Great article, Nina.

The set of beliefs held by those writer festival goers seems very narrowly focused. To fit in you basically have to be left-wing, athiest, pro gay marriage and spend a lot of time calling out climate deniers.

They can't see the point of following a set of beliefs such as those espoused by faith communities, yet their doctrines are just as restrictive, if not more so.

Harmer and the wider Twitterati display this sort of narrow mindedness on social media every day. Let's not forget, though, that the Twitter party guest list is fairly exclusive - used by only 10% of the Australian population and heavily left-leaning

What a ridiculous article - why can't someone be a churchgoer and attend a writers' festival, and find a sense of community in both? Setting up a false dichotomy like this just reflects poorly on the author.

'False dichotomy' -- that's the phrase I was looking for. Writers' festivals are mass events held occasionally in order to attract a large and diverse crowd of gullible people (well, who ELSE would pay to hear a writer talk?). Church services are small events held regularly to attract small and recurring groups of gullible people. What is the point of comparing the two, other than to provide a false positivity for the church experience? If you can show that church attendance has benefits over attending, say, a weekly bridge club, pool tournament or creative writing group, then you might have a case. But this is apples and oranges.

This really says it all about our modern city society, when people have nothing better to do with their time, than sit in a hall having someone talk at them from a raised stage.

I guess we should feel sorry for them, that their lives in our cities has become so meaningless, & boring.

PRAY TO THE VIRGIN!

Community of itself does not necessarily provide anything valuable. It depends on what the community does that makes it worthwhile. A bunch of heroin addicts living in a run-down squat is a community.

A writer’s festival attracts people for all manner of reasons. Just because Harmer thinks some go for ‘spiritual’ benefit does not mean that the festival is only of benefit to them. People go to hear new ideas or to enjoy sharing insight into the writing process. They go to hear stories and biographies and to listen to debates about topical subjects. They go to be entertained and stimulated.

Churches on the other hand attract people for one reason alone and that is because those people are insecure and cannot find effective ways of dealing with their insecurities. It does not mean that church helps them – it just numbs them. People feel lots of fear and anger and deal with it in different ways. Some join a community in a squat and inject themselves with heroin others drink or gamble or get involved in crime. None of these things work.

The author is trying to convince herself that church does work. If it did work then she would be totally unfazed by anything Wendy Harmer has to say on the subject.

Hi Nina,
A very interesting perspective. It is also one in which while I have some sympathy it is also one where I think you miss a significant contribution. Churches are full of Australians communicating and interacting in our egalitarian way.

Writers festivals are meetings where elites and academics, dominate. Where the old Australian cultural cringe is alive and well. Except the cringe is now no longer before all that is from the home countries, it is now a cringe before all that is foreign.

Its no wonder people leave them confused about community.Its forums are where Australian egalitarianism is scorned and foreign forms of community interaction are promoted as preferable to our own. Where foreignn understanding of Australian community is encouraged and the Australian voice is stifled.

Cheers well done.

Glorious, glorious,
one can of beer between the four of us.
Hail the purple flower there are no more of us,
cause one of us could drink it all alone.

Seriously, if you can't believe in a creative being, or simply can't find it in some hall or church, or work of patently pluralistic plagiarized fiction, then believe in the mighty irrefutable truth.
Hard to go wrong there?
Rhrosty.

That's an interesting perspective, imajulianutter.

>>[Writers festival] forums are where Australian egalitarianism is scorned and foreign forms of community interaction are promoted as preferable to our own. Where foreignn understanding of Australian community is encouraged and the Australian voice is stifled.<<

Here in multicultural Sydney, my (admittedly personal) observation is that our city churches are actually filled with Asians - Chinese and Koreans in particular. One neighbourhood church only recently (proudly) advertised the fact that one of their Sunday services would be held... in English!

Not, of course, that there is anything wrong with that. We all choose the groupuscules with which we identify. And quite frankly, it doesn't surprise me in the least that churches and literary festivals appeal to totally different mindsets. I'd probably be quite upset if they did coincide, given their fundamentally differing views on the value of broad enquiry over dogma, and of imagination over conformity.

