Glen Milne's "The Murray Darling Political Sinkhole"

The Australian’s Glen Milne wrote The Murray Darling Political Sinkhole for the ABC’s The Drum. Many others expressed similar reservation about Milne’s article. Here is my small contribution.

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This is a strange article. Here we are talking about the difficulty of the short term political problems, not the long term sustainability of the Murray-Darling basin. Yes, there are going to be short term political issues. What if the Murray-Darling basin simply continues to get abused? Instead of losing billions of dollars we will lose the eastern seaboard of Australia. Like Australia’s attempt to preserve our fish stocks, sacrifices are going to be made. People will go out of business, towns wills die and people will suffer but it not the Murray-Darling Authority’s fault. It the fault of over optimistic politicians who where finding cheap ways to win rural votes.

Don’t think that I in Perth can be comfortable about water either. Overly optimistic WA State governments have abused the Gnangarra Mound. The Gnangara Mound is an area north of Perth where a large mound of sandy soil reaches an elevation of about 60 metres. It stores about 20 cubic kilometres of fresh water, about one hundred times Perth's current annual water usage. It is currently the single most important source of potable water for the city. Together with the Jandakot Mound south of Perth it supplies about 70% of the city's drinking water. However, it being abused and now is seriously in trouble.

A Secular Government?

Tim Dean, a journalist and PhD philosophy student, wrote a piece defending something call secular liberalism. It was published on the ABC’s The Drum and was titled was Secular Liberalism Misunderstood. The first two are my replies to the piece. The rest are some of my replies to others comments. I got a little angry with my atheists.

Tim,

I agree with most of what you say. My difference is terminology. You call it secular liberalism. I would say it is the only Christian example of government. Indeed, when the United States was established they could not decide between the Anglicanism of the South or the New English congregationalism. So they compromised and settled on the middle states of Pennsylvania, New York and Rhode Island’s view that belief in this or that should not be considered essential to citizenship. These views arose, in part, from religious persecution. Roger Williams, a Baptist preacher, was literally excommunicated from congregational Massachusetts. Williams then bought land from the local Indians to found the city of Providence, Rhode Island. Williams ensured that citizenship had no religious or philosophical test. In your terms, this was the first secular liberal government. Providence is not only the home of America’s first Baptist Church but is also the home of that nation’s first Synagogue. Some Baptist still defend the liberty of conscious. If you doubt it please look at the Baptist Joint Committee’s website - http://www.bjconline.org/

Regrettably, our nation did not follow this aspect of American life more closely.

Further, I must disagree with Greg Sheridan. If I cannot defend my faith from Richard Dawkins et al it is not worth believing. Though, I must agree, Dawkins is a lousy philosopher.
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Tim,

I forgot to disagree with you about democracy. Democracy is a socialist idea, not a liberal. It is about collective decision making. It has not interest in preserving individual liberty. In the days following the totalitarian nightmare of the ‘socialist’ Soviet Union, we have forgotten the non-Marxian socialists. The Fabians and the Christian socialists with their views of peaceful transition and collectivisation seem to have been forgotten. Their legacy of credit and trade unions are still with us, even though commercial collectives like Wesfarmers have been ‘corporatized’.

You can still hear how democracy is a threat to individual liberty. The self appointed guardians of the people, the gutter press bail up some defenceless crook insisting that the people have a right what his person looks like or feels. The people do not have a right to know about another misery!
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If we are going to be hypo precise in language, one does not believe in God either
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To all the illiberal atheists out there - the UN treaty on the Rights of the Child gives parents the right to educate their child in their religion!
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What are you going to teach the children instead of their parent's religion? Some form of the so-called logical atheism. Atheism is about as logical as the fly spaghetti monster!
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Dan,
You do not support freedom of the individual conscious. How can you deny parents the right to bring up their children in their beliefs? And if a parent should not bring up their children in their beliefs, how should they bring their children up. What is a belief free environment look like? Can one exist?
Or does everyone have values derived from ones beliefs? If that is the case, do you not want to impose your religious belief on someone else?
I cannot and will not seek to speak for others, but I am a Christian. I defend others right to be wrong. I do so because Christ told me to love my neighbour, the prophets of old told me to defend the poor and the aliens and the doctrines of salvation tell me that every human being is capable of accepting Christ as saviour. They must accept Christ freely without any coercion.
Finally, the first governments to accept all regardless of religious belief were founded by Christians. William Penn (1644 – 1718) (founded Pennsylvania) and Roger William (c.1603-1683) (found Rhode Island) were committed Christians. The Baptist Thomas Helwys (c.1575-c.1616) wrote the first call for religious liberty in English. Religious people have been defending liberty for an awful long time!
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To all the illiberal atheists out there - the UN treaty on the Rights of the Child gives parents the right to educate their child in their religion!
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What are you going to teach the children instead of their parent's religion? Some form of the so-called logical atheism. Atheism is about as logical as the fly spaghetti monster! In other words parents are free to indoctrinate their children in our religion. This is called totalitarianism.
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Article 14.2 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child states:-States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.

The rights of the parents to teach their child their religion!
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Further Dan, teaching a religion is not indoctrination. I look forward to your apology for using inflammatory language! Your rudeness is typical of many of the modern atheist!
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Actually, atheism is a positive statement about the existence of god or gods. Hence, it fails to prove a case in the same way theism does. Agnosticism makes no statement about the existence or non-existence of god or gods.
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P Smith,

What crap! Atheism is a religion. One of the definitions of a religion is that it functions like a religion. This definition evolved to include religions without a deity, like Buddhism. Given the diatribes here, there is plenty of proof that atheism is functioning like a religion.

