This is, indeed, disturbing. More even for the hypocrisy it exposes than for the substance of the matter. I am ambivalent on the issue of religion, but believe strongly in freedom of choice.

I wonder whether this article's author and OLO could publish ASL's letter, detailing their objections to the current. Let the Minister and his acolytes respond publicly ...

This looks like an issue that needs oxygen, and I am glad someone is is vigorously perusing it. Keep up the good work.

Having read the article the first thing I wondered is whether the Australian Secular Lobby is just noisy bunch of whingers, or if indeed there really is something to this. I found your web site, but as I am sure you are aware it is just a shell right now. Present your case on it. List your evidence - your submissions to the minister, copies of the relevant Education Queensland web pages, letters from parents - things that make it plain what is going on and how often it happens. Make sure it is 100% accurate and sourced so it can be independently verified. Do this well and journalists will start using it as a source.

Also, I found your article hard to read. The sentences were long. Perhaps that is your natural writing style and is hard to change. But there is no excuse for all the abbreviations and TLA's. Spell it out in full. As it is, I found myself continually tripping over the bloody things, and then having to scan from the top to find where you defined it. But sometimes you didn't - for instance, what is a SU chaplain?

Great work.
Pell need only look at the numbers in his pews to see where the failure is.

The "secular" "experiment" has failed?

Compared to the stunning success of mysticism in what? Curing disease? Harnessing the lightning? releasing the power of the sun from the heart of the atom? Getting the crops in? Easing pain? Curing deafness? healing the lame, somtimes the blind. Immediate communication with loved ones a world away? Understanding our world, our universe, our selves? Justifying it's expenses? Engineering a more uniform and visually appealing asparagus? The freedom to differ from Pastor, who likes his job as moral gatekeeper, without being put in coventry?

The key is the word "secular", long used by the more self-obsessed churches as a label for what is actually mainstream, from which they are the deviation, not the signpost.

Rusty

With shenanigans going on like this, supported at the highest offices in the state, why in the hell would any thinking person go to Queensland to live?

I sure wouldn't, and I'm from there and happily living in southern Australia. I'd even have Canberra ahead of Brisbane. Actually, come to think of it, Queensland has little going for it really, compared with other parts of Australia. It might, however be good for a holiday if you steer clear of the Gold Coast.

Great post from Rusty Catheter.

The article could be better written, but it's always nice to read about Australia's own nascent theocracy.

Despite the harm to the national economy, I'd like to see QLD act on the impulse to install a state religion. It would be fascinating to watch an entire state regress toward the middle ages while bordered by successful, modern societies.

Folks,
Have to say my first thought on reading the article was that this type of 'education' can only happen because, whether we like it or not, the majority of people don't have an opinion either way about the place of religion in education. I expect Hughie's second sentence 'I am ambivalent to the issue of religion' is likely typical within most parts of Australia. This ambivalence allows this type of 'education' because the voice of those 'really opposed' is much smaller than the 'really for' and the 'ambivalent' groups. I don't mean any offence to you Hughie, but your wish for freedom of choice means to me that you are not ambivalent to the issue of religion in schools, particularly when it appears it is part of the curriculum.
Coothdrup

Couldn't agree more. As a former state teacher in qld i witnessed the quiet and effective way that "born agains" conspired with principals to set up a chaplaincy (50% funded by the school). The deal was that RE (note not RI) would be "non denominational" which might mean one thing to normal folks, but means something else to Pentacostals! i recall the chaplain being asked at a staff meeting why non-chrstian faiths weren't discussed in the RE lessons: suddenly the 50% state funding disappeared and we were told that the chaplaincy was owned by christian churches and wasn't about to discyss anything but xtianity.
I can confirm that classes were handed over to volunteers for Re classes: students had to opt out with a signed parental letter. Think about any other school activity that was compulsory unless parents opted out. Zero social responsibility and ethics in the "RE", just full on faith and lots of jesus. Sad but true and defended by the EQ
system. It's a sham and amounts to a conspiracy by a small group of activists who without exception in my school's experience come from the "tin shed" end of the crazy born again spectrum.