Rhosty

Your simple non rythymical ryhming verse would be scorned by our literary elites and academics.
They would prefer you used the American idiom of free verse but that would make you too sound utterly conflicted.

American free verse was born out of the American ideology of freedom of and premience of the individual. It maintains the classic structure do not suit that voice or idealogy.

Our lefty elites tied to the idealogy of the collective constantly use this form as to them it is a tearing down of all the old literary structures. Sadly they fail to understand the conflict and their free verse is as a result sadly conflicted, has mangled and obscure metaphors and all theother critisims the socialist Poe yelled at the American free verse inventors and individualists Dickenson and Whitman.

There I do know enough about poetry to critique, scathingly.

Well Pericles

Whoever said our communities of Asian new Australians haven't adopted or won't adopt our Australian egalitarian way?

My money is on a tendency to think our land will shape those communities in much the same way it has always shaped all the communities of all the inhabitants in the 40,000 years of existence as custodians of this land.

Would you disagree with that?

And that Pericles is the voice not heard in the australian writing festivals of elites and academics, which puts them outside our society of communities.

That's very confusing, imajulianutter.

>>My money is on a tendency to think our land will shape those communities in much the same way it has always shaped all the communities of all the inhabitants in the 40,000 years of existence as custodians of this land. <<

I absolutely agree with you. It has always been this way, despite the protestations of the Little Australians that immigrants are a blight on our communities.

But surely, your depiction of the writers festivals support your assimilationist views? You describe them as places...

>>where foreignn understanding of Australian community is encouraged<<

Sounds to me as though you are on the same side.

Not at all Pericles.

I am an Australian. My family first stepped onto Australian soil 7 generations ago. While 4 generations are buried in NZ 3 live in Aust. Common traits shared by immigrant Australians and NZers of similar heritage and Indigenous Australians are common and many. It is my belief the land we all live in shapes us. Newer arrivals do not share that experience and tend to have little understanding or appreciation of the depths it extends into the formation of todays unique Australian character.
I recognise we are much more adaptive, have greater connections to land and are far more egalitarian than groups who are more recently arrived in these lands.The voice of these newer arrivals dominate our literary elites and academics. These share now share a cringe beforehand anything foreign and they overwhelmingly promote anything other than our broader Australian culture. and older inhabitants.

Been away for the past 5 weeks.
This essay was/is so one-dimensional, as indeed is most of what is now promoted as religion in this time and place. And yes it sets up a false dichotomy.
Never mind of course that the usual church services are incredibly boring - the equivalent of junk-"food" for the soul.
These related references describe the nature of the consoling self-serving religiosity that Nina promotes.
http://www.dabase.org/up-1-1.htm
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/truth-religion
http://global.adidam.org/books/gift-of-truth-itself

Nice article, Nina.
You've helped give some insight into the life, health and vibrancy of a modern church. I'm amused by the reaction you've drawn from some of those who have trouble handling the idea that attending church might just be a positive experience (most probably those who've rarely or never been.) Thanks for taking the trouble to put your thoughts out there.

One often hears news that the church in Australia is weak. That really depends on how what measure you use. In raw numbers of attendees, it is probably a lot down compared to the 1950s. But by other measures, it is very strong, perhaps stronger than it's ever been. Your stats comparing church to Aussies' love for footy are not made up. It's almost a poke in the eye to the Australian media who generally don't seem to want to like Christians.

From the media, you might get the impression that Australia is a country dominated by atheists. I think it's more a case that the media is dominated by atheists.

Another stat that comes to mind is the number of overseas Christian missionaries sent out by the Australian church. I think this compares quite favourably to the US in the ratio of missionaries to population (that's missionaries compared to national population, not missionaries compared to church attendees.) It's a stat which shows the underlying strength of belief. For while church attendance is higher in the US, going can be more socially acceptable there. Here a higher rate of people attend because they truly believe in it.

