You appear to be asking religion to play fair.
They will not. It is time to fight back as we cannot afford the "special treatment" and "some are more equal than others" philosophy that has pervaded the power elites lately.
Like all primitive beliefs religion will use animal tactics. Consistency, logic and fairness are not among them. They will continue to band together and hide their corruptive influence on government. They will continue to skulk around in the shadows: stacking committees, undermining democracy as they go. Honest, transparent argument is the enemy the forces of "faith". They want unconditional surrender of rationality and evidence based laws and teachings.
Look at the lies peddled in the name of creationism! They deny known facts, rewrite history and simply lie about things that they should know better about. Rather then an honest search for truth they simply attack using all the dodgy rhetorical devices in the book.
Why are so many preachers revealed as gross hypocrites? Because that's the game they are in. Tricking people. Most people eventually discover that the certainty displayed by preachers is an act: fake it 'till you make it.
Time and time again the church is shown to be morally corrupt: harboring paedophiles is just one example.
They provide no leadership: Aids in Africa has exploded because they lie about condoms. GW Bush said God told him to bomb thousands of innocent civilians and allow the CIA to kidnap and torture world wide. Where was the condemnation from churches...nowhere because he was "their man". Now *that* is morally bankrupt.
Where is the so-called moral guidance that religion is supposed to provide? In the real world religion seems to be more about having reasons to hate others, it is certainly not a vehicle for bridging differences or negotiation.
Wisdom requires a lot of work and knowledge requires lots of real-world experience. Religion provides a soothing faux-wisdom that belongs in the fields of dark-ages Europe. It has *no* place in modern society.
</rant>

Oh, All very commenable, but I think our school children have enough to do without adding their workload. I think most people make up their minds about religion at university ages - ie Tony Blair.
It is also about time the truth about Islam was told rather than the PC version. Try this link - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/696408/posts.

Ian
You never mentioned Taxes. If someone wants to follow a religion that is their choice, but I see no reason why the ATO should treat the orgnaisations they belong to any differntly to you or I. You mention Scientology and the Exclusive Brethern. If they (and the Christian churches etc.) paid taxes how much extra income would this generate, or the other way around, how much would my tax drop by?
The none payment of Taxes by religious organisations is a real form of reverse religiious discimination. I am discriminated against because I do not want to be part of a religion.
Also remember All Capone came undone because of taxes. The payment of taxes would provide a degree of accountability to religions. At the moment religious organisations can operate behind closed doors with no accoountability. Not a healthy situation.

Just listen to the self righteous 'rationalist' who fail to see the bigotry of their own belief. Unfortunately their voices are getting louder as they promote their own style of warped morality with no basis except their own corrupt minds. The champion of 'human rights' the UN is probably as corrupt as the Catholic church has ever been. When are these blinded priests of secular humanism ever going to see that their form of morality is flawed. The only way people get treated with respect and dignity is when we all realise that we are in the same predicament (dumb and corrupt compared to our Creator and His Word). When the hearts of men are changed from bigotry then actions follow. Trying to bludgeon people into the acceptance of perverted behaviour is actually the opposite to treating people with dignity. Thank God I will never accept this warped rubbish. Prison is a better option than being hoodwinked into such self righteous morality.

Religious cults only exist for the rather of power and riches, there is no reason way our ATO should help them in this endeavour. They also complete against free enterprise for government contracts. The tax exemption should be abolished

Daviy,

Churches don't pay tax, not because the government is being nice. But because if the government required taxes to be paid, Christians would simply start an opposing society of their own. Remember, religion is much more important to believers than the government - you should know how this power structure works by now!

The religious assault on civil liberties is only just beginning.

See for example the attempt to re-introduce blasphemy laws under the guise of stopping the "defamation of religion."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-why-should-i-respect-these-oppressive-religions-1517789.html

Quote:

"The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated 60 years ago that "a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people". …loathed by every human rights abuser on earth. Today, the Chinese dictatorship calls it "Western", Robert Mugabe calls it "colonialist", and Dick Cheney calls it "outdated". …the document has been held up by the United Nations as the ultimate standard against which to check ourselves. Until now.

"Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to "respect" the "unique sensitivities" of the religious, they decided – so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within "the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community".

The school chaplaincy program started by PM Howard placed chaplains in the schools. Most if not all are fundamentalist Christians connected with Scripture Union. The current PM has continued the program. Chaplains have stated that their purpose is to 'bring people to Christ.' Having such individuals in the schools lends them the authority of the state. It is outrageous if and when children were subjected to government supported missionising in schools of a Muslim country. It is equally outrageous for children to be subjected to government supported Christian missionising in Australian schools. http://www.thefourthr.info/index.html is a website which contends the chaplaincy program violates Queensland law. Are there efforts in other states to end this program?

If parents want religious indoctrination for their children that is their right, but it should not be the business of the public schools.

Children may need a person to come to with their problems in school. Such an individual should be provided by the school system. However, the individual should be a trained councillor who has no religious axe to grind.

My representative in Parliament, a Lib, supports the chaplaincy program. The Rudd government supports the program. I feel state supported missionising has no business in Australian schools.

Going on the lead sentence... I so totally agree.

The difference as I see it is how people behave.

No offense to religious people, but gods are just ideas, as opposed to physically reality of race. Comparatively speaking an idea can take as much hate as people feel the need to throw at it. A human being can't.

While I stand for peoples right to (even for religious reasons) not like a race or sexuality, just because it is a human right to have an opinion. One cannot accept active harm to anyone else for no real reason. Where as a belief/god cannot really be harmed and in the name of transparency must be kept open to being debated, hated, fought against, ridiculed... etc.

It's the responsibility of the people who shelter in the name of any belief or group to maintain it's reputation. I find any *group* abusing positive discrimination to enhance itself or protect it's own bigotry to be a shameful burden on society..

Mr Robinson, there are undoubtedly points to be made in favour of rescinding special tax exemptions for religious groups.

These laws are anachronistic in the extreme.

However, the rest of your arguments against special pleading for religions, sound awfully like... special pleading.

"Choice implies a range of options from which one option can be selected... So if we are to have freedom of religious belief, people must be presented with a range of religious choices,"

The logic leap between "choice implies a range of options" and "So, if we are to have freedom..." is a step too far.

Why should it follow, that because we have choices, "the gumment" should be responsible for presenting us with those choices?

This provides massive opportunity for abuse.

Who decides what that "range of options" should consist of? Kevin Rudd? Fred Nile? Danny Nalliah?

How do you deliver the stories consistently?

The proposed "solution" is not only superfluous, but unworkable.

Also, to unilaterally decide that schools funded by religious groups should not qualify as schools, in terms of government funding, is discriminatory in the extreme. Why should you restrict parental choice in this way?

Again, the argument is specious.

"...they would not be eligible for any public support or funding, on the grounds that they were not meeting their human rights obligations to promote freedom of choice in religion and belief."

Since when was it a "human rights obligation" to promote someone else's religion?

If I choose to send my children to a Catholic school, or an Anglican School, or a Muslim school, why should that "freedom" not be subject to government protection too? After all...

