Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

“Christ had one "value" to which he adhered leading to his death at the hands of the state. Namely, he was faithful to his Father's will. “

Roger, in the myth his father was Yahweh the god of war, he states and demonstrates his will in the old testament frequently and his followers have continued to express it throughout history. So it's logical for Yahweh followers to strive for their personal outcome, irrelevant as to the method or path used. After all, they rely on repenting and being forgiven at their day of judgement. Fielding is no different. All draconian laws, disenfranchising and elitist biased legislation and just about every thing to do with the negatives of government, has been introduced or supported fully by god's representatives in government.

I believe its important to know a candidate's psychological controls. How would you put faith or trust in any who believe and support a violent mythical superstition? We see worldwide the outcomes and growing negative probabilities of the push by god's followers to take more control, as they fervently contribute to killing life on earth. So people should put aside being a christian when voting and open their eyes to the frightening reality ahead and vote for someone who says and will do what they say they will for a real future, unlike those in parties.

The separation of church and state is part of most democracies

There is no difference between church and state in the supposed democracies of the world. They are one and the same, as most political parties and organisations are heavily involved and controlled by religion. Both lib/lab leaders are devout Christians, most ministers and shadows are too, along with a majority of bureaucrats and minders. Typically you can only ever expect lie after lie from them all as their beliefs are lies, so are their lives and we all see the outcomes of the deluded being in control of societies.

The church and state don't merge on ethical deliberations, religion has no ethics, just what they describe as morals or more to the point, suppression of expression and non injurious practices. Ethics are found throughout nature, but not within the religious of the world, which is aptly demonstrated throughout all endeavours of religious live. The reason religion is always pushed to the forefront of government is because the religious have only one agenda, control at any cost. We see this as our world collapses and gods followers continue to support and promote its demise as quickly as possible. All the time believing their god will come to their aid and they will be proved right, against the glaring evidence of their lives.

Roger Fedyck states clearly why you can't have any faith or trust in god's followers. The followers of god are the biggest hypocrites on the planet, they proudly announce they are one of gods children and follow their messiahs way of life. But not one of them upholds the words attributed to the myth, or do anything to care for the planet of their maker. They will tell you they have free choice, but they refuse to allow the world to be free of their choices, demanding all life bow down and become enslaved to their gluttonous greed. After all, there is never any talk or action from gods followers regarding the growing extinctions of life on this planet, as they have no other thought but themselves, they are blinded to reality and we see that in their control over politics. Like all ideologies, church and state are failed, past their use by date and destined to become a negative blot on the history of the world.

Something must have led public figures to seek his counsel. His autobiography, “Just as I Am” (HarperOne), tells us that in 1954 Winston Churchill arranged a meeting. The man who stared down Hitler confessed to the preacher after just a few minutes: “I see no hope for the world,” Churchill said. “I am a man without hope.” And together, they prayed.

The library sheds no light on such events, nor on Mr. Graham’s controversial political relationships. For understanding those, the recent book “The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House,” by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy (Center Street), is invaluable. Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Mr. Graham “how a person can be sure when he dies he’s going to heaven.” Lyndon B. Johnson, thinking of his own death, asked, “Billy, will I ever see my mother and father again?”

"Perhaps no person in modern times-- or anytime -- has been as close to so many presidents as Billy Graham. To the presidents, all of whom seek the image of divine approval for their policies, this has been a blessing. To Graham, who was frequently used by politicians for their own purposes, it has been a mixed blessing and sometimes a curse. No other writers have penetrated the inner sanctum of these unique relationships between presidents and the world's most famous evangelist as well as Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy. This is a fascinating and informative book that reveals new historical facts and exposes the many dangers when representatives of the kingdom 'not of this world' become too close to representatives of an earthly kingdom."
—Cal Thomas, syndicated columnist

Billy Graham was close to many of the political leaders of the last fifty or sixty years. Was their relationship symbiotic?

