Who needs God? We have the Media in all it's manifestations.

Comparing Australia to Europe, one comes to understand that Australia is a more conservative country than most, excluding perhaps Italy (socially, not economically), Ireland, or Austria. Thus, the social order which Christianity has infused with its teachings survives to a larger degree than in England, Holland, or other nations which have embraced the social liberalism of "choice". Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that the two leading factions in politics in Australia are a socially conservative bunch of unionists with a significant proportion of Catholics in it, and a socially conservative bunch of accountants and lawyers with a significant amount of Anglicans, and a growing number of Catholics, there within contained. Also, we don't have a Bill of Rights, a representation of Christian belief in human dignity detached from Christianity.

This means that, as it has been noted, most Australians do not lead lives as has been described to a large degree. Drug use is decreasing, marriage and the birth rate are up, the push for reform of institutions is minimal; on the whole we're a conservative lot. Still, the apocalyptic style of revelation has proved its relevance in its ability to motivate by attempting to reveal a glimpse of the end of days, just as it could be argued that Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Mr Sellick do.

Notwithstanding that, the elevation of the self to the highest sphere and its necessary accompanyment of choices to allow the self-relevation of as many selves as possible has grown in popularity. You don't need to be religious to fight it, though it helps: social conservatism takes much from religion (and much from paganism) in an attempt to make a political doctrine to fight it.

Something i'd like to add... this individualism can occur on two levels; social or economical. Labor is more pushing social individualism, whilst the Coalition more economic individualism. Deakenite liberals and Catholic unionism more traditionally stood between the two, arguing for a settlement in economic matters and then against social liberalism. These two groups are being futher isolated by current machine politics.

Sells

The shallow and empty pursuit of gratification and self-indulgence that you caricature is not what most small-‘l’ liberals mean or want by freedom. Rather, it is as about taking responsibility for our lives, for our actions and for their consequences. Choice is a moral act, as well as a utilitarian one. You condemn freedom without responsibility, and so do I, but I vastly prefer freedom with responsibility to the absence of freedom.

Nor is freedom necessarily about refusing to accept authority, but rather about choosing our authorities and evaluating them critically (even die-hard libertarians will probably be more inclined to accept some propositions just because von Mises said them).

You mention Jesus’ temptation. He was offered the three predominant means of exercising power over other human beings, both in Roman times and today – economic (“command these stones to become loaves of bread”) political (to rule all the kingdoms of the world) and religious/charismatic, by beguiling an audience with an evident miracle. He rejected them all in favour of a model of service and persuasion – authority, certainly, but not of a kind the world had seen before (or much since, sadly).

All of Jesus' followers chose to accept the invitation to follow Him, many at great cost to themselves.

Liberation is a central theme of the Bible and it has some compelling things to say about freedom.

“if you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free”

“for freedom Christ has set us free.”

Christ offers us the possibility of being perfectly free and completely under authority at the same time. But this is neither freedom nor submission as encountered in the secular world, where freedom and coercive authority are almost always polar opposites. In that context, give me freedom every time

"It is of the nature of evil that it is always presented as the good."

For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

There is a misunderstanding here. Most of the commentators are arguing that choice would be OK as long as it's combined with responsibility. But that misses the point. Peter Sellick is clearly arguing that there is a flaw in the modernist philosophy of choice, in that it degrades choice itself. I have to agree. Once you accept the belief that the ideal to aim for is an autonomous individual who is free to choose according to his own desires, then the point of politics will be to enhance this kind of freedom. This requires a "liberation" from those things which impede individual choice.

But what impedes individual choice? Think of all those things which lie outside the realm of individual choice: it would include anything determined by our own biology; anything significant to an inborn human nature; any inherited forms of identity; any traditional or customary social roles; any forms of authority external to the individual; and any "objective" codes of morality.

So what is left to choose after you have "liberated" the individual from all these things? Mostly what is superficial. You can't include "manhood" or "womanhood" (biological destiny). You can't include traditional communal identities (inherited not chosen). You can't include objective moral codes (external to individual choice) - and so on.

Is it really so great that we strip down our concept of the individual, until we finally arrive at the pretence that we are "self-defining", if this requires us to limit ourselves to trivial aims and a mass of insignificant choices?

Thank you, alchemist and Pericles, for your eloquent answers to Sellick’s sermon. It’s not possible to be human without making choices and taking risks.

Sellick is waging the 21st century’s major war – the conflict between those who, in the name of religion, claim the right to tell others how to behave, and those of us who refuse their claim.

The fact that it’s possible to achieve goodness without the help of deities and priests is far too threatening for the proselytisers. They will never give up their attempts to control our lives. They offer all kinds of justifications, but frankly, I reckon it’s because they despise themselves, and believe that all other humans are as rotten as they are.

I’d like to leave them to their terrors, and honestly I would if they didn’t keep trying to tell me how I should run my life. But you just can’t leave claims that choice displaces faith, or “the celebration of choice is a mask covering the underlying nihilism” unanswered. This nonsense is repeated so often that we become habituated to it, too tired to dispute.

There is no underlying nihilism: choice doesn’t displace faith, but reason often does. The celebration of faith is a mask covering the underlying voodoo.

“Choice has become a word that signifies that we believe in nothing.” Eh? I think you mean that we believe something you don’t want us to. “Choice has no ground except the fragile whim of the chooser.” (Mark’s variation, that we can only choose the superficial, is just as insulting.) Human beings are constantly modulating their relationships with other humans, making choices based on whatever value or belief system they’ve (yes!) chosen.

Personally, I think my value system is better, but the values of reason and tolerance I have chosen to adopt require that I accept others’ rights to their own belief systems, even when bilge like this sermon makes it nauseatingly difficult