IT IS a great honour for me to be your guest speaker this evening on the occasion of the inaugural annual dinner of Saltshakers.
I am not necessarily sure why I was chosen to be your guest speaker this evening, but I do note that it was found necessary to start Saltshakers some eight short months after I became a Senator. I trust that the need for Saltshakers was not a reaction to my arrival in Canberra!
They always say to wreck any good dinner party, just raise the topic of religion or politics. Well, I intend to throw the demolition ball into this one by talking about both subjects.
Firstly, I want to talk about some examples of where some leaders in the Christian community have done the church a disservice by involving themselves in an uninformed way in political debate, and then to talk about the challenges that are before us as Christians.
Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with Christians involving themselves in political debate — indeed, it should be encouraged. Along with many of my colleagues (on all sides), I was brought up to believe that the Christian ethic should guide the way our society operates.
However, problems arise when some church leaders involve themselves in political issues of the day in an uninformed way — resulting in a loss of credibility.
The great challenge for anybody, Christian or non-Christian, seeking to comment on public issues is to be fully informed. For those of us that seek to have some Christian influence on the public life of this country, it becomes very difficult when colleagues can quite rightly and fairly belittle elements of the Christian community because of their ignorance; or their mere mouthing of the latest popular fad.
Allow me to give you a few examples.
During the first sale of Telstra, a Christian organisation wrote to me about the importance of equal services being available for telecommunications customers, both in the city and in the country areas. As a matter of political argument and policy debate, I can understand that point of view. However, to try to clothe the argument with some religious and Biblical imprimatur is unhelpful. I can fully understand that there are Christians who support the sale of Telstra like I do, and there would be some that do not support the sale of Telstra.
Ticket to heaven
I get a funny feeling that church leaders will not be asked on the last day whether or not they supported the privatisation of Telstra. If public ownership of telecommunications were the big ticket item for Christianity, one would assume that only the leadership of North Korea and Cuba might be allowed a ticket to heaven, if that was the basis on which judgement was made!
But more seriously, amongst my colleagues it raised the issue of what is the role of the Church?
I recall my response to the church representative – asking whether they supply the same sort of service to their rural constituency as they were requiring of Telstra. The services in the city of course are a lot greater with midnight services, a variety of services on Saturday night and during the day on Sunday. In the country, in some areas, you are lucky to have one service celebrated per month. So a church that does not provide for its own customers, is seeking to challenge the Government about Telstra’s service provision. Guess what – it made the Church’s comments rather hollow to a number of my colleagues.
I am also reminded of an example where a particular church leader was condemning the closure of bank branches in the pursuit of economies. A great homily was delivered in relation to their social responsibilities. Some six months later, the same leader was announcing the amalgamation of a number of his parishes for, you have guessed it, economy reasons.
Another example was in relation to the Native Title debate that this country had after the High Court decision in Wik. As the Chairman of the Native Title Committee of the Federal Parliament at the time, I was about as informed of the varying issues and arguments on all sides of the debate as one could be. I found it unhelpful when elements of the Christian church, including from my own denomination, wrote condemning the Government’s proposals in all manner of strident language.
In engaging in debate with some of these by way of letters, I was drawn to ask the question “have you actually read the proposed legislation?” To which I got a response that I was basically being a smart alec. Of course, the church leader admitted he had not read the proposed legislation, and his righteous indignation had been fired by media reports.
To which I responded and said ‘if somebody were to condemn the Bible to you, would you not challenge them with a simple question “But have you read it?” And if you are allowed to condemn the Government’s proposal on the basis of media reports, then do non-Christian MPs have the right to condemn the Church on the basis of media reports?
Workplace Relations reforms in another case study. There was one religious leader for whom I confess I have great respect, who was reported in the media as saying ‘his main concern remained that minimum wages not be ‘pushed down further’. What does pushed down further actually mean? Well, the undisputed statistics show that minimum wages have grown by over 5 per cent in real terms. In other words, those on minimum wages have been sharing in the increased wealth which our community has been gaining.
And it is comments like this that make it so easy for my Parliamentary colleagues to simply dismiss the Church and its leadership when it does try to speak on the important issues of the day.
These examples of elements of the Christian community involving themselves in debates where they are uninformed or where they have sought to gain some social relevance by commenting on the issue of the day is so depressingly counterproductive. And commenting on the issue of the day seems to be the go.