Some define symbiosis in the sense that De Bary intended, describing a close relationship between organisms in which the outcome for each is highly dependent upon the other.

Bishop Boniface Adoyo, the head of the 35 Kenyan evangelical denominations, is leading opposition to the exhibition. “I do not dispute that as humans we have a history, but my family most certainly did not descend from the apes,” he said. The bishop was invited to view the new Human Origins gallery before it opened this month, and said that he would call on his flock to demonstrate outside the museum if evolution was described as anything other than merely a theory.

“Bits of it are being disproved by scientists every day,” he said. “Yet it’s being taught in our schools to children - a theory being taught as fact.”

His argument echoes a similar dispute in America, where creationists have developed the theory of intelligent design as a rival to Darwin’s natural selection.

Among the exhibits at the museum are remains of primitive apes dating back 25 million years and evidence that primates have been walking upright for 4 million years.

The star of the show will be Turkana Boy, a 5ft 3in (1.62m) skeleton of a human who died 1.5 million years ago, aged about 12. It is the best-preserved example of Homo erectus, the species that set out from Africa to conquer the world.

Lining up against the evangelical movement is the country’s most famous fossil-hunting family.

Richard Leakey, who led the team that unearthed the skeleton in the far north in 1984, dismissed the creationist argument. He said: “Science is at the very foundation of our ability to deal with the new century, so if we bring it down to the idea that science may be unChristian . . . well, how stupid can you get?”

Intelligent Design, not so intelligent. As Richard Leakey says science is not unChristian.   

I point out to Mr Roskam that the organiser of last year's Make Poverty History concert is not a Christian, nor were a very large percentage of the 50,000 Australians who signed up to the campaign to end extreme poverty.

You don't need to be Christian to agree that a child dying needlessly every 3 seconds, because of extreme poverty, is a moral issue.

I was also surprised by Roskam's apparent use of the word 'morality' as a derogatory term. Roskam labels increasing foreign aid as a purely moral issue devoid of any reasoning. This is a fascinating conclusion given that increasing foreign aid has proved effective in facilitating the kind of economic development that can end extreme poverty.

Christians like to think they have a monopoly on morals. I suggest in todays society many Christians and not following in Christ's footsteps.

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:24.

I was looking at Webdiary's 2004 for a piece when I came across Religion and Democracy.

Interesting read.

Roger, two things make attempts to communicate with you impossible. One is your insistence on arguing that black is white. The other is that you argue from premises the validity of which your communicant has never acknowledged, and on which you yourself are unable to provide meaningful argument, offering instead only childish dogma.

You accuse me, when I invite people to think for themselves, of being equivalent to the church when it lays down imperatives to stop thinking and accept on faith whatever it decrees. I ask you, how silly is your line of argument here?

You accuse me of claiming things, when in fact it is you who claims things, not I.

One of the things you claim is that there are "primitive" societies which ""even today" have no tradition of philosophical pursuits. Good Heavens. Name one. Some pre-Neanderthal society, is it?

You ask me: "Why would God decide to give us individually some huge puzzle to solve so that we can enter into eternal communion?" Now when did I ever say I subscribed to that dogmatic "eternal communion" codswallop?

But leaving that aside you are asking, in effect, how I can know the mind of God, when from the outset my contention has held that I cannot, and nor can you or anyone else. What we have been talking about here is understanding the meaning of the words of Jesus, a man, hampered as we are by this difference in time and place, language and mode of expression. Anyone imagining that he can know the mind of God is like a dog thinking he can know the mind of his master.

Have a read of Australia's Christian vote on Radio National's Religion Report. Guests are Christine Milne (Greens) Fred Nile and Jim Wallace.

Roger, I think you need to understand and remember that Jesus spoke in parables. No doubt He used plain language just as we do in everyday communication with those around us but, contrary to what the church might tell you, He was predominantly not a dogmatist.