"This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief"

OK, so I've adopted one. Only now I'm prevented from sending my kids to a school that teaches my chosen belief system?

I don't think so.

It is a crying shame that the author cannot see the faultlines in his argument, given that he advertises himself as a rationalist.

Don't see a great deal of rational thinking here, I'm afraid.

<<Also, to unilaterally decide that schools funded by religious groups should not qualify as schools, in terms of government funding, is discriminatory in the extreme. Why should you restrict parental choice in this way?>>

huh? why SHOULD the government be supporting such divisive schools? yes, it's "discriminatory", exactly in the sense that discrimination is needed. what is needed is discrimination between indoctrination and education.

yes, that discrimination will always be clumsy and controversial. but to simply give up, throw your hands in the air and pronounce that any superstitious quackschool is entitled to government assistance is just ridiculous.

and, it is arguably unconstitutional, as is the case in america. one crappy high court decision can do a hell of a lot of damage.

Pericles,

I agree that the author's proposal is impractical, however,
you're equating freedom of religion with government support of "independent" schools, a secular state has no business promoting superstition by the use of taxpayers' funds. What do you mean by "governmemt protection"? If you want to send your children to a religious school you pay for their education( that's real freedom of religion) not the taxpayers, as long as these schools reach the required standards of education, I have no objection. Since when was it a human rights obligation to promote any religion? The raison d'etre of a liberal democratic state is to protect the rights and liberties of its citizens, nothing more. I'd say the notion that the government should pander to its citizens' prejudices is a development of the ridiculous and pernicious notion of "multi culturalism".

Ian,
The problem I have with philosophers in general is they tend not to be plugged in to the reality of humanity. They seem to believe in either the worst or the best but never allow for the variation or the extremes.
I am a little disappointed in the rationalist society if your reasoning is indicative or sanctioned policy.

A few practical but fundamental issues that are omitted from your piece rendering it one size fits nobody and unworkable.
• Whose version of specific religions is going to be taught? e.g. In Christianity Catholic, Brethren Adventist et al. the same goes for the rest.
• Who is going to teach it? Some slick spruiker that plays on the children’s emotions a Brother Love travelling show type or some fire and brimstone
• How is a teacher of committed perspective going to give fair representation?
• Who or how is the curriculum going to be decided?
Then the other aspect is what appropriate religious criticism is and what is plain ordinary vilification?

On this site we have extremes one who preaches Islam and all who follow it are terrorists the abomination etc. Then we have the opposite the atheists who don’t tolerate any religion even in context of an entire race i.e. primitive tribes.

I would argue that public schools
• Should get all the public funding, you want something different you pay for it. Like public transport you don’t like it then you pay for your alternatives.
• Schools should stay out of religious indoctrination altogether. It is a personal choice like choice of politician.
• Churches should lose their favoured tax status except in rebate for non religious charitable works.
In essence reason that people have the right to believe in what ever religious doctrine they want but do not have the right to impose it on others. Those that do are more concerned with power and money rather than the individual

Ian Robinson: "A person is born into a race and cannot change it". Which race, for example? Nubian or "Negro"? Assyrian or "Semite"? Slav or "Aryan"? The statement falls down upon its first examination, because the concept of "race" is so misguided and ultimately fictitious.

And what creepy program of "racial purity" has meredith been involved in? The "physically reality of race"? How so? But her post is explicit. Meredith stands "for people's right to not like a race" - in other words: meredith backs a right to race-based hatred!

People are actually mixed, regardless, and the whole concept of "race" is mythical, often inspired by vanity, and usually stemming from aristocratic or caste notions of ruling elites. Any genetic commonalities that such "racism" relies on have as much validity as the preservation of family traits via incest. The whole concept is silly, and the very foundation of "racism", just as its legislation enshrines the very concept itself and consolidates the discriminatory and snobbish garbage it purports to oppose.

The "rights" Robinson claims to champion are not really useful when compared against more basic and collective needs for civilizational building blocks like running water, basic health care, education, infrastructure, etc.

Oh, Robinson had all that from when he was a kid? Was that a legacy of his "racial" and/or class background?

Jeezus Mil, will you stop calling me *creepy*, name calling is pathetic, it's retarding the debate.... Now go back and re read.. there is nothing malicious there... and no I don't back racial hatred, grow up and stop being so desperate to find or create problems in posts of people you disagree with and just have a proper debate.

meredith: "No offense to religious people, but gods are just ideas, as opposed to physically reality of race...
While I stand for peoples right to (even for religious reasons) not like a race or sexuality, just because it is a human right to have an opinion. One cannot accept active harm to anyone else for no real reason."

OK, helmets and carabiners on, and let's follow the logic's flow chart downwards to check out this dark cavern...

A most problematic implication of meredith's conditions against "active harm" is that some notional "PASSIVE harm...for no real reason" could instead pass muster in meredith's moral and legal codes. Such "passive harm" could thereby cover easily those most loosely contrived "race" notions as a basis for embargoes and other denial of more basic "rights" e.g., to running water, basic health care, sanitation, nutrition - in short, systematic genocide, and all derived from even the most fictitious and "unreal" notions of "race", or other "unreal" reasons. The absence of any need for a "real reason" behind such "passive harm" would open the possibilities for varieties of bizarre discrimination beyond just "race" e.g., the passive harmer just felt like it, enjoyed it, perceived some advantage according to the harmer's personal or collective ambitions, fantasies, etc., or even because the harmer lost at a game of cards.

Of course, meredith's comments also imply a very problematic justification for ACTIVE harm for a "real reason" ("the physically [sic] reality of race"). So we have seen that she regards "race" as very "real", which would clearly manifest - by her words and rationale - as a "real reason" for "active harm"! Explosives, machine guns, incendiaries, gas, even nukes would all be justifiable when invoking that supposedly "real reason" opened up by that notion of race's "physical reality".

But from meredith's rights advocacy, we can infer the likely inspiration underlying all such harm, whether "active" or "passive" harm: dislike/hatred for some conceptualized "racial other", the nurturing and expression of which would be a right that meredith stands for. A liberalist right to an opinion, regardless of the logical implications.

Thanks for the feedback bushbasher and mac.

What I obviously failed to do was to successfully separate the concept of government funding for education, and government funding for religion.

My observations were in the context of government support of independent schools. If you disagree with that in principle, then you will by definition disagree with funding directed to independent schools with a particular religious leaning.

Or none, come to that.

But if you support the concept, then surely it is up to the open market to decide where the individual punter will put their hard-earned dollars.

I might base my choice of school on whether it meets my religious criteria, as well as my academic criteria, sports criteria, performing arts criteria, crafts and design criteria and so on. I certainly don't expect the government to be involved in those decisions, just because they are providing taxpayer dollars.

Interfering in my religion-based choice would seem to be the slippery slope to dictating those religious leanings in toto. I would find that offensive, whether they wanted me to be a Christian, Muslim, atheist or whatever.

I would equally ind it offensive if they wanted to prevent me from being a Christian, Muslim, atheist or whatever.

I am in favour of government non-interference in any of the choices I make as a private citizen. Including whether I choose or reject religion.

