Squeers
By resisting the risk of indoctrination you are expressing something that is deeply felt by many. Why should we believe what our parents and priests sought to instil in us from an early age. Its a very good question -is it just baggage we can’t easily ditch because we heard it so early in our lives? – very reasonable indeed.
I too question why I follow my own parents in this regard .- seeking to teach . Bottom line. I do resist children’s propensity to call themselves God and to not think about whoever created us and how they might think about what we are doing ; will They one day hold us to account ?. If it was all from fear or pushed in overtly authoritarian manner , I think I might find myself closer to where you are . Maybe that means you have to catch a vision of God is love before you can come close to the idea that he’s tough – but not unfair.
What’s the alternative here? Saying HSe’s “just not there “leaves the world open to everyone doing what they like and justifying what they like .That’s a real reason to fear. That’s a world to be afraid of !

Perhaps we must look past the ignorance of our parents as they stumbled to represent what’s greater, bigger and better than just doing your own thing ;To see them trying to make us see our own feeble reasoning patterns as “not up to the task” .
Have we have got something in common here? – a desire for good? What happens to that desire for good ?
If we thought our parents were paranoid about evil , at least those of us that are now older know that they were partly reasonable to be so . That’s the good part of the incentive ,it seems to me, for the meeting in Melbourne next week . Evil and good ; at least we are talking about it . We still haven’t got to dogma, and why that’s absolutely necessary – later

This discussion misses one sad point. We are completely governed today on atheist principles. We made a deal with The Queen of England about 110 years ago, to establish a Commonwealth in Australia. Instead we have an atheist republic, and our government has become a good replica of Stalin’s Russia. The feature of Stalin’s Russia, that was most evident was the abolition of local government and its replacement with central planning.

Christianity of the Protestant variety was the very foundation of democracy. The systems engineer we call Almighty God inspired the free thinking Roman Catholics of England to reject the atheist concept of an absolute monarch, living in Rome, with absolute monarchs as delegates in every state in Europe.

To make us all atheists the Parliament of the United Kingdom after the lawyers were allowed back in after 1870, started to dismantle the Christian system, and replace it with an absolute sovereign in the form of an elected Parliament, with organized gangs in it called political parties. The problem with atheism is that in Australia we have nine of these so called sovereign parliaments, all pumping out laws, all owned to a greater or lesser degree by one or other of two Atheist political parties.

We have an apologist Federal Supreme Court called the High Court that is the home of the Exclusive Atheist Brethren, stacked with graduates of the Atheist Seminaries, called University Law Schools. We have an atheist Federal Court of Australia stacked full of the same brainwashed cartel members, and a ruling elite that is not answerable to anyone at all.

However as we are all compulsory atheists, there is almost no risk today that you will find a committed Christian, in any position of real power. As the Book says, you will know the tree by its fruit. In nearly two and a quarter years, we have yet to see the supposed moral strength of a Churchgoing Prime Minister, introduce any real reform to a bumbling and vindictive legal system, introduced by a Jewish Gangster so he could run his brothels and gambling dens with impunity

Heh. George once complained because I described his sophistry as "mental gymnastics", but it seems he has no compunction in using "verbal acrobatics" in order to obfuscate the issue.

If George's convoluted reasoning is "verbal acrobatics", what does that make Peter Loquacious' interminable babble - textual calisthenics?

Organised crime flourishes under atheism. The answer to organized crime was an absolute separate Sovereign, totally independent of an elected Parliament in whose name all laws had to be made. That separate Sovereign, was governed by an Oath that had to be taken before the Office was filled. You may find a copy here, on this website. http://www.community-law.info/?page_id=456

You will see that in order to become Sovereign, Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second was obliged to agree to uphold the Gospels, and to deliver law and justice in mercy in all Her judgments. The Governor General represents Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second and all Judges and Magistrates in Australia should be Her delegates. Currently there is scant mercy anywhere in Australia, and the media brays for blood, and even more oppression, whenever they whip up a crime wave.