There's still a contradiction here, imajulianutter.

>>It is my belief the land we all live in shapes us.<<

Absolutely agree. Our entire history stands in evidence for this, does it not.

>>Newer arrivals do not share that experience and tend to have little understanding or appreciation of the depths it extends into the formation of todays unique Australian character.<<

But given your position above, surely you must accept that it is just a matter of time before the assimilation process takes over? I recall very clearly the ghetto mentality of various European groups - Italians and Greeks, predominantly - that persisted for many years through the fifties and into the sixties. A generation or so later, and you wouldn't tell them apart (except while the World Cup is on, of course, when parts of Sydney and Melbourne suddenly turn red, white and green...). I'm sure that the same will happen to what you describe as "newer arrivals" (I suspect you mean folks of Aisan descent), and the recent sign advertising "New: English services" at the church around the corner will become completely redundant.

But I suspect this may be your main problem:

>>The voice of these newer arrivals dominate our literary elites and academics.<<

I haven't seen any evidence of this, even at the recent Sydney Writers Festival. Can you give examples, perhaps? Here's a link to help you along:

http://www.swf.org.au/

Or are you working from another agenda completely?

Pericles

Part of the culture I belong to has a great openess. When someone in my culture has something to say they say it. It is rare in my culture to suspect others motives or to sssign to them the common characteristics of foreigners eg. Racism.

Therein lies our difference.There is ample evidence that this foreigness pervades sections of our culture. It is usually confined to elites and newer arrivals.

People who have roots extending back more than a couple of generations rarely exhibit such stupidity.

People who are more newly arrived do not understand that. As generations pass people here become influenced by the existing cultures and the attachment to land.
This is not something that occurd within one or two generations.
Our literature once highlighted that and once defined us.
That is no longer the case.

Look how few writers poets simply want to publish in Aust/nz. Most aspire to be internationally recognised. To do that the old Australian culture is shredded in the publishing process. Traditionally our Australian voice came from our communities not from academia or the elites .In our communities connections to the Australian culture and the land are still far stronger than the connections of newer arrivals (a self evident truth) and the inner city uni educated elites. Those groups dominate our media from publishing to tv news. And if you libed smong our cultute and communities you would understand the scorn towards these groups. That voice is censored by the elites and academia.

As an example ask an academic or modern poet what they think of simple rhyming verse.

That is a great australian tradition and stil loved by people of my culture.

You'll see from the elites and acadenics open derision and scorn. They all pretty well to a person prefer American Free Verse. And they are so bad at that, because of their conflict, they would be harangued in the same terms used by Poe.

Ps I am not uni educated nor part of any socialist elite. I am egalitarian.

But...

>>It is rare in my culture to suspect others motives or to sssign to them the common characteristics of foreigners eg. Racism.<<

Is that not exactly what you are doing, imajulianutter?

e.g.

>>...foreigness pervades sections of our culture. It is usually confined to elites and newer arrivals.<<

and

>>In our communities connections to the Australian culture and the land are still far stronger than the connections of newer arrivals (a self evident truth) and the inner city uni educated elites.<<

How did you get on with the information on the Sydney Writers Festival? Anything there that supports your anti-new-Australian views? We are supposed to be discussing church vs. writers festivals, after all.

Iamajulianutter,
You suggest our land will shape its inhabitants as it has always done for 40,000 years. Would we disagree with that?

Yes, I would disagree.

The idea that any community has been living on the Australian continent for the last 40,000 years is preposterous by any intelligent examination. The effect of such huge numbers of people on the land would have been far more evident.

Do you understand population growth models? Start with any small number of people. Insert any population increase factor (however small,) and multiply by 40,000. The figure arrived at is astronomically big, and ridiculously so. It's impossible. It never happened.

The idea that Australian aborigines may have lived here for tens of thousands of years is a nice, politically popular myth, but it defies any evidence. A few thousand years at most is more likely.

Dan S de Merengue, you use the word "evidence" here quite loosely, I feel.

