Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Catherine Deveny says it well with her:

I care that the invisible electric fences that are wired in the minds of children brainwashed by religion are difficult to remove.

That is a problem. It is not exclusively one of religion, though. The secular electric fences that are wired into the minds of children are just as damaging as the religious ones.

Stephen F. Robert, whoever he is, doesn't sum it up for me with his:

We are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Most people are drawn to seek reasons for their being beyond the pointlessness of existence apparently accepted by Deveny. That seems to be wired into the human brain by nature. And not all who refuse to religiously deny the existence of any God dismiss the beliefs of people who are brought up to believe in some other God. Robert is talking about himself, not believers in Gods.

Well done, David. The kinds of simple but powerful arguments you make here should be included in any Federal government campaign explaining action on climate change and the emissions trading scheme.

Fiona: Welcome to Webdiary, Darren.

A synonym, actually, F Kendall. I just pasted "eclectic" into the thesaurus installed in this computer and found:

Wide-ranging, broad-based, extensive, comprehensive, encyclopedic; varied, diverse, catholic, all-embracing, multifaceted, multifarious, heterogeneous, miscellaneous, assorted.

I assume others saw, as I did, Kevin Rudd's amazing performance as he milked the audience with his "talking in tongues" welcoming messages to the Pilgrims.

Hark back to our Roman Catholic former PM Paul Keating who kissed the ground when the last pontiff visited but his performance was nothing on Rudd's.

I see a new side to Rudd all the time – I reckon this guy has got a clever mind that can milk an opportunity whilst appearing to be still just a bespectacled slightly mild mannered PM.

If the Catholic population of Australia is around 35%, has Kevin secured their votes plus a whole lot more from other Christians ?.

I can't wait to actually view the PM in person and gauge his "charisma" factor which certainly doesn't come across in the media, but humbleness can be deceiving. I well remember the times I encountered Howard at some charity function or so – he really had so little presence – especially noticeable when he and Bob Hawke walked into a room together. Bob used to positively glow (perhaps it was something to do with that hair !) by comparison.

And the main thing that struck me was that both were actually the same height while Hawke had successfully portrayed Howard as "Little Johnnie".

It's no guide to the inner person of course but certainly an asset in these days of media driven election campaigns – as Peter Costello would find if the latest rumours were true.

Intelligence must lie in the eye of the beholder. Only one without much of his own to draw on would see much intelligence reflected in an objection to a plan intended to save the world from disaster on the grounds that it would destroy the economy of the Hunter Valley. Then again, the objection comes from a year 12 student in high school, albeit a selective one.

Malcolm, you said earlier that you have "put out bold, difficult policies that are designed to replace coal-based power generation with solar." It doesn't take much thought to see the impracticality inherent in any such policy, of course; but were it possible, how do you reconcile that with your revelation that the preservation of the Hunter Valley economy is paramount?

Of course this whole discussion is nonsense anyway. People seem to want to talk about the effects of global warming on Australia. They even want to talk about the effects it will have on the Australian economy, of all things; when what is under threat is the world as an inhabitable planet. Thought — the only human activity that doesn't produce greenhouse gasses — is avoided like the plague. We even find references to cow and sheep farts: things that have never existed. They would rather live in their own little dream world than face up to reality.

Try to turn people's attention away from futile tinkering and towards the all too obvious fact that we have gone way past the point of no return and should be looking at ways whereby we might ease our species' adaptation to an altered planet, and they scuttle off to start another thread about stupid, futile tinkering.

Coal is the prime fossil fuel that is abundant. It is likely that it will remain a good source of income for the very few Australians who work in it (30,635 of them according to the Australian Coal Association). Given that the price has risen 100% or so in the last year without demand lessening, I don't guess that the added cost from carbon permits is going to make much difference to those numbers in the working life of those currently employed there.

Which brings us to the difference between us on this. YOU want to prescriptively close down their business and replace it with solar. I (and the government) just want to price in the environmental impact and let the millions of people and businesses affected by that price find their own best solutions for reducing the carbon content of what they do. They'll make better decisions than I (or a civil servant) will.

The "global war on terror" has conjured the image of terrorists behind every bush, the bushes themselves burning, and an angry god inciting its faithful to religious war. We have been called to arms, built fences, and compromised our laws and the practices that define us as a nation. The Administration has focused on pursuing terrorists and countering an imminent and terrifying threat. Thousands of Americans have died as a result, as have tens of thousands of foreigners.

Former CIA intellegence officer Glenn Carle in The Age.

The threat from Islamic terrorism is no larger now than it was before September 11, 2001. Islamic societies the world over are in turmoil and will continue for years to produce small numbers of dedicated killers, whom we must stop. US and allied intelligence do a good job at that; these efforts, however, will never succeed in neutralising every terrorist, everywhere.

Why are these views so starkly at odds with what the Bush Administration has said since the beginning of the "global war on terror"? This Administration has heard what it has wished to hear, pressured the intelligence community to verify preconceptions, undermined or sidetracked opposing voices, and both instituted and been victim of procedures that guaranteed that the slightest terrorist threat reporting would receive disproportionate weight — thereby comforting the Administration's preconceptions and policy inclinations.

We have been conned into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our political leaders have over-exaggerated the threat of terror, a threat that has always been there and probably always will. We have to learn to live with the reality that there will are people who will want to bring down our governments and make us live to their rules. We need to be aware of the threats but not over- react. The last seven years have been a massive over-reaction.

Yes, "catholic",  diverse, an antonym to "eclectic", I would say.  Of course, by "catholick" , old prickle,  you may well  mean "anglickan", according to your earlier post.    

I gather that you were objecting to my comment:  "There will be no voice of abuse from the GPS schools and such."   I have since remembered Richard Walsh as an exception, and, I think, Geoffrey Dutton re physical abuse.  So I will amend "no voice" to "few voices".  Happy?

As Sam Harris, author of The End Of Faith, puts it, "I think that 'atheist' is a term that we do not need, in the same way that we don't need a word for someone who rejects astrology.

"We simply do not call people 'non-astrologers'. All we need are words like 'reason' and 'evidence' and 'common sense' and 'bullshit' to put astrologers in their place, and so it could be with religion."

I don't care what people believe in, but I do care that religion impacts on political discourse, public policy and that it stunts the ability of people to think for themselves and question. And that it kills people and causes suffering. But most of all I care that the invisible electric fences that are wired in the minds of children brainwashed by religion are difficult to remove. And impossible if you don't even know they're there.

A quote attributed to Stephen F. Robert sums it up for me: "We are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Peace be with you.

Catherine Deveny in this morning AGE.

Catherine is correct: how do you choose one god when there may be thousands?

Good questions: how did you choose your god? On what criteria did you reject all the others? Does it matter? How to sort fact from fiction?

Misogyny, racial discrimination and homophobia, David Eastwood, are not systems of belief. They are systems of disbelief. Like atheism.