Under S 22 of the Australian Courts Act 1828 all Acts were supposed to be submitted to a Supreme Court for enrollment. The so called Sovereign Parliament in the United Kingdom abolished that requirement in about 1875, and the Sovereign was brought into hatred and contempt, because Her power derived from Almighty God under the Constitution of England, was curtailed. Queen Victoria was only an 18 year old slip of a girl when She became Queen. Her Consort, Albert was dearly beloved by Her, and He as Her Consort, vetted all laws before the Royal Assent was given. A Royal Identifier was affixed to every Legitimate Act, and one was affixed to the Royal Deed that established the Commonwealth in Australia.

Albert was a problem for atheists. Their scheme to take over the Empire was thwarted by his interference so he died suddenly in 1865. In the next twenty years, the Queen was in mourning, so Parliament really went wild, and virtually abolished the Christian system of government, establishing a tyranny of Parliamentary Supremacy, that was no better than government from Rome, abandoned so many years earlier.

The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 is an English Act that established a democracy in Australia in which all Christians were equal. Criminals hate it

Hanrahan

Spare us from this over-repeated line "Maybe that means you have to catch a vision of God is love before you can come close to the idea that he’s tough – but not unfair."

The song 'why don't bees go to heaven?' covers the source of all gods:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzXYYmBMst8

So, 'who is the Creator?' being settled, there seems little left to consider except for what motivates people.

As far as I see, there is no guarantee that those who 'believe' do act in the 'moral' ways they say Jesus, or whoever they follow, might have behaved, assuming their moral hero always acted and spoke in only 'loving' ways.... further causing some of us to be confirmed in the view that 'human behaviour' is behind most acts, good or bad.

As for 'our parents', my mother lived in a Catholic convent during WW2 and learned how easily 'evil' surfaces within the Catholic system of coercive dogma and cruelty, all for Jesus and God's 'tough mercy'.

Given the recent revelations of 'bestial' behaviour from the Pope's Soldiers in Eire, never mind elsewhere, it seems she was hardly alone in the world...no doubt this is passed off as 'tough love'?, but most people would recognise the gross child abuse and cruelty.

'Believers' seem to suggest that anyone who does not share their precise views is incapable of doing anything remotely decent with themselves, or within the community they live in.

Such arrogance feeds the Orientalism Said wrote of, and perpetuates not only 'the other' but also the constant need for there to be an 'other'.

Was it 'evil' that prompted Greg Hunt to declare that public schools were 'anti-religious', and for Julie Bishop to insist they were 'moral vacuums' just so they could impose an army of Christian evangelists into public schools, to boost Howard's electoral chances?

Kevin Rudd is doing exactly the same now, but that does not make it any less 'evil' to those of us who can live without the props of Vatican 'bestiality' and evangelical bullying and coercion.

George,

I didn't address you deliberately, like you, I was making a point to a third party not criticising, challenging your linguistic gymnastics or your superior literary expression.

To attempt that would be absurdly ambitious on my part. I am, if nothing else, painfully aware of my limitations, particularly when it relates to expression but I do try.
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TBC

Catholicism isn't known for it's acceptance of women in leadership roles. But Eire it doesn't seem to apply.
Your intent was that the Irish were conditioned by Christianity/Catholicism. Mary Robertson, current pres disproves that.

Bishop Tutu non catholic shows that other denominations are also liberal democratic in their out look.
Obama's, Gore's were aberrations, Tutu clearly deserved his.

The over arching point was that you tend to argue by unsupportable assumptions and extreme case examples. You appear off topic and arguing application of religion.

I am well aware of the difference between secular and atheist... the topic is the rise of atheism.

Neither USSR or Korea are Atheistic by definition they created their own 'religion'.

No society can exist without some believe in some greater organization purpose power and articles of faith (individually unsupportable) note....by definition they can't aren't atheist.

Secular is different. My version thereof means, I don't have some supernatural belief or explanation but I do tolerate others who do.
Arguably atheism isn't passive it seeks to REPLACE one world view with another. I don't.

Beyond that my skills of explanation fail.