"Show me the section in the New Testament which justifies your statement ? Note.. NEW Testament on which Christianity is based, in that it interprets and fulfills the Old. If you so much as even once drag up some obscure out of context old testament verse about ‘genocide’ I will leap through the monitor and ‘speak harsh words’ to you :)"

In that case David, perhaps its time that the Xtians throw out the old testament from their holy book. Clearly the angry, vindictive,
baby killing, sperm worshipping god of the old testamement is not part of their belief. Unless he changed his mind of course...
Nope I have no intention of killing my neighbour for working on the sabbath..

Founding any new party is not easy, even though 90% of Australians don't bother attending a church. Religion simply doesent matter to most, apart from the religiously obsessed.

I think that the secular movement just needs to be more outspoken.
OLO is one great place to do it :) Point out the shallowness of their claims, the dogma based on supernatural claims, no evidence etc.
The point is that a secular society should allow freedom of religion, but also freedom from religion. Peoples rights matter etc.

Politicians need to be aware of how many votes they stand to lose,
if they get carried away with beliefs in the supernatural and want to force us to live by those beliefs. Our human rights matter, the majority of Australians would agree with that and vote for it.

Forget political correctness, we need to say what we think more often!

I doubt whether forming a "Secular Party" will do anything but divide the nation further. We already have seperated church and state in Australia... the fact that money is being given to the church based schools is unusual even wrong but it has hardly blurred the line.

The real problem in Australia is that we need a third party of substance... one which has members in both the upper and lower houses. One that actually gets out there and represents middle Australia. Neither left nor right. One that can be trusted to follow their parties platform to the letter... An honest party perhaps?

The Democrats once had a chance but alas they were too comfortable "keeping the bastards honest" and didn't try hard enough to get into the House of Reps. The Senate can be a cushy long term existance for a Polly. The real demise of the Democrats occured after Natasha left the top job and the GST debacle which basically left them as "one of the bastards". It has spiralled towards nothingness ever since. With Natasha they at least had a broad spectrum, popular person with a public profile.

Up until the "Rosaries off my ovaries" teeshirt the Greens were making some headway into at least having a chance to form a significant party... but ... a tee-shirt may have shot them down. Don't Senators have advisors?

So what's left... another party... I doubt it. Actually even though it pains me to say it the members of the Secular party could join the Democrats and work within the existing framework. I'm not a Democrats supporter per-se but I still think they have the structure and some good people to at least get some of their voters back onside.

I'm not sure whether traditional Democrat supporters will trust the Senators enough to reboot their lost potential, but with the current Govts. work in the Senate I suspect people will want someone back to keep control of any meglamaniacs that gain power.

Do any ex-Dems really trust the party and it's Senators?

Opinionated2,
Not being a supporter of the Democrats, I can't answer that question, however I would suggest this....

Those of us wanting a change in Australian politics, should join one of the two major parties, with like minded friends if possible, and try to change the philosophy of the chosen party from within. To my knowledge, the Labor Party has 10,000 members in Australia, so if a significant number joined that party for example, it would not be too difficult to bring them back to the centre of politics.

I am not sure about the internal structure of the parties, except they tend to be state based, if one state branch advocated something sensible I imagine other state parties would be compelled to follow the lead, only a suggestion, but one that may work for us. I am more left orientated, however could quite happily vote for a centreist party.

Secular to me means religious law is not imposed.

It’s a fine system, I have no problem with religion/idealism in private, we all believe in something.. Me, I have hero’s, Winston Churchill and my Grandfather.

Scout
If you are around, you were asking me somewhere ages ago why I don’t pick on Christians but I openly loathe islam, its simple, I like them and I despise islam/pc/new-age. Understand now?

Christians are decent and easy to get along with. They are a bonus to our society with charity work and they wont hurt me for being an atheist or having green hair or any of my other various “strange” lifestyle choices. Plus in a secular society, I can vote for or against any issues they push.

Islam has not made this leap.

My problem with a secular party is that people who claim to be an Atheist are usually just bitter at god, society or the church. The argument they put forth is “its not fair”. They are not Atheists at all, but embittered pious new-agers pushing a political newage idealism into our legislation. These newage “atheists” are not actually secular at all.

They are the very thing they claim to hate. Pious gits forcing PC romanticism down unwilling peoples throats.

Newage anger/resentment/reason is inane and futile, “its not fair” just does not cut it as a political argument... Life naturally is not fair. We make what we can of it.

Atheist is the simple conclusion there is no after life or spiritual world… (a beleif system in itself)Atheist is about having no one to rescue you and no one to blame.

I assume Winston was religious (I have never checked, does anyone know just for interest sake?), but man he was practical

My, my my, what an interesting bunch we have here. G'day all. I'm a card-carrying Quaker myself, but don't hold that much truck with the bible, qu'ran, torah etc. As George Fox put it: "You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light, and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?"

I believe in God, although it is beyond me to say exactly what or who "God" is. All I "know" is that God exists.

As for "religion" - my true faith lies in democracy. Albeit a certain kind of democracy, viz:

i) Where the executive arises from within the legislature (as opposed to an American system of executive separate from the legislature).

ii) Where the judiciary is separate from the legislature (this is pretty standard the world over).

iii) Where members of the legislature are elected via preferential voting for single-member constituencies (as opposed to proportional representation - the worst-case in the world being Israel)

iv) Where (HERE'S THE BIG ONE FOLKS - NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD HAS THIS ... YET) full general elections for all representatives are held on an annual basis.

That's right folks - annual general elections. It would make for better accountability, transparency, stability, long-term planning, consensus-building, and cost cutting. It would foster a better "culture" of democratic processes and ideals, and would give us all something to celebrate each and every year.

We have built a pretty good House of democracy in Australia. Alas, we have yet to learn how to maintain it well.

One thing ALL traditional “religions” have in common? Annual festivals that celebrate and inculcate their particular “world view”. You cannot have Easter (or Christmas), or Hajj, or Passover, or Buddha’s birthday, etc. etc. every second, third, fourth year! And the same goes for all secular “religions" – ANZAC Day, Australia Day, 4th July, AFL grand final, etc.

Happy to discuss this further if anyone wishes.

In peace,
David (in Perth, Western Australia)

One of the most disputable assertions made amongst these (generally constructive) comments is a longstanding claim made by religious devotees that a secular person or secular state is not able to adopt and adhere to a moral code of behaviour because they have no fundation for such.

This has been one of Christianity's most cherished defences against atheism. 'If you don't believe in God then you can't be a morally uprighteous citizen'. Even way back in primary school catechism classes my brain took offence at the shallowness of this argument.

All I can say in hindsight, on the basis of a lifetime's experience, is that the most humanitarian, thoughtful and moral people I have come across have by and large derived their moral standing not from closed religeous ideology but from open discourse, unclutterred by the dogmatism and limitations that religion tends to impose.

This is not to say there are some fine leaders in church circles, nor that all secular leaders are moral human beings. But the proof is in the pudding. Dogmatism breeds intolerance, intolerance breeds bigotry, bigotry breeds hatred, hatred breeds violence. Even if we overlook Northern Ireland, the Middle East and Kashmir battlegrounds and all the other holy wars, the forceful eradication of diverse human cultures the world over in the name of Christianity is a history of terrible shame.

A society that can liberate itself from these demeaning shackles is one that has finally matured. People who are driven by religious faith have to be respected as part of the mix, not above nor below. Secularists would do themselves a disservice if they, in turn, became smug or pious in ther attitude to others.