>>The idea that Australian aborigines may have lived here for tens of thousands of years is a nice, politically popular myth, but it defies any evidence.<<

There is, of course, a wealth of evidence to that effect. The fact that you reject that evidence is a personal choice on your part, and doesn't suddenly cause history itself to evaporate.

But you and I have been here many times before, so on this occasion I'll leave imajulianutter to follow the intellectual contortions of your belief system.

Dear Pericles. Thanks, as always, for your words of encouragement.

I trust that you (and Julian) know how to add and multiply. So try for yourself. Find a calculator. Punch in any base number, with any mild or ordinary rate, multiplied 40,000 times, and the numbers speak for themselves. 40,000 is not credible. Try it and see.

And your assumption, Dan S de Merengue, is that you apply a single multiplication factor to your mathematical model, and calculate exponentially from that number?

>>Punch in any base number, with any mild or ordinary rate, multiplied 40,000 times, and the numbers speak for themselves. 40,000 is not credible. Try it and see.<<

It may come a something of a shock, but occasionally, people have been known to die. This creates the need to introduce a negative factor at some point, which is not catered for in your scenario.

"In this view it is the interaction between the effects of fluctuating climate and environment and of competition with modern humans that would have led to the eventual Neanderthal extinction."

http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/what-happened-to-the-neanderthals-68245020

Trying to justify your position on young earth creationism through the application of gonzo mathematics simply doesn't wash, I'm afraid.

'" (I suspect you mean folks of Aisan descent), and the recent sign advertising "New: English services" at the church around the corner will become completely redundant.

But I suspect this may be your main problem:'

that Pericles is you assigning attitudes and disparaging a person.

that is playing the man in debate. Now show me where I have played you in this debate?

Argue my points instead of attacking me as racist. There is no racism in my thoughts as I have expressed them. That you interpret my expression of my thoughts as racist says more about you than you realise. It shows three things
:you lack any appreciation of how we have become the culture we are today
:you lack a complete understanding of Australian culture
:you are attempting to stifle discussion by bullying.

These say your arguments are weak and are leading nowhere. This presents Australian culture only in a negative light and is a perfect example of how our elite's and academic's are presenting their modern cultural cringe.

As our culture and underlining philosophy comes from our communities and not our elites and academics, as Bertrand Russell maintained, it becomes very easy to see why you are so confused.

Dan
I won't argue your point of view.
you say 3000, some say 60,000. Mid point is 28500. If it's a case of maths let's for the sake of peace and respecting peoples beliefs(whether right or wrong) just accept an average.

Do you have an opinion on the belief of the age of the bible, the book of Thoth or Corpus Hermeticum?

Thanks and could you please supply the relevant mathematical proofs?

I am sure that you are absolutely right, imajulianutter.

>>There is no racism in my thoughts as I have expressed them.<<

It must have been my imagination..

Imajuliannutter,
For Australian aborigines inhabiting the continent, you first suggest a history of 40,000 years as the figure, though mention people may give it a wide range, some as low as 3000 or as high as 60,000 (I’ve heard even higher.) You don’t seem very sure, despite being quite emphatic at first instance.

It seems to me the only reason people say 40,000 is that they’ve heard others say it so often that it has come to stick. The numbers you’ve thrown about with cavalier abandon are really a very long way apart. Even 10,000 years is an incredibly long time in human terms. It’s longer than all of recorded history. Your solution to the problem is to pick a random number somewhere in between them all. Is this your usual approach to problem solving?

I’m not aiming for a mathematical proof. Mathematics is just a tool to help decide what is ball park reasonable and what is not. 28,500 is not reasonable, and I’ll state why below.

As for the age of the Bible, there are some pretty standard dates going around for the ages of the various books, depending on which book of the Bible you are talking about (there’s something in the order of 1500 years between the first and the last). For those other two you mention, I’ve never heard of either one.

Pericles,
The problem of population growth is a real problem for the idea that people have been living in Australia for 40,000 years. The problem doesn’t disappear by suggesting that people are also dying. All population growth models are well aware of the fact that people die.

