BOAZ_David, I note you believe that "large beurocratic [sic] Churches (Anglicans_RC_Uniting) are as far from the idea of the 'Church' in the new Testament, as is the concept of 'prosperity' gospel." It seems to me that there aren't many true Christians, if that's how you define Christianity. Sounds like a splinter-Maoist condemning all the other Communists as capitalist running-dog lackeys.

It's all a bit self-referential really. "I'm a Christian and I believe XYZ, If you don't believe XYZ you're not a Christian." So feel free to believe whatever, you obviously only represent yourself and your own biblical interpretation.

Forget-about-Nihilism-and-Religion. God-helps-those-who-first-save-themselves.

What we have in Australia 2006 is the prelude to another world war based on monopolisation of IT technologies and INFORMATION.

WWs I&II were preceded by particular technological advances where a handful of individuals and corporations HOGGED that technology, grew populations beyond stable bounds purely for MARKETS, enslaved those populations with PROPAGANDA, engendered fascism and Nationalism to penalise anyone with original thought, force citizens into a sense of false-security, inaction and NIHILISM, and lead them into inevitable wars of GREED.

All this so a few individuals with unbelievable power and riches can be divine KINGS (Just-LOOK-at-obscene-CEO-salaries!). These KINGS and their king maker politicians will not let go. They are able to garner extensive financial, social and political MONOPOLIES that make religion irrelevant, freedom a sham and nihilism the only way we can rationalise our weakened-position short of an unpalatable revolution. We keep hoping we will awake one morning and John Howard will stop unfairly funnelling immigrants into SYDSEQ to the hurrahs of a corrupt Italian NSW state Government. That Iemma isn't a liar and will not reclose the CCT funnel roads after the March 07 election. That state and federal governments aren't creating MONOPOLIES to reduce our choices and funnel our water, our cars and our lives into serfdom and suffering. We've all seen the nihilism in Soylent Green and think its fictional. Only when we understand that Soylent Green style debasement IS happening NOW with a pernicious gusto of funnelling, stacking and monopolisation, can we get past the nihilism and do what we still have a right to do:

VOTE THE BASTARDS INTO OBLIVION!

Continued..

And keep voting for alternate governments, both-Federal-and-State till they listen to 'we-the-PEOPLE' and not to big corporations, too drunk on false hopes of Kingdoms to realise that in 10 years time PEAK oil will rent their ambitions to dust.

This corruptitude of human civilisation has been going on since our time dawned. You'd think Howard, Iemma and Co. would've learned.

The tragedy is that now, in our time, John Howard, Westfields, MacBank and PBL still believe they can be KINGS of Australia despite all historical evidence to the contrary. Lets give them cause to wake up to themselves Australia. That's where the rubber hits the road and that's where nihilism gets left right out - or perhaps right left out

Remember, religion in its truest form can't blossom when we are ensconced by the desires of EVIL men or when we are so debased by them that God must intervene to save us. If you want true religion then USE YOUR VOTE and rid this country of Howardism and State governments that serve minority obidurate ethnic branches.

The Alternative? We need to STOP immigration. Give ourselves breathing space from the greed, corruption and pressure surrounding the fedral immigration program. Give ourselves a government that will teach us skills rather than making us redundant and vulnerable to ever increasing numbers of voracious foreigners. Give ourselves time to worship rather than being consumed by the need to compete and survive. I thought Howard was just senile but since his record breaking doorstop interviews last week it is clear that he is CULPABLE. Let's give HIM a taste of NIHILISM and vote him, Costello and their 'immigrationopolies' out.

So both W and The alchemist are disciples of choice. Is this a life philosophy we ought to be eager to adopt and defend? If anyone thinks so I would ask them to consider two things.

1) There is nothing pointing beyond choice itself in this philosophy. Choice is not allowing us to get at something important. We are supposed to be content to merely have choice itself.

So, when I asked for some positive quality in life to be considered important neither W nor The alchemist could list anything much beyond choice itself. The alchemist actually wrote that "Choice allows you to never have an ending, nor an answer, but always a possible choice." Choice gives you ... choice.

Doesn't this seem empty? Can't we affirm the positive value of something beyond choice itself?

2) The philosophy of choice not only leads to a failure to choose, it also limits the field of choice - and it particularly restricts us from choosing the most important things.

Why? Because if I am supposed to be free to be a self-defining individual, then I will have to deny all the things I can't possibly choose for myself. I will have to deny anything that came to me as part of my biology, or my inborn nature, or from custom or tradition.

Because I can't choose these things, they have to be made not to matter, in order for me to uphold the pretence that I can be a purely self-creating individual.

For these two reasons, we have to revisit the whole philosophy of "choice", to recast it so that it isn't self-defeating. Part of this will have to be the recognition that we choose within a reality which we ourselves do not and cannot create and which rightfully points us toward a set of goods which exist independently of our own will.

Huh? Boxgum, where did all this come from? Cripple needing a crutch? You didn’t hear it here, least of all from me.

Nevertheless you accuse scout and me of “picking the flowers” and say that we are “underpinned by christian social formation.” And what might that underpinning be? Two thousand years of sectarian warfare? The Inquisition? Witch hunts?

Let’s be clear, I’m not holding you responsible for any of these things. My point is that there are worthy reasons to reject christianity, just as you might claim that there are worthy reasons to embrace it.

And before you protest that my examples are in the distant past, let me remind you that the christian tradition has brought us Fred Phelps http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=103703, who pickets funerals, Peter Hollingworth http://www.abc.net.au/am/stories/s484774.htm, who blames the victim for sexual abuse, and Frank Houston http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Houston, who saved his best ‘pastoral care’ for the teenagers in his congregation.

Still, you choose christianity? Fine. Your beliefs are your own affair, and no doubt you’ve got good reasons for holding them. The same goes for me. When you imply my choice of values is like picking the low hanging fruit, you are being offensive in the extreme.

My protest above is against using religious arguments in support of a claim to impose religious values on me by proscribing civil, legal choices.

Please, pay me the courtesy of quoting me accurately, allowing me my values as I allow you yours, and leaving my civil rights alone.

Crabby, your point about “idolisation of choice” would be correct, were it not for Sellick’s paragraph beginning, “We kill our unborn babies under the rubric of choice.” The claims about the celebration of choice are a mask for the real argument about limiting people’s choices. Thankfully, the preachers don’t get to decide these things.

Mark, please stop challenging my values – they’re none of your business. This discussion is not about my beliefs. It’s about adult human choices. Sellick is making a case for limits to particular choices on religious grounds. I and others reject his claims on civil grounds. Basta.

W is painting a picture in which his preferred civil society leaves people alone to do as they will, whilst the religious element interferes.

In reality it is the civil society which has become increasingly intrusive. One exampe of this was the informal code of political correctness which became so oppressive to people that it inspired a popular backlash. More recently, there are formal speech laws, which operate inconsistently with some classes of people being deemed "protected" and others "unprotected" and which are becoming increasingly detailed: in parts of Canada it is now considered a form of harassment if someone feels you have adopted an "air of superiority" toward them.

The civil philosophy endorsed by W has effectively become a kind of state religion. It doesn't announce itself as such, but it is the way the people who shape society make sense of things, and they have committed themselves to very radical forms of social engineering, often against the views of the majority, in line with their view of things.