I suggest that sec 116 of the Constitution deals sensibly and constructively with the issue of freedom of religion and that the efforts of the AHRC to do more is unnecessary and dangerous. It will lead to plenty of work for the so-called human rights lawyers and an erosion of rights for many.
I would also suggest Michael Bachelard's book, "Behind the Exclusive Brethren" - it gives an excellent insight into why we should be very wary of giving any more 'religious freedom' to any extremist group.

meredith,

please don't give mil-observer any excuse to go off at a tangent to the topic( I know it's not easy) you should be used ad hominem arguments by now.

mil observer,

I agree with your opinion on the dubious notion of race and "anti-racism" legislation, however your argument that the material conditions of the population are more important than liberty has been the excuse of every Stalinist dictator of this and the previous century. The Communist societies were disfunctional and they didn't deliver improved living standards so they collapsed, remember? We shouldn't let the facts get in the way of an internally consistent theory, should we?

Pericles,

I understand, but I still don't support the concept of government funding for religious schools or tax exemptions for religious organisations, apart from their charitable activities.

pericles, indeed i'm against any government funding for any independent school. but, even given government funding for independent schools, i think one can argue against funding of some, and perhaps all, religious schools.

you have your own criteria for a "school". but to the extent that a government is supplying money, they also have a right to ask whether their money is genuinely and efficiently going to education.

of course they won't exercise that right. religion is of course, ahem, a sacred cow. there is no other explanation for churches continuing to get tax breaks. but political reality is only one aspect. we may still consider the contingent, or inherent, contradictions of a religiously based education.

and i don't think one needs to pick on crazy marginal cults to make the case. to take just one example, catholics have a roaring trade with their sin-mongering against homosexuals (while simultaneously inviting anti-semites back into the fold). and what does their argument amount to? god (not even jesus!) says homosexuality is evil. that's not an argument. that's not educational. it's just divisive nonsense from a nasty, albeit hugely successful, cult. they shouldn't be banned, but god knows why any non-catholic thinks they should be funded.

What a great thread! OH! just remember! everyone,s stupid except you.

All the best.

EVO

What's the difference between the taxpayer funding a Catholic School, a Lutheran School, a Jewish School or a Muslim Madrassa?

The principle is the same.

Despite the marketting and spin , the underlying motive is to suppress independent critical thought and indoctrinate future members.

Why not start Political Schools - Conservative or Communist Colleges for example - or others sponsored by Retail Department Stores?

Same thing.

I agree that there should be no government funding of religious schools. Perhaps that might encourage more secular private schools in Australia which there is precious few of.
* Teaching based on evidence and not superstition - better for society
* Separation of church and state - better for society

Now where are those dead set peanuts Peter the Believer and BOAZ_Dave trying to defend this bias protection of superstition and rage at the Atheist church of the state?

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was enacted in 1986 as Schedule 2 to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986. Because Church and State were merged in 1970 in New South Wales after the Imperial Acts guaranteeing that concept, including the Australian Constitution, were declared by an atheist Parliament to no longer apply in Australia’s biggest State, it is denied. It guarantees the separation of church and State because it says all persons are equal before the law. Criminals who commit serious crimes get a jury trial as of right. Any lesser sinner must submit to a State Judge. The absolute equivalent of a Father Confessor.

It is not by chance that Robert McClelland appointed Father Frank Brennan to investigate. As a probable Roman Catholic, used to confession and absolution, the concept of a court as a church is anathema to continental Europeans, and many Irish. The contempt felt by many for Judges and Magistrates, is not based upon their infliction of pain and suffering on all who come before them, but for their denial of the basic human right to freely worship Jesus Christ.

The Magna Carta from 1297, guaranteed the separation of Church and State, by guaranteeing that a Judge would never be a total despot. Judges are State Father Confessors. They are a Roman Catholic institution, and whether we like it or not, give no choice at all to a poor civil litigant. I am god in my court, they say and they are.

The Australian Courts Act 1828 is supposed to maintain the status quo, but New South Wales did not declare it law in 1970, so it could de-facto establish itself as an atheist State. NSW has not had a single properly constituted court since 1970. By only declaring S 29 of the Magna Carta and leaving off S 14, it took punishment from a jury and gave it to the Father Confessor. Even S 29 is ignored by the State appointed Judges. The Magna Carta guarantees religious freedom, to worship Jesus Christ if we choose and seek His mercy

The main problem that I have with this article is that it reifies the notion of 'race' as an immutable biological category into which one is born, rather than one that is ascribed on people by others, most often with the intent or effect of attributing innate inferior characteristics to those thus categorised.

However, the author correctly demonstrates that religion is a social category to which individuals ascribe themselves, either by conscious choice or by force of habit through socialisation. There is nothing innate about it, regardless of whether similar processes of vilification occur to those who practise particular religions as to those who are ascribed particular 'racial' categories.

This also appears to be one of those rare cases where I disagree with Pericles. While I agree that people should be free to choose to send their kids to religious schools if they wish to have them indoctrinated (or for any other reason), I think that choice should not be subsidised by the taxes of others who choose to avail themselves of the public education system that is available to all.

Hey people.

I'm not talking about about "crazy marginal cults", "suppressing independent thought" with "indoctrination".

The position I was trying to get across goes like this.

There is at present no prohibition of religion in Australia. I can choose to be an Anglican, a Catholic, a Muslim or whatever, without being thrown into jail. You may disagree with this policy, and wish that everyone were an Anglican, a Catholic, a Muslim or whatever (or even an atheist), but right now it is the way it is.

I for one am happy with this situation.

Alongside this, we have an education system that - again, whether you believe it is right or not - supports the independent school system with taxpayers' money. It is currently provided with no "cultural" strings attached. As a school. you don't have to follow government diktat on non-educational-related issues.

And as it happens, I'm comfortable with this policy too.

So let's accept as a given, that my religion - or lack of it - is entirely my business. Fair enough?

Now if Joe Public finds an independent school curriculum that is tailored to his value system, e.g.big on rugby, light on macrame, has a championship chess team, but is hopeless at drama, and happens also to have his personal religious values, why should he not be permitted the same privileges as a citizen who chooses not to have those values?

Put another way, why should the school be penalised only for the religious bit, and not the rugby part?

Although I am a confirmed atheist, with no religious axe to grind at all, I don't think it is reasonable to deny those who have religion, the opportunity to pursue it by legal means.

If the government decides to withhold all funding from independent schools, that's a policy decision for which they are accountable to the electorate. As they would be if they chose to make one or the other religion illegal. Or compulsory.

But until then, I still think it is unrealistic to tie funding to an absence of religious teaching.

Fair enough, Pericles - I certainly wouldn't object to all funding that currently goes to "independent" schools being redirected to the public education system where it belongs.

It'd be nice if we had a government that had the balls to do just that. If it was an election issue, I suspect that a small majority of the electorate would probably support such a proposal if it was put to them. Most of those who would oppose it probably vote for the Coalition or the fundies anyway.