I’ll try and put this simply. If more babies are born than people die in a year, then there has been a net increase. Imagine an increase of one percent. Such an increase over the years accumulates, a bit like money gaining interest in the bank. One percent increase carried over about 70 years leads to a doubling. For example, if Australia’s population was 22 million in 2014, with a one percent increase it would double in roughly 70 years: 44 million in 2084, 88 million in 2154, etc.

Populations tend to increase in such manner, sometimes quicker, sometimes slower, but they increase at a certain rate. Even with the catastrophes, wars and famines, over the 20th Century, most nations saw a multiplied increase.

If they decrease consistently over a time, they will dwindle and disappear. That is obviously not what happened to the Australian aborigines, as they are still here. They are, of course, a resourceful, intelligent and durable group of peoples.

So the Aborigines have increased over time, but at what rate? Let’s imagine starting with 20 people increasing at a meager rate of 0.4%.

After 2,500 years – about 432,000 (that seems ball park reasonable),
After 3,000 years – about 3.2 million people (more than what is evidently present),
After 5,000 years – about 9 billion people (quite unreasonable)
After 10,000 years – about 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people (ridiculously unreasonable,)
After 28,500 years (Julian’s preferred age) – about 25 with 48 zeros following!
After 40,000 years – about 22 with 68 zeros following!

I put the problem in the hope that someone may come up with a reasonable solution given the tendency for an intelligent and resourceful people to naturally increase. The Aborigines couldn’t have been suffering at zero increase or near extinction levels for 37,000 of their 40,000 year existence.

Dan

I don't have much truck with mathematics, too many assumptions and variables to be as simple as you suggest.

Neither of us was alive during the time of the ancient Egyptians either. Evidence suggests their civilisation was likely to have started between 9000 and 15000 years ago.

How does that fit your mathematical model?
Shouldn't there now be at least 9 billion Egyptians?

'The Aborigines couldn’t have been suffering at zero increase or near extinction levels for 37,000 of their 40,000 year existence.'

Why not?
cheers Dan

Pericles,

It was in your interpretation not your imagination but I'll accept your statement sorta as a simple apology.

But it does, Dan S de Merengue

>>Pericles, The problem of population growth is a real problem for the idea that people have been living in Australia for 40,000 years. The problem doesn’t disappear by suggesting that people are also dying.<<

Early civilizations were prone to mass annihilation, due to the fragility of their lifestyles. So we are not talking about any form of steady-state increase, but a fluctuation that includes a reduction to close-to-zero. In some parts of the world, this included a full reduction-to-zero.

>>I’ll try and put this simply. If more babies are born than people die in a year, then there has been a net increase. Imagine an increase of one percent. Such an increase over the years accumulates, a bit like money gaining interest in the bank.<<

That would seem simple enough.

However, let's exercise your model using the CIA World Factbook figures that the world annual birthrate, mortality rate, and growth rate are1.89%, 0.79%, and 1.096% respectively.

Starting with Adam and Eve, and allowing for your conviction that the Flood happened around 2350BC, there would now be a world population of 55 quadrillion people.

So that can't be right, can it.

If instead we reverse engineer the numbers, taking a starting population of 8 people following the Flood, we would arrive at our current population of 7 billion or so with a growth rate of 0.475% - not massively different from your own imaginary number.

Unfortunately, that leaves us with the unpleasant thought that when the Israelites arrived in Canaan around 1456BC, the total world population would be a massive... 548 people. Not a lot, really.

How would you suggest we handle this little problem, Dan S de Merengue?

Pericles,
Some populations, of course, will increase faster or slower than others, depending on their given circumstances. I'm only looking for what is possible and within normal bounds of reason.

As you suggest, starting with 8 people, given 4350 years, an average rate of about 0.475% annual increase, to arrive at a total population of about 7 billion (accepting your figures.) This is a reasonable expectation of what could happen.

Imajuliannutter,
'Shouldn't there now be at least 9 billion Egyptians?'
In a similar line, I don't think the Egyptian history is nearly that old. The dates surrounding their lists of kings is the subject of much interpretation.

