Painting Fakes

It's very interesting to see what's happened to Anzac Day over my lifetime. I attended a lot of Anzac Day ceremonies in my childhood.  On April 24 there would be a memorial service at school and we would all buy Anzac badges.  Then on the day itself my scout group would gather early in the morning with the other marchers at the Sunnybank shopping centre on Station Road.  Led by local war veterans, the various organisations would march - or rather stroll - down Station Road, turn left into Lister St (passing my house on the way, where Dad would wave from the verandah) and attend a short memorial service at the Municipal Hall.  Someone would play the Last Post, we would sing Lest We Forget and someone would give a short address.  I don't remember what they said, because I was always distracted by the honour boards listing the names of the local men who died in the two World Wars and whose names also graced our local streets. I stopped attending these e...

I don't really feel shocked when I hear about cases of sexual abuse in the church.  I feel deeply sad for the victims and angry at the perpetrators, and I feel betrayed when church leaders protect the abusers at the expense of their victims.  But I don't really feel shocked.  I've worked in child protection.  I know the statistics.  It is pretty much inevitable that somewhere in any big insitution there will be abuse going on.  When I read about it, my expectations are merely proved correct. Rolf Harris is another matter altogether.  With Rolf it's personal.  He was the first singer I ever loved.  Before I discovered pop music, he was my number one musical taste.  I had some of his records, and watched his show on TV.  His songs were also the first I ever performed in public.  I sang one of them at a scout concert and our leader (who despite the stereotypes was not the least bit abusive) was so taken with it t...

In Part 1 I provided a quick summary of what Paul says about slavery.  How should we understand this message as 21st century Christians? For 21st century readers of the Bible, our immediate, visceral reaction to Paul's words on slavery is to say, "Why didn't he just come out clearly and say that slavery is wrong and slaves should be freed?  Why was he so circumspect?  Surely loving people who have been enslaved must entail giving them their freedom!"  Many devoted Christians down the ages have agreed.  The emancipation movement in 18th century England was famously led by evangelical Christians who saw the slave trade as an unmitigated evil. I suspect the answer lies in the problem of legalism.  The main danger of legalism, as identified by Jesus and Paul, is hypocrisy.  If we have obeyed the letter of the law, we see ourselves as righteous even if we actually do great harm.  This is precisely the danger in relation to slavery. Under...

Reading The Good Book has reminded me about the issue of slavery.  One of the more frequent complaints atheists and others make against Christianity is that the Bible, and particularly Paul, seems to support the ownership of slaves.  After all, doesn't Paul say "slaves, obey your masters"? The New Atheists say many silly and ill-informed things about Christianity, but this is not one of them.  They are raising a serious issue, so I thought it was worth a serious answer.  I'm afraid the result will be a rather long post which for the sake of the blog format I will post in two parts (Part 2 is here ).  Even then I will only just scrape the surface. Lest you think this is a dry exercise in ancient history bear in mind that human rights organisations estimate 27 million people are currently enslaved around the world and somewhere between 300 and 1,000 women are trafficked into Australia every year, mostly to work in the underground sex trade. I'll get back ...

When I asked the question a few weeks ago about atheist world views , my relative and favourite atheist Roo referred me to AC Grayling's The Good Book: A Secular Bible.   AC Graying  was until recently Professor of Philosophy at London University, and is a prominent advocate of secular humanism which he equates with atheism.  The purpose of The Good Book , it seems, is to provide humanists with their own guidebook which could take the place of the sacred texts of the religions he sees as obsolete or discredited.  This book reminded me of those high-functioning autistic savants who are able to translate their singularity of focus into works of obscure and unusual genius.  Sometimes these works are merely brilliant curiosities, like Stephen Wiltshire , who produces lifelike paintings of real cityscapes based on the briefest of observations, or Gilles Trehin, the creator of Urville , an incredibly detailed imaginary city. On the other hand, some h...

I for one will not be in deep mourning over this week's death of Margaret Thatcher.  Of course her death is a sad event for her family and friends and they are entitled to their grief.  As for the rest of us, the grieving began much earlier, as the results of her policies began to bite. One thing you can say in Thatcher's favour is that she never hid her intentions.  Our current crop of tories tend to hide their light under a bushel, pretending to be moderate and compassionate and then implementing hardline policies when they get elected.  Thatcher was always up front - pro-free enterprise, anti-welfare, anti-union.  She said she would privatise services and she did.  She said she would reduce the power of trade unions, and she did.  She said she would resist communism, and she did. If you think those are all good things, then she will be your heroine and you will be in mourning right now.  I don't, and I'm not.  Once Thatche...

The bit of atheist apologetics I enjoy the least, and find the most absurd, is the evolutionary explanation for religion.  Daniel Dennett wrote a whole book on it, and Michael Shermer has written several.  The point is generally that religion developed because it, or the bahavioural basis behind it, has survival value.  Shermer says our ability to attribute intention to things that have none (like the sky) is a by-product of our ability to predict the behaviour of predators.  Dennett says that religion builds social cohesion in small hunter-gatherer groups and hence helps them to survive by working together.  EO Wilson says altruism grows out of our drive to care for our offspring and hence ensure our genetic continuity. The thing about all these explanations is that they seem plausible, and could even possibly be true,  but the evidence for them is almost non-existent.  This is because the science of evolutionary biology has fe...

On Good Friday I gave a short meditation on two passages - the story of Jesus before Pilate as told in John 18 and 19, and for a bit of background the story of David's plan to build a temple from 1 Chronicles 17. David certainly had plenty of faults, but he is often protrayed as the archetypal King of the Jews, the man who first established them as a secure, powerful nation.  1 Chronicles 17 recounts how, after fighting various wars and establishing his kingdom securely, David had the notion to build a temple to Yahweh.  Even his household prophet Nathan thought it was a good idea.  Yahweh disagreed, and sent David a message.  The essence of it was that he didn't need a house, and if any house-building was to be done he, Yahweh, would do it.  He would establish Israel in their home, and build a house (that is, a dynasty) for David.  David was put firmly in his place.  He may have had a household prophet, but he didn't have a h...