You're undoubtedly correct though - it'll never come from Rudd.

pericles, i guess it comes down to a matter of degree. how religious does a religious school have to be, to be a serious cause for concern? you write "As a school. you don't have to follow government diktat on non-educational-related issues." fair enough. but when does religious instruction become (substantially) an educational-related issue? there is obviously such a point.

Correct. Laws should not do what you say, disparage religion. There should be just one law on religion. A complete ban.

It's simply horse manure, a mass delusion and should be treated as such as those in authority do know the truth. They just ignore it for votes. Rudd excepted of course. He has shiny knees on all his suits.

Ban the insanity. Please. In the meantime disparage away, rubbish it, laugh at it, sneer at it. But don't pass laws disparaging it.

While I don't agree with pegasus that religion can or should be banned, items like this make such a sentiment understandable:

<< The Catch the Fire Ministries has tried to blame the bushfires disaster on laws decriminalising abortion in Victoria.

The Pentecostal church's leader, Pastor Danny Nalliah, claimed he had a dream about raging fires on October 21 last year and that he woke with "a flash from the Spirit of God: that His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb". >>

http://www.smh.com.au/national/pastors-abortion-dream-inflames-bushfire-tragedy-20090210-832f.html

What a complete idiot!

Mr Costello said

'"Those who have suffered deserve ever support and sympathy. It is beyond the bounds of decency to try to make moral or politcal points out of such a tragedy.''

Mr Brown from the ferals was the first to make a political point in blaming the gw myth. You would think of all people the Greens would keep their trap shut as they have fought commonsense measures for years when it comes to clearing fire fuel.

Ian Robinson appear to be influenced by cheap sensational news. The amonut of research gone into this article is meagre. There are so many points that are ill thought out. Just to point out a few: -
1. "introducing courses in comparative religion.....appropriate to the age of the children": What is approriate in a class of children? They are all at different developmental age in every class.

2. "...being indroctrinated at home..." Just who is responsible for children? The state or the parents? Children are an expression of their parents aspiration and confidence. The state has nothing to do with it.

3. "...a number of pernicious cults...." This is a clear example of sensationalism. Mr Robimson appears to have very little faith in the commonsense of the people of Australia.

4. "...an African child who has been born with Aids because a priest has told her mother the use of condom is a sin...." According to this there is a priest in every village in Africa that telling every lorry driver not to use prostitutes. Where is the evidence Mr Robinson?

Mac's warning to meredith confirms that she let some real stinkers loose on "race". But I wasn't ad-hom when asking "what creepy program of 'racial purity' has meredith been involved in?" Worse than Robinson's simplistic acceptance of race legislation, meredith's further adventures there exposed the seriously dangerous luggage that she brings onto our plane, so to speak.

I identified meredith's dangerous cargo, so perhaps I "played the affliction, not the wo/man" in that case. Strange that someone who talks tough over bombing civilian neighborhoods should cry foul over criticism of her mystical and logically compromised beliefs about "race".

As for "liberties", we can summarize Robinson's liberalist principles as freedom of: "religion/belief; speech; association; from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; privacy; and respect."

Now, mac associates "Stalinist dictatorships" with my emphasis on (often more basic) rights to such essentials as: running water, sanitation, nutrition, education and basic health care. Mac also assumes that notions of "liberty" (presumably as enunciated by liberalists like Robinson) should have precedence, perhaps exclusively, over my concerns.

There are two massive problems with mac's argument:

1) It assumes such "liberty" actually exists in some promised land of western liberalism. It actually does not: there is almost no "free speech" (it costs a fortune), while legal and bureaucratic structures penalize so much free expression where the speaker/writer fails to satisfy oligarchical dictates and conceits of class and property. Similar hypocrisies apply to other "freedoms" that western liberalists assume as givens and grounds for further smugness.

2) Apart from the fact that I never advocated Stalinist dictatorship, my advocacy for universal basic rights to life do not necessarily usurp reasonable precedents attempting individual liberty. Indeed, the developing world still pursues variously self-regulated or foreign-dictated efforts at market capitalism, but prioritizes such rights to life as a matter of course, good sense and moral obviousness for up to 85% of the world's neediest.

There's another intrinsic problem in the above where mac digresses about communist systems' dysfunctionality and collapse; maybe he utters those irrelevancies and their generalizing inaccuracies to fix his stigmatizing "Communist" tag a bit more firmly to myself.

I for one, am a strong believer in the idea of teaching comparative religion.
Pericles makes the point that he has a right to choose where he sends his kids. Fair enough.
But isn't there an age where the kids have a right to make choices of their own? About which subjects they choose, which sports they play, which religion they subscribe to?
I see no reason why comparative religion would not be workable.
In my high school days, one hour a week was set aside for scripture classes (at a public school). These classes were run by the local preachers.Even in a fairly small country town back in the sixties we had a choice of Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist.
Obviously the choices could be far more diverse today, including Judaism, Islam, Hindu etc, but why could not the same mechanism apply?
Except, of course, as comparative religion, students would rotate between classes and religions, giving them freedom of choice.
Surely if one has genuine faith in their faith, the proponent has nothing to fear about their children's being able to choose?
I wonder how many of the faithful -of any religion- have that much faith.

Milly,

It's like your aching for it to be true, I explained there was nothing sinister meant... What's weird here is how you seem ache for it to be true.

lol.

Just shoving your own vile thoughts and words back down your throat.

That faint laughing noise is you choking on them.

meredith, mil-observer is an absolute pro at reading people's minds. you don't get to declare what you think: Mil The All-Knowing does it for you.

It is 20 years since the Islamo-fascists in Iran issued a death sentence on Salman Rushdie. And to my knowledge this death sentence still stands in 2009.

Therefore, in such a thread as this it seems fitting to post a short video of Rushdie reciting 'The Satanic Verses';

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v20VvP19kCI

Brilliant. No wonder religious nutcases foam at the mouth.

Yeh, poor bloody Salman Rushdie, dare I say it:

*Islam the religion of peace or we kill you!*

Fancy ordering someones death for writing a flipping book. Also I spose we should bring up the censorship and banning of Hollands Geert Wilders from England... For a critical look at the Koran...

Poor old England... what a tragedy of spine this is.

http://www.geertwilders.nl/

"It is easy to tolerate the views and behaviour of those we agree with, but the true test is being able to tolerate the views and behaviour and even the trenchant criticism of those whose views oppose ours."

So true. Who recalls John Howard describing the hijab as "confronting"? This was practically an invitation to Australia to take affront at its existence.

Bennie,

That's just paranoid... It's actully very off if your into woman's rights... A lot of people find it very offensive and sad... I hope others opinions on the face sack aren't to difficult for you to accept?

I wouldn't allow kids to see a woman so demeaned.. let alone try and tell them it was ok..

Yes, we seem to have identified a touchstone and litmus test in that nasty, creepy concept "race".

There now seems to be an increasing number of liberalists who oppose the universalism, equality and justice pioneered since the early foundations of our religious traditions. Such aggressive liberalists often instigate that opposition because of their own preference for a contrasting gross inequality in fictitious, divisive and destructive notions of "race" and/or compatible oligarchical concepts of feudal networking via intermarried families and clans. Of course, corruption and provocation from those same secular and anti-religious quarters often encourages ostensibly "religious" fringe groups too - hence the delight with which liberalist fanatics identify those more reactionary, simplistic, misguided and caricatured exponents of humanity's religious heritage.