In contrast, it is very non “pc” to talk about matters spiritual, unless of course you do it in relation to wilderness values, or aboriginal land rights. And it is really uncool and old-fashioned to talk of the spiritual needs of individuals in mainstream society. But we all have deep spiritual needs. Human beings are spiritual beings. And if the Christian gospel does not fulfil that need, some other belief system will fill the void, or simple desperation as witnessed by our suicide rates and drug dependency.
When will we hear a journalist ask the same question of the atheist politician?
The answer lies with you and me as individuals, not so much with the Government. We need to reclaim our society for Christ.
So how do we go about that?
As a Protestant, you would not be surprised to hear me repeat Martin Luther’s injunction about how we are to approach life and its challenges. His injunction was simple: “pray as though it all depends on God, and work as though it all depends on you.” I think it is a wonderful motto which acknowledges God’s omnipotence, together with my individual responsibility.
And can I encourage you to work at it in your home, in your family, in your street, community groups — be prepared to share your faith.
And so, when you hear Christian politicians being asked in interviews, ‘so how does your Christian belief or views influence your thinking on this particular topic?’ (Usually accompanied with the appropriate tone and inflections to give you the distinct impression they are on the side of the devil) ask the question: when will we hear a journalist ask the same question of the atheist politician: “How does your status as a member of the Godless left impact your decision making in public life?”
And when a Church leader complains about the Government not doing enough about petrol sniffing, ask that Church leader as to what he is doing to convince the mums and dads of those aboriginal communities to stop their children from petrol sniffing; what is he doing to convince them to take personal responsibility for their children, rather than simply trying to have unrealistic expectations raised as to what the Government might be able to achieve (that does not mean to say the Government has no role, eg the roll-out of “Opal” Petrol which does not give sniffers a high.)
It becomes so easy to get a cheap headline calling on the Government to do something, allowing so many people to absolve their conscience and wash their hands from their individual duty.
And as an aside, I cannot help but notice that those church leaders who continually speak publicly on these issues seem to preside over an ever-diminishing flock.
The story of the Good Samaritan springs to mind. This story is not a direct challenge to Government, but rather, to you and me as individuals as to how we treat others. Today, the new era churchman might say, “you shouldn’t have to touch the victim, it is the Government’s role.” And while the victim lies bleeding in the gutter, they would hold a press conference and call on the Government to employ someone to look after the victim. It will get the headline, but I am not sure it will necessarily help the victim, nor will it excuse the personal failure to look after the victim.
Soft issue, soft topic
Similarly, it is so easy for a Church leader to get publicity by calling on the Government to give more in overseas aid. It is a soft issue, soft topic, and it puts the Government on the back foot. But why don’t we hear those same Church people say “the Government is very generous with tax deductibility, and we as Australians individually have a responsibility to give more?” As I read the gospels, Jesus’ challenge is not to Government, as much as it is to individual citizens.
This nation needs a greater sense of personal moral responsibility. We must always beware of supposing that somehow we can get rid of our own moral duties by handing them over to the Government; that somehow we can get rid of our own guilt by talking about national or social guilt. We are called on to repent our own sins, not each others’ sins.
It seems that in today’s society we want to take all the fruits of Christianity without its roots. The simple fact is that without roots the fruits will wither. And they will not come back again to our society unless we nurture the roots.
That is the great challenge for Australia’s Christians today. Let’s be active and proclaim Christ as Lord of all, starting with our own lives.
And the challenge for Christian organizations is to exercise discernment in the issues they chose to publicly involve themselves.
This speech by Senator Eric Abetz Special Minister of State, was delivered to the inaugural annual dinner of Saltshakers, Aug 27, 2005.
Dr Kevin Bonham
August 31, 2005 at 11:06
It is good to have this speech posted here for discussion. In my view any discussion of the contents of the speech needs to be a separate issue from the issue of Abetz choosing to dignify the existence of Salt Shakers by accepting their invitation at all, on which see the previous thread started by Rodney Croome:
http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php/weblog/comments/abetz-linked-to-gay-hate-group/
It’s quite amusing that Senator Abetz rebukes Christian leaders for attacking his party’s policies without doing their research, yet is happy to, by implication, attack non-spiritual views of the world by saying that “we all have deep spiritual needs. Human beings are spiritual beings. And if the Christian gospel does not fulfil that need, some other belief system will fill the void, or simple desperation as witnessed by our suicide rates and drug dependency.” Does Abetz have any actual evidence to back these claims? Has he read the appropriate psychological literature to determine whether humans can really not survive without “spiritualist” fulfillments (whatever those are) without becoming unusually suicidal or drug-dependant? One doubts it.