"the Queensland public system had not been secular since a 1910 referendum to introduce Bible lessons and RI"
In the 50s and early 60s yes there were religious instruction classes at State primary and secondary schools. They were conducted by ministers or laymen from the respective Churches. If you didn't wish to attend RI you normally ended up gardening or in the library. There were NO Bible lessons or RI given by teachers in the schools.
How odd this religious incursion is happening in a Labor governed Queensland over the past 20 odd years. Aliens?

How can one but be ambivalent on matters of mysticism; without such a faculty what else is there to do but shake one’s head? It’s often amusing scanning the dead certainties among these edifying pages, penned by the mystics out there who are blessed with amazing insights into the nature of God and his creation. I profess only my ignorance (which amounts to a kind of religion), siding with E. M. Forster who didn’t “believe in belief” and saw faith as a kind of “mental starch”. Of course one finds oneself in the minority here in QLD where the average denizen is already well established in one of the mainstream belief systems, or else is ready to credulously partake of something transcendentally trendy.
I have four kids in primary school and I actually want them to get religious education—“comparative” that is, my hope being that exposure to the irrationalities, hypocrisies and barbarisms of god-bothers of all persuasions will act as a kind of immunising agent against their own susceptibilities. But ‘tis true! The public system in QLD (the only non-secular state!), at least in my kids’ experience, offers nothing but twee or fundamentalist claptrap administered by poorly educated (how could it be otherwise?) sots to the cause. I do not exaggerate; my kids have been fed fire and brimstone (as well as fairy tales) from lollypop ladies, and other credulous fools, given sanction by the school! Indeed, even a chaplain at one school, to my certain knowledge, under the guise of “counsel” was warning children about the fiery pit—he was told to tone it down a bit.
I want religion in schools in all its infamy, and occasional glory; but I don’t want brainwashed zealots poisoning yet another generation.
QLD’s anomalous non-secularity is a scandal!!

Hugh Wilson is typical of how secularists operate. They argue that they are being discriminated against by religious influence, but they have no hesitation in using discrimination to restrict freedom of religion and freedom of speech. For instance, in promoting homosexual rights, they go out of their way to discriminate by legislating for such rights to over-ride both freedom of religion and freedom of speech. In promoting abortion, their denial of rights to the unborn is discrimination in the extreme.

Secularists merely object to the proselytisation of their kids. Religion is a cross-cultural phenomenon and children should learn about these institutions that have so affected history and brought us to our precarious present. Indeed it is religion that has always put a muzzle on freedom of speech and stifled rational thought. Just as it is religion that has traditionally discriminated against, nay persecuted, women and homosexuals, or any group that failed to embrace the dictates that the churches themselves routinely abused. It is organised religion that denies mothers “their” rights as paramount over those of the unborn—whose worldly existence is in potentia, and contingent upon the mother’s fitness/capacity to nurture. It is religion that insists on the sanctity of human life, no matter that the proliferation is at the expense of every other species on the planet, and ultimately our own. Secularists are for freedom of speech (though they may often shake their heads at it), but religion should be utterly separated from state, and denied its vile influence on children. Religions should be left to sink or swim in an ideologically “free” marketplace, rather than enjoying government sanction on top of ongoing and discriminative government funding and tax exemptions.
But all the freedoms continue to be enjoyed on the side of organised voodoo!

As a parent of a child who attends a Queensland State School, I agree with Hugh Wilson and the ASL that religious instruction has no place in public education. On the other hand, education about comparative religion could well be a way of providing kids with the information they need to form their own beliefs and to break down the barriers of bigotry that separate people in our society according to religious affiliation.

If parents want their kids to receive religious instruction, they should send them to religious schools, do it themselves, or send them to Sunday schools or whatever.