But the moral implications of such secular, liberalist endorsement of racism and oligarchical primordialism would be in clear opposition to that healthy guidance of humanity that we know from the great religions' moral codes. Such morality, as developed and imposed by the great religions at their best and most mature, is in stark contrast to the mystical, superstitious but actually anti-religious, anti-social and generally anti-human pursuits of those who wish to divide humanity as a precondition for further self-aggrandizement via conquest, enslavement and perpetual barbarism of "divide and rule". Of course the great religions' moralities still stand in opposition there, especially where evident in such essentially anti-racist taboos as those forbidding incest and similar reproductive degeneracy, or the primitive categorizations of any "race" other than "the human race".

Both in concept and practice, racism - like incest - is fundamentally poisonous for civilization and humanity.

Uh, yeah. I hope that’s cleared up.

I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick Meredith. Personally I’m not in favour of them and wouldn’t ask anyone to wear it. It’s patriarchical, oppressive, and nowhere as attractive as more familiar forms of socially-sanctioned torture such as high heels.

It’s not just Islam. What is your opinion of monks who deprive themselves of all human comforts in the belief that suffering will bring them closer to their god? Who would want a life of seclusion and suffering unless they were led to believe from a young age it was for a good reason? Quaint centuries-old tradition, or a culture of coercion by parents, teachers, seniors, history, society, ‘betters’? Somebody oughta write an article. I mean, people believe the damnedest things sometimes. There is another group of people convinced it’s in their best interests and that of the wider society to wear constrictive clothes and take vows of silence, chastity and privation. We call them nuns. I’m not equating them but beware not everyone sees it the same way. If it’s all about choice where does that leave those taught from an impressionable age they’re being watched every living moment – judged, no less - by a vengeful god?

I also wouldn’t teach young children they were born sinful, nor wear a symbol of mediaeval torture around my neck to proclaim my personal piety and adherence to the supernatural. But that’s just me.

You wouldn’t allow a child to see a woman so demeaned. Fair enough. Preferable instead you implore them to “ENJOY LONGER LASTING SEX” via five metre lettering on a Broadway billboard, amid the reclining figure of a semi-naked nymphette, just down the road from the topless bar (“Wet T-shirt competition! Lunchtime Wednesdays”). And for the umpteenth time don’t leave that Cosmo lying around without hiding the sealed section first.

So which will it be? Oppression or objectification? Is that the dichotomy? Worth another article

I know of several Muslim women so garbed, but who would actually make model "liberalists" if they were allowed the title.

Extra-marital affairs, even prostitution, have been known to occur among some women so adorned with the traditional garb that is so increasingly misunderstood, stereotyped and stigmatized by western liberalists (as apparent here). Anyway, such headwear still finds its way into traditional women's dress in Christian southern and eastern Europe, and in some Israeli Jewish communities I've seen too.

For practical purposes, "liberalist" is a more fitting description for the hypocrisy of those who claim some extra religiosity from such fashion, but practice altogether different pursuits than what they preach.

It's funny to read the blanket liberal feminist assumptions about "oppression" implicit in such fashion. What of Muslim men in correspondingly traditional and strict garb - including the headwear - or orthodox Jews, yarmulkes, Amish, etc.?

Get over it.

'There now seems to be an increasing number of liberalists who oppose the universalism, equality and justice pioneered since the early foundations of our religious traditions.'

Well, that statement is a complete joke mil-observer.

Judaism, Christianity (Catholicism) and Islam all bottom out into xenophobia once they gain any kind of political power. Discrimination and gross intolerence against non-monothesitic peoples, or peoples of the 'wrong' monotheism, has been demonstated ad nauseum throughout history. The whole point of secular humanism as a political end is to keep monotheism on a leash. I'm sure Rushdie and other persecuted writers, politicians, and intellectuals would agree.

TR

It is not only monotheistic religions that "bottom out into xenophobia." To see just how brutal a polytheistic religion like Hinduism can be speak to any "untouchable" in India.

Of course religions are not the only vicious ideologies. Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin all espoused atheist ideologies whose cruelty matched that of any theistic religion. I suppose you could use the following classification.

Hinduism is a religion with many Gods. It is a polytheism. (poly = many)

Christianity, Islam & Judaism are monotheisms (mono = "one" or "single")

Marxism is a nullotheistic religion (from Latin nullus = none)

It is RELIGION, not the number of gods, that is the problem.

cont...

Perhaps all ‘face-sack’ wearers - dangerously close to ‘rag-head’, that one - are indeed oppressed. Perhaps some prefer it. From a western perspective the point is “the true test is being able to tolerate the views and behaviour ... of those whose views oppose ours." A national leader has no business publicly announcing his inability to come to terms with foreign cultures at a time religious intolerance was growing and searching for justification. The comment shed no light on that which offends; rather it was a self-indulgence better left expressed in private. It was left to the listener to fill in the gaps.

Our better instincts are often buried under the worse ones - guess where such comments would find resonance? There’s nothing wrong on the other hand in pointing out all Australians are entitled to their beliefs and the respect of others for those beliefs, however alien they might be. Trite, but what’s the alternative? We can take on the world and remake it in our image, hide from it altogether, or deal with it maturely.

All faiths are designed to modify one’s behaviour; some are more effective than others and in a theocracy doubly so. Feel sorry for them all you want Meredith, and whenever you get the chance make sure to explain very carefully to those from other cultures just how yours is superior.

Heya Bennie,

Yeh, I can buy some of that.

But hey when you say "Perhaps all ‘face-sack’ wearers - dangerously close to ‘rag-head’, that one - are indeed oppressed."

Lol, looking for a new word to censor? Words and the right to speak them is a bitch, hey?

Sorry I just don't buy the all religious are equally as bad argument.. Sure the monks may beat themselves up, the atheists hate everything, the Christians think a man walked on water, sucked in on them all... Thing is I doubt Geert Wilders would be banned from a country if he criticized monks or Christians or atheists.

It's a free world, there will be comment, opinion, it is part of a transparent society...

But sorry Bennie love, I do feel deeply sorry for those poor women in their face sacks and will always say so.... How degrading it is to walk the streets, faceless, in a horrible ugly shaped sack... I mean get real here... and why the horrid discrimination from the feminists... SHAME on them.

It was wonderful when that girl who got done for drugs in Indo, converted to Islam and used the religious favoritism to get off the charges and came home to Oz and became a bikini model.... ehhehe

Now that is good Islam :)

With all due respect, I genuinely think Islam needs to soften up and reform, let go a bit, have a beer and show it's tits. Stop taking so much offense at everything and have a laugh at Mohammed drawn as a bomb head etc...

The Christians take it on the chin with the Jesus jokes, I am an atheist I can laugh at Nietzsche dying from madness and the pox,so can other atheists...