I also take issue with Abetz’s throwaway line about the “godless left”. There is not necessarily any connection between atheism and political orientation, although it is fairly unusual for atheists to be moral conservatives. Indeed one of the most vigorous defenders of the economic Right in the 20th century was an atheist – Ayn Rand. It should not be assumed that if an atheist is left-wing that there is any necessary connection between these two views, although for rationalists and secular humanists leftist positions can arise as a direct result of the individual’s religious (dis)beliefs.
Abetz’s comments about generosity and the obligation of the individual to give remind me of a vaguely related issue – his government’s preoccupation with encouraging individuals to donate their services, as seen in massive campaigns to promote volunteering. However, this should be a two-way street, and it is certainly not such while that government continues to subject those out of work to the current harsh Centrelink requirements, instead of (for instance) valuing volunteering appropriately by treating a sufficient level of volunteering as enough to meet an individual’s full Mutual Obligation requirement.
Jonathan Males
September 2, 2005 at 21:06
Ok, let’s see how far we can take this one without descending into the whirlpools and dead-ends of overly rigid thinking…
Kevin, have a look at some of the work by developmental psychologists like Loevinger, Robert Kegan, Susanne Cooke-Grueter, and Don Beck / Clare Graves who have all studied the unfolding development of the adult self.
A similar approach to faith development has been expored by Robert Fowler, and Ken Wilber has probably done more than anyone to synthesise a developmental understanding of human sense-making, values and capability. (if googling these names doesn’t help, I’m happy to provide direct references).
I’m offering these as one source of evidence to back up Abetz’s perhaps sweeping claim that we are all have spirtual needs. The research evidence suggests that we DO have an innate need to seek meaning in our lives, and that this need develops, evolves and becomes more complex throughout a typcial life-span. There are clearly individual differences in openness to spiritual experience, so that for some, meaning is found more readily in rationality and science than in any form of faith.
This is all context to my main point; it seems all too easy to take ‘christianity’, ‘religion’, ‘spirituality’ (and so on) as homogeneous concepts. Viewed from a developmental perspective, individuals (and indeed whole sections of societies) vary enormously in the way they make sense of, respond to, engage with, and use or abuse, the processes of faith and expereience of spirituality.
So to talk about, for example, ‘christianity’ as a single entity fails to note the differences between (at two extremes) the judgmental and narrow views of fundamentalists (NB Dubya and co.)and the ‘new age christians’ led by Adrian Smith who challenge much established christian dogma and seek to acknowledge the role of other faiths.
I usually avoid discussions about faith and religion that fail to take these important differences into account, because my experience is that they almost always end un-productively with the two sides arguing from different value bases and assumptions, unable to see that both their views can belong to a higher order understanding. See Wilber for more on this.
I personally find it refreshing to read Abetz’s speech – it seems to me that he presents an all too rare willngness amongst christians to reflect upon and question the role of faith in society. I hope that this leads to more debate, not about whether faith /God exists or not, but on how questions about personal responsibility, moral choice, behaviour and the universal need for meaning can be productively expressed within society.
Barry Brannan
September 3, 2005 at 07:57
Unlike Jonathon, I hope that this also leads to debate on whether God exists because public policy decisions are being made based on “faith” in God’s existence.
If God does not exist then policy decisions based on belief of its existence are potentially floored. Decisions made due to religious beliefs are often inconsistent with decisions made on a non-religious basis.
Justa Bloke
September 5, 2005 at 04:50
I cannot see the point of arguing whether god exists or not.
The important thing is to live as if there is no god. The belief that there is anything to which one must owe a greater loyalty or love than to our fellow constituents of this world – human, animal, vegetable and inanimate – is worthy only of contempt.
Consequently any political decisions based on such a belief are likely to be wrong.
Certainly any politician or party promoting such a belief must be vigorously opposed.
This does not, of course, mean that atheist or agnostic politicians have all the answers. It just means that they are more likely to be asking the right questions.
Dr Kevin Bonham
September 5, 2005 at 09:12
At the risk of engaging in “overly rigid thinking” (which, for the sake of cynicism I’ll translate as “even passing attention to basic logic” or “refusal to succumb to woolly waffle”), Jonathan Males’ argument is confused and self-contradictory.