Further, the introduction of school chaplains was an insidious act that has encouraged proselytisation and indoctrination of vulnerable children who are required by law to attend school. They should be replaced by properly trained professional counsellors who would provide secular support to those kids who need it.

I went looking for where Pell said the secular experiment failed. It sounded like the usual inflammatory attention seeking crap he spouts, but it also fitted in rather too well with the articles aims so my suspicions were raised. I can't find anywhere on the net that agrees he said this. Can anybody give me a link?

My personal experience with these school chaplains has been largely positive. My children had a series of chaplains through school. The first few were actually rather good - supportive, helpful and there when the kids needed them. The last couple were real firebrands who seemed to delight in hurling threats of hell and damnation at kids from their pulpits.

One a weekend we were visited by Jehovah Witnesses. I am always polite to these people. I say I am not interested, then we usually have a pleasant chat and they move on. But this day we got one cast from the same mould as those chaplains. While she railled her accomplice stared at the ground avoiding all eye contact. After what seemed an age, she finally exhausted herself. Once she was safely out of earshot my son exploded.

His chief complaint seemed to be that each of these people had their own brand of god, and you couldn't believe in them all. But if you didn't profess to accept their version they abused you over it. He carried on for 5 or so minutes, and then announced he had had it - he was having nothing further to do with religion. I hadn't said a word to him.

It is rare one gets to see you child reach an inflection point, and then choose a future path in life. I think I have those chaplains to thank for my witnessing this one.

I say let the secular system completely crash. Take out the last remaining threads of Christian influence and parents will continue to move to private schools. Let the secular ferals encourage their kids to experiment and end up shipwrecked. If the author is to stubborn and blinded to see that secularism has failed their is little hope for him to reason.

rstuart: George Pell ‘TheFailure of the Family’, Quadrant, March 2002, pp. 16-22.

Runner: The is no "secular" system, just the whole wide rest of the world. *I* say the obsessively religiose should have the benefits of mainstream thought and social change withdrawn. *Let* the religious schools indoctrinate the littlies to the most dysfunctional of views. The bishops can always get their medical care and other professional services requiring education (rather than indoctrination) from places which tolerate the unfettered and godless, as the Saudis do. The religiose *can* send their kids off to be buggered by their betters, who should never be scrutinised by a world uncaring of their particular sensitivities. The flock *should* be bullied into parting with their tithe, to a pastor who never submits a tax return, preaches chastity and boffs the secretary....oh, hang on, they already often do.

When I can teach paleobiology and evolutionary genetics at church, as current best understanding, your johnny-come-lately religion might well qualify for inclusion as one among many in a comparative religion course. It could start with a ceremony recognising the longest-standing local religion, out of respect. The real question is not "how to interpret the whole world via my religion", it is "how much of my religion is required to be tossed out to not appear an idiot?"

Most of us *do* live with as enforcedly little religion as we can manage. We're not forced by "faith" to tolerate pastor feeling up the kids while expressing outrage that "secularists" are undermining the church by objecting. We can substitute ethics and even just plain old consideration of consequences to better effect. Let's *see* the Christian church get along without the unwilling support they siphon from us all. Don't forget to stop using the intellectual products of known athiest scientists while you're at it. Don't forget to tell your wife the legal rights she may no longer claim.

You can't make me "believe" but your church would *love* to regain the power to make me pretend, and pay, of course, for my own good, of course. (Bronx cheer)

Rustopher

Rusty writes

'Let* the religious schools indoctrinate the littlies to the most dysfunctional of views'

No doubt you have not noticed the obvious that by far the most dysfunctional families come from the secular zoos. Your own earth worshiping religion fails dismally and only adds to the dysfunction. The only difference between the perverted homosexual priests that molest children and the secular teachers is that one pays compensation while the other does not.

Your 'intellectually superior' pseudo science such as evolution is yet to achieve any real science breakthroughs. You are blinded by your own bias and dogmas. The ethics you refer to are no doubt very elastic and nonsensical.

