get elected dog-catcher in the United States of America is no secret. That an atheist can get elected Prime Minister in Australia is less surprising, given Australia's reputation for greater secularity. In fact, to an American who is, like me, typically under-informed about Australian politics and culture, the surprise is in learning about what John Harrison recently called "the Bonhoeffer effect" - namely, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's open assertion of Christian identity in order to win over Christian voters in Queensland in 2007.

We have in my country had to get used to politicians pandering to the large constituency of conservative and moderate voters for whom a candidate's religious identity is a principal concern.

We have endured the 2008 presidential candidates' forum hosted at megapastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. We have suffered a Republican gubernatorial primary in Alabama this year in which the candidates tried to outdo each other in strident Christian maximalism.
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If voters want public officials who make their faith known at every opportunity, then politicians should not give the people what they want.

I should make clear that I do not make this claim for predictable liberal-intellectual reasons. I do not argue this because I think that properly secular American politics is being poisoned by theological language.

Rather, I think that American Christianity is being poisoned by the transformation of Christian identity to a market-tested political brand identity. Perhaps the same is going on in Queensland.

So how did the cross become a political brand? The cost to an individual politician of seeming to be a Christian is fairly low - appear at churches, make a few statements about the importance of one's faith, come out in support of a key Christian cause.
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Talking about God on street corners is not an absolute demand of Christian faith - even Jesus placed limits on faith's expression. Where the risk of slipping into hypocrisy was great, he counseled secrecy as the better part of wisdom.
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2010/09/20/3016389.htm?topic1=&topic2=

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Gus: "secrecy" of atheism is also part of that general wisdom. Actually I would not call it secrecy, but a non-tooting of the position while enjoying life.

But with the pope and other zealots trying to associate us with Hitler while forgetting their past inquisitions where people were tortured to make believe, we may squeak up. Even in this short analysis of politics and christianity, Jonathan beats a familiar track that has long been travelled by countries such as Russia, China and to some extent, France.

But I disagree with his secrecy bid.

The fact of the matter is that voters will use their faith as a tool, even with the secrecy of religion of their leaders — which can't ever be hidden. Furthermore, these leaders, even secretly, would have ways to highjack the debate, as did John Howard, into the "moralisationing" of policies towards an exclusion of secularity in favour of "Australian values" cleverly immersed in religious faith...

Thus by having the debate in the open, even if it cost us some votes, we can see who is getting the cheap votes and who is being a grand hypocrite such as Tony Abbott who may claim catholic relationships but will act like an an un-Australian dis-honourable dubious rat-bag member for Warringah.

The bullshit is clear and religiously hypocritical. Have you ever seen a politician trying to shoot himself/herself in the foot by not giving in to the cheap religious vote? The only one so far, in these very religiously polarised recent political times, has been Julia Gillard.

And I believe she has been hammered for it, not so much for the politics... But for living in "faithless sin"...

In today's SMH (27/09/10), the cartoon from Bruce "the Great" Petty tells it succinctly. A parliament's prayer that goes crook: "Our father who art in Heaven... Hallowed be Thy Name. Give us this day the means to belt the CRAP OUT of THOSE MONGRELS MORONS OPPOSITE ... RATBAG VERMIN for ever and ever. AMEN."

Of course this prayer can only be Tony's and his team of hypocritical has-beens.  Julia is way above this low slippery muddy god-pleading ground.

Amazingly now, in America, the already religious bigoted republicans are being booted out by more religious bigoted tea-party-ists — and of all things, extremist women with the gift of the gab.

This worrying trend will force the nature of things into last position of priority. The natural environment will be degraded further more rapidly, species will disappear at an accelerating rate of knots and this will be chanted as the will of god.

Christians, Jews and Muslims —and others, but not so much the atheists (atheists place themselves near the exits) — all are in for the conquest of the world. "Go forth and multiply till it hurts" is the underlying message. Each rely on submissive religious desire but act this caper out in various ways. All want "control".

The Jews use money and media such as hollywood.

The Muslims use severely enforceable submission and archaic laws.

The Christians use fear and promise of a "better" after life. You suck in this one...

All are designed to control more than just faith. Their dictum are created to control politics.

All have the wrong idea about our natural place and responsibility on the planet.

Now, the problem is being compounded at a rate of knots:

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In the US, Mormons and conservative evangelicals have nearly twice the birth rate of non-religious Americans and have grown rapidly. In the cities of the Muslim world, women who strongly support the sharia have twice the family size of Muslim women who oppose it. Even in Europe, white women who are regular church attenders - even at the same education level - will bear up to a half-child more than their non-religious sisters.

It's not that religious fundamentalists are having more kids. It's that secular women are having fewer. Over generations this becomes a profound force for social change, and its repercussions for our certainties of secularism, enlightenment and liberal progress cannot be ignored.

Eric Kaufmann is author of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, and will speak at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at Sydney Opera House on October 3.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/out-of-mouths-of-babes--religious-will-rise-as-secular-birth-rates-fall-20100919-15hsc.html

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The Festival of Dangerous Ideas??? Wow... go for it...

put a lid on it...

The most important documentary shown on Australian TV since Dick Smith's Population Puzzle - that's Sir David Attenborough's brilliant hour-long special How many people can live on planet Earth?

If you haven't already seen it, don't miss it! You can still catch it for the time being online via this SBS link. Also you can view and participate in the discussion via this link. If the SBS link has expired, it should still be available on YouTube.