On the one hand he argues that findings on the role of meaning in “developmental understanding of human sense-making, values and capability” are evidence to back up Abetz’s claim that “evidence to back up Abetz’s perhaps sweeping claim that we are all have spirtual needs. ” Then he says that “There are clearly individual differences in openness to spiritual experience, so that for some, meaning is found more readily in rationality and science than in any form of faith.” Obviously if there are some individuals who can find this supposedly necessary meaning from sources other than spirituality, then Abetz’s claim is exposed as an overgeneralisation that deserves to be buried or at least modified, not defended. From Jonathan’s description it seems that the sources he refers to either deal with something irrelevant to what I was talking about (the need for meaning as opposed to the question of whether there is one necessary source for it) or else back up what I was saying (that there are multiple possible sources and therefore that we do not all have “spiritual needs”.)
Even if Abetz’s claim was true in most cases it would still be an offensive generalisation that downplayed human diversity in a completely inexcusable fashion. Indeed, in such a case, saying “all humans have spiritual needs” would be on a par with saying “all humans are heterosexual”.
Finally I’m not keen on Jonathan’s rather loaded-sounding phrase “openness to spiritual experience”, which could be read as suggesting both that there is something spiritual to experience and that those who do not do so are somehow inhibited rather than simply unconvinced.
Jonathan Males
September 21, 2005 at 11:54
Thanks for your comments Kevin, which have helped me reflect further on the issues within this thread. I’m happy to engage in questions of logic and clarity of thinking – less interested in a “I’m right so you must be wrong” tussle where there is little genuine inquiry. In presenting my points as a defence of a generalisation, I ignored the useful maxim that “that all generalisations are wrong, including this one”. And I also left myself open to the principle that only one contradictory example – and from the tone of your comments, it appears you cite yourself as one – negates a generalisation. Mea culpa.
It seems that the issue here is the nature of ‘spiritual need’. I wonder what meaning do you give to this, that the suggestion that we all have them causes such offence? Does the term bring up images of a Monty Python cartoon god with a stern face and long white hair stomping on sinners? Does it imply some sort of weakness or submission to an exterior force? Is it irrational and therefore worthless?
My suggestion is that if instead of ‘spiritual need’ (which carries many connotations) we use the term ‘need for meaning’ a less emotive discussion might follow, and one that draws on research rather than faith alone. In terms of my phrase ‘openness to spiritual experience’, I could perhaps have said ‘openness to a sense of wonder, appreciation, connection and awe’ . I have no desire to ‘convince’ anyone to have this sort of experience, as rather than it referring to something objective or outside the individual, I suspect it is an interior and subjective matter. How do you feel Kevin, when you stand alone in the forest, or on top of a mountain?
Dr Kevin Bonham
September 22, 2005 at 08:06
I don’t have a problem with the term “need for meaning”. The reason I consider it fundamentally different from “spiritual need” is that the term “spiritual need” implies that there actually is something spiritual to need. I don’t believe there is, and even if there was, I’m not convinced that belief in it would be necessary for meaning.
The meaning I give to the term “spiritual” is very broad and includes cartoon deities such as those worshipped by fundamentalists, but also includes beliefs in magic or ghosts, belief in an underlying abstract spirit world and so on. Most of these beliefs don’t offend me at all (even though I don’t agree with them) but what does concern me is the idea peddled by Abetz and other apologists/propagandists that it is necessary to believe in one or the other and that someone who does not is somehow deficient.
I have no problem with Jonathan’s term “openness to a sense of wonder, appreciation, connection and awe” as a substitute for “openness to spiritual experience” except that if we substitute the former into his original context, it suggests that those who “find meaning more readily in rationality and science than any form of faith” would be less open to this sense. I doubt that that is true, because I think those of us who have no religious-type faith are at least as capable of getting subjectively inspired by things around us as anyone else. However, the natural (non-human) world certainly doesn’t have a mortgage on these forms of inspiration.
I’m also not sure whether those who are aspiritual really do find meaning primarily and directly from “rationality and science”, rather than from just doing things that they happen to enjoy or find purposive (whatever these may be). However perhaps I’m relying too much on my own experience there.
Peter Stokes
October 18, 2005 at 04:16
Well I never, I am so glad to see so much discussion about God. Clearly He must exist or people would not spend so much time trying to disprove His existence, or simply pontificating personal opinion about Him, which appears to be mostly what this thread has done.
Firstly, true Christian belief is more about relationship than proof. For those of us who have stepped out of the humanist ‘I am all there is’ and allowed the evidence around us (the incredible world we live in) to prove to our finite intelligence the existence of an infinite intelligence way beyond ourselves, we find He is actually interested in ‘me’ – this is extremely liberating.
Secondly, a simple look at history shows that countless attempts have been made to ‘prove’ there is no God, or to prove God is dead, or to simply legislate God out of existence (USSR/ China etc.) – but all of them have totally failed.
