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Dear Mark (the author),

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You pose some interesting questions.

My guess is that the religious vote in Australia remains relatively strong, despite the fact that, as you say, the country is constitutionally secular, and people no longer go to church regularly. Politicians still have every interest in playing to the religious vote.

Also, Church lobbies continue to be very powerful and active in political circles (state and federal parliaments, governments and political parties). Like the economic elite, they exercise considerable influence on our local, state and federal policymakers.

In addition, it is worth recalling that our head of state, Her Royal Highness the Queen of England, is also the head of the Church of England. Our whole political system of parliaments and governments is based on the Westminster system. And like the United Kingdom, Australia is a Constitutional Monarchy.

For this to change, we really need to complete the final stages of our long, drawn-out process of emancipation from the venerable “mother country”, now that we have come of age, and establish ourselves as a truly independent nation capable of assuming our own destiny - which we have always been obliged to do anyway !

We sacrificed much of our youth on a number of occasions in the defence of the interests of our "mother country", but when we, in turn, were under attack by the Japanese invaders during the second world war, our dear, venerable "mother country" was nowhere to be seen. She left us to face our fate alone.

Thank goodness, the Americans came to our rescue.

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Hi Mark,

One interesting thing about those men (they were all men) who framed our Constitution, they would all profess to be Christian, most regularly practising their Christianity. Yet the same Christian gentlemen seen it as imperative that state and religion had to be separated, and it was impotent that our nation when formed, be secular. What danger do you think the framers of the Constitution perceived if we had gone down the path of becoming a Christian recognised nation?

Some people refer to the "religious vote", no doubt with a curled lip, assuming that the targets of their disdain base their votes on religious principles.

So, what are the votes of the irreligious to be called: the "nothing vote", the "atheist vote"? And, on what principles and beliefs do the irreligious base their decisions, given that the very basis of Western culture is Christian mores. They might not be "Bible bashers", but your their way of life is based on Christian ethics; otherwise they would be barbarians like those people who are not Westerners and who don't even pay lip service to Christianity as most Australians do.

spoke to a non religious plumber yesterday. Yep even he was in agreement that a baby born with a penis is male. He hated the way the schools were brainwashing the kids.

The god deniers bash their putried ideologies on the average Aussie far more than 'bible bashers'. In actual fact you can find plenty of filth in State schools but bible reading and prayer is largely banned.

You simply need to believe in biology and hard science to see how sick the secular/globalist dogmas have become.

The globalist are so stuck up themselves that when people reject them they show there true Marxist colours. The Democrats in the US still can't accept democracy. Russian collusion, Ukraine Collusion and any other hoax to convince that people have rejected their godless agendas.

The funniest thing is that the likes of Bucko and others think that somehow they are going to rid their consciences by ridding themselves of God. One day they will see like the communist that it is a pathetic match. God is going nowhere and the only place they will end up is hell unless they are smart enough to humble themselves and receive His mercy.

Secular doesn't mean without religion, it means without religious preference. The idea that s116 somehow prohibits religion in public life is to misconstrue the section, as also is it to misconstrue secularism to interpret it as excluding religion. Wikipedia is pretty good on s116. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_116_of_the_Constitution_of_Australia

The way some use secular to try to exclude religious belief as a valid foundation for argument or participation in public life is an attempt at logical sleight of hand. What they are really saying is that policy must only be based on rational principles, and religion is not rational.

But that ignores the fact that you can't interpret facts outside a conceptual frame, and that all conceptual frames have assumptions which are essentially non-rational. I'd prefer the Christian's conceptual frame with its non-rational assumptions, than the Marxists', or the socialists' with theirs.

At the same time, given that religious belief varies within and between religions, I wouldn't seek to exclude Muslims or Buddhists, or ban Catholics or Pentecostals because I think my brand of belief is better. Nor would I ban atheists, Marxists or socialists.

Anyway, the idea that religious belief applied to public policy is irrational is flawed. Most theology is argued on a logical basis, even if you don't agree with the premises.

Graham Y,

<<Anyway, the idea that religious belief applied to public policy is irrational is flawed. Most theology is argued on a logical basis, even if you don't agree with the premises.>>

Thank you for bringing clarity and sanity into this thread.