'The Aborigines couldn’t have been suffering at zero increase or near extinction levels for 37,000 of their 40,000 year existence.' Why not?

I think that after 37,000 years (that's an awfully long time) they would have found solutions to whatever was troubling them. After all, we do credit them with a fair amount of intelligence. Alternatively, if their problems were insurmountable, then that would have killed them off (which evidently didn't happen.)

Populations either increase or decrease, usually they tend to increase (for the reason of human sexual drive, if nothing else.). It's simply extremely unlikely that they would stay at that knife edge of exactly zero percent increase for 37 of the 40 thousand years. Why should they?

I think you may have ever-so-slightly missed the point I was making, Dan S de Merengue.

>>As you suggest, starting with 8 people, given 4350 years, an average rate of about 0.475% annual increase, to arrive at a total population of about 7 billion (accepting your figures.) This is a reasonable expectation of what could happen.<<

This is the part you may have overlooked:

"Unfortunately, that leaves us with the unpleasant thought that when the Israelites arrived in Canaan around 1456BC, the total world population would be a massive... 548 people."

I await your views on that possibility with breath only slightly bated. Or indeed, any alternative theory you may have as to the population of the world in 1456 BC. Don't forget to comment on their geographic distribution across the continents with special mention of our Aboriginal friends - for example, how did they reach Australia, when did they first get here, and where had they come from?.

Imajuliannutter,
The maths used here for population growth is not complex. It is simply applying a small annual percentage to the previous population, estimated over many years. Would you propose we did something else?

Pericles,
I suppose the question of where the Australian Aborignes came from might be an interesting one to explore. However, the question I’m raising (following Julian's comment) is when did they really arrive. The evidence suggests it wasn’t as long ago as many assume.

But that's the point, Dan S de Merengue, is it not?

>>The maths used here for population growth is not complex. It is simply applying a small annual percentage to the previous population, estimated over many years<<

Which is an entirely wrong process. You are making the assumption that populations never decrease, which is of course completely fallacious.

>>Would you propose we did something else?<<

Obviously you would. By not assuming that populations grow at a continuous rate, but allowing for the fact that various populations have, over time, grown and decreased - sometimes disappeared completely. The fact cannot have escaped you that this must have been true, or your own young-earth creation model would not make sense.

Otherwise, how come there were only five hundred people in the world when the Israelites descended upon Canaan?

>>However, the question I’m raising (following Julian's comment) is when did they really arrive. The evidence suggests it wasn’t as long ago as many assume.<<

What evidence might that be? We know now that it cannot be this "evidence":

>>Start with any small number of people. Insert any population increase factor (however small,) and multiply by 40,000. The figure arrived at is astronomically big<<

So what else is there?

The model I'm proposing for population growth is quite standard. I'm well aware that populations sometimes decrease. I never said otherwise. But over time, the tendency is for them to increase. This is observed evidentially. It's central to human nature. It's part of our human experience.

The figures are evident. But if you'd like to propose any type of realistic scenario that explains a population model fitting with the current Australian population over vast millennia (40,000 years), then you are welcome to demonstrate one.

Yet the most pressing and obvious conclusion is that a community on the Australian continent simply haven't lived here anywhere near that long.

That's just a little cheeky, Dan S de Merengue.

1. You propose that there is no mathematical growth model that adequately explains 40,000 years of Aboriginal presence here.

2. I propose that there is no mathematical growth model that adequately explains 6,018 years of human presence on the planet.

3. You then ask me to propose a mathematical model that does in fact fulfill both equations' requirements.

The answer is that there is none that is as simplistic as i) take a starting number, ii) take a growth figure then iii) multiply.

The reason being, of course, that populations both grow and die. If you genuinely would like to understand the mathematical models that illustrate this - which, somehow, I doubt - Google "Conway's Game of Life". There you will see how with a given set of survival parameters, and their concomitant threats, populations grow and recede.

Enjoy.