The Christian church was stronger at the fall of the Soviet Union than at its inception. The church in China is growing exponentially at the moment, not the official church, but the persecuted underground, evangelical, and often charismatic, church. So much so that they are actually sending our missionaries to other surrounding countries.
God is NOT dead – He will have the last laugh on the selfish humanist world just as He is over this ongoing discussion due to Senator Abetz speech. If Rodney had not complained about the Senator speaking to Salt Shakers none of you would have ever known about it and yet here you are discussing it’s contents and God two months later!! God is Good!!
Barry Brannan
October 18, 2005 at 07:39
The existence of this discussion does not ‘clearly’ mean that God must exist. In fact if we had proof of God’s existence then we may not be having this discussion at all.
Peter, the ‘incredible world we like in’ is not evidence of the existence of God. Scientists are learning more and more every day about the universe but there is no evidence yet of a creator.
The countless failed attempts to prove there is no God is not suprising: it is not possible to prove that God does not exist — it is only theoretically possible to prove that he does exist, and no-one has done so. Why should the burden of proof be pushed onto the non-believers? Non-believers are so because there is no evidence for them to believe. It is up to the believers to provide the evidence.
You seem to be deluded into thinking that every discussion such as this about God is further proof of it’s existence when in fact a large part of the discussion is questioning such existence.
I welcome a response.
Peter Stokes
October 19, 2005 at 09:27
God challenged a scientist to make a man, he accepted the challenge. They meet at pre arranged time and stood face to face – God said you go first. As the scientist bent down to pick up some dirt with which to mould his man, God said stop, you can’t use my dirt, make your own.
You’re right Barry, we can’t prove there is a God, but that does not prove He is not there. One thing is clear though Barry, we both see the dirt and you can’t tell me where it came from.
I’m sorry to say that you’re wrong when you say “Scientists are learning more and more every day about the universe but there is no evidence yet of a creator”. Why do you think there is a huge debate right now about ‘intelligent design’ – simply because more and more evidence of ‘intelligent design’ is being discovered every day – by scientists.
No that does not prove God, it proves design rather than chance. But what caused the design? I can look at the birds I hand feed every morning and see the most amazingly complex ‘design’ – I see God. I see wisdom more infinite than the best of the best scientist because they cannot make the dirt, let alone a bird.
Dr Kevin Bonham
October 19, 2005 at 16:16
I really didn’t want to get back on this thread which hardly anyone is still reading but the smug rubbish peddled by Peter Stokes in his latest reply demands to be utterly crushed.
The anecdote about the scientist and the dirt is nonsense, because as I have known since I was four years old, people can invent gods to explain where the world comes from, but then they still have to explain what created their gods. If it is not OK for the universe to exist without being created by something else, it is not OK for “God” to exist without being created likewise.
All you have done is added an extra layer of pointless complexity to the puzzle you were trying to explain, without answering a question which probably cannot be answered anyway.
“Intelligent design” is also rubbish but since Stokes has argued for it without backing his claims with evidence I shall just suggest that he goes to http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html and reads the material linked off the question “What about intelligent design?” and the questions about Behe and Dembski, and comes back if he thinks he can disprove anything there.
There is a huge debate about “intelligent design” and “irreducible complexity” because creationists have found some dodgy and easily refuted but jargonistic theories to rehitch their broken-legged old horses to, and created the illusion that just because something is being talked about it and people are using big words, it suddenly must have merit.
Perhaps they figure that if it worked for French postmodernism it can work for them too, but it didn’t for long, and it won’t.
Peter Stokes
October 20, 2005 at 03:52
If you don’t want to keep going Kevin then don’t throw your personal opinions in the ring.
As for the web site you suggest, as though it was some mainstream scentific Journal, it states “Visitors to the archive should be aware that essays and FAQs appearing in the archive have generally not undergone a rigorous peer review procedure by scientific experts”
Exactly – they are more opinions from people like you who don’t want to know the truth. Perhaps because they have held a certain line for a long time and would hate to be wrong, or they don’t want to feel they have to surrender to a higher authority than ‘self’.
The god of ‘ME’ – I’m in control so I can do what I like.
Try these quotes from non Christians:
Richard Dawkins (a vehement atheistic evolutionist), The Blind Watchmaker, WW Norton & Co, New York, p. 43, 1987.
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully designed to have come into existence by chance.
Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, THE FREE PRESS,p.252-253, 1996.
