“zombie carpenter”

“It's religious institutions that are the boil on the bum of progress.”

Comments from academics who were, or still are, employed at places such as universities that have anti-discrimination and anti-vilification policies, and those policies cover religions.

It shows the complete lack of interest their staff have regards anti-discrimination and anti-vilification.

No wonder many foreign students have left, unlikely to return.

Well, crabsy, this, for one: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/28/1051381900365.html

And this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/7066564/Hallucinating-God-the-Cognitive-Neuropsychiatry-of-Religious-Belief-and-Experience

"The Christian view is that we are part of the good creation of God but have been alienated from Him. This is the theological content of the story of the Garden of Eden. ... If we take the creation narratives seriously,  we will know that our nature is made in the image of God.  Faith, then, promises a return ... we return to an original nature that has been created and seen to be good." 

But if we don't take the narratives seriously? To what do we return? The current narrative says we are advanced slime on a large round backwater rock. Is that the Hope of the nations? 

Peter, I think you've missed the point. You acknowledge what is there but are yet to grasp it. 

Human beings are demonstrably THERMODYNAMIC machines.
We input energy, use it to do work,output progeny and goods and services and discard low energy(high-Entropy) WASTES that we cannot use.

The trick is that this reality has weird and wonderful complications. Thermodynmaic systems are inherently QUANTUM-MECHANICAL(QM). That means:

They communicate by what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance",

they LASE in coherent powerful bursts(good OR bad) if energised in particular ways,

they obey Pauli-related exclusion-rules and react violently to enter specific separate states when OVERCROWDED,

their output is QUANTIZED depending on their energy input regime with in-between output states strictly avoided,

they emit electromagnetic energy(thoughts&actions) when their energy source is cut off and their current state decay to lower quantum levels

and a host of other impressive QM oddities.

The overriding key to this human QM THERMODYNAMICS is the slice of the ENERGY input regime (petrol and coal) per person.

If some one person or group could control say the electricity supply of a state, say NSW, in such a way that the buck stops at COMMERCIAL in CONFIDENCE and not with the Government of the day, THEN they are effectively GOD for all intents and purposes & it doesn't matter what is imprinted on our blank slates. They will have filled the god-hole & have control of all our thermodynamic levers. That means they control all the QM consequences & selectively create any kind of society the care to dream up and sequester.

The dangers are great but at the end of the day if your electricity is cut off long enough you simply won't exist, rending your once-full-slate to the unending ghostly boredom of QM delocalisation or DEATH.

The moral of this Physics is that human beings need to respect their ENERGY sources and expect a certain frugality within the reproductive cliques.

Giving energy sources to CEOs hiding behind 'Comm-in-Con' diplomacy and giving exorbitant paid parental leave to priveledged anglo-saxon ruling elite workers in an MultiCult society is NOT exactly the way to go about it.

I can tell you the consequences right now but I think y'all know!

briar rose:

We agree in part about the religious institutions.

a) << they don't continually reappraise and renew>> Generally so, although there is some effort that is not easily observed from outside. Such efforts are accelerating.

b) << they are ossified as a consequence>> Again largely so but, in view of the foregoing, not permanently so.

c) << the institutions don't bear the wisdom - the writings bear the wisdom, be they Christian or other faiths.>> Wisdom and spiritual healing is found not only in writings. In church-life, for instance, it is found also through such channels as oral discourse, traditional liturgy, music and the symbols to be found in the artworks and architecture. And the sense of being part of an institution that is the nexus between today's people and many generations of the distant past can facilitate development of a person’s spirituality.

Rhian:
<< You may be a bit soft on Peter.>> Well, I’ve just re-read the article slowly and pondered some passages. I’ll reserve judgement for now on the charge of Christian-exclusivism. If that is indeed his position I don’t think the article blatantly states it. Further consideration needed.

Clownfish: Thanks for those two links. I’ll follow them up.

Jon J says:

//WHAT!? The zombie carpenter whose family didn't have sex for two generations, who asked his friends to stick their fingers in the whole in his side, who ascended to heaven to the accompaniment of an earthquake and a zombie attack that somehow never made it into history; this is an ANTIDOTE to bizarre and irrational beliefs?//

Now Jon... that is religious vilification, plain and simple.

You could have simply argued like Pericles and others... in a more responsible, less overtly abusive and mocking manner.. but no... you chose to vilify. Certain people are ALREADY paying money to lawyers defend themselves for such statements .. I doubt you (Or David F or David Singer) would like to join them.

How about taking an 'argumentative' approach rather than just hurling out rubbish and hoping some of it will stick.

Christians may believe that humanity has a God shaped hole in our beings.. there is no need to sprinkle verbal cyanide in it.
All you have to do is disagree and deny and argue against... no biggy.