CJ Morgan wrote: "Those who hearken back to the days of yore when the dominant social history of the Australian continent was Anglo and Christian are doomed and deluded - those days are gone, and will prove to be a blip in the history of human occupation of this continent.."

Contrary to your delusions, Australia still remains a predominately British country, demographically and culturally.

As for the future makeup of the country, it should ultimately be up to the Australian people, and the Australian people alone, to decide what kind of society we wish to become. Just as a family has the right to determine who may live in its home, so too a sovereign country has the right to determine its own ethnic and cultural composition and the kind and number of people it invites to settle within its borders.

Our future is not set in stone by any means. Those who claim otherwise are effectively denying Australians the right to define and shape their own society.

TR, I think your religion of science, reason, and humanism is one of the most stupid ever invented - some great technical advances, but at what cost to humanity and the earth! I am a Christian but if I had to choose another religion, yours would be at the bottom of the list.

But I am very happy for you to set up a regular meeting place in my street and would not dream of protesting against it.

Efranke: << Australia still remains a predominately British country, demographically and culturally >>

You meant 'predominantly', didn't you? It's fascinating how many Anglophiles can't speak English correctly.

While a majority of Australians may be of 'British' descent, that demographic feature has been declining since World War 2. Also, while many of our cultural institutions are derived from our sorry colonial past, their 'British' origins have become concomitantly less relevant as we move inexorably towards independence. This obviously doesn't suit that minority of Australians who want to live in the past, but that's their problem.

I'm a born and bred Australian of 'British' descent, but I certainly don't identify with Britain, any more than I do with any other foreign country. Also, like many others, I'm not even nominally Christian.

Please don't presume to speak for me and the vast majority of tolerant, secular Aussies as you spout your ideologies of divisiveness and hatred. I think that anyone who wants to be 'British' should migrate to Britain, rather than try to turn back the clock in Australia.

rstuart,

The right to presumption of innocence is a legal convention,I prefer to rely on the record of Moslems in those countries where they are a majority or a significant minority,such as in some European countries.Islam is a totalitarian ideology,to treat it as just another religion is to make a great mistake. Basically your attitude is "so far so good", I hope you're right.

Firstly, I think we need a little historical perspective. An old Jewish myth about an "interfaith utopia" in the Middle Ages never existed – therefore, neither do the grounds exist for blame to be cast on the Jews and Zionism for destroying a ‘traditional harmony’ between the two peoples – rather, they co-existed. Jews were second class citizens, at best during this period. They were classed along with other religious minorities as unbelievers who did not recognize the prophet hood of Muhammad and the truth of the Koran. But this kind of unbelief was not as threatening to Islam as Jewish unbelief was to Christians, for unbelief in Christianity meant the rejection of Jesus as Messiah and as God, a greater affront to the dominant faith than Jewish unbelief was to Islam because it challenged the theological basis of the whole religion. For Christian Fundamentalists today, this same affront similarly exists – albeit its degree is often hidden.

Secondly, there are two religions, Judaism and Islam, both based on a ‘singular’ mono-theism (i.e. without pluarity) and both having the same fundamental religious outlook, structure, jurisprudence and practice. An interesting inconsistency, hypocritical in proportion, occurs when one of these faiths is revered well above that of the other. For some strange reason (and I know it well) there are some who appear to hold ‘God’s Chosen ones’ in an ‘holy’ esteem, well beyond that of the other. Secularists aptly call it prejudicial - I’ll go one further and identify it as a bad and ignorant theology

Efranke “Contrary to your delusions, Australia still remains a predominately British country, demographically and culturally.”

I agree, but delusions consistently overshadow that particular poster

And when we consider Australia has been politically and socially stable, largely free of civil uprisings (Eureka stockade being hardly worth a mention) or civil wars for the 200+ years of its existence, it might be worth thanking those British values which were bequeathed to us.

The government, legal and other civil and military institutions, including commercial and social practices and laws, upon which the fabric of Australian culture and values is founded did not just “happen” they were designed and implanted through colonization, most particularly by the migration of millions of British settlers over the centuries.

When I look at many other countries, particularly say, South America, colonized and settled by the Spanish and Portuguese and consider their history of civil war, attrition, genocide, corruption and these days kidnapping, drug trafficking and institutionalized murder I have to wonder…

would the South American continent have been better served with the same British colonial services which Australia and Canada and in a different way, USA, benefit from and which, stupidly, many African nations abandoned (to their detriment).