Now it’s the turn of the fundamental science of life, modern biochemistry, to disturb.
The simplicity that was once expected to be the foundation of life has proven to be a phantom; instead, systems of horrendous, irreducible complexity inhabit the cell. The resulting realization that life was designed by an intelligence is a shock to us in the twentieth century who have gotten used to thinking of life as the result of simple natural laws. But other centuries have had their shocks, and there is no reason to suppose that we should escape them.
Charles Darwin, The Morality of Evolution, Autobiography,Norton, p. 94, 1958.
A man who has no assured and ever-present belief in the existence of a personal God, or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones.
Jeffrey Dahmer (serial murderer) in an interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, November 29, 1994.
If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s—what’s the point of—of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought, anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we died, you know, that was it,
there is nothing….
Dr Kevin Bonham
October 20, 2005 at 05:27
Peter, I consider myself to have a kind of quasimoral duty to not let false statements exist unpunished, which sometimes drags me into debates I would prefer not to waste my time on, but I gather you would not relate to that sort of thing.
I nowhere stated that talkorigins was a mainstream scientific journal, although it is a hell of a lot closer to it than the dribblings of Peter Stokes.
How ironic that Stokes’ comments on the unrefereed nature of articles on talkorigins, when most of the time creationists whinge that the reason they have to publish material online or in dodgy movement house journals is a supposed conspiracy by the refereed science movement against them.
Peter, you have not cited one refereed article in support of your case as yet and for you to expect opposing arguments to be refereed under those circumstances is totally pathetic and suggests you will use any lame excuse whatsoever to avoid considering the evidence.
Actually you will note that the site I referred you to cites numerous refereed articles to back its case – unlike you. Furthermore, Peter, I am not merely an opinionated onlooker, but someone with a PhD in biogeography, on which basis alone I am quite happy to tell you that the Noah’s Ark story is categorically false.
I also have tertiary qualifications in philosophy which come in handy in refuting this nonsense your type put out. However I’m not going to bother explaining these things in too much detail unless you lift your game substantially in terms of backing your arguments with facts or at least links to someone who knows what they are talking about, rather than these puffed-up unsubstantiated assertions about God and quotes out of context you seem so fond of.
Your quoting of Richard Dawkins way out of context is either contemptible or extremely ignorant. Dawkins’ quote refers to the fact that evolution is not a process of blind chance but one in which, although mutations initially occur through “chance”, a strongly directed and essentially nonrandom process develops because some mutations succeed in the environment and some do not – evolution is therefore not a “chance” process, otherwise it would not work.
He may not be a Christian but he’s not an evolutionist either, and I’ve provided links to plenty of stuff that debunks the claim above. The Darwin quote is given in full at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part2.html , showing that Stokes has also used it out of context, because Darwin continues “A dog acts in this manner, but he does so blindly. A man, on the other hand, looks forwards and backwards, and compares his various feelings, desires and recollections. He then finds, in accordance with the verdict of all the wisest men that the highest satisfaction is derived from following certain impulses, namely the social instincts.” and so on in this vein, showing that Darwin believed evolution was entirely consistent with his far from unusual ideas of morality.
Finally for Stokes to quote Jeffrey Dahmer as an authority on evolution and morality is no more valid than me quoting the Reverend Jim Jones or David Koresh as authorities on how to run a religion. Not only is it contemptible, but the use of these quotes together has been shamelessly (and without attribution) ripped off by Stokes from an identical juxtaposition by creationists, eg in the document http://www.answersingenesis.org/cec/study_guides/answersSG4.pdf.
Peter, next time to save yourself further embarrassment, (i) read any quote in its full original context before employing it and (ii) do let us know who is doing your lack of thinking for you.
Dr Kevin Bonham
October 20, 2005 at 07:01
Above post should read “Behe may not be a Christian but …”, not “He may not …” – looks like a couple of letters went AWOL somewhere in transit.
Pasta Jon Kudelka
October 20, 2005 at 07:39
I think it’s nice that people are still allowed to have imaginary friends.
http://www.venganza.org/
Greg Gerrand
October 20, 2005 at 16:31
“He may not be a Christian but he’s not an evolutionist either,”
Kevin, do you mean Behe here rather than Dawkins? Peter is also utterly wrong in saying Behe is not a Christian.
Dr Kevin Bonham
October 20, 2005 at 17:06
Greg – yes, and you’re right, Behe IS a Christian, as was pointed out by the rather good segment on ID on Catalyst this evening.
In fact Behe claims to be a “Roman Catholic”.