Dogma is invariably delivered in unequivocal terms, to be heard and accepted, full stop, just like the instruction you got from your teachers in primary school. On the other hand metaphor such as Jesus used whenever He was teaching invites — indeed requires — the hearer to think about what is said, and to make his own sense of it.

Further to that, multiple understandings of multiple aspects of life are to be got from instruction delivered by way of extended metaphor, in the same way as many mansions may be contained in a single house.

Mansions, yes. Mansions within a house. Think about that. One needs to, to make any sense of it.

I'm pleased at least that you quote from the King James version; not from one of those which speak of many rooms in God's house, making Him out to be some kind of boarding-house keeper. Reinterpretation such as this can only stand in the way of understanding. In trying to make sense of it they have in effect turned the meaning inside out.

That, though, is what you begin to do, in your unthinking interpretation of Jesus' reported words. Consciously or not, you and many people follow John Pratt's advice, and keep your thinking to a minimum.

You and they are to be excused, of course. Traditionally, the Church of Rome forbade the reading of the bible by those few of the faithful who could read — all were required to accept without question the interpretation handed down to them by makers of dogma in the church hierarchy.

Since those times many people from both inside and outside of the church have reflected on those puzzling words in John 14:2. Many an interpretation has been arrived at, and significantly most have no fundamental conflict with any other. And that lack of conflict is in itself a reflection of the many mansions metaphor.

Universally, I think, God's house is interpreted as everything, both physical and metaphysical, that exists. And of course all is eternity: that is the milieu in which we all operate. When Jesus speaks of His Father's house, he speaks of the sum total of everything, and forever. The many mansions within that house may be taken as the various belief systems which strive to unite believers with the Godhead.

The notion I favour at the moment, and especially in context of this discussion, is the variety of approaches that may be taken to the subject at hand. Your view is one mansion; mine is another. I think mine is better than yours. No Mc prefix to my mansion, thank you very much.

Climate change provides another example of the churches' rush to resort to morality. When Cardinal George Pell cautioned against church leaders making extravagant claims about global warming and environmental catastrophe, he was taken to task by Anglican Bishop George Browning. Bishop Browning went so far as to claim that because Jesus spoke about the rich taking what belonged to the poor, therefore "He spoke about climate change". Following Bishop Browning's scriptural exegesis, presumably we are close to finding a biblical injunction for Australia to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

Foreign aid, like climate change, is an area in which morality has overtaken reality. The problem with the tactic of resorting to morality at every opportunity is that when eventually everything is a moral issue, nothing is.

John Roskam is executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs.

John Roskam argues in The Age that if everything is a moral issue, nothing is. This I believe is rubbish. Every decision we  make has a moral  aspect  and  morality is not diminished by running the morality metre over it. When we decide to buy our next car, or a fur coat, when we choose which political party we support, when we decide to buy expensive jewellery. Whenever we buy anything we have a choice, we could go without, we could give more to charity. If morality has anything to do with religion? It should be central to our decision making process. When morality is central in our life then it is never diminished.

When we decide to act to protect the planet and all who live on it, it is a win for human morality. The idea that you must drive a bigger car or cars, that you must accumulate more and more consumer goods, is  failed philosophy.  We must learn to share the planet and sharing is one of the first things we learn in kindergarden. Sharing is a moral issue. To have more than your share is immoral.

Roger, dealing with trivial stuff first: if you want to cite multiple consecutive consonants in words to challenge my dislike of those in the word "judgment", you could have gone to the classics "rhythm" and "strength". The trouble with such argument would be that both of these contain not multiple consonants at all, but rather digraphs and trigraphs. These things count as one consonant, I think in any language; certainly in English. Your double Fs and Gs are also digraphs. The doubling serves to modify the preceding vowel in pronunciation. There may well be another English word which matches "judgment", but I cannot think of one, and you have not quoted any. If there is not one which is not just another corrupted English word, as "judgment" seems to be, then "judgment" should be detained and deported back to America from whence it came.

