Peter.... can you elaborate on this opening line, "In Melbourne this week a blow will struck at last by a registered solicitor and barrister against the rise and rise of Atheism in Australia. These poor individuals, ( Atheists) got Paul Keating’s ear, and between the 7th January 1991 and the 21st January 1991, installed Atheism as the Official State Religion of Australia"?

I've read your three postings, but you don't say what these two people, the barrister and solicitor, are going to do next week.

By the way, when the Pope lost his lands, they were not so much 'given' to the peasants of England as sold, or given, to the power brokers by Henry, and land was indeed sold off to help create the middle calsses that came later.

Although, as a child, I was delighted to read of the demise of the monastery in my home town, torn down by the locals who then used the stones to build their own houses, most of which, well many anyway, still remain as fine examples of housing of that era.

Sad to say, on the other hand, of course, that future generations were denied the delights of looking at, studying and learning about a fine building on an equal to Wells Cathedral, so the history books and plans tell us.

Blue Cross,

It is vainglorious statements like these that leads to the rise of atheism. The reasonable man looks at this and says to himself:

"If this is religion, I want no part of it."

Jeffhosk...are you referring to Peter the Believer's comments, or the others who seem to 'believe' without question, or all of them?

The Weekend Oz magazine has a snippet of an interview, p.7, with Peter Singer, covering aspects of this thread.

I see he too is a speaker at the convention.

Having just read this, watched AC Grayling the other night on Lateline, and recently watched Dawkins interviewed by Denton, and when he shot Fran down the other morning on RN, it is hard to reconcile these thoughtful, fairly docile, characters with the charge that they lead 'aggressive atheism/secularism/humanism' or whatever, and are trying to create an 'atheist revolution' to ban religion forever.

On the other team, mind you, we have Catch The Fire, Salt Shakers, ACL, Pell, Jensen, Hillsong, Scripture Union.... the list is too long to complete here, plus of course all those fruitcakes in the USA in the Teabag outfit, the GOP, and Dawkins old mate Ted Haggard and his God fearing mates to wonder about.

I think I'll take my chances with the likes of Grayling, Singer and Dawkins above the others, who do sound like a serious threat to the thoughtful underpinnings of our national community... to say nothing of the rest of the world.

The blow that will be struck this week, will be an application for an injunction in an appropriate court, not the High Court but another exercising federal jurisdiction, to prevent the tidal wave of illegal and unconscionable repossessions by a bank of a loan given during the throw money at people period, that led to the GFC. The appointment by Westpac of 600 bank managers has happened because Westpac saw this coming.

These lawyers may chicken out, but I don’t think they will, and the court they go into may not grant the injunction immediately, but it will eventually. Today I went up to the Monash Library in Clayton Melbourne and photocopied the exact enactment of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Act the Banks and politicians have been denying since 1981, and this legal team will be able to prove it in a way that no Judge and Magistrate can refuse to recognize.

Atheist thieves have not been adhering to the Constitution. They have been using State Laws to circumvent the provisions of the Constitution, and we trusted KR when he said he was a Christian, to fix this problem. Instead he has crawled up the recti of State Premiers, with disastrous, results for the general population. These Atheists are just thieves in disguise. They say a man with a gun can only take what you have on you, but a lawyer in a suit will take everything. Land Tax is illegal but returns $2 billion dollars in New South Wales alone, because there are no courts in New South Wales that are working. The Sheriff is an agent of atheism.

Christians in the Bible believe that those who are planted in the house of the Lord will flourish in the courts of our God. Psalm 92:13. The courts of Our God, is the same court in S 79 Constitution. It has judges, and a panel of 12 judges will start to make the truth heard. The money honestly earned will be directed to keeping the promise to end homelessness in Australia: With Kevin07 or not

Squeers,
I liked the quip about the balloon vs moon. One could continue with the metaphor by saying that this is what e.g. Dawkins et al think, namely that what I see as the moon they think is just a balloon that they can shoot down so that the fingers will indeed point to nowhere. Well we - or rather those who come after us - shall see if they succeed.

Although much of your standard criticism of Christian institutions is justified, I think one has to distinguish between Christianity as an idea and its particular application in history up to the present. After all, it was both this idea as well as its applications - many going counter the original idea - that brought us where we are: There is no alternative civilisation that would have arrived from Antiquity to Enlightenment and (post)modernity through bypassing e.g. the period of medieval Christendom.

Now I see I have already promised not to comment on this, since there are many books interpreting Christian history and praxis overall positively, as well as those interpreting it overall negatively, and I am not a historian.

>>I love the fabric of the church, its music<<
See my story (again a metaphor) about the three little pigs in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2909#66836.

As to conservatism, a car needs an accelerator as well as brakes (sorry, again a metaphor). Applying only the former (rebellion or revolution) will probably lead to a crash, applying only the latter (rigid conservatism) will not get you going. I think reform that you mention, is the right way to go: reasonable conservatism curbing emotionalised rebellious thinking, or even acting.

George,
"The Moon's a Balloon" is the title of David Niven's delightful autobiography, but it's an apt metaphor.
I too am highly suspicious of the Dawkins/Hitchins line, especially the note of positivist triumphalism, though to be fair to them I think the religions they're gunning for are the extremist ones that are wreaking so much havoc in the world--not just the terrorists but the fundamentalists of every stripe and their proselytising missions.
I like the three pigs parable! And there's excellent sense of course in the other things you say.
To a large extent the human condition doesn't seem to admit of solutions, and yet the world inevitably changes, one way or another. Who knows how many more dark ages will benight the human race, or if we'll ever emerge.
Anyhow I look forward to other debates in the not too distant :-)