Runner, mainstream "zoos" have to take all comers, hungry and naked if need be. I gladly pay taxes to that end. I demand their education involve the universal basics, including the fundamentals of biology. Money misdirected to religious schools could instead be used in the mainstream to teach what is needed. You can still indoctrinate at home and church. I see some fundie kids chuck away their cult once they escape the isolation imposed by their parents and insular little schools. I see others stunted by their indoctrination and totally unable to cope just move on to other anodynes.
You are mistaken about my religion, I don't have one. Perhaps Pastor lacks a dictionary?

At least you agree the priests are perverted.

The earth exists, and needs no worship or tithe. I need no proof for the existence of the universe, seeing how it actually does. Your imaginary friend enjoys no such actuality.

Perhaps religion could be taught in Health and PhysEd under mental diseases?
Sneaking it into schools as in the article is underhand and a disservice to all, a dodgy attempt at product placement in a priveleged environment.

Runner, I suspect you have nothing to say about biology, one of the most successful branches of human endeavour, except the lies you get from pastor. I suggest you stick to the nothing till you get an education about it. Three years study and a further year or two of biological field work and lab work would give you time to catch up with reality. Then you can discuss with people who use aspects of it to research and treat cancer, viruses, antibiotics, infection control, organ transplants, plant and animal breeding, paleobiology, geology, and more, about the everyday miracles produced by these fields and how to participate. There is no creation myth or revelation in your book that matches the stunning scale and elegance of what we now know. There is no miracle your pastor could demonstrate that isn't overwhelmed by the routine success of these fields in saving life, extending life and making this life a paradise for some.

The scariest thing about runner, in the context of this thread, is that he claims to have home-schooled his kids.

I can’t quite leave this dead thread without commenting on that “paradise for some”. For whom? is the obvious question. But even for those lucky (dim-witted) souls who find themselves in paradise, it’s surely a fool’s gold? Life, withal the trappings, without philosophy is a mean existence (just ask Solomon or Socrates). Secularism is merely a viable system of moral law, an anthropocentrism that took off, but it has no extension or subtlety. Is the human odyssey at an end then? Is Homer Simpson really the best we can do?

Rusty you write

My fundie 'kids' have excelled at secular university, sports and jobs maybe to your disappointment. They could see straight through the dogmas taught by 'fundie athiests'. The fruit of ahtiests lives is even more visible then their deceitful little doctrines. If you want some teaching on biology I suggest you speak to the thousands of doctors that know the fraud of the evolutionary teachers.

The teaching of evolution has done nothing to advance medicine. You are either deceitful or either fooled. Why do I need to get an education on biology when many with Phd's have already exposed your false beliefs.

Your ignorance/arrogance in denigrating God's Word must be quite amusing to your Maker. No wonder you have to believe in so many myths in order to justify your perverted world view.

I had a religious upbringing, and unfortunately was also raised in Queensland. From my own experience and that of others, I find devoutly religious parents to be authoritarian, irrational and intolerant. They brook no dissent, and do not use authoritative child-rearing, rather they use authoritarian child rearing. Corporal punishment is often also a feature. If you in any way don't turn out as they want, question their views etc, you lose much of their love, so much so that they will not speak to you, see you or have you visit inside their home. Such parents also, even with young adult children, demand unquestioning obedience and submission, and are ruthless in dealing with dissenters or non-conformists. Despite the claims by xtians about the love and mercy of their imaginary man in the sky, they are anything but loving and merciful. Religion is often used to denigate many people and many advances that have been beneficial to society, such as science, reproductive services, evidence-based sex education, etc.

By the way, census data shows you lot are in an expanding minority. Regular church attendances are extremely low, as a proportion of the population. However, due to irrational edicts on contraception, religious folk are prodigious breeders.