More fool me for taking Peter’s word for it! Or maybe he is one of those Christians who prefers to exclude the Catholics from the fold.
Peter Stokes
October 21, 2005 at 07:01
You can pontificate all you like Kevin –
Question is – can you make the dirt?
It is always interesting how people attack the person rather than actually debate the issue!
Just because Behe was ‘raised’ a Catholic does not mean he was a Christian – Darwin was raised a Christian too. By the way, adding the rest of his quote does not detract from the start – with no God you can do what you like – just as Dahmer stated.
I was not using Dahmer as a ‘authority’ – just a very clear example of what Darwin stated.
But what about the dirt?
Greg Gerrand
October 21, 2005 at 12:26
“As a Roman Catholic I was always taught that God made life…”
– Michael Behe, 1996
http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9602/behe.html
“I’m a Roman Catholic, I believe in God”
– Michael Behe, 1997
http://www.arn.org/docs/techno/techno1197.htm
“I’m a Roman Catholic.”
– Michael Behe, 2002
http://www.freeinquiry.com/behe-npr.html
phill Parsons
October 21, 2005 at 13:51
Peter, how can anyone meet your impossible task. If your imaginary ‘God’ made everything then there is nothing tfor the ‘scientist’ to use.
Indeed it would appear that the ‘scientist’ is already spoken for lost stock and barrel as he is remains the property of the manufacturer. I just love such circular arguements, they are so much a matter of faith.
For a view on not so intelligent try http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-great-designer-mythology/2005/10/16/1129401142311.html
Dr Kevin Bonham
October 21, 2005 at 15:12
Who cares if I can make the dirt, Peter? You can’t make your God, you can only invent one, and even then you haven’t invented one for yourself but you’ve gone for the dodgy second-hand model (or should that be the wrecker’s yard?) Never mind dirt, Peter, all you can make around here is manure.
You attacked the person by suggesting that I am a person who doesn’t want to know the truth, by inferring that I would allow hatred of admitting I was wrong to stop me from changing my views, and by insinuating that I was part of some dumb ME cult that you’ve erected a strawman around (though frankly, compared to your beliefs I would take that as a compliment anyway.)
I believe that in your religion it is considered sinful to attack somebody for a quality you yourself posess and have not atoned for, so I look forward to your retraction of all personal insults you have dished out towards me and others here, and your commitment to go away and rethink your approach to public life until you can at least confine your own personal attacks to things that are actually true.
Not that you will be getting an apology from me. I attack you personally because your beliefs are an attack on me by virtue of my beliefs. Whether I am personally named is totally irrelevant to this – your faith still argues that I am deluded and going to Hell, and quite frankly I find that offensive and stupid and lame. Your beliefs are also an affront to every person who is gay, and to all kinds of others who do not follow your religious morality. All these are entitled to criticise you personally for your views. If you can’t take attacks, find a faith that doesn’t dish them out. Furthermore, to say I was attacking you rather than debating the issue is an evasion – I was doing both.
As for the issue of whether the lack of belief in God implies that there are no moral objectives, there are actually no unconditional moral objectives irrespective of whether there is a God or not. It is true that if there is a God then defying that God could result in eternal punishment, but that does not make that act morally wrong, it just means that that is the punishment an arbitrary cosmic dictator considers appropriate. In any case, if there is an all-powerful deity then the will of that deity is unknowable (because that deity can create any illusion that it likes and leave you none the wiser) and hence all talk of right and wrong is pointless.
That “all is permitted” thing is no big deal – the more important issue is what parts of “all” we subjectively wish to try to prevent in the real world. The great majority of us don’t want Dahmer types (or Jim Jones types) out doing what they do, and won’t want them no matter what our views on God, so we act together, for our various reasons, to make their task more difficult. In any case Peter, just because you can’t deal with your idea of the real world consequences of people holding a certain idea, makes no difference whatsoever to whether that idea is true.
jonathan males
October 22, 2005 at 12:36
Much of this debate confirms my worst fears about the difficulty of reasoned, good-natured dialogue on this topics. Rather than endlessly go in circles on the reality of god, why not consider that faith DOES exist, and from what I can tell from history or sociology, has existed in some form in pretty much all societies at all times.
And there has been useful research (which I pointed to earlier in this thread, see especially James Fowler’s work, and anything by Ken Wilber) that has examined how faith has the capacity to evolve and develop within individuals and societies.
