Groupthink

Posts Tagged religion

The ACL would never alienate anyone

Jun 30

Posted by Spock... in Politics | 18 Comments

Three ACL related blog posts in 2 weeks. I really need to stop reading articles that mention them because they are very bad for my health. I promise that I will stop mentioning them here after today.*

The Australian asked the ACL for a comment on Julia Gillard’s statements about her lack of religion or religious belief. The ACL obliged.

THE Australian Christian Lobby has warned that Julia Gillard might have alienated Christian voters by declaring she does not believe in God.

Julia is alienating Christian voters with such provocative statements like:

“I am, of course, a great respecter of religious beliefs, but they’re not my beliefs”

“For people of faith, I think the greatest compliment I could pay them is to respect their genuinely-held beliefs and not to engage in some pretence about mine.”

And what reasonably minded Christian wouldn’t be alienated by that kind of statement? Such thoughtfulness, tolerance and respect. It sickens me. How dare she respect their beliefs by not pretending to hold them for political gain.

And it’s not like the ACL would ever encourage politicians to alienate any group of people. Especially not gays, non-Christians, women, refugees and even some Christians. That’s just not their style.

My favourite part of the article was this quote from ACL spokesman Lyle Shelton:

“I think she’s being honest and true to herself. Obviously, that position will alienate some in the Christian community and some in the wider Australian community.”

Yes, as a member of the “wider Australian community” I am always aliened when people are “honest and true” to themselves.

Dicks.

*Unless they do something that really, really, really raises my blood pressure.

UPDATE: Lyle Shelton’s appearance this morning on Sunrise. Peddling the same disingenuous bull-shit that we have come to expect from the ACL.

Lyle, you just made the list.

Lyle Shelton

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50,000 people are pretty insecure

Jun 28

Posted by Spock... in Education | 4 Comments

I don’t know what came over me when I subscribed to the Australian Christian Lobby’s RSS feed. I guess part of me just thought that my blood pressure was too low. But thanks to whatever pearl of wisdom lead me to subscribing to their blog, I now get regular updates like this delivered straight to my RSS reader.

A staggering 50,000 people have called on the NSW Government to protect the place of special religious education (SRE) in schools and reschedule the proposed ethics classes to another time slot.

Christians from all major Christian denominations across NSW have signed a petition organised by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) which was tabled in NSW Parliament yesterday.

ACL’s NSW Director David Hutt said today that the overwhelming support for the Save Our Scripture petition should send a clear message to NSW parliamentarians about the need to safeguard the special place of SRE in NSW schools.

You see, the ACL and other religious organisations are feeling threatened by the NSW governments decision to trial ethics classes in state schools in the same time slot as special religious education (SRE) classes. Under the current arrangement in NSW for one hour every week schools hold these SRE classes with leaders of their religions, with various religions being represented. These classes are optional, but there is no option for parents of no faith so kids who do not attend one of these classes are left to do private study for an hour. What this leads to (and presumably what the religions like about this) is kids attending religious classes because there are no other options, even if they are not especially (or even at all) religious.

This is where ethics classes come in.

Ethics classes provide a secular alternative to SRE classes for those kids who are currently attending a SRE class out of convenience or simply not attending any classes for that hour a week. The problem is, apparently, that ethics classes are ‘competing’ with SRE and children are forced to ‘choose’ between the two.

“The Government should not be discriminating against children of faith who will not be able to attend both SRE and ethics. The classes should be run at separate times.”

I have an even better solution. Let’s not run SRE classes in public schools. Then there will be no problem about conflicting schedules.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with children being taught religion in public schools, but only when it’s done with the same scepticism that is afforded politics and history (after all, it really is history and politics). I do not support kids learning particular religious narratives in public schools. If parents want their children to learn a particular religious narrative then those parents should be taking their kids to church and enrolling them in private religious schools, not expecting public schools to offer it to all schools.

Religious education not being offered in public schools is not an attack on religion. I am not anti-religion. Religions are not being discriminated against by not being allowed into public schools and to claim that they are is cynical and disingenuous. The opposite is true. Allowing religious education in schools the way NSW does discriminates against students who do not belong to a religion. Offering secular ethics classes to children is a step in the right direction, but I still don’t believe SRE or ‘scripture classes’ has any place in public schools anywhere in the country.

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Pardon my snit

Feb 15

Posted by Ross Sharp in Society | 4 Comments

The atheists are gathering …

Something you will never see: an atheist boarding a plane with a bomb strapped to him, waving a copy of On The Origin Of Species, before he blows himself up in a violent attempt to further his cause.

So says David Nicholls, the head of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, the man at the increasingly pointy end of the reinvigorated and freshly vocal atheism movement.

And, by way of response, cliches cluster …

Atheists may not be suicide bombers (”Atheism’s true believers”, February 13-14) but it doesn’t mean they are any less adept at mass murder than Islamists. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot come to mind. In extolling the virtues of atheism, David Nicholls shows a severe case of historical amnesia – Lyle Shelton Kaleen (ACT)

Let’s get one thing perfectly fucking straight here, shall we?

Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot constructed societies where all authority was vested in one individual and one only, and a personality cult, a cult of worship around this one individual was expected, encouraged or made compulsory, replete with nifty little uniforms and symbols and slogans and all manner of cheap and whiffy paraphernalia.

In this respect, these individuals have far more in common with the “cult” of Jesus Christ, the Pope, and the Pells and Jensens of this world than they have with your average atheist or agnostic, all of whom would just like to be left the fuck alone and would dearly love it if the theists would kindly stop attempting to ram their beliefs down our throats by way of influencing state and federal legislation.

Now, I don’t know whether this qualifies as some variation on a “Godwin’s Law” type thing, but the next time some crotch-fiddling nutball attempts to equate atheism with Hitler and Stalin, would you kindly point this out to them and then tell them to fuck off out of it.

Because it’s giving me the shits.

Ta.

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