So much for that. Now to the on-topic issue. It seems to me that you are missing the central point of the Gospels' message. It is not justification for selfishness, which is what I am reading from your posts. In an earlier one, you suggest that only personal spiritual salvation is to be got from taking on board Jesus' exhortations, that what He said has nothing to do with the secular world. In your latest to date, you say that charity begins at home. Which well it may; but it doesn't need to stop there. "Home", to us, is a place where people at the lower end of affluence suffer obesity related ailments; and the more affluent can afford a healthier diet, and to burn off excess calories at expensive gymnasiums. While you would have us fatties working towards perfection in our own backyard, people somewhere else are dying of starvation.

The Christian ethic is one of compassion, never selfishness, or self-centredness. Humanists of course will vehemently disagree, and say that compassion comes naturally to humans; but I am prepared to posit that it comes to us, believers and non-believers alike, whether we care to recognise it or not, from Jesus' words and examples. It has filtered down to us from His teachings, and become part of our ethos.

Compassion was a radical idea in Jesus' time. His people's ethos was one of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The Nazarene carpenter advocated quite the opposite: He said turn the other cheek. A bit of hyperbole in both the old and the new, but Jesus was quite given to a bit of hyperbole. The Gospels are liberally sprinkled with it.

There was certainly no concept of compassion in Greek or Roman culture in Jesus' time. Arbitrary mercy, when it suited their agenda, but no such thing as disinterested compassion. Like Nietzsche, and the Jews, the Greeks and Romans had no admiration for that sort of weakness at all. Some have suggested that Jesus got the idea of compassion from India (His "missing years" may have been spent there), but that is where they trod untouchables underfoot and obliged widows to burn themselves on their husband's funeral pyres. So that suggestion is just plain stupid. I think there is good evidence that general compassion was part of the human ethos before our (relatively recent) change from hunter-gatherers to agriculturists. I presume this to be the case because some pre-agricultural societies have survived, right here on this continent, among others, and we have been able to observe their cultural mores, and come to see that they exhibit a natural propensity for compassion. But history shows that we threw that propensity out the window, at about the time we invented windows. If anyone can show where any pre-Christian society has had even paid lip service to general compassion, as we do, I would like to hear about it.

If you still need to know what indication exists that Jesus' message was meant for peoples other than the Jews, consider that His travels took him often into Gentile lands, where he preached, and did miracles. Example: when he rid the man of demons which then took refuge in the herd of swine, he was clearly in a place of Gentiles. Final proof that he meant his message to go to the whole world is to be found in the verses at the end of Matthew.

P.S. Fiona, it makes no difference whether you are passing judgement on someone in a courtroom, or on which shoes would go best with what you plan to wear tonight; the word is the same, the meaning is the same, and so should be the spelling.

I AM not campaigning for Kevin Rudd in this federal election. And equally I am not campaigning against the Government, the Prime Minister, or my brother. But I have bought into the election campaign because I believe the issue of overseas aid and the position of the two major parties is critical. Indeed it is a matter of life and death.

World Vision research shows the extra funding that Labor has committed to aid, if delivered, could allow funding of programs that could reduce child deaths by 140,000 each year in the Asia-Pacific region.

The funding boost could also reduce maternal deaths by 4200, lead to at least 29,000 fewer deaths from AIDS and 31,000 fewer deaths from TB annually. And it could provide access to safe drinking water to almost 37 million people.

Why isn't Tim Costello our Treasurer or Prime Minister? This is a man with real Christian values. How can anyone who believes in God, ignore the plight of suffering children?  I would not like to be in the shoes of anyone who does ignore the plight of these children, when they face their God on judgement day. 

For the sake of these children, I plead to anyone with a conscience, vote Labor on 24th of November. 

4 NOVEMBER 2007

CHURCH LEADERS SUPPORT FOREIGN AID INCREASE

Church leaders around Australia have joined with The Oaktree Foundation, and other aid organisations around the nation, to ask the Howard government to increase its foreign aid commitment, as promised. 