This doco was first screened in the UK by the BBC in December last year. Given that the ABC has screened just about everything Attenborough has ever done, it is a bit weird that they did not screen this, the "jewel in the crown", the culmination of Attenborough's thinking about human beings and their natural environment. Their explanation, given to SPA after numerous fruitless requests, was that SBS had "a deal" with the production company.

"It was never offered to us", was the explanation given by said ABC Managing Director Mark Scott. Mr Scott did not mention whether the ABC actually asked for it - and maybe the ABC is back to its old pro-growth bias after a brief flritation with Dick Smith. Never mind - congratulations to SBS for screening this documentary!

http://www.population.org.au/

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Businessman Dick Smith is offering $1 million to the young Australian who can come up with a solution to bring the country's population under control.

He has launched the Wilberforce award in Sydney, arguing that Australia's population doubles every 30 years and that the rate of growth is not sustainable.

Mr Smith says he is not confident the major political parties have the answers to population growth, but a young Australian might have the solution.

He says the world only has finite resources.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/11/2979958.htm

on track...

Los Angeles baked in record temperatures on Monday, bringing sweltering scenes to the West Coast metropolis nearly a month after the end of the main August heat.

As firefighters remained on alert in tinderbox conditions around the outskirts of the city, temperatures hit 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius) in downtown, the highest since records began in 1877.

Streets remained unusually empty, as Angelinos sought the shelter of air-conditioned shops, offices and homes.

But in the city centre the heatwave, which began at the weekend and is set to last days more, sent some locals frolicking in a walk-through fountain just next to Hollywood's famous Kodak theatre, home of the Oscars.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/los-angeles-bakes-in-record-heatwave-20100928-15uji.html

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Gus: of course, overpopulation is leading to overuse of fossil fuel leading to increase of CO2 leading to global warming... This year is on track to be the warmest year on record (the first eight months were equal to the warmest) in a period of the earth rhythms that should already have been tracking towards an ice age...

But our un-Australian dishonourable catholic wrecker-in-chief from Warringah will deny there is a problem and vehemently oppose the concept that global warming is human induced — and if there was a problem, his solution to basically ignore it would be far better than Julia's proposal of a possible carbon tax to reduce consumption... The ignoramus cad...

Meanwhile the Abbott's crack troops are sharpening their barbed-wire wits and filling the vitriol vats, while the Murdoch press is inking its printing presses with poison.

One has to remind oneself that presently it only needs an increase of 0.05 degree Celsius per annum to add 2 degree Celcius extra on average by 2100... By then the extra temperature influence would have displaced about 600 million people (on now population count) which would be 1.2 billion people for the projected human population of 12 billions by 2100.

We're not going to make it, are we?

Because let's face if if we don't drastically reduce our CO2 emissions now, by 2150, the average world temperature would go to about four degree extra. And please consider that these are very very conservative estimates.

My personal estimates (buried in somewhere on this site) are that by 2100, the average temperature would have gone six degrees Celsius extra (minimum) and the human population in profound distress would be about 2.5 billions, while about 4 billion plus would be suffering somewhat...

By 2150, the average temperature would reach an extra 12 degrees Celsius...

Then most of animal and plant species would be in distress, many would have become extinct and weather phenomenom intensified so much that we (the lucky ones) would live half our lives in underground shelters.

No joke.

Meanwhile the faithaholics would halleluia the will of god while begging for his benevolent mercy — in air conditioned comfort.

subterranean religious wars...

One month before the invasion of Iraq, Riah Abu el-Assal, a Palestinian and the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem at the time, warned Tony Blair, “You will be responsible for emptying Iraq, the homeland of Abraham, of Christians.”

The bishop proved a prophet. “After almost 2,000 years,” writes the Financial Times, “Iraqi Christians now openly contemplate extinction. Some of their prelates even counsel flight.”

The secular despot Saddam Hussein protected the Christians. But the U.S. liberation brought on their greatest calamity since the time of Christ. Scores of thousands of those Iraqi Christians fleeing terrorism and persecution after 2003 made their way to Syria, where they received sanctuary from President Bashar Assad.

Now, as the FT and Washington Post report, the Christians of Syria, whose forebears have lived there since the time of Christ, are facing a pogrom should the Damascus regime fall.

Christians are 10 percent of Syria’s population, successful and closely allied to the minority Alawite regime of the Assad family. Said one Beirut observer, “Their fear is that if the regime falls to the Sunni majority, they will be put up against the same wall as the Alawites.”

For decades, notes the Post, the Assad regime “has protected Christian interests by enforcing its strictly secular program and by curbing the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, slaughtered perhaps 20,000 followers of the brotherhood after they began a campaign of bombings and terror and attempted an uprising in Hama in 1982. Hafez al-Assad rolled up his artillery and leveled the city.

Observing the toll of dead protesters — more than 100 this past weekend, more than 200 overall, the work of police, snipers and agents of the regime — it is hard to summon up any sympathy for Bashar Assad. And if his regime were to fall, that would eliminate a patron of Hamas and Hezbollah and a close ally of Iran in the Arab world.

But before he embraces the Syrian revolution, President Barack Obama ought to consider, as President George W. Bush did not, what happens to Arab Christians when a long-repressed Muslim majority comes to power.

In Iraq, liberated Shiites used their newfound freedom to cleanse Baghdad of Sunnis while al-Qaida arrived and went straight after the Christians. In Syria, it would be a Sunni majority rising if Bashar and the Alawites were to fall.

What would that mean for Syria’s Christians, for peace, for us?

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2011/04/25/when-dictators-fall-who-rises/

Aaaahhh.... the freshness of cleansing...