Runner,

Your kids excel in the mainstream? I wish them well. I approve your conviction in home schooling, you aren't paying Pastor's minions. You are aware that getting to uni and excelling is no great trick. The majority of those there came from the public system which routinely does as well as home schooling or private schools in meeting entrance requirements. Studying science are they? Or an applied discipline whose principal skill is memory? Or law or mathematics, which are self-referential. Your kids saw straight through nothing but the narrow blinkers you gave. I hope they're happy.

I don't get taught by doctors, I teach them. Doctors are service-delivery technicians that depend on the research of a few stars among them and upon scientists to advance new techniques and understandings of disease. Evolving diseases in a world of related life. Mediocre doctors such as you mention probably have no need to know where their knowledge came from, and little professional interest. Probably the ones that prescribe inappropriate antibiotics. Please refer such so I can avoid their services.

I say again, get an education, I'm not fooled, but your pastor has you. The very few phD's in biology who are willing to go public vs evolutionary theory are typically not involved in any sort of biological research, but do display the sort of dysfunctional indoctrination you claim of yours. The ones with degrees in civil engineering have much to go on.

Myths? As opposed to the imaginary friend? Which one? Someone else claims theirs is bigger, another older. Much information you have to go on, none actually existing. Amusement is felt by we who exist.

Athiest lives are often just fine, they are certainly not the universal shambles you desire to satisfy your insufficiently private fantasy.

If you and yours are doing well, good for you. Me and mine are also doing well in the complete absence of what you call necessity, suggesting that your beliefs are optional. You, like the Saudis, can buy the services of professionals informed by theories you deny.

Rustopher

Squeers,

Not tasting your problem here.

Philosophy and ethics do not depend on the existence of a deity.
A philosophy that hinges on the untrue would hardly be genuinely satisfying, no matter how intricate and time consuming, or comforting to some.

We do indeed live in a physical paradise, never hungry except by choice, virtually free of disease, vermin, the misery of cold, the tyranny of distance. We may ply our trades with dignity, without need for sharp practice and with room for compassion, and consider those topics you mention.

The problem is that many of our species *are* hungry, and while I believe science and engineering and will could make them all much more comfortable I suspect certain economic and political forces are the real barrier. Hungry people make poor deals, the distressed make overcommitments to poor gods.

Independent peoples don't *need* a level playing field, or to satisfy the profit expectations of a few. The unindoctrinated don't *need* to pay parasitic pastor to proselytise.

The experiment of taming the church, begun with the Magna Carta, is a success. Now lets bring the results to the world.

Rusty

Rusty Catheter
My cosmology has no need of a deity either. But while “Philosophy and ethics do not depend on the existence of a deity”, neither do they necessarily exclude one—whatever it might be. Neither can science say what is "true" or “untrue”; indeed, science uses rather a crude approach to the phenomenal universe, with great success, though its theories are becoming more and more arcane in response to seemingly infinite complexity. In my conception there’s no need of a god that I cannot conceive, moreover one that is inseparable from traditional/scriptural notions of him. The numinous belongs to what I don’t know, and I’m persuaded that this ignorance (human ignorance) dwarfs the so-called Enlightenment (what we do know, or think we know) in extent. But I’m getting off track. None of this is to deprecate the advances you allude to. I see you’re now calling it a “physical paradise” (I struggle to dissociate “paradise” from its Edenic etymology), by the way, but what other kind of paradise is there in a secular world view?
My point was pointing-up the ethical problem of the “paradise for some”—that paradise is exploitative and unsustainable, at least until we invent food synthesisers ala Star Trek, and less invasive, less toxic modes of production.
The more interesting angle, for me, is the perceived spiritual void at the centre of secularism. Human beings seem desperately to need to invest in some notion of ultimate meaning (a psychic hangover caused by centuries of religious binging?), and here secularism fails them utterly (spare me the Saganesque rhapsodies about the grandeur of it all—another form of mysticism). I disagree that secularism has “won”, and different polls will tell you different things about church attendances. My sense is that the vast majority are as loopy as ever over deities, more or less, or anything metaphysical. Of course we have capitalism and commodity culture to cater for secularism’s deficiencies—drugs and multi-media provide our transcendental diversions.
I’m afraid that the human race is ultimately irrational—but then who’s to say that the universe is rational? That may be a secular conceit.
Squeers