This raises (for me anyway) far more interesting questions, both for those who have a faith and those who don’t, such as, “how is it possible to manage the paradox that faith has led to much good in the world (e.g. the development of hospitals and much of the social justice movement) and has also led to so much pain and suffering (e.g. fundamentalist wars and bigotry)?” This is a real challenge for those of us who may claim a faith.
Or what about, “how can we encourage the open exploration of the worlds of science and faith, recognising the limitations and contribututions of both domains?”
(see The Universe in a single atom, the convergence of science and spirituality, by the Dalai Lama, as a positive example that this is possible)
Finally, I came across an article in yesterday’s (UK) Daily Telegraph, quoting the former Archbishop of Canterbury now Lord Carey, who “passionately believed it was good for members of a religion to have their faith criticised on certain occasions”.
Of the film The Life of Brian, he said, “I love the film and I think it is good for religion to be knocked, to be criticised, to be challenged because we have done a lot of harm in the past”. “We know religion is a force for good but I don’t want to control a writer not to criticise me, because I may need that criticism”.
I offer this last point as a counter to the generalisation that ‘religion’ is sensitive or closed to criticism. Yes, many of religious faith are. And there are many who are open to dialogue and exploration. Is this thread able to move to open exploration of important questions without personal attack?
Peter
October 24, 2005 at 09:22
Where is the science in evolution?
Where is the ‘evidence’ for evolution?
‘The intelligent’ part of ‘intelligent design’ is not scientific – nobody is trying to say it is, BUT the ‘design’ part is.
The big question, that people who do not believe in a God can’t face is, can you have ‘design’ without intelligence – can you have ‘random design’?
In fact evolutionists are now being pushed into a corner and they don’t like it. They know that science is now disproving their ‘theory’ and they don’t want to admit it.
Simple logic, or common sense, knows that there must be a designer – faith not science will decide what/who it is.
As for ‘being a Catholic’ – Catholics tend to believe that once baptised as a child they are a Catholic – the Bible says that by their ‘fruits’ (evidence of thought and deed) will you know if they are really ‘Christians’. Sadly, calling oneself a Catholic or even an evangelical Christian does not put one automatically in the ‘creation’ box today. It should, but it doesn’t and hasn’t for a long time.
Fact is that Behe was a scientist, and as a scientist he decided there was design, not as a Catholic.
Dr Kevin Bonham
October 26, 2005 at 16:51
Peter Stokes claims Behe, as a scientist, decided there was design. In that case, Peter, in which refereed scientific journal did Behe publish these findings and add them to the scientific literature?
Peter, I can face your “big question” and laugh at you for even thinking you are onto something – you simply have no clue about this stuff. You can indeed have functionality without deliberate design. Where you go wrong is by asserting that this is “random”. In fact, because some mutations are very successful in the environment and others are not, natural selection provides such a strong weighting on the “random” outcomes that it is essentially no longer random.
The remainder of your questions were answered in links I already posted. “Simple logic” and lame arguments from analogy are not the same thing, and as for “common sense”, claims described as such in debates about complex issues are generally neither common nor sensible.
Peter, by commenting that calling oneself a Christian does not mean one is one, you invite the same from others. I therefore from this point on do not recognise you as a Christian, and I doubt that your Jesus would either. If you do not believe Behe deserves the label, you should say why.
Jonathan – I think you make the mistake of assuming that an act claimed to be done in the name of a faith (or done by a member of a faith) was necessarily motivated by it. That could be sometimes the case, but in others people could be using religion to rationalise (or should that be irrationalise?) what they should have done anyway, or using religion as a tool of motivation or control over others.
With your comments about the limitations of science and faith you again seem to be straying towards the nonsense that both are necessary and that someone without the latter is somehow deficient. As we previously discussed the socially beneficial behaviours sometimes attributed to faith can also occur without it.
As for your question about “personal attack” (itself an implied attack upon people on both sides), my answer is no: for so long as there are people here making false claims in the name of religion while not even bothering to research the subjects they are discussing, they can expect me to be calling them on it and for it. If anyone has a problem with this, I could always find a few choice words for their inconsistent, condescending forum-hippy attitudes too. Oh dear, I already have. Jonathan, you’re almost as much a cardboard cutout on this one as our visiting NaCl shaker.
jonathan males
October 26, 2005 at 23:04
Thanks for your views, peace be with you Kevin.
Dr Kevin Bonham
October 27, 2005 at 07:52
Jonathan – can’t imagine anything more boring, except perhaps for your deployment of a lame and insincere cliche frequently used to insinuate that the opponent is not at peace with themselves, when in fact all they are not at peace with is idiocy and folly.