On Sydney’s Channel 9 News, Brian Housten (Senior Pastor, Hillsong Church), declared his support of an equal increase of aid to 0.5% Gross National Income by 2015 to make this election issue bipartisan. 

“I absolutely believe we should have bipartisan support for this.” said Brian Houston. 

His comments were backed up by Rev Dr Ross Clifford (Baptist Union of Australia), Rev Gregory Henderson (Head of the Uniting Church) and Jim Wallace (Australian Christian Lobby). 

In 2000 the Howard government agreed to increase foreign aid to 0.7% of Gross National Income by 2015 as part of the Millennium Development Goals – a United Nations plan to half extreme poverty by 2015.  However, the achievement of this goal remains un-reached.  Currently the Coalition has committed 0.36% GNI by 2010; Labor has matched this and promised a further increase to 0.5% GNI by 2015. 

“Last week I received a letter from the Prime Minister where he made it clear that he cares about ending extreme poverty. We ask that the Coalition match Labor’s promise on this important moral issue,” says Hugh Evans, Director of the Oaktree Foundation. 

According to World Vision statistics, an increase to 0.5% GNI could save the lives of 140,000 children in developing countries.

“No Australians should have to choose between the life and death of a child.  This is a moral issue, and there is the potential for all political parties to rise to this challenge,” Hugh Evans said. 

“The messages of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY and ZEROSEVEN Roadtrip already have the support of over 1 million people around Australia, and now with the support of Australian churches, the Australian public is sending a strong message to all political parties – make foreign aid bipartisan.” Hugh Evans said.

Roger, you say you don't believe that the concept of religion in its incarnation of Catholicism, Anglicanism etc. has any merit. I think, as I have said elsewhere, that it has at very least the following merit: it has kept the stories alive. If it were not for the churches, you would not know the stories of Jesus at all. The conversation you are having would not be happening; and you would not hold the beliefs you do. Don't shoot the messenger.

Especially, you would not be able to hold the belief that Christ was God, who died on the cross to atone for your sins.  That is an invention of the church. Jesus of Nazareth never said anything like it, according to any sensible interpretation of the words He is reputed to have said. And while he referred to His God as His father, he told us we should all do the same. All of us. Look at the prayer He gave us: "OUR father which art in heaven…"

And how many times is he said to have called himself the son of MAN?

My interpretation of Jesus' message is altogether different from yours. I think His message was that we have no Messiah, except ourselves, or each other. The Jews had (still have, I suppose) a belief that a prophesied Messiah would come out of the house of David to save them from all tribulation. Jesus came to tell them that the prophesy was right: He was that saviour, he had the solution. It was a radical one. His solution was that only by taking responsibility for earthly suffering upon themselves could the people gain redemption.  "Do unto others" is a very political message, when you get right down to it.

John Carroll's The Existential Jesus is fascinating.

Also wading through Chris Hitchens' God is not great. He lines up the usual suspects, but I lost a bit of faith because of three errors of fact in as many pages, including 'Steven Hawking' the physicist and 'George Miller' the 19th century American millenialist (should have been William).

Yes, Ian, it gets just a bit easier a day at a time, though. Worth it in the long run, am told.

Actually just read elsewhere where a fundy church that demonstrates a bit too "robustly" outside of funerals for returning vets killed in Iraq, over the deaths being God's punishment for US tolerance of homosexuality, got sued by a family offended by the noise. Result – a ten million dollar court win.

My kind of god would perhaps send a "message" like that, an ironic comment on crass mean-spiritedness, but perhaps it was just more a matter of Karmic "going 'round, coming 'round".

Finishing, must say I find people infinitely more frightening than any god I can conceive of and that includes most of all the bloke in the mirror (yes, will accept donations for plastic surgery, if folk choose to read above that way!!).