Rusty

You suggest 'I say again, get an education, I'm not fooled'

Coming from someone who denies the obvious (creation points directly to a Creator) I find that a bit rich. I would be the first to agree it is a good thing to continue to learn but embracing your dogmas is not part of my plan.

I would suggest you need to get education. Your knowledge of spiritual matters seems very low. I would think that someone who is hell bound would look at their corrupt nature and conscience and stop hiding behind pseudo science as an excuse to deny the obvious. You don't really think your intellectual snobbery based on myths is going to help you on judgement day do you? The writer of proverbs rightly says that a fool says in his heart their is no god. Your pathetic little evolutionary tales will certainly look very foolish (as if it does not now) on that Day.

If it were not for another secular experiment tried on the Queensland Guinea Pigs, by the Goss Government, the secularization of the Supreme Court maybe Hugh Wilson could get a fair hearing on his concerns, but today in the fully privatized secular Supreme Court in Queensland, he would just be thrown out with costs.

A truly honest education system would teach as history, as I was in Queensland between 1949 and 1959, the introduction of Christian democracy into the United Kingdom, in 1215, made law in 1295. It would teach as fact that the Australian Courts Act 1828 brought this representative democracy to Australia and Queensland got it when it became a separate colony. Fully representative democracy is not a right to vote once every three years, but a full franchise to both vote in elections, and vote as a member of a jury.

The words that secularized the Supreme Court are these:

SUPREME COURT OF QUEENSLAND ACT 1991 - SECT 56
56 Single judge to constitute the court
(1) All proceedings in the Trial Division are to be heard and disposed of before a single judge.
(2) For those proceedings, the judge constitutes, and is to exercise all the jurisdiction and powers of, the court.
(3) The court, including the court as constituted by a master, may be constituted at any place.
(4) This section does not affect the hearing and disposal of proceedings before a master, registrar or other officer of the court in accordance with an Act or the rules.
(5) This section does not affect any right to trial by jury under an Act, the rules or a practice of the court.

This is a fundamentally dishonest piece of legislation. The word court is un-capitalised, but it does not comply with S 79 Constitution. S 79 says: The federal jurisdiction of any court may be exercised by such number of judges as Parliament prescribes. Because it gives a pagan Judge power to constitute a court, without fair just and impartial judges of fact, as existed before 1991, it repeals the Australian Constitution. That is beyond power

One part of S 56 of the Supreme Court of Queensland Act 1991, that should be obeyed by all Judges and Magistrates is ignored every day, by the secular and totally un-Christian Judges and Magistrates of Queensland.
(5) This section does not affect any right to trial by jury under an Act, the rules or a practice of the court.

These patently dishonest individuals, these grubby little wannabe Gods, should read the recent Pape decision in the High Court, brought down on July 9 2009, and take special note of the pronouncements on s 15A Acts Interpretation Act 1901 ( Cth).

In Queensland after I was shafted by the Supreme Court, constituted by a single Judge, like so many others since 1991, when I pointed out to the government that they had not repealed the sections guaranteeing jury trial in Queensland, in two other Acts, they consolidated them in the Supreme Court Act 1995. The pagan Judges in Queensland ignore these sections.

51 Judge may by consent try questions of fact
(1) The parties to any cause may by consent in writing signed by them or their attorneys as the case may be leave the decision of any issue of fact to the court.

259 Duty of judge and jury
(1) It shall be the duty of a jury to answer any question of fact that may be left to them by the presiding judge at the trial.
(2) But nothing herein or in any rule of court contained shall take away or prejudice the right of any party to any action to have the questions submitted and left by the judge to the jury with a proper and complete direction to the jury upon the law and as to the evidence applicable to such questions.

