Rhys,

David is correct. This is our nation’s heritage and should be preserved. Certainly it has been eroded heavily by bigoted overzealous atheists. We no longer sing hymns each morning in our State Schools. I am unsure but we may not even have the option of regular Christian instruction in our State Schools. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is our heritage. Noone prevents you from choosing to be an atheist so please don’t let your fierce hatred of Christianity and bizarre ideas about it’s origin undermine our heritage.

You use the words intolerance, one-eyed opinions, and bigotry to describe even David’s neutral comments and state that these are all symptoms of a deeply entrenched disease. Please consult a dictionary and then make an honest effort to see which post these words could really be best applied to. I hope this helps.

Okay – let’s talk facts shall we? I mean facts, not mythological antiquated dogma. The following facts are all sound reason for all levels of government to cease the ritual of reciting Christian prayers before each session. Either that ritual is stopped or other religions and faiths be given an opportunity to participate

Fact 1: There is no credible, scientific, or factually reliable evidence for the existence of a god, gods, or the supernatural. Quotations from the bible therefore have no credence in a discussion of governmental procedures.
Fact 2: In the 2001 census the number of people claiming to have no religion constituted 33.33% of the total population. Take into account the number of people who ‘go along’ with parents or spouses to keep harmony in the household and the number lifts exponentially. Then there are the ‘other’ beliefs. The total number of people who claim to go to church regularly amounts to 12%. Then there are those who go to church twice a year because they consider it to be the right thing to do.
Fact 3: Heritage? What does that mean? It used to be heritage to burn women at the stake for being witches. It used to be traditional for lords or lairds to be the first to sleep with virgins in their respective domains.
Fact 4 When our worthy forefathers wrote the Constitution they were all –or most of them – raised on a tradition of religious dogma. But please note that the Constitution refers to Almighty God and not specifically the Christian Almighty God. There is little doubt the reference is to the Christian God but at that time it was the predominantly and indeed the only god they knew. The Constitution also make reference to every state except Western Australia and what is now Central Australia or Northern Territory. They were brought in at a later time thus making the Constitution flexible.
TO BE CONTINUED

FACT 5 Since the Constitution was written science has blown most of the dogma associated with religion out of the water. Even the Roam Catholic Church and the current Pope have had to contend with the loss of faith in their community because of the overwhelming evidence refuting the biblical claims.
FACT 6: There are many in government who have no religion therefore it is hypocritical for them to bow their heads to a Christian prayer. Some examples are Bob Hawke, Bill Hayden, Paul Keating and many others. Then there are those who belong to other faiths and religions. That alone should be sufficient reason to abolish the ritual or to allow others to participate.
David in one of his submissions asks if Atheists are in the majority. I would agree they are not but it is close to being the case. The Moslems are not in the majority either. Nor are the Roman Catholics. In fact no individual religion is in the majority. The collective Christian religions barely scrape over the 50% limit and look at the differing opinions they have on the subject.
So – considering those facts let’s get back to the subject in hand by looking at the definition of ‘Democracy’. My Oxford dictionary states inter alia: ‘a form of government in which the people have a voice in the exercise of power, typically through elected representatives’.
Therefore is it not reasonable to expect that my representative is obliged to voice, or at least consider, my opinion along with those of others? In which case why does he or she pray exclusively to a Christian god in parliament? Why, when there is supposed to be a separation of church and state?
Even a appeal on the Australian ‘fairness to all’ tradition – or should that be heritage? – it is only reasonable that we all be considered equally?

Good on you Rhys. There is absolutely no reason why it should be presumed that one person's religion/superstition/delusion should predominate over anyone else's. The Christian's assumption that they somehow have been indoctrinated correctly, and that others have not, is the height of arrogance.

All religions should be treated equally, which in practice means that each should keep their own private delusion to themselves. Instead, religious people think they can promote morality by forcing their own bigoted preconceptions on others. They don't care what harm, division and violence it leads to. What a crazy world!

John
http://www.secular.org.au

Thank you John. It never ceases to amaze me how often that tired old 'heritage' argument crops up in debates such as this. Do you know that the Brits still say prayers despite the country being one of the most secular in the world? Oddly they turn their backs to the Speaker while the Lord’s Prayer is read. When questioned I was told it dates back to when they wore swords and could not place the swords behind them when standing. Just goes to show how ridiculous heritage can go. In the UK today 44% claim to have no religion. France records 48% while Canada 30%. Sweden has as many as 85% recorded as having no religion and that country does not seem to have fallen on criminal or un-humanitarian ways. When will our governments and councils begin to realise that religion is a dead issue in a modern world and supported only by the uninformed. Speak of science and you get a dumb look. Have you noticed that every time the bible is quoted it is always the ‘good’ bits they quote? Never the bad bits. In fact it is not possible to have a debate with a Christian without them quoting something from the bible.

Rhys is correct in demanding an end to our representatives offering up supplications to a mythical superman in the sky. Not only is it silly, it’s dangerous. A study reported in the Journal of Religion and Society [a publication of Creighton University's Center for the Study of Religion] by evolutionary scientist Gregory S. Paul, looks at the correlation between levels of "popular religiosity" and various "quantifiable societal health" indicators in 18 prosperous democracies, including the United States.
Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services. He then correlated this with data on rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion and child mortality.
He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. — which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) — also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy divorce, domestic abuse and sexually transmitted diseases.
Secular Europe has the lowest degree of social dysfunction!
Australia was declared secular by its ‘Christian’ founders in order to stop the vicious fighting between Catholics and Protestants. As for the social freedoms mentioned in a previous post, take a look at the facts and you will see that the major religions have fought tooth and nail against every social reform in this country’s history, from votes and equality for women through to Aboriginal and workers rights. And today, religious despots are the only people refusing equality for same-sex-oriented people. Secular humanists and atheists have been responsible for this country’s egalitarianism, and it is the present religiosity and kow-towing to religion that is seeing the removal of civil liberties, workers’ rights, freedom of thought and expression