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The Forum > Article Comments > The impossibility of atheism II > Comments

The impossibility of atheism II : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 27/2/2009

Are we to damn Christianity because cruel things were perpetrated in its name of which Christ would have been ashamed?

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It gets a bit hard to talk to some people who have no idea at all about contract law. I talk of both Fractelle and Pericles.

Even university grads who have passed out of our Law faculties, in the last forty years, have very little idea how we are governed from cradle to grave by contracts.

Every time we buy a loaf of bread we make a contract. That is a simple contract where one party agrees to pass over a couple of dollars and in return gets a loaf of bread.

Statutes are Contracts of Record. They are written down so that everyone who can read, that is most of us, can find them and understand their contents and obey the commands contained in them.

Deeds are contracts of record, recorded in the Land Titles Office, as a guarantee that when a dispute arises over ownership, a solid basis of evidence is available. It was not always so. Until the Torrens system of Land Registration was invented, possession was nine tenths of the law and if a person could prove by receipts or other evidence the courts would recognize a persons title, and uphold a trespass action against any transgressions.

It is all contract law, and the English made a contract with Almighty God and so did the Australian people in 1900, and if Fractelle and Pericles have a Constitution they will see that the people relied on the blessing of Almighty God.

Further there is s 5 Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 and the contract was set to bind the courts, judges and people of every State notwithstanding anything in the laws of any State. The words court and judges are uncapitalised. They had discrete meanings in 1900; the word judges referred to the 12 judges of fact universally accepted as the Christian jury, and court, was a place where a justice sat and presided over a political meeting, where the rights of property owners were decided.

Thousands of unbelievers, have destroyed that system, and no man can be relied upon these days to keep his word.
Posted by Peter the Believer, Friday, 13 March 2009 2:12:55 AM
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Cheeky beggar, PtB!

>>It gets a bit hard to talk to some people who have no idea at all about contract law. I talk of both Fractelle and Pericles.<<

[Puts down gin and tonic. Glares over the top of his half-moon glasses]

>>if Fractelle and Pericles have a Constitution they will see that the people relied on the blessing of Almighty God. <<

As it happens, I have a copy right here.

The contractual relationship between God and Australia seems to be confined to the preamble's slightly apologetic phrase "humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God".

Any lawyer worth his cheese would drive a coach and horses through that, in terms of the commitment made by the Almighty that PtB seems to infer.

[Hey Fractelle, that reminds me of the joke where the Devil scoffs "and where are you going to find a lawyer up there, God?" Another G&T perhaps?]

>>the word judges referred to the 12 judges of fact universally accepted as the Christian jury, and court<<

Universally accepted, PtB?

Doesn't follow, I'm afraid. We're back in the land of your opinion - which is perfectly valid, but is not in any way backed up by Magna Carta, or by the Constitution.

The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can have an intelligent conversation about whatever injustice you feel has been wrought upon you by our legal system.

Because that's what this is all about, isn't it?
Posted by Pericles, Friday, 13 March 2009 6:20:57 AM
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Pericles

"we can have an intelligent conversation about whatever injustice you feel has been wrought upon you by our legal system."

I can't wait.

I also can't help but wonder what PtB's take is on Sharia Law? Ooops maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that.

Another G & T?
Posted by Fractelle, Friday, 13 March 2009 8:52:11 AM
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Daviy,
>> ... academic and a Christian. I have never been able to understand how the two can be reconciled. One requires thinking and the other require non-thing addiction to dogma.<<
What a sincere, although strange, admission of ignorance about our Western civilisation! Do you really need a list of ideas, humane institutions, scientific discoveries, technological achievements etc. that could not have come into existence without the contribution of quite a few people who could "reconcile" being both an academic/scholar/scientist and a Christian?

waterboy,
>> I am just trying to alert you to the fact that the teachings of conservative and evangelical churches dont quite line up with what Jesus really said and did.<<
May I also alert you to the fact that what I - like many others - was teaching about modern implications and extensions of Euclidean geometry does not quite line up with what Euclid really wrote or would have understood.

Expecting Jesus to talk to his fishermen about the problems of e.g. metaphysics or bioethics would be the same kind of anachronism as expecting Euclid to write about pseudo-riemannian or non-commutative geometry
Posted by George, Friday, 13 March 2009 8:28:08 PM
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George

Thanks for the Geometric analogy... unparalleled in this discussion... Im sure. But fun aside....

Daviy made the assertion that Christianity was primarily a religion of internalised .. spirituality .. for want of a better word. His exact words were "If there is a God I feel it has to do with an inner connection not external observance." He then proceeded to quote a Bible verse to support this view. The verse he quoted was mistranslated and deeply misleading. Jesus talked about a 'kingdom' that was being 'realised'. The signs of the kingdom were that the blind would see, the lame would walk and the prisoner would be set free. I think we've had this discussion before. The kingdom is primarily a metaphor of society and justice in society. Naturally individuals must change in order to change society but for Jesus the 'goal' was justice for all in the 'kingdom' of God. The goal is not personal and individual salvation for its own sake.

Daviy falls in with a long line of detractors who assert that religion (or faith) is an individual (and internal) matter. This is a seductive notion but Christians cannot afford to succumb to it. It is NOT consistent with Jesus' teaching or with His own behaviour. I believe Jesus message was social, political and subversive. As illustrated by Daviy's choice of text and translation.. the truth about Jesus is sometimes lost in poor translations and even worse theology. I am prepared to argue that in this forum and others.
Posted by waterboy, Saturday, 14 March 2009 2:15:12 PM
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waterboy,
I agree in principle with everything you wrote, including where you state that "for Jesus the 'goal' was ... not personal and individual salvation for its own sake" with emphasis on "for its own sake". And I would add that neither was he a fighter/seeker of justice in society, or self-determination for this or that nation, race, class etc., for its own sake.

Without these qualifications these would be just two "partial truths" (complementary if you like) about Jesus‘ “goals“, in the sense of a (medieval?) definition of heresy as not a total denial of "truth" (as the Church saw it) but as "partial truth passing itself as the total truth" e.g. about Jesus.

The Communists liked to call Jesus the first Communist (Protocommunist) in the sense that he taught about the primacy of the collective, societal, over the individual, personal. And Thomas Merton warns against the other distortion of Jesus’ teachings: "spirtitual perfection is appropriate rather to a philosopher who, ... unconcerned with the needs and desires of other men, has arrived at a state of tranquility where passions no longer trouble his pure soul. This is not the Christian ideal of holiness“.

I think the same could be said about Daviy's claim that religion (or faith) is just an individual, internal, matter: a "partial truth" passing itself as the "total truth". As far as I understand it, the Hindus have a distinction between Atman (the God within us) and Brahman (the God without us); Christians do not have the equivalent of Atman: the “God dwelling within” is closest arrived at through the concept of Grace or the Catholic understanding of Communion (“Jesus entering your heart” as explained to children).

I admire your understanding of the bible, including the technicalities of various translations. My approach to faith is more through the “Book of Nature” supported by what I can understand from the “Book of Scripture” (Galileo), rather than the other way around, which seems to be the case with most contemporary theologians, and I have to respect this.
Posted by George, Saturday, 14 March 2009 10:44:58 PM
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