Even worst, given the diatribes here atheism is an extremist ideology. It wishes to reach into the parent child relationship to prevent a parent tell a child what they believe if that is parent believes in a non-approved religion. It labels this child abuse. It wants the parent to teach children only approved things. The only approved religion is atheism because it pretends that religion is based on reason. Yet it is blind to its own totalitarian tendencies.

Penultimately, I have posted here historical proof that the first governments which respected the freedom of thought and speech were established by deeply religious people. No-one has contested my argument. If anyone wants me too, I go into their theological justification of such. It is an undeniable fact that both liberty of thought and speech thought of by the ‘third’ wave of the Reformation: the Anabaptist, the Baptist, the Quakers and so on. Only later was such ideas adopted by the so called enlightenment thinkers.

Finally, you equate religious thought with extreme ideologies like communism. Communism is the first political ideology to base itself on atheism. It managed to kill more people last century than any other belief, religious or philosophical. Maybe that is why atheism has taken so long to establish itself in human thought. The ancients realise it was completely bankrupt!

Use of Evolution in Social Science

This was posted on the National Center of Science Education Facebook page. It is a comment to a post by Michael Zimmer. He was informing us of his article in the Huffington Post. I also refer to the sacking of the Israeli Education Minister.

Don’t get me wrong, I accept that life origins on Earth are, at the moment, best explained by evolutionary biology.

The problem is that evolution is being used as a myth. A myth is used to justify some policy or ethic. The only science theory deployed in the humanities and political ethics is evolution. Conservative defenders of capitalism have always invoked evolution. Good examples are Herbert Spencer and his social Darwinism, Fredrick Hayek in his defense of the market, and the modern promoters of so called science of evolutionary psychology. Scientific opponents include Stephan Jay Gould. But early, the opponents were religious. In 19th century Britain they were evangelicals. Gavriel Avital might be a Jewish example of this.

Pru Goward's oppose Same Sex Marriage

Prue Goward wrote a piece for the ABC The Drum opposing same sex marriage.  I commetted.  the commet was a little angry so it might not get published.  Here is what I sent -

Prue Goward is spruiking the usual load of Liberal Party crap on same sex marriage. She argues that marriage has been a between a man and woman across all religions and cultures. Across all religions and cultures, women have been oppressed – should we get rid of the Sex Discrimination Act? Or exclude women from the vote or parliament? I hope not!

Ok, return the control of marriage to the Churches. Once they have denominational authority, about a quarter of Christian congregations would celebrate the marriage of same sex couples in exactly the same way that they celebrate heterosexual couples. The theology that excluded same sex couples has been rejected in the same way that the theological justification of slavery and women’s inferior position has been jettisoned. As the old hymn said, “There is more light to break forth from your word”.

Our current dilemma started with the Howard Liberal Government amendment to the Marriage Act which excluded gay and lesbian couples. Amendments supported by the spineless ALP. The Howard Liberals feared a high court appeal but a well resourced gay or lesbian couple.

Yet we live in a society that has chosen to permit all religious and philosophical views to live side by side. The exclusion same sex couple from the legal protections marriage bring tears at the fabric of society that has chosen to not to have a state ideology. Restoration to the fabric of Australia requires the Liberal Party to stop promoting homophobia and the ALP to find its spine again.

Posted in responce to Max Wallace, Religion, government and free speech: The case of New Zealand on the ABC Religioin and Ethics page.

The other problem with the so called separation of Church and State is one cannot separate belief from political motivation. It could be argued that Christians should accept a version of Luther’s two kingdom theology. That this theology could justify having two completely different belief systems. I suspect that is the origins of the Kantian notion that religion is part of the private sphere of belief and public policy is part of the scientific sphere of public fact.


My first problem with that is public policy is not philosophically or religiously neutral. It rests on assumptions that are derived from ‘private belief”.

The other is there are those, like me, who accept the unified thought of Calvin. Two kingdoms theological schizophrenia is madness. Either the New Zealand Race Relations Commissioner suggests a place for me to seek treatment or assists me in building a religious belief that permits toleration.

Comments on Mumble

This comment was a response to Peter Brent's blog Mumble post "Voting intentions the only predictor".  May be I drifted a bit....

I must agree, the preferred PM poll is not as significant as those in the Howard government era pretended. However, Paul Keating is not a good example. I must have been the only one of my group to support Keating. Most Australian detested him. However, as Hewson found out the hard way (and as Howard nearly found out in 1998) unpopular polices like the GST can lose elections.

The figures that matters are not able to be polled. The key question is how willing is the voter to change their preferences. I am sure that many in Perth are rusted on to the Liberal Party. Even if Labor retains Husluck and pick up Canning, that would not have changed. That result would mean that the ALP holds a third of WA seats. The changing values in the public opinion polls suggest this is not the case in the rest of the country, especially Queensland and NSW. Given the popularity of the NSW Labor government, that is remarkable.

By the way, the cold weather in Perth might produce some electoral upsets in Perth. The new state Liberal-National government has increased the prices of electricity, therefore making house heating too expensive for social security income dependants or part time workers. Unlike NSW, the next WA state election is in 2012. They might want to send a message to the state Liberal government.