These are the sections that make the Supreme Court the court of the Supreme Being. If Mr Dick, the Attorney General, is fair dinkum, he will accept that there is an irreconcilable conflict between S 56 of the 1991 Act and S 51 and 259 of the 1995 Act. He may surpass even Kevin

Runner: If the diet is too rich for you, water it down, start with logic. Something non-existent cannot create, cannot do anything. Something that actually exists may well evolve internally, might indeed do anything, no intangible "thingy" required. See? Simple. Stumps Archbishops. Apparently clinging to what is historically, definitively dogma, your criticism isn’t compelling. Your imaginary bogeyman friend is impotent to act in this world, let alone judge in an imaginary next. You can go to *your* grave content, not stopping you. The people really sailing the boat sleep less easy to be sure, knowing some of the perils in this world. Knowing it’s up to us, we prefer Pastor not jog our elbow during important work. He is dismissed.

Go sift a religion from the thousands on offer, get consensus from the religiose about it, and I'll consider spending some time on it. Betting it's not yours. Similarly recent and derivative, I don't spend a lot of time “studying” Star Trek either. Get some idea of the gulf that exists between Pastor's impotent prayer and selecting appropriate antibiotics for the otherwise terminally ill. This usually after a simple microbiological experiment recapitulating the heart of natural selection. It isn't dogma, it's demonstrated daily. Catch up.

The wives of yank televangelists go to the “Mayo”, staffed by athiests and scientists. Only the mugs in the cheap seats have to put up with faith "healing" as a substitute. Pastor acts like a sideshow operator, sells trinkets to punters and puts his (formerly your) money where the good odds are.

Which PhD's refute biological evolution again? Is pastor's favourite the unemployed moonie? Or perhaps the one who invented the chocolate diet? About Pastor's top scientific speed, I imagine. No Nobel Prize-winners? Didn’t think so. I think his "spirituality" will be about as deeply considered. His audience is not, after all, very critical. How can adherence to a cheap PR campaign be "spiritual"?

Rusty the teacher of doctors writes

'Something non-existent cannot create,'

Drrr. And the chances of the 'big bang' are (not enough space to put the numbers). He then so cleverly writes 'something that actually exists may well evolve internally,' How did the 'something' come into being smarty?

Evolution is a fairytale for adults who really are blinded by dogma and a desire not to be accountable to their Maker. If Rusty is really a teacher of doctors it shows why our society is in such a mess.

Rusty the teacher of Runner writes: Logic lesson two. (Yawn)

If "real" object "A" cannot concievably exist without a creator, neither can "real" object "B".
How did the creator come into being, smarty? (did pastor help you with yours, or did you do it all by yourself?)

Alternatively, If object "B" could "always be" or "self create", well, it becomes "a bit rich" to automatically assume object "A" cannot.

Maybe your imaginary friend is "special". I'm increasingly sure you are.

The only people who think evolution in some form is not valid have books by the moonie and the Chocolate diet Doctor among their favourites. Their theology is sourced from similarly respected thinkers.

The point of this caricature is that the whole of the worlds organised theological thought has not in fact dealt with this problem. They establish by elaborate discussion what would be nice, and depend on our desire for such to justify the possibility.

Can our society do without? Sure can!

Runner's imaginary friend is a fairytale for adults who really are blinded by dogma and a desire not to be accountable. There there, Even Bigger Daddy will fix it and slap those nasty people, *they'll* be sorry one day. Be good or the Bogeyman will get you.

If faith could heal, it would be good enough for pastor. Ask him if you can check the books.

Better hope *your* doctors know what I have taught about antibiotic reistance genes. Far better to be a living hypocrite in denial than fully faithful and dead, dead forever, dead eternally. No god, no heaven, no limbo, no purgatory, no hell. Not *even* hell.