Also separating law from religion helped the Christian society's a lot, we stopped burning witches and made some progress.... maybe Islam could have a conversation with the rest of the world about that too...

'It is RELIGION, not the number of gods, that is the problem.'

I tend to disagree Steven - totalitarianism is the problem. Hence, Judaism, Christianity (Catholicism), Islam, Stalinism, and Nazism all persecute 'the other' because they are monolithic ideologies.

In Stalinist and Nazi systems the whole purpose of society is to serve the dictator and his political party. In the monotheistic systems the whole purpose of society is to serve the the clerical class and its religious party. No big difference. The threat of violence against dissenters and free-thinkers is therefore inevitable.

Finally Steven - can you think of a conflict where the aggressor marched under the banner of Zen Buddhism? Not all religions are grossly intolerant or prone to violence. Only some are.

Ah, she's talking about something like "chador"! Hard to tell when they use bigot-speak like "raghead", "tea towels", etc.

But in chador too there's another case for entitlement to the "liberalist" title among some such fundie-branded "muslims" (those actually acknowledged, preferred and encouraged by the west's imperialistic Islamophobes). Many Turkish and Indonesian unis (among other countries) have expressly banned chador because some opportunistic female students used them as a way of infiltrating friends or hirelings to pose as themselves during exams. And a truly "free market" - as trumpeted by western oligarchs - would let them, would it not?

And on similarly "aspirational"-liberalist turf, there's a whole separate category of fetish-porn where ostensibly "Muslim" women "show its tits" (and not always as prostitutes). But if judged by empire-liberalists, especially those on record as having serious "race" baggage like meredith, such women must by their identity be deemed somehow "oppressed" and therefore needing liberation, including that of some approved form of market sexualization associated with western fashion and its various money-based gradings of caste/class.

Imagine the response among Muslims to such patronizing judgements and pronouncements about how Islam must change, when those who pass judgement on Muslims and Islam do not even know such factors as those I describe above.

Btw, Sir "Scruffy" Rushdie is hardly an oppressed dissident writer: he punted on inciting Iran's post-Shah theocracy and won his gamble. He wouldn't have got his knighthood - and his hands into the oligarchy's pants - without having provoked the fatwa in the first place. Great marketing, as we would expect from one of empire's most highly endorsed liberalist icons.

Then there's clown and uber-Islamophobe TR on Zen, missing entirely the several wars that Zen warrior-monks fought (almost exclusively) in Japan and Korea over centuries!

TR wrote:

Finally Steven - can you think of a conflict where the aggressor marched under the banner of Zen Buddhism? Not all religions are grossly intolerant or prone to violence. Only some are.

Dear TR,

Although the army marched under the banner of the Rising Sun the officer corps of the Imperial Japanese Army during WW2 were almost all Zen Buddhists. They were a notable violent group of men. John Ferguson examined 15 religions and wrote "War and Peace in the World's Religions". He found trends toward both violence and nonviolence in all of them. Many Buddhists are peaceful, but definitely not all of them. Islam conducted a nonviolent jihad in the nineteenth century. Christianity contains the Society of Friends or Quakers. Judaism has the Jewish Peace Fellowship which promotes pacifism and the refuseniks who refuse to serve in the occupied Territories. The 15 religions that Ferguson examined both promote violence and nonviolence.

david f's courteous response shows that part of my post was quite out of order and against forum etiquette. Worse still from my own reflection on it, the name-calling was grossly stigmatizing for those many wise, intelligent and fair-minded who paint their faces for their important work as circus entertainers. I remind us all here: that sector of the workforce overwhelmingly does NOT seek to incite inter-religious, anti-religious or related ethnic hatreds.

'Then there's clown and uber-Islamophobe TR on Zen, missing entirely the several wars that Zen warrior-monks fought (almost exclusively) in Japan and Korea over centuries!'

Well, you're an Aladdin's Cave of information mil-observer. Therefore, I stand corrected, Steve Meyer is right after all - religion IS the problem. I was just trying to be nice.

As for calling me a 'clown' - Allah and all her Prophets must be reclining in a state of orgasmic pleasure at your witty reposte on their behalf. Not to mention the sheer relief of having someone like yourself to stick up for them. I wonder, what her omnipotentence would do without you?

I dunno - maybe just fumble around the keyboard in tremors of "omnipotentent" Islamophobic self-arousal.

But hey, some profound "Zen" stuff could still be an impressive fashion statement for your lounge room, in an entirely liberalist, non-monotheistic and "Islamo-sceptical" sense of course. But that and Islamophobic rants won't be enough for guests - be sure to try some juggling too.

Then the puerile equation "war + religion = religion BAD"; a regular genius at work. In fact, underpinning all wars have been human beliefs, delusions and other attitudes that cover all humanity at some time - including of course various liberalists, and those more pathologically affected with their special and fashionable obsession about Islam.

So if you're so simple as to think that humanity itself must be "the problem", follow my advice to OLO's many Malthusians: try leading by example and showing consistency with those shallow principles by topping yourself.

Don’t flatter yourself mil-observer. The fact that Islam, and other monotheisms, have the awful side effect of magnifying the worst aspects of primitive human tribalism is not the main reason why atheists shun religion.

No, the actual reason is that the Bible and the Koran are so unbelievably unbelievable. Talking angels, pregnant virgins, and the Adam and Eve story - give me a break. Indeed, one of the most stupid propositions in the history of the human race is that the Bible and Koran have their origin in the mind of an omniscient deity.

Consider these two passages concerning the creation of Adam- al-Hijr 15:28-38 and Sad 38:71. Why would an intelligent God relate the same story twice? And them muddle his actual dialogue. Did God forget what he said to Iblis the first time?

The reason that the Koran contains passages which are inaccurately repeated is that the book has been thrown together from a plurality of primitive oral traditions. In other words, bad memory and bad editing plague the Koran.

Now, deep down all intelligent theists know that their respective texts are incoherent and nonsensical. However, because it is often too emotionally difficult to break free they rage against sceptics and scientific rationalists so as to maintain their ‘psycho-spell’.

However, we will not be quiet. Dissenters reserve, and deserve, the right to hammer home the necessary truth that the Bible and Koran are on the exactly the same plain as Homer’s Iliad and other similar ancient books. It is this unfettered intellectual freedom that we crave. Phobias or racial hatred has nothing to do with anything.

You seem convinced that uttering "monotheism" lends a sense of depth to your tirades. It's embarrassing, because you still fail to explain just why "monotheism" is so bad, except by sloganeering about devotees as "violent, intolerant", etc., and sweeping generalizations of (barely) historical association. Try starting your explanation with Akhenaten, Zoroaster or Judaism, otherwise it'll just get more boring to all except other thrilled Islamophobes and those less specifically obsessed seeking their cop-out from religious heritage (like the absurd "secular jews", "lapsed catholics", etc.).

Your continued, obsessive emphasis on Islam confirms rank opportunism amidst the west's "terrorism" charades and associated imperialistic warfare. I suspect your instincts to please ruling elites would have seen you latch onto similarly caricatured anti-Marxism-Leninism cliches during the Cold War.

Your blanket, offensive claims about sacred texts (with emphasis on the Koran), betray the same lap-dog reflex; or do you engage such original fables from a mastery of Aramaic, not classical Arabic? Any serious observer knows linguistic origins are crucial to any proper comprehension of texts' content, nuance and discrepancies, let alone discussion thereof. But no, any hack English translation will do for you, or did you lift a critique from the work of a more qualified fanatic (I know such web sites abound nowadays)? Very pretentious and obviously plain bigoted regardless.

And all that fanaticism apparently tries to conceal your poses' utter political gutlessness: your advertising of "courageous opposition, liberation and dissent" are empty of all meaningful challenge against truly established, oppressive and most influential power. Instead, your ideological fakery actually serves the decadent, fanatically secular, liberalist oligarchs, and their cynically dishonest fundamentalist counterparts and partners, who would compel all the rest of humanity to regard themselves, exclusively, as gods on this earth, and answerable to no higher or greater power, or any "morality" but that based on their own rubbery, subjective excuses for "principles".

My rhetorical suggestion towards your nihilistic suicide is merely to highlight logical results of your anti-religious fanaticism, which opposes religion's life-affirming importance and leveling of people before, inter alia, concepts of morality, and existence beyond birth, death, time and space.

Leveling? Oh, I wish, I wish.

For an atheist, everbody's holier than thou. For a theist, no-one is.

'My rhetorical suggestion towards your nihilistic suicide is merely to highlight logical results of your anti-religious fanaticism, which opposes religion's life-affirming importance and leveling of people before, inter alia, concepts of morality, and existence beyond birth, death, time and space.'

How ignorant you are mil-observer. You really need to get out more. Or maybe read some non-Islamic propaganda.

The motivation of atheists who embrace humanism is more altruistic and sincere than monotheists because we don't have the fear or hell hanging over heads. Or the sugar soaked bribery of heaven.

Indeed, the use of hell and heaven as a motivating factor assumes that the Muslim has the mind of a 2 year old child. A child that obeys because they might get their bottom smacked, or receive the pavlovian reward of a jam sandwich.

"Humanism" - a middle class excuse for a religion, a foil for self-righteous atheism. The very word is absurd, but its practical hypocrisies in brutal socio-economic injustice betray it as one of the most repugnant cop-outs of all "isms".

The association with text-book Renaissance art is another most revealing aspect of "Humanism" as a vague, indoctrinated notion for use as a "branding" tool of class aspiration, with presumptions to scientific achievement too (most of the avowed "humanists" actually believe Newton was a genuine scholar, for example).

newton wasn't a "genuine scholar"?

Yep, a 100% fraud. Plagiarism and mysticism mixed up with some "old school tie" English public school networking. But he couldn't even do plagiarism properly, while his actual "scholarly passion" was all quackery about alchemy, as revealed when JM Keynes bought Newton's collected personal documents in a large trunk.

It's amazing once you look into it, especially given the establishment's (secular) canonization of the man as drummed into us at school and beyond.

yeah, i guess all that calculus and gravity stuff wasn't great shakes.

Yes, putting it mildly. An apple falling on his head, etc.!

The case of his "study" into optics (refraction, in particular) is perhaps the most shockingly blatant scam against vast medieval monastic and middle eastern precedent. But even in that more straightforward example, Newton still managed to inject preposterous, mystical "theory" (his only original contribution) that would disqualify any scholar assessed on their actual merits.

It's not just the fact of plagiarism, but the shoddy and corrupted expression of it that characterizes the Newton hoax.

But it's quite unlike the mystical and metaphysical business of traditional religious devotion and its typically heavy reliance on the metaphor of dream symbolism, for example. Such "hard science" as the Newton case demonstrates how privileged establishment can profoundly corrupt the very notions of "knowledge", "inquiry" and scholastic accreditation. This still goes on, of course, and I've seen several conspicuous cases first-hand in Australian, US and European tertiary "education".

Just think of a conspicuous, parallel case from Oz's Rum judiciary: Marcus Einfeld.

I think that we can safely say that you are barking mad Mil-observer.

I am hoping that you aren't a religious leader in your community. That would be catastrophic.

Yes, sometimes mil-observer makes sense.

This, however, is not one of those increasingly rare occasions.

More schoolyard antics of a mob - the great western individualists can't assert themselves individually on the terms of the discussion itself. Then the most tired method for dismissing and ridiculing dissent: just quip "yes, quite mad"...

Good though that this digression exposed some anti-scientific, irrationalist superstitions, and the uncritical, conformist ignorance of some of today's brainwashed cultists who would ridicule religion in a wan display of supposed "rationality".

I entered this discussion by challenging such cultish irrationality in statements like: "right to not like a race", "A person is born into a race", and "the physically [sic] reality of race".

So my reference to the Newton's hoax-career merely emphasizes that such actual quackery has a long tradition and many enthusiastic dupes (usually because they're so class-conscious and obedient to the tastes of the Royal Socie-teh).

mil, do you have a reference for the hoaxiness of newton's career? i don't mean the alchemy stuff. i mean the accepted stuff: the physics and the maths.

Mil, Please tell us from whence Newton plagiarised his three laws of motion.
I have just watched a program which demonstrated the importance of freedom of people to criticise the practice of religion. It was the 4 Corners report from the Taliban controlled areas of Pakistan where the Shiah Muslim population are so completely cowed by the brutal and tyrannical Sunni Muslim Taliban that they dare not make any comment at all for fear of being killed.
I am happy that, even with laws restraining aspersions against religion, we in Australia still have sufficient freedom of speech to be able to label religion for what it is: a massive fraud based upon centuries of systematic mendacity designed to provide power and riches to a privileged minority and ensure the obedience of the deluded majority.

[Such fascinating "insights" into South Asian politics there symp. A pity that there's nothing about corrupt Saudi fundies financing terror]

Cases against Newton are not some revelation - more a dirty but "public secret" due to the vast institutional commitment to the man over centuries from the highest authorities of the British Empire. How do you explain, for just two precedent examples, Kepler's detailed (and working) mathematics on gravity and Leibniz's thorough, working explanations of calculus (and their foundational importance to modern mathematics)?

Even today, the Newtonian fraud cannot express consistency on which lie we're meant to accept about his "discovering calculus" i.e., did Newton draft it in 1687, 1693, or some point in the 1670s? Leibniz presented calculus to The Royal Society in 1676, and published it in 1684. That same Royal Society canonized Newton and granted him eternal celestial rank!

Like his absurd Law of Gravity, Newton speed of sound and lunar orbit theories fudges investigative data in order to justify his only original contributions i.e., theories and "laws", those products of his fertile and prolific imagination.

I guess that would be a no bushbasher.

Guess all you like; it is your only remotely conceivable "intellectual" aptitude, after all. Your wild-@55 guessing has so far passed smug, rash, and sweeping judgement on the life-affirming and communally stabilizing faiths of some 4 billion or so people. Ever keen to spot a religious badge from some incident in order to slander a whole faith, again and again.

References exploding the Newton fraud abound. Even as timid and empire-sensitive a reference as Judson's 'The Great Betrayal: fraud in science' (Harcourt, 2004), explains it thus:

"The case against Newton is clear-cut and not denied, although it took a quarter of a millennium to be exposed fully".

Again, that above reference is just a weak one by a very cautious and timid science writer. Regardless, I never serve requests by OLO posters to do their research for them. I will point to issues, discussion points, and argumentative grounds, but to serve up secondary sources would mean sacrificing myself to give them a free education on the one hand, and a means of trying to dismiss and/or stigmatize sources based on the now-fashionable tendency to assess work based solely on considerations of network and oligarchical patronage (and most importantly, lack thereof).

Speaking of fraud, I just found another interesting tie-in on Justice Marcus Einfeld and my initial criticism on this thread (relevant to the article's offensive and misleading claim about "a person is born into a race"):

Einfeld: "Insidiously, through the many pregnancies that result from rapes, it is also a way of diminishing the racial and cultural purity of the East Timorese" [Aubrey, Jim (ed) 'Free East Timor', Vintage, 1998].

What a disgrace: using the memory of the Shoah and East Timorese suffering to preach the irrational and divisive filth of "racial purity" and the "sanctity of Volk".

mil:

>> "The case against Newton is clear-cut and not denied, although it took a quarter of a millennium to be exposed fully"

the case of what exactly? the only paragraph i can find with any substantial accusation is the one you quote from. the accusation seems to be very minor: he fiddled the figures a little so the numbers (on sound, equinoxes and orbits) better fit his theories.

gosh, i'm in shock. from this we get "100% fraud"? honestly, don't you have a substantial reference? as it is, it's minor dodginess, and theory-guiding-analysis stuff of a pretty common and pretty minor variety. details, man!

mil, do you think galileo and kepler didn't fiddle the books? do you think these guys didn't have their nasty sides. if so, why all this special attention to newton? if not, i suggest you get out more.

if you want to claim that newton was a nasty bit of work, that his arrogance meant he wasn't totally honest, that there are disputes about precedence, that's fine. it's hardly groundbreaking, but i agree that we shouldn't pretend mathematical and scientific heroes are paragons of virtue and intellectualism. this is a genuine problem in the history of ideas.

but nothing i've read, here or elsewhere, shakes my belief that newton was an intellectual giant, arguably the greatest mathematician of all time, and certainly in the top five. nothing justifies your bizarre reference to his "absurd law of gravity", your seeming insinuation that he didn't independently come up with the calculus, your weird reference to kepler (was proving kepler's laws just a triviality?), your trivialization of his concept of force.

mil, it's not that what you say doesn't have a grain of truth. the trouble is that you over-egg the omelet. by about a farmsworth.

mil-observer, I'm afraid you're being just a little, errr, free with the language, are you not, when you describe Newton as a fraud.

>>It's not just the fact of plagiarism, but the shoddy and corrupted expression of it that characterizes the Newton hoax.<<

The "hoax" that you describe was, as any fule kno, a little light tinkering with the numbers. That did not in any way invalidate or bring into question the theories for whose support they were enlisted.

And if you insist on reaching your conclusions via sensationalist marginalia, be aware that such behaviour can fry your brain.

Your source material in this instance was dismissed by the authoritative voice of "Nature", whose review pointed out that "[Judson's] arguments [are] far-fetched, dated and poorly aimed"

In its obiter dicta, the critique also points out:

"Taking a tip-of-the-iceberg approach, Judson extrapolates from scores of documented episodes in the pantheon of scientific fakery, many of them also recounted in a 1983 book of similar title, scope and dour conclusions, Betrayers of the Truth by William Broad and Nicholas Wade (Simon & Schuster)."

Could that be a tiny suggestion of... plagiarism? [Shurely not - ed]

bb: "...accusation seems...very minor...fiddled the figures a little...[to] better fit his theories".

Were you an HIH lawyer, bb?

Newton's "re-working" of Kepler's laws is a grand fraud, mainly because Newton merely used different and vague terminology for what Kepler discovered over fifty years earlier. Newton didn't "prove Kepler's laws"; Kepler backed his own conclusions with 100% perfect research and analysis (even harmonics!). Newton's intellectual parasitism suited The Royal Society that sponsored Newton and promoted him as one of their own.

I never "insinuated" that Newton plagiarized Leibniz's Calculus work: rather, I stated it as a matter of clear historical fact. Any fair examination of the sequence of events leaves us only that one sensible conclusion; the rest concerns political influence committing to Newton for the sake of Britain's local and international interests of coercion and/or corruption. "Fluxions" indeed!

Besides, Newton's repeat rip-offs locate his Leibniz con in familiar territory. Newton's pampered, glittering career is replete with such scamming. Optics was another case, where medieval studies preceded Newton's dabbling which, characteristically, came in for more Newtonian "re-working" and re-wording.

And Pericles, why would I defend the Judson book? I'm not surprised if it has its own plagiaristic form - that would suit the whole joker's mentality in these cases, as if to demonstrate just how easily people can be misled (as in the Newton case itself). I already warned of Judson's pithiness and timidity; I quoted that one sentence merely to highlight the basic fact that Judson conveyed, however meekly and indirectly i.e., "the case against Newton is clear-cut and not denied". Judson's reference to Newton's cooking of data to fit his theories is just the "tip of the iceberg". But then, from your quote, that's exactly what obiter dicta said is it not? And you can be certain that the context of Newton is exactly what the obiter dicta criticism meant about Judson's limp approach.

From what I can ascertain, this interesting side case of Judson's timid scientific dissent betrays just how persistent is the political influence in protecting the reputations and commitment surrounding the whole Newton hoax.

references, mil. last chance.

OK, not HIH. FAI then? OneTel?

Last chance at what? Impressing you or (possibly) helping to educate you by passing you a reading list? You can't even come near substantiating any actual case for Newton - you'd rather it be just another name-dropping contest. I've proved my main point on this thread: the loud "secular humanists" go by various "received truths". They think little and have no critical faculty worth the description.

Here's a reference to bb's own stuffy text: "...the hoaxiness of newton's career? i don't mean the alchemy stuff. i mean the accepted stuff..."

So there goes the great Sir Newton, avid alchemist and purported icon of the Enlightenment's strident opposition to superstition and "received truth"! Just leave out "the alchemy stuff" - it doesn't fit with the entry on Newton in that illustrated compendium 'The Greatest Scientists of All Time'.

But, as I said before: I don't do references - I don't have the clout that comes from such august bodies as The Royal Society. However, I know of a guy who can give some quite glowing references. His name's "Justice Marcus Einfeld". Now, this guy can get you: character references; employer references; academic references; witness statements; coroners' reports; DNA analysis reports; tertiary degree certificates (by mail); urinalysis reports; weather reports; statutory declarations - just name it.

[this bb guy demands sources, qualifications, etc. here, but has previously gone on record in OLO (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8461&page=0#133722) to say that quoted scientists "are neither here nor there" in countering his outlandish claim that a case of scientific dissent is only the conjuring of "a political hack". His double standards are a sick joke]

forget it, mil. life's too short to attempt to reason with guys like you.