George,
We seem to be at cross purposes in that we are not discussing the same article. My article is based on Sheridan's " Idea of God is perfectly logical" no the article that you referred to which I admired.
Pete

runner,

Whether I believe the Bible, or accept it as authoritative, is irrelevant. The fact that you do is all that is needed for my point to have had meaning.

[No, he's saying educators shouldn't be shoving your religion down kids throats.]

Perhaps schools have changed since I was a kid, but if I remember right, teachers never shoved any beliefs down students throats. The closest they got to that is a few days planned around diversity and learning about different cultures. Even that wasn't about Christianity. Your being paranoid Toni.

[Unless you'd be happy for non-Christians to rock up at one of your religious services and start evangelising for their god... keep it to yourselves and away from our kids.]

That would be disruptive, but if it brings the people to church regularly I'd put up with it for their benifit. As long as they didn't get violent, I think it would be a good oppurtunity to try and teach them.

You make it sound like church is child abuse. It isn't.

I am confused about what 'Christian values' that Sheridan et al. are promoting?

Some weeks ago on ABC's The Drum, Sheridan was attacking an ethical conservative Christian leader in Angela Merkel blaming AfD success upon her decision regarding Syrian etc. refugees the other year (which pales in comparison to the post WWII and later movements); without passing comment upon the ethics of the AfD?

What would he say to Pope Francis who has supported Syrian refugees, or would he behave like Bannon?

This smells like the neo nativism of conservative Christianity as outlined by Chris Hedges, theologian and journalist, complaining of the politicisation and lack of ethics in too much non mainstream Christianity owing more to 1930s Germany:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/69095.American_Fascists

Of course one is not implying that Sheridan was saying what he thought his employer would like to hear?

No fan of 'Krudd', but he is one MP who could parse through this re. his citing of Boenhoffer, present day Christianity in the US and ethics?

//Perhaps schools have changed since I was a kid//

Yeah, not all schools are the same as the one you went to. In fact, the only school that's the same as the one you went to is the one you went to.

//teachers never shoved any beliefs down students throats//

That depends on the school: in some of them, it is the teacher's job. At my first primary school it was the teacher's job; at the second, they drafted in volunteers from the local Baptist church and took an hour off active instruction to do some marking. At my high school, they just gave us a free period one afternoon a week (a much better system: those who wished to their free period for religious study could do so, and the rest of us could do better things with our time).

However, the high school did regularly give time at assemblies to Christian - and only Christian - evangelists. And when one my brother's friends a few years above me made himself a placard reading 'All hail Satan 666' (or words to that effect) and held it aloft at one of these assemblies, he got in trouble off the teachers. Now surely he had just as much right to evangelise in favour of Satan as the Christians did for Christ? And yet the teachers only sought to silence him.

//Your being paranoid Toni.//

Yes, of course. Because everybody attended the same school as you and has had the same life experience as you.

//That would be disruptive, but if it brings the people to church regularly I'd put up with it for their benifit.//

Oh good. Where do you go to church?

Sells,

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I could not find any article called “Idea of God is perfectly logical” or some other mixing logic with faith. You apparently had in mind his “The God question: listen to your inner voice” that also appeared on the 28th October.

This article is more relevant to our disagreement on whether or not God of the philosophers corresponds to God of the Bible, no point in going into that again. However, if you admire this article then you will probably agree with his quoted above sentence about cutting us off from the roots of our civilisation. So I can only repeat that not only the Bible but also various Christian approaches to philosophy, in particular various understandings of the terms reason, rational (that Sheridan attempts to defend) belong to these roots. Otherwise one is in danger of being grouped with those deniers of our civilisation's roots - like one of the posters here - who call “mumblings” not only the philosophy of